Gastronomic Experience Quotes

I think in France, for example, we can say whatever we want about the French, but going out and dining is more about the intellectual moment to share with the people you dine with than trying to figure out what the chef did with that little piece of salmon or lobster and all that.

Dining is and always was a great artistic opportunity.

However amazing a dish looks, it is always the taste that lingers in your memory. Family and friends will appreciate a meal that tastes superb-even if you've brought the pan to the table.

The No. 1 place I've visited so far was Antwerp, Belgium. That was one of the coolest cities I've ever seen. Every day I woke up, I felt like I was in a movie.

Cuisine is only about making foods taste the way they are supposed to taste.

Conversation is the enemy of good wine and food.

I came from the old world of gastronomy. Many years ago I walked into the kitchens of the Hotel St George and I feel very fortunate that I worked for chefs that were behind their stoves. I saw that world of gastronomy. I can sit here today and say that I saw the golden age of gastronomy. It's gone, it's gone. It's never going to have that anymore, once the accountants get involved the romance fades. That's the reality.

If my last supper was ever going to be cooked by a chef, it would have to be Thomas Keller.

In America we eat, collectively, with a glum urge for food to fill us. We are ignorant of flavour. We are as a nation taste-blind.

When people arrive at El Bulli, everybody goes through the kitchen. It's a way of making them feel at home. When they leave, the only thing I ask is whether they've been happy. Everything in between, I don't particularly care.

Fine dining is an occasional treat for most people.

The authorities liked to say that we received a balanced diet; it was indeed balanced - between the unpalatable and the inedible.

Cheesecake Factory is great. It should have Michelin stars.

Fancy Restaurant: one that serves cold soup on purpose.

There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat.

Sometimes, early in their careers, chefs make the mistake of adding one too many things to a plate to get attention. If a chef is just coming up with wiz-bang gimmicks on their plate, that has nothing to do with bringing real pleasure to people.

A banquet is probably the most fatiguing thing in the world except ditch digging. It is the insanest of all recreations. The inventor of it overlooked no detail that could furnish weariness, distress, harassment, and acute and long-sustained misery of mind and body.

We are delightfully trapped by our memories. I can't drink a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-Pape Vieux Telegraphe without revisiting a hotel bistro in Luzerne, Switzerland, where I ate a large bowl of a peppery Basque baby goat stew. A sip and a bite. A bite and sip. Goose bumps come with the divine conjunction of food and wine.

Too much trouble,' 'Too expensive,' or 'Who will know the difference' are death knells for good food. ... Cooking is not a particularly difficult art, and the more you cook and learn about cooking, the more sense it makes.

The same intelligence is required to marshal an army in battle and to order a good dinner. The first must be as formidable as possible, the second as pleasant as possible, to the participants.

People are bored of these 12-course gastronomic menus. They want affordable glamour.

Today there are very few chefs at that high level who are behind their stoves. You don't feel their presence within the room. Where's the romance? Where's the show? Where's the theater? The modern day restaurant - it's like dining in a chapel. It's boring.

The meal was pretentious - a kind of beetroot soup with greasy croutons; pork underdone with loud vulgar cabbage, potato croquettes, tinned peas in tiny jam-tart cases, watery gooseberry sauce; trifle made with a resinous wine, so jammy that all my teeth lit up at once.

An intelligently planned feast is like a summing up of the whole world, where each part is represented by its envoys.

Scallops are expensive, so they should be treated with some class. But then, I suppose that every creature that gives his life for our table should be treated with class.