I don't care what a lot of anonymous strangers think about restaurants.
I'll never understand those greasy little deep-fried wings most bars serve.
Tell the cook of this restaurant with my compliments that these are the very worst sandwiches in the whole world, and that, when I ask for a watercress sandwich, I do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.
I don't think it's a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef's a fat pig.
The critic has to do more of what the book critics and art critics have done in the past. Which is give you a context for understanding the restaurant, give you a better way to appreciate it, give you the tools to go in there and be a more informed diner who can get more pleasure out of the experience.
On New York's Palm restaurant: Their steaks are often good, but the lobsters-with claws the size of Arnold Schwarzenegger's forearms-are as glazed and tough as most of the customers.
Cuisine Nouvelle was just a concept, and one which, crucially, the English managed to get wrong. I mean, if you run a restaurant, you've got to feed people, not make pretty little pictures on plates to make up for your lack of ability.
I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant.
The truth is, as much as I loved writing restaurant reviews, it always felt very self-indulgent to me. It was so much fun, I loved doing it, but there's so much else to say about food.
The Cheesecake Factory's not that bad.
I don't like it when I go to a restaurant and I'm lectured from the menu.
The disparity between a restaurant's price and food quality rises in direct proportion to the size of the pepper mill.
I like telling stories, and I tell stories that interest me. It would be boring to have to go to nothing but the best restaurants. That would be a misery to me.
One of the things that happens to you if you write about restaurants - one of the reasons restaurant critics are the real heroes - is that whenever anyone has a grievance about any aspect of the business, they tell you about it.
I don't think I've actually ever had cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory. I've had the Steak Diane. I don't like cheesecake!
Find what's hot, find what's just opened and then look for the worst review of the week. There is so much to learn from watching a restaurant getting absolutely panned and having a bad experience. Go and see it for yourself.
While you can have the cult of the celebrity chef, the food still must taste good.
