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The greatest food quotes ever


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107 replies to this topic

#31 et alors

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Posted 02 December 2007 - 08:59 PM

My father just sent me this quote from the New Yorker (he failed to mention who the author was, but I bet on Bill Buford.)

"You should always know the first name of the person you buy your meat from."

Now that i think about it, odd the New Yorker would allow a sentence ending in a preposition... it's still a sentiment I heartily endorse.
"Gourmandise is not unbecoming to women: it suits the delicacy of their organs and recompenses them for some pleasures they cannot enjoy, and for some evils to which they are doomed." Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

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#32 Peter B Wolf

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Posted 05 December 2007 - 10:54 AM

Eating habits and the Industry

“We have been conditioned to want, what they want us to want we want, and want it now."

My Own Quote in eGullet 2003
Peter

#33 jgm

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Posted 08 December 2007 - 08:51 PM

I regret that I cannot accurately quote one of my favorite lines. Edith Bunker, God rest her soul, was my kind of woman.

After Archie refused to eat the evening's entree, which was tongue - saying "I ain't eatin' nuttin' that came out of no cow's mouth" - Edith replied,

"Alright, Archie. I'll go fix you an egg."
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

#34 Bill Miller

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Posted 08 December 2007 - 10:00 PM

1. The source of the word "vegitarian"--unknown, but from a Native American dialect meaning "bad hunter"
2. Voltaire, after a year in England-"The English are an amazing people, they have 50 religions, but only one sauce."
3. Dorothy Parker--at the Algonquin in1926--"I love a martini, two at the most--three, I'm under the table--four, I'm under the host."
Cooking is chemistry, baking is alchemy.

#35 maggiethecat

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Posted 08 December 2007 - 10:30 PM

George Bernard Shaw was a teetotal vegetarian (so never going to make my heart or any other part of my anatomy throb) but this is a neat quip:

"I flatly declare that a man fed on whiskey and dead bodies cannot do the best work of which he is capable."

John Gays's my guy. His poem "To a Young Lady, with some Lampreys" extols, poetically and erotically, the delightful sin food can lure you into. Just a few lines:

"Each day has its unguarded hour
Always in danger of undoing,
A prawn, a shrimp may prove our ruin!
The shepherdess, who lives on sallad (sic)
To cool her youth, controls her palate.
Should Dian's maids turn liqu'rish livers
And of huge lampreys rob the rivers
Then all beside each glade and Visto
You'd see Nymphs lying like Calisto."

Margaret McArthur

"Take it easy, but take it."
Studs Terkel

1912-2008

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#36 jayt90

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 08:08 AM

Angela Baddely as Mrs. Bridges in 'Upstairs, Downstairs',

"A stew boiled is a stew spoiled!"

#37 racheld

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 08:56 AM

Mrs. Blatherwick, serving a gristle/turkey neck/potato peelings broth to the seven recalcitrant children trying in vain to get rid of Nanny McPhee:


"Smell that. That is the smell that forged this empire.

That pong is the pong of conquerors!"
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#38 Shalmanese

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Posted 09 December 2007 - 10:03 PM

My father just sent me this quote from the New Yorker (he failed to mention who the author was, but I bet on Bill Buford.)

"You should always know the first name of the person you buy your meat from."

Now that i think about it, odd the New Yorker would allow a sentence ending in a preposition... it's still a sentiment I heartily endorse.

View Post


I think it was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.
PS: I am a guy.

#39 paulraphael

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Posted 26 December 2007 - 11:03 PM

Two more from the Simpsons ...

Moe (on his first date in years, at Springfield's snottiest French restaurant):
"Give me the best thing you got and stuff it with the second best thing you got."

Homer (at a protest against animal testing at a cosmetics company, he sees pigs that have been tarted up with lipstick and mascara):
"So sad. Yet so sexy. Yet so delicious!"

And my favorite food quote of all time, from Alain Ducasse (spotted a while ago in someone's eGullet signature):

"Desserts are like mistresses. They are bad for you. So if you are having one,
you might as well have two."

#40 insomniac

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Posted 27 December 2007 - 02:53 AM

2 gems from my daughter's friend's very old Irish granny this Christmas....

Ali, 'No thanks granny, I won't have a sausage, I'm vegetarian.'
Granny, 'Ah, ya will, sure it's not meat, it's pork.'

and

Granny' 'If you ever want to kill a dog feed him chocolate, he'll be dead within the hour.'

#41 Ariel Schor

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Posted 19 April 2008 - 11:47 PM

These are my three favourites so far....

"Remember that a very good sardine is always preferable to a not that good lobster." - Ferran Adria

"I'm tougher than you, faster than you, better than you. I'm a Chef. I work in inhuman temperatures, and I like it that way. I don't have to sleep every day if there's work to be done now; you get the work done. Only got a couple hours of sleep last night, and you've got eighteen more hours of work ahead of you. Good. You like that. You're a chef. You can sleep later." Michael Ruhlman - The Soul of a Chef

"For Millenia, people have known how to make their food. They have understood animals and what to do with them, have cooked with the seasons and had a farmer's knowledge of the way the planet works. They have preserved traditions of preparing food, handed down through generations, and have come to know them as expressions of their families. People don't have this kind of knowledge today, even though it seems as fundamental as the earth, and, it's true, those who do have it tend to be professionals - like chefs. But I didn't want this knowledge in order to be a professional; just to be more human." - Bill Buford -"Heat"

#42 Wesley1

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Posted 20 April 2008 - 03:48 PM

WOW! These damn things are as hot as a stiff cock!

-Julia Child, bare handedly, pulling cannellini out of a pot of boiling
water

#43 Ted Fairhead

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Posted 20 April 2008 - 08:17 PM

"i have noticed when chickens stop quarreling over their food they often find that there is enough for all of them. i wonder if it might not be the same with the human race"
archy's life of mehitabel
Donald Robert P. Marquis


#44 adegiulio

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Posted 08 November 2008 - 06:59 AM

A Scottish acquaintance once told me a of a first date gaffe. When asking the waiter whether or not the venison was aged, she inquired "The deer, was it well hung?"

Nuff said
"It's better to burn out than to fade away"-Neil Young
"I think I hear a dingo eating your baby"-Bart Simpson

#45 Peter Green

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Posted 08 November 2008 - 10:16 AM

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." Ben Franklin

#46 Kerry Beal

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Posted 08 November 2008 - 08:08 PM

A Scottish acquaintance once told me a of a first date gaffe. When asking the waiter whether or not the venison was aged, she inquired "The deer, was it well hung?"

Nuff said

View Post

Hubby always orders his eggs 'over hard'. The waitress at our usual breakfast place walks up with the plates and asks him "are you hard?" She choked a little, turned quite red, then started laughing so much she could barely put the plates down.

#47 ASM NY

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Posted 03 October 2009 - 06:01 PM

Not surprised to see a lot of Simpsons quotes here, who can forget the classic:

Homer: Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute. Lisa honey, are you saying you're *never* going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad! Those all come from the same animal!
Homer: [Chuckles] Yeah, right Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.
Arley Sasson

#48 Shalmanese

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Posted 04 October 2009 - 12:34 AM

Moe (on his first date in years, at Springfield's snottiest French restaurant):
"Give me the best thing you got and stuff it with the second best thing you got."


"Excellent sir. Lobster stuffed with tacos"
PS: I am a guy.

#49 prasantrin

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Posted 04 October 2009 - 02:42 AM

"It's just food. Eat it."
--David Chang

#50 Tri2Cook

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Posted 04 October 2009 - 05:55 AM

"Here's what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colourless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
It says that the effect of a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick."
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

"The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?"
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)

Edited by Tri2Cook, 04 October 2009 - 05:59 AM.

It's kinda like wrestling a gorilla... you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is tired.

#51 RiceCooker

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Posted 30 November 2009 - 05:53 PM

Great restaurants are, of course, nothing but mouth-brothels. There is no point in going to them if one intends to keep one's belt buckled. ~Frederic Raphael
"What's your favorite kind of apple?"
"I bet it's granny smith you sour prick."

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#52 Busboy

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Posted 01 December 2009 - 09:56 AM

Around my house the main quote is WWTD? What Would Thomas [Keller] Do?

And also (apropos of the Voltaire quote earlier):

*Either*
"How can you govern a nation that has 246 kinds of cheese?"

*Or*
"Nobody can simply bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese."

-- Charles de Gaulle

My suspicion, knowing politicians as I do, is that once he'd found a decent line, he probably said both.
I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government.

#53 RWells

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Posted 02 December 2009 - 11:50 AM

Mario's famous quote, "The Italians were eating with forks when the French were still eating each other."

Bourdain's quote that I use for my tag, "Even Samantha Brown would have a hard time summoning a "wow" for this"

I love the WWTD. A classic for cooking slackers.



Bob
Even Samantha Brown would have hard time summoning a "wow" for this. Anthony Bourdain

#54 roosterchef21

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Posted 02 December 2009 - 08:30 PM

I can relate to this. A suitable quote for those times when people look at you funny when you have blown a thousand bucks on a meal.

We were saving, saving, saving then going to France and blowing the money eating. She was a nurse and had never experienced fine dining but she loved it, too. Our mates thought it absurd.
Heston Blumenthal

#55 Shalmanese

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Posted 04 December 2009 - 08:56 PM

"[The Black Truffle] is treasured not so much for its taste or appearance but for its aroma, which has been likened to bedsheets after a night of abandon, slatterns who disdain to bathe, all that is dark and alluring about the human body and soul." - Alan Richman
PS: I am a guy.

#56 Peter Green

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Posted 20 August 2011 - 09:30 AM

I was reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, and a line near the end made me smile in a way that I know I'll be quoting Mitchell for some time:

Dhondt to Frobisher - "My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched."

#57 Panaderia Canadiense

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Posted 20 August 2011 - 11:06 AM

My fave is another of Douglas Adams' -

"All time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. Drink up, the world's about to end." - Ford Prefect to Arthur Dent, HHG2G

After that, I'm quite fond of an unattributed quote: "Any self-respecting cat will bury a ripe guava."

Edited by Panaderia Canadiense, 20 August 2011 - 11:07 AM.

Elizabeth Campbell, baking 10,000 feet up at 1° South latitude.
My eG Food Blog (2011)My eG Foodblog (2012)

#58 dcarch

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Posted 20 August 2011 - 01:32 PM

At the end, you can't take it with you,

except what you put in your stomach.

dcarch

#59 Porthos

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Posted 20 August 2011 - 01:52 PM

This particular theme has already been touched on - but this refers to the one who first inspired me.

I recently saw this apron: Large Letters "WWJD" small letters "What would Julia do"
Porthos Potwatcher
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#60 judiu

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Posted 20 August 2011 - 09:04 PM

This particular theme has already been touched on - but this refers to the one who first inspired me.

I recently saw this apron: Large Letters "WWJD" small letters "What would Julia do"

I L0VE it! :laugh:
"Commit random acts of senseless kindness"