The greatest food quotes ever

[MarkIsCooking]

Just looking at the signatures from many of you, I'm sure there is a wealth of great food quotes. I'm looking for anything from interesting to hilarious. Here are 3 to get it started.

The first taste is with you eyes.

More important than the food on the table are the people in the chairs.

not sure everyone here agrees <g>

and one I saw in someone's signature:

Some see the glass as half emtpy. Some see the glass as half full. I see the glass and say, "Are you going to finish that?"

-Mark-

[LaurieB]

I heard a chef once implore one of his employees:

"Just try to be smarter than the food!"

I loved that.

[JanMcBaker]

I heard a chef once implore one of his employees:

"Just try to be smarter than the food!"

I loved that.

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Oh, THAT is a good one!! I like that too.

My sister and I are especially partial to:

"We need desserts!" --Lilo, in 'Lilo and Stitch'

[Toliver]

Just a reminder that if you use a quote from another eGullet member in your signature you need to get their permission first. See Avatar, Signature, & Member Biography Guidelines>Signatures

That being said, some of my favorite eGullet quotes:

“I don't get jello "salads" either. But white sausage gravy over a biscuit is a poem in pork.” – fifi

“Never underestimate the power of pork.” – tejon

“I should mention that the morning always begins with bacon.” - snowangel

“They can have my bacon when they can pry it from my cold, dead fingers.” =Mark

“A world without pork is not a world for me.” – fiftydollars

“…it is very difficult to transcend the quality of your ingredients.” - chocopihle

“Torn roasted peppers make Jacques Pepin cry. That's my code for a bad thing. As in: 'Washing chicken makes Jacques Pepin cry.' Or: 'Holding the knife like that makes Jacques Pepin cry.' " – jinmyo

Another gem from jinmyo:

“Psh. I don't care about the people. Some you like, some you don't.

I won't cook food I don't love.”

“Sure I can grill…I can also make a dress out of a floursack and a man out of you.” – Maggiethecat in the GGWotS (Great Grill War of the Sexes) discussion

[oneidaone]

Well this one is about wine from Rob Bigelow of Bellagio at a recent Pinot Noir tasting at the Kapalua Wine & Food Festival this past July, it remains quite memorable for me:

"It's the kind of wine you can drink early in the afternoon and feel good about later."

I can't remember how many we tasted that morning, probably 10 or 12 and this was at the beginning of the tasting.

[Mayhaw Man]

Mark Twain:

"New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin."

[annecros]

Another quick one from Mark Twain:

"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

and a longer and better one from the same:

"Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs. It is not strange; for tastes are made, not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired; but afer all, the Scotchman would shake his head, and say, "Where's your haggis?" and the Fijan would sigh and say, "Where's your missionary?""

From A Tramp Abroad

But, Miss Piggy said it so well, I cannot even wrap my mind 'round her genius:

"Never eat more than you can lift."

[SundaySous]

My Grandfather, father of eight:

"We're poor, we eat our mistakes!"

[Peter the eater]

Here's 10 from this thread started by Rosie about food jokes:

Strictly speaking not a joke, but here are my top ten favourite food quotes from "The Simpsons":

10. Moe: “I just made a Cornish game hen with chestnut stuffing. . . Would you believe a pigeon stuffed with Spam? . . . Would you believe a rat filled with cough drops?”

9. Cletus: “Look Brandene, it's Wolfgang Puck! Mr. Puck, you make the only grub what satisfies my gut worm. I swear.”

8. Marge: “I'd like to see the Japanese take on the club sandwich. I bet it's smaller and more efficient.”

7. Comic Book Guy: “Oh, loneliness and cheeseburgers are a dangerous mix.”

6. Troy McClure: “Don't kid yourself, Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!”

5. Ralph: “When I grow up I'm going to Bovine University”

4. Lunch Lady Doris: “More testicles mean more iron.”

3. Apu: “These hotdogs are now nearly rectum-free”

2. Homer: “Olive oil? Asparagus? If your mother wasn't so fancy, we could shop at the gas station like normal people.”

And finally my personal favourite:

1. Homer: “I’m so hungry I could a steak the size of a toilet seat.”

[MaxH]

How many do you want? I started collecting quotations that "you won't find in Bartlett's" around 1980; many are about food and wine. Used some in past eG postings. Here are a few choice ones mostly used earlier here. In small type to save space. For the modern books, briefly quoted, I strongly recommend reading the full originals.

You have heard the news: excommunicated. Come and dine to console me. Everyone is to refuse me fire and water; so we will eat nothing but cold glazed meats, and drink only chilled wines. -- Talleyrand (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord), in a letter to his friend the Duc de Biron (better known as the Duc de Lauzun), April 1791. Sources: Larousse Gastronomique 1961 Crown edition; also Duff Cooper, Talleyrand (Harper and Brothers, 1932).

A light supper, of course. I am exceedingly fond of Welsh rabbit. More than a pound at once, however, may not at all times be advisable. Still, there can be no material objection to two. And really between two and three, there is merely a single unit of difference. I ventured, perhaps, upon four. My wife will have it five; but, clearly, she has confounded two very distinct affairs. The abstract number, five, I am willing to admit; but, concretely, it has reference to bottles of brown stout, without which, in the way of condiment, Welsh rabbit is to be eschewed. -- E. A. Poe, Some Words with a Mummy

[At the end of the 19th century in Berlin,] even at court, a strange relationship to good food prevailed. According to author and art historian Max Rapsilber, Emperor Wilhelm II once said after a banquet at the Adlon Hotel, "Dinner was good, but what pleased me most was the discipline with which it was made."

The Brillat-Savarins came of heroic stock and all died at the dinner-table, fork in hand. Brillat's great-aunt, for example, died at the age of 93 while sipping a glass of old Virieu, while Pierrette, his sister, two months before her hundredth birthday, uttered (at table) the following last words which are forever enshrined in the memory of good Frenchmen: `Vite,' she cried, `apportez-moi le dessert -- je sens que je vais passer!' -- Lawrence Durrell's preface to Marcel Rouff, The Passionate Epicure. English translation by Claude [sic], E. P. Dutton, 1962.

No matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney.

-- Rube Goldberg, as quoted by Lee Roth in <1259@sousa.ltn.dec.com>

Baron Philippe de Rothschild became impatient waiting for lunch at the Tadich Grill after asking his host to take him to a "place that's typically Old San Francisco." He said "I dislike doing things like this, but perhaps it would help if you told them who I am." His friend replied, "I dislike telling you this, but I did, 15 minutes ago." -- Story summarized; quotations from Herb Caen, 1970

Calvin Trillin, joking about the meaning of [“continental cuisine” in the 1970s US], suggested the continent in question must be Antarctica, because so much continental food is made from frozen ingredients. -- Jane and Michael Stern, American Gourmet, Harper Collins 1991, ISBN 0060167106.

Nasty, brutish, and long. -- Ted Talley (wholesale wine merchant), striving to describe the flavor of a remarkably hideous wine at a blind tasting in my presence, 18 May 2000.

[AvsKick21]

"At the end of the day it's just food, isn't it? Just food."

-Marco Pierre White

[merstar]

"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people."

- Orson Welles

"Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables. They probably get jet-lagged, just like people."

~Elizabeth Berry

"Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces."

--Judith Viorst

"In the beginning, the Lord created chocolate, and he saw that it was good. Then he separated the light from the dark, and it was better."

-Unknown

"Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can't remember what they are."

- Matt Lauer (on NBC's Today Show).

[andiesenji]

Many of my favorites were penned by Terry Pratchett.

My signature states my very favorite!

The Ephebians made wine out of anything they could put in a bucket, and ate anything that couldn't climb out of one. -- (Terry Pratchett, Pyramids)

Sham Harga had run a succesful eatery for many years by always smiling, never extending credit, and realizing that most of his customers wanted meals properly balanced between the four food groups: sugar, starch, grease and burnt crunchy bits.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms)

And then you bit onto them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn't know it had got. Dibbler had worked out that with enough fried onions and mustard people would eat anything.

-- A fact McDonalds knows about as well (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

"You pay for it before you eat it? What happens if it's dreadful?"

- "That's why."

-- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)

[Ted Fairhead]

When mighty roast beef was the Englishman's food,

It ennobled our hearts and enriched our blood,

Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good.

Oh! The roast beef of old England!

Richard Leveridge, The Roast Beef of Old England

[Megan Blocker]

"The food of thy soul is light and space; feed it then on light and space. But the food of thy body is champagne and oysters; feed it then on champagne and oysters; and so shall it merit a joyful resurrection, if there is any to be."

- Herman Melville, Pierre, or The Ambiguities

I just love that one, and have completely stolen it from my best friend, Louisa - we share a love of champagne, so now we share a motto.

[kpzachary]

That's the problem. If you're slower than me, stupider than me and you taste good...tough shit."

- Anthony Bourdain

"Anything that gets cut into four pieces, and the pieces move independently? That's one dumb fsckin' creature."

-Anthony Bourdain, referring to lobster

[truenorthern]

W.C Fields, when asked if he like children

"Yes, as long as they're not overcooked"

(do it with the voice. It's funnier)

Edited November 6, 2007 by truenorthern (log)

[Hombre]

Kissing don't last; cookery do.

- George Meredith

[Catherine Iino]

Thank you, Megan! We have an oyster-centric Thanksgiving, and I will love sharing that quote.

[Gifted Gourmet]

"Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it's cute but boring and expensive."

- P.J. O'Rourke

"You can never have enough garlic. With enough garlic, you can eat The New York Times."

(Morley Safer)

We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police.

– Jeff Mander

Edited November 17, 2007 by Gifted Gourmet (log)

[ruthcooks]

"Are you making a statement, or are you making dinner?" Mario Batali

[HVRobinson]

"A egg salad so good you could PLOTZ!"

--- Woody Allen's What's Up Tiger Lily

hvr

[Barry Foy]

You'll look a long time for a quote with more to gnaw on than the following, in Sean Wilsey's review of the book Service Included, in the 18 November New York Times Book Review:

Refinement is a form of corruption. Sharpening of the palate may well correspond to deeper deadening. Human organs of sense and experience, cut free from anything but their own pleasure, catered to so scrupulously--how can it end in anything other than a spoiled, infantilized, ever-more-demanding state?

[Pebs]

The Chicago Tribune asked area chefs what their secret to great holiday cooking was. My favorite response was from the chef at a well known soul food restaurant......

Mo buttah...Mo bettah

[Bree20]

I heard a chef once implore one of his employees:

"Just try to be smarter than the food!"

I loved that.

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This alot easier said than done