Top 1200 Restaurant Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Many chefs of a certain caliber do not see me as a chef. I don't have a restaurant. They see me as a TV food personality, not a chef. I've gotten respect, trust me, they respect me, but I think that I can't hit that particular level of respect from them until I have a successful Vegas restaurant that not only makes money but creates unbelievable food and a fabulous experience. I don't think people think I can cook, and they don't think I know what the hell I'm doing.

I wrote a mad, passionate letter to the best restaurant in the UK, Le Gavroche in London, and asked if I could work for them. They gave me a job as a dishwasher (Colin laughs). For me that was a joy because I had a foot in the door of this world class restaurant. Just being around the buzz and the pots and pans and the wonderful food and all this produce that was coming in, that was the start of Paul Rankin the chef.

I have new music coming out. I'm working on some television shows. I still do a tremendous amount of concerts. I'm doing my restaurant. I got a club coming in New York. The restaurant is called Doug E. The club is called Fresh.

Our clients wanted the restaurant experience, not their mother's buffet dinner - so we reached out to that world and hired a series of restaurant chefs: Robb Garceau from Jean Georges, Cornelius Gallagher from Oceana. Cornelius completely revolutionized our menu; he did a stint at El Bulli, and one of the techniques he brought back was sous-vide cooking. Our current chef, Patrick Phelan, continues to grow the vision.

It's very important in a restaurant to really do the right hiring because there's no restaurant that you have one cook and one chef and nobody else in the kitchen. Generally you have five, ten, 15 people with you. So that's really important is to train them right, but first you have to hire the right people.

During one of his uncannily well-timed impromptu visits to my restaurant, Union Square Cafe, Pat Cetta taught me how to manage people. Pat was the owner of a storied New York City steakhouse called Sparks, and by that time, he was an old pro at running a fine restaurant.

There's not too many people that don't think I'm crazy, for walking away from so much money. I'm at a restaurant with my wife, it's a nice restaurant, we're eating dinner. I look across the room, I say, 'You see this guy over here, across the room? He has $100 million.' And we're eating the same entree. So, OK, fine, I don't have $50 million or whatever it was, but say I have $10 million in the bank. The difference in lifestyle is miniscule.

Although a great restaurant experience must include great food, a bad restaurant experience can be achieved through bad service alone. Ideally, service is invisible. You notice it only when something goes wrong.

You're not even in a restaurant, but... you got served!

I worked in a restaurant and in a nightclub cloakroom.

I think there are two ways of eating, or cooking. One is restaurant food and one is home food. I believe that people have started making food that is easy that you want to eat at home. When you go out to a restaurant, you want to be challenged, you want to taste something new, you want to be excited. But when you eat at home, you want something that's delicious and comforting. I've always liked that kind of food - and frankly, that's also what I want to eat when I go out to restaurants, but maybe that's me.

You know, my parents had a restaurant. And I left home, actually, in 1949, when I was 13 years old, to go into apprenticeship. And actually when I left home, home was a restaurant - like I said, my mother was a chef. So I can't remember any time in my life, from age 5, 6, that I wasn't in a kitchen.

I want to open a restaurant.

My parents own a restaurant in Albuquerque.

I judge a restaurant by the bread and by the coffee.

Being general manager is like being the de facto owner. It's like wearing the crown of 'Restaurant Man' without being 'Restaurant Man.' You're trying to run the business, but you're running the ranch without riding the big horse.

I worked in a Chinese restaurant.

We've become such a restaurant society.

I was always pretty broad. I've had a couple bad experiences. One time, I showed up late for a gig in Brooklyn at an Italian restaurant. I ran on stage, did my show, and then some guy in the audience threatened to kill me because he didn't like my joke. Instead of talking to him, I just ran off stage. And then, because I was late, the owner of the restaurant threatened to kill me. And I was 19 years old and so scared that I almost started crying. But, I've done every gig you can imagine, in every state.

I'm a walkawayer. If someone brings me a really crap meal in a restaurant I will tell them it's wonderful and then just never go to the restaurant again. I think that's the best way to do it generally, rather than sit and fight and annoy your head. Just pretend to enjoy it and then leave.

It was a revolution, but now it is an evolution. People know more ingredients, people know more techniques, and people look for more ingredients they've never looked for before. In the '80s, you couldn't find raw tuna in any restaurant that wasn't Japanese. Now, you can't find any restaurant without it or sashimi.

Every restaurant in the world is owned by a Greek.

With that availability of cash coming in to your restaurant, get a chance when you buy your restaurant, pay it off first and then buy your property. At that point, it's because you own it. Everybody runs it, and if it doesn't work, then you're not going to be out of a bunch of money.

One day I may commit to a city and settle down and do the restaurant thing - when I'm ready and however and whatever the definition of a restaurant means to me and how I want to cook for people. Many lessons to be learned that are probably long overdue for me and I'm finding them through all channels of exploration and keeping all my doors open.

He brought a sensibility and a hard-edged reasonableness to operating restaurants that had a lasting impact on me and still affects how I run all our restaurants today. The passing of 'Restaurant Man' - the original gangsta 'Restaurant Man,' my father - was the passing of an era. No one can replace him.

When I was 11 or 12 - a young boy in Japan - one of my older brothers took me to a sushi restaurant. I had never been to one, and it was very memorable. Back then, sushi was expensive and hard to come by, not like today, when there's a sushi restaurant on every street corner and you can buy it in supermarkets.

Marg Helgenberger and I were waitresses in the same restaurant in Evanston, Illinois. I'm happy to say that that restaurant has since been torn down. [...] We both had an audition for ABC soaps - different soaps, but we auditioned at the same time, and she got the part and went off to New York. Three years later, I went to L.A. So she was kind of an inspiration to me. And it makes sense that we will both be in Wonder Woman together, because we ARE Wonder Women.

Right after I graduated high school, I joined a sushi restaurant to learn how to make Japanese food. And then spent seven years. Then that time - that's enough. Then sushi restaurant - butchering fish and they make your body smell like fishy.

If you've got a restaurant, you definitely want the line to be out the door the first night, but you're more interested in people continuing to come to the restaurant. And that's their outlook, a little bit. I think it allows for more creativity, in the process. It allows people to make interesting programming that maybe wouldn't have a place on broadcast networks, if you were just counting people.

Every restaurant needs to have a point of view.

When I was a kid, I have two dreams. I want to be a baseball player. Hometown, Hiroshima, has a Japanese baseball franchise team called Hiroshima Carps. You know, and then I want to be a sushi chef. I want to make own restaurant - sushi restaurant.

In Japan, the more expensive a restaurant is, the larger the plates and the smaller the portions. The cheaper a restaurant is, the smaller the plates and the larger the portions.

I have started my own restaurant.

So, the first step to opening a restaurant is, don't. Opening a restaurant is a series of putting out fires every single day. I mean, even once you're open, it's still a series of putting out fires. Step one: don't.

Having been in the restaurant business, our job in the restaurant business is to be responsible for our customers' happiness. It's the nature of the hospitality business. You need to take care of people. You take care of customers above all others. Customers are your lifeblood.

Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant!

Our awareness of time affects how we think and act. This is illustrated by the story about the clock in a restaurant window. It "had stopped a few minutes past noon. One day a friend asked the owner if he knew the clock was not running. 'Yes,' replied the restaurant man, 'but you would be surprised to know how many people look at that clock, think they are hungry, and come in to get something to eat."' If only there were some kind of divine timepiece that would arouse a spiritual hunger in people!

I'm a restaurant junkie.

The personality of a restaurant is very important.

The restaurant industry is brutal.

I absolutely love the restaurant industry.

Today's restaurant is theater on a grand scale.

I love cooking. I'm in the restaurant business.

I only have the restaurant. If I do other things, it's only to do with the restaurant.

Yelp is - I mean, Yelp's not even good for looking up the restaurant's phone number because, you know, on the site, they just want you to read their reviews and look at their ads. They don't even actually want to give you the information about the restaurant or the menu.

It's one thing to execute dishes on your own time for family and friends, but quite another to perform and be judged in a competition. And that's what cooking in a high profile restaurant is. It's a competition. You're up against every other three-star restaurant in your city, and if you want to stay in business, you'd better deliver.

I was at a restaurant and I heard this little voice at a nearby table pipe up and say, 'I believe I will have the chowder.' I got up and walked out into the middle of the restaurant. There was Sterling Holloway just sitting there being Sterling Holloway. Never in a million years would I have imagined that I'd have the honor of filling his shoes. I just regret not going up to him and saying hello.

I don't answer my phone in a restaurant.

I don't get to cook in my own restaurant.

In March 2019, I was looking to make investments in the F&B sector. Ranjit Bindra approached me because he heard I was interested in this space with an offer to invest in his restaurant Bastian. I had been a regular patron at this popular restaurant and decided to invest in the same buying a 50 percent share stake along with management rights.

Working at a restaurant is a tough gig.

What is Valentines? Is it a restaurant name?

There's this terrific kid in Maine who saw all the waste generated by straws handed out in restaurants. So he made up these little pop-up cards and asked restaurant owners put them on the tables to explain why straws wouldn't be handed out unless requested. Of course, the restaurant owners couldn't resist a 9-year-old kid, and so it worked.

There's another little vision in my life, going into a restaurant in New York years ago: All the women are sitting in their little strapless dresses with their cleavage, and there's this one woman in a sleeveless turtleneck and pants. And I can tell you that every man in that restaurant looked at that woman's arms. It was hypnotizing when everything was covered up. Just the face, the conversation - and you see the arms. And the arms and the hands become an obsession. I like that.

I bought a restaurant - that was pretty expensive.

My favourite restaurant of all time is Mildreds on London's Lexington Street. It's a little vegetarian restaurant and is really fun and healthy, too. It was the first place I went to in London and really liked. That was 20 years ago, and it is still my favourite.

I own the restaurant. There are a lot of cooks, waiters and waitresses in this restaurant. They worry about their problems. I worry about all the problems.

In the restaurant it's much more serious.

People are the core of every business. Businesses are based on relationships, and relationships are based on people. I would go to an average restaurant run by amazing people over an outstanding restaurant run by awful people.

I judge a restaurant by the bread & the coffee.