Gastronomy Quotes

“Everything in this room is edible. Even I'm edible. But, that would be called canibalism. It is looked down upon in most societies.”
― Tim Burton, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

“I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead.”
― Woody Allen

“And he, like many jaded people, had few pleasures left in life save good food and drink.”
― Honoré de Balzac

“A German wine label is one of the things life’s too short for.”
― Kingsley Amis

“No one was irritable; we have never known anyone to remain unhappy while digesting a good meal. We enjoy lingering in a becalmed state, a kind of midpoint between the reverie of a thinker and the contentment of a cud-chewing animal, a state that should be termed the physical melancholy of gastronomy.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Short story collections are the literary equivalent of canapés, tapas and mezze in the world of gastronomy: Delightful assortments of tasty morsels to whet the reader's appetite.”
― Alex Morritt, Impromptu Scribe

“There are three kinds of oyster-eaters: those loose-minded sports who will eat anything, hot, cold, thin, thick, dead or alive, as long as it is oyster, those who will eat them raw and only raw; and those who with equal severity will eat them cooked and no way other.

The first group may perhaps have the most fun, although there is a white fire about the others' bigotry that can never warm the broad-minded.”
― MFK Fisher

“Die gastronomischen Kenntnisse sind allen Menschen nöthig, insofern alle die Summe des Vergnügens, die ihnen bestimmt ist, zu vermehren streben.”
― Johann Rottenhöfer

“Not every change is so subtle. There are chefs in Rome taking the same types of risks other young cooks around the world are using to bend the boundaries of the dining world. At Metamorfosi, among the gilded streets of Parioli, the Columbian-born chef Roy Caceres and his crew turn ink-stained bodies into ravioli skins and sous-vide egg and cheese foam into new-age carbonara and apply the tools of the modernist kitchen to create a broad and abstract interpretation of Italian cuisine. Alba Esteve Ruiz trained at El Celler de Can Roca in Spain, one of the world's most inventive restaurants, before, in 2013, opening Marzapane Roma, where frisky diners line up for a taste of prawn tartare with smoked eggplant cream and linguine cooked in chamomile tea spotted with microdrops of lemon gelée.”
― Matt Goulding, Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture

“gastronomically, a wild salmon and a farmed salmon have as much in common as a side of wild boar has with pork chops.”
― Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

“A dynamo in the kitchen, she was elevating Mexican cuisine to new gastronomic levels. She had opened her restaurant, El Colibrí, two short years ago. At first people thought she was nuts- then they tasted her dishes. Billing her cuisine as "not your mother's tacos," she'd introduced gourmet Mexican food to Los Angeles, and you didn't eat her creations- like the lobster tail served with the pomegranate mango salsa, served on a blue corn tortillas- with your hands, especially with her secret version of a chimichurri sauce. A hint: truffle oil along with olive oil. The girl genius was an alchemist in the kitchen, creating elixirs and blending ingredients like a mad culinary scientist.”
― Samantha Verant, The Secret French Recipes of Sophie Valroux

“Good cooks make the most of what they have, great cooks of what they don't.”
― Neel Burton

“Men's ideas, though, continue to run in the old channels about oysters as well as God and war and women. Even when they know better they insist that months with R in them are all right, but that oysters in June or July or May or August will kill you or make you wish they had. This is wrong, of course, except that all oysters, like all men, are somewhat weaker after they have done their best at reproducing.”
― MFK Fisher

“Twenty-eight courses?" Dylan mused.
"Get comfortable," Grace said with anticipation.


They came on little spoons, tiny plates, in small glasses, atop mini-pedestals even speared and hung, suspended on custom-made wire serving devices like little edible works of art, which was entirely the point: mint-scented lamb lollypops, osetra and oysters on frothed tapioca, beet gazpacho and savory mustard shooters, foie gras porridge with a sweet ginger spritz in an atomizer, ankimo sashimi on house-made pop-rocks, plums in powdered yogurt, goat cheese marshmallows, venison maple syrup mastic, warm black truffle gumdrops with chilled sauternes centers. Foamed and freeze-dried, often accompanied by little spray bottles of fragrance and tiny scent-filled pillows, the food crackled and smoked and hissed and sizzled, appealing to all the senses. Thin slices of blast-frozen Kobe carpaccio were hung on little wire stands to thaw between courses at the table. All sorts of textures and presentations were set forth. Many were entirely novel and unexpected renderings of traditional dishes.
Intrigued and delighted by the sensory spectacle, Dylan and Grace enjoyed the experience immensely, oohing and aahing, and mostly laughing. For as strange as each course might be, as curious as the decorative objects that presented them, each one was an adventure of sorts, and without exception, each one was delicious, some to the point of profound. And each one came with an expertly matched extraordinary wine, in the precisely correct Riedel glass.”
― Jeffrey Stepakoff, The Orchard

“After several courses, Dylan looked at the menu, noting that "Cheeseburger" was next up. "Okay, this is something I recognize," he said with relief.
"Don't get too excited," said Grace knowingly as she sipped the last of a bright and barnyard funky Romanee-Saint-Vivant from a big-bowled burgundy stem.
The waiter stepped out of the shadows and set two servings of the next course on the table simultaneously. Another server placed two very large Bordeaux stems on the table, and then carefully filled each with just one and a half ounces of wine. "This is Chef's cheeseburger," the waiter said. "Paired with the '70 Latour." The waiter and other server then backed away.
Dylan and Grace leaned forward, examining the strange creation.
It smelled amazing, though it looked much more like something from a science class than from a Michelin-starred restaurant-- a tiny piece of freeze-dried cheese on a teaspoon of bison tartare, lying atop a small lettuce pillow that had been filled with Vidalia onion smoke. It sat on a small warm open-face wheat bun, and the whole thing was presented on a miniature plate on which was a little pool of foamed heirloom tomato, and another of foamed mustard seed. And it was all topped with a few droplets of pureed brined Japanese cucumber.
Dylan just stared at it. "I feel like it belongs in a museum."
"I know. It's almost too beautiful to eat," Grace said.
They were both captivated by the variety of scents coming from the presentation. It did, indeed, smell like an amazing cheeseburger.
"Well, I'm gonna try," said Dylan, putting the little top bun on. Grace watched as he picked it all up with his thumb and forefinger, dapped it in the foamed tomato and mustard, and popped it in his mouth.
Dylan's mouth and nose were filled to bursting with all the expected flavors and scents of a great cheeseburger-- bread, meat and cheese, ketchup and mustard, lettuce and pickle. Oh, wow, it was good. And as he chewed, he popped the lettuce pillow, adding just the right touch of sweet onion scent and flavor to the mouthful.”
― Jeffrey Stepakoff, The Orchard

“Jasmine licked her finger and flipped through her notes: Smoked Chicken with Pureed Spiced Lentils, Hot Ham and Bacon Biscuits, Cassoulet Salad with Garlic Sausages. After three cookbooks, she was finally finding her voice. She had discovered her future lay in rustic, not structure. Oh, she had tried the nouvelle rage. Who could forget her Breast of Chicken on a Bed of Pureed Grapes, her Diced Brie and Kumquat Salsa, her Orange and Chocolate Salad with Grand Marnier Vinaigrette? But her instincts had rightly moved her closer to large portions. She hated the increasing fad of so much visible white plate. She preferred mounds of gorgeous food and puddles of sauces. Jasmine kneaded her heavy flesh and smiled. She had finally found her term. She was going to be a gastrofeminist. She would be Queen of Abundance, Empress of Excess. No apologies of appetite for her, no 'No thank you, I'm full,' no pushing away her plate with a sad but weary smile. Her dishes would fulfill the deepest, most primal urge. Beef stews enriched with chocolate and a hint of cinnamon, apple cakes dripping with Calvados and butter, pork sautéed with shallots, lots of cream, and mustard.”
― Nina Killham, How to Cook a Tart

“I will never forget that day. It was in Europe, what... seven years ago now?
It was molecular gastronomy's most prestigious international competition. As famous name after famous name received their awards...
... imagine my shock when I saw a young girl less than ten years of age step forward to receive one of her own!"
"Cooking is art. The more it is honed, the more beautiful and elegant the result.
I look forward to showing you all... the beautiful worlds the art of cooking can create."
She went on to receive almost all the awards there were to win. By the time she was ten years old, she had successfully obtained forty-five patents and was contracted with over twenty different restaurants for research into new menu items.
She is heaven's gift to molecular gastronomy, a certified genius!
Of all the first-year students in the institute, no one can refute that she is the one closest to being named to the Council of Ten!”
― Yuto Tsukuda, 食戟のソーマ 8 [Shokugeki no Souma 8]

“Mert ameddig nem tudjuk konyhánkat újragondolni, ameddig nem tudunk egy patinás, a hagyományokon, a régi magyar gasztrozófián alapuló, mégis korszerű és izgalmas gasztronómiát varázsolni, addig olyan nép leszünk, amilyen most vagyunk: egyszerre álmos és álmosító, alacsony növésű, de fennhéjázó, irigy és dühös, maradi és sznob, szűklátókörű és középszerű nemzet.”
― András Cserna-Szabó, Mérgezett hajtűk

“Drawings on caves dealt with one of man's major concerns, that of finding food. Hunting with spears, trapping deer, stalking game with bows and arrows, and spearing fish or catching them in nets are all portrayed with an energy.”
― K.T. Achaya, INDIAN FOOD

“The train of thought went like this: I scribbled down the most "sophisticated" foods I could think of. Foie gras. Truffles. Expensive wine. Caviar. Ibérico ham. The one that struck a chord with my Jewish brain was caviar. Caviar served with blinis, little pancakes hailing from eastern Europe. In Russia they served blinis with caviar and sour cream. But even if I could make a hundred and fifteen blinis in the time allowed (since we had to make a few extras for beauty shots and mistakes), I couldn't just serve them with caviar and sour cream. That wasn't transformative enough. Original enough.
What else was served with blinis? I tapped my pen thoughtfully against my Chef Supreme notepad. We were getting to the end of our planning session, and the way the others around me were nodding and whispering to themselves was making me nervous. Sadie, they all know exactly what they're doing, and you don't, I thought to myself. And then I nodded, confirming it.
Jam. Blinis were served sweet-style with jam. But even if I made my own jam, that wouldn't be enough. I needed a wow factor. What if... what if I made sweet blinis, but disguised them as savory blinis? Ideas ran through my head as we were driven to the grocery store. I wasn't hugely into molecular gastronomy, but even I knew how to take a liquid or an oil and turn it into small gelatinous pearls not unlike fish eggs. I could take jam, thin it out, and turn it into caviar. Then what would be my sour cream? A sweetened mascarpone whip? And then I needed something to keep all the sweetness from becoming overwhelming. I'd have to make the jam nice and tart. And maybe add a savory element. A fried sage leaf? That would be interesting...”
― Amanda Elliot, Sadie on a Plate

“Women however charming, have this disadvantage - they distract the mind from food.”
― Agatha Christie, Death on the Nile

“And for the person who likes oysters, such a delicate, charming, nostalgic gesture would seem so delicate, so nostalgically charming, so reminiscent of a thousand good mouthfuls here and there in the past...in other words, so sensible...that it would make even nostalgia less a perversion than a lusty bit of nourishment.”
― MFK Fisher

“Why, Hang Town Fry...I remember once..."

Then, for a few minutes or seconds before the part he has been playing so long submerges his real thinking self, and smudges all the outlines into those of a campus character, you see what this big deaf lost man must have been, one night down near the Ferry Building when he ate Hang...Town...Fry...”
― MFK Fisher

“Because of the munchies I get after a fat spliff is the reason I care for tasty food!”
― Martins Ate, Martins Ate's 108 Pure Vegetarian Food Cookbook: Excellent munchies recipes for a whole family

“In my cooking, I'm trying to avoid canned food preparing all from fresh and local ingredients.”
― Martins Ate, Martins Ate's 108 Pure Vegetarian Food Cookbook: Excellent munchies recipes for a whole family