On Restaurant Critics
       Restaurant critics are like very bad lovers. They only come once a year, they don’t care if you’re not ready, they leave without saying a word and then they tell everyone what you did wrong.

On Jamie Oliver
       London has spawned the Robbie Williams of TV dinners. Young, cute and studiously raffish, Jamie Oliver has yet to convince his fans to spend much time in the kitchen. When Sainsbury’s, which has paid Oliver several million pounds to star in its advertisements, surveyed its customers in January 2006, 90% said they own a cookery book, but over half never use it.  Department of Uncomfortable Truths: Jamie Oliver MBE is an icon for a lot of men and women who are fascinated by food and totally unwilling to cook. The fact that he shares a name with a boy who famously asked for more lends the following paradox greater punch:
                                                The Oliver Twist: Eat More, Cook Less.

On Michael Winner
       The first critic at Murdoch’s Sunday Times is a vainglorious snob who writes in a prose style that appears to defy logic: everything is staccato, yet still the man cannot stop rambling. Like a cuddly bear with rotten teeth, Michael Winner is just a bit endearing, and the story of his rise to culinary power is instructive. It proves that anyone can become a restaurant critic. The good news for restaurateurs is that Michael Winner is easy to recognise. He looks like Barbara Cartland. The bad news is that he is remarkably candid, and strangely incorruptible. Yes, he has favourites, like all of us, and no, he doesn’t make any secret of that fact. But for a man who styles himself as a professional buffoon, what’s interesting about Winner is his own intolerance of stupidity. It’s not that he doesn’t suffer fools. He gives them no reason to live.

On Gordon Ramsay
       The difference between Gordon Ramsay and a talking pig is that Gordon Ramsay never shuts up.

On Celebrity Chefs
       To become a celebrity chef in England, it is essential to have some cursory skills in the kitchen, a big mouth and a deep, abiding belief in the proposition that there is no such thing as bad publicity. It helps to have a really hostile personality. You need to upset your wife, your staff and the guy from the Times on table three. You want your rivals to hate you, for a man among his mates is a schmuck at this end of the market. They should be talking about you from Babington House to the Bel Air Hotel. And when the last great scorer comes to write against your name, you will probably tell him to fuck off.

On Waiters
       History teaches us that at some dim point in the past, humans regarded service as a noble calling. Today, in terms of the level of esteem that society affords it, working in a restaurant is just below clerking in a video store, and just above selling cocaine. The art of running a dining room is now practiced in the main by resting actors and middle class dropouts. Neither have much interest in other human beings, and both have reason to be deeply insecure.

On Dinner in the Average Irish Restaurant
       I cannot remember the food, but the waitress, who was from Irkutsk, said something I shall never forget, in withering response to my invitation to come out for a drink. The sentence did not start with the words, “In Siberia, we do things differently… ” but that was the implication. “It is practical,” she announced, “as well as wise, to discover if a woman is sleeping alone, before you apply to share her bed.”

On Anthony Bourdain
       Tony Bourdain is a very cool character. Tall. Handsome. Hip. Funny. As he fluffed another question that it probably wasn’t fair to ask, I caught myself admiring him as one might admire a drunken friend, impressing some girl on the last bus home with stories that won’t lie down. A waitress, probably. I bet he’s slept with plenty. Looks like Jeffrey Goldblum, dresses like Harvey Keitel. You get the impression that he wants to be buried in black leather. Assumes your confidence and speaks as he writes. No great respect for grammar; farrago of clauses, delivered at a pace that implies a tax on time; sounds like he learned to speak English in the kitchen of a very cheap Chinese restaurant in Queens.

On Magazine Publishing
       Let me not pretend that the business is glamorous. That myth was created to impress advertisers. In publishing, as Rupert Murdoch noted, you make a lot of enemies. Competitors often print your obituary in order to steal your clients; those same clients are obsessed with the size of your circulation. Never mind the quantity, you say, feel the quality. But nobody listens. Even praise can rot the brain. Readers say how much they admire the work of someone who writes for the competition. Or else they issue the toilet line: “I keep your magazine beside the loo.” So you get your fifteen minutes. Then the customer wipes his ass.

On writing restaurant reviews
       Dr Johnson said nothing invented by man produces so much happiness as a good tavern or inn. The function of a critic is to identify the best. The shame is not that his tools are so crude, but that it’s so hard not to hurt someone’s feelings. “I’m not a consultant to the restaurant industry,” writes AA Gill. “If they want a consultant they can go out and hire one. Besides, you’re dealing with real people’s real money. You owe it to readers to be straight and tough.” Gill is right, but so was the editor, an American, who once said, “It’s okay to slap a man in the face, but you don’t have to cut his cheek with your ring.” Perhaps the challenge is to negotiate a path between the two positions.

On AA Gill
       The man who put the rant in restaurant.

Some Things I Hate to Hear a Waitress Say
     “Dad?”
    “Welcome to the Hard Rock Café.”
    “What has she got that I haven’t got?”
    “I recommend the plaice… [whispering] next door.”
    “Who’s the veal? Oh I see. I thought you ordered the veal.”
    “To be fair, it does look like a fingernail.”
    “Jesus, I said I’m sorry. Give me a break, it’s my first day.”
    “Look, I’ve already explained. Your card has been declined.”