Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fishbones and Pernod.
Norman Mailer described the desire to be cool as a decision to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness and one exists...
It’s very rarely a good career move to have a conscience.
If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and...
I can't imagine a better example of Things To Be Wary Of in the food department than bargain sushi.
For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as...
A proper saute pan, for instance, should cause serious head injury if brought down hard against someone's skull. If you have any doubts about which will dent — the victim's head or your pan — then thr...
Like slicing bread, thick-skinned tomatoes and so on — but on your full line of vegetables, spuds, meat and even fish. My sous-chef uses his for just about everything. F. Dick makes a good one for abo...
Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The
Tim and Andy stood there in head-to-toe leather motocross outfits, covered in road dust, behind me in a dark corner of the hotel’s dining room. Tim has penetrating pale blue eyes with tiny pupils, and...
There’s something wonderful about drinking in the afternoon. A not-too-cold pint, absolutely alone at the bar – even in this fake-ass Irish pub.
There was another inspiring moment: a rough, choppy, moonlit night on the water, and the Dreadnaught's manager looked out the window suddenly to spy thousands of tiny baitfish breaking the surface, ru...
There is nothing cool about used to be cool.
The bartender is Irish. Jumped a student visa about ten years ago but nothing for him to worry about. The cook, though, is Mexican. Some poor bastard at ten dollars an hour—and probably has to wash th...
Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don't have.
Skills can be taught. Character you either have or don't have. Bigfoot understood that there are two types of people in the world: those who do what they say they're going to do — and everyone else.
Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London is invaluable. As is Nicolas Freleng's The Kitchen, David Blum's Flash in the Pan, the Batterberrys' fine account of American restaurant history, On the Town...
Just believe me when I tell you that the city is beautiful – and not in the oppressive way of, say, Florence, where you’re almost afraid to leave your room because you might break something.
I'd been the culinary equivalent of the Flying Dutchman too long, living a half-life with no future in mind, just oozing from sensation to sensation.
I learned to recognize failure.