I was afraid of Korean food when I moved to L.A., let alone sushi. I remember thinking either sink or swim. Living here in Studio City, Ventura Blvd. is the Mecca of sushi restaurants. What you thought was so exotic is just run of the mill.
The thought of eating rabbit and squirrels doesn't appeal to me. And that was on our table quite often as a kid. In your uppity restaurants, they serve a lot of rabbit. But I just can't help but think of Peter. And deer, I can't go there, because of Bambi.
I love shopping, but I can't go out. I love going to restaurants and eating out with friends.
I've got a really great team around me. They're the ones that are in the restaurants on a day to day basis. Anyone that's good can't be stifled in any way. I don't baby people.
I had a lot of fun creating some restaurants with a casual note to it, such as DBGB, for example, where it was about bangers and beers, being a very casual brasserie with very affordable food but very interesting homemade program.
There should be more booing in shops and restaurants and places like that when when the service is bad. If you've had a poor breakfast in a hotel, you should put your knife and fork down and boo.
I like going to New York. I like the galleries and the theatre and the restaurants and bars and music. I think that city is more alive than Los Angeles.
I've always hated Zagat. If I'm going to listen to someone else's opinions on restaurants, I don't care if I agree or not. I just want to know who they are.
We don't get the Tony gift basket anymore. You used to get incredible swag - there was like $5,000 worth of stuff. I remember getting an MP3 player, gift certificates to restaurants, a three-year gym membership.
I like the level of fame that I have. You get nice tables in restaurants sometimes, but fame isn't something that I find comfortable.
People go to restaurants for so many different reasons. To court a girl, to make some deal. Maybe to talk to some lawyer about how to get an alimony settlement better than they got last week.
We'll serve, on a good Saturday night six or seven thousand people in all the restaurants, and it's like, the percentages are that maybe one person's not going to like what they get. And I can't be there to fix it. I hate that. We're in this business to make things that please people.
I never subscribe to the stay-at-home policy. I'm not sick of the road or sick of eating in good restaurants around the country. I like to travel.
Waiter trainers claim that an investment in education pays off very quickly for restaurants.
I worked in 40 restaurants over a five-year period.
All my friends were in college when I was making 'Superbad.' We were drinking beer and watching movies and eating pizza. It wasn't like I was going to nice restaurants or anything like that, and I lived like a frat guy. Eventually it was time to grow up, be healthy and be responsible. You can't live like a kid forever, you know?
And, of course, millions of us cross the border to work in US homes and gardens and factories and carpentry shops and restaurants, and if you go to a restaurant pretty much anywhere in the United States, the chances are that the dishes will be washed by a Mexican.
I don't know what it is about me: I am no Rock Hudson, but I absolutely wow all the little old white-haired ladies. They stop me and talk to me all over the country, on the street, in restaurants, in elevators.
As people of color, it took a whole generation in many ways to get us out of the kitchen, and it's gonna take us the same whole generation to get us back into the kitchen and have ownership of restaurants, hotels and stuff like that.
There are certain things that make restaurants work and a certain kind of DNA that people who excel in restaurants need. But it's a lot like life, in the sense that you get out of it what you put into it.
Whenever I'd go to restaurants, the main chef came out and was cooking for me, and he's asking me how the food is. I get, like, VIP service, so it's weird.
I love to see the smiles on people's faces when you cook for them. I love to go to different restaurants. I want to cook because I know this acting isn't going to last forever, and I want something to fall back on. It's another way to make people smile.
My home in Dallas is wonderful. I can walk everywhere. It's a pretty good hidden secret, Dallas. There are wonderful restaurants and a wonderful nightlife. It's just a beautiful city to be in.
Restaurants serve huge portions on even huger platters, and people are tempted to eat too much.
Life has its trade-offs. As you age, you lose things like teeth and the ability to play in the ball pit at fast-food restaurants, and you gain things like experience and employer-based health insurance.
Last, in restaurants you spend a lot of time dealing with people who are very unhappy. Soup has been spilled on their laps, they've waited 10 minutes to get their check so they can leave, and you learn how to listen, I think, in a much more proactive way than government does.
People use restaurants to do business, to do politics, to socialize.
We stay in U2's hotel. They bought a hotel, The Clarence, a nice place and it's in an area where everything's happening, so many fantastic restaurants and bars and the people are so friendly.
I'm amazed that years after I stopped playing tennis, people still recognize me in restaurants and ask for my autograph.
We have our little restaurants, and there's a beautiful beach that we go to in the summer and fall. We tend to have a lot of get-togethers, and if it's at my house, we order pizza because I can't cook.
'The Food Network' was just starting in New York, and I was getting lots of attention from Mesa Grill. They had no money, so if you couldn't get there by subway, you couldn't be on. It wasn't like TV was something I really wanted to do - but I knew it would be great publicity for my restaurants.
Restaurants and chefs have become followed by such a broad swath of the public, in a way that used to be reserved for sports stars, movie stars, and theater actors. Restaurants are in the firmament of today's common culture.
Given the number of restaurants I have, I could easily travel all the time - but I try not to.
Restaurants stress the protein. People read menu items left to right, with the protein first. I read descriptions right to left.
You hit a certain age and - especially because of TV - the young cooks coming up say, 'You're a sellout, because you're doing something other than what you should be doing.' 'Top Chef' is a double-edged sword for me: There's a whole group of people who will not come to the restaurants because they assume I'm not in them anymore, all I do is TV.
Nobody makes bouillabaisse from scratch. It's all a bunch of malarkey. Even the restaurants buy a commercial-grade product. I had a very famous chef tell me that.