Foreign Food Quotes
"When it comes to foreign food, the less authentic the better."
Gerald Nachman, ‘San Francisco Chronicle’
“The French approach to food is characteristic; they bring to their consideration of the table the same appreciation, respect, intelligence and lively interest that they have for the other arts, for painting, for literature, and for the theatre. We foreigners living in France respect and appreciate this point of view but deplore their too strict observance of a tradition which will not admit the slightest deviation in a seasoning or the suppression of a single ingredient. Restrictions aroused our American ingenuity, we found combinations and replacements which pointed in new directions and created a fresh and absorbing interest in everything pertaining to the kitchen.”
Alice B. Toklas
“If I had magic powers, I should like to wave my golden fork over the confined cookery of Europe and enlarge it to infinity; I would like to . . . offer French nationality to the many hardly known but delicious foreign dishes; ...I would like to put the whole of natural history on the spit, in stews, in fricassees, in court-bouillon, in grills,..... “
Fulbert-Dumonteil (Jean Camille) 1831-1912.
French journalist and writer.
“The army from Asia introduced a foreign luxury to Rome; it was then the meals began to require more dishes and more expenditure . . . the cook, who had up to that time been employed as a slave of low price, become dear: what had been nothing but a métier was elevated to an art.”
Livy (Titus Livius), Roman historian (59-17 B.C.)
‘The Annals of the Roman People’
“The only cooks in the civilized world are French cooks. . . . Other nations understand food in general; the French alone understand cooking, because all their qualities - promptitude, decision, tact - are employed in the art. No foreigner can make a good white sauce.”
Roqueplan (Born Louis Victor Nestor Rocoplan) French journalist and theater administrator. 'La Vie parisienne'
“we heard one evening, under the eye of the imperturbable Paul, a foreign lady ask for a milk chocolate drink to accompany a fillet of sole Cubat, the chefs speciality. Sacrilege! Just as well that Marcel Proust and Boni de Castellane were not here to see that.”
Simon Arbellot de Vacqueur
French journalist (1897-1965)
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