I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.
A. N. Wilson
I've never had a study in my life. I'm like Jane Austen - I work on the corner of the dining table.
Our house has a library - it seemed better use of the space than as a dining room! - and I try to spend as much time in there as possible. There's nothing better while reading or writing than to be surrounded by books.
Adam Christopher
I like being the people's champion when it comes to dining.
Adam Richman
In Paris we have bistros, then we have fine dining. In London, you have a very contemporary scene with mixed influences.
Alain Ducasse
Food is one part of the experience. And it has to be somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the dining experience. But the rest counts as well: The mood, the atmosphere, the music, the feeling, the design, the harmony between what you have on the plate and what surrounds the plate.
I like using iconic things. What fine dining restaurant can get you to eat a breakfast sandwich that's like baby food?
Alvin Leung
I painted one dining room red and I must say, the conversation became very heated in that room.
Amanda Pays
I thought I'd be the first to introduce herbal tea to Patna. White tea, ginger tea, rooibos, camomile. No one touched it. On subsequent visits, I'd find the packets decorating the shelves in my parents' dining room.
Amitava Kumar
One restaurant I visit without fail, whenever I'm in the Bay Area, is the Boulevard at 1 Mission Street, a few strides from the waterfront. It has excellent food and wine very much in the modern California style, but I go there less for any one dish than for the pleasure of dining with the restaurant's chefs.
Amor Towles
The Panda mission really speaks to our philosophy. It is, 'Deliver exceptional Asian dining experiences by building an organization where people are inspired to better their lives.' I'm talking about everyone who works at Panda. They're inspired to better their own lives.
Andrew Cherng
If there's one thing I've learned after a lifetime of dining on delicacies like blood pudding, sea squirts, and camel kidneys, even folks who wouldn't come within 100 yards of a Cambodian tarantula want to hear what it's like to chomp on one!
Andrew Zimmern
The Sabbath is a weekly cathedral raised up in my dining room, in my family, in my heart.
Anita Diament
There are houses where they don't any longer have dining tables. They will sit in front of the telly and eat.
Anna Soubry
I don't ever think of myself as coming from a particular class because my father was working class but made his living as a newspaper foreign correspondent - someone of no fixed abode, as he used to say - who was as comfortable dining with the Mountbattens in India as he was having a pint with the boys. He was very gregarious.
Anne Reid
I think fine dining is dying out everywhere... but I think there will be - and there has to always be - room for at least a small number of really fine, old-school fine-dining restaurants.
Anthony Bourdain
Should l go on playing bridge and dining, going in the same old monotonous circle? It's easy that way, but it's a sort of suicide, too.
Antoinette Perry
The Ritz in London has an old-fashioned charm, with waiters wearing tails and white gloves. The dining room is exquisite, with immaculate service and ornate details.
Anton du Beke
Early on, I had a girlfriend come see me, and she was like, 'Yeah, it was good, but you were funny at a dining hall at the University of Maryland.' That's when I realized I was contrived. I was reciting jokes. So I really worked on - no matter what - sounding like I was just talking to the people.
Ari Shaffir
I used to eat under my grandmother's dining room table. I wouldn't eat at the table ever until I was about 10.
Ashley Walters
Why is it that a large majority of Hindus do not inter-dine and do not inter-marry? Why is it that your cause is not popular? There can be only one answer to this question, and it is that inter-dining and inter-marriage are repugnant to the beliefs and dogmas which the Hindus regard as sacred.
I actually built my own dining table back home in Australia. It's a secret hobby of mine that I weirdly find transfixing.
The first trip I remember taking was on the train from Virginia up to New York City, watching the summertime countryside rolling past the window. They used white linen tablecloths in the dining car in those days, and real silver. I love trains to this day. Maybe that was the beginning of my fixation with leisurely modes of travel.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, I rushed home before the kids left for school and gathered them around our dining room table and told them what had happened. Like everyone else, we struggled for words to describe to our kids why such a thing would occur.
Ping-pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century, and it was called Wiff-waff! And there, I think, you have the difference between us and the rest of the world. Other nations, the French, looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to have dinner; we looked at it an saw an opportunity to play Wiff-waff.
In the dining room, next to my collection of colorful papier-mache Mardi Gras float art, hang draperies made of the New Orleans toile fabric that I designed pre-Katrina for Hazelnut.
I simply adore getting dressed up for a special occasion. I feel incredible stepping out in luxurious fabrics and a bit of bling. That's also how I feel about special-occasion dining rooms. Because these aren't everyday spaces, they contain all sorts of drama for that once-in-a-while 'wow' event.
Dining rooms are really all about the table and the chairs.
A common mistake people make regarding dining rooms is to buy a matching set of table and chairs, which can be monotonous. I like to mix guest chairs in one style and head chairs in another for a more interesting, dynamic look.
Dining with a married couple can be uncomfortable.
In our fast-forward culture, we have lost the art of eating well. Food is often little more than fuel to pour down the hatch while doing other stuff - surfing the Web, driving, walking along the street. Dining al desko is now the norm in many workplaces. All of this speed takes a toll. Obesity, eating disorders and poor nutrition are rife.
I think people are more savvy about cooking, food and dining. I notice they are looking for more value for their money - not in larger portions but more in terms of healthier, fresh, farm-to-table dishes with a nice presentation.
I have a Damien Hirst spot painting which I love. It has pride of place over my dining-room table.
All four elements were happening in equal measure - the cuisine, the wine, the service, and the overall ambience. It taught me that dining could happen at a spiritual level.
To make money for college, I worked in our college dining room.
My husband and I have a deal, which has worked out well: He cooks one Sunday, I cook the next. The kids set the table, and we eat in the dining room together, just as I used to do as a kid.
Every time I baked cookies for people as a kid, it made me so happy. But when I was in culinary school and working in fine-dining restaurants, that was not a thing.
It was incredible to have J Dilla in your dining room making beats - it was one of the greatest experiences I've had.
I was very happy sitting alone at a dining room table, writing a script.
I have the mentality of a winner. I first went to the Olympic Games when I was 17, three weeks after my O-levels, and I remember sitting in a dining-hall filled with the world's best athletes.
While I've won five Junos, I've donated four of them to the National Archives in Ottawa. Which left my fifth Juno sitting, seemingly abandoned by its four family members, on my bookcase in my dining room.
My aunt got me interested in journalism - she found an old typewriter, had it worked over, put it on the dining room table, gave me a stack of paper and said, 'Play like you're a writer.'
We have cultural expectations that everyone needs a dining room, yet they're only used three times a year. But if I put a bone handle on the door of an upper-end brick home, I'm making an outlandish statement.
I want to make sure the fine-dining restaurant has a clientele who is local as much as tourists and foodies.
I think in France, for example, we can say whatever we want about the French, but going out and dining is more about the intellectual moment to share with the people you dine with than trying to figure out what the chef did with that little piece of salmon or lobster and all that.
I think fine dining should be part of the community where it is, more than just for the people who are going to make a special occasion.
History has long had a wall up between the kitchen and the dining room. Front of house, back of house - one group always wielded more power and influence.
'Fine casual' means taking the cultural priorities that fine dining, at its best, believes in.
Museums are like sports stadiums, hotels and hospitals: they are in the category of captive-audience dining.
I think that more and more and more really talented restauranteurs and chefs from the fine dining world are going to try their hand at fine casual. They're going to say, 'Why not us?'
