It was fine for my Polish Ashkenazi forebears to live on dumplings and potatoes, because they laboured in the fields. But that diet is unsuitable for an urban lifestyle.
GILES CORENHe was a staffer at Punch but in the evening he wrote columns for the Evening Standard and The Times.
More Giles Coren Quotes
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Gentile smoked salmon is all… muscular and smells of smoke. It’s not very fatty. They don’t understand – smoked salmon should be almost spreadable! So you give them the real stuff and they can’t believe how delicious it is.
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I had become mean and stupid and deliberately hurtful because that is what is expected of restaurant critics. Of critics in general.
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How clever am I? I’m really quite clever. I mean, look, I’ve got a first-class degree from Oxford.
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I’m just a bit frustrated that in London we make such an effort to ape the New York restaurant scene. I have good friends who ape the New York restaurant scene and do it brilliantly. None of them would claim that the primary reason for going to their restaurant was the food.
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Not since Ancient Greece have cities been thought of as the ideal living environment for humans. And that was so long ago it predates the invention of trousers.
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I used to be a very angry person, I used to throw things and break them. Then I had five years of constant psycho-analysis, and I don’t get angry any more.
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I know more than most journalists. I know more than most columnists on big, important newspapers.
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I have Gordon Ramsay to thank for my TV career because Channel 4 spent a long time trying to find him a sidekick for ‘The F Word’, then he suggested me, knowing I’d stand up to him.
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Gradually, I developed opinions about food, and my French friends taught me that you have to complain in a restaurant.
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As drivers desert the city I find myself clinging more and more to my father’s belief that a man without a car is not really a man.
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I come from a country where there’s a reputation for bad press.
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I think unionization of labour is a great thing.
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You can get a decent mouthful of food in Warsaw or Chad if you look hard enough. It’s just I wouldn’t actually go there looking for the food.
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I sleep nine hours every night, I have a little nap after lunch, and, if I’m going out for dinner, I sneak in an extra one before I head out.
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Being a success in the world, having total control of one’s life, is about being able to take or leave things.
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