If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny.

When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying, as politely as possible, that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere.

I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant.

Many Texas barbecue fanatics have a strong belief in the beneficial properties of accumulated grease.

Marriage is not merely sharing the fettucini, but sharing the burden of finding the fettucini restaurant in the first place.

Although I grew up in Kansas City, ... I have always kept more or less au courant of Texas barbecue, like a sports fan who is almost monomaniacally obsessed with basketball but glances over at the N.H.L. standings now and then.

Given the clientele, the restaurants on Capri might resemble those fancy Northern Italian places on the East Side of Manhattan where the captain has taken bilingual sneering lessons from the maitre d' at the French joint down the street and the waiter, whose father was born in Palermo, would deny under torture that tomato sauce has ever touched his lips.