To coin a football phrase, the restaurant business is a funny old game. And we mean that in the literal sense, for anyone who works in this wonderful sector will know how adept it is at delivering some of the biggest belly laughs you can have while on the job.

However, sometimes, we all need a little reminder of why we got into this business in the first place.

So, if your interest is waning, if you’ve endured a particularly bad service or if you simply need a restorative laugh, check out our twenty favourite restaurant quotes and sayings. They’ll inspire, raise a wry smile and put you in the best frame of mind for when that next diner enters the door.

1. “The disparity between a restaurant’s price and food quality rises in direct proportion to the size of the pepper mill.”

– Bryan Miller

2. “In Pakistan anti-American protesters set a Kentucky Fried chicken restaurant on fire. The protesters mistakenly thought they were attacking high-ranking U.S. military official Colonel Sanders.”

– Jimmy Fallon

3. “I was at this restaurant. The sign said ‘Breakfast Anytime.’ So I ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.”

– Steven Wright

4. “If you’re choking in a restaurant you can just say the magic words, ‘Heimlich maneuver,’ and all will be well. Trouble is, it’s difficult to say ‘Heimlich maneuver’ when you’re choking to death.”

– Eddie Izzard

5. “The finest landscape in the world is improved by a good inn in the foreground.”

– Samuel Johnson

6. “Numbers written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe.”

– Douglas Adams

7. “Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?? I’m halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God….I could be eating a slow learner.”

– Lynda Montgomery

8. “The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, ‘Could I get you your check?’ and we answered, ‘How about the menu first?’”

– Erma Bombeck

9. “Great restaurants are, of course, nothing but mouth-brothels. There is no point in going to them if one intends to keep one’s belt buckled.”

– Frederic Raphael

10. “Never trust the food in a restaurant on top of the tallest building in town that spends a lot of time folding napkins.”

– Andy Rooney

11. “As a restaurateur, my job is to basically control the chaos and the drama. There’s always going to be chaos in the restaurant business.”

– Rocco DiSpirito

12. “If you’re a person who says yes most of the time, you’ll find yourself in the hotel business and the restaurant business.”

– Francis Ford Coppola

13. “If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.”

– Anthony Bourdain

14. “Days off are few and far between in the restaurant business. But on an hour off, I like to have a glass of wine with my wife.”

– Geoffrey Zakarian

15. “I come from the restaurant business; you’re talking to a guy used to working 12, 14 hours a day.”

– Bobby Schilling

16. “The restaurant business is something that you have to treat like a baby. You have to constantly be there. You can’t trust it to anybody else, because no one’s going to love it like you do.”

– Action Bronson

17. “Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them.”

– P. G. Wodehouse

18. “In the restaurant business, there’s the concept of pivot. Pivot to the stove, pivot to the refrigerator.”

– Tom Douglas

19. “People like consistency. Whether it’s a store or a restaurant, they want to come in and see what you are famous for.”

– Millard Drexler

20. “I love cooking. I’m in the restaurant business.”

– Bill Rancic

Got a favourite quote or restaurant saying of your own? Let us know in the comments section!

Image credit