Pretentiousness Critic Gifts

"Frankly, I don't believe his tastevin is in the repair shop."

"No, I won't write your prescription legibly...you'd just google it and ask a lot of dumb questions."

"It was a holiday I'll never forget...I saw life in the raw!"

"Oh, this old thing?"

"Well there's no way I'm going to say 'whom'!"

"'How We Die' - fabulous!"

"This is one of her more important paintings from her early period."

"You notice all the books behind me...one of these days I'll get around to read one."

"Their bookshelves look more convincingly read from than ours."

'I don't actually want to learn so much that I become a wine buff - just a wine snob!'

"I wouldn't read that book, dear... it's only there to impress visitors."

Foodies at a Diner. We'll have the alphabet soup, unless it's Helvetica or Times New Roman.

"Hints of migrant workers on the nose."

"We grind our own catnip."

"I'll have the crescent-crab 'purses' and the smoked duck 'hash' – hold the quotation marks."

"Revelatory, Michael - such airy meatballs."

"C'mon dude, these are not your people."

'I should know who he is! His work is in every gallery I go into.'

"I know it's a foreign book...but I'm reading it with a local accent."

'No, no, no...that's far too legible. Shakier. Much shakier!'

" ..graduated with honours, great job, beautiful wife, great kids.. Sure we've all got a sad story to tell."

'I found it difficult to put down, but I will. It's trite rubbish.'

I say if life gives you tapens, make tapenade.

New Acquisitions at the Museum of Modern Food

"Yuck. I could make better crêpes fourrées aux boeufs brouillés au parmesan myself."

Inferior Designer

'You call that restaurant upscale? I couldn't even get a pitcher of Champagne.'

"I don't mean to be a snob, but I know what real leather sounds like."

"Yes, but what happens if the ‘sniffling, sneezing coughing, aching, stuffy-head, fever, so-you-can-rest medicine’ makes me hallucinate?"

Coffee-table kids' books

"I'm liberal and tolerant. Anyone who disagrees with me should be allowed to choose his or her way of death."

'Highway Snobbery.'

'So, it's OK for you to go on and on about nothing, but as soon as I open my mouth, I'm a yappy little dog.'

"The house of Chardonnay, sir - it's a young wine and a bit fruit forward."

"'Au contraire' to you, too."