Never invite anybody, certainly not a girl, to your flat for a meal. This indicates taking full responsibility for the selection and condition of the fare, apart from letting people see something of the way you live, which must remain forever a mystery. When you take a girl home for the night, insist on breakfasting at a hotel.

• Show no knowledge of how food is actually prepared. You have never cooked a meal in your life. What you eat is provided either by the Scottish treasure who keep house for you or by a girl or by a restaurant. [T 7, DN 20, OHMSSS 2] In your world, a meal appears, is devoured and vanishes.
• Generally, you love simple, quality meals. Scrambled eggs with bacon or sausage, and plenty of good strong coffee is suitable for breakfast, lunch, dinner or late supper. [LALD 3, DAF 10]. The champagne you typically wash such meals down with will make it clear you enjoy such meals for their taste, not their thrift [OHMSS 8, CR 14]. (At New York's Plaza Hotel, Felix Leiter could always get the chef to prepare your favourite egg dish -CC.)
• Eggs Benedict in a mousseline sauce [TMWTGG 7] or eggs en cocotte [G 12] are special variations, but always depicted by you as just solid old-fashioned egg dishes.
• When time is short, order a stack of ham sandwiches with plenty of mustard to satisfy your desire for strong tastes and sensations [G 7].
• Otherwise, dinner may bring grilled sole [OHMSS 2], escalope of veal [FRWL 25], a steak with french fries [LALD 15] or a simple plate of cold roast beef and potato salad [OHMSS 2]
• When abroad, you know and devour the ordinary simple food of that region: Cold langoustine in France [CR 6], tagliatelle verde in Italy [FYEO 4], or stone crabs and melted butter in the states [G 2].
• You are contemptuous of restaurants which boast of "specialities du chef" which are seldom more than poor cuts of meat hidden under wine or cream sauces [OHMSS 2]. You have a keen eye for the quality of food and have been known to point out to the waiter that you have been served the fly walk of the pate and demand a fresh slice.
• Scorn tea whenever it is offered, decrying it as a "flat, soft, time-wasting opium of the masses."