A cannibal is a person who walks into a restaurant and orders a waiter.

Morey Amsterdam was best known as a nightclub comic and television performer whose humor relied on quick one-liners, puns, and absurd literalism. This quip fits that mid‑century stand-up and variety-show style: it takes a familiar word (“orders” in a restaurant) and flips it into a darker, literal meaning (“orders” as in requests the waiter as food), producing a surprise punchline. While the joke is widely attributed to Amsterdam in quotation collections, I cannot confidently place it in a specific dated performance, broadcast, or published script without a verifiable primary citation.

The line is a compact example of comedic misdirection: it begins like a dictionary-style definition (“A cannibal is…”) and leads the listener toward an expected explanation about eating people, then pivots to a literalized restaurant scenario where “orders a waiter” means both requesting service and placing an order for the waiter as food. The humor depends on the double meaning of “order” and the social script of dining out, which makes the taboo subject (cannibalism) feel safe and abstract. It also showcases Amsterdam’s persona-driven style—quick, clean wordplay that lands in a single beat.