Bourdain Quotes & Sayings

Nobody in Singapore drinks Singapore Slings. It's one of the first things you find out there. What you do in Singapore is eat. It's a really food-crazy culture, where all of this great food is available in a kind of hawker-stand environment. — Anthony Bourdain

Only Texans and Jews understand brisket — Anthony Bourdain

In college, I think I probably positioned myself as an aspiring writer, meaning I dressed sort of extravagantly and adopted all the semi-Byronic affectations, as if I were writing, although I wasn't actually doing any writing. — Anthony Bourdain

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter? I can. — Anthony Bourdain

I believe - to the best of my recollection, anyway - that I soon made the classic error of moving from margaritas to actual shots of straight tequila. It does make it easier to meet new people. — Anthony Bourdain

That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund. — Anthony Bourdain

I do my very best to avoid shark fin. — Anthony Bourdain

I always want off-the-beaten-path, Anthony Bourdain-inspired travel. — Meghan Markle

The menu selections for my brother and me expanded somewhat, to include steak-frites and steak hache (hamburger). — Anthony Bourdain

To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things - and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect. — Anthony Bourdain

If somebody crafts an interesting tweet that'll lead me to their blog, I'm going to their blog. — Anthony Bourdain

Always was Morocco. And recently the country's leadership seems to have embraced it in all its ill-reputed glory. The days of predatory poets in search of literary inspiration and young flesh are probably over for good. Hippies can just as easily get their bong riffs in Portland or Peoria. But the good stuff, the real good stuff, the sounds and smells and the look of Tangier
what you see and hear when you lean out the window and take it all in
that's here to stay. — Anthony Bourdain

Assume the worst. About everybody. But don't let this poisoned outlook affect your job performance. Let it all roll off your back. Ignore it. Be amused by what you see and suspect. Just because someone you work with is a miserable, treacherous, self-serving, capricious and corrupt asshole shouldn't prevent you from enjoying their company, working with them or finding them entertaining. — Anthony Bourdain

I'm not afraid to look like a big, hairy, smelly, foreign devil in Tokyo, though I do my best not to, I really do. — Anthony Bourdain

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you've got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it's a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way. — Anthony Bourdain

Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later. — Anthony Bourdain

When you're shooting that fast end to end, you wake up in a hotel and you don't know where you are. You're dreaming of Singapore, you wake up in Hong Kong. Or you just lose track. [It's] one of the reasons I'm staying in hotels that I know I've stayed in before, and they don't look like other hotels. — Anthony Bourdain

Every chef I know, their cholesterol is through the roof. And mine's not so great. — Anthony Bourdain

The cooking profession, while it's a noble craft and a noble calling, 'cause you're doing something useful - you're feeding people, you're nurturing them, you're providing sustenance - it was never pure. — Anthony Bourdain

Don't lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don't do it again. Ever — Anthony Bourdain

I like telling stories, and I tell stories that interest me. It would be boring to have to go to nothing but the best restaurants. That would be a misery to me. — Anthony Bourdain

Without Montreal, Canada would be hopeless. — Anthony Bourdain

Male, female, gay, straight, legal, illegal, country of origin - who cares? You can either cook an omelet or you can't. You can either cook five hundred omelets in three hours - like you said you could, and like the job requires - or you can't. There's no lying in the kitchen. The restaurant kitchen may indeed be the last, glorious meritocracy - where anybody with the skills and the heart is welcomed. But if you're old, or out of shape - or were never really certain about your chosen path in the first place - then you will surely and quickly be removed. Like a large organism's natural antibodies fighting off an invading strain of bacteria, the life will slowly push you out or kill you off. Thus it is. Thus it shall always be. The ideal progression for a nascent culinary career would be to, first, take a jump straight into the deep end of the pool. Long before student loans and culinary school, take the trouble to find out who you are. — Anthony Bourdain

I won't eat in a restaurant with filthy bathrooms. This isn't a hard call. They let you see the bathrooms. If the restaurant can't be bothered to replace the puck in the urinal or keep the toilets and floors clean, then just imagine what their refrigeration and work spaces look like. — Anthony Bourdain

I wasn't that great a chef, and I don't think I'm that great a writer. — Anthony Bourdain

Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. — Anthony Bourdain

I'm not afraid to look like an idiot. — Anthony Bourdain

Demi-glace. There are a lot of ways to make demi-glace, but I recommend you simply take your already reduced meat stock, add some red wine, toss in some shallots and fresh thyme and a bay leaf and peppercorns, and slowly, slowly simmer it and reduce it again until it coats a spoon. Strain. Freeze this stuff in an ice-cube tray, pop out a cube or two as needed, and you are in business - you can rule the world. And remember, when making a sauce with demi-glace, don't forget to monter au beurre. Chervil, — Anthony Bourdain

People's choice to become vegan, from people I've spoken to, seems motivated by fear. — Anthony Bourdain

I need the anesthetic qualities of the local fire water. — Anthony Bourdain

When I was writing 'Kitchen Confidential,' I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car. — Anthony Bourdain

You have an impeccable argument if you said that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo are food capitals. They have a maximum amount of great stuff to eat in the smallest areas. — Anthony Bourdain

I can't imagine a better example of Things To Be Wary Of in the food department than bargain sushi. — Anthony Bourdain

I Like this quote I dislike this quoteMy house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature. — Anthony Bourdain

To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. — Anthony Bourdain

There are chefs who are spectacular technicians, and often their food is worth eating once or twice, but if there's no heart in it, if there's no personality in it, it's not something you want to go back for. But heart without any skill at all? All the heart in the world ain't gonna help you if you can't peel an onion, or if you don't understand how to apply heat properly. A well-done steak is a well-done steak. — Anthony Bourdain

It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that's enlightenment enough - to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go. — Anthony Bourdain

I admire vegetarians who refuse to eat nothing but vegetables in their homes, but I also admire those who put aside those principles or those preferences when they travel. Just to be a good guest. — Anthony Bourdain

Luck is not a business model. — Anthony Bourdain

Those places I don't understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora. — Anthony Bourdain

I'm very type-A, and many things in my life are about control and domination, but eating should be a submissive experience, where you let down your guard and enjoy the ride. — Anthony Bourdain

I travel 250 days a year. There are chef friends who I only see every couple of years. By conventional standards I'm a bad friend. I'm not there to remember your birthday or to offer you words of support through Twitter. I'm not up on what you're doing in New York because I'm not in New York. I'm not what people call in parenting circles "present." — Anthony Bourdain

And now to sleep, to dream...perchance to fart. — Anthony Bourdain

Hot, salty, crunchy, and portable, the previously awful-sounding collection of greasy delights can become a Garden of Eden of heart-clogging goodness when you're in a drunken stupor, hungering for fried snacks. At that precise moment, nothing could taste better. — Anthony Bourdain

What's the opposite of suck? Un-suck? — Anthony Bourdain

I like the fact that Melbourne always seems to support their chefs and promote them in ways I find really admirable. — Anthony Bourdain

PETA doesn't want stressed animals to be cruelly crowded into sheds, ankle-deep in their own crap, because they don't want any animals to die-ever-and basically think chickens should, in time, gain the right to vote. I don't want animals stressed or crowded or treated cruelly or inhumanely because that makes them probably less delicious. — Anthony Bourdain

I've been fascinated by the world ever since I read 'Kitchen Confidential' by Anthony Bourdain. I've watched 'Top Chef' and watched interviews with chefs on 'Charlie Rose' ... I thought they're really intriguing characters, and they really encapsulate that tension between vision and commerce, art and commerce. — Jon Favreau

If you've ever hauled a 28-pound two-year-old around New York, you'll find that men fold at the knees a lot quicker than women. — Anthony Bourdain

They're professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don't forget that the Russians - any Russian - can drink you under the table. — Anthony Bourdain

Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it's a start. — Anthony Bourdain

For the rest of my life- to resemble this one: both complex and strangely comforting. — Anthony Bourdain

You'd have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food, as far as being a hub. Given a choice between Barcelona and San Sebastian to die in, I'd probably want to die in San Sebastian. — Anthony Bourdain

When I'm back in New York - and this is a terrible thing to complain about - I eat a lot more really, really good food than perhaps I'd like to. So many of my friends are really good chefs. It's kind of like being in the Mafia. — Anthony Bourdain

Turning your nose up at a genuine and sincere gesture of hospitality is no way to travel or to make friends around the world. — Anthony Bourdain

Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out. — Anthony Bourdain

I'm a Twitter addict. Jose Andres is a serial tweeter. It's funny to see which chefs have embraced it, and the different paths they take. — Anthony Bourdain

I'm never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective. — Anthony Bourdain

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it's the restaurant business. — Anthony Bourdain

At the time of their deaths, three out of five Russian men, I am told, are found to have a blood-alcohol level exceeding what one needs to qualify for a DWI. — Anthony Bourdain

'Kitchen Confidential' wasn't a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia. — Anthony Bourdain

Cooking is work that is traditionally done by working-class people. The work itself is not glamorous. It's repetitive, and it's a lot closer to factory work than art, whatever level you're doing it at. Certainly chefs are used to living like rock 'n' rollers to some extent, inasmuch as we get a lot of those fringe benefits without having to learn how to play guitar. — Anthony Bourdain

There are very sophisticated, very time-consuming dishes to prepare; always from scratch, and always in excess of what you could possibly need. You tend to kill your guests with kindness around here. — Anthony Bourdain

If you get an opportunity to work with David Simon, anybody with good taste would. — Anthony Bourdain

The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef's recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions. — Anthony Bourdain

It's been about a week without alcohol of any kind. I'm enjoying my new, clean-living lifestyle. — Anthony Bourdain

The food that comes in Tuesday is fresh, the station prep is new, and the chef is well rested after a Sunday or a Monday off. It's the real start of the new week, when you've got the goodwill of the kitchen on your side. Fridays and Saturdays, the food is fresh, but it's busy, so the chef and cooks can't pay as much attention to your food as they - and you - might like. — Anthony Bourdain

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about. — Anthony Bourdain

I'm a comic nerd. I'm a former serious collector for much of my childhood and early teen years I wanted to draw underground comics. — Anthony Bourdain

And I've long believed that good food, good eating is all about risk. — Anthony Bourdain

In another telling anomaly of the meat-grinding business, many of the larger slaughterhouses will sell their product only to grinders who agree to not test their product for E. coli contamination
until after it's run through a grinder with a whole bunch of other meat from other sources ... It's like demanding of a date that she have unprotected sex with four or five other guys immediately before sleeping with you
just so she can't point the finger directly at you should she later test positive for clap. — Anthony Bourdain

Lying in bed and smoking my sixth or seventh cigarette of the morning, I'm wondering what the hell I'm going to do today. Oh yeah, I gotta write this thing. But that's not work, really, is it? It feels somehow shifty and ... dishonest, making a buck writing. — Anthony Bourdain

If you go to working class, and working poor areas of America, the food sources that are relegated to them are generally limited to unhealthy ones. — Anthony Bourdain

Norman Mailer described the desire to be cool as a decision to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention. — Anthony Bourdain

Regret is something you've got to just live with, you can't drink it away. You can't run away from it. You can't trick yourself out of it. You've just got to own it. — Anthony Bourdain

The Ecuadorian, Mexican, Dominican and Salvadorian cooks I've worked with over the years make most CIA-educated white boys look like clumsy, sniveling little punks. In — Anthony Bourdain

Unlicensed hooch from a stranger in a parking lot. Good idea? Yes, of course it is. — Anthony Bourdain

I'm married to an Italian woman, and I used to love cooking Italian at home, because it's one-pot cooking. But my wife does not approve of my Italian cooking. — Anthony Bourdain

Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don't have. — Anthony Bourdain

I've sat in sushi bars, really fine ones, and I know how hard this guy worked, how proud he is. I know you don't need sauce. I know he doesn't even want you to pour sauce. And I've seen customers come in and do that, and I've seen him, as stoic as he tries to remain, I've seen him die a little inside. — Anthony Bourdain

I had field experience, a vocabulary and a criminal mind. I was a danger to myself and others. — Anthony Bourdain

Learn how to cook a (effing) omelet. I mean, what nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast? You look good doing it, and it's a nice thing to do for somebody you just had sex with. — Anthony Bourdain

If I were trapped in one city and had to eat one nation's cuisine for the rest of my life, I would not mind eating Japanese. I adore Japanese food. I love it. — Anthony Bourdain

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it - not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits. — Anthony Bourdain

I don't think people should be encouraged to look like Kate Moss; I think that's unreasonable. I think the normal human body should be glorified. By the same token, if you need a stick to wash yourself, you're not healthy. — Anthony Bourdain

like slicing bread, thick-skinned tomatoes and so on - but on your full line of vegetables, spuds, meat and even fish. My sous-chef uses his for just about everything. F. Dick makes a good one for about twenty-five bucks. — Anthony Bourdain

Chefs are fond of hyperbole, so they can certainly talk that way. But on the whole, I think they probably have a more open mind than most people. — Anthony Bourdain

I listen a lot to how people speak. I've read a great many good books in my life. I had some excellent English teachers. Surely, those things were helpful. — Anthony Bourdain

Trying to micromanage the perfect vacation is always a disaster. That leads to terrible times. If you get lost and you just end up eating just anywhere, you know, you see a bunch of Venetians sitting around smoking cigarettes, eating something unrecognizable in a dark alley somewhere, chances are it's interesting. — Anthony Bourdain

I've assembled a pretty good collection of mid-'70s New York punk classics on tape: Dead Boys, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Heartbreakers, Ramones, Television and so on, — Anthony Bourdain

I believe I should be able to treat my hamburger like food, not like infectious fucking medical waste. — Anthony Bourdain

The food was what you might expect to find on Air Uganda tourist class: — Anthony Bourdain

You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese. — Anthony Bourdain

You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together. — Anthony Bourdain

I could do nothing but Brooklyn shows for the rest of my career, and I could die ignorant. — Anthony Bourdain

It was a long time ago: 'Angela's Ashes' by Frank McCourt. It was a great story that was lasting, and I loved it so much. I also love Nora Ephron. I gobble up everything she writes. Also, I love Anthony Bourdain, very irreverent and funny. — Isabel Gillies

Anyone who's a chef, who loves food, ultimately knows that all that matters is: 'Is it good? Does it give pleasure?' — Anthony Bourdain

On the plane, I like to read fiction set in the location I'm going to. Fiction is in many ways more useful than a guidebook, because it gives you those little details, a sense of the way a place smells, an emotional sense of the place. So, I'll bring Graham Greene's The Quiet American if I'm going to Vietnam. It's good to feel romantic about a destination before you arrive. — Anthony Bourdain

Only desperation can account for what the Chinese do in the name of 'medicine.' That's something you might remind your New Age friends who've gone gaga over 'holistic medicine' and 'alternative Chinese cures. — Anthony Bourdain

A proper saute pan, for instance, should cause serious head injury if brought down hard against someone's skull. If you have any doubts about which will dent - the victim's head or your pan - then throw that pan right in the trash. — Anthony Bourdain