Anthony Bourdain Quotes

42 Sourced Quotes

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life.

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, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living—all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents.

Anthony Bourdain
For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous.

Anthony Bourdain
I've long believed that good food, good eating, is all about risk. Whether we're talking about unpasteurized Stilton, raw oysters or working for organized crime 'associates,' food, for me, has always been an adventure

Anthony Bourdain
The room smelled like a gust of wind from Satan's anus.

Anthony Bourdain
Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life - and travel - leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks - on your body or on your heart - are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.

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
I am in no way supportive of hunting for trophies or sport - would never do it and don't like it that others do. But if you kill it, then eat it, it's fine.

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

Anthony Bourdain
Avoid at all costs that vile spew you see rotting in oil in screwtop jars. Too lazy to peel fresh? You don't deserve to eat garlic.

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

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
Meals make the society, hold the fabric together in lots of ways that were charming and interesting and intoxicating to me. The perfect meal, or the best meals, occur in a context that frequently has very little to do with the food itself.

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's something wonderful about drinking in the afternoon. A not-too-cold pint, absolutely alone at the bar - even in this fake-ass Irish pub.

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 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
Naturally, I'm misanthropic. But the Negronis are helping considerably.

Anthony Bourdain
You have to love a town where you can both smoke and gamble in a pharmacy.

Anthony Bourdain
Always entertain the possibility that something, no matter how squiggly and scary looking, might just be good.

Anthony Bourdain
I'd learned something... Food had power. It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me... and others. This was valuable information.

Anthony Bourdain
It's an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you've been and whats happened. In the end, you're just happy you were there- with your eyes open- and lived to see it.

Anthony Bourdain
But I do think the idea that basic cooking skills are a virtue, that the ability to feed yourself and a few others with proficiency should be taught to every young man and woman as a fundamental skill, should become as vital to growing up as learning to wipe one's own ass, cross the street by oneself, or be trusted with money.

Anthony Bourdain
Bad food is made without pride, by cooks who have no pride, and no love. Bad food is made by chefs who are indifferent, or who are trying to be everything to everybody, who are trying to please everyone … Bad food is fake food … food that shows fear and lack of confidence in people's ability to discern or to make decisions about their lives. Food that's too safe, too pasteurized, too healthy – it's bad! There should be some risk, like unpasteurized cheese. Food is about rot, and decay, and fermentation…. as much as it is also about freshness.

Anthony Bourdain
I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas - fat, drugged, and completely out of it.

Anthony Bourdain
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.

Anthony Bourdain
If you're twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.

Anthony Bourdain
Good food does lead to sex. As it should. And in a perfect world, good music does too.

Anthony Bourdain
Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.

Anthony Bourdain