Anthony Bourdain Quotes

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.

Margarine? That's not food. I Can't Believe It's Not Butter? I can. If you're planning on using margarine in anything, you can stop reading now, because I won't be able to help you.

I'm not going anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

I'm not looking to freak people out - eating rodents or bugs. I don't do that anymore.

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.

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.

I love New York. I'm a guy for whom a New York accent is a comforting thing.

I wish I could play bass like Larry Graham or Bootsy Collins. My God, I'd give up just about everything else for that.

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.

The ingredients of a hamburger seldom vary. It's a percentage of fat to lean meat, add salt and prepare and that's it. It shouldn't need a recipe.

Silly trends don't last long. A lot of this nonsense that pops up, I don't even really pay attention because it'll be gone in a flash.

I don't like to see animals in pain. That was very uncomfortable to me. I don't like factory farming. I'm not an advocate for the meat industry.

I'd love to play bass with Parliament Funkadelic, but I can't play bass, so I don't think that's going to happen.

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

If you go to chefs all across America and ask them, 'What's your biggest problem right now?,' It is finding people to cook in their restaurants. They're having an enormous, countrywide problem here staffing their operations.

Drugs didn't work out too well for me.

All of these concoctions that we think are Mexican, are in no way reflective of the deep, incredibly old, complex and sophisticated deep regional cuisine of Mexico. Or the new modern Mexican cuisine, which has really been exploding over the last few years. I think we just have a completely misrepresented view of how good, how complex these flavors are. I think we could learn a lot more. It's a great cuisine that's really moving forward, faster than any other.

It's not normal, what I do. Just being on television isn't.

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

Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards.

Tokyo would probably be the foreign city if I had to eat one city's food for the rest of my life, every day. It would have to be Tokyo, and I think the majority of chefs you ask that question would answer the same way.

I think it's a universal truth that most chefs I know are happiest eating simple, unadorned good things.

Don't dunk your nigiri in the soy sauce. Don't mix your wasabi in the soy sauce. If the rice is good, complement your sushi chef on the rice.

At the end of the day, the TV show is the best job in the world. I get to go anywhere I want, eat and drink whatever I want. As long as I just babble at the camera, other people will pay for it. It's a gift.

The world they live in now is in no way the world the Michelin system was set up to evaluate back in France, which was all about motorists and seeing if it was worth driving an extra 50 miles for a restaurant. It's a silly thing. Why do you want to help a tire company? You don't owe them nothing.

I'm not going to get off the pony as long as they let me ride it.

I'm away 250 days a year. It's a tough situation.

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.

I'd never done anything useful as far as my writing.

Drink heavily with locals whenever possible.

I go anywhere I want, do whatever I want when I get there, they let me make self-indulgent TV about that experience, and give me about as much creative freedom as anyone's ever had in the history of television.

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.

As Americans, we tend to look at Mexican food as nachos, which is not Mexican food really - they don't eat them.

My love of soft, runny cheese - it's impossible to resist.

I'm very proud of the Rome episode of 'No Reservations' because it violated all the conventional wisdom about making television. You're never, ever supposed to do a food or travel show in black and white.

You know, it's not the world I would have wanted, for sure.

The journey is part of the experience - an expression of the seriousness of one's intent. One doesn't take the A train to Mecca.

A burger is something anyone can do, just follow the rules.

I can't do exercises regularly because my schedule changes from day to day. I'm okay with hurting myself, like I'll lift something until it hurts, but I don't want to pass out or vomit in front of people.

The way you make an omelet reveals your character.

Good food and good eating are about risk.

When I cook, I generally stick with what I know, what I'm comfortable with, and what I feel I've paid my dues learning, and am good at.

It's as if Japanese men, all to aware that deep inside they'd like to stomp Tokyo flat, breathe fire, and do truly terrible and disgusting things to women, have built themselves the most beautiful of prisons for their rampaging ids. Instead of indulging their fantasies, they focus on food, or landscaping, or the perfect cup of tea -- or a single slab of o-toro tuna -- letting themselves go only at baseball games and office parties.

Theres no hope, none, of ever talking about it without pissing somebody, if not everybody, off...By the end of this hour I will be seen by many as a terrorist sympathizer, a Zionist tool. A self-hating Jew, an apologist for American imperialism, an orientalist, socialist, fascist, CIA agent, and worse.

Thinking that your story is so interesting that other people will want to listen to it or read it or pay to hear it, that's - what kind of person thinks that? A monster of self-regard. It's not normal thinking.

Look, getting bullied in school and coming home crying in the rain and my mom making me a can of Campbell's Tomato Soup with some oysterettes. It was comfort food; that is what food should be.

The older I get, and the more I travel in particular, the less I care about what exactly is in the dish than who's cooking it and why.

My French definitely improves the more I drink, as I worry less and less about absolutely perfect grammar. I do speak and understand the language, just not particularly well.