Anthony Bourdain Quotes

Just because I like sushi, doesn't mean I can make sushi. I've come to well understand how many years just to get sushi rice correct. It's a discipline that takes years and years and years. So, I leave that to the experts.

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.

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

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.

This is the dream of all the world. The dream is to live in Granada. You know, work in the morning, have a one-hour in the afternoon, at night go out and have that life. You know. Go out and see your friends and eat tapa and drink red wine and be in a beautiful place.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Anyone who doesn't have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.

Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.

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

I don't have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what's appropriate or attractive.

If I'm an advocate for anything, it's to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else's shoes or at least eat their food, it's a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.

In America, there might be better gastronomic destinations than New Orleans, but there is no place more uniquely wonderful. ... With the best restaurants in New York, you'll find something similar to it in Paris or Copenhagen or Chicago. But there is no place like New Orleans. So it's a must-see city because there's no explaining it, no describing it. You can't compare it to anything. So, far and away New Orleans.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I've seen zero evidence of any nation on Earth other than Mexico even remotely having the slightest clue what Mexican food is about or even come close to reproducing it. It is perhaps the most misunderstood country and cuisine on Earth.

Street food, I believe, is the salvation of the human race.

The way you make an omelet reveals your character.

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

In that sense, what a great way to live, if you could always do things that interest you, and do them with people who interest you.

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.

What nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast?

Wholesome food is wholesome food anywhere. I may not like something but, generally speaking, if it's a busy, street food stall serving mystery meat in India, they're in the business of serving their neighbors. They're not targeted toward a transient crowd of tourists that won't be around tomorrow. They're not in the business of poisoning their neighbors.

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.

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

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.

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.

The bible of cooking. The all-time argument ender. Early in my cooking career, I wielded my Larousse like a weapon and it never let me down.

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

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

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.

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

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

Being a vegan is a first-world phenomenon, completely self-indulgent.

An ounce of sauce covers a multitude of sins.

I’m a big believer in winging it. I’m a big believer that you’re never going to find perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one. Letting the happy accident happen is what a lot of vacation itineraries miss, I think, and I’m always trying to push people to allow those things to happen rather than stick to some rigid itinerary.

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.

Good food and good eating are about risk.

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

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

Let's at least acknowledge who is working in America right now and what our needs are, as well as the moral question of somebody who's been here 20 years, paying taxes to which they probably do not receive a refund, and not committing any crimes, working hard, and supporting an industry. Shouldn't there be some middle ground here? Shouldn't there be a way for them to be welcome in this country?

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.