Anthony Bourdain quotes

Born
June 25, 1956 New York City, U.S.

Died
June 8, 2018.

Occupation
Chef, author, travel documentarian.

Anthony Bourdain was an American chef, author, travel documentarian, and television personality. He was considered one of the most influential chefs in the world.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.
– Anthony Bourdain

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

I would like to see people more aware of where their food comes from. I would like to see small farmers empowered. I feed my daughter almost exclusively organic food.
– Anthony Bourdain

Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it’s a start.
– 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

The fact that over 50 per cent of the residents of Toronto are not from Canada, that is always a good thing, creatively, and for food especially. That is easily a city’s biggest strength, and it is Toronto’s unique strength.
– Anthony Bourdain

I don’t snack. I don’t generally eat sweets or drink soda. I never eat between meals or even before big ones.
– Anthony Bourdain

I’m evangelical on the subject of some chefs and writers.
– 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

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

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

The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen.
– Anthony Bourdain

You can call me the bad boy chef all you want. I’m not going to freak out about it. I’m not that bad. I’m certainly not a boy, and it’s been a while since I’ve been a chef.
– 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

Oh yes, there’s lots of great food in America. But the fast food is about as destructive and evil as it gets. It celebrates a mentality of sloth, convenience, and a cheerful embrace of food we know is hurting us.
– Anthony Bourdain

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

One of life’s terrible truths is that women like guys who seem to know what they’re doing.
– Anthony Bourdain

An employer of mine back in the ’80s was kind enough to take me on after a rough patch, and it made a big difference in my life that I knew I was the sort of person who showed up on time. It’s a basic tell of character.
– Anthony Bourdain

If I’m in Rome for only 48 hours, I would consider it a sin against God to not eat cacio e pepe, the most uniquely Roman of pastas, in some crummy little joint where Romans eat. I’d much rather do that than go to the Vatican. That’s Rome to me.
– Anthony Bourdain

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.
– Anthony Bourdain

I’m a control freak. If you’re going to slap my name on something, I would like to control it.
– Anthony Bourdain

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.
– Anthony Bourdain

Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don’t speak the language and haven’t been before – that’s really satisfying to me. I like that.
– Anthony Bourdain

I love the masochistic aspect of eating seething, real Sichuan food in Sichuan Province.
– Anthony Bourdain

I’m definitely looking forward to the day when I stop working – if I ever stop working. I like the idea of keeling over in my tomato vines in Sardinia or northern Italy.
– Anthony Bourdain

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

Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.
– Anthony Bourdain

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.
– 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 be treated well in places where you don’t expect to be treated well, to find things in common with people you thought previously you had very, very little in common with, that can’t be a bad thing.
– Anthony Bourdain

I learned a long time ago that trying to micromanage the perfect vacation is always a disaster. That leads to terrible times.
– Anthony Bourdain

Southeast Asia has a real grip on me. From the very first time I went there, it was a fulfillment of my childhood fantasies of the way travel should be.
– Anthony Bourdain

I, personally, think there is a really danger of taking food too seriously. Food should be part of the bigger picture.
– Anthony Bourdain

The Kobe craze really annoyed me. Most of the practitioners had no real understanding of the product and were abusing it and exploiting it in terrible and ridiculous ways. Kobe beef should not be used in a hamburger. It’s completely pointless.
– Anthony Bourdain

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.
– Anthony Bourdain

I’m not besotted with the notion of being on CNN to the point that I’m going to suddenly morph into Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour. I’m not a foreign correspondent.
– Anthony Bourdain