Top 200 Anthony Bourdain Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “They’d been running households for years, of course – seeing to the finances, cooking, cleaning, weaving, and in general, doing all those things which men couldn’t, or more accurately, wouldn’t, do.”

— Anthony Bourdain

152. “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

153. “Just because we are not Italian, does not mean we cannot appreciate Michelangelo, it is the same with cuisine.”

— Anthony Bourdain

154. “Remember, brunch is only served once a week – on the weekends. Buzzword here, ‘Brunch Menu’. Translation? ‘Old, nasty odds and ends, and 12 dollars for two eggs with a free Bloody Mary’.”

— Anthony Bourdain

155. “I’m not impressed by any cooks who can brag about a filet mignon. A guy who can take the neck of a shank or can use tripe to make into something delicious is really interesting to me; that’s impressive.”

— Anthony Bourdain

156. “My last semester at Vassar, I’d taken to wearing nunchakus in a strap-on holster and carrying around a samurai sword – that should tell you all you need to know.”

— Anthony Bourdain

157. “What’s the opposite of suck? Un-suck?”

— Anthony Bourdain

158. “Too lazy to peel fresh? You don’t deserve to eat garlic.”

— Anthony Bourdain

159. “I love the saying “Nobody likes a dirty old man or a clean little boy.”

— Anthony Bourdain

160. “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

161. “You dropped a 500-seat deuce on Times Square.”

— Anthony Bourdain

162. “There are people with otherwise chaotic and disorganized lives, a certain type of person that’s always found a home in the restaurant business in much the same way that a lot of people find a home in the military.”

— Anthony Bourdain

163. “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

164. “Just believe me when I tell you that the city is beautiful – and not in the oppressive way of, say, Florence, where you’re almost afraid to leave your room because you might break something.”

— Anthony Bourdain

165. “Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman – not an artist. There’s nothing wrong with that: the great cathedrals of Europe were built by craftsmen – though not designed by them. Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying.”

— Anthony Bourdain

166. “This same gag is used by pastry chefs to swirl chocolate or raspberry sauce through creme anglaise and allows them to charge you another three bucks a plate for two seconds of work that you could easily train a chimp to do. But.”

— Anthony Bourdain

167. “Life without stock is barely worth living, and you will never attain demi-glace without.”

— Anthony Bourdain

168. “The roots of creativity of cooking are hungry people trying to figure out how to take something that’s not particularly fresh or tender and transform it into it something delicious that everyone will love.”

— Anthony Bourdain

169. “In my house, neither my wife nor my daughter are impressed that I’m on television, and they remind me of that frequently.”

— Anthony Bourdain

170. “I wouldn’t want to compare myself to David Byrne whom I consider a genius, but what I think what we have in common is that he’s also a guy who is very interested in the world and who has a lot of passions beyond singing and playing guitar.”

— Anthony Bourdain

171. “Line cooks are the heroes.”

— Anthony Bourdain

172. “I am a delightfully evangelical guy about things I love. I am that annoying guy who sits everyone down and forces them to read some book I like. I’m looking across the full spectrum of genres.”

— Anthony Bourdain

173. “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.”

— Anthony Bourdain

174. “I, personally, think there is a really danger of taking food too seriously. Food should be part of the bigger picture.”

— Anthony Bourdain

175. “Always entertain the possibility that something, no matter how squiggly and scary looking, might just be good.”

— Anthony Bourdain

176. “Jacques Pepin’s La Technique.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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

— Anthony Bourdain

178. “What do they do here better than any other place on earth? Answer: Guinness. This delicious, some say magical, probably nutritious, unparalleled beverage. This divine brew is so tasty, creamy, so near chocolatey in its rich, satisfying, buzz-giving qualities, that the difference between the stuff here, and the indifferently poured swill you get where you come from, is like night and day. One is beer, the other, angels sing celestial trombones.”

— Anthony Bourdain

179. “What most people don’t get about professional-level cooking is that it is not all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavours and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking – the real business of preparing the food you eat – is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way.”

— Anthony Bourdain

180. “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

181. “Get up early and go to the local produce markets. In Latin America and Asia, those are usually great places to find delicious food stalls serving cheap, authentic and fresh specialties.”

— Anthony Bourdain

182. “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

183. “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

184. “I wanted to write in Kitchenese, the secret language of cooks, instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever dunked french fries for a summer job or suffered under the despotic rule of a tyrannical chef or boobish owner.”

— Anthony Bourdain

185. “With my little short-shorts a permanent affront, I was quickly becoming a sullen, moody, difficult little bastard.”

— Anthony Bourdain

186. “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

187. “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

188. “You have to love a town where you can both smoke and gamble in a pharmacy.”

— Anthony Bourdain

189. “I eat strategically. If I know I’m having a big Chinese banquet tomorrow, I’m not eating a big dinner tonight, and I’m not having breakfast.”

— Anthony Bourdain

190. “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.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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

— Anthony Bourdain

192. “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. The.”

— Anthony Bourdain

193. “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.”

— Anthony Bourdain

194. “We are, after all, citizens of the world – a world filled with bacteria, some friendly, some not so friendly. Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonald’s? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all.”

— Anthony Bourdain

195. “I was a serious comic collector and fanboy as a kid. I wanted very badly to draw comic books for a lot of my childhood and early adolescence. So when you have an unfulfilled dream like that, when years later you find yourself in a position to make a graphic novel – hell yeah, I’m going to do that.”

— Anthony Bourdain

196. “Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable, and satisfying. And I’ll generally take a stand-up mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day.”

— Anthony Bourdain

197. “I’m a guy who should not have a lot of free time. But when it comes to vacation, I like to pull the plug completely. It’s all about my daughter – I’m no longer the star of my own movie.”

— Anthony Bourdain

198. “And I’ve long believed that good food, good eating is all about risk.”

— Anthony Bourdain

199. “Shepherd’s pie’? ‘Chili special’? Sounds like leftovers to me. How about swordfish? I like it fine. But my seafood purveyor, when he goes out to dinner, won’t eat it. He’s seen too many of those 3-foot-long parasitic worms that riddle the fish’s flesh.”

— Anthony Bourdain

200. “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