Top 200 Anthony Bourdain Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Food, it appeared, could be important. It could be an event. It had secrets.”

— Anthony Bourdain

202. “A mama’s boy, loner, intellectual, voracious reader and gourmand, Dimitri was a man of esoteric skills and appetites: a gambler, philosopher, gardener, fly-fisherman, fluent in Russian and German as well as having an amazing command of English. He loved antiquated phrases, dry sarcasm, military jargon, regional dialect, and the New York Times crossword puzzle – to which he was hopelessly addicted.”

— Anthony Bourdain

203. “I write quickly with a sense of urgency. I don’t edit myself out of existence, meaning I’ll try to write 50 or 60 pages before I start rereading, revising and editing. That just helps with my confidence.”

— Anthony Bourdain

204. “I can’t imagine a better example of Things To Be Wary Of in the food department than bargain sushi.”

— Anthony Bourdain

205. “There are very sophisticated, very time-consuming dishes to prepare; always from scratch, and always in excess of what you could possibly need. You tend to kill your guests with kindness around here.”

— Anthony Bourdain

206. “There is nothing cool about “used to be cool.”

— Anthony Bourdain

207. “As well, there’s the age-old syndrome common to fans of musicians with passionate and discerning cult followings. When the objects of adulation are crass enough to become popular, they quickly become a case of “used to be good.”

— Anthony Bourdain

208. “He doesn’t yearn for a better, different life than the one he has – because he knows he’s got a home in this one.”

— Anthony Bourdain

209. “The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef’s recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions.”

— Anthony Bourdain

210. “I know how old most seafood is on Monday – about four to five days old!”

— Anthony Bourdain

211. “I remember it well, because it was such a slap in the face. It was a wake-up call that food could be important, a challenge to my natural belligerence. By being denied, a door opened.”

— Anthony Bourdain

212. “At the base of my right forefinger is an inch-and-a-half diagonal callus, yellowish-brown in color, where the heels of all the knives I’ve ever owned have rested, the skin softened by constant immersion in water. It distinguishes me immediately as a cook, as someone who’s been on the job a long time. You can feel it when I shake my hand, just as I feel it on others of my profession. It’s a secret sign, a sort of Masonic handshake without the silliness.”

— Anthony Bourdain

213. “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.”

— Anthony Bourdain

214. “The life of the cook was a life of adventure, looting, pillaging and rock-and-rolling through life with a carefree disregard for all conventional morality. It looked pretty damn good to me on the other side of the line.”

— Anthony Bourdain

215. “Toast your goddamn muffins.”

— Anthony Bourdain

216. “I could eat bloody Elvis – if you put enough vinegar on him.”

— Anthony Bourdain

217. “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.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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

— Anthony Bourdain

219. “This book is about street-level cooking and its practitioners. Line cooks are the heroes.”

— Anthony Bourdain

220. “I think people lose sight of the fact that chefs should be ultimately in the pleasure business, not in the look-at-me business.”

— Anthony Bourdain

221. “If you need instruction on how to handle a knife without lopping off a finger, I recommend Jacques Pepin’s La Technique.”

— Anthony Bourdain

222. “Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard have given us a deep and important look at the people, places and cuisine that are reshaping what we want for dinner. Koreatown thrills with flavors that will change your life.”

— Anthony Bourdain

223. “I believe the words “meat” and “treated with ammonia” should never occur in the same paragraph – much less the same sentence. Unless you’re talking about surreptitiously disposing of a corpse.”

— Anthony Bourdain

224. “Whatever had the most shock value became my meal of choice.”

— Anthony Bourdain

225. “Most jobs, you don’t work, you don’t get paid. You wake up with a sniffle and a runny nose, a sore throat? You soldier on. You put in your hours. You wrap a towel around your neck and you do your best to get through. It’s a point of pride, working through pain and illness.”

— Anthony Bourdain

226. “Fine-looking women, smoking and drinking and gambling and doing whatever they like? Sounds good!”

— Anthony Bourdain

227. “The bartender is Irish. Jumped a student visa about ten years ago but nothing for him to worry about. The cook, though, is Mexican. Some poor bastard at ten dollars an hour – and probably has to wash the dishes, too. La Migra take notice of his immigration status – they catch sight of his bowl cut on the way home to Queens and he’ll have a problem. He looks different than the Irish and the Canadians – and he’s got Lou Dobbs calling specifically for his head every night on the radio.”

— Anthony Bourdain

228. “The business, as respected three-star chef Scott Bryan explains it, attracts ‘fringe elements’, people for whom something in their lives has gone terribly wrong.”

— Anthony Bourdain

229. “I like cooking pasta. Maybe it’s that I always wanted to be Italian American in some dark part of my soul; maybe I get off on that final squirt of emulsifying extra virgin, just after the basil goes in, I don’t know.”

— Anthony Bourdain

230. “But that cold soup stayed with me. It resonated, waking me up, making me aware of my tongue, and in some way, preparing me for future events.”

— Anthony Bourdain

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

232. “And when you buy a non-stick, treat it nice. Never wash it. Simply wipe it clean after each use, and don’t use metal in it, use a wooden spoon or ceramic or non-metallic spatula to flip or toss whatever you’re cooking in it. You don’t want to scratch the surface.”

— Anthony Bourdain

233. “Las Vegas no less – the Ugly Shorts Heart of Darkness.”

— Anthony Bourdain

234. “After level of skills, it’s how sensitive you are to criticism and perceived insult – and how well you can give it right back – that determines your place in the food chain.”

— Anthony Bourdain

235. “As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system – and it is profoundly upsetting if another cook or, God forbid, a waiter – disturbs your precisely and carefully laid-out system.”

— Anthony Bourdain

236. “It was not a pretty sight, all these pale, gangly, pimpled youths, in a frenzy of hunger and sexual frustration, shredding bread.”

— Anthony Bourdain

237. “He was a crusty old bastard, dressed like my uncle in ancient denim coveralls, espadrilles and beret. He had a leathery, tanned and windblown face, hollow cheeks, and the tiny broken blood vessels on nose and cheeks that everyone seemed to have from drinking so much of the local Bordeaux.”

— Anthony Bourdain

238. “Inarguably, a successful restaurant demands that you live on the premises for the first few years, working seventeen-hour days, with total involvement in every aspect of a complicated, cruel and very fickle trade.”

— Anthony Bourdain

239. “But I’m simply not going to deceive anybody about the life as I’ve seen it. It’s all here: the good, the bad and the ugly.”

— Anthony Bourdain

240. “The tone of the repartee was familiar, as was the subject matter, a strangely comfortable background music to most of my waking hours over the last two decades or so – and I realised that, my God... I’ve been listening to the same conversation for twenty-five years!”

— Anthony Bourdain

241. “It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that? As.”

— Anthony Bourdain

242. “When I was in Bulgarian paratroopers – we like this plane very much,’ he said. ‘Of course, we were all wearing parachutes.”

— Anthony Bourdain

243. “I make two cook like you in the toilette each morning! You are deezgusting!”

— Anthony Bourdain

244. “She doesn’t try to have dignity or refinement. She wants to affect men by what she says, not what she doesn’t say.”

— Anthony Bourdain

245. “Line cooking done well is a beautiful thing to watch.”

— Anthony Bourdain

246. “This sounds like positive social change, right? Anything the revs are against is surely a good thing. Fine-looking women, smoking and drinking and gambling and doing whatever they like? Sounds good!”

— Anthony Bourdain