"We learn as professionals by repetition, by getting it wrong, getting yelled at and doing it again."
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Anthony Bourdain quotes (page 4 of 17)
337 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Is it a good hot dog? That’s all I want to know … I don’t think the personal health and purity of my colon is that important compared to pleasure. As a chef, I’m not your dietitian or your ethicist. I’m in the pleasure business …. My responsibility is to give you the most delicious tomato that I can afford, given the circumstances, and maybe increase the likelihood that you get laid after dinner."
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"I look at Guy Fieri and I just think, 'Jesus, I'm glad that's not me.'"
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"I'm not afraid to look like an idiot on TV."
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"I travel 250 days a year. There are chef friends who I only see every couple of years. By conventional standards I'm a bad friend. I'm not there to remember your birthday or to offer you words of support through Twitter. I'm not up on what you're doing in New York because I'm not in New York. I'm not what people call in parenting circles "present.""
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"Recognise excellence. Celebrate weirdness and innovation. Oddballs should be cherished, if they can do something other people can't do."
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"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."
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"Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night. Seeing two guys who'd just as soon cut each other's throats in their off hours moving in unison with grace and ease can be as uplifting as any chemical stimulant or organized religion."
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"Luck is not a business model."
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"I think of [street food] as the antidote to fast food; it's the clear alternative to the king, the clown and the colonel."
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"There are chefs who are spectacular technicians, and often their food is worth eating once or twice, but if there's no heart in it, if there's no personality in it, it's not something you want to go back for. But heart without any skill at all? All the heart in the world ain't gonna help you if you can't peel an onion, or if you don't understand how to apply heat properly. A well-done steak is a well-done steak."
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"When you have a child you're no longer the star of the movie."
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"One of life's terrible truths is that women like guys who seem to know what they're doing."
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"Those places I don't understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora."
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"Without Montreal, Canada would be hopeless."
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"Bad food is made without pride, by cooks who have no pride, and no love. Bad food is made by chefs who are indifferent, or who are trying to be everything to everybody, who are trying to please everyone. Bad food is fake food, food that shows fear and lack of confidence in people's ability to discern or to make decisions about their lives."
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"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."
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"Don't lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don't do it again. Ever"
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"There is no other place on earth even remotely like New Orleans. Don't even try to compare it to anywhere else."
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"Assume the worst. About everybody. But don't let this poisoned outlook affect your job performance. Let it all roll off your back. Ignore it. Be amused by what you see and suspect. Just because someone you work with is a miserable, treacherous, self-serving, capricious and corrupt asshole shouldn't prevent you from enjoying their company, working with them or finding them entertaining."
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