100 Best Anthony Bourdain Quotes About Travel, Food & Life

Anthony Bourdain was one of the most beloved television chefs—so beloved, in fact, that people still enjoy the nuggets of wit and wisdom you can find hidden within the very best Anthony Bourdain food and travel quotes.

With his dry sense of humor and passion for food, he took his fans on trips around the world with his show Parts Unknown, learning different cultures, and trying local and unusual cuisine along the way, igniting a certain sense of wanderlust in viewers and bridging the culinary gap across the globe.

Even though the famous chef died tragically in 2018, his legacy has yet to be undermined. A man known for being gregarious and sharp-witted, some of the best Anthony Bourdain quotes have stuck with his enthusiasts long after his untimely death and will continue to do so to keep his memory alive.

These best Anthony Bourdain travel quotes and food quotes are a reminder of the trail he blazed and a great way to reflect on the adventures you’ve had in your own life.

Best Anthony Bourdain Travel Quotes

1.“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.”

2. “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. Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food. It’s a plus for everybody.”

3. “When dealing with complex transportation issues, the best thing to do is pull up with a cold beer and let somebody else figure it out.”

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

5. “I’m a big believer in winging it. I’m a big believer that you’re never going to find the 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.”

6. “Everybody should come here. Everyone should see how complicated, how deeply troubled, and yet at the same time, beautiful and awesome the world can be. Everyone should experience, even as the clouds gather, what’s at stake, what could be lost, what’s still here.”

7.  “Looking at these photographs, I know that I will never understand the world I live in or fully know the places I’ve been. I’ve learned for sure only what I don’t know—and how much I have to learn.”

8.  “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.”

9. “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.”

10. “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.”

11.  “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.”

12. “Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown.”

13. “The Italians and Spanish, the Chinese and Vietnamese see food as part of a larger, more essential and pleasurable part of daily life. Not as an experience to be collected or bragged about – or as a ritual like filling up a car – but as something else that gives pleasure, like sex or music, or a good nap in the afternoon.”

14. “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?”

15. “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.”

16. “In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.”

17. “I love New York. I'm a guy for whom a New York accent is a comforting thing.”

Best Anthony Bourdain Food Quotes

18. "The way you make an omelet reveals your character.”

19. “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.”

20. “In America, the professional kitchen is the last refuge of the misfit. It’s a place for people with bad pasts to find a new family.”

21. “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.”

22. “I’d put aside my psychotic rage, after many years being awful to line cooks, abusive to waiters, bullying to dishwashers. It’s terrible—and counter-productive—to make people feel like idiots for working hard for you.”

23. “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.”

24. “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.”

25. “Basic cooking skills are a virtue. The ability to feed yourself and a few others with proficiency should be taught to every young man and woman as a fundamental skill. It’s as vital to growing up as learning to wipe one’s own ass, cross the street by oneself, or be trusted with money.”

26.  “People are generally proud of their food. A willingness to eat and drink with people without fear and prejudice. They open up to you in ways that somebody visiting who is driven by a story may not get.”

27. “Sometimes the greatest meals on vacations are the ones you find when Plan A falls through.”

28. “For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we’ve all had to become disappears, when we’re confronted with something as simple as a plate of food.”

29. “An ounce of sauce covers a multitude of sins.”

30. “Good food and good eating are about risk. Every once in a while an oyster, for instance, will make you sick to your stomach. Does this mean you should stop eating oysters? No way.”

31. “Food, it appeared, could be important. It could be an event. It had secrets.”

32. “Food may not be the answer to world peace, but it’s a start.”

33.  “I think food, culture, people and landscape are all absolutely inseparable.”

34. “If you are easily offended by direct aspersions on your lineage, the circumstances of your birth, your sexuality, your appearance, the mention of your parents possibly commingling with livestock, then the world of professional cooking is not for you.”

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

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

37.  “Food had power. It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me and others.”

38.  “For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous. But like a love affair, looking back you remember the happy times best.”

39. “Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fishbones and Pernod.”

40. “I am not a fan of people who abuse service staff. In fact, I find it intolerable. It’s an unpardonable sin as far as I’m concerned, taking out personal business or some other kind of dissatisfaction on a waiter or busboy.”

41. “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”

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

43. “What nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast?”

44. “Anyone who’s a chef, who loves food, ultimately knows that all that matters is: ‘Is it good? Does it give pleasure?”

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

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

47. “You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.”

48. “For a dinner date, I eat light all day to save room, then I go all in: I choose this meal and this order, and I choose you, the person across from me, to share it with. There's a beautiful intimacy in a meal like that.”

49. “I would like to see people more aware of where their food comes from. I would like to see small farmers empowered.”

50. “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.”

51. "I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I continue to work. The ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam."

52. “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.”

53. “People's choice to become vegan, from people I've spoken to, seems motivated by fear.”

54. “I think fine dining is dying out everywhere... but I think there will be—and there has to always be—room for at least a small number of really fine, old-school fine-dining restaurants.”

55. “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.”

56. “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.”

57. “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.”

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

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

60. “Chefs are fond of hyperbole, so they can certainly talk that way. But on the whole, I think they probably have a more open mind than most people.”

61. “I do not have a merchandise line. I don't sell knives or apparel. Though I have been approached to endorse various products from liquor to airlines to automobiles to pharmaceuticals dozens of times, I have managed to resist the temptation.”

62. "There's something wonderful about drinking in the afternoon. A not-too-cold pint, absolutely alone at the bar -- even in this fake-ass Irish pub."

63. "Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards."

Best Anthony Bourdain Quotes About Life

64. “Skills can be taught. Character you either have or you don’t have.”

65. “I don’t have to agree with you to like you or respect you.”

66. “No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American.”

67. “It’s very rarely a good career move to have a conscience.”

68. “Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.”

69. “I am not afraid to look like an idiot.”

70. “Without new ideas success can become stale.”

71. “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.”

72. “It’s been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost. But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

73. “I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.”

74. “I had always believed that if somebody who worked with me went home feeling like a jerk for giving their time and their genuine effort, then it was me who had failed them—and in a very personal, fundamental way.”

75. “Once you embark on a career dictated by the need for immediate cash flow, it never gets any easier to get off the treadmill.”

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

77. “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.”

78. “There is no Final Resting Place of the Mind.”

79. “Don’t lie about it. You made a mistake. Admit it and move on. Just don’t do it again. Ever.”

80. “Without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, and moribund.”

81. “Luck is not a business model.”

82. "Under 'Reasons for Leaving Last Job,' never give the real reason, unless it's money or ambition."

83. “Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.”

84. “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.”

85. “Your body is not a temple. It’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.”

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

87. “Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?”

88. "I was an unhappy soul, with a huge heroin and then crack problem. I hurt, disappointed and offended many, many, many people and I regret a lot. It’s a shame I have to live with."

89. "I should’ve died in my 20s. I became successful in my 40s. I became a dad in my 50s. I feel like I’ve stolen a car—a really nice car—and I keep looking in the rearview mirror for flashing lights. But there’s been nothing yet."

90. "If you’re a writer, particularly if you’re a writer or a storyteller of any kind, there is something already kind of monstrously wrong with you."

91. "Let’s face it, it is an unreasonable attitude to look in the mirror in the morning and think, 'You know, there are people out there who would really like to hear my story.'"

92. “I think that if all kids aspire to reach a point where they could feed themselves and a few of their friends, this would be good for the world surely.”

93. “I don't think people should be encouraged to look like Kate Moss; I think that's unreasonable. I think the normal human body should be glorified. By the same token, if you need a stick to wash yourself, you're not healthy.”

94. “I'm very type-A, and many things in my life are about control and domination, but eating should be a submissive experience, where you let down your guard and enjoy the ride.”

95. “My house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature.”

96. “One of life's terrible truths is that women like guys who seem to know what they're doing.”

97. "When I die, I will decidedly not be regretting missed opportunities for a good time. My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted, and advantages squandered."

98. "What are our expectations? Which of the things we desire are within reach? If not now, when? And will there be some left for me?"

99. “I can unload my opinion on anybody at any time."

100. "I wanted kicks—the kind of melodramatic thrills and chills I'd yearned for since childhood, the kind of adventure I'd found as a little boy in the pages of my Tintin comic books."

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