Anthony Bourdain was the author of the novels Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo, in addition to the mega-bestsellers Kitchen Confidential and A Cook’s Tour. His work has appeared in The New York Times and The New Yorker, and he was a contributing authority for Food Arts magazine. He was the host of the popular Emmy and Peabody Award winning television show Parts Unknown.
Les Halles owner Jose Meirelles initially wanted Tony to go by the French version of his name, Antoine-Michel, much to Tonys protests.
He studied at Vassar College, worked for some time in the seafood restaurants of Provincetown, Massachusetts, and graduated from the Culinary Institute of America before running kitchens at New York Citys Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue and Sullivans.
His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Times, The Observer, Scotland on Sunday, The Face, Limb by Limb, Black Book, and The Independent, and he is a contributing authority for Food Arts magazine.
He and Ottavia Bourdain welcomed their first child, a girl named Ariane Bourdain, on April 9, 2007. She weighed 7 lbs. 9 oz.
As a guest on BBC TVs "Breakfast" (2 September 2010), Bourdain surprised hosts Bill Turnbull and Susanna Reid when he disclosed that his all-time favorite restaurant was the British "St. John" run by friend and chef Fergus Henderson in Londons Smithfield district.
Older brother of Christopher Bourdain.
His mother was of Ukrainian Jewish and Austrian Jewish descent, and his father was of French ancestry.
He was nominated for the 2016 New Jersey Hall of Fame in the Arts and Letters category.
He was nominated for the 2017 New Jersey Hall of Fame in the Enterprise category.
When Tony gets hungry, things die.
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, or even stinky cheese is a,life not worth living,Bad food is made without pride, by cooks who have no pride, and no love.
You are too old.
Those days are best left in the past. Sometimes I think about the,excitement, the energy, the stress that working a kitchen involved, and,I remember how young, naive, confident I was back then. The kitchen is,at its best when new, cocky, limber, innovative chefs are in control.
As a child growing up in New Jersey, I speak on behalf of every child,that ever grew up there in saying that your purpose in life was looking,across the bay to New York City and figuring out a way to end up there.
If you want to know if a chef has true cooking ability, ask them to make,you eggs. That meal will reveal more than anything else.
Vietnam is my favorite destination. The people are wonderful, the food,is fantastic, and there is a lot of mystery and beauty surrounding it.
You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.
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.
Early moralists who believed that taking too much pleasure at the table led inexorably to bad character-or worse, to sex-were (in the best-case scenario, anyway) absolutely right.
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.
I’m a big believer in winging it. I’m a big believer that you’re never going to find 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.
It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after,you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you’ve been and whats happened. In the end, you’re just happy you were there- with your eyes open- and lived to see it.
Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans . . . are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.
We know, for instance, that there is a direct, inverse relationship between frequency of family meals and social problems. Bluntly stated, members of families who eat together regularly are statistically less likely to stick up liquor stores, blow up meth labs, give birth to crack babies, commit suicide, or make donkey porn. If Little Timmy had just had more meatloaf, he might not have grown up to fill chest freezers with Cub Scout parts.
Good food is very often, even most often, simple food.
I lurched away from the table after a few hours feeling like Elvis in Vegas - fat, drugged, and completely out of it.
To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.
That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund.
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.
I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living--all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents.
No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American.
And now to sleep, to dream. . . perchance to fart.
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.
[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.
You know, from age 17 on, my paycheck was coming from cooking and working in kitchens.
You have an impeccable argument if you said that Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo are food capitals. They have a maximum amount of great stuff to eat in the smallest areas.
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.
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.
Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it - not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.
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.
