A Cook's Tour Quotes

“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, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“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.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“I wanted adventures. I wanted to go up the Nung river to the heart of darkness in Cambodia. I wanted to ride out into a desert on camelback, sand and dunes in every direction, eat whole roasted lamb with my fingers. I wanted to kick snow off my boots in a Mafiya nightclub in Russia. I wanted to play with automatic weapons in Phnom Penh, recapture the past in a small oyster village in France, step into a seedy neon-lit pulqueria in rural Mexico. I wanted to run roadblocks in the middle of the night, blowing past angry militia with a handful of hurled Marlboro packs, experience fear, excitement, wonder. 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. I wanted to see the world – and I wanted the world to be just like the movies”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life. I mean, lets face it:when you're eating simple barbecue under a palm tree, and you feel sand between your toes, samba music is playing softly in the backgroud, waves are lapping at the shore a few yards off, a gentle breeze is cooling the sweat on the back of your neck at the hairline, and looking across the table, past the column of empty Red Stripes at the dreamy expression on your companion's face, you realize that in half an hour you're proably going to be having sex on clean white hotel sheets, that grilled chicken leg suddenly tastes a hell of a lot better”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“I am in no way supportive of hunting for trophies or sport - would never do it and don't like it that others do. But if you kill it, then eat it, it's fine.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“Only desperation can account for what the Chinese do in the name of 'medicine.' That's something you might remind your New Age friends who've gone gaga over 'holistic medicine' and 'alternative Chinese cures.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“if you look someone in the eye and call them a ‘fat, worthless, syphilitic puddle of badger crap’ it doesn’t mean you don’t like them. It can be – and often is – a term of endearment.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“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.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“There is no halfway. You don’t, it turns out, sell out a little bit. Maybe you thought you were just going to show a little ankle – okay, maybe a little calf, too – but in the end, you’re taking on the whole front line of the Pittsburgh Steelers on a dirty shag carpet.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“What is an oyster if not the perfect food? It requires no preparation or cooking. Cooking would be an affront. It provides its own sauce. It’s a living thing until seconds before disappearing down your throat, so you know – or should know – that it’s fresh. It appears on your plate as God created it: raw, unadorned. A squeeze of lemon, or maybe a little mignonette sauce (red wine vinegar, cracked black pepper, some finely chopped shallot), about as much of an insult as you might care to tender against this magnificent creature. It is food at its most primeval and glorious, untouched by time or man. A living thing, eaten for sustenance and pleasure, the same way our knuckle-dragging forefathers ate them. And they have, for me anyway, the added mystical attraction of all that sense memory – the significance of being the first food to change my life. I blame my first oyster for everything I did after: my decision to become a chef, my thrill-seeking, all my hideous screwups in pursuit of pleasure. I blame it all on that oyster. In a nice way, of course.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“These are the end products of the Masterminds of Safety and Ethics, bulked up on cheese that contains no cheese, chips fried in oil that isn’t really oil, overcooked gray disks of what might once upon a time have been meat, a steady diet of Ho-Hos and muffins, butterless popcorn, sugarless soda, flavorless light beer. A docile, uncomprehending herd, led slowly to a dumb, lingering, and joyless slaughter.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“The whole concept of 'the perfect meal' is ludicrous.

I knew already that the best meal in the world, the perfect meal, is very rarely the most sophisticated or expensive one....Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“A sampler of England's hottest 'chefs' would include a mostly hairless young blond lad named Jamie Oliver, who is referred to as the Naked Chef. As best as I can comprehend, he's a really rich guy who pretends he scoots around on a Vespa, hangs out in some East End cold-water flat, and cooks green curry for his 'mates'. He's a TV chef, so few actually eat his food. I've never seen him naked. I believe the 'Naked' refers to his 'simple, straightforward, unadorned' food; though I gather that a great number of matronly housewives would like to believe otherwise. Every time I watch his show, I want to go back in time and bully him at school.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“One in eight Cambodians – as many as 2 million people – were killed during the Khmer Rouge’s campaign to eradicate their country’s history. One out of every 250 Cambodians is missing a limb, crippled by one of the thousands and thousands of land mines still waiting to be stepped on in the country’s roads, fields, forests, and irrigation ditches. Destabilized, bombed, invaded, forced into slave labor, murdered by the thousands, the Cambodians must have been relieved when the Vietnamese, Cambodia’s historical archenemy, invaded.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“Once you've been to Cambodia, you'll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with you're bear hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about the treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia - the fruits of his genius for statesmanship - and you will never understand why he's not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remake at A-list parties, Cambodi, the neutral nation he illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“I lifted the description ' a bewildering array of stars' once from a far better writer - I can't remember who now, only that I stole it - and that expression came to mind as I stared up at an awe-inspiring sky over the Sahara, the bright, penetrating lights, the quick drop of comets, a cold moon, which made the rippling patterns sand look like a frozen sea. The universe was large all right, but no larger, it appeared, than the whole wide world ahead of me.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“I talk about these mysterious forces all the time with my chef cronies. Nothing illustrates them more than the Last Meal Game. You're getting into the electric chair tomorrow morning. They're gonna strap you down, turn up the juice and fry your ass until your eyes sizzle and pop like McNuggets. You've got one meal left. What are you having for dinner? When playing this game with chefs - and we're talking good chefs here- the answers are invariable simple ones.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“When I finally leave the market, the streets are dark, and I pass a few blocks where not a single electric light appears – only dark open storefronts and coms (fast-food eateries), broom closet-sized restaurants serving fish, meat, and rice for under a dollar, flickering candles barely revealing the silhouettes of seated figures. The tide of cyclists, motorbikes, and scooters has increased to an uninterrupted flow, a river that, given the slightest opportunity, diverts through automobile traffic, stopping it cold, spreads into tributaries that spill out over sidewalks, across lots, through filling stations. They pour through narrow openings in front of cars: young men, their girlfriends hanging on the back; families of four: mom, dad, baby, and grandma, all on a fragile, wobbly, underpowered motorbike; three people, the day’s shopping piled on a rear fender; women carrying bouquets of flapping chickens, gathered by their feet while youngest son drives and baby rests on the handlebars; motorbikes carrying furniture, spare tires, wooden crates, lumber, cinder blocks, boxes of shoes. Nothing is too large to pile onto or strap to a bike. Lone men in ragged clothes stand or sit by the roadsides, selling petrol from small soda bottles, servicing punctures with little patch kits and old bicycle pumps.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“Tim and Andy stood there in head-to-toe leather motocross outfits, covered in road dust, behind me in a dark corner of the hotel’s dining room. Tim has penetrating pale blue eyes with tiny pupils, and the accent of an Englishman from the north – Newcastle, or Leeds maybe. Andy is an American with blond hair and the wholesome, well-fed good looks and accent of the Midwest. Behind them, two high-performance dirt bikes leaned on kickstands in the Hang Meas’ parking lot.      Tim owns a bar/restaurant in Siemreap. Andy is his chef. Go to the end of the world and apparently there will be an American chef there waiting for you.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“Sahara, the bright, penetrating lights, the quick drop of comets, a cold moon, which made the rippling patterns of sand look like a frozen sea. The universe was large all right, but no larger, it appeared, than the whole wide world ahead of me.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“The whole concept of a 'perfect meal' is ludicrous.
'Perfect,' like 'happy,' tends to sneak up on you. Once you find it...it's gone. It's a fleeting thing, 'perfect,' and, if you're anything like me, it's often better in retrospect.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“Now, I famously hate salad bars. I don’t like buffets (unless I’m standing on the serving side: buffets are like free money for cost-conscious chefs). When I see food sitting out, exposed to the elements, I see food dying. I see a big open petri dish that every passing serial sneezer can feel free to drool on and fondle with spittle-flecked fingers. I see food not held at ideal temperature, food rotated (or not) by person or persons unknown, left to fester in the open air unprotected from the passing fancies of the general public.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“I’m still here, I tell myself. I’m still here.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“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, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“Shortcut.’ The word filled me with dread. When has a shortcut ever worked out as planned? The word – in a horror film at least – usually precedes disembowelment and death. A ‘shortcut’ almost never leads to good times.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“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, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“I’ve learned something on the road. It doesn’t do to waste. Even here – I use everything.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“fun . . . But if you ever fuck me, talk shit about me behind my back, drop the ball, show up late, or show disloyalty in any way, I don’t care if you’re my dearest friend, I don’t care if you saved my fucking life, I will fire your sorry ass like I’m blowing my fucking nose. Do we understand each other? Is that clear? And do you want me to write it down?” That’s what’s called “fair warning”. You’ve drawn the lines. He crosses them and it’s bye-bye. You let him know up front what a vicious, cold-blooded motherfucker you can be. That way, there’re no surprises.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“Next time you’re hiring a sous, do like I do. Take him out to a nice bar. Buy him a drink before you close the deal. Then give him the Talk. Let him know right up front. I say, “I’m the nicest, sweetest guy in the world. You call me at four o’clock in the morning needing bail money? I’m there for you. I’m not going to be riding your ass like some other chefs will. I won’t humiliate you in front of your crew or anybody else. You don’t have to address me as ‘Chef’ all the time. I’ve got a sense of humor – and in my off hours I’m a depraved, degenerate animal – just like you. You will like working with me. We’ll have”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

“Of course I have Lomotil. The traveling chef’s best friend.”
― Anthony Bourdain, A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines