Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Michael Bourdainis an American chef, author, and television personality. He is a 1978 graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of numerous professional kitchens, including many years as executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles. Although Bourdain is no longer employed as a chef, he maintains a relationship with Les Halles in New York. He became widely known for his 2000 book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. His first food and world-travel television show was...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth25 June 1956
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.
What nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast?
Most of the time, I'm fighting guys who are 22 years old, former college wrestlers, athletes, kids who are in much better shape than me. Often people who are much bigger and wider than me. It can be dispiriting at first.
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.
I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.
I'm not besotted with the notion of being on CNN to the point that I'm going to suddenly morph into Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour. I'm not a foreign correspondent.
You know, from age 17 on, my paycheck was coming from cooking and working in kitchens.
I'm not searching for hard news; I'm not a journalist, but I'm interested in pushing to boundaries of where we can do the kind of stories that we want to do. I mean, it's a big world and CNN has made it a lot bigger and they haven't flinched.
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.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
I think as a moral question, restaurant workers should get paid more.
Norman Mailer described the desire to be cool as a "decision to encourage the psychopath in oneself, to explore that domain of experience where security is boredom and therefore sickness and one exists in the present, in that enormous present which is without past or future, memory or planned intention.
I won't eat in a restaurant with filthy bathrooms. This isn't a hard call. They let you see the bathrooms. If the restaurant can't be bothered to replace the puck in the urinal or keep the toilets and floors clean, then just imagine what their refrigeration and work spaces look like.
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.