Anthony Bourdain

Jiro Ono serves Edo-style traditional sushi, the same 20 or 30 pieces he's been making his whole life, and he's still unsatisfied with the quality and every day wakes up and trains to make the best. And that is as close to a religious experience in food as one is likely to get.

I’ve been really fortunate in that I guess I was hired to do A Cook’s Tour, I was already a known quantity, meaning I had written a really obnoxious book and nobody expected me to be anyone that I wasn’t already.

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 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.

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.

Hong Kong is a wonderful, mixed-up town where you've got great food and adventure. First and foremost, it's a great place to experience China in a relatively accessible way.

Going to Southeast Asia for the first time and tasting that spectrum of flavors - that certainly changed my whole palate, the kind of foods I crave. A lot of the dishes I used to love became boring to me.

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

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

I'm a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don't agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

I'm a decent cook; I'm a decent chef. None of my friends would ever have hired me at any point in my career. Period.

I'm a control freak. If you're going to slap my name on something, I would like to control it.

I wasn't that great a chef, and I don't think I'm that great a writer.

When I'm back in New York - and this is a terrible thing to complain about - I eat a lot more really, really good food than perhaps I'd like to. So many of my friends are really good chefs. It's kind of like being in the Mafia.

Cream rises. Excellence does have its rewards.

I look at Guy Fieri and I just think, 'Jesus, I'm glad that's not me.'

There are very sophisticated, very time-consuming dishes to prepare; always from scratch, and always in excess of what you could possibly need. You tend to kill your guests with kindness around here.

New Orleans is a glorious mutation

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.

Without new ideas success can become stale

Street food, I believe, is the salvation of the human race.