Anthony Bourdain

It is no coincidence that all my kitchens over time come to resemble one another and are reminiscent of the kitchens I grew up in: noisy, debauched and overloaded with faux testosterone – an effective kitchen, but a family affair, and a dysfunctional one, at that. I coddle my hooligans when I’m not bullying them.

Scott learned early that he might have to actually work for a living, whereas 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

thought Scott was in it for the food or for the lifestyle. It gave him pause

By this, I mean simply that many times in my life the statistical probabilities of a fatal outcome have been overwhelming – thanks to my sins of excess and poor judgment and my inability to say no to anything that sounded as if it might have been fun. By all rights I should have been, at various times: shot to death, stabbed to death, imprisoned for a significant period of time, or at very least

My regrets will be more along the lines of a sad list of people hurt, people let down, assets wasted and advantages squandered.

Sure, there were things to learn. I learn things all the time. But I’m talking about eye-opening, revelatory, perspective-altering life experiences: the exotic, the frightening, the totally new.

with a wife who still – remarkably – found me to be amusing on occasion

We went on, calling for more, our appetites beginning to attract notice from the other chefs and some of the customers who’d never it seemed, seen anyone – especially Westerners with our kind of appetites

Tsukiji, Tokyo’s central fish market, puts New York’s Fulton Street to shame. It’s bigger, better, and unlike its counterpart in Manhattan a destination worth visiting if only to gape

Things were different here in that the Japanese market workers had no compunction about looking you in the eye, even nudging you out of the way.