Sometimes the greatest meals on vacations are the ones you find when Plan A falls through.

The celebrity-chef thing, even at its worst, its most annoying, its silliest, its goofiest, its most egregious and cynical, has been a good thing.

Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.

In college, I think I probably positioned myself as an aspiring writer, meaning I dressed sort of extravagantly and adopted all the semi-Byronic affectations, as if I were writing, although I wasn’t actually doing any writing.

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 feel that if Jacques Pepin shows you how to make an omelet, the matter is pretty much settled. That’s God talking.

As you move through this life…you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life – and travel – leaves marks on you.

I, personally, think there is a really danger of taking food too seriously. Food should be part of the bigger picture.

I could do one show after another in China for the rest of my life and still die ignorant. There’s a lot of places left to go.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

I hated the Naked Chef. Fine, yes, he did good things for school food or whatever, but, you know, I don’t want my chefs to be cute and adorable.

‘Kitchen Confidential‘ wasn’t a cautionary or an expose. I wrote it as an entertainment for New York tri-state area line cooks and restaurant lifers, basically; I had no expectation that it would move as far west as Philadelphia.

I don’t have to agree with you to like you or respect you.

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

One of the things is challenging yourself to do a Rome show when everybody‘s done a Rome show. To find some aspect of food culture or chef culture that people can look at in a new way.

Anyone who’s a chef, who loves food, ultimately knows that all that matters is: ‘Is it good? Does it give pleasure?’

To be treated well in places where you don’t expect to be treated well, to find things in common with people you thought previously you had very, very little in common with, that can’t be a bad thing.

I don’t snack. I don’t generally eat sweets or drink soda. I never eat between meals or even before big ones.

In that sense, what a great way to live, if you could always do things that interest you, and do them with people who interest you.

I’m a radical environmentalist; I think the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better. The world will do better without us. Maybe some fuzzy animals will go with us, but there’ll be plenty of other animals, and they’ll be back.

The cooking profession, while it’s a noble craft and a noble calling, ’cause you’re doing something useful – you’re feeding people, you’re nurturing them, you’re providing sustenance – it was never pure.

I think that if all kids aspire to reach a point where they could feed themselves and a few of their friends, this would be good for the world surely.

Oh yes, there’s lots of great food in America. But the fast food is about as destructive and evil as it gets. It celebrates a mentality of sloth, convenience, and a cheerful embrace of food we know is hurting us.

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.

Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it’s a start.

Southeast Asia has a real grip on me. From the very first time I went there, it was a fulfillment of my childhood fantasies of the way travel should be.

Recognise excellence. Celebrate weirdness and innovation. Oddballs should be cherished, if they can do something other people can’t do.

If somebody crafts an interesting tweet that’ll lead me to their blog, I’m going to their blog.

My house is run, essentially, by an adopted, fully clawed cat with a mean nature.

One of life’s terrible truths is that women like guys who seem to know what they’re doing.

Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don’t speak the language and haven‘t been before – that’s really satisfying to me. I like that.

I’m a Twitter addict. Jose Andres is a serial tweeter. It’s funny to see which chefs have embraced it, and the different paths they take.

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.

I’m a comic nerd. I’m a former serious collector for much of my childhood and early teen years I wanted to draw underground comics.

As I see it, fast food outfits have targeted small children with their advertising in a very effective way. You know, it’s clowns and kid‘s toys and bright colors and things like that.

You can call me the bad boy chef all you want. I’m not going to freak out about it. I’m not that bad. I’m certainly not a boy, and it’s been a while since I’ve been a chef.

At the end of the day, the TV show is the best job in the world. I get to go anywhere I want, eat and drink whatever I want. As long as I just babble at the camera, other people will pay for it. It’s a gift.

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

You learn a lot about someone when you share a meal together.

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.

your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.

What you’re going to be eating in the next year is decided by chefs. If the consensus is that pot-bellies are in next season, that’s what’s on your plate. And I think that’s a good thing, because we know, obviously, about food.

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.

It just seems there’s better things to do in your life than be on television if it’s not interesting, if it’s not challenging, if it’s not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I’ll stop making television.

If you get an opportunity to work with David Simon, anybody with good taste would.

In America, there might be better gastronomic destinations than New Orleans, but there is no place more uniquely wonderful.

To the extent I am known, I think I am known as a person who expresses his opinion freely about things – and I was sensitive to the possibility that if I was seen taking money for saying nice things about a product, my comments and choices and opinions would become, understandably, suspect.

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

The Kobe craze really annoyed me. Most of the practitioners had no real understanding of the product and were abusing it and exploiting it in terrible and ridiculous ways. Kobe beef should not be used in a hamburger. It’s completely pointless.

I’ve seen zero evidence of any nation on Earth other than Mexico even remotely having the slightest clue what Mexican food is about or even come close to reproducing it. It is perhaps the most misunderstood country and cuisine on Earth.

The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, ‘I’m not interested,’ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.

That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund.

We learn as professionals by repetition, by getting it wrong, getting yelled at and doing it again.

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.

People’s choice to become vegan, from people I’ve spoken to, seems motivated by fear.

When I was writing ‘Kitchen Confidential,’ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

I’m very proud of the Rome episode of ‘No Reservations‘ because it violated all the conventional wisdom about making television. You’re never, ever supposed to do a food or travel show in black and white.

I’m evangelical on the subject of some chefs and writers.

I’m very type-A, and many things in my life are about control and domination, but eating should be a submissive experience, where you let down your guard and enjoy the ride.

The Congo was the most difficult shoot of my life but was also maybe the greatest adventure of my life.

I just do the best I can and write something interesting, to tell stories in an interesting way and move forward from there.

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.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

Since the very beginning, Emeril’s had a sense of humor about me calling him names and poking fun at him.

I often look ridiculous in Japan. There’s really no way to eat in Japan, particularly kaiseki in a traditional ryokan, without offending the Japanese horribly. Every gesture, every movement is just so atrociously wrong, and the more I try, the more hilarious it is.

Nobody in Singapore drinks Singapore Slings. It’s one of the first things you find out there. What you do in Singapore is eat. It’s a really food-crazy culture, where all of this great food is available in a kind of hawker-stand environment.

When I’m doing a book tour in the States, I’ll wake up in the room sometimes in an anonymous chain hotel, and I don’t know where I am right away. I’ll go to the window, and it doesn’t help there either, especially if you’re in an anonymous strip and it’s the usual Victoria‘s Secret, Gap, Chili‘s, Applebee’s.

I do my very best to avoid shark fin.

You’d have a hard time finding anything better than Barcelona for food, as far as being a hub. Given a choice between Barcelona and San Sebastian to die in, I’d probably want to die in San Sebastian.

I always entertain the notion that I’m wrong, or that I’ll have to revise my opinion. Most of the time that feels good; sometimes it really hurts and is embarrassing.

I’m always secretly the most pleased when a show just really, really looks good and when my camera guys are really happy with the images they got.

I’m married to an Italian woman, and I used to love cooking Italian at home, because it’s one-pot cooking. But my wife does not approve of my Italian cooking.

I don’t have much patience for people who are self-conscious about the act of eating, and it irritates me when someone denies themselves the pleasure of a bloody hunk of steak or a pungent French cheese because of some outdated nonsense about what’s appropriate or attractive.

It would be an egregious mistake to ever refer to me in the same breath as most of the people I write about.

Chefs are fond of hyperbole, so they can certainly talk that way. But on the whole, I think they probably have a more open mind than most people.

I love New York. I’m a guy for whom a New York accent is a comforting thing.

Being a vegan is a first-world phenomenon, completely self-indulgent.

Naturally, I’m misanthropic. But the Negronis are helping considerably.

I’m not looking to freak people out – eating rodents or bugs. I don’t do that anymore.

The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen.