On February 12 2022, the Facebook page “Messages for the Soul” shared the following quote attributed to Anthony Bourdain, along with an image:
“Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.”– Anthony Bourdain
On Facebook, the post was instantly popular and moved quickly. Prior to that, the quote appeared to have circulated in September 2021, appearing in university newsletters, chef’s blogs, and on Twitter:
Fact Check
Claim: Anthony Bourdain said: "Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride."
Description: The claim suggests that Anthony Bourdain gave a lengthy quote encouraging people to ‘Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.’ This quote was shared frequently on the internet, particularly on social media platforms.
Anthony Bourdain was a well-known and widely-admired chef, and he died in June 2018. Bourdain was eulogized in long-form by CNN (the network that aired his show Parts Unknown) at the time, and the outlet concluded its obituary with a different quote by Bourdain:
The show’s website [in June 2018] posted an homage to Bourdain featuring one of his many oft-repeated quotations – one that seemed to embody his philosophy: “If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food.”
The circulating quote — starting with “Eat at a local restaurant tonight” — did not appear in that lengthy meditation on Bourdain’s legacy. Neither was it printed in a detailed obituary published by the New York Times.
It appeared that the popular quote attributed to Bourdain did not really surface or spread until around September 2021, three years after Bourdain’s June 2018 death. A search for portions of the quote (“Eat at a local restaurant tonight” “Get the cream sauce” “Have a negroni” Bourdain) in February 2022 returned over 3,000 results, whereas restricting the search for only results published prior to February 2021 numbered seven in total — largely misdated social media posts.
A search of Google Books for portions of the quote in Bourdain’s book did not return any hits, nor did we find any version of the quote pointing to the purported context in which Bourdain purportedly made the comment (or wrote it). Search also returned archive.org’s text copy of Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, but several searches for snippets of the quotation returned no matches.
One of the first results in unrestricted search was from the subreddit r/AnthonyBourdain in November 2021, from a user questioning the veracity of the quote:
That thread had three comments in total, all skeptical that the quote originated with Bourdain:
“I have never heard him say this in any book or show I have seen or read. Sounds like someone using platitudes that sound like something he could’ve said. That final line ‘check in on yourself’ to me reeks ‘this wasn’t said by Bourdain'”
“Yea, this seems like a variation of something he’s said. I don’t think this is a direct quote. I’ve definitely heard him say that negroni thing though…and I have to say I agree.”
“I think it’s a combination of several quotes by him, but I don’t believe it’s a direct quote.”
A few comments on the tweet embedded above also indicated that attempts to verify the attribution to Bourdain were unsuccessful:
We found a July 2021 post on a film blog about the release of Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain. It was difficult to determine in the context in which it was presented whether the post’s author was quoting from the film or another source:
“Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain,” like Morgan Neville’s earlier “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” (2018) that properly esteemed Fred Rogers, captures a complex, beloved cultural figure drawn from the base of electrons left behind in the form of telegenic presence, and in the case with Bourdain, a battery of B-roll footage and outtakes that roll into the thousands of hours. Neville makes an intimate epic of Bourdain’s late-booming success as chef, writer, raconteur and empathetic-in-the-instant interlocutor, as well as the hurt, heart and soul not far beneath the surface, along with a vein of his hardly hidden mania and jangle along the way. Bourdain is a vivid presence: he’s right there, he’s right here. He was always narrating his own life, at least the experiential particulars he shared as an eventual profession. The best thing to say about Neville’s compact, dense yet feather-light attainment is that it sings and it stings and stands alongside memory of vigorous Bourdain passages such as the immortal: “Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a Negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.” Opening Friday, July 16 [2021] in theaters, including the Music Box.
Chronologically, the first version of the quote we located was a June 27 2021 post on a message board’s older thread about Bourdain’s death.
That commenter didn’t seem to attribute it to Bourdain:
Re: Anthony Bourdain dead.
Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.
Happy Bourdain Day
He would have been 65
In February 2022, a quote attributed to Anthony Bourdain (“Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been …”) began recirculating on social media, having first spread in September 2021. That particular quotation was missing from 2018 remembrances of Bourdain, and we were unable to locate any credible indication he ever said or wrote the words attributed to him. The first iteration we located chronologically was a forum user’s birthday tribute to Bourdain, and that may have been the origin of the quote. Much of what Bourdain said was on-air and harder to source, but fans of the late chef speculated portions of the quote were out of character for Bourdain and suggested the lengthy commentary included some real quotes stitched together with someone else’s words.
- "Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride." - Anthony Bourdain | Facebook
- "Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride." - Anthony Bourdain | Newsletter
- "Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride." - Anthony Bourdain | Chef's blog
- "Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride." - Anthony Bourdain | Twitter
- CNN’s Anthony Bourdain dead at 61
- Anthony Bourdain, Renegade Chef Who Reported From the World’s Tables, Is Dead at 61
- "Eat at a local restaurant tonight" "Get the cream sauce" "Have a negroni" Bourdain | Google Search
- "Eat at a local restaurant tonight" "Get the cream sauce" "Have a negroni" Bourdain | Google Search
- Full text of "Anthony Bourdain Kitchen Confidential" | archive.org
- Did Anthony Bourdain actually say this? | Reddit
- "I've been trying to find the answer to this for a good 20 minutes. Wonder if it's one of those falsely attributed quotes" | Twitter
- "Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you ... " | Film blog
- "Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride." - Anthony Bourdain | Message board