Kerala, India Episode of

Life’s a bitch for Anthony Bourdain. [Photo: Travel Channel ]

It must be very difficult to be Anthony Bourdain : on last night’s episode of No Reservations , Tony goes to the Kerala region of India and hangs out with movie stars and drinks on luxury river boats. Rough life. On to the Quotable Bourdain — feel free to add your picks in the comments below.

1) On the ability of Indian movie stars to film a scene in one take: “It takes me three takes to walk into a fucking restaurant.”

2) On palm wine: “Me, I’d rather get my buzz out of a bag of airplane glue or smoke the teeth from a plastic comb.”

“I could almost be a vegetarian in India. For about a week.” >>>

3) Again, on palm wine: “The only thing I don’t like about the toddy shop is the toddy.”

4) On beef biryani: “They mash up slowly-cooked beef and cooked cassava, creating a satisfying but frankly leaden crowd-pleaser of stoner meat and starch loaf. It hits like a brick.”

5) On an Indian newspaper caption of his picture: “I would like to be addressed as that, in the future. Mr. Ambassador? Your Eminence? I think that would be appropriate.”

6) On almost fainting at a festival celebrating the god Shiva: “Me? I don’t know. I was standing here with the cameras for an hour, in the 100 degree heat, in the crowd, waiting for the elephants to, like, do something, and right about here my eyes started to roll up into my head.”

7) On Indian cuisine: “I could almost be a vegetarian in India. For about a week.”

On the backwaters: “At least where I come from, the backwater is somewhere where you don’t want to get a flat tire, or have to spend the night in a motel, or get butt-rogered by some guy in a mask made from human skin.”

9) On spicy foods: “I like nuclear hot. Burns going in, burns going out kind of thing.”

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