“In my worldview, food
certainly plays a role,
hopefully in bringing
some kind of enlightenment
and understanding
and openness and appreciation
of other cultures.”
Anthony Bourdain became one
of the most famous chefs
probably living today,
partly — in fact mostly —
because of his writing
and his reporting
much more than because of his food.
“Work, work, work, work, work.”
And I think one
of the defining
images of Tony Bourdain
that will live on
is of him cracking
President Obama up
in a noodle shop in Vietnam.
“This is killer.”
They’re both
so happy to be there.
And you can tell that.
And that was just not an image
of a president eating street food
that we had
ever seen before.
And Bourdain, when he
was cooking, his food
was classic,
pretty upscale.
When he went over to broadcasting,
he abandoned that
world completely.
He really was not interested
in what rich people were eating
in fancy dining rooms.
He was really
interested in what
people were cooking all
over the world, making
the best of what they had.
And he definitely connected
both of those traditions
in a way that I don’t think
anyone had ever done before.
He really saw himself once
he was a writer as someone
whose job it was to poke
the aristocracy
in a very classic way.
“I loathe in
principle the idea
of adhering to any orthodoxy
or strict belief system,
because my travels
have shown me
as I move from place to place
that what I thought yesterday
is, in fact, completely
wrong, again and again.”
His first TV show,
“A Cook’s Tour,”
was focused exclusively on food.
“I think almost all modern
chefs are impressed
by Japanese presentation —”
His more recent show that
he was filming when he died
is called “Parts Unknown.”
It’s more of a travel show.
There is a food aspect to it.
But his mission — as he saw
it — was to really give people
access to places
like Lagos, in Nigeria,
or the night markets
of Singapore.
Places that were, as he
thought of them, off the map.
He brought them onto the map.
“So back in Vietnam
and all of the things
I need for happiness:
Low plastic stool — check.
Tiny little plastic table — check.
Ooh, something
delicious in a bowl.”
Bourdain was really smart.
He was really brash.
His appeal
definitely was partly
to men, who may previously
not have thought of cooking
as such a masculine activity.
He was
irretrievably masculine.
“Because that’s
the kind of guy I am.”
Bourdain’s mother was a copy editor
at The New York Times
and he was always
part of — in fact
one of the first — of the
new generation of more
educated chefs who
knew a lot about food
and were good at
talking about food.
He had written, I believe,
a couple of mystery novels
before he published the
article in the New Yorker
that really made
him famous.
That formed the basis of
“Kitchen Confidential,”
which was his memoir
of what it’s really
like to work in a kitchen —
“Welcome to 
my world.”
— which was full
of what some people consider
really unappetizing details,
but which were totally
entrancing for people
who were caught up
in the idea of this rough
and tumble, no holds barred,
the idea that
working in a kitchen
was like being in a rock
band and it was sweaty
and it was loud and
it was stressful.
But in some way
it made people —
it brought people together.
It made them better. It pulled
their best work out of them.
It was very intense the
way that he described it.
“You know, I wrote a book that,
you know, I stand by
and that it was an honest
representation of what I saw,
what I went through,
what I, you know —
the voices I heard
and my own
voice at the time.
But I provide a validation for
a kind of a meathead mentality,
a bro, you know, sort of
meathead, bro culture
that, you know, has not been
good, particularly for women.”
Bourdain always called himself
a classic bored
New Jersey suburbs kid.
He really tried to escape
that as soon as he could,
first through music
and then through drug use.
Lots of chefs, especially
back in the ’80s,
used cocaine really simply
as a way to stay awake
during 12-hour shifts.
It was something that
he was open about.
It was something that
he struggled with.
I know that he
quit multiple times
and relapsed multiple times.
In some ways, that was always
in the background of
his persona as a chef
and it was also
in the background
of his persona
as an individual,
as someone who had
been through the fire
and survived.
“I went from a guy, you know,
broke, always been, had been
broke, never insured, never
owned anything, perpetually
in debt,
hardworking guy to overnight,
the guy with the
best job in the world.”
