Beloved author, chef, and award-winning television
producer and host Anthony Bourdain died June
8th, 2018, of an apparent suicide in his hotel
room in northern France.
Best known for taking viewers on culinary
adventures via his Travel Channel show No
Reservations and later refining the format
on CNN's Parts Unknown, Bourdain was a no-nonsense
advocate for good food, good drink, decency,
and common sense.
Here are a few things you may not know about
the late Anthony Bourdain.
He was a novelist
It was his 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential
that put him on the map, but he had already
released a number of books of a very different
sort: crime fiction.
He started with 1995's A Bone in the Throat,
which has his main character - a chef, unsurprisingly
- getting mixed up in Little Italy's criminal
underworld.
It was later made into a film starring Gossip
Girl's Ed Westwick.
That was followed by 1997's Gone Bamboo, and
later by 2001's The Bobby Gold Stories.
Bourdain explained the storytelling allure
of the criminal world to The New York Times:
"Crime as work appeals to me [...] The guy
who gets up in the morning and makes his living
by crime.
I've always been a crime buff and a big fan
of crime jargon, and in the restaurant business,
I've met a bunch of gangsters."
He wrote graphic novels, too
Karen Berger, editor and founder of DC Comics'
Vertigo imprint, worked with Bourdain on his
2012 graphic novel Get Jiro!.
She told Vulture that Bourdain was a massive
fan of dark, underground comics and graphic
novels.
He followed up Get Jiro! with 2018's Hungry
Ghosts, a four-part comic book series for
Dark Horse.
As far back as the 1970s, Bourdain had tried
his hand at both writing and illustrating
graphic novels, but the publishers he approached
told him he just wasn't good enough as an
artist.
Bourdain recruited illustrators and a co-writer
to finally bring his visions to life.
His war with Switzerland
Bourdain traveled the globe in search of great
food and compelling stories, but there's one
place he's always had a tongue-in-cheek aversion
to, and it's a bit surprising: Switzerland.
Back in 2008 he wrote on his Travel Channel
blog:
“Even Ricola commercials make me break into
a cold sweat.
Lederhosen, Alpine hats, cuckoo clocks, St.
Bernards, cross-country skiers, and The Sound
of Music make me physically ill."
He later told Conan O'Brien he had a "morbid
fear" of all things Swiss, but wasn't quite
sure why:
"I must have had some terrible childhood experience
while watching Sound of Music that I blocked
out."
His MMA connection
Bourdain's second wife, MMA fighter Ottavia
Busia, wrote a piece for Vice describing just
how important MMA and UFC was to the family.
According to her, Bourdain was a big boxing
fan back in the 1970s, and once she took him
to an MMA fight, he really got into it.
She went on to interview him on the subject,
and he said that he loved that she fought,
and could always defend herself.
But she had to ban him from watching her compete
because he made her anxious.
Bourdain said he didn't want her to ever experience
"the agony of defeat," considering how hard
she works to prepare for her fights.
He also said he was glad his daughter was
also learning how to defend herself:
"The day will come when little Timmy in the
next desk is gonna pull her hair.
And I like the idea that she'll be able to
f--- little Timmy up real bad."
His most treasured possession
Bourdain had a love of all things hand-crafted,
and focused on unsung artisans in his web
series Raw Craft, a paid promotional partnership
with Scottish whiskey brand "The Balvenie.".
When Bourdain made himself available for an
"Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit, someone
asked him if he got to keep the, quote, "samurai
quality" knife artisan Bob Kramer made in
an episode of Raw Craft.
He said he didn't, but he later bid on it
when it went to auction.
It ended up selling for around $22,000.
After waiting more than a year, Bourdain finally
purchased a Kramer blade, and he was thrilled,
writing,
"It is easily my most valued physical object
that I own.
It is a thing of beauty, and I'm just waiting
to find food worthy of it, to use it."
His impact
When news of Bourdain's death broke, there
was an immediate outpouring of grief.
It wasn't just foodies and chefs who mourned
his passing - as NPR notes, there were particularly
moving tributes from those in communities
widely marginalized by the rest of society.
Food historian Michael W. Twitty wrote on
Twitter,
"For a Black man that has walked the plank
for being highly critical of the food world
so white, #Anthony Bourdain was special.
He called Africa the cradle of civilization,
took his cameras to Haiti, honored the hood
with Snoop, broke bread with Obama like a
human being..."
University of Detroit law professor Khaled
Beydoun lauded Bourdain for, quote, "humanizing
Muslims and Arabs as regular, everyday people
-without politicizing their lives or stories."
Journalist Mohammad Alsaafin tweeted,
"If you're from a marginalized, dehumanized
community, you know what Anthony Bourdain
meant.
To Palestinians, Iranians, Libyans, undocumented
immigrants in the US, abused women...what
a loss."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal
thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK.
That's 1-800-273-8255.
