So this is my favorite quote from Tony.
"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, it's a plus for everybody."
[music]
Bourdain entered my life many years ago, 1999,
when I came across the New Yorker piece, like
many people in this room, essentially pulling
the blinds aside and kind of exposing the
secret happenings of the kitchen, and this
idea of why you shouldn't eat fish on Mondays.
Over the years, I followed his career quickly,
I was very young, I was coming out of a career
in IT at the time, I wasn't in food, but I
followed his career, followed the Cook's Tour
show and then the Travel Channel show No Reservations,
where I came across this blog that he had
on the Travel Channel.
And it was like a behind the scenes blog that
he would put up, posts that he'd put up while
he was filming, whether it was in Namibia
or in Jamaica, or wherever he was.
And I really was hooked on his unique way
of storytelling, this idea of just being really
raw, and something very refreshing compared
to what you'd see on the Food Network.
And I followed his career since then, obviously,
and I've met him on a number of occasions,
and to see how it has evolved into the show
on Parts Unknown with...
The show that's kind of about food, but not
really about food, it's about people and it's
about this idea of people and music and culture
and politics.
And I wanted to go back to the first times
you had met Bourdain.
Gabrielle, I know that with your restaurant,
the Prune, in East Village, which is now 20
years old?
In October, it'll be 20.
Yeah.
And you've known Bourdain for just as long.
Can you talk a little bit about maybe one
of your first encounters with Anthony?
Sure.
We got pretty drunk at the Siberia Bar and
it ended with smashing beer bottles against
the brick wall at the end of the bar, and
it was a revelation.
It's very hard to break a full bottle of beer.
It's easier when they're empty.
Did you share a meal together?
The first thing I learned from Anthony.
May I pour you some water?
So Joel, I know you've worked with Bourdain
on a number of graphic novels, Get Jiro, the
sequel to that, and Hungry Ghosts, which is
now out.
But I recently learned that you've actually
known each other for quite some time, going
back to the early '80s, and there's this cool
story about Bourdain dropping off a manuscript
at your doorstep.
02:56 Joel: I had this little magazine called
Between C&D.
In 1981, I got my first book contract and
I bought a computer.
It was the first home computer, it was an
Epson QX10NH18...
I like to know the model, yeah.
It produced dot matrix on a thing.
And I realized I had a printing press...
Back when polio was still...
Yeah, really.
But the next thing I knew, I got a comic in
the mail from, I don't know, from somebody.
And I wrote back that, "Your drawing sucks,
but your writing is pretty good."
And like about a week later, I was upstairs,
I lived in a tenement apartment on the fourth
floor in the East Village and somebody rang
my buzzer and I went downstairs and there
was this very tall guy in chef whites, fucking
high out of his mind.
And I brought him upstairs and we sat for
about four hours at my kitchen table, just
talking.
My dad was a waiter at the stage in the Carnegie.
My brother, who's right there, we grew up
in the restaurant business.
I worked my way through graduate school working
in...
I like to say every restaurant in New York,
but not quite.
But a lot of restaurants, and we just hit
it off.
He was so insecure, he was so unsure of himself.
And I worked with him a lot over the years,
but he was a natural writer from the get-go.
He was a genuine talent.
And the person that you see on TV, that's
who he was, he was caring and expansive in
every way.
And for me, who worked with him on many, many,
many projects together, he was the best partner
and I miss him terribly, 'cause his spirit
was...
It's with me right now, he's with me all the
time.
What was he like in person, Gabrielle?
When you spent some time with Bourdain.
What is Tony like in person?
He's very early for every event.
He would sit in that green room 30 more minutes
than we just did to be sure he was the first
one there.
He's awkward, he's a little awkward.
Nervous.
He used to come to Prune, right?
Say again?
He used to eat at the restaurant quite a bit.
He ate at Prune frequently, I think his kind
of joy when he came the first time, he was
excited to see this dish of Fergus Henderson's
that I was totally plagiarizing, with Fergus'
permission, of the roasted bone marrow.
And I think Tony loved, as you know, the esoteric
and the little known.
And so he was like, "Why would you have these
marrow bones?
How do you know this guy?"
Who is now very famous, but...
What was he like in person?
He was like he was on camera, but also not
very...
Nervous.
He was...
He had social anxiety, I think.
His work, whether it was from the novels or
whether it was from the TV shows, reached
a lot of people, millions of people across
the world, cross-generational, people of all
backgrounds and shapes and sizes, colors or
whatever.
Why do you think his work was so appealing?
What was so appealing about what he was doing?
Maybe you can talk about just his writing
and what appealed to you in those early days?
His energy, how genuine it was.
He was a seeker.
He was interested in all kinds of people in
a very visceral way.
I also really appreciated that he was so dedicated
to the kitchen and so dreaded it at the same
time.
When I met him he was still a young man, and
he was already thinking about, "I don't wanna
be trapped on the line."
He just...
He felt, as exhilarated as he was, that it
was not a place that he wanted to be as he
aged.
Yeah, as your knees start to crack when you
step on the line and you go up and down the
stairs to the basement prep kitchen for your
9000th visit as you're hitting your 50s, that
is not a prospect you wanna face without healthcare,
without a good income.
But his love of the work when he could still
do it was so contagious, and I think that's
what people are drawn to.
He was in love with the work, with the pirate
ship, with the pirates.
And he made it so attractive; ironically,
if you will, he made the pirate ship attractive
to non-pirates.
And so you get a lot of very hygienic people
now wanting to work in this industry.
[laughter] It's like wait, there's no more
scallywag, there's no more...
His pirate ship that he loved so much.
And so you worked in the industry as well.
But you were front of house, right, I think
you said?
I was, I worked as a waiter.
Well, I worked as a bus boy, I worked as a
dish washer, I worked as a waiter.
But never together with Tony.
No, I never worked with Tony.
But you spent some time eating.
I think you famously said that you've eaten
in...
I ate at every...
In every kitchen that he ever worked from
when I met him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Tony's work for me has evolved as I said...
Evolved between the TLC shows and Parts Unknown
shows.
I've always resonated with anything that he
did in South East Asia because it's just a
personal connection for me.
Are there any bodies of work that you guys
have enjoyed over the years that he has produced?
Gabrielle?
Well, I feel like Tony wrote the national
anthem and the pledge of allegiance for all
time of line cooks the world over.
I don't watch a lot of television.
Of course, I've seen him in every airport
when I'm in the airport.
But I come to him through his book, his first
book Kitchen Confidential and Nasty Bits too.
His writing was so fantastic and so right.
He managed this thing that I think food writers
find very difficult, which is to revere and
honor the craft of writing, and also get the
food in there and the work.
But not...
It's a real balance getting the not...
Oh, it's just about food, so I don't really
have to be a good writer or I can load up
this poor little plate of food writing with
huge meaning, too much, right.
I think he got it just right.
But the first book Kitchen Confidential, it
did what had not been done.
It opened up that door to the back of house
that no one had ever seen, and as he said
he could not travel the world ever again without
the door pushing open and the fluorescent
lights from the kitchen spilling out and the
line cooks all looking at him, and sending
him a treat, a snack, buying him a drink.
He revered the crew.
Right, yeah.
Joel, or you?
No, I...
Is there a piece of work between Jiro and
the sequel and Hungry Ghosts, is there a body
of work maybe you've worked on together that
you've enjoyed the most, that stands out?
You know, working with Tony over the years...
Kitchen Confidential came from an email that
he sent me.
He was sent by...
Les Halles was opening a branch in Tokyo,
and he went for the first time and he wrote
me an email from his hotel room looking out
over Tokyo.
And it was hilarious and I took it out of
the computer and I went into the living room.
My wife, who's a publisher, Karen Rinaldi,
had just had our son and she was sitting on
the floor in the living room breastfeeding
the baby.
And I said, "Karen, you have to read this
from Tony."
And she said, "Joel, get away from me, can't
you see what I'm doing?
I'm feeding the baby."
So I read it to her and it was so funny and
so good.
And she called up his agent and made an offer.
And it became Kitchen Confidential.
But Tony...
Once Tony got free...
Once he just allowed himself to write without
anxiety, he always had anxiety, but once he
let it start to flow, his voice came out.
Like I said, he was always a really good writer.
But once he got over that...
And then our relationship was like the perfect
relationship as far as writers go.
Because we would both just do what we did
and as soon as we hit a wall, we would just
send it to the other person.
And especially Tony would just go...
And then it would come back to me and it was
[13:16] ____.
But it was such brilliance in it, and you
could just pick it out.
And that's all I did.
I just picked it out and just edited and we
had a ball with both Get Jiro and Hungry Ghosts.
Yeah, 'cause I guess when you were working
on the graphic novel, he was traveling, obviously,
extensively.
Always traveling.
So, your communication in terms of that, that's
always email.
Always email.
Yeah.
We would meet when he was in town, but he
was in town so infrequently.
He was on the road 270 days a year.
Yeah.
You made a comment about how great of a writer
he was and there are so many quotes that you
can pull from Bourdain's work.
I mean, Eater regularly ran a series where
they did a Quotable Bourdain post every time
a show aired.
I just wanna pull one up.
So he said, "You learn a lot about someone
when you share a meal together."
I wanna to ask the two of you, if you can
tell us a story about some of your meals together
over the years.
Gabrielle, please.
It's so funny because he got so...
I'm thinking about that chapter in Kitchen
Confidential in the end where he discusses
the level of discourse.
And that for 20 years, over 20 years, he's
just been hanging out with cooks trying to
figure out new ways to say, "You're a dick."
[laughter]
In any language that was at hand and [chuckle]
dropping the F-bomb.
And it's so funny how he really honed his
skill with words in the kitchen.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, he was right about...
Yeah.
Is there a story you'd wanna share, Joel,
about maybe one of your meals together over
the years?
My last meal with Tony was a perfect meal.
We were at his apartment and his daughter
was hungry so we went out to Gray's Papaya,
a hot dog stand.
And that was my last meal with Tony.
I think that's the beauty of Bourdain's work,
is that he would eat all ends of the spectrum,
right?
Highbrow and like he would not be afraid to
eat at the Jollibee in the Philippines and
have bowls of spaghetti with fried chicken
on top of it.
That was very appealing to me.
Totally.
He loved...
He can enjoy any...
If any of our moms were cooking that would
be his favorite meal.
To go to your mom's house, yeah.
Yeah, that was his favorite, just to...
But he loved everything.
He loved to eat and he changed after Lebanon,
after Beirut.
Before that, I think he was much more focused
on food and he loved that, he loved sharing
food.
But after Beirut, he became much more involved
with people and their struggles.
And weaving in the stories of the people in...
[overlapping conversation]
It transformed him.
And I think it made him...
Not that he wasn't before, because he was,
but it made him so soulful and he just...
He had good intent towards people, to all
kinds of people, and his inroad was through
food, certainly, but it was through...
Every time...
I never saw him ever with when he wasn't gracious
to people, strangers, anyone.
He was always just absolutely gracious and
giving of himself in such a remarkable way.
I always admired him for his spirit and his
heart.
It's that generosity, he does the work so
passionately that you don't even know he's
working so hard, and it's so attractive.
Again, another...
The television, the travel, you know how many
people wanna be Tony Bourdain, like, "Man!
You've got the job.
Man, that is the life."
And what you don't see is that actually it's
like 220 days a year in a hotel room.
And you're never home and all you see is the...
The finished product.
That's right.
His passion for the people, not the work that
he had to do to show it to, to share it, it's
very generous and receding, right?
That's a real Tony move, he'll buy you dinner
and leave before you have a chance to realize
that he picked up the check, and you're like,
"Fuck."
[laughter]
"He just paid."
He also made himself quite accessible to everyone,
especially in the industry.
There's a reputation that...
He had a reputation where he constantly was
able to lend an ear or an eye or help to any
writer, any aspiring writer in the industry.
He was always approachable in person or via
communication.
When you were working on your memoir, I guess,
it'd be 10 years ago now when it came out?
Did you collaborate with him?
What was that process like?
Did you ever work with him when you were writing
it?
Certainly not.
I had...
A lot of the questions were, "Do you wanna
be the female Tony Bourdain," 'cause I was
writing that memoir.
"Is it gonna be the female Kitchen Confidential?"
And I argued with Kitchen Confidential as
well.
As much as it was the anthem of our people,
I also, when I read that book thought, "Oh,
dude, it's not always like this."
It's not all drugs and sex and running guns,
and working for the mafia.
It's like there are some very quiet moments
and...
[laughter]
There isn't a fire every day.
In fact, I was almost counter, I was like,
"I think I'd like to write a truer or not
a truer, but as true, but if you look up and
see the whole week, not just the day when
everything's on fire and everyone's...
"
And is that a testament to how the industry
has evolved in that time period?
It would have been a decade between Kitchen
Confidential and your memoir, right?
I don't think that the kitchen had evolved.
I grew up in the same kitchens that he grew
up in, it's...
Tony loved the pirate ship, I can't emphasize
it enough.
He was desperate to be a pirate, this boy
from New Jersey with loving parents, with
a good education, and he wanted to be bad
ass.
He wanted to...
As he...
Admired so much.
He's like, "This is the work.
This milieu.
This is for people who are either on their
way to prison or on their way out."
[laughter]
Out.
Okay, right, right.
And that was fascinating to him and that's
exactly our differences, right?
I think we often share a fan base sometimes
until we meet each other's fans and then we're
like, "Actually, no."
He wanted to be bad ass and I'm always trying
to not say fuck, and to always clean it up
[chuckle] and to get out of juvie and...
And I guess he was using the graphic novel
as a conduit to get some of that.
Totally.
He would say he always wanted to be a pirate.
He used to tell me this story when he was
at Vassar.
He went to school before he went to CIA and
he would walk around campus with a sword.
And everybody thought he was completely out
of his mind.
Right, he was the dick with nunchucks.
Yeah, right.
[chuckle]
Walking around campus.
You can still find those photos if you Google
them online, yeah.
So when we were doing comic books together,
that was his dream.
He was living his dream.
He loves Japanese Samurai movies and gangster
movies, yakuza movies, he just...
He was there.
He was so thrilled with himself.
So I remember June 8th of last year quite,
it's still very fresh for me.
We woke up in the morning, my wife and I,
we have...
The first 10 minutes of our morning is usually
we just sit on the couch.
We don't talk, we just catch up on our tweets
and Instagrams and emails and whatnot.
Pretty embarrassing, but then I remember,
I had seen a tweet, I'd seen the tweet from
the CNN account and immediately my phone fell
to the floor and I said, "Oh, honey, turn
on the TV right away."
And we tuned into CNN and our day just got
worse and worse and worse and it...
The whole range of emotions just lasted for
what felt like days and weeks.
And I don't really...
I never really had a personal relationship
with Bourdain.
What was your day like that day, can you tell
me about what you were feeling when you heard
the news?
Yes.
It's actually...
Sure.
I just will say that the first thing that
I saw was a Instagram post by a colleague
and it started immediately.
There were no pictures of...
It wasn't just Tony, it was, "Me and Tony
and look at my proximity to Tony," and I felt
gutted by this.
I found it almost grotesque or some kind of
an obscenity, this kind of grab for, "I wanna
show you that he was special to me the most."
And I found it a day to not publish, I guess.
I was like, "This is a day to shut the fuck
up and shut up and lie down and bawl your
brains out.
And not immediately self-publish, self-publish,
look at me."
And that's where I was, dropping my kid off
at school and heard it from a shock jock on
the radio and just did not talk for, until
today.
My phone rang at 5:00 in the morning and it
was, we had the same agent, and she said,
"Tony passed."
My wife actually had picked up the phone and
Karen said to me, "Tony's gone."
And I said, "Tony who?"
It didn't compute.
And then our phone just didn't stop that day.
And I just...
I couldn't believe it and then I could believe
it at the same time.
But I had just talked to him the day before
and I just was like, whatever, you think like,
could I have helped?
Could I have done something?
Should I have seen?
And I think the answer is no.
I mean, Karen and I talked about it enough.
She had interviewed him just a couple of weeks
before and she said that he was depressed.
And I guess my ego or my own self-involvement
didn't let me see well enough or something.
I don't even know.
I don't know.
And you were in the middle of still working
on a project...
We had just written the dedication for our
last book together, just like I said, the
day before.
We had just written it and I don't know.
What's the last year been like for you in
terms of with Hungry Ghosts and seeing that
come to fruition?
Well, I know that he loved the book.
The book is so beautiful and I know he was
really proud of it and what I had really enjoyed
working on it and that gives me comfort, and
I'm still working on it.
We're doing...
Sony had bought it for TV anime and I'm doing
it now and I'm with him.
He's with me.
He's still yelling at me and I'm still yelling
at him.
I mean, it's just...
I don't know.
He was...
Good to argue with.
Yeah, he was good to argue with.
He was ready for it.
When you read Hungry Ghosts, you can't help
but read it in his voice, obviously, from
the front to back and his style is right there
from the beginning to end with the peppering
of the food elements throughout the book.
I really enjoyed it.
Thanks.
And the artwork with all the illustrators
are also quite wonderful.
I have one more quote that I wanna go back
to and this is a good one.
Wait, can I just say one thing, though?
Yeah.
I don't remember if you were there.
There was a memorial for him and there were
all these...
It was so awkward.
What?
It was awkward.
Yeah.
But it was also...
But some...
You mean the one in front of Les Halles?
No, it was a private thing with a lot of people
from his life.
And this kid came up to me, he was a man,
came up to me, who'd been to high school with
Tony and he had Tony's sketchbook.
Wow.
He pulled it out and it was the same shitty
drawings that that he had sent me.
[laughter]
It made me feel so good.
[laughter]
So this is my favorite quote from Tony, "If
I'm gonna advocate for anything it's to move
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.
It's a plus for everybody."
Gabrielle, I know you've traveled extensively
in the past where you've worked through Greece
and Turkey.
Looking back to your friendship with Bourdain,
did he inspire you to travel anywhere or travel
in a particular way?
No. [chuckle]
Maybe a place in Southeast Asia?
No.
I mean, I love this dude.
I love the dude, but he was not an inspiration
or a...
I think we were kindred.
I think we liked each other because we already
traveled in a similar way and already wrote
and already had candour and frankness and
so no, I was already on that path.
Joel, what about you?
I think you had mentioned Vietnam briefly
backstage?
Well, I haven't been to Vietnam, but my brother
just came back and I think that it inspired
him to go because Tony loved Vietnam so much.
But Tony was like...
He was like my little brother.
I mean, he was taller than me, but he was
like my little brother.
And I paid attention to...
He certainly inspired me to go visit Japan
and oh my God, he turned me on to so many
movies and books and he was just so encyclopaedic
about the things that he loved and he just
made me want to watch 12 hours of Samurai
movies in a row, 'til my eyeballs fell out.
[laughter]
And I think that's the inspiration.
I mean, one of my favorite quotes is where
he says, "Your body is not a temple.
Your body is an adventure.
So go eat everywhere."
Yeah.
Yeah.
