The Culture War’s Conscientious Objector

In the early days of the hipster coffee boom, a foodie friend of mine took me to Stumptown in the Ace Hotel. I remember being overwhelmed by two things: the rich smell of grinding beans, and the sheer number of knit caps. And porkpies. And bowlers. And derbies. It seemed every barista was required by law to cover their head in something silly and, if biologically possible, to pair it with it beard. The espresso was amazing.

“You know,” said my friend, as we remerged into Manhattan daylight, “I love the coffee. But I hate the hats.”

Anthony Bourdain believed in coffee without hats. He embraced quality while rejecting its sidekick pretension. No wonder he gained notice by exposing the fakery of restaurants. No wonder he became famous for loving food.

Not just loving. Devouring. Bourdain, no glutton, was ravenous. He didn’t sample pleasures. He didn’t sip them. He slurped. Millions of people derived joy — real joy — just from watching him eat.

I must confess that I myself wasn’t a regular viewer of his show. And yet I was so happy it existed. The knowledge that someone was out there traveling the globe, searching for good things to share, kept a small hopeful neuron firing in the back of my mind.

I didn’t realize that until this morning.

I also didn’t realize how much I’ll miss his writing, which, like his eating, was passionate and deliberate and slurpily unrefined. Here’s one of my favorite passages, from an essay about his home state of New Jersey.

But we knew the squeak of sand against the ear, when half asleep on a beach towel. The comforting rumble of Atlantic waves breaking against the jetties, the pleasures of stolen cigarettes, steamer clams dripping butter, summer corn, funnel cakes, and finger-fucking.

Was I happy?

I must have been.

What an amazing piece of writing, as rich and sharply textured as a shot of good espresso. Doesn’t it make you want to head for the beach right this minute? Doesn’t it make you want a cigarette (even if you’ve never smoked one) and a feast (even if you’ve tried steamers), and a raft of other stolen pleasures (which I’m too modest to mention here). Doesn’t it make you want to live, really live?

Doesn’t it make you a little sad?

Especially now, when we could really use an Anthony Bourdain. We seem stuck in a pointless conflict between proudly smug cosmopolitans and proudly tasteless reactionaries. You either eat well-done steak with ketchup or drink kombucha with your acai bowl. Pick a side.

Or, said Anthony Bourdain, you can slice into a perfectly bloody Bistecca alla Fiorentina. You can find a bowl of spicy noodles that will kick your yuppie smoothie’s ass. You can have the pleasure of good taste without the perils of class. Bourdain was an evangelist without being a demagogue, a prophet in a world full of partisans. He was the conscientious objector in the culture war.

What a radical choice. Imagine if more of us could make it; if we we embraced new experiences and old traditions, not as burdens but as feasts. Imagine if taco trucks on every corner had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with tacos.

This was the promise of Anthony Bourdain: that stripped of pretension, our shared love of good things could unite us, and maybe even save us. The tragedy of Anthony Bourdain was that his promise couldn’t even save him.

And yet visions outlive prophets. One of the culture’s foremost searchers is done searching. But for the rest of us — eaters, cooks, writers, citizens — there remains the chance to seek out life’s honest pleasures, take off our hats, and slurp.