Why We Loved Anthony Bourdain

It would be impossible to put into words the impact of someone like Anthony Bourdain. His loss will be continually heartbreaking. His charisma traversed borders both physical and metaphorical. Spending the majority of his life broke and in debt only to become an overnight success allowed him to live most his life out of the spotlight, slowly stewing into the persona we would all come to know in his later life. He first came to the attention of many as this cool-guy chef who had some how managed to get the greatest job on the planet. He achieved his self-fulfilling prophecy of becoming a real-world James Bond who wined and dined through more than 200 countries and no government could stop from enjoying a gastronomical experience.

I remember the day I was introduced to Anthony the television personality like it was yesterday. My father was watching as I walked into the room and it was this new show called “No Reservations” airing it’s first season. I didn’t understand what I was watching at first. I couldn’t believe someone was getting paid to do this. He visited Paris, Vietnam, Malaysia, Italy, and more just in the first season. I watched every episode he did henceforth. Following him intensely for the rest of his career was a joy, constantly eager to see where he would go next and what sort of revelation he would poetically lay on us afterword. He inspired many, like myself, to take our own trips around the world to specific places he visited and we all idolized him even more for being able to do that.

But lets not forget before all this he also inspired many misfits to join the culinary world in his work as a writer. He truly was a gifted storyteller that could turn any encounter into a romantic escape from reality. The way he spoke about food and life intertwined like a ancient philosopher from a time when the world was still undiscovered. He was a walking modern-day intellectual-romance novel and he reveled in that intellectual engagement in a way that was charming and addictive to many of us. He carried an allure that made you want to have endless bottles of wine with him after an amazing meal that took miles to find. He was a master at bringing people together. He was a master at coming across as honest, helped in part by the fact that he was.

Bourdain’s character on screen was also approachable by anyone in the world and he was committed to approaching everyone in the world through it. The topic might have always been food but it really always about people. He loved people and people loved him. There was almost never a moment where you felt that he didn’t truly care about the words being spoken around him. He was simultaneously sensitive and masculine giving both a sense of normalization hard to find elsewhere in the media. He was courageous enough to stand up to super-macho elements of caricatures around him and bring them into a much more respectable and appreciable realm. He showed that the super-macho bravado could be compatible with a stronger love for your neighbor and it was his hallmark in his ability to disarm anyone.

This was an immense and measurable evolution from the man we had come to know at the start of his career. When he began he was a blood-touting meat-loving man’s man who loved smoking, drinking and the bloodier the meat was the better it tasted. In 1999, he penned an essay for the New Yorker called Don’t Eat Before Reading This, in which he bragged about coming from a generation “when cooks still smoked on the line and wore headbands.” He warned us on how to order fish in New York when he said it “may be just as fresh on Friday, but it’s on Tuesday that you’ve got the good will of the kitchen on your side.”

He used to famously rail against groups like brunch eaters, vegetarians and vegans. He was merciless in his passion for putting anyone to shame whom he didn’t agree with him when it came to cooking. Speaking of vegans he once wrote, “serious cooks regard these members of the dining public — and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, — as enemies of everything that’s good and decent in the human spirit. To live life without veal or chicken stock, fish cheeks, sausages, cheese, or organ meats is treasonous.”

He berated us with his opinion that it was not just permissible but mandatory to consume pork and butter. “We thicken many sauces with foie gras and pork blood, and proudly hurl around spoonful’s of duck fat and butter, and thick hunks of country bacon”, he unashamedly pronounced. He reminded us to revel in the chaos of the kitchen, that chefs don’t use gloves or hairnets, and that we shouldn’t be scared by this. It was these tidbits of info that made us feel like we were getting a true inside scoop to chef mentality that ran New York and that it was trustworthy information because it came with all the dirt attached to the bottom. Nothing was sacred from description and everything could be talked about… as long as it led to a better meal.

There’s sometimes a backlash against certain people in society that actually offer a lot of wisdom. Not every beneficial statement in society comes from perfect individuals. In fact, none of them do. No one is perfect, but no one is worthless. And neither was Bourdain. In his early years fans forgave him for being a meat-loving cigarette smoker who drank unforgivingly and boasted of the drug induced years of his past. But that may have been part of the charm. We loved him even more because he had real world faults. He was gritty and we wanted more of that in what we read. While he undoubtedly had a list of addictions in his life that may or may not have led to his unfortunate death, it’s important to note that they never handicapped his path to becoming such a loved individual within societies around the world. It would be a great time to step back from the heavy world of criticism to remind us that not every imperfection is justification for a life on the sidelinesThere was also another key moment in the evolution of Bourdain when he wrote so eloquently about the recent claims of the harassment of women in the media, in a open letter to the public, something that seemed to really bother him

“To the extent which my work in Kitchen Confidential celebrated or prolonged a culture that allowed the kind of grotesque behaviors we’re hearing about all too frequently is something I think about daily, with real remorse.”

In the last year of his life he spent time dating Asia Argento whom he lent his undying empathy and support once again. As Bourdain became a supporter of her work and the MeToo movement it was clear there was no ends to his ability to evolve with the times. When he realized there were claims against chefs he had showed past support for on his show he came to the forefront and wrote, “nothing else matters but women’s stories of what it’s like in the industry I have loved and celebrated for nearly 30 years ― and our willingness, as human beings, citizens, men and women alike, to hear them out, fully.” He truly was representative of the type of man we need to more of in our modern culture; men of sensibility, rationality, and some form of determination to be a better person. People clearly dedicated to leaving this world a better place than it was when they found it, and people dedicated to leaving the world a better person than when they arrived.

Near the end of his life Bourdain would be eating a six-dollar bowl of bun cha and a beer with the President of the United States while sitting on plastic stools in a small restaurant in Vietnam. When President Obama reflected on this moment after his death he wrote,

Low plastic stool, cheap but delicious noodles, cold Hanoi beer. This is how I’ll remember Tony. He taught us about food — but more importantly about it’s ability to bring us together. To make us a little less afraid of the unknown. We’ll miss him.

So to the little boy that once tasted a fresh oyster on a boat in France, the poor dishwasher that took pride in his rise to chef, to the writer and entertainment producer that spoke to us from the heart while expanding our minds. You once bragged that you wouldn’t need anyone to write your biography because you already did it for yourself. You were right. We will really miss you.