The Anthony Bourdain thread

(although clearly neither the reminder nor the method of death are his fault)

Unlike any other celebrity passing I almost feel like I lost a friend . I don’t know , it was just my wife and I could always count on him and his show doing what they always did and it was like the show we would watch after those long day when we ate dinner on the couch. It was comforting in some way. idk I’m really bummed by this.

Sometimes he felt a little too aging-punk-rock-try-hard to me, but the episode that he did with Jim Harrison was all-time.

i still think about the beirut episode of NO RESERVATIONS a lot.

https://vimeo.com/203033243

that they pulled this off was pretty cool

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/bourdain-parts-unknown-obama-hanoi/index.html

People are also sharing this:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-before-reading-this

yeah, the beirut episode is all-time

whenever there's sabre-rattling in iran's direction i always think of the awesome people bourdain hung out with when he visited there, and how it should be required viewing for anyone who thinks murdering them might somehow benefit the world

me too. needless to say it's been on my mind a lot lately.

Extremely sad. I am going to rewatch these episodes today.

it fucking sucks to be reminded that even people who seem to have found some kind of peace and contentment can still feel hollow enough inside to take their own lives

yeah, not only did he seem like had this shit together, he also lived what a lot of people would consider their dream life - travel the world and be treated like a king to delicious food

can't imagine the issues he had with his big nyc project helped his mental state: https://ny.eater.com/2017/12/22/16812274/bourdain-market-nyc-canceled

I didn't even know it was canceled until I just looked it up, I thought it was just taking forever

That New Yorker article was fantastic.

rip. i always took his project to be search for decency and common ground. it's something we really needed.

That New Yorker article was fantastic.

If you want a whole lot more of that, spring for Kitchen Confidential.

That New Yorker piece launched the rest of his life.

Imagine starting with this:

Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay. It’s about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands and distended livers of young animals. It’s about danger—risking the dark, bacterial forces of beef, chicken, cheese, and shellfish. Your first two hundred and seven Wellfleet oysters may transport you to a state of rapture, but your two hundred and eighth may send you to bed with the sweats, chills, and vomits.

I heard some interview where he talked about really, really hoping to get it published in New York Press.

reading that new yorker piece again for the umpteenth time is really heartbreaking, because it shows what a great writer he was, how much pride he had in being a cook and the pleasure he took from it, and that being able to do both and share them with people just wasn't enough to keep him alive, no matter how much people loved him for it

Man, this sucks. I've cooked professionally for over 30 years now and outside of Orwell's Down and Out, Bourdain's book(s) are the only truthful accounts of the biz i've yet to read. I loved the guy and will definitely miss his presence. I guess his "neurotic New Yorker" schtick, had more truth to it than one would assume. R.I.P big guy.

lord almighty

what the fuck is wrong with you pic.twitter.com/WUkrgabwZS

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) June 8, 2018

fuck newsweek is the worst shit

have been thinking a lot in the past couple of days about how the older generation's much maligned advice to younger people to "suck it up and get over it" where "it" = depression or anything similar is almost always self-directed too. don't want to get into too much detail here since I think this thread is indexed, but it is a hell of a thing to try to contend with when persuading some older people it might be a good idea to get help

rip. i always took his project to be search for decency and common ground. it's something we really needed.

― call all destroyer

i agree. i don't want to be cynical, but i'm not exactly surprised that he killed himself.

have been thinking a lot in the past couple of days about how the older generation's much maligned advice to younger people to "suck it up and get over it" where "it" = depression or anything similar is almost always self-directed too.

this is super otm imo
i have been thinking about this too

What a brilliant man to trick those ghouls into doing coverage of life in the third world with his “food show”

— Allen Ventano 🌹 (@AllenVentano) June 8, 2018

Allen otm

more on that

Can’t think of any other person on television who portrayed Africans, Palestinians, and Iranians in a positive light. https://t.co/tLgorYdl34

— Arash Karami (@thekarami) June 8, 2018

have been thinking a lot in the past couple of days about how the older generation's much maligned advice to younger people to "suck it up and get over it" where "it" = depression or anything similar is almost always self-directed too.

it's been rebranded in the younger generations as "putting in the work" as if depression is something quantifiable that if you haven't conquered you are just lazy. it's obnoxious as fuck.

RIP Bourdain. he made a lot of people happy and touched a great many lives.

goddamn it

In 2010, I covered a @Bourdain book-tour stop at #stl’s @TheFoxTheatre where a boy with leukemia asked his culinary idol where he should go eat - anywhere in the world - once he’s in remission. Bourdain didn’t hesitate: Spain. But then...1/3

— Evan Benn (@EvanBenn) June 8, 2018

That New Yorker article was fantastic.

If you want a whole lot more of that, spring for Kitchen Confidential.

― Simon H., Friday, June 8, 2018 9:35 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

KC is really a great book, not just for the restaurant stuff but as a memoir of a guy who was a bit of a fuckup and who struggled for years to get his life together before truly stumbling into the public figure role we know him for today. it can't be said enough how close bourdain was to playing out the string as an anonymous nyc cook. to get a platform relatively late in life and do what he did with it is amazing.

he was a real inspiration to me

i hate this

Wow this is a bummer. Always seemed like a genuinely standup guy.

I've been lax in keeping up with Bourdain's show and work in the last few years, but it's not because my interests have diverged. If anything, his stance as a public person makes more sense to me now than before. I was young, in my early 20s when I really started to love everything he was contributing to the world, and the verbosity and outsized persona were seemingly the hook, the thing I'd talk about with friends, but I think the genuine care for other people and respect for humans (in the guise of interest in their food) around the world was what really resonated.

Over the years that became the core of his television work and writing and, while still verbose at times, it became clear by the time he started on the CNN version that he wasn't interested in showing the story of him touring the world, but the stories of the world and its people. I never knew him personally so I can't speculate about that being personal growth, but it felt like it, and it made me think about how I view the world and my place in it.

So while it's very painful to think about him being gone, I'm left thinking that the world still has stories, and I'm glad Anthony Bourdain was there to help bring them to me. I'm trying to be optimistic, because it's my turn to make an effort to seek out people and listen to them on my own. I think he'd like that.

<3 mh

It's remarkable how quickly someone's absence brings their contributions into focus.

otoh there are a handful of people Bourdain really hated weighing in on his death on twitter and I feel like responding to them with "eat shit" is also something he'd appreciate :)

Who's this? (Is Kissinger on Twitter?)

oh, I guess the president didn't say it on twitter, just irl

point stands

I had typed up a long, meandering ramble about this. But, forget it. I'll just echo the standard sentiment because it is the most appropriate: this is fucking heartbreaking.

goddamn it

In 2010, I covered a @Bourdain book-tour stop at #stl’s @TheFoxTheatre where a boy with leukemia asked his culinary idol where he should go eat - anywhere in the world - once he’s in remission. Bourdain didn’t hesitate: Spain. But then...1/3
— Evan Benn (@EvanBenn) June 8, 2018
― and TOWERS MONACO as 'seaman' (bizarro gazzara), Friday, June 8, 2018 10:38 AM (forty-nine minutes ago)

fuck, man

I have a very strange Anthony Bourdain story to share, one which though it involves no contact with him at all, I think speaks to the warm cosmic connections people seemed to feel around him.

— Dan O'Sullivan (@Bro_Pair) June 8, 2018

I met him at a book signing in 2006 and he gave so much time to the cooks & ppl in the kitchen trade that it filled my heart so much. Like it’s so common to be disappointed by irl celebrities but if anything my estimation improved just witnessing his interactions with other ppl that day.

And mh is otm, so much of his career was about lifting up other ppls stories, other cultures than his own & made himself more of a conduit than a hey look at me guy even though at a glance his personality seemed like he would have been all about the latter

I liked the behind the scenes episode he did at les halles, that was all about just showing what life was like for people that work in the kitchen of a mid-tier restaurant, especially what it is like for immigrants.

Gustavo Arellano's thread is a hell of a read:

When I was barely starting as a good writer, my then-editor at @ocweekly gave me "Kitchen Confidential" by #AnthonyBourdain as a gift. That changed my perspective on food writing forever

— GustavoArellano (@GustavoArellano) June 8, 2018

And separately, looking at his praise of Batali from 2007 in that famed Food Network rant

https://web.archive.org/web/20070323011756/http://blog.ruhlman.com:80/2007/02/guest_blogging_.html

Vs. how he reacted last year after Batali's crimes became public

https://medium.com/@Bourdain/on-reacting-to-bad-news-28bc2c4b9adc

Truly, that's how to take stock, that's how to recognize and react.

Man! I'd no idea he was so beloved. I'm barely acquainted with the show but was in book retail when Kitchen Confidential became a hit. What I came away with was how condescension was more foreign to him than many of the non-Americans whom he'd talk to and, best, listen to.

I think Gustavo's observation in his thread comparing him to the mighty Huell Howser is spot on -- he connected wide and deep with 'regular people' around the world, and, per Alfred's comment, gave them space to speak and defended their spot in the wider conversation.

The Nasty Bits and Medium Raw are great collections of his post-KC food writing, I think about the piece in one of them about going to Masa for sushi a lot - it's a special kind of skill to make an experience I'm not having with food (and probably won't have) so enthralling.

It's this right on top of Kate Fucking Spade that's messing with me. It's like, experiment over, results are in, even being a rich white American 1%er isn't enough to make life tolerable anymore

possibly not the thread for it, who knows: in the wake of events like this, people keep talking about the importance of reaching out, and no one really wants to reckon with the fact that the most common outcome of "reaching out" to friends and family is alienating, fighting with, or even losing said friends and family; or the fact that a lot of people might not have anyone they can reach out to (or don't have those people anymore, because they burned through them already)

Sometimes it's just about the amazing anecdotes.

Agreed! He ended up in line behind me at a lobster food truck in Austin at SXSW one year. I turned and asked “Lobster roll?” He said, “Sure I’m gonna goto the middle of Texas on a 90-deg day and order a lobster roll from a shitty rusty truck.” Pause. “Yeah, the lobster roll.”

— Skuke Lywalker (@fancypantsUSA) June 8, 2018

Was just in Houston, Texas last weekend and his episode on that city and its diversity and what that meant to him (right after the presidential election) was inspiring to me. Now, at the Himalaya restaurant in a strip mall there, certain items on the menu are labeled "Bourdain favorite" while the African-American barbecue spot Burns Barbecue has the segment from that show featuring their restaurant on a loop on a tv. When Bourdain was there in Houston he got grief from some for not featuring any trendy (white) chefs on the episode, and for saying that he was not going to do so. Pretty sure he didn't care about that criticism.