The Anthony Bourdain thread

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.

This was so cute I teared up at my desk

In other moments, particularly when he wasn’t the one controlling the narrative, Bourdain could be slippery about personal matters—the critic Maria Bustillos, in a 2017 piece analyzing his literary œuvre, observed his tendency toward “a gentle drawing of the curtain over private moments.” A year and a half ago, just after the Presidential election, I interviewed Bourdain for a profile in Eater, where I was an editor at the time. We sat for a few hours at a yakitori restaurant in midtown, eating chicken hearts and drinking beer. The Rome episode of “Parts Unknown” had just aired, and, as we settled into our conversation, I jokingly mentioned his obvious crush on the Italian actor and filmmaker Asia Argento, who had been featured in the episode. At the mention of her name, Bourdain’s large, tanned hand swept over the microphone of the recorder. “What do you mean, my crush on Asia?” he said, and I laughed, telling him his puppy-dog eyes were in every frame—not to mention his Twitter posts about the episode, which fairly breathed with infatuation. He took his phone out and scrolled through his recent tweets, asking me to point out specific evidence. “We’re trying to keep it under wraps,” he said.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/anthony-bourdain-and-the-power-of-telling-the-truth

the part just before that hit me hard

In a 2016 episode of “Parts Unknown,” set in Buenos Aires, he held an on-camera therapy session. “I will find myself in an airport, for instance, and I'll order an airport hamburger,” he says, lying on a leather couch. “It’s an insignificant thing, it’s a small thing, it’s a hamburger, but it’s not a good one. Suddenly, I look at the hamburger and I find myself in a spiral of depression that can last for days."

this is so fuckin' terrible. this dude was a hero in so many ways.

this makes me sad & happy at the same time

Rating food trends: Truffle oil “Tastes like astroglide & is made from the same stuff”

https://youtu.be/6qjOdmukDm0

I relate to the airport hamburger anecdote hard

hey at least we still have Guy fieri

loved this guy. everyone on my mother’s side of the family is obsessed with him because of how much he reminds us of my grandfather who died at a similar age over a decade ago and had the same charming yet troubled bon-vivant thing going. rest in peace <3

i forgot about this

https://www.eater.com/2013/8/19/6385655/heres-anthony-bourdains-foreword-to-marilyn-hagertys-book-grand-forks\

really liked a few things about him recently:

cared about the plight of the palestinians

he hated baby driver

when he was in glasgow he met a self-defence guy who specialized in responding to knife attacks but also correctly pointed out that glasgow is a friendly and not particularly dangerous city in the scheme of things

rip

Sometimes it's just about the amazing anecdotes.

A friend of mine ran into him at a jiu-jitsu studio in Borneo of all places, went up to him and asked "Hey Tony, wanna roll?" and he replied, "Sure, let's go." And that was that.

Another friend talked about how Bourdain was in Dubai shooting No Reservations in 2010, and behind-the-scenes the producers and Bourdain were concerned about how to portray Dubai's opulence and wealth at a time when the world was emerging from a global economic crisis.

Just an incredible person. RIP.

i was aware of him for years and generally liked him but in recent times i came to think he was a hero for his work out there.

a friend of mine was in an episode of no reservations w/him years ago and loved the guy, even though he zinged him in V.O.

lol

one of my fav bourdain eps is when he went to san francisco and got shitfaced.. dovetailed pretty well with most of my experiences in sf

I spoke too soon upthread

Alex Jones went on air today and claimed Bourdain was murdered by globalists because he planned on coming out as a Trump supporter. I wish I was making this up.

— Secular Talk (@KyleKulinski) June 8, 2018

i love the Vietnam episode where he talks about Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American” - it had such a different feel to other episodes & felt v personal

also the Vienna episode where he was sure he would hate it there & ended up in a big cheesy sweater eating linzer torte lol

Any standout eps of The Layover? It's the only Bourdain thing on Canadian netflix

Layover is a pretty breezy show overall, it doesn't really go deep into culture and politics. Don't think it has standouts.

Paris Review has a lovely obit

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/08/three-brief-encounters-with-anthony-bourdain/

The next time I met Anthony Bourdain, he came by our show to promote his cookbook Appetites. He’d agreed in advance to answer our listener’s etiquette questions. Once again, he was kind and game. I asked him the following listener-submitted question: “All right. This next question comes all the way from New Zealand. It’s from Sophie. And Sophie writes: ‘If someone serves me challenging offal without warning at a dinner party, is it okay for me to say I would rather poke my eyes out with a pen than have one mouthful of your tripe à la mode. I mean, it’s a recipe from the Middle Ages, so okay, well done, you. But I’m not bringing back the Black Death for a revamp at my next soiree.’ ”

He responded quickly and unequivocally. “You will die friendless and alone. You have disrespected your host, okay? Rejected a beloved dish that’s reflective of probably personal history. That tripe à la mode could be a beloved family dish. You just basically spat in the milk of their mother. You rejected any possibility of trying something new. You revealed yourself to be an inward-looking buffoon and no one I would want to be friends with.”

NEVER EVER disrespect your host is the best lesson.

dag

WHAT??

'a la mode' is the problematic part

sorry for quoting the quote of another, but this classic made me giggle

RIP to the man who told Alec Baldwin he was "too dumb to pour piss out of a boot" pic.twitter.com/0VeFxV0FvX

— Eliz@beth King (@ekingc) June 8, 2018

That’s an LBJ line (with the “if instructions were printed on the heel” struck from the end)

A friend of mine ran into him at a jiu-jitsu studio in Borneo of all places, went up to him and asked "Hey Tony, wanna roll?" and he replied, "Sure, let's go." And that was that.

Another friend talked about how Bourdain was in Dubai shooting No Reservations in 2010, and behind-the-scenes the producers and Bourdain were concerned about how to portray Dubai's opulence and wealth at a time when the world was emerging from a global economic crisis.

Just an incredible person. RIP.

― Roz, Friday, June 8, 2018 5:02 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

first story is so dope

just to confirm my isolation, what i knew about AB yesterday was "a chef"

yeah same, although these stories are all really moving

I always found the intro song to Parts Unknown a little irritating tbh, but now the lyrics seem prophetic

even as he admits, not a particularly great chef. Known as a writer/tv host/etc. His scatalogical punk-rock schtick could be pretty tiring and he actually didn't have as good a rapport with his interviewees as his buddy Andrew Zimmern (who has charmed every grandmother alive, though can be really annoying). And that's the bad stuff I have to say about Bourdain. The good stuff is that he was a sincere fan and curious and occasionally a surprisingly poetic writer who i think was best when he got political. Stuff like the Beirut episode of No Reservations was seriously good TV, and the Houston Episode of Parts Unknown was really beautiful.

I'm behind but just watched the final episode, the Hong Kong one with Christopher Doyle and it wasn't a great episode, but it had some great stuff as usual, and being a fan of Wong Kar Wai it was as always fun to watch Tony geek out around Doyle. Little snippets really stand out, like a few minutes of an umbrella repair man describing his process, that's just not your normal TV.

The show took chances and had fun with it, sometimes it failed and sometimes was great, sometimes hilarious and sometimes ridiculous. He was definitely a force of good in this world, if this is a world where we can all just agree that people everywhere like to make and share food and just want to be happy.

But then there was the Zamir episode in romania...