The Anthony Bourdain thread

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...

https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/let-s-revisit-anthony-bourdain-s-hilariously-disastrous-1826675726

"too dumb to pour piss out of a boot if instructions were printed on the heel” gave this tired weary household maximum lols, thank u outic

thanks for reminding me of that one, dan

zamir’s role as an effective fixer was rumbled so quickly, but his legend as an affable guy who made for mediocre television will live on

oh god that episode was so terrible <3

went to waffle house tonight as a salute. the pecan waffle is a pretty sublime thing.

it is!

where are people supposed to dine in salute when Guy Fieri dies, Noma?

This was the first thing I thought of this morning and devastated all over again.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliareinstein/marilyn-hagerty-anthony-bourdain-olive-garden

sigh. this is humility

where are people supposed to dine in salute when Guy Fieri dies, Noma?

i never watched more than a couple of eps of Parts Unknown, so digging in on Netflix today. A nice continuation of the No Resevations tone without as many gimmicks & a bit more depth. Good stuff

I remember being unusually excited when that Waffle House episode came out. It was my teenage hangout.

The Layover had some of my favorites from his series (like PU, less gimmicky than No Reservations) but it's been a while so they're blurry - San Francisco was good IIRC and he hung out with Iggy in Miami.

The No Reservations where they made him roller derby was good as far as gimmicks go.

Uh i beg to differ

Anthony in peru high on ayahuasca was

lol i think Tony’s long lasting legacy in addition to chef & travel dude should be “rolled ATV’s on camera for a living”

✔️ new zealand sand dunes
✔️ Colombian coastal flats

did you miss this?

no, I both saw that episode and made a joke

waffles clip made me cry, that guy was one of our best humans and FUCK whatever made him feel otherwise

I still stand by my pick for the Techniques episode upthread (the one where Jacques Pepin shows you how to cook an omelette, Thomas Keller shows you how to roast a chicken, etc.). It has never left my laptop since it aired - according to iTunes I've watched it 11 times.

Totally heartbroken...

Ernest Hemingway also only made it to 61. Hunter S Thompson was what, 67? Bourdain was a better force for good in the world than either of them. I haven't outright sobbed this much since Bowie.

(weird synchro-mysticsm: we're leaving for China on Monday so we've been watching old episodes this week in prep. Next Parts Unknown features, um, a friend in Berlin.)

_did you miss this?_


no, I both saw that episode /and/ made a joke

Watching Bourdain was what got me to finally try bone marrow many years ago. I still havent revisited organ meat. Bad experiences as a child via my grandmother’s love for offal has left me with deep scars

I honestly didn't know I would feel this upset about it or how he impacted so many other people. I wish he had known too.

rewatching the Techniques ep, the little signoffs from each chef about how they wished he was there with them <3

i get so drawn into watching him & laughing at his dumb jokes & the way he smartasses to camera with a sly grin like a punk kid wagging school & then I remember that he’s gone & it’s just so fucking sad

a lot of my fandoms go back to teens but he’s like one of my deepest fandoms of this back half of my life.

when he first showed up it was like I was being rewarded for loving rare steak & the new york dolls and reading all those burroughs books in college. he was like a fever dream, lol.

This is so sad Christ

Sudden memory of reading the "Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown" chapter of KC in the bookstore when it came out and howling with laughter. Sure, don't eat fish on Monday but that chapter is amazing amazing writing.

otm

i haven't had a copy of Kitchen Confidential in years so I hit amazon to pick one up and didn't realize Bourdain had written so many other books; there are more actual 'food' books than I knew of (cookbooks) and several detective novels? has anyone read his fiction? i imagine it's actually awful but the reviews are not bad.