When I was in first year in college, I found a book in a wardrobe in my house. Kitchen Confidential instantly changed my relationship with food, with the restaurants I worked in to pay my way through university, with chefs, with New York, with writing. I wanted to know what Vichyssoise was and to eat an oyster. At the time, Down and Out in Paris and London was one of my favourite books – I discovered it 68 years after it was first published – and Kitchen Confidential is arguably one of the few, maybe the only one, that could credibly be called its successor.
Surely hundreds of thousands of people had this same experience, falling in love with Anthony Bourdain’s energy, enthusiasm, his almost explicit level of honesty, and the seduction of that lid being lifted on the stew of the industry, and all the hedonism, recklessness and joy that bubbled underneath. We know that food matters, but very few people can really transmit that. Bourdain connected food to what it’s really all about; life, place, people.
It feels foolish to be especially shocked by the fact that Bourdain died by suicide. “But he was so full of life, so passionate,” you want to say. But depression and suicide don’t have a criteria of personality types to spare. His death is a punch to the gut, a reminder to take care of ourselves and to ask after others. Nobody is invincible. Even the most seemingly successful and energy-filled people suffer.
Bourdain wasn’t shy about living close to the edge, with his history of heroin and cocaine use, a punishing filming schedule that brought him to over 100 countries, a passion for jujitsu, and a searing honesty that smacked the nonsense out of a lot of people.
He will be continue to be described in shorthand as being the reason people still won’t order fish on Mondays and avoid swordfish, and feel sceptical about hollandaise, but what was so seductive about Bourdain was the sense that he went all in on life. We are drawn to people who throw off shackles of apprehension. We follow people who believe in themselves. “Food had power,” Bourdain wrote. And so did he.
His passion was transmitted through brilliant writing, and a television presenting style that felt authentic in the most superficial of mediums. When someone is really in love with something, and wants you to understand that love – as Bourdain did with food and cooking – all I can think of is “I want some of that.”
#MeToo movement
Many aped the superficial aspects of Bourdain’s image, taking it as a shtick, seeing passion as swashbuckling, and muscularity as machoism. One of the most thoughtful pieces I read about the #MeToo movement was an interview with Bourdain last October on Slate, in response to not just a growing list of sexual harassers in the restaurant industry, but also his partner’s – Asia Argento’s – bravery in confronting Harvey Weinstein.
“I’m looking back on my own life,” he said, “I’m looking back on my own career and before, and all these years women did not speak to me . . . I had to ask myself, particularly given some things that I’m hearing, and the people I’m hearing them about: Why was I not the sort of person, or why was I not seen as the sort of person, that these women could feel comfortable confiding in? I see this as a personal failing.”
His writing and approach weren't just seductive, but showed us someone who seemed to want to live deliberately
Bourdain himself brought the very thing that made him popular – his public image – into question. He asked why he was not seen as a natural ally to women suffering from harassment in his industry. “I’ve had to ask myself,” he said, “To what extent in that book [Kitchen Confidential] did I provide validation to meatheads?”
Many famous people reach a degree of notoriety which then turns on itself, where their intentions are misinterpreted, and the fans that gravitate towards them are people they’d never want to hang out with. But Bourdain didn’t trap himself in the masculinity he was wrapped in.
He showcased the ability to change, to reflect, to be honest about ourselves, to face up to how we may have benefited from systems and attitudes that are damaging to others. His attitude is incredibly instructive.
BS-free revolutionary
Much has been written about Parts Unknown, but for me, Bourdain was also at his best in The Layover, a food and travel show with the goofy premise of spending a short amount of time – maybe 48 hours – in a city, and packing in as much as possible.
A culinary egalitarian, he oscillated between $5 hot dogs and multi-Michelin-star cuisine. Good food is good food. These days, most “foodies” (gah!) seem determined to avoid divisiveness, preferring the positions of Pinterest and PR, niceties and blandness.
In a world of brand-conscious, cookie-cutter “influencers”, and celebrity chefs trading on wholesomeness, Bourdain remains a BS-free revolutionary. There are rare exceptions, such as Action Bronson, whose Vice show F*** That’s Delicious was the best programme about eating in years.
The opening lines of his famous 1999 New Yorker article “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”, still feel radical nearly 20 years later. “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.”
His writing and approach weren’t just seductive, but showed us someone who seemed to want to live deliberately, to suck all the marrow (often, literally) out of life, as Henry David Thoreau wrote. One feels there was always a deep kindness there too. What a terrible, terrible shame.