ANTHONY BOURDAIN, WHO WAS FOUND DEAD FRIDAY FROM SUICIDE AT THE AGE OF 61, WAS THE MOST INFLUENTIAL FOOD PERSONALITY OF OUR TIME. HE TAUGHT A GENERATION RAISED ON KRAFT DINNER THE THRILL OF FOOD.
CELEBRITY CHEF FOUND DEAD AT AGE 61 IN FRENCH HOTEL
From slurping noodles with Barack Obama in Hanoi to sharing shrimp and grits in Charleston with Bill Murray, Anthony Bourdain sat down with countless stars on his award-winning show Parts Unknown. And yet no exchange was more poignant than the one he shared with Iggy Pop during an episode filmed in Miami.
“You seem like a curious person,” Pop remarked.
“It’s my only virtue,” Bourdain replied.
Inquisitive beyond measure, Bourdain spent much of his public life seeking out the most unlikely of delicious foods. Raw pig’s blood soup known to cause blindness in Thailand? Absolutely. Armadillo in Uruguay? No problem. According to Bourdain, the armoured mammals tasted just like chicken.
Bourdain, 61, was found dead Friday in his hotel room in France. He was in Strasbourg filming an upcoming segment of his award-winning Parts Unknown series for CNN. The network confirmed the cause of death was suicide.
His death has prompted an outpouring of grief and sadness in as many parts of the world as his adventurous culinary travels have taken him.
Throughout the 11 seasons of Parts Unknown, Bourdain treated unsuspecting street food stands as though they were culinary landmarks. In doing so, he managed to avoid gimmicks and cultural stereotypes, teaching a generation of North Americans raised on Kraft Dinner and Dunkaroos how thrilling food can be if you learn to embrace the unknown.
This alone makes him the most influential food personality of our lifetime, but his hunger was also greater than that which could be satiated by eating alone. In his writing he was self-effacing, documenting the morbid struggles of professional kitchen life in his breakthrough New Yorker op-ed Don’t Eat Before Reading This and best-selling memoir Kitchen Confidential.
It’s ironic that a man known for sampling some of the world’s most “grotesque” foods would start his writing career with a warning about the filth and grime of the restaurant kitchens from which we’ve all eaten. But Bourdain didn’t let us in on the industry’s most precious secrets — like the fact that cooks often use recycled butter to make hollandaise and Monday’s fish special has likely been sitting unrefrigerated for days — just to scare us. He told us these things simply because it was the truth.
It’s impossible to read his early work today without hearing the confident, authoritative tone of the famous Bourdain we all know. But it took guts to publish those first stories, exposing an industry known for keeping its cards close to its chest.
As he went on to become the most famous food personality on the planet, he could have slowed down, taken an easier route and stopped sharing such personal truths. But his was a back-breaking type of honesty rooted in a desire, above all else, to get things right.
When accused of glorifying masculinity in restaurant kitchens, he issued a series of earnest public apologies. When his friends in the stratosphere of superstar chefs were accused of sexual misconduct, he condemned their actions.
A vocal supporter of equality and the unflinching power of truth, it is still too early to grasp the significance of Anthony Bourdain’s legacy. But like his life and persona, it will continue to extend far beyond the world of food.
Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafés and McDonald’s? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.
A BACKBREAKING TYPE OF HONESTY.