Anthony Bourdain defined new era for chefs
NEW YORK: Anthony Bourdain is largely credited for defining an era of line cooks as warriors, exposing a kitchen culture in which drugs, drinking and long, brutal hours on the line in professional kitchens were both a badge of honour and a curse.
Bourdain was open in his writing about his past addictions to heroin and cocaine.
Before he joined CNN in 2012, he spent eight seasons as the globe-trotting host of No Reservations on the Travel Channel, highlighting obscure cuisine and unknown restaurants.
No Reservations largely focused on food and Bourdain himself. But on Parts Unknown, he turned the lens around, delving into different countries around the world and the people who lived in them.
He explored politics and history with locals, often over plates of food and drinks.
Bourdain famously appeared with President Barack Obama on an episode of Parts Unknown in Vietnam in 2016.
Over cold beers, grilled pork and noodles at a restaurant in Hanoi, they discussed Vietnamese-us relations, Obama’s final months in office and fatherhood.
Anthony Michael Bourdain was born June 25, 1956, the oldest son of Pierre Bourdain, who was an executive in the classical-music recording industry, and Gladys Bourdain, who was a longtime copy editor at The New York Times. He grew up outside New York City, in Leonia, New Jersey, and his parents exposed him to fine cuisine, taking him often to France.bourdain graduated from high school in 1973 and attended Vassar College, dropping out after two years.
He spent long nights drinking and smoking pot.
At Vassar, he met Nancy Putkoski before he left school for a chance at a culinary career. Bourdain spent a summer in Provincetown on Cape Cod with some friends. There, he started working as a dishwasher at a seafood restaurant and closely watched the cooks, men who dressed like pirates, with gold earrings and turquoise chokers. “In the kitchen, they were like gods,” he wrote.
The experience solidified his determination to make cooking his life’s work.
“I saw how the cooks and chefs behaved,” Bourdain told The Times in 1997. “They had sort of a swagger, got all the girls and drank everything in sight.”
He then enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America in 1975 and graduated in 1978, stepping away at times to work at restaurants in Greenwich Village in Manhattan.
He started at the bottom in the kitchen hierarchy, with stops at the Rainbow Room, the WPA restaurant and Gianni’s. He reached the top in the 1990s, becoming an executive chef at Sullivan’s, the restaurant next to the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway, and at Les Halles.