Bourdain brought millions of fans along to ‘parts unknown’
In 2016, Anthony Bourdain gave an interview to PBS’ “Biography” about his extraordinary life story.
“Oh man, at the age of 44, I was standing in kitchens, not knowing what it was like to go to sleep without being in mortal terror,” he said. “It was a nightmare,” Bourdain continued, “but it’s all been different for about 15 years.” That was an understatement. Bourdain, a chef who grew up in New Jersey, had stalled out at middle age, partly thanks to years mired in substance abuse. He then went on to become a bestselling author and beloved television personality, whose hit shows “No Reservations” and “Parts Unknown” featured his adventures eating all manner of things, with all manner of people, all over the world.
What distinguished Bourdain’s adventures, and served as their common denominator, was his own appetite for them. Whether he was eating a multicourse meal at a Waffle House in South Carolina or a stillbeating cobra heart in Saigon, his enthusiasm for new experiences was unmistakable.
So the news of his death at age 61 on Friday was gutwrenching for many fans in addition to his family and friends. In an era of increasing insularity and mutual recriminations, Bourdain was notable in that he never seemed to meet a stranger — or a community whose culture he considered “alien,” as opposed to unfamiliar, to him.
It was also a blow for the transnational fraternity of families who have been affected by the disease of addiction. Bourdain had not only achieved recovery but built the kind of life a person in recovery can hope to achieve. His many friends, now in mourning, have no shortage of stories about the difference he made in their lives, as well as his contributions to the common cause of humanity.
It’s no wonder that this city was one of the places he found himself at home along the way, and which his show depicted faithfully, as the Houston Chronicle’s editorial board noted after a Houston-centric episode of “Parts Unknown” aired in October 2016.
“From Vietnamese shrimpers to Bollywood dancers and Congolese gardeners, national viewers saw a burgeoning confidence and optimism that lives in the shadow of B-roll freeway shots,” the editorial noted.
“The editorial ran just a few days before Trump was elected president,” my colleague Evan Mintz noted on Friday. “At the time, Bourdain’s portrayal of flourishing immigrant communities in Houston were a welcomed alternative to the hateful campaign rhetoric.”
Gene Wu, a state representative from southwest Houston, offered an idea for Houstonians looking to celebrate Bourdain’s memory and honor his values of diversity, peace and tolerance.
“This weekend, everyone go out to eat at a place you’ve always been too scared to try & raise a glass to the man who broadened both the world’s mind and palate,” said Wu on Twitter.
I thought this was a great idea, and after relaying it to my own followers, I learned that my fellow Texans have eaten a variety of terrifying things.
Chicken hearts. Sea urchin. Lamb brains and pig brains. Crickets and mealworms. Possum. Gopher — “not the fluffy kind, but the kind that lives in a shell like a tortoise.” Barbecued armadillo.
“I was in college. I was intoxicated,” explained the colleague who offered the latter submission.
I have no such excuse for my own decision, years ago, to try a bite of the tacos de ubre my new friend Octavio ordered from the taco stand on the plaza in Jaltenango de la Paz, a tiny town in Chiapas, Mexico.
Since “ubre” means “udder” I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the taco, and in fact it was probably the worst bite of food I have ever had in my entire life.
The dinner, though, was one of the best I’ve ever attended. It was a beautiful night in a peaceful plaza, in a cloud forest in southern Mexico; plus, Octavio had ordered some good tacos, too.
And the purpose of traveling, after all, is to leave your comfort zone and appreciate the different pleasures and new friends in parts of the world that had been unknown to you. Bourdain saw it that way, and spent years helping others see it, too.