Anthony Bourdain: The Renegade Chef That Changed World Travel Forever

The man who ate it all.

It’s hard to fathom that Anthony Bourdain is no longer with us. Cutting his teeth in New York City restaurants in the 1980s, Bourdain transcended the kitchen to become one of the defining culinary and cultural voices of our time. A stovetop punk, social activist and writer, Bourdain sliced through the zeitgeist like a hot knife through butter, sharpening his irreverent tongue in articles, books, and the popular television series Parts Unknown.

Now, as we prepare to consume his final posthumous book World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, we thought we’d revisit the life of renegade chef and perpetual pot-stirrer, Anthony Bourdain.

Don’t Eat Before Reading This
Born in 1956 in New York City, Anthony Bourdain grew up in suburban New Jersey. As a child, it didn’t take long for Bourdain to develop an interest in food. Remembering a family trip to France, Bourdain recalled eating a bowl of vichyssoise (potato leek soup) aboard the Queen Mary. ‘It was the first time I truly enjoyed eating’, Bourdain reflected in his hit TV series, Kitchen Confidential.

Later in the series, he described his first oyster: ‘I took it in my hand, tilted the shell back into my mouth and with one bite and a slurp, wolfed it down. It tasted of seawater. Of brine and flesh, and, somehow, of the future. Everything was different now. Everything.’

Back in New York City, Bourdain tried to recreate this feeling in the kitchen. He began his culinary career at restaurants like Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue, and Sullivan’s, before landing the coveted role of executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in 1998.

Funnily enough, however, it was in print that Bourdain really started making a name for himself.

In 1999, The New Yorker published Bourdain’s article ‘Don’t Eat Before Reading This’, a blistering critique on the New York restaurant business. The article immediately caused a sensation, and would eventually become The New York Times best-seller, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly in 2000. Bourdain quickly followed up with A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines in 2001, an account of the nomadic chef travelling the globe and devouring exotic foods, and a book that would later inspire the TV series, A Cook’s Tour.

Silver Spoon Service on the Silver Screen
It turns out Bourdain was just as gifted in front of the camera as he was with a pen. Known for his gauzy, irreverent prose, Bourdain was a natural storyteller on TV. After two seasons of A Cook’s Tour, Bourdain collaborated with CNN on 2012’s No Reservations, a critically acclaimed series that ran for nine seasons (No Reservations nabbed two Emmy Awards for its cinematography).

Buoyed by a huge viewership, Bourdain became a counter-cultural icon, the sharp-tongued chef and thoughtful traveller inspiring a legion of fans who were tired of the bourgeois appropriation of food culture.

‘There are the People Who Brunch. The “B” word is dreaded by all dedicated cooks.’ Bourdain once wrote in The New Yorker. ‘We hate the smell and spatter of omelettes. We despise hollandaise, home fries, those pathetic fruit garnishes, and all the other cliché accompaniments designed to induce a credulous public into paying $12.95 for two eggs. Nothing demoralizes an aspiring Escoffier faster than requiring him to cook egg-white omelettes or eggs over easy with bacon.’

Biting down on bun cha with Barack Obama in Hanoi and visiting Buddhist kingdoms in the Himalayas, Bourdain devoured every morsel of life. A proud stovetop punk and iconoclastic globe trotter, Bourdain’s words seem more prescient than ever in these strange times.

‘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 Cafes and McDonald’s?’ Bourdain wrote in his memoir. ‘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.’

By challenging the status quo, Bourdain reminded us all to take the bull by the horns.

Bourdain’s final book, World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, is available on April 20.