Anthony Bourdain Fooled Me
“Bourdain’s been there.”
Three words spoken to anyone who trusted me enough to ask for a restaurant recommendation. It was the classic endorsement by a verified account in human form. Before I traveled to any city in this world, a quick Google search read, “Bourdain *insert city name here.*”
Tributes poured into the internet about Mr. Glass-half-full-of-cold-beer Anthony Bourdain by those who knew him personally. It’s a feat to remember him without bringing yourself up, yet much of what I’ve read has been in that realm. Typical. He was a magnet for anyone who could admit they’re doing the best they can without the coat of sugar. So much of him was rooted in uncovering someone else’s ethos, contrived from a simple belief that each of us has a story to tell. He had this aura that hinted he would make time for anyone — just say the word and don’t be vegan. I missed my chance. He would probably tell me that anyone you meet — at least the ones who live with dignity when no one’s watching — are much better people to serve your time. I would take you both, Tony.
I have no firsthand stories of his candor. I have the television, anecdotes from his books, and memories of hundreds of meals he inspired me to dine that recalls his gravelly voice resounding in my mind.
A Man of Love
Bourdain was deeply enamored by the unknown as it could spark some of life’s most metamorphic moments, humbled to be invited into new homes, and angered by anyone with the audacity to judge something without first experiencing it for themselves. Even pain had its place — never something you avoid, but cradle and accept for the likelihood of understanding yourself. However, most endearing was his love affair with noodles- the bowl with a thousand faces. The guy judged you on your ability to ‘slurp.’ Can you understand the merit in broth, meats, vegetables, surrounded by motley mix of assorted spices that taught you that it’s possible to smell beauty? — Try to keep up with the unmistakable allure in a sauna of piping hot noodle as it liberates heat over your face right before you attempt a confident slurp. That’s Bourdain for you. His poetry toward simplicity made us laugh. It made him real. He lowered himself down to earth, sat next to us on the couch, and pandered us with signature soliloquies of devotion to the slurping of bowls full of sidewalk noodles.
Still, we were dazed by how he used that bowl of noodles or pan of paella to transcend bigotry. It’s arduous to break boundaries that people construct in their minds, and people spend their whole lives believing in the worst in others. We survive on distrust and antiquated survival instincts which we do not question despite how far back it holds us. Bourdain made a bridge by sprinkling flour across borders, and with patience and care, he and his guests broke bread.
Food was his bridge to connect people who needed a reason to let their guard down. Food was the key to the door that opened to worlds different, yet peculiarly similar, to our own. We never like to be told what to do. Bourdain made us feel like it was our decision.
Did you know?
Did you know Bourdain consulted for the Pixar film, Ratatouille? You’ll find online an e-mail he wrote where he admits it’s the best food movie ever made. The movie’s creators thanked him in the credits for serving up what he shared in his book, Kitchen Confidential, around what really happens in the kitchen. Not just how your food is handled, but who’s handling it and how those hands ended up in kitchens in the first place — Collette, Remy, Linguini and all. Those were his people when he was a chef in New York. But the scene that I’m sure he had a say in, although I can’t find proof right now, but if you know him, you know he’d already detailed this scene in books and interviews for years — well before Ratatouille came out — was at the end of the film. Bourdain was firm on a meal’s ability to evoke memory in a way that enhances the meal itself. In Ratatouille’s example — the best meal was the one that warped a stringent restaurant cynic back to childhood in its irrepressible state of satisfaction — the pleasure in innocence, the warmness of your mother nearby making magic in the kitchen, where there’s no sound except for deep inhales and satisfied sighs, as tins of leftovers were re-imagined into new feats of innovation turned masterpieces. Yes, when the restaurant critic, Anton Ego, goes to the restaurant, Gusteau’s, for the second time and eats Remy’s ratatouille, his memory of the French countryside as a child eating a home cooked ratatouille was inspired by Bourdain. It has to be. Because that was Bourdain. It wasn’t about an expensive meal for the sake of it. It was about good food, context, and how they complement each other. It was about experiencing the intersection of new and old through taste, smell, touch, and sound. He didn’t just tell stories as he scampered across distant lands, consuming different cuisines and using every adjective his mind could muster to describe them;, he reminded us of goodness, how planning and itineraries won’t allow you to find the good stuff.. It’s just food, and he happened to like it really good — fatty, stinky, good.
“Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.” — AB
It wasn’t about his television series for me, his bad-boy-Ramones-tee-shirt-wearing-musky-outlaw manliness he embodied (but it helped), or even his storytelling of places beyond what even our restless dreams could conjure. I wish it were that simple. No, Bourdain was an echo for those of us who loved new experiences, tried new things, and nonsensically satisfied at never being satisfied.
He introduced himself to me via “No Reservations,” coincidentally at a time when deep in my unconscious yielded a girl also ‘hungry for more’. I was 18, and the demons in my head were on 24/7 guard duty, relentless in reminders that the-only-way-I’ll-be-good-enough-is-if-I-live-the-life-of-everyone-around-me. Because if you replicate those around you, you’re immeasurable. If you look and act like others, if you want the same things, and make the same choices, you have control because you gave up all self-control. Makes sense, doesn’t it? You’ll look like them in every way. You give up originality for a carbon copy Ikea bookshelf. But why is that bad? Ikea’s always packed.
I needed an outlaw of the norm, and someone cool as hell who did it.
I traveled outside the United States for the first time at 2 years old, visiting my family in India several times on short stints over the years, and I knew I enjoyed it. I knew I was adventurous, a risk-taker, not so much a daredevil, but unafraid of the world before me. It was common sense to see the world. It should be default. If countries are allies, we trade goods, and we came from these other places — then there must be something that those places should teach us just as one follows other unsaid rules of life.
It was what was inside of me that scared me — that fear of being ‘too different.’ I was too good at waging war on myself. But as I traveled more in my late teens, new worlds became a testament to a sense of self outside of self-pity, towards calmness, to the dissociation of self-acceptance because when you travel, there’s no need for it.
People told me I was crazy, or their other favorite benign adjective: “weird”. “Do you do it for attention?” — people would ask as I saved my money for plane tickets and hostels over clothes and cosmetics. “I just could never travel by myself. I’d be so bored,” girls would explain. “It sounds lonely.” I hated how they talked about it, like I couldn’t function in a “normal” life and malfunctioned under interpersonal relationships. — To put it simply, I was like any other self absorbed college kid trying to find myself. I know now that I’m the same as those guys, but that knowledge now doesn’t really help, does it? But at the time when I didn’t know; I had Bourdain. I had the way he talked about travel as this desire to be pulled from himself, and over the years he proved that travel embedded this mystifying and pioneering journey to excavate the soul. His books, “Medium Raw,” “Kitchen Confidential,” and “A Cook’s Tour,” gave me the poetry and goosebumps to overwrought my self -hate — and my body kept clicking “purchase ticket.”
I was the weird one. I ventured off by myself to different parts of the Earth just to sit at cafes and watch the music of footsteps play like a summer evening free orchestra. I flew across continents for rides on tuk-tuks, rickshaws, and scooters. I wanted to navigate different public transportation, listen to languages I didn’t understand, and fall in love with various skin tones that almost melt throughout their bodies and into my eyes. I love the simplicity of people who are in the day to day monotony. I love learning the fabrics of the individual — the stitching is where the beauty lives. Like all the best things — it’s about the detail.
Anthony Bourdain validated that amor. I traveled alone. I traveled far. I met strangers who are now friends. They make up my best memories. Back home, my friends got married. I was afraid of intimacy. I traveled instead. I was reckless as people my age should be. I’m still reckless where it fits. I look forward to the next time I’m sitting alone in a bar while the bartender cleans pint glasses, simultaneously filling up the receptacles sitting on bucket seats around me. Don’t be fooled by the person alone at the bar staring at the bar back’s whimsy and how he somehow floats through time stacking glasses in zen-like stupor. He’s the person that doesn’t fiddle with their phone. Their own mind’s wonder and curiosity are much more interesting.
Anyone swept off their feet by Anthony Bourdain’s dark charm lost something this month. He was the Yoda for travelers. He was beloved by millions because he was so appreciative of this strange and improbable world, despite the ache and pain it promises to impart in every one of us.
Bourdain introduced us to the secrets of the world, the hole-in-the-wall slices of the good life, reminders of beauty in simple things, the small pleasures in even smaller moments. He introduced me to Pannekoekenhuis up the creaky stairs of traditional houses in Amsterdam. I remember eating blood sausage in Buenos Aires and imagining him next to me smiling. In this fantasy, I roll my eyes and say, “I know, Tony.”
But he validated my choices. He made me feel less like an outlier, and more human, just as he does with every family that’s ever invited him in for a home cooked meal. Regular people visit trendy restaurants. Bourdain walked his 6'4" frame that often stood out, ducked through just about any shop or home, made of bricks, wood, or clay, probably about to devour that duck or other fleshy, fatty, meat for what he’d describe as divine intervention.
Thinking about that wrinkled, rubbered face — It went on a wild ride, maintaining the residue of past highs, whether induced by drugs or just good conversation. The number of passport stamps he rallied, the nights he rallied for the sake of experience. He encouraged us to move. He didn’t quite understand people who were close minded, allergic to meals that required submission to leisure, risk, and adventure. He’d listen anyways and make up his mind later.
One Last Thing
And this is the part I may get wrong — only because it took his death for me to learn it. It was silly how much I relied on Bourdain for a restaurant recommendation, or how much I used his name as a declaration of my own authority and expertise on where to get a good plate of meat. Because Bourdain pushed for the opposite. I recently read in an article that production for Parts Unknown often altered a restaurant or bar’s appearance so people couldn’t taint its realness. After he died, I read some of his quotes in a different light —
“I’m a big believer that you’re never going to find perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one.”
“Look, I try not to f***places up. There have been times where we deliberately shoot [a neighbourhood bar] in such a way that you’ll never find it.”
Bourdain’s episodes were an outlet to wander and discover. There’s no science here, no equation that adds up to why everyone must go see that one bar he went to. You don’t need to travel across a city for the pub he want to if you pass hundreds along the way. No — it’s putting in the time to slow down and discover the world on your own — each block, each bad meal, each good conversation, etc. And you will absolutely make the wrong choice- which can debilitate our generation. Who wants to be the one that makes a sh*t decision when choosing a bar or restaurant? If you’re with friends — everyone’s good time is on you. But we can’t rely on Bourdain’s episodes to tell us where to go. It’s cool to know where Bourdain goes but that’s not where the magic is — the magic is where you find that one bad place and it’s the memory you laugh about for the rest of your life — and maybe, because you did your time, you’ll find the good ones too — The restaurant where you’re alone or with your friends and everything in the universe aligns. The people around you are the perfect blood alcohol concentration. The lamps on the street create the perfect golden lemon on the reflection of the window’s and your friends’ face. No one has there phone and you just talk and talk about anything. And then, just like that, — magic. You’ve found your recommendation. You just have to find it yourself.
