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 long-time copy editor at The New York Times. He grew up outside New York City, in Leonia, N.J., and his parents exposed him to fine cuisine, taking him often to France, which is where he first became conscious of food. When he was in fourth grade, on a family vacation to France aboard the Queen Mary, he sat in the cabin-class dining room and ate a bowl of vichyssoise, a creamy mix of leek and potato. What surprised him was that the soup was cold.
'It was the first food I enjoyed and, more important, remembered enjoying,' he wrote in his memoir 'Kitchen Confidential'. He did not remember much else about the trip.'
Bourdain graduated from high school in 1973 and attended Vassar College, dropping out after two years, where he spent long nights drinking and smoking pot.
'I was — to be frank — a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructing and thoughtless young lout.'
At Vassar, he met Nancy Putkoski (his first wife) before he left school for a chance at a culinary career. He 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. I saw how the cooks and chefs behaved. They had sort of a swagger, got all the girls and drank everything in sight.' ~ Anthony Bourdain
The experience solidified his determination to make cooking his life's work. 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 W.P.A. restaurant on Spring Street and Gianni's at the South Street Seaport. In everything he did, Bourdain cultivated a renegade style and bad-boy persona. For decades, he worked 13-hour days as a line cook in restaurants in New York and the Northeast, until he reached the top in the 1990s, first becoming an executive chef at Sullivan's, the restaurant next to the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway, and then followed by Brasserie Les Halles in 1998, serving steak frites and onion soup in Lower Manhattan.
He had been an executive chef for eight years when he sent an unsolicited article to The New Yorker about the underbelly of the restaurant world and its deceptions. To his surprise, the magazine accepted it and ran it — catching the attention of book editors. It resulted in 'Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly', a memoir that elevated Bourdain to a celebrity chef and a new career on TV. He became an instant hero to a certain breed of professional cooks and restaurant-goers when 'Kitchen Confidential' hit the best-seller lists in 2000. He 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 honor 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. One of my favorite episodes, I have many, when he 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-American relations, The President's final months in office and fatherhood. Among the ones I enjoyed more, with a certain insider feel, were the many he did in Montreal, especially with my friends from Joe Beef, David McMillan and Frederick Morin.
Bourdain was found in his hotel room at Le Chambard, a luxury hotel in Kaysersberg, a village in the Alsace region of eastern France, by long time friend Eric Ripert, himself a celebrity chef and restaurateur who appeared with Bourdain on several of his shows. Bourdain had traveled to Strasbourg in France, near the country's border with Germany, with a television production crew to record an upcoming episode of 'Parts Unknown' on CNN.
'Anthony was a dear friend, and an exceptional human being, so inspiring and generous. One of the great storytellers of our time who connected with so many. I wish him peace. My love and prayers are with his family, friends and loved ones.' ~ Eric Ripert
'I could not think of a better way to say goodbye.' ~ © Frank Borsellino
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writer/blogger/bon vivant
* photo by Alex Welsh @ The New York Times '2015 in New York City
* via The New York Times
