RIP Anthony Bourdain

It’s been more than a year since I’ve written anything on this site. But the awful news about Anthony Bourdain seems like as good a time as any to start again.

I hate to think of his ending as sparking my beginning (again). As a friend put it, these countless in memoriam posts are self-serving. Though I think that is a lesson that we learn from his death, that we need to serve ourselves sometimes in order to readjust and make sense of the world and our place in it.

My fondness for Bourdain was as great as anyone else’s. I devoured his books, especially “A Cook’s Tour” which came out at about the same time that I was waiting tables at night and writing about travel during the day. He was remarkable in that he could be irreverent and sincere all in the same sentence. He was unflinchingly honest but kind. He put other people, places, food, and cultures at the center of his work but didn’t hesitate to insert himself into the action so that we could understand his perspective, preferences, biases, and humor. None of his words felt forced. The seemingly effortless way that Bourdain wrote about food and travel and the people he met along the way translated perfectly to the screen, too.

The man was unpretentious. He ate on the street, at holes-in-the-wall, and at McFoxy’s, Ukraine’s answer to McDonald’s. Though he had exacting standards when it came to food, he wasn’t afraid or embarrassed to eat as regular people would eat – not just in Saigon or Penang or Rome but even in the US Midwest. Indeed, he embraced it. While reading all the remembrances to Bourdain, I was moved to learn that he had come to the defense of 80-year old Olive Garden reviewer Marilyn Hagerty when the internet was making fun of her. Likewise, his visit to Xi’an Famous Foods in Flushing, Queens, helped an immigrant family grow their business into the “American Dream.”