Good Bye, Anthony Bourdain.

I never met him, but felt I knew him. My first “taste” of the prickly, profane, entertaining, Anthony Bourdain was when I read “Kitchen Confidential” which had me on the floor laughing my ass off. In the book, Bourdain even mentioned the coked up co-owners of the restaurant where, years earlier, sweating, swearing, flinging sauté pans, shouting at the wait staff, I worked as their chef.

Working in NYC kitchens, I could relate to Bourdain on SO many levels. He entered the “biz” as a dishwasher; I, by “helping” friends of a friend in their newly mobbed Columbus Ave café in the late 1970’s.  Like Bourdain, I was attracted to the tightly functioning chaos and the brutal, relentless hours inherent in the business. Copious drugs and alcohol prevailed as the go-to antidote to the craziness. It takes a certain “unconventional” personality to survive such an environment. Burying myself in the business enabled me to avoid the pain, the shame, of a dissolving marriage, of a life defined by ignoring trauma with stiff upper lips and denial. Bourdain’s words were accurate, descriptive and humorously engaging. He opened my eyes, gave me a voice, and made me laugh.

I loved “No Reservations” and “Parts Unknown”. Bourdain whisked me away on whirlwind tours around the world, tasting, experiencing, feeling, places I never would have known. He was an active, vocal advocate, highlighting the essential role of immigrants the historically marginalized and now demonized backbone of restaurant kitchens. He was a leading male voice speaking in support of the “Me Too” movement, especially significant given the abusive, misogynistic nature of the restaurant business. 

My heart breaks for his daughter, his friends, his family, his crew, the hundreds of those whose lives he touched, worked with, and met during his international adventures, and especially, for his friend and frequent collaborator, the chef Eric Ripert, who found him “unresponsive” in his luxury hotel room in France.

To many of us, celebrities such as Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, Robin Williams, Marilyn Monroe, Kurt Cobain, Diane Arbus, etc, had what we perceive as “great” lives. They had money and fame, parameters our society mistakenly holds as the gold standard of success, and therefore, supposedly, happiness. Yet, their suffering was profound enough for them to end their own lives. There’s the endless list of celebrities who killed themselves with drug overdoses, and last, but in NO way least, the multitude of “regular” people, the uncelebrated, the unknowns, whose unbearable pain drives them to end their lives. I still grieve the death of a poetess friend who shot herself a few months ago.

Here is the link to Bourdain’s compelling essay, published in 1999 in The New Yorker, “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”, the fuse that ultimately catapulted his uniquely compelling and exciting adventures into our comparatively mundane lives. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/04/19/dont-eat-before-reading-this

Mr. Bourdain, you will truly be missed. Good bye, my friend.