The World Lost Anthony Bourdain

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When I was a kid, I was picky beyond reason, logic, and understanding.

There were only a handful of items I would eat. I loved noodles, grilled cheeses, chicken, rice, bacon, grits, and eggs. I ate a little more than that, but nothing stands out in my memory as something I glossed over.

Textures killed food options for me more than taste. Thick cut ham, sausages all varieties, tomatoes, onions, most pork options, and any fish that wasn’t battered and deep fried.

By 15, I was eating more, cheeseburgers, meatloaf, sausage, cooked onions, and all of the traditional fare that you’s expect out of a reasonably adjusted young man, but I wasn’t stepping too far out of my comfort zone and trying the things that I would consider to be “gross.”

Flipping through the selections on Netflix one day, I stumbled across a travel show called “No Reservations,” a show I had heard of before in passing but had never seen. I decided to give it a show, and over the course of the next five hours, I couldn’t move from my couch. I was utterly addicted. Anthony Bourdain, the tall, witty, funny host who was as snarky as he was intelligent, opinionated as he was empathetic, angry as he was kind, became a role model for me.

Something yearned inside of me get out, to experience life outside of my small Mississippi town, to see the things that fascinated me so much in pictures and movies, but I couldn’t conceptualize those feelings yet. They didn’t feel real. His shows put into words and pictures the feelings that had churned away inside of me for years.

Soon after, I searched out his writing and got my hands on Kitchen Confidential, Medium Raw, and A Cook’s Tour, and I found that I loved his writing even more than I loved his TV shows. His prose flowed so masterfully that it shook me. There was a sardonic bite to his writing, yet he was able to capture heart of people and places to the point where I felt like I was experiencing things myself. It reinforced that I always wanted to write, to try to make people feel things, have feelings, laugh, endure epiphanies through words, much like he did for me.

His love of film inspired me to search out lesser known art film, both foreign and domestic (His Criterion suggestions can be found here).

And he persuaded me to venture out of my boring food bubble and try things before I made my mind up. The very first thing I did after finishing Medium Raw was go to a local gas station and try their fried chicken gizzards. To this day, they remain one of my top five favorite foods.

I woke up in a panic this morning. There were four missed calls from my wife on my phone when I woke up; I knew something was terribly, horribly wrong.

The biggest non-family influence in my life died.

Anthony Bourdain hanged himself.

To make matters worse, he was found by his dear friend Eric Ripert, one of the best chefs in the world. I can’t imagine the pain he must be going through right now.

It wasn’t so much that he was living the life that I’ve always wanted to live. He lived that life how I wanted to live it. Bourdain ate, drank, and saw the world in a manner that felt excessive, gluttonous, and insatiable. That’s the type of traveling we should all be inspired to do.

He was both pretentious and the everyman. He was as happy eating a hot dog as he was sitting through a tasting menu in a Michelin-starred restaurant.

I’d venture to say that Anthony Bourdain did as much for the rise of interest in food as any other chef in our era. He inspired a whole generation of people to view food foreign foods with respect and curiosity, and in doing so, he taught us to treat the people who made it (and the ones joining us to eat it) in the same regard.

Like Hunter S. Thompson before him, Bourdain went out on his own terms, and while I may have admired that somewhat in years past, it hurts like hell today.

We’re all struggling today. We all hurt. Yet it doesn’t get any easier.

Seeing someone you admire so greatly, who seems to have everything we’ve told ourselves would make us happy, who had the pieces we thought would make us whole, die in such a self-administrated fashion feels so wrong.

If it could happen to him, right?

I was supposed to eat leftovers tonight: Harissa chicken, couscous, and Brussels sprouts.

But I’m not going to do that now. I’m going out somewhere to eat something I’ve never had before, a small memorial to a man I never met, a who made such a significant impact on me that I find myself at a loss today. I try everything now. I have trips to Amsterdam, Romania, Japan, and Thailand scheduled. And I try my damnedest to remain empathetic in a world that doesn’t always care.

Thank you, Tony.