This is how much we miss Anthony Bourdain

«Enthusiast. Frequent flyer. Used to cook for a living». This is the phrase that Anthony Bourdain uses to describe himself in the biography of his Instagram profile. The last update we have from the chef on social media dates back to June 4, 2018, showing a plate of red meat, sauerkraut, and potatoes geolocated in Alsace, France. As we know, four days later, the chef’s life tragically ended in his hotel room in Kaysersberg, near Colmar, an event that left a bitter taste for anyone who ever knew Bourdain, his adventures, the freedom and open-mindedness with which he approached the world and what it had to offer. If Anthony Bourdain’s life continues to remain an example years later - with clips of him traveling the world being reposted and celebrated online, and his books being passed down from generation to generation - it is surely due to his exceptional nature, with the only flaw being that such greatness risks falling into the wrong hands. According to Deadline, the independent film studio A24 (producer of Priscilla and Amy) is about to acquire the rights to Tony, a biopic on the chef that would be played by Dominic Sessa, a young star from The Holdovers. No further details on the script (written by Lou Howe and Todd Bartels) have been revealed, so we do not know which key events will be featured in the story. What is certain is that it will be challenging to summarize the life of someone like Bourdain in just a few hours. From drug addiction to the controversial relationship with Asia Argento, whom he supported during the accusations against Harvey Weinstein, the chef's private life has been as turbulent as his professional one.

A true New Yorker, son of a New York Times editor and a camera salesman, Anthony Bourdain began to develop a passion for cooking during a vacation in France (his paternal grandparents' country of origin), after trying an oyster on a fishing boat. Before graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, he worked in several seafood restaurants, eventually ending up in kitchens at places like Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue, and Sullivan’s, and becoming head chef at Les Halles. Some of his articles began to be published in a small print magazine in the 1980s, while his first book Bone in the Throat was published in 1995. Like his second release, Gone Bamboo, none of his early literary projects were successful: for that, he would have to wait for the new millennium and the breakthrough that would launch his career, Kitchen Confidential. In the book, which brutally reveals all the less pleasant aspects of the restaurant industry, Bourdain exposes a world that had remained largely unexplored by the mainstream media until then. In the multi-best-seller, he shares intimate aspects of himself, such as the addictions he had to succumb to in order to keep up with the pace in the kitchen, and also about the restaurants, warning readers not to order fish on Monday mornings as it might not be as fresh.

While continuing to write one best-seller after another, from A Cook’s Tour to the collection The Nasty Bits, the popularity surrounding Bourdain grew, fueled by his literary successes as well as by the “television hunger of the early 2000s audience”. On Food Network, viewers could follow Bourdain around the world as he tried traditional dishes from different cultures, a concept that was soon translated to Travel Channel under the title No Reservations. The experiences narrated firsthand by Bourdain on TV are nothing short of extraordinary: in 2006, while working in Beirut, the chef and his crew found themselves forced to evacuate the country as the conflict between Israel and Lebanon erupted. In 2013, after leaving Travel Channel (“The network made a commercial with me promoting a product and didn’t even bother to ask me to do it,” he writes in a blog post titled Fighting Mad), Bourdain collaborated with CNN for Parts Unknown, a show in which the chef explores states whose cuisine he had never tasted. Even in this case, some episodes have become iconic, such as the one where he ate with Barack Obama in a restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam - the establishment has preserved the table and the dishes used by the two in a glass case.

Beyond the exhaustive amount of projects Bourdain worked on throughout his career, and the extraordinary experiences he was part of, what makes Bourdain’s work a raw diamond destined to shine is the complete honesty to which he always remained faithful. As evidenced by his departure from Travel Channel as soon as he felt “commodified,” the chef always stayed on guard against full television commercialisation, managing to become a celebrity while avoiding everything that could have come with it: it wasn’t snobbery, but total dedication to his work and audience. He openly criticised the celebrity chefs of his time, provoked vegetarians and vegans by arguing that they were concerned with a “first world luxury”. In his books and shows, everything was included, from his personal struggles to the most extravagant dishes in the world, except for the “marketing gimmicks” mentioned above. The legacy Bourdain left us is ultimately a lesson in philosophy, more than in cooking. As he writes in Kitchen Confidential:

«Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once»