Anthony Bourdain minced garlic, not words. Who'd he call a d-bag? A threat to America?
The "Hell-spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker"? We're serving ourselves a slice of Bourdain
with a side of piping hot beef.
Bourdain embarked on his "Close to the Bone" tour in 2015, and he wasn't shy about throwing
shade at other famous chefs. He took aim at a number of Food Network stars, and Guy Fieri
got burned pretty hard. Bourdain mused,
"I sort of feel in a heartfelt way for Guy. I wonder about him. He's 52 years old and
still rolling around in the flame outfit ... What does he do? How does Guy Fieri de-douche?"
Fieri — who was actually still in his 40s at the time — had a few thoughts on the
matter. He told GQ a few months later,
"I don't like him making fun of people, and I don't like him talking s—. And he's never
talked s— to my face. It's just, What are you doing? What is your instigation? You have
nothing else to f—ing worry about than if I have bleached hair or not? I mean, f—."
"I said ‘How about I make you a knuckle sandwich, dirty?’"
Bourdain defended himself, later telling People,
"The day you can't tell jokes about Guy Fieri, comedy as we know it is dead."
Rachael Ray is one of the brightest stars on the Food Network. But — according to
Bourdain, her show "30 Minute Meals" sets the bar way too low. As he blogged in 2007,
"She's selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She's a friendly,
familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that 'Even your dumb, lazy
a– can cook this!'"
Bourdain took aim at Ray again later that year, accusing her of crossing "the line"
with her promotion of junk food. As he told Outside magazine,
"It's like endorsing crack for kids. […] Juvenile diabetes has exploded. Half of Americans don't
have necks. And she's up there saying, 'Eat some f—ing Dunkin' Donuts. You look great
in that swimsuit — eat another doughnut!' That's evil."
"Don't hold it against me."
Reps for Ray responded in a statement, via Page Six,
"We respectfully disagree with Anthony's opinion. […] Anyone who knows Rachael and watches
her on TV is aware she promotes balance and moderation, instead of living life in extremes."
No one can deny that chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck has been an icon in the global
food scene for decades — not even Anthony Bourdain. He recognized Puck's influence,
telling Playboy in 2011, that the Austrian chef didn't even need to be on TV to be famous.
But according to Bourdain, Puck sold out when he put his name on everything. Bourdain said,
"Listen, I'm not eating in his s—-y pizza restaurants. I think it's bulls—, and it
breaks my heart to see him on QVC or whatever, but the fact is he paid his dues. He's an
important guy. […] If Wolfgang Puck wants to open crappy pizzerias in airports all over
America, that's f—ing fine."
"He always thinks he's such a good cook."
Despite the shade, there always remained a mutual respect. When Bourdain died, Puck praised
him, telling The Week,
"Enjoying a moment with great food is the most important part of life. Anthony did an
amazing job of showcasing this…"
Bourdain once said that he was hesitant to trash a, quote, "nice old lady" — but he
threw a bunch of shade at celebrity chef Paula Deen anyway. He went to town on Deen and her
shows, blogging in 2007,
"A recent Hawaii show was indistinguishable from an early John Waters film. And the food
on a par with the last scene of 'Pink Flamingos.'"
For those unfamiliar with Waters' cult hit, the ending involves dog poop. But Bourdain's
criticism of Deen's Southern cuisine got a lot more personal over the years. As he told
TV Guide in 2011,
"She's proud of the fact that her food is f—ing bad for you. […] The worst, most
dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. […] I would think twice before telling
an already obese nation that it's OK to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks."
"Butter wranglers!"
Deen responded by telling Page Six that Bourdain should, quote, "get a life," but the reaction
from her fans was swift. Bourdain told Rolling Stone,
"I received a lot of scary mail and Facebook posts. It was the first time I've ever been
frightened."
In 2016, Bourdain chowed down in Vietnam with then-president Barack Obama. The two men were
good friends, but Bourdain had nothing nice to say about Obama's successor. When asked
if he would ever consider dining with Donald Trump, he told The Wrap,
"I would give the same answer that I would have given 10 years ago, when he was just
as loathsome."
In what would become his final interview, in 2018, Bourdain claimed he was just waiting
for someone to give Trump a good dressing down. He said, via Popula,
"Somebody at the White House press briefing has to sacrifice their job and say, 'You utter
piece of s—! Do you really expect us to swallow that steaming load of horses—? How
do you live with yourself? You should be ashamed.' Give me one guy to throw themselves on a fire
like that ... for that infinitely repeatable meme."
"It's not personal, it's just business." "That's a mafia saying, but, y'know."
"It's alright."
When news of Bourdain's death reached the White House, then-president Trump offered
his condolences to the family, saying in a statement,
"I think it's very sad. I enjoyed his show, he was quite a character, I will say."
Sandra Lee won a Daytime Emmy for her Food Network show "Semi-Homemade" in 2012. And
by then, Bourdain had made his opinion on her cooking crystal clear. Lee's approach
involves incorporating a lot of store-bought goods rather than fresh ingredients. It supposedly
saves hours and money. But, as the New York Times noted, a number of recipes from her
cookbooks save neither thing. For his part, Bourdain once described Lee as:
"Pure evil. This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission
to kill her fans, one meal at a time."
"We're gonna make fruit cocktail trifle."
Bourdain often referenced Lee's infamous "Kwanzaa Cake" episode, which offended many and went
viral for all the wrong reasons. As he told Eat Me Daily in 2009,
"Watch that clip and tell me your eyeballs don't burst into flames. It's a war crime
on television. You'll scream."
But Lee didn't take Bourdain's comments to heart. When he died in 2018, she paid tribute
to him, tweeting,
"He was a gifted, smart, articulate man and even though [he] could be incredibly critical,
especially of me, somehow that was part of his charm."
Bourdain brutally roasted Adam Richman, best known as the down-for-anything host of "Man
v. Food." On the show, Richman traveled to different restaurants to attempt their supersized
eating challenges. And Bourdain revealed that he saw people watching Richman's show during
visits to the Middle East. He said during his 2015 tour,
"The show confirms their worst suspicions — that Americans are fat, lazy, slothful,
wasteful. […] I know what he’s thinking, 'America is a terrible place. I want to join
ISIS.'"
In 2012, Richman claimed that he and Bourdain were actually friends. But he criticized him
for being too bitter at times. As he told Food Republic,
"Lord knows he definitely has strong opinions about a lot of the s— I do."
During a 2021 interview with Mashed, he admitted that some of Bourdain's comments cut deep.
In 2011, Bourdain had joked with David Letterman that viewers tuned in to "Man v. Food" because
they wanted to see Richman, quote, "choke on that burger" and "die."
But according to Richman, when Bourdain was confronted about the comments, he actually
apologized, and offered some words of wisdom to Richman.
Bourdain had nothing but good things to say about Gordon Ramsay's cooking, but he wasn't
a fan of the chef's most famous show. Bourdain said at a 2008 event,
"Gordon's actually a really sweet, nice guy. I hate 'Hell's Kitchen.' I thought that show
was so bad."
"They got a brilliant mentor; me."
But Bourdain would change his opinion on Ramsay's "nice guy" status in 2012 when it emerged
that Ramsay had attempted to trademark "Spotted Pig" in the U.K. It was already the name of
an existing Stateside restaurant developed by chef April Bloomfield. Bourdain tweeted:
"That Gordon Ramsay would register [the] name 'Spotted Pig' in London and screw April Bloomfield
(who built the brand) over is shameful, pathetic."
As Eater reported, three months after submitting the trademark application, Ramsay withdrew
it. And according to "60 Minutes," the New York Spotted Pig closed for good in 2020.
Upon Bourdain's passing in 2018, Ramsay tweeted:
"Stunned and saddened by the loss of Anthony Bourdain. He brought the world into our homes
and inspired so many people to explore cultures and cities through their food."
While Bourdain heaped praise on other respected chefs in his 2010 book "Medium Raw," he wouldn't
offer the same to one French culinary master. He wrote,
"Alain Ducasse, on the other hand, is a villain. Because he almost single-handedly brought
down fine dining in America with his absurdly pretentious restaurant Alain Ducasse New York.
[...] To use an egregiously overused expression, ADNY was where fine dining jumped the shark."
The eatery opened to much fanfare, but the prices turned people off. At the time, Ducasse
said:
"If people will not accept this price, we will go elsewhere."
In 2007, his namesake eatery shuttered for good. As for the reason why, Bourdain wrote,
"He rolled into New York with his bad attitude, ungracious proclamations of how exclusive
his new place would be, how unwelcome New Yorkers might be — if they were not already
acquainted with Himself via Monaco or Paris."
Ducasse's flagship location would never shake its bad rep. According to the Robb Report,
"It became the restaurant New Yorkers loved to hate."
Bourdain always had a love/hate relationship with Alice Waters, founder of the farm-to-table
restaurant Chez Panisse. While he agreed with her on a lot of points, he found her condescending
in her approach. He told NPR,
"She's just so spectacularly tone deaf and constantly saying the wrong thing that she's
a polarizing figure for a cause that should be, in the best-case scenario, sort of a ground-up,
grassroots kind of a movement."
There's an entire chapter about Waters in "Medium Raw" where Bourdain calls her out
for cooking an egg over a wood fire on "60 Minutes." He wrote,
"I don't know about you, but burning up a couple of cords of firewood for a single f—ing
egg doesn't exactly send a message of sustainability."
Bourdain also claimed that Waters doesn't seem to have ever gotten her hands dirty in
the kitchen. He added,
"After reading all the accounts, official and unofficial, of Alice's career and the
history of Chez Panisse, [I] can't find a single supporting source to verify she was
ever a chef."
Waters paid tribute to Bourdain in 2018, telling ABC 7,
"He introduced the chefs and validated that person's work and he did this around the world."
Bourdain and Emeril Lagasse [EM-er-ul luh-GAH-see] were good friends at the end of Bourdain's
life. But that wasn't always the case. Bourdain called the TV chef "Ewok-like" in his memoir
"Kitchen Confidential," referring to him as, quote, "fuzzy little Emeril." Seven years
later, Bourdain admitted in a blog post that his opinion on Lagasse had softened, but added,
"I STILL find him unwatchable. As much mileage as I've gotten over the years, making fun
of Emeril; he deserves a lot more respect than I've given him."
"Just…bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam." cut before it cuts to a new shot please
By the time he wrote "Medium Raw," Bourdain had come to understand Lagasse's business
strategy a little better. But when the pair co-hosted the roast of Mario Batali, Bourdain
wanted to know why Lagasse didn't just retire and live out his days enjoying his fortune.
Bourdain recalled,
"I asked him why he gave a f—. He smiled tolerantly, then began listing [...] all the
people who'd helped him along the way and who now relied on him, in one form or another,
for their living."
Lagasse paid tribute to Bourdain following his death, tweeting:
"I'm shocked and extremely saddened by the tragic loss of such an inspiring man. Tony
was a great soul, a mentor, a friend, a father, and an incredible chef."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
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