Beloved author, chef, and award-winning television producer and host Anthony Bourdain died June
8th, 2018, of an apparent suicide in his hotel room in northern France.
Best known for taking viewers on culinary adventures via his Travel Channel show No
Reservations and later refining the format on CNN's Parts Unknown, Bourdain was a no-nonsense
advocate for good food, good drink, decency, and common sense.
Here are a few things you may not know about the late Anthony Bourdain.
He was a novelist
It was his 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential that put him on the map, but he had already
released a number of books of a very different sort: crime fiction.
He started with 1995's A Bone in the Throat, which has his main character - a chef, unsurprisingly
- getting mixed up in Little Italy's criminal underworld.
It was later made into a film starring Gossip Girl's Ed Westwick.
That was followed by 1997's Gone Bamboo, and later by 2001's The Bobby Gold Stories.
Bourdain explained the storytelling allure of the criminal world to The New York Times:
"Crime as work appeals to me [...] The guy who gets up in the morning and makes his living
by crime.
I've always been a crime buff and a big fan of crime jargon, and in the restaurant business,
I've met a bunch of gangsters."
He wrote graphic novels, too
Karen Berger, editor and founder of DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, worked with Bourdain on his
2012 graphic novel Get Jiro!.
She told Vulture that Bourdain was a massive fan of dark, underground comics and graphic
novels.
He followed up Get Jiro! with 2018's Hungry Ghosts, a four-part comic book series for
Dark Horse.
As far back as the 1970s, Bourdain had tried his hand at both writing and illustrating
graphic novels, but the publishers he approached told him he just wasn't good enough as an
artist.
Bourdain recruited illustrators and a co-writer to finally bring his visions to life.
His war with Switzerland
Bourdain traveled the globe in search of great food and compelling stories, but there's one
place he's always had a tongue-in-cheek aversion to, and it's a bit surprising: Switzerland.
Back in 2008 he wrote on his Travel Channel blog:
“Even Ricola commercials make me break into a cold sweat.
Lederhosen, Alpine hats, cuckoo clocks, St. Bernards, cross-country skiers, and The Sound
of Music make me physically ill."
He later told Conan O'Brien he had a "morbid fear" of all things Swiss, but wasn't quite
sure why:
"I must have had some terrible childhood experience while watching Sound of Music that I blocked
out."
His MMA connection
Bourdain's second wife, MMA fighter Ottavia Busia, wrote a piece for Vice describing just
how important MMA and UFC was to the family.
According to her, Bourdain was a big boxing fan back in the 1970s, and once she took him
to an MMA fight, he really got into it.
She went on to interview him on the subject, and he said that he loved that she fought,
and could always defend herself.
But she had to ban him from watching her compete because he made her anxious.
Bourdain said he didn't want her to ever experience "the agony of defeat," considering how hard
she works to prepare for her fights.
He also said he was glad his daughter was also learning how to defend herself:
"The day will come when little Timmy in the next desk is gonna pull her hair.
And I like the idea that she'll be able to f--- little Timmy up real bad."
His most treasured possession
Bourdain had a love of all things hand-crafted, and focused on unsung artisans in his web
series Raw Craft, a paid promotional partnership with Scottish whiskey brand "The Balvenie.".
When Bourdain made himself available for an "Ask Me Anything" session on Reddit, someone
asked him if he got to keep the, quote, "samurai quality" knife artisan Bob Kramer made in
an episode of Raw Craft.
He said he didn't, but he later bid on it when it went to auction.
It ended up selling for around $22,000.
After waiting more than a year, Bourdain finally purchased a Kramer blade, and he was thrilled,
writing,
"It is easily my most valued physical object that I own.
It is a thing of beauty, and I'm just waiting to find food worthy of it, to use it."
His impact
When news of Bourdain's death broke, there was an immediate outpouring of grief.
It wasn't just foodies and chefs who mourned his passing - as NPR notes, there were particularly
moving tributes from those in communities widely marginalized by the rest of society.
Food historian Michael W. Twitty wrote on Twitter,
"For a Black man that has walked the plank for being highly critical of the food world
so white, #Anthony Bourdain was special.
He called Africa the cradle of civilization, took his cameras to Haiti, honored the hood
with Snoop, broke bread with Obama like a human being..."
University of Detroit law professor Khaled Beydoun lauded Bourdain for, quote, "humanizing
Muslims and Arabs as regular, everyday people -without politicizing their lives or stories."
Journalist Mohammad Alsaafin tweeted,
"If you're from a marginalized, dehumanized community, you know what Anthony Bourdain
meant.
To Palestinians, Iranians, Libyans, undocumented immigrants in the US, abused women...what
a loss."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide
Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK.
That's 1-800-273-8255.