From bad-boy chef to world-traveling television host, Anthony Bourdain has led a wild life.
He was still a relatively unknown executive chef in New York at age 43, before hitting
the big time He's traveled the world hosting TV shows, won a few Emmys, and even earned
a Peabody award.
But how much do we really know about the man who wrote Kitchen Confidential?
Let's take a bite out of the double life of Anthony Bourdain.
His drug and alcohol use
For most of his adult life, Bourdain has been an unashamed smoker and drinker.
In his memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Bourdain explicitly
discusses his prior drug use, including a major heroin addiction picked up in the kitchens
of 1970s New York, which he kicked by the '80s:
"Hardly a decision was made without drugs.
Pot, quaaludes, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms soaked in honey and used to sweeten tea, seconal,
tuinal, speed, codeine and, increasingly, heroin, which we'd send a Spanish-speaking
busboy over to Alphabet City to get."
Opinionated
Bourdain has issued scathing smackdowns of Paula Deen, Rachael Ray, Guy Fieri, Bobby
Flay, and even Emeril Lagasse.
But he's definitely aware of the irony of his position, given his current fame.
"I think you used the phrase "naked contempt" to express your whole attitude towards a lot
of the things that were on food television.
And yet you're kinda caught up now in the television phenomena."
"Yeah, irony sucks."
While he's stuck to his principles on some fronts, such as refusing the types of merchandising
deals that have made some of his peers rich, he does know how to compromise.
In an episode of No Reservations, he finally reconciled with Emeril Lagasse.
Bourdain has also dished out harsh criticisms of vegetarians, at one time even calling them
"enemies of everything that's good and decent in the human spirit."
But time, age, and probably fame, have modified that view somewhat.
In a 2006 interview, he explained:
"I admire vegetarians who refuse to eat anything but vegetables in their homes or communities,
but I also admire those who put aside those principles or preferences when they travel."
Family and Fitness
Bourdain's first wife was his high school sweetheart, Nancy Putkoski.
But shortly after Kitchen Confidential shot him to fame after its publication in 2000,
the marriage ended.
In 2007, he married his second wife, Ottavia, with whom he had a daughter that same year.
After that, Bourdain focused more on his health, and now he's in better shape than ever.
Ottavia is a Brazilian jujitsu mixed-martial-arts specialist and got him hooked on jujitsu as
a form of exercise.
Bourdain even won gold participating in the IBJJF New York Spring International Open Championship
in 2016 and currently holds a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
Still, even though Bourdain seems to have changed his life for the better from Ottavia's
healthy influence, the couple reportedly split up in September of 2016 after a nine year
relationship.
Mystery meat
Bourdain knew he wanted to be a chef when he was 10, and since it was his book that
made him famous, his talent for both cooking and writing has been obvious for a while.
But what you may not know is that Bourdain has a flair for fiction as well, having written
three mystery novels before the publication of Kitchen Confidential: Bone in the Throat,
Gone Bamboo, and The Bobby Gold Stories.
In fact, a movie based on Bone in the Throat premiered at the South By Southwest film festival
in March, 2015
Not only that, but Bourdain also wrote a historical investigation into Mary Mallon, the Irish
Immigrant who became known as "Typhoid Mary."
He also co-wrote two graphic novels called Get Jiro and a prequel called Get Jiro: Blood
and Sushi, which are sort of like Chef's Table meets Kill Bill.
"Where warring gangs of chefs slaughter each other over seemingly inconsequential points
of culinary minutiae."
Financial success
In 2014, he and his wife bought a condo in the Upper East Side of New York City for a
cool $3.35 million — a pretty dramatic turnaround from his pre-Kitchen Confidential days.
He explained how far he'd come in a 2016 interview with Biography:
"At the age of 44, I was standing in kitchens, not knowing what it was like to go to sleep
without being in mortal terror.
I was in horrible, endless, irrevocable debt.
I had no health insurance.
I didn't pay my taxes.
I couldn't pay my rent.
It was a nightmare, but it's all been different for about 15 years."
Very different, indeed.
With several bestselling books and popular TV shows under his belt, Bourdain has been
living quite comfortably for the last decade or so.
Still, his success doesn't mean he's lost sight of the true pleasures in life.
"We're now at one of my favorite places in Los Angeles, In & Out Burger.
Yes…"
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