Anthony Bourdain Was a Writer First

I just want you to read The Anthony Bourdain Reader so we can commiserate together

Anthony Bourdain broke my fucking heart. He probably broke your fucking heart, too. We cherished Tony, with his soulful, Gallic gait that he used to maximize the experience and his cutting wit that belied a pure vulnerability. We couldn’t fathom that he would end a life basked in triumph, suffused with the love of peers and admirers all over the world. Despite documentarians’ best efforts, we will never have the answers as to why he took himself away. But Tony taught us that it’s OK to not have all the answers. Even so, he lived many truths according to his various identities of chef, addict, writer, father, husband, and beloved TV show hero.

One of Tony’s foremost truths was that food can be a bridge to the soul of a people, a sequence of steps to a people’s story that can be appreciated and layered with the stories of others. Of course, Tony also believed that life is unfair, but that we have a responsibility as members of this unique species to make it fairer. And lest we forget, Tony was an omnivore who believed that humans are animals at the top of the food chain. We are apex predators. With that comes responsibility to be good stewards of earth and all its creatures.

Bourdain’s beliefs pervaded his writing. The “Anthony Bourdain Reader” not only illuminates Bourdain in his most celebrated glory, but it proves that writing was his most important identity.

The book shows how Tony was a writer first who worked as a chef and then TV host. Indeed, his writing informed everything else, acting like an anchor to which his life was tethered. This compendium of some of his most classic words fully demonstrates this. Yes, there are the snippets from his cookbooks and the hits from Kitchen Confidential (shout out to my big sister, Juana, for buying this for me some 20 years ago and making me a Bourdain head and for getting me tickets to see him speak in 2010), but then there are the lesser-known essays and stories in various stages of completion that give you a glimpse into Bourdain the storyteller.

This is where we fall in love again with Bourdain the seeker. His essays wax poetic about his fatherland of France, provide tours of the kitchen that served as his fortress of order in which he knew his place, and finally embrace awe while he makes flavors he’s lived come to life on the page. The essays are vintage Tony, rich in description and amply seasoned with piercing humor that sets your synapses on fire and expands your mental palate. Oh, and he gets plenty gritty with the offal.

His stories, on the other hand, show you who he is. Often involving tales of underworld intrigue borne of a life on 9-5 society’s margins, Bourdain’s fiction transports you to those nether worlds he’s rubbed up against. His exposition is always detailed, his descriptions setting the table before the action rises like any good curator of an experience. And with Tony, there was always action. His were tales of chefs slumming it, hectic kitchens buzzing with white-knuckle ferocity, and mob scenarios that would fit into any Scorsese joint.

His imagination was vivid because he was a keen observer of the human condition, as any writer is. Indeed, he paid attention to everything around him, always on the prowl for stories in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. Tragedy, irony, action, and suspense- Bourdain hit all those notes. The last story he was working on before his death was incomplete and untitled. It was about love.

Of course, our beloved Bourdain’s life ended in tragedy and ambiguity, not unlike the material found in so many of his pages. While Tony had forceful, even dogmatic, opinions about certain things (TV chefs, Kissinger, democracy, etc.) he knew he didn’t have the answers. Writers- at least the good ones- understand this. They even provide hints to the reader, lest the reader begin to think them a sage. Tony knew he wasn’t a sage. But he was a seeker, and he knew that, which is why he put pen to page. His words remain forever. May he rest in peace.