BYE Anthony Bourdain WE loved U

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Alas the beloved chef and world travel show host has departed from this world. Much honor and glory to you Anthony for inviting us to such fascinating adventures in your own original way. WE will miss you.

Now it's a big bathroom wall where people write a lot of things about you—some good, some bad, some dumb.

On when things go wrong on location:

"We have never thrown a whole show out. We have the luxury of when things go horribly wrong, we can still show it up. We do not have to put on happy faces and pretend that this is not a dreadful and awful experience when it is. For instance, we had a couple of shows this past series, like in Sicily, and an episode of No Reservations: Romania where we did everything wrong, and everything got screwed up. It was clearly a disaster but they ended up as sort of comedy classics. Those are not the shows I go out looking to do, but we have the freedom to look into the camera and say, "This is the worst thing I have ever eaten" or "This scene has gone horribly wrong" or "I am so depressed right now I just want to hang myself in the shower." That's a luxury that most people on television don't have."

 

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Anthony Bourdain Doesn't Care About Your Artisanal Charcuterie
Hillary Eaton

Sep 29 2016, 5:00pm
I spoke to the culinary world’s foremost bullshit detector about the “artisanal” craze, the food media’s role in its perpetuation, and the pros and cons of making everything in-house.

maple water to tortilla chips.

So when Anthony Bourdain, the culinary world's foremost anti-establishment bullshit-detector, decided to launch Raw Craft, a web series that highlights true craftsmen—artisans such as famed knifemaker Bob Kramer and welder Elizabeth Bishop—I was intrigued. Even more interesting is Bourdain's choice of sponsored partner on this project: the single-malt Scotch brand The Balvenie.

I met up with Bourdain in between two back-to-back LA premiere screenings of the web series' second season in the back room of the silent movie theater to talk about how the "artisanal" craze started, the food media's role in its perpetuation, the pros and cons of making everything in-house, and why unnecessary things can be the most beautiful.

MUNCHIES: Hi, Anthony. You say the term "handcrafted" gets thrown around a lot, and I think that is totally true. How did we get here? Anthony Bourdain: I think it's part of the effect of the discovery by corporations that if they call something artisanal they get to charge more for it. They identified that some people were actually sourcing things—you know, better quality products or making better things and getting more money for it. They figured, "Let's get some of that, all you have to do is slap a name on it."

The same kind of things happen in the kitchen too, right? Like you kind of hear everything is farm-to-table even if it isn't. Yeah, I mean my way of thinking is most food is grown on a farm and it is served on the table. It's an overused definition as well, and I think it's a little pretentious.

Do you feel that food media is kind of at fault for that? I think that the pressures are understandable with the nature of journalism changing. Visual media has opened things up in a really, really interesting way. I mean, it can make a restaurant now. It's made the playing field much more interesting but it's also put pressure on a lot of people, clocking away at keyboards, underpaid in cubicles to generate hits. So, they've got to generate a certain amount of words every day and there's only so much to be written about food. It's a lot like writing about porn. It's the same story over and over. So I think a lot of people are less scrupulous about calling bullshit. Look, if we'd shut down the pumpkin spice thing in its crib, we would've done the world a service on the one hand; on the other hand, we'd have a lot less to write about because we can't write endless articles about the scourge of pumpkin spice or how awesome the latest pumpkin spice product is or how just weird or astounding or laughable it is.

The fact is people need stuff to write about and it's hard, particularly in food. There's a limited number of adjectives which describe a salad, a limited number of players. So that pressure is on to generate content, generate hits. So, you know the balloon fills with a lot of gas and nobody's interested in really puncturing the thing because it's one less thing we'll have to write about. I kind of understand....

 

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not a love triangle

 

[Sun Devil 92]

R.I.P.

 

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What Anthony Bourdain Understood About Authenticity
He was one of 21st-century pop culture’s few figures to argue persuasively for an assailed and slippery concept: realness.

Spencer Kornhaber ( The Atlantic)

 

[Care4all]

RIP Tony! I wish you hadn't taken your own life!

will miss you!

 

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Before He Wanted to Be a Chef, Anthony Bourdain Wanted to Draw Comic Books
By Karen Berger as told to Abraham RiesmanShare
Excerpt from the Bourdain-written Get Jiro. Photo: DC Entertainment / Langdon Foss, José Villarubia, Dave Stewart, and Todd Klein

Anthony Bourdain will be be remembered as a chef, a writer, a television personality, a filmmaker, a world traveler, and an advocate for the marginalized. But lest we forget, he was also a geek. Bourdain grew up reading the envelope-pushing sci-fi and horror of publisher EC Comics and the outré underground work of R. Crumb and his cohort. As an adult, he made good on his fandom, eventually co-writing two graphic novels, the dystopian 2012’s Get Jiro! and 2015’s Get Jiro: Blood and Sushi; and one anthology horror series, this year’s Hungry Ghosts. Comics editor Karen Berger, founder of DC Comics’ adult imprint, Vertigo, first brought him into the comics fold with Get Jiro! at Vertigo and returned to working with him on Hungry Ghosts at her Dark Horse Comics imprint Berger Books.

 

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ASIAN VOICES
06/15/2018 02:34 pm ET
Legendary Sushi Chef Fights Tears Remembering Anthony Bourdain
Masa Takayama appeared in a 2016 episode of Bourdain’s show, “Parts Unknown.”

By Kimberly Yam

The death of restaurateur and author Anthony Bourdain devastated many in the culinary world, including sushi legend Masa Takayama.

Takayama, renowned chef and owner of the Michelin three-star sushi restaurant Masa in Manhattan, talked through tears as he reflected on Bourdain’s life in an interview with BBC.

“He just started an amazing show, amazing stuff,” Takayama says in the video, weeping. “I’m so upset. He’s a great man. I will miss him very much.”

 

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[buttercup]

I've never seen his show, and from the little I do know of him I can't say I like the guy… But it is always tragic when someone takes their own life.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Loved his attitude and sarcasm about today's increase in foo-foo "artistic" foods using edible gold and outlandish....downright stupid multi-$1000 dishes in top NY restaurants.

 

[Lakhota]

Anthony Bourdain Mural Unveiled at Santa Monica Bar

 

[Lakhota]

I really do miss Anthony. I will remember him fondly as long as I have a memory. He was awesome. I'm usually trying to watch my weight - and he was very hard on that. I can only dream about all the wonderful exotic places and foods he shared with us all. RIP, Anthony! Thank you for all the great memories!

 

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The Village Voice‏Verified account @villagevoice


"If we truly want to help keep people alive and thriving, we need more than platitudes about calling friends or suicide hotlines in a moment of extreme crisis — we need ongoing, substantive, broad-based investment in mental healthcare."

 

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In Kitchen Confidential he wrote candidly about falling into a depression that was fanned by his substance abuse. “I could no longer bear even to pick up the phone; I’d just listen to the answering machine, afraid or unwilling to pick up, the plaintive entreaties of the caller an annoyance,” he wrote. “I was in hiding, in a deep, dark hole, and it was dawning on me — as I cracked my oysters, and opened clams, and spooned cocktail sauce into ramekins — that it was time, really time, to try to climb out.”

 

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