CAPILLAS
It’s been over a week now since his death but I would like to remember New York chef and travel writer Anthony Bourdain for his shows, his insights into food and the restaurant industry and his dishes rather than the way he died.
Like many others I got wind of Bourdain’s death by suicide through Facebook and minutes after CNN broke the news, there was an outpouring of sympathy and sadness from Filipino netizens.
Many of them would remember with fondness how he toured the Philippines and sampled its culinary and scenic delights as shown in his “No Reservations” program and later on, through “Parts Unknown” in CNN.
My earliest memories of Bourdain came from a guest spot he had on TV host Oprah Winfrey’s program back in 1997/1998 in which he talked about his experience in New York’s restaurant industry as recounted in his book “Kitchen Confidential.”
Thanks to YouTube, there’s a clip of that guest spot and Bourdain shared to Winfrey and her guests some secrets that chefs and restaurant owners kept from their customers such as their frequent use of butter to improve their dishes—he said a diner in a New York restaurant can consume at least one stick of butter in one evening.
In his TV programs, Bourdain talked from a New Yorker perspective, which is straight up casual, with some smattering of cuss words and pop culture references including his favorite band The Ramones and he didn’t hide it either from interview subjects and his voice over narration to his viewers.
It was through his program that I got to know other celebrity chefs like the mercurial Gordon Ramsay—whom he described as a “decent guy” despite his famed insult-laced outbursts in “Hell’s Kitchen”–Marco Pierre White, Mario Batali and his best friend, French chef and restauranteur Eric Ripert whom he described as being the best when it comes to cooking and serving fish in the world.
While he described himself as being “easy to please” when it comes to food, he didn’t hide his contempt towards some TV cooks like Paula Dean whom he described as “hypocritical” for serving fat and sugar rich dishes despite suffering from diabetes and Guy Fierre, whose tweet on going to a Nickelback concert he considered as the “funniest thing” he’s ever read.
Among his many memorable episodes were his Philippine trip to sample Cebu’s lechon and other Filipino dishes and a series with CNN program host Anderson Cooper in which he cooked among other dishes Korean budae jiigai or Korean army stew.
In the wake of his death, there was an outpouring of tributes but few are as eloquent as those spoken by former US president Barack Obama who described Bourdain as having “taught us about food—but more importantly, about its ability to bring us together. To make us a little less afraid of the unknown.”