Anthony Bourdain

At 61 years old, Anthony Bourdain has this physical status:

Anthony Michael Bourdain (June 25, 1956 – June 8, 2018) was an American celebrity chef, author, and travel blogger whose work revolved around global culture, cuisine, and the human condition. Bourdain, a 1978 graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of several commercial kitchens over his long career, including years as executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in Manhattan, was a fan of the French cuisine Les Halles in Manhattan.

He first became well-known for his book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000).

In 2002 and 2003, A Cook's Tour, his first food and world-travel television series, lasted for 35 episodes on the Food Network.

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (2005–2012) and The Layover (2011–2013).

He began a three-season stint as a judge on The Taste, and then moved his travelogue show to CNN to host Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Bourdain, who is best known for his culinary writings and television presentations, as well as many books on food and cooking, as well as travel guides, wrote both fiction and historical nonfiction. Bourdain died by suicide when on location in France for Parts Unknown on June 8, 2018.

Early life

Anthony Michael Bourdain was born in Manhattan on June 25, 1956. Gladys (née Sacksman) was his mother, and his father, Pierre Bourdain (1929-1977), was his father. Christopher, his younger brother, was born a few years ago. Anthony grew up with both of his parents and wrote about his childhood in one of his books: "I did not want for love or attention." My parents adored me. Neither of them drank to excess. Nobody beat me. God was never mentioned, and I was disgusted by neither church nor any suggestion of sin nor damnation." His father was Catholic, and his mother was Jewish. Bourdain said that, although he was deemed Jewish by halacha's definition, he had never been in a synagogue. I don't believe in a higher power. However, this doesn't mean I'm any less Jewish than others, as I don't believe." His family was also non-religious. Pierre, at the time of Bourdain's birth, was a salesman at a New York City camera store, as well as a floor manager at a record store. Gladys, a staff editor at The New York Times, later became an executive for Columbia Records, and Douglas Ferrand became a staff editor.

Bourdain's paternal grandparents were French (his great grandfather Aureli Bourdain was born in Brazil to French parents), and his paternal grandfather Pierre Michel Bourdain (1905-1932) migrated from Arcachon to New York after World War II. Bourdain spent the bulk of his childhood in Leonia, New Jersey. He was jealous of his classmates' lack of parental control and the freedom they enjoyed in their homes. Bourdain was a member of the Boy Scouts of America in his youth.

Personal life

Bourdain dated Nancy Putkoski in the 1970s when attending high school at Dwight-Englewood School. She was deemed "a bad girl" older than him and "part of a druggy crowd," he said. She was a year older than him, and Bourdain graduated one year early in order to follow Putkoski to Vassar College because they were still accepting male students. He worked there between the ages of 17 and 19. He then attended the Culinary Institute of America, a 15-minute drive from Vassar. The couple married in 1985 and were married for two decades, before divorcing in 2005.

Ottavia Busia, who later became a mixed martial artist, was married on April 20, 2007. Ariane, the couple's daughter, was born in 2007. Bourdain said being compelled to be away from his family for 250 days a year while watching his television shows put the family together. Busia appeared in many episodes of No Reservations, including those in Tuscany, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Naples, and Sardinia, Italy's birthplace. In 2016, the couple married.

When filming the Rome episode of Parts Unknown, Bourdain met Italian actress Asia Argento in 2016. Argento told the New Yorker in October 2017 that she had been sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein in the 1990s. After being chastised for her work in Italian media and politics, Argento migrated to Germany to escape what she described as a "victim blaming" in Italy. Following the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, Argento gave a speech on May 20, 2018, claiming that she was assaulted by Weinstein in Cannes when she was 21 years old. "And now, sitting among you, there are those who must still be held accountable for their behavior against women," she said. During that time, Bourdain aided her. Bourdain posted a video on June 3, 2018 where the team was celebrating during the production of the show with Argento as director, him and Chris Doyle. In August 2018, Bourdain paid actor Jimmy Bennett $380,000 for his silence in October 2017 in order to prevent Argento from receiving negative media for allegedly sexually assaulting Bennett in 2013 when he was 17 and Argento 37.

Bourdain studied the martial art Brazilian jiu-jitsu, gaining a blue belt in August 2015. In the Middleweight Master 5 (age 51 and older) division, he gained gold at the IBJF New York Spring International Open Championship in 2016.

Bourdain was known to be a heavy smoker. Thomas Keller once delivered a 20-course tasting menu featuring a mid-meal "coffee and cigarette," a caffeine custard infused with nicotine with a foie gras mousse, in honor of Bourdain's two-pack-a-day cigarette habit. Bourdain quit smoking for his children in 2007, but he rediscovered his life toward the end of his life in 2007.

Bourdain, a former cocaine, opium, and LSD user, wrote about his stint in a SoHo restaurant in 1981, where he and his colleagues were often high. Bourdain said drugs inspired his decisions, and that he'd bring a busboy to Alphabet City to obtain cannabis, methamine, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, secobarbital, amphetamine, codeine, and opium.

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Culinary training and career

Bourdain's passion for food began early in his childhood when he tried his first oyster from a fisherman's boat in France. He graduated from the Dwight-Englewood School, an independent coeducational day school in Englewood, New Jersey, in 1973, then enrolled at Vassar College, but he dropped out after two years. Before attending Vassar, he worked at seafood restaurants in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which inspired his decision to pursue cooking as a profession.

Bourdain attended The Culinary Institute of America, graduating in 1978. From there, he went on to manage several restaurant kitchens in New York City, including the Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue, and Sullivan's.

Bourdain joined Brasserie Les Halles in 1998 as an executive chef. The brand, which was headquartered in Manhattan, at the time, had additional restaurants in Miami, Washington, D.C., and Tokyo. Bourdain was an executive chef at Les Halles for many years, but the restaurant's owner, who was still employed as a chef in January 2014, still had a friendship with the restaurant, who described him as their "chef at large" on January 2014. After filing for bankruptcy, Les Halles closed in 2017.

Media career

Bourdain's in the mid-1980s began submitting unsolicited work for publication in Between C & D, a literary magazine on the Lower East Side, during the Cold War. Bourdain's article about a chef who was trying to buy heroin in the Lower East Side was eventually published by the magazine. Bourdain signed up for a writing workshop with Gordon Lish in 1985. After speaking with a Random House editor in 1990, Bourdain received a small book advance from Random House.

In 1995, Bone in the Throats, his first book, a culinary mystery, was published. He paid for his own book tour, but he didn't find success. Gone Bamboo, his second mystery book, also did poorly in sales.

Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, a 2000 New York Times bestseller, was a sequel to his 1999 New Yorker article "Don't Eat Before Reading This."

Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, a memoir and follow-up to the book Kitchen Confidential, was published in 2010.

A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines (2001), an account of his food and travel adventures around the world, published in conjunction with his first television series of the same name.

Bourdain released The Nasty Bits, a series of 37 exotic, provocative, and amusing anecdotes and essays, many of which were based on food, and separated into sections devoted to each of the five traditional flavors, as well as a 30-page fiction essay ("A Chef's Christmas").

Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical History of Bourdain was published in a hypothetical historical study about Mary Mallon, an Irish-born cook who is said to have infected 53 people with typhoid fever between 1907 and 1938.

Bourdain's book No Reservations: Around the World in 2007, focusing on the experiences of filming and photographing of the show's first seasons and crew members at work when filming the series.

His articles and essays appeared in several journals, including in The New York Times, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Gourmet, Maxim, and Esquire. Scotland was shown on Sunday by The Face, Food Arts, Limb by Limb, BlackBook, The Independent, Best Life, The Financial Times, and Town & Country. In 2008, Top Chef's third season was nominated for a Webby Award for Best Blog (in the Cultural/Personal category).

Bourdain co-wrote Get Jiro, the original graphic novel written in 2012. Langdon Foss was a collaborator with Joel Rose and Langdon Foss' art.

Bourdain joined Roads & Kingdoms as the site's sole investor and editor-at-large in 2015. Bourdain's contributions to the website and edited the Dispatched By Bourdain series over the course of many years. Bourdain and Roads & Kingdoms also worked on Explore Parts Unknown, a digital series that debuted in 2017 and received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series in 2018.

Bourdain has filmed several food and travel shows, including his first, A Cook's Tour (2002-2003). From 2005 to 2013, he worked for The Travel Channel. He worked for CNN from 2013 to 2018. Bourdain referred to the idea as "I fly around the world, eat a lot of shit, and then do what the fuck I want." Bourdain's "very graceful style" was praised by Nigella Lawson, who spoke in a variety of languages, from erudite to dazzlingly slangy.

Bourdain's memoir Kitchen Confidential resulted in the Food Network's invitation for him to host his own food and travel show, A Cook's Tour, which premiered in January 2002. It ran for 35 episodes from 2003 to 2003.

Anthony Bourdain, a young, slightly similar television show on the Travel Channel, premiered in July 2005. No reservations were made. As a result of the tremendous success of Kitchen Confidential, the Fox sitcom Kitchen Confidential premiered in 2005, in which Jack Bourdain's character is based loosely on Anthony Bourdain's biography and persona.

When the Israel-Lebanon war broke out unexpectedly after the crew had only filmed just a few hours of footage, he and his crew were in Beirut filming an episode of No Reservations. His producers assembled a behind-the-scenes video of him and his crew in Beirut, including not only their first attempts to film the episode but also their firsthand experiences with Hezbollah supporters, their days of waiting for information about other expatriates, who stayed in a Beirut hotel, and finally, a fixer (unseen in the video), who escaped by a fixer (who was unveiled in the video), after Harvey Keitel'setain's The United States Marine Corps had Bourdain and his crew evacuated with other Americans on the morning of July 20. In 2007, the Beirut No Reservations episode, which aired on August 21, 2006, was nominated for an Emmy Award.

The Travel Channel revealed in July 2011 that The Layover, a second one-hour, 10-episode Bourdain program, would premiere on November 21, 2011. Each episode featured an investigation into a city that can be achieved in a 24 to 48 hour air travel layover. From February 2013 to February 2013, the series ran for 20 episodes. The Getaway, a celebrity-hosted television show, lasted two seasons on Esquire Network. Bourdain executive Drew Bourdain hosted The Getaway, which lasted two seasons.

Bourdain revealed in May 2012 that he would not be leaving the Travel Channel. He explained on his blog in December that his departure was due to his dissatisfaction with the channel's new ownership, who used his voice and image to make it seem as if he were endorsing a car brand, and that the channel was releasing three "extra episodes" based solely on clips from the channel's seven official episodes of that season. Parts Unknown for CNN. Anthony Bourdain became the host of Anthony Bourdain. The program, which was based on other cuisines, cultures, and politics, debuted on April 14, 2013.

In an episode that aired in Vietnam in September 2016, President Barack Obama was featured on the show; the two talked about a beer and bun cha at a small restaurant in Hanoi. The show was shot and staged in places as diverse as Libya, Tokyo, the Punjab region, Jamaica, Turkey, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Far West Texas, and Armenia.

He appeared as narrator and executive producer on several episodes of the award-winning PBS series The Mind of a Chef from 2012 to 2017, which aired on the last months of each year. In 2017, PBS went from PBS to Facebook Watch.

He served as an executive producer and mentor in ABC's cooking competition show The Taste from 2013 to 2015. He has received an Emmy Award for each season.

Bourdain appeared five times as a guest judge on Bravo's Top Chef reality cooking competition, a celebrity in the United Kingdom.

In the November 2006 episode of Season 2, his first appearance was in "Thanksgiving."

In June 2007, he was in his second appearance in the "exotic surf and turf" competition that featured ingredients including abalone, alligator, black chicken, geoduck, and eel.

He appeared in Season 3 as an air travel specialist, judging the competitors' airplane meals. During Season 3's episodes, he was also published weekly blog commentaries, filling in as a guest blogger while Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio was busy opening a new restaurant.

He appeared as a guest judge in the start of Season 4 Restaurant Wars' season 4, where two chefs went head-to-head in the preparation of various classic dishes, and then again in the Season 4 Restaurant Wars episode, temporarily taking the place of head judge Tom Colicchio, who was at a charity function. In episode 12 of Top Chef: Washington, D.C. (Season 7, he judged the cheftestants' meals for NASA), he appeared as a guest judge.

He was also one of the top judges on Top Chef All-Stars (Top Chef, Season 8).

On the New York City episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern on August 6, 2007, Zimmern made a guest appearance, and Zimmern himself appeared as a guest on Bourdain's No Reservations on the same day. On the Travel Channel, Bourdain hosted a special, At the Table with Anthony Bourdain on October 20, 2008.

Bourdain appeared in an episode of TLC's reality show Miami Ink, in which artist Chris Garver tattooed a skull on his right shoulder, was on display. Bourdain, who said it was his fourth tattoo, said that one reason for the skull was to balance the ouroboros tattoo he had drawn on his opposite shoulder in Malaysia while filming Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.

He served as a consultant and writer for Treme, a television series.

In 2010, he appeared on Nick Jr.'s Yo Gabba Gabba! Dr. Tony, a retort of the movie Roadrunner, appeared in the film Roadrunner as Dr. Tony.

In 2011, he appeared on a cameo on an episode of The Simpsons titled "The Food Wife," in which Marge, Lisa, and Bart launch The Three Mouthkateers' food blog.

He appeared in a 2013 episode of the animated series Archer (S04E07), a parody of himself. In 2015, he appeared on "Snake Parts Unknown," a fictionalized version of himself on an episode of Sanjay and Craig.

A collection of short videos released on YouTube from 2015 to 2017. Bourdain hosted Raw Craft, a collection of short videos. Bourdain was on tour to visit many artisans who produce various craft items by hand, including iron skillets, suits, saxophones, and kitchen knives. William Grant & Sons created the series to advertise their Balvenie distillery's products.

Bourdain Books, Ecco Press's September 2011 publication line, will feature his own publishing line, Anthony Bourdain Books, which includes purchasing between three and five titles per year that "reflect his eclectic tastes." L.A. was one of the first books to be published by the imprint in 2013. Son: My Life, My City, My Food by Roy Choi, Tien Naughn, and Natasha Phan, Prophets of Smoked Meat by Daniel Vaughn, and Pain Don't Hurt by Mark Miller. Bourdain also announced plans to publish a book by Marilyn Hagerty.

"This will be a series of books for people with strong voices who are good at something and who speak with authority," he said of the collection. Others than a general interest for people who cook food and like food, this discerns nothing from this initial list. The ability to kick people in the head is just as convincing to us as well as the ability to vividly describe the situation. We are just as keen on crossing genres as we are excited about our first three writers. It's only from here that it gets weird."

HarperCollins announced that the publishing line would be shut down shortly after Bourdain's death.

He also produced and starred in Wasted!

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Awards and nominations

• Bourdain was named Food Writer of the Year in 2001 by Bon Appétit magazine for Kitchen Confidential.
• A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal was named Food Book of the Year in 2002 by the British Guild of Food Writers.
• The Beirut episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, which documented the experiences of Bourdain and his crew during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Programming in 2007.
• Bourdain's blog for the reality competition show Top Chef was nominated for a Webby Award for best Blog – Culture/Personal in 2008.
• In 2008, Bourdain was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America.
• In 2009 and 2011, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations won a Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming.
• In 2010, Bourdain was nominated for a Creative Arts Emmy for Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming.
• In 2012, Bourdain was awarded an Honorary Clio Award, which is given to individuals who are changing the world by encouraging people to think differently.
• In 2012, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations won the Critics' Choice Best Reality Series award.
• In 2013, 2014 and 2015, Bourdain was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program for The Taste.
• Each year from 2013 to 2016 & 2018, Bourdain won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series or Special for Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.
• In 2014, the 2013 season of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown won a Peabody Award, which was accepted by Bourdain.
• In December 2017, the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters in Culinary Arts honoris causa to Bourdain, who graduated from the CIA with an associate degree in 1978.
• Bourdain posthumously won a 2018 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series in partnership with Roads & Kingdoms.