Drinking In The Afternoon: Remembering Anthony Bourdain
It was once said that this is the land of the free. There is, I believe, a statue out there in the harbor, with something written on it about “Give me your hungry…your oppressed…give me pretty much everybody”-that’s the way I remember it, anyway. The idea of America is a mutt-culture, isn’t it? Who the hell is America if not everybody else? We are-and should be-a big, messy, anarchistic polyglot of dialects and accents and different skin tones… — Anthony Bourdain, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones
In a world divided by race and authority, conquered and closed down by pandemic, Anthony Bourdain’s presence is missed more than ever.
That today marks the two year anniversary of Bourdain’s passing barely seems plausible. That he is no longer with us still doesn’t feel real, such is the indelible legacy he left behind — an all-encompassing mantra of adventure as necessity and food as community.
Through his books and documentaries, Bourdain seemed to learn just as much as he taught. His compulsion to thrust himself into unfamiliar situations enlightening him and, by proxy, his readers and viewers. What he believed in ‘Kitchen Confidential’ was not what he necessarily believed by ‘Medium Raw’ and the man we witnessed finding his feet among the wider world in ‘A Cook’s Tour’ was almost an infant in comparison to the towering explorer who guided us through ‘Parts Unknown’. As he grew, so did we.
As an advocate for travel and tolerance, it’s impossible to picture Bourdain anywhere else but on the frontlines of the battles against systemic racism and Covid-19. Before he took his own life in a Strasbourg hotel, the former Les Halles hellraiser had thrown every single ounce of his weight behind the Me Too movement. He spent his entire life working shoulder-to-shoulder in kitchens with people of colour, immigrants and refugees, then undertook an almost two-decade long circumnavigation of the globe to understand as much of their heritages, their struggles and their cultures as possible. He compelled his audience to open their minds, to not wince at ‘mystery meat’ from a back alley taqueria or a dive bar’s dirty water hot dogs. These establishments, after all, would provide a deeper, more significant learning experience than the rigidity of tour guides and oversaturated landmarks. And Bourdain’s proclivity for the road less traveled opened up the lesser knowns to newfound custom and acclaim.
With the world’s restaurant industry in tatters, staring at a future irrevocably altered by the Coronavirus pandemic, it is Bourdain’s championing of the independent daredevils and their labours of love that is so sorely missed right now. When furloughs are being dished out by even the most gargantuan of chain restaurants, what hope do the ‘mom & pop’s’ have? Beloved neighbourhood pubs could easily disappear, ripping the heart and soul out of local communities, who have bonded together across their bars and over their tables for generations. The curry houses, the chippies, the ramen joints, the pizza parlours, the karaoke bars, the subterranean Chinatown supermarkets — all could be permanent victims of this pandemic. No one would give them a bigger voice than Bourdain.
Of course, there are the David Changs, the Eddie Huangs and the Phil Rosenthals who strive to bind the world together with culinary experiences, to develop understandings over plates and bowls of something delicious. They are all, of course, following the trail blazed so wonderfully by the skyscraping New Yorker, and deserve an enormous amount of applause for their works on Netflix and Vice. Between ‘Ugly, Delicious’, ‘Huang’s World’ and ‘Somebody Feed Phil’ there is the unmistakable energy you simply cannot ignore, that is derived from Bourdain’s adventures across nine seasons of ‘No Reservations’ and 12 of ‘Parts Unknown’. It’s not the food that is the main event. It’s the people. It’s the history. It’s the lack of comfort zones.
Bourdain tapped into restaurants and bars as safe spaces. Where better to break bread with a perfect stranger than the place they have enjoyed so many of their happiest memories? His approach allowed him to understand the cultures behind the food he was eating, the journey that had preceded a plate of kai yaang tua, a bowl of kontomire stew or a sizzling skewer of yakitori.
He taught us about food — but more importantly, about its ability to bring us together. To make us a little less afraid of the unknown. We’ll miss him. — Barack Obama on Anthony Bourdain
As hundreds of thousands of us across the world march and protest in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, seeking to end hundreds of years worth of oppression, many of us understand that black history is a knowledge of which we are in woefully short supply. We know we must learn. We know we must confront the atrocities of our nations’ collective pasts and ensure that equality isn’t merely a pipe dream any more. We know we must listen. Anthony Bourdain became an expert in this level of understanding. He learned from those afflicted by these atrocities, he saw first hand the suffering millions have endured, whether it be a shanty town in Haiti, a warzone in Beirut or communities closer to his own home, such as marginalised and forgotten about areas of Detroit, Louisiana and the south side of Chicago.
Such a devotion to confronting difficult truths is as important now as it ever was. Anthony Bourdain traversed the globe, confronting himself with the results of dictatorships and crippling socio-economic disparity brought about by governments who simply don’t care about the black, the foreign or the poor. He would have now been shining a light on the bar owners and restauranteurs facing an uncertain future, on the chefs who might not be able to make rent next month, on the societies brought to their knees by a killer virus that the two most developed nations in the world and all their wealth have been unable to contain or control out of sheer arrogance and disdain for the vulnerable.
There’s something wonderful about drinking in the afternoon. A not-too-cold pint, absolutely alone at the bar — even in this fake-ass Irish pub. — Anthony Bourdain, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook
So, when the times comes where we can safely do so once more, settle down at a quiet bar, wherever that might be, preferably at around three in the afternoon, and knock one back for Anthony Bourdain. We miss him now more than ever.
