Anthony Bourdain

 ( 1956 Births ) 

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

In 1998, Bourdain became an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles. Based in Manhattan, at the time the brand had additional restaurants in Miami; Washington, D.C.; and Tokyo. Bourdain remained an executive chef there for many years and even when no longer formally employed at Les Halles, he maintained a relationship with the restaurant, which described him in January 2014 as their "chef at large". Les Halles closed in 2017 after filing for bankruptcy.

His first book, a culinary mystery called Bone in the Throat, was published in 1995. He paid for his own book tour, but he did not find success. His second mystery book, Gone Bamboo, also performed poorly in sales. , a 2000 New York Times bestseller, was an expansion of his 1999 New Yorker article "Don't Eat Before Reading This".

The acclaim surrounding Bourdain's memoir Kitchen Confidential led to an offer by the Food Network for him to host his own food and world-travel show, A Cook's Tour, which premiered in January 2002. It ran for 35 episodes, through 2003.

In July 2005, he premiered a new, somewhat similar television series, , on the Travel Channel. As a further result of the immense popularity of Kitchen Confidential, the Fox sitcom Kitchen Confidential aired in 2005, in which the character Jack Bourdain is based loosely on Anthony Bourdain's biography and persona.

In July 2006, he and his crew were in Beirut filming an episode of No Reservations when the Israel–Lebanon conflict broke out unexpectedly after the crew had filmed only a few hours of footage. His producers compiled behind-the-scenes footage of him and his production staff, including not only their initial attempts to film the episode, but also their firsthand encounters with Hezbollah supporters, their days of waiting for news with other expatriates in a Beirut hotel, and their eventual escape aided by a fixer (unseen in the footage), whom Bourdain dubbed Mr. Wolf after Harvey Keitel's character in Pulp Fiction. Bourdain and his crew were finally evacuated with other American citizens, on the morning of July 20, by the United States Marine Corps. The Beirut No Reservations episode, which aired on August 21, 2006, was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2007.

In July 2011, the Travel Channel announced adding a second one-hour, 10-episode Bourdain show to be titled The Layover, which premiered November 21, 2011. Each episode featured an exploration of a city that can be undertaken within an air travel layover of 24 to 48 hours. The series ran for 20 episodes, through February 2013. Bourdain executive produced a similar show hosted by celebrities called The Getaway, which lasted two seasons on Esquire Network.

In May 2012, Bourdain announced that he was leaving the Travel Channel. In December, he explained on his blog that his departure was due to his frustration with the channel's new ownership using his voice and image to make it seem as if he were endorsing a car brand, and the channel's creating three "special episodes" consisting solely of clips from the seven official episodes of that season. He went on to host for CNN. The program focused on other cuisines, cultures and politics and premiered on April 14, 2013.

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

Between 2012 and 2017, he served as narrator and executive producer for several episodes of the award-winning PBS series The Mind of a Chef; it aired on the last months of each year. The series moved from PBS to Facebook Watch in 2017.

From 2013 to 2015, Bourdain was an executive producer and appeared as a judge and mentor in ABC's cooking-competition show The Taste. He earned an Emmy nomination for each season.

Bourdain appeared five times as guest judge on Bravo's Top Chef reality cooking competition program. He was also one of the main judges on Top Chef All-Stars ( Top Chef, Season 8). He made a guest appearance on the August 6, 2007, New York City episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, and Andrew Zimmern himself appeared as a guest on the New York City episode of Bourdain's No Reservations airing the same day. On October 20, 2008, Bourdain hosted a special, At the Table with Anthony Bourdain, on the Travel Channel.

In 2011, he voiced himself in a cameo on an episode of The Simpsons titled "The Food Wife", in which Marge, Lisa, and Bart start a food blog called The Three Mouthkateers.

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

From 2015 to 2017, Bourdain hosted Raw Craft, a series of short videos released on YouTube. The series followed Bourdain as he visited various artisans who produce various craft items by hand, including iron skillets, suits, saxophones, and kitchen knives. The series was produced by William Grant & Sons to promote their Balvenie distillery's products.

In describing the line, he said, "This will be a line of books for people with strong voices who are at something—who speak with authority. Discern nothing from this initial list—other than a general affection for people who cook food and like food. The ability to kick people in the head is just as compelling to us—as long as that's coupled with an ability to vividly describe the experience. We are just as intent on crossing genres as we are enthusiastic about our first three authors. It only gets weirder from here."

Shortly after Bourdain's death, HarperCollins announced that the publishing line would be shut down after the remaining works under contract were published.

Bourdain was known for consuming exotic local specialty dishes, having eaten black-colored called mustamakkara () in Finland AL: Julkkiskokki ahmaisi puoli kiloa mustaamakkaraa (in Finnish) IS: Anthony Bourdain rakastui Suomen vierailullaan mielipiteitä jakavaan perinneruokaan: "Good stuff!" (in Finnish) and also "Lamb fries in Morocco, ant eggs in Puebla, a raw seal eyeball as part of a traditional Inuit seal hunt, and an entire cobra—beating heart, blood, bile, and meat—in Vietnam". Bourdain was quoted as saying that a Chicken McNugget was the most disgusting thing he ever ate, but he was fond of Popeyes chicken. He also declared that the unwashed warthog rectum he ate in Namibia , episode 3.4: "Namibia"; January 22, 2007 was "the worst meal of his life", along with the fermented shark he ate in Iceland.

Bourdain was noted for his put-downs of such as Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Sandra Lee, and Rachael Ray, and appeared irritated by both the overt commercialism of the celebrity cooking industry and its lack of culinary authenticity. He voiced a "serious disdain for food demigods like Alan Richman, Alice Waters, and Alain Ducasse". Bourdain recognized the irony of his transformation into a celebrity chef and began to qualify his insults; in the 2007 New Orleans episode of No Reservations, he reconciled with Emeril Lagasse, whom he had previously disparaged in Kitchen Confidential. He later wrote more favorably of Lagasse in the preface of the 2013 edition. , episode 4.5: "New Orleans"; February 4, 2008 He was outspoken in his praise for chefs he admired, particularly Ferran Adrià, Juan Mari Arzak, Fergus Henderson, José Andrés, Thomas Keller, Martin Picard, Éric Ripert, and Marco Pierre White, as well as his former protégé and colleagues at Brasserie Les Halles., episode 4.10: "Into the Fire"; March 10, 2008 He spoke very highly of Julia Child's influence on him.

Bourdain was known for his sarcastic comments about vegan and vegetarian activists, considering their lifestyle "rude" to the inhabitants of many countries he visited. He considered vegetarianism, except in the case of religious exemptions, a "First World luxury". However, he also believed that Americans eat too much meat, and admired vegetarians and vegans who put aside their beliefs when visiting different cultures in order to be respectful of their hosts.

Bourdain's book The Nasty Bits is dedicated to "Joey Ramone, Johnny Ramone, and Dee Dee" of the Ramones. He declared fond appreciation for their music, as well as that of other early punk bands such as Dead Boys and The Voidoids. He said that the playing of music by Billy Joel, Elton John, or Grateful Dead in his kitchen was grounds for firing. Joel was a fan of Bourdain's, and visited the restaurant.

On No Reservations and Parts Unknown, he dined with and interviewed many musicians, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, with a special focus on glam and various rockers such as Alice Cooper, David Johansen, Marky Ramone, and Iggy Pop. He featured contemporary band Queens of the Stone Age on No Reservations several times, and they composed and performed the theme song for Parts Unknown.

On April 20, 2007, he married Ottavia Busia, who later became a mixed martial artist. The couple's daughter, Ariane, was born in 2007. Bourdain said having to be away from his family for 250 days a year working on his television shows put a strain on the relationship. Busia appeared in several episodes of , notably the ones in Tuscany, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Naples, and her birthplace of Sardinia. The couple separated in 2016.

Bourdain met Italian actress Asia Argento in 2016 while filming the . In October 2017, Argento said in an article in The New Yorker that she had been sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein in the 1990s. After being criticized for her account in Italian media and politics, Argento moved to Germany to escape what she described as a culture of "victim blaming" in Italy. Argento delivered a speech on May 20, 2018, following the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, calling the festival Weinstein's "hunting ground" and alleging that she was raped by Weinstein in Cannes when she was 21. She added, "And even tonight, sitting among you, there are those who still have to be held accountable for their conduct against women." Bourdain supported her during that period. On June 3, 2018, Bourdain tweeted a video where the team was celebrating during the production of the show with Argento as director, him and Chris Doyle. In August 2018, Argento said that Bourdain handled the payment of $380,000 to Jimmy Bennett, who had accused Argento of sexually assaulting him. She stated the payment by Bourdain was one he "personally undertook to help Bennett economically, upon the condition that we would no longer suffer any further intrusions in our life.”

Bourdain practiced the martial art Brazilian jiu-jitsu, earning a blue belt in August 2015. He won gold at the IBJJF New York Spring International Open Championship in 2016, in the Middleweight Master 5 (age 51 and older) division.

Bourdain was known to be a heavy smoker. In a nod to Bourdain's two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, Thomas Keller once served him a 20-course tasting menu which included a mid-meal "coffee and cigarette", a coffee custard infused with tobacco with a foie gras mousse.

A former user of cocaine and heroin, Bourdain wrote in Kitchen Confidential of his experience in a SoHo restaurant in 1981, where he and his friends were often high. Bourdain said drugs influenced his decisions and that he would send a Busser to Alphabet City to obtain cannabis, methaqualone, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, secobarbital, tuinal, amphetamine, codeine and heroin.

Bourdain's body bore no signs of violence and the suicide appeared to be an impulsive act. Rocquigny du Fayel disclosed that Bourdain's toxicology results were negative for narcotics, showing only a trace of a therapeutic non-narcotic medication. Bourdain's body was cremation in France on June 13, 2018, and his ashes were returned to the United States two days later then given to his brother Christopher.

Following the news of Bourdain's death, various public figures expressed condolences. Among them were fellow chefs Andrew Zimmern and Gordon Ramsay, former astronaut Scott Kelly, and then-U.S. president Donald Trump. CNN issued a statement, saying that Bourdain's "talents never ceased to amaze us and we will miss him very much." Former U.S. president Barack Obama, who dined with Bourdain in Vietnam on Parts Unknown, wrote on Twitter: "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." On the day of Bourdain's death, CNN aired Remembering Anthony Bourdain, a tribute program.

In the days following Bourdain's death, fans gathered to pay tribute to him outside his former place of employment, Brasserie Les Halles (which had closed down the previous year). Cooks and restaurant owners held gatherings, tribute dinners, and memorials, and donated the net revenue from these events to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

In August 2018, CNN announced a final, posthumous season of Parts Unknown. Its remaining episodes were completed using narration and additional interviews from featured guests with the season including two retrospective episodes paying tribute to the series and to Bourdain's legacy.

In June 2019, Éric Ripert and José Andrés proclaimed the first annual Bourdain Day as a tribute to Bourdain. That month, the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) established a scholarship in Bourdain's honor.

A collection of Bourdain's personal items were sold at auction in October 2019, raising $1.8 million, part of which went to support the Anthony Bourdain Legacy Scholarship at his alma mater, the Culinary Institute of America. The remainder went to his family. His custom-made Bob Kramer Steel and Meteorite Chef's Knife sold for the highest price, a record $231,250.

In June 2021, a documentary film directed by Morgan Neville and produced by CNN Films and HBO Max titled , had its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was released by Focus Features on July 16, 2021.

In October 2022, , an unauthorized biography of Bourdain, was published.

In August 2024, a biopic of Bourdain titled Tony was announced to be in the works with A24 in negotiations to acquire the film and Dominic Sessa attached to star as Bourdain.

Bourdain advocated for communicating the value of traditional or peasant foods, including all of the offal and unused animal parts not usually eaten by affluent 21st-century Americans.Bourdain, Anthony (2006). The Nasty Bits. New York: Bloomsbury. He also praised the quality of freshly prepared street food in other countries—especially developing countries—compared to fast-food chains in the U.S.Bourdain, Anthony (2001). . New York: Bloomsbury. Regarding Western moral criticism of cuisine in developing countries, Bourdain stated: "Let's call this criticism what it is: racism. There are a lot of practices from the developing world that I find personally repellent, from my privileged Western point of view. But I don't feel like I have such a moral high ground that I can walk around lecturing people in developing nations on how they should live their lives."

With regard to criticism of the Chinese, Bourdain stated: "The way in which people dismiss whole centuries-old cultures—often older than their own and usually non-white—with just utter contempt aggravates me. People who suggest I shouldn't go to a country like China, look at or film it, because some people eat dog there, I find that racist, frankly. Understand people first: their economic, living situation." Regarding the myth that monosodium glutamate in Chinese food is unhealthy, Bourdain said: "It's a lie. You know what causes Chinese restaurant syndrome? Racism. 'Ooh I have a headache; it must have been the Chinese guy.

In an acceptance speech for an award given by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Bourdain stated, "The world has visited many terrible things on the Palestinian people, none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity." He opened the episode of Parts Unknown on Jerusalem with the prediction that "By the end of this hour, I'll be seen by many as a terrorist sympathizer, a Zionist tool, a self-hating Jew, an apologist for American imperialism, an Orientalist, socialist, a fascist, CIA agent, and worse."

He championed industrious Spanish-speaking immigrants—from Mexico, Ecuador, and other Central and South American countries—who are cooks and chefs in many United States restaurants, including upscale establishments, regardless of cuisine.Master chef Douglas Rodriguez, on the July 8, 2009 episode of Top Chef Masters, stated that 60% of restaurant kitchen workers in the U.S. are Latinos. He considered them talented chefs and invaluable cooks, underpaid and unrecognized even though they have become the backbone of the U.S. restaurant industry.