The Bear wouldn’t exist if not for Bourdain

Five years ago, the chef that we all felt we knew personally and loved, Anthony Bourdain, took his own life. In response, and to mark his legacy in a positive way, Bourdain’s friends Eric Ripert and David Chang started to celebrate Bourdain’s birthday on June 25 and declared it, Bourdain Day. It caught on, and on this day every year we raise a glass to the intrepid chef, writer, and documentarian.

It’s worth reflecting on what Bourdain’s legacy is. He wasn’t the first chef to open the doors to what goes on in the kitchen and he wasn’t the first travel journalist to highlight lesser-known destinations. But he had a unique voice and an irreverent, singularly New York way of cutting through the noise, speaking the truth as he saw it and doing it eloquently. He was the chef who had seen it all and lived to tell the tales. He never made a secret of his struggles with addiction.

It all proved to connect him with the public at large in a way that is rare in public life. He was authentic and genuine, for good and for bad, take him or leave him. The public choose to take him and he could do no wrong in their eyes.

Now five years later, his light seems undimmed. Five years is a long time to process grief and loss. Privately we may never get over the loss of a loved one, but often the death of public figures begins to fade over time, and their presence is felt less and less, immortalised in jaded iconography that becomes a parody of itself.

One possible place to still really feel Bourdain’s presence and to see the real impact of his work is in the FX television series The Bear. There may be a generation enthralled with the show and the trails of Carmy, Sydney, et al. having never read Kitchen Confidential or seen an episode of No Reservations, and yet we can say The Bear wouldn’t exist without Anthony Bourdain.

The references are there if you look at them—in the disparate oddball group of chefs, in the meeting of corner shop deli tradition and fine-dining aspirations, in the real and gritty atmosphere of the city’s restaurant scene and the way the characters find hope and support by following a dream together. It all recalls Bourdain’s writing.

In episode one, season two, we get a glimpse of Bourdain as they are taking down signed celebrity photographs off the wall of The Beef. The camera lingers on a signed picture of Bourdain, and they hesitate for a second as the take it carefully down.

But probably the most significant reference to Bourdain in The Bear must be the centrally felt, yet invisible presence of Carmy’s brother Mike. The love for Mike permeates all activity in the restaurant, the grief and the loss felt by Carmy can only be processed in the following of a culinary dream. For me, this is Bourdain, an invisible presence, reminding us to roll our sleeves up and get peeling those shallots in time for service, but reminding us to take care of each other, because service is battleground.

Celebrity chefs come and go, shine for a brief few years, and are then forgotten about, as a new generation take their place. Few have changed the industry the way Bourdain has. He opened the kitchen to the world, but he also opened the world to the kitchen, allowing people to see chefs and cooking in a different way. Even if Bourdain eventually came to regret how he emboldened the trope of the emotionally wrecked chef, those who work in the industry, indeed all of us owe him a debt of gratitude for bringing it to light in the first place.

And on June 25 we remember Bourdain and the way he touched our lives, whether we knew him personally or not. Even in the way that Bourdain checked out, it forced us to look at the things we wanted to avoid. It still does. There is a whole new world of talking about mental health, of sharing our struggles and asking for help, you can trace the line from that directly back to Bourdain. For that we are grateful, for that we are here today, to raise a glass to the chef that we all loved and miss every day.