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We met him just one year ago, for an interview and a chat about the highs and lows of travelling. Anthony Bourdain, who passed away today, was a chef and an author, but overall a story teller and all-round food enthusiast.
Here, we want to paint a portrait using his own words gathered from his most celebrated work, Kitchen Confidential, which first launched his talent into the public eye almost two decades ago, and what he said to us.
From Kitchen Confidential
FOOD IS GOOD
"… It was on a family vacation to Europe, on the Queen Mary, in the cabin-class dining room... all of us excited about our first transatlantic voyage, our first trip to my father's ancestral homeland, France.
It was the soup.
It was cold.
... this was the first food i really noticed. it was the first food i enjoyed and, more important, remembered enjoying. I asked our patient british waiter what this delightfully cool, tasty liquid was. 'Vichyssoise,' came the reply...
I remember everything about the experience: the way our waiter ladled it from a silver tureen into my bowl, the crunch of tiny chopped chives he spooned on as garnish, the rich, creamy taste of leek and potato, the pleasurable shock, the surprise that it was cold.
I don't remember much else about the passage across the Atlantic."
Foodie is a perfectly reasonable person who enjoys and pays attention to where the good stuff is.
Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown - CNN
THE BEGINNING
"I graduated CIA, knocked around Europe, worked some famous two-star joints in the city-damn good ones, too. I'm not some embittered hash-slinger out to slag off my more successful peers (though I will when the opportunity presents itself). I'm usually the guy they call in to some high-profile operation when the first chef turns out to be a psychopath, or a mean, megalomaniacal drunk."
Line cooks are the heroes.
Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential
From Fine Dining Lovers
TRAVELLING
I see how hard people work in so many places in the world to make dinner, to get the ingredients for dinner, how much they can do with very little, how good food can be even when you have almost nothing. So, it’s given me an appreciation, a richer, deeper appreciation of food, and a less tolerant attitude towards waste.
I think you become a better person by travelling, and are more likely to empathise with other people. But I don’t think it’s necessary.
Anthony Bourdain, Fine Dining Lovers
BEST MEALS
The full incredible meal at The Bocuse in France with my hero, Paul Bocuse, with him right there serving me the greatest hits of his long and glorious career, that’s a meal where you could literally see me tearing up on camera.
Magic moments are often about timing and not the food.
Anthony Bourdain, Fine Dining Lovers
FUTURE
I'm just going to keep going, doing what I'm doing, as long as I can get away with it.
