by Frankie Blake Greenslade
Photos by David Holloway
Trigger warning for discussions of suicide.
Having worked in hospitality for four months over the summer, I found a new appreciation and simultaneous cynicism towards restaurants and, more notably, the chefs in the kitchen. Working with them is just as you’d expect: everything is the fault of the front of staff (a criticism sometimes deserved), and their love language is seemingly the art of contradiction where the chef still cooks your break food after having chewed you out on the pass.
Even so, I understood the constant contradictions at play, where the stress of a busy shift on top of having to deal with a 20-year-old girl is probably warranted. It was after this where I appreciated not only how restaurants work in practice, but how they can encompass someone’s entire livelihood. It’s why Anthony Bourdain has become even more compelling to me as, like many other people on this planet, I felt like I understood his psyche.
Anthony Bourdain was a chef with a writing dream in the 90s but ended up becoming a vessel of the human experience. Through his many television series (A Cook’s Tour, 2002–2003; No Reservations, 2005–2012; The Layover, 2011–2013; Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, 2013–2018) and books including Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000), he seemingly explored the world on our behalf and mastered the art of truth and storytelling.
Bourdain represented ideas of total authenticity, where his blunt and interesting persona had a charismatic charm that no one has since been able to replicate. We relied on him to tell us the truth of the world and how to live authentically, an idea which seemed detached from the mundane everyday. His dinner with President Obama in an episode aired in May 2016 where they sat down for bún chả in Hanoi, Vietnam, became one of the most unforgettable moments in food television, simply representing real food and real conversation.
It’s no wonder that Bourdain’s death by suicide had a significant impact on people worldwide. He’d touched the hearts and minds of the many in small but profound ways, and his act of suicide led to the media and the public to wonder the simple question: why? His brother, Chris Bourdain, remarked after Anthony’s death that “One of the unfortunate things about somebody who obviously has some tragic part to them is, does that undermine or somehow diminish the message they were trying to get out there?
“But I don’t have an answer, I hope not.”
In ways, Bourdain’s day-to-day of travelling across the world, eating delightful food and having interesting conversations with people from a diverse range of backgrounds represents the romanticised, idealised life many dream for.
And unlike many ‘influencers’ today, Bourdain wasn’t telling us where to go or what to eat per se, he was showing us how to live by implementing the simple philosophy of total authenticity which anyone anywhere could put to the test: “If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody.
“Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.”
His death fundamentally questioned this idea of what Bourdain represented in the hearts and minds of the public, leading to documentaries such as Roadrunner (2021) and a number of memoirs where people who both knew and didn’t know him attempted to understand his suicide. Many delved into his previous addiction, microanalysing moments from his television series and attempted to craft a story of his life – one which can seemingly justify his suicide.
It’s here when attempts to understand Bourdain fall flat. In fact, viewing him as “the most interesting person in the world”, as remarked posthumously by GQ, deliberately detaches him from his humanity, his flaws and his authenticity. There is no secret to his death, no blaming of his ex-spouse as many suggested; instead Anthony Bourdain’s suicide is simply a testament to the mental health struggles which so many people themselves go through. What killed him is void of a narrative and attempting to understand his death through the eyes of a film or a memoir is redundant to what he himself represented: the art of humanity.
In a dream he describes in Parts Unknown Season 8, Episode 3 set in Buenos Aires, he recounts how he is stuck in a “vast old Victorian hotel with endless rooms and hallways”, unable to check out. He details being unable to remember where home is, a suggestion that the ironic dream life many attached to his persona is actually much more emotionally draining than the audience initially thought. This idea, though, of never totally being satisfied or content is perhaps the most human thing of all, where no matter how far you travel, life will continue to humble you.
This is what I find most compelling about Anthony Bourdain: his suggestion that we will never be able to understand the human experience in its entirety, but we should still open ourselves up to listen and change in a desperate attempt to understand the world around us even just a little bit better. His emphasis and genuine willingness to uplift the voices of the underrepresented through his travels across the world is what made this as clear as day, and as remarked by Anthony himself, “Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity.
“Perhaps wisdom…is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go”.
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