Page 33 - 0609

Groton Daily Independent
Saturday, June 09, 2018 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 330 ~ 33 of 59
Traversing the globe meant visiting areas of conflict and also intense poverty, and Bourdain didn’t shy away from either. In “No Reservations” on the Travel Channel, he went to Haiti after the devastating earthquake in 2011, and reflected on his ambivalence at being there. “I’m there talking about local cui- sine, and that means I’m shoveling food into my face ... that a lot of those people can’t afford,” he said. And he described how his well-meaning efforts to feed locals around him led to chaos and “hungry kids being beaten with a stick.”
There was, of course, a more lighthearted side to his travels, including some wild and bizarre eating experiences. In Morocco, it was that roasted sheep’s testicle. In Canada, it was a raw seal’s eyeball. In Namibia, it was the wrong end of a warthog (he wound up with a parasite.) In Vietnam, it was the still- beating heart of a cobra that had just been sliced open.
Much closer to home — Bourdain lived in New York, when he wasn’t traveling — was a late-night visit to Waffle House in Charleston, South Carolina, described in poetic terms by Bourdain as “an irony-free zone where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts; where everybody regardless of race, creed, color or degree of inebriation is welcomed.” Sampling the pecan waffle drowning in butter and maple syrup, he exclaimed, “This is BETTER than French Laundry, man,” referring to the Napa Valley temple of high cuisine.
That clip was being widely shared on Friday, and fans were also flocking to Amazon, where at mid- afternoon, four of the six top-selling books were by Bourdain. “Kitchen Confidential” was No. 1.
In that acclaimed book, Bourdain, who born in New York City and raised in Leonia, New Jersey, candidly described his personal struggles, including drug use that led to his dropping out of Vassar College.
But he thrived in restaurant kitchens, and that work led him to the Culinary Institute of America, where he graduated in 1978. He eventually became executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in 1998. In the pref- ace to the latest edition of “Kitchen Confidential,” Bourdain wrote of his shock at the success of his book, which he managed to write by getting up at 5 a.m. before his kitchen shifts.
“The new celebrity chef culture is a remarkable and admittedly annoying phenomenon,” he wrote. “While it’s been nothing but good for business ... few people are less suited to be suddenly thrown into the public eye than chefs.”
Fellow celebrity chefs didn’t always gain Bourdain’s respect or praise. Many earned his unfettered scorn. Among them: Alice Waters, whose insistence on organic food he once described as “very Khmer Rouge.” He called Sandra Lee “pure evil,” and worse. He called New Orleans chef Emeril Lagasse “Ewok-like,” and Guy Fieri’s Times Square eatery, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, a “terror-dome.”
But Lagasse became his friend, and he tweeted Friday: “Tony was a great soul, a mentor, a friend, a father, and an incredible chef.” His friend Ripert, the famed chef of Le Bernardin, called him “an exceptional human being, so inspiring and generous, one of the great storytellers of our time who connected with so many.” Saul Montiel, executive chef at the Mexican restaurant Cantina Roof Top in Manhattan, called Bourdain “one of the few chefs that valued the work of Latinos in the kitchen.”
Countless more wrote of their shock and sadness. Some noted that Bourdain’s death came just days after the suicide of fashion designer Kate Spade, also a great shock to those who knew her. Bourdain’s own mother, Gladys Bourdain, a longtime editor at The New York Times, said she had no indication that her son might have been thinking of suicide.
“He is absolutely the last person in the world I would have ever dreamed would do something like this,” she told the Times. “He had everything. Success beyond his wildest dreams. Money beyond his wildest dreams.”
___
AP Writers Sylvie Corbet and Elaine Ganley in Paris, Hillel Italie and David Bauder in New York contrib- uted to this report.