Bourdain: Eternal Traveler

"The journey is part of the experience - an expression of the seriousness of one's intent. One doesn't take the A train to Mecca."

Anthony Bourdain is dead. He traveled and wrote. He traveled and ate. He traveled and listened. He went to places most regular people wouldn’t go even on a dare: Congo, Libya, Tanzania, Colombia, Iran. He traveled to over 80 countries. And he won countless awards.

Perhaps his greatest gift was his easy way with people. Never judgmental or condescending. Always willing to try something new; always willing to sit down around a plate of food, beer in hand, lean back and listen. He defined what each traveler ought to strive to be: open-hearted and open-minded.

For some, a holiday is a chance to lounge around with other holiday-goers, take a dip in the pool, eat breakfast, lunch and dinner within the cozy confines of a safe and secure hotel. For Bourdain, the only way to travel seemed to be on the edges. He ate like the locals. He embraced delicacies, no matter how “exotic” or unfamiliar. He self-admittedly risked his own health (on more than one occasion), eating unsanitary food. I guess he though it was better to fall ill than to be rude. Better to say you did than live your life regretting you refused.

In 2013, Bourdain won a Peabody Award. In his short acceptance speech he provided a glimpse into what made him magic and so magnetic: “We ask very simple questions: What makes you happy? What do you eat? What do you like to cook?” And then, he would listen.

Some say what makes a gifted storyteller a gifted storyteller is imagination, ingenuity, creative prowess; the ability to spiral words into a uniquely cohesive whole. I think in Bourdain’s case, he stripped the process down to its barest essentials. He let people tell their own stories with the presumption that everyone has a story worthy of being heard. I don’t recall him ever cutting an interviewee off, or getting brash or upset with a response. There was always room for more.

While the premise behind Bourdain’s success was his upbringing in the culinary industry, I think he used food as a conduit. He used food as a means to enter into conversation. He used it to step into someone else’s culture, to have talks about heady matters over a bowl of tripe and a cold pint. By immersing himself in culinary traditions, he was granted access into cultural experiences.

For as much as Bourdain made it seem oh so simple to accept the world, warts and all, I suspect he had a difficult time accepting himself. As a chef in his twenties and thirties, he battled heroin and cocaine addiction. He was granted a reprieve and seemed to have turned himself around. He got re-married, started doing Jiu-Jitsu. He had a daughter who by all accounts, he adored. I once read an article in which Bourdain spoke of the joys of packing lunch for his little girl. He was writing a new story for himself, that of a man in his fifties learning to be a father and loving every second of it.

But on Friday, the story came to an abrupt close. Bourdain’s friend and fellow chef, Eric Rippert, found him hanging in a hotel room in France. He was 61 years old.