A Tribute to Anthony Bourdain

On my About page, I wrote that my wanderlust has “exposed me to one common thread: no matter where my travels take me, food is found at the centre of every culture. The rituals of preparing and eating a meal provide social cohesion and, for travellers, they offer an invaluable glimpse into everyday life. It seems natural then to explore not just the world’s many tantalizing dishes, but the traditions that surround them and the ways in which they bring people together.”

I might as well attribute these words to Anthony Bourdain (who would have undoubtedly written them 100 times more eloquently) — the man who, through Kitchen Confidential, A Cook’s Tour, The Nasty Bits and his eye-opening TV shows, influenced how and why I travel. How I eat with near reckless abandon, with the knowledge that food is a window to the soul of a culture, destination and its people. How I connect with those geographically far and seemingly so different from me, and see the best, most beautiful in them.

Bourdain, a skilled interpreter of the intersectionality of food, history, politics, geography and culture, devoured and celebrated the world. He brought it into our homes with the magnificent breadth and depth of his storytelling. It was a gift devoid of Western appropriation and paternal arrogance, served up with his unique brand of grit, humour and unapologetic honesty.

He had a genuine desire to break barriers. He called on us to raise our fists and scream “f*** off!” at our fears of the foreign. He was fierce in his hunger to see for himself faraway places and the people who inhabit them as they really are through their struggles, triumphs and resilience. Really see them. Hear them. And give them a voice.

It may come as no surprise that Bourdain is one of the reasons I’ve travelled solo to regions many people wouldn’t want to step foot in. Without his wisdom, I likely would’ve missed out on one of my most memorable travel moments: being invited into the home of an Arab family for a meal within moments of meeting them on a street in volatile East Jerusalem.

It’s hard to fear people when we come face to face with them. When we do get close, we are humbled and fall a little more in love with the world.

But in the end, it seems, it was the world that became too much for Bourdain.

When asked in an interview what the hardest part of his job was that no one knew, he answered, “Loneliness, separation from my daughter, existential despair. I’m on the road about 250 days a year, and I stay in a lot of beautiful places and look out the window at a lot of beautiful views but I am usually alone.”

If we’ve lived with our own existential angst and have been on the road long enough, we intimately understand these words; it is one of the reasons I gave up my pursuit of long-term travel. We know fleeing to a far-flung country is no escape from the loneliness. It becomes our shadow on the white sand beaches of the Caribbean, under the starry night sky in the Jordanian desert, even in the cheerful pubs of Ireland no matter how much National Geographic-worthy scenery we’re blessed to see or how many friendships we forge on our journey.

Some of us know the ambivalence too, the all-too-familiar anguish and perplexing comfort of the struggle that we hope hasn’t taken up permanent residence in our lives. Either way, it’s a part of our personal landscapes today and, when we carry that burden across the world from one locale to another, it weighs more heavily on us.

Bourdain exposed the dark underbelly of the restaurant industry and his previous life as a chef. Long-term travel, if we are to be real, has its own. Travel is many things, infinitely powerful in its potential as an instrument for transformation, but no antidote in itself for the turmoil of our past or of seeing, experiencing and feeling too much.

The cruel irony is that Bourdain, the brilliant explorer and communicator of the human condition was, perhaps, too human.

RIP, Anthony Bourdain, the man who brought us the world.

Let us live his legacy: travel and eat with his reverence, deep curiosity and unbridled passion wherever we may go.