Anthony Bourdain Biography

Anthony Michael "Tony" Bourdain (born June 25, 1956) is an American chef, author, and television personality. He is well known for his 2000 book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, and is the host of Travel Channel's culinary and cultural adventure programs Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and The Layover.

A 1978 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of numerous professional kitchens, Bourdain was a chef-at-large, whose home base was Brasserie Les Halles, New York.

Early life and family

Anthony Bourdain was born in New York City, to Gladys and Pierre Bourdain (d. 1987). He grew up in Leonia, New Jersey. Bourdain's paternal grandparents were French; his paternal grandfather emigrated from Arcachon to New York following World War I. Bourdain's mother worked for The New York Times as a staff editor. Bourdain graduated from Englewood School for Boys in 1973 and attended Vassar College before dropping out after two years; he graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978.

Bourdain married his high school girlfriend, Nancy Putkoski, in the 1980s. They remained together for two decades before divorcing; Bourdain has cited the irrevocable changes that come from traveling widely as the cause of the split. He resides with his second wife, Ottavia Busia, whom he wed on April 20, 2007. Together, they have a daughter, Ariane, born on April 9, 2007. Busia has appeared in several episodes of No Reservations: notably the episode on Sardinia, her birthplace; the Tuscany episode, in which she plays a disgruntled Italian diner; the Rome episode; the Naples episode; and the Rio de Janeiro episode, wherein she displays her skills in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Culinary training and career

In Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain describes how his love of food was kindled in France, when he tried his first oyster on an oyster fisherman's boat as a youth, while on a family vacation. Later, while attending Vassar College, he worked in the seafood restaurants of Provincetown, Massachusetts, which sparked his decision to pursue cooking as a career. Bourdain graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978, and went on to run various restaurant kitchens in New York City - including the Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue, and Sullivan's - culminating in the position of executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, beginning in 1998. Brasserie Les Halles is based in Manhattan, with additional locations in Miami and, at the time of Bourdain's tenure, Washington, D.C. and Tokyo, Japan.

Media career

Writing

Bourdain gained immediate popularity from his 2000 New York Times bestselling book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, an outgrowth of his now-famous article in The New Yorker called "Don't Eat Before Reading This." The book is a witty and rambunctious exposé of the hidden and darker side of the culinary world, and is a memoir of Bourdain's professional life as well.

Bourdain subsequently wrote two more New York Times bestselling nonfiction books: A Cook's Tour (2001), an exotic account of his food and travel exploits across the world, written in conjunction with his first television series; and The Nasty Bits (2006), another collection of exotic, provocative, and humorous anecdotes and essays mainly centered on food. Bourdain's additional books include Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook; the culinary mysteries Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo; a hypothetical historical investigation, Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical; and No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach. His latest book, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, the sequel to Kitchen Confidential, was published in 2010.

Bourdain's articles and essays have appeared many places, including in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Times, Los Angeles Times, The Observer, Gourmet, Maxim, Esquire (UK), Scotland on Sunday, The Face, Food Arts, Limb by Limb, BlackBook, The Independent, Best Life, the Financial Times, and Town & Country. On the Internet, Bourdain's blog for Season 3 of Top Chef was nominated for a Webby Award for best Blog - Cultural/Personal in 2008.

In 2012, Bourdain co-wrote the original graphic novel Get Jiro! for DC Comics/Vertigo along with Joel Rose with art by Langdon Foss.

Television

The acclaim surrounding Bourdain's memoir, Kitchen Confidential, led to an offer by the Food Network to host his own food and world-travel show, A Cook's Tour, which premiered in January 2002. In July 2005, he premiered a new, somewhat similar television series, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, on the Travel Channel. As a further result of the immense popularity of Kitchen Confidential, the Fox sitcom Kitchen Confidential aired in 2005, in which the character "Jack Bourdain" is based loosely on the biography and persona of Anthony Bourdain.

In July 2006, Bourdain was in Beirut filming an episode of No Reservations when the Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out. Bourdain and his crew were evacuated with other American citizens on the morning of July 20 by the United States Marines. Because of the unexpected conflict only a few hours of footage were available from the first restaurant on their agenda. Bourdain's producers compiled the Beirut footage into a No Reservations episode which aired on August 21, 2006. Uncharacteristically, the episode included footage of both Bourdain and his production staff, and included not only their initial attempts to film the episode, but also their firsthand encounters with Hezbollah supporters, their days of waiting for news with other expatriates in a Beirut hotel, and their eventual escape aided by a "cleaner" (unseen in the footage), whom Bourdain dubbed "Mr. Wolf" after the character portrayed by Harvey Keitel in the movie, Pulp Fiction. The episode was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2007.

Bourdain has appeared five times as guest judge on Bravo's Top Chef reality cooking competition program: first in the November 2006 "Thanksgiving" episode of Season 2; and then again in June 2007 in the first episode of Season 3, judging the "exotic surf and turf" competition featuring ingredients including abalone, alligator, black chicken, geoduck and eel. His third appearance was also in Season 3, as an expert on air travel, judging the competitors' airplane meals. Bourdain also wrote weekly blog commentaries for many of the Season 3 episodes, filling in as a guest blogger while Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio was busy opening a new restaurant. Bourdain next appeared as a guest judge for the opening episode of Season 4, in which pairs of chefs competed head-to-head in the preparation of various classic dishes, and again in the Season 4 Restaurant Wars episode, temporarily taking the place of head judge Tom Colicchio, who was at a charity event. He is also one of the main judges on Top Chef All-Stars (Top Chef, Season 8).

Bourdain appeared in an episode of TLC's reality show Miami Ink, which aired August 28, 2006. Artist Chris Garver tattooed a skull on Bourdain's right shoulder. Bourdain, who noted it was his fourth tattoo, said that one reason for the skull was that he wished to balance the ouroboros tattoo he had inked on his opposite shoulder in Malaysia, while filming Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.

Bourdain made a guest appearance on the August 6, 2007 New York City episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern; Zimmern appeared as a guest on the New York City episode of Bourdain's No Reservations airing the same day. On October 20, 2008 Bourdain hosted a special, "At the Table with Anthony Bourdain," on the Travel Channel. Bourdain also has a brief cameo appearance in the 2008 movie Far Cry.

In 2010, Bourdain appeared on Nick, Jr.'s Yo Gabba Gabba! as Dr. Tony. He is a consultant and writer for the HBO series, Treme.

Travel Channel announced in July 2011 that it would be adding a second one-hour ten-episode Bourdain show to be titled The Layover, which premiered November 21, 2011. Each episode features an exploration of a city that can be undertaken within an air travel layover of 24 to 48 hours.

Also in 2011, Bourdain voiced himself in a cameo on an episode of The Simpsons entitled "The Food Wife", in which Marge, Lisa, and Bart start a food blog called "The Three Mouthkateers", and Homer winds up in a meth lab.

In May 2012, Bourdain announced that he would be leaving the Travel Channel to host a show titled Parts Unknown for CNN, focusing on other cuisines and cultures.

On January 22nd, 2013, Bourdain is set to appear as a judge and mentor in ABC's cooking competition show, The Taste.

Publishing

Ecco Press, a division of HarperCollins, announced in September 2011 that Bourdain would have his own publishing line, which would include acquiring three to five titles per year that "reflect his remarkably eclectic tastes". The first books that the imprint will publish, to be released in 2013, will include Spaghetti Junction: Riding Shotgun with an L.A. Chef by Roy Choi, Prophets of Smoked Meat by Daniel Vaughn, and Fight Shark by Mark Miller. Bourdain has also announced plans to publish a book by Marilyn Hagerty.

In describing the line, Bourdain said, "This will be a line of books for people with strong voices who are good at something - who speak with authority. Discern nothing from this initial list - other than a general affection for people who cook food and like food. The ability to kick people in the head is just as compelling to us - as long as that's coupled with an ability to vividly describe the experience. We are just as intent on crossing genres as we are enthusiastic about our first three authors. It only gets weirder from here."

Public persona

Because of Bourdain's liberal use of profanity and sexual references in his television show No Reservations, the network has placed viewer discretion advisories on each segment of each episode. In later seasons, the advisories include animation that is related in some way to the episode.

Known for consuming exotic ethnic dishes, Bourdain has eaten sheep testicles in Morocco, ant eggs in Puebla, Mexico, a raw seal eyeball as part of a traditional Inuit seal hunt, and a whole cobra - beating heart, blood, bile, and meat - in Vietnam. According to Bourdain, the most disgusting thing he has ever eaten is a Chicken McNugget, though he has also declared that the unwashed warthog rectum he ate in Namibia and the fermented shark he ate in Iceland are among "the worst meals of [his] life."

He has been known for being an unrepentant drinker and smoker. In a nod to Bourdain's (at the time) two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, renowned chef Thomas Keller once served him a 20-course tasting menu which included a mid-meal "coffee and cigarette": a coffee custard infused with tobacco, together with a foie gras mousse. Bourdain stopped cigarette smoking in the summer of 2007 because of the birth of his daughter. He is also a former user of cocaine, heroin, and LSD. In Kitchen Confidential he writes of his experience in a trendy SoHo restaurant in 1981: "We were high all the time, sneaking off to the walk-in refrigerator at every opportunity to 'conceptualize.' Hardly a decision was made without drugs. Cannabis, methaqualone, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms soaked in honey and used to sweeten tea, secobarbital, tuinal, amphetamine, codeine and, increasingly, heroin, which we'd send a Spanish-speaking busboy over to Alphabet City to get." In the same book, Bourdain frankly describes his former addiction, including how he once resorted to selling his record collection on the street in order to raise enough money to purchase drugs.

Bourdain is also noted for his put-downs of celebrity chefs, such as Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri, Sandra Lee, and Rachael Ray and appears to be irritated by both the overt commercialism of the celebrity cooking industry and its lack of culinary authenticity. He has voiced a "serious disdain for food demigods like Alan Richman, Alice Waters, and Alain Ducasse." Bourdain has recognized the irony of his transformation into a celebrity chef and has, to some extent, begun to qualify his insults; in the 2007 New Orleans episode of No Reservations, he reconciled with Emeril Lagasse. He has been consistently outspoken in his praise for chefs he admires, particularly Ferran Adrià, Juan Mari Arzak, Mario Batali, Fergus Henderson, Thomas Keller, Martin Picard, Gordon Ramsay, Eric Ripert, and Marco Pierre White, as well as his former protegé and colleagues at Brasserie Les Halles. Bourdain has also spoken very highly of Julia Child, saying that she "influenced the way I grew up and my entire value system."

Bourdain is also known for his sarcastic comments about vegan and vegetarian activists, saying that their lifestyle is rude to the inhabitants of many countries he visits. Bourdain says he considers vegetarianism, except in the case of religious strictures as in India, a "First World luxury." He has clarified that he believes Americans eat too much meat, and admires vegetarians who allow themselves to put aside their vegetarianism when they travel in order to be respectful of their hosts.

Bourdain's taste in music is also a matter of public record. His book, The Nasty Bits, is dedicated to "Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee" of the Ramones. Bourdain has declared fond appreciation for their music, as well that of other early punk bands such as The Stooges, Dead Boys, Television, The New York Dolls, and The Voidoids. Additionally, Bourdain writes in Kitchen Confidential that the playing of music by Billy Joel in his kitchen was grounds for immediate firing (amusingly, Joel is a fan of his and has subsequently visited the restaurant). In the 2006 No Reservations episode in Sweden, Bourdain proclaimed that his all-time favorite album (his "desert island disc") is the groundbreaking punk record Fun House by The Stooges; he also made it clear that he despises the Swedish pop group ABBA. On his 2007 No Reservations Holiday Special episode, the rock band Queens of the Stone Age were the featured dinner guests, adding food-inspired holiday songs to the episode's soundtrack.

Interests and advocacy

Bourdain is an advocate for communicating the value and tastiness of traditional or "peasant" foods, including specifically all of the varietal bits and unused animal parts not usually eaten by affluent 21st-century US citizens. Bourdain has also consistently noted and championed the high quality and deliciousness of freshly prepared street food in other countries - especially developing countries - as compared to fast food chains in the U.S.

Bourdain often acknowledges and champions the industrious Spanish-speaking immigrants - often from Mexico or Ecuador - who make up a majority of the chefs and cooks in many U.S. restaurants, including upscale restaurants, regardless of cuisine. Bourdain considers them to be talented chefs and invaluable cooks, underpaid and unrecognized even though they have become the backbone of the U.S. restaurant industry.

Awards and nominations

• Bourdain was named Food Writer of the Year in 2001 by Bon Appétit magazine for Kitchen Confidential.
• A Cook's Tour was named Food Book of the Year in 2002 by the British Guild of Food Writers.
• The Beirut episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, which documented the experiences of Bourdain and his crew during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Programming in 2007.
• Bourdain's blog for the reality competition show Top Chef was nominated for a Webby Award for best Blog - Culture / Personal in 2008.
• In 2008, Bourdain was inducted into the James Beard Foundation"s Who"s Who of Food and Beverage in America.
• In 2009 and 2011, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations won a Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming.
• In 2010, Anthony Bourdain was nominated for a Creative Arts Emmy for non-fiction writing.
• In 2010, Anthony Bourdain was awarded an Honorary CLIO Award, which is given to individuals who are changing the world by encouraging people to think differently.
• In 2012, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations won the Critics' Choice Best Reality Series award.

Bibliography

Nonfiction

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• Bourdain, Anthony (2010). Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. Ecco/HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-171894-7.

Fiction