You were loved, chef
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- June 13, 2018
- 1498
Can I talk to you about Anthony Bourdain a moment?
Mentors take many forms, and it’s good to remember, as we go about our lives, that we may in fact be mentoring someone without being aware of the relationship or even without knowing the person we mentor personally.
Bourdain had a career in professional kitchens spanning more than 30 years. In the midst of it, he used his talent for writing a good story to submit a short article to The New Yorker magazine, never expecting to get a response once he’d dropped it in the mailbox.
Not only was it published, but it went on to become a book, “Kitchen Confidential,” a peek inside the world of restaurant kitchens, revealing some of the underbelly of the business he loved.
There followed a career as a television journalist quite unlike any other. He did something close to my own heart, talking to people about food, bringing the connection between cuisine and people under a bright, clarifying light.
Chef, passionate eater, brilliant illuminator, storyteller, author and world traveler, Bourdain knew how to put people at ease and let them talk.
Via his CNN series, he spoke to oligarchs in Russia over vats of vodka. He let us learn the fears of South Korean economists with soup and beer. He sought out Cubans who were looking down the barrel of a coming deluge of American tourism. He went into the Punjab and gave us a first-rate education in the Hindu-Muslim divide there.
Diving under the surf in Hawaii, he emerged with the locals to show us their love/hate relationship with an expensive paradise they’re forced to share. He squatted on tiny plastic seats, slurping noodles and beer in Hanoi.
He told us that the people he encountered in Afghanistan were the most friendly and welcoming he’d ever met. He was hungover in Hong Kong, stuffed in New Orleans.
Through him we saw a smaller world, filled with people not unlike ourselves. He was, frankly, everything I wanted to be and a mentor as I sat writing about food in my small way.
Friday, June 8, he took his own life.
You and I, my friend, have experienced situational depression. We’ve grieved, had our hearts obliterated, watched our best efforts come to naught. Life is hard, but as hard as it is for you and me, it is impossibly, endlessly bleak when the depression is an ever-present illness.
Bourdain was highly functioning in his illness. It seems that no one saw his suicide coming.
Bourdain, on the surface of it, had it all: the pinnacle of success in several careers, the respect of those who knew him slightly and well, and he was handsome, had children and the love of a beautiful woman at his side. He was an original, one of a kind, and had a vigorous nose for weeding out fakery and nonsense.
You and I, we can tug ourselves out of sadness with a starry night or the smell of approaching rain. We cannot imagine never again seeing our children smile or feeling the slow breathing of our most loved person while they sleep. Some just can’t recover like that.
Vicariously I lived out his extraordinary life in watching his travels. Staring out into my little world, I could wonder, “What’s Tony doing right now? What marvelous adventure is he having?”
But no more.
You were loved, chef.
As we feel helpless in the face of such loss and look around us wondering who else must be secretly suffering, let us just try to be present, do what we can and understand the outcome may be beyond our control.