By Sam Unsworth
“Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at four o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an Oyster. Have a Negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.” – Anthony Bourdain.
Is it really possible for one to be effortlessly cool? Appeal to all? Understand and be understood by those with lots and those with little? Only one man, I find, has this connection. The late great Anthony Bourdain. While Parts Unknown and A Cook’s Tour used to seem to me of the genre of Ice Road Truckers, River Monsters , or whatever everyone’s dad was watching in the late 2000s, they are in fact some of the most insightful perceptions of what it means to travel and embrace culture. I would expect that most readers are familiar with the opening quote, no doubt plastered on an eccentric French teacher’s wall at school, but find it means far more now than it did at the time.
The beauty of Bourdain’s work truly lies in his honesty. Whilst the Clarkson, May, Hammond trio, Michael Palin and even Richard Ayoade have inspired prospering travellers to engage in great feats and navigate the globe purely for thrill and interest, they fail to capture the same intimacy as Bourdain. The audience feels as though they know him, that they are experiencing his strange escapades alongside him, both the good and the bad. We are invited into the very workings of his brain, as though every episode is a tell-all about his multitude of experiences.
I was recently rewatching Parts Unknown, procrastinating whatever essay was sitting in my due folder gathering dust, when I came across an episode I had not watched for a long time. The Sicily trip. This episode is utterly thought-provoking as Bourdain circles into a state of manic depression after a staged diving trip to “capture” some seafood for dinner.. Bourdain swimming along the vibrant coral with octopi falling from above, hurled from a fishing boat not ten metres away. With each splash, and falling fish, the shock and disappointment crept across his face. We, the audience, are then taken through the rest of his travel, and hearing the voiceover we feel as though we are experiencing the trip alongside Anthony. He admits in the voiceover that he had proceeded to get so drunk after the fishing trip that he did not remember the interactions and meals that were filmed after it. He states that had he not been filming he would have returned to his hotel room, mixed up some medicine, drank, and flicked through the porn channel. This kind of gritty honesty is what makes him such an engaging character, we see him through thick and thin.
In Parts Unknown, we are introduced to a slightly older, more mature Bourdain, already a seasoned traveller but now lacking his signature cigarette stuck to his bottom lip. On a side note, I have been meaning to find an interview between Bourdain and Marco Pierre White and count who smoked more cigarettes during the interaction. Bourdain’s early work is what drove his mantra of “enjoy the ride” as we see him eating anything and everything, challenging the new and mysterious with an open heart and mind and firing Kalashnikovs whilst sipping on a Tiger in a Cambodian bar. Interestingly, at said bar, you don’t pay for drinks but for ammunition. Bourdain personifies the traveller, willing to talk with anyone and do anything such as his graphic discussions about bondage in Tokyo. Having grown up in the kitchen, Bourdain is aware of a tough life and hard work and made his name in the culinary field working in Michelin star kitchens. He was a man who knew how to eat, but, more to the point, he knew what he liked to eat. Whether that be at roadside cafes or famously the meal he shared with Obama in Hanoi, there is a refreshing lack of snobbery in his ideas on food. He narrates with a quick wit and humility, dealing with the culinary delights of the world, whilst also dealing with very intense and very real problems facing many people today.
So, if you find yourself at a loose end or simply need some inspiration for your next travel or adventure, then there is no better place to start than with the master himself: Anthony Bourdain.