You don't know me- you never would have known me- but yet I feel the impact of you, or rather, the loss of you, as if a dear friend has passed.
This is the absurdity of celebrity. You become so famous, so instantly recognizable to many of us, that we forget sometimes that we did not, in fact, know you at all.
Clearly none of us knew you at all.
From the outside, your life was the envy of all foodies and travelers. To wake up each morning to a feast of the senses! To count your days by delicious meals, unique adventures, all the gourmet and salty and sweet and umami that you could ever want! A dream to live like this. On TV, episodes were cut so that it seemed that your life was riot of pleasure and experience. On any given day, you might eat meaty pho for breakfast on the streets of Hanoi for breakfast, followed by bun cha pork for lunch, followed by snails or crabs or fish for dinner. Every unique restaurant-- every one-of-a-kind impossible-to-get-a seat treasure land was yours for the taking. You had the pleasure of the highest gourmet palaces on earth: the Nobu, the French Laundry, the Nomas, of the world. You ate sushi made by Jiro, French food made by Alain Ducasse-- and then enjoyed the company of the famously wonderful Eric Ripert.
It wasn't only pillars of great gastronomy that drew your attention-- no-- you also dined on traditional food, made by local home cooks, sitting on tatami mats, mud floors, tiny plastic stools on street corners. Your fixers found the best of obscure local cuisine and gave you the chance to taste things that were truly of their locale-- not sanitized and Westernized for tourist palates.
Most of us would dream to experience any one of those things in a life time. You had them all.
Your advice guided many of us in our own, albeit far more humble, culinary experiences. It's because of you that my husband and I visited Vietnam-- the place you said has the best food in the world. Because of you, we wandered streets of Hanoi to find that perfect snail place-- the one where all they serve is perfectly boiled snails, in a bowl, to be drawn from their shells with a small piece of metal. Because of you, we ate in tiny alley ways, on plastic tables, in restaurants that only ever had menus in Vietnamese. You taught us that food is best enjoyed when it is new and strange and unexpected. That one must travel off the beaten path-- even in a place filled with tourists like Hanoi-- to find the best of local food. Because of you, our trips to Southeast Asia-- to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos-- were filled with days of searching for the most local, the most traditional.
And when we found that food? We learned to not just taste but to experience. To take a bite and then describe our tastes, as if we too were hosting a food-and-travel show. We compared and reflected, we endlessly reminisced. What was the best bite of Laos? The best roast bird in Cambodia? Best frog in Southeast Asia? We didn't only eat-- but we truly savored.
Every bite an affirmation that life is beautiful and textured and new.
How, then, could someone who seemed to enjoy the sensations of all of this take away his very ability to experience them? How can you go from someone who waxed poetic about the perfection of a piece of sushi to someone who wanted to never taste again?
It boggles the mind. Since your death, I've tried my best to understand and create my own theories. Perhaps this is not a useful exercise, but I can't help myself. To all of us, dear Anthony, Mr. Bourdain, you had the dream. You lived what most of us can only experience in small pieces-- if we are lucky, on one vacation in a lifetime.
Why?
In Japan, we found the streets of yakatori stalls you talked about. Smoky, crowded, tucked away-- now no longer the hidden magic it once was, but instead filled with tourists. Most likely before you created shows that featured "Memory Lane" in Shinjuku, it was a special place for locals. Now as I walk down the alley (where the yakatori still IS delicious, by the way) I see signs saying, in English-- "No photos!" indicating that the chefs here are tired of fame. They just want to cook.
Is this why you left us? Did you feel guilt at exposing the special local places of the world to an onslaught of your fans? I've heard that there was a Saigon soup vendor who had to close down her shop because she was overrun by tourists. I can imagine that was painful for you to know about-- and yet, you can forgive yourself for this. Nothing much is truly hidden and unexplored anymore-- it is rare to find something truly "unknown" by outsiders. The world is wired and connected and filmed. This is not your fault.
Instead of seeing your fame as a negative impact on the special places-- see, instead, that you gave a gift to those who could not afford to fly to Asia and eat duck egg on the street. You gave many Americans a sense of the world that they themselves could not have. You helped reveal "foreign" as "special" and "delicious." Americans suffer terribly from egotism that their lives are "normal" while others are "bizarre." We are xenophobic to the extreme, as recent political drama in the US can attest. You helped many see that the best life has to offer is that which is new and unknown. If we stay within what is known, we take away our opportunity to look back askance at ourselves, at our own perceptions and judgements.
But perhaps your sense of "ruining secret places" wasn't the reason.
There are meals that I've had -- singular tastes I've experienced-- that have almost brought me to tears because they are just that good. On our recent trip to Kyoto, we ate our first kaiseki meal at a Buddhist temple- all vegetarian and served to us one dish at a time. I ate one tiny tomato- served with a sweet tofu something next to it-- and felt overwhelmed with sensation. THIS is what food is, I thought. This tomato. Nothing else matters. And nothing-- nowhere-- will ever taste this good again.
Is this why? Did you have too many great meals that, when the plates were cleaned away, bellies full, you couldn't bear the thought of eating something less great?
I can understand some of that feeling. In Japan on our recent trip, I was filled with joy but also sadness because every meal was better than the last. Everything just kept getting better and better. That one piece of sushi hand crafted by the master and handed to us-- an unknown, unnamed fish, perfectly sliced and flavored with green onion? It's a bite I will never, ever forget. And even as I describe it I'm terribly sad that I'm not eating it RIGHT NOW.
But also grateful. Forever grateful and thankful that I had that chance- I ate that thing. I tasted the experience of the perfect tomato, the perfect crab claw, the succulent shrimp head, the roasted chicken skin. I feel so lucky to have had the chance to allow my tongue and belly and brain to experience THAT.
Did you lose your sense of gratitude, Mr. Bourdain? Did you begin to feel overwhelmed by fame and stress and everything and forget to just appreciate the joy that it is sensation-- that is food-- that is life?
Perhaps.
The truth is we will never know, of course. You made your choice.
So yes, you have left us. And I know it might be cliched to say this-- and I'm hardly the only one to have this thought since your death-- but your life was not lived in vain. You gave the world something unique and special. You allowed us to focus our time and energy on something as seemingly small as EATING. Food does not just sustain-- it teaches. It gives us a sense of ourselves, our cultures, our place in the world. Eating something new in some place new reminds us of how much we have yet to learn about the world. Traveling and eating are humbling experiences. We are small in the great world and there is so much left to see and taste.
I'm sorry that you won't be around to continue to know and feel what there is out there. We, in our small ways, will try to continue to live what we've learned. We have tomorrow and the next day and all the days after that. Thank you, dear Anthony, for reminding us that we all need to keep on keeping on. You would have wanted us to.
