Bourdain Read online

  Epigraph

  An ounce of sauce covers a multitude of sins.

  —ANTHONY BOURDAIN, KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Cast of Characters (in order of first appearance)

  Introduction

  1. “I Absolutely Always Saw a Talent in Him”: Early Life

  2. “Super Smart, Super Funny”: The Teenage Years

  3. “A Lot of Fun to Be Around”: Young Adulthood

  4. “It Was What the Cool Kids Were Doing”: The Early New York Years

  5. “He Just Wanted to Be a Writer in the Worst Way”: Meeting Joel Rose

  6. “They Got Some Money, and It Just Went into Their Veins”: Heroin

  7. “I’m Tony Motherfucking Bourdain—You Got a Problem?”: New York in the Nineties

  8. “Such Was My Lust to See My Name in Print”

  9. “Appalling Stories of Remorseless Criminality”: The Stone Brothers

  10. “You’ve Got a Long Con Going Here”: The Genesis of Kitchen Confidential

  11. “It Was Picking Up a Rock Off the Restaurant Scene and Showing Everything That Was Underneath It”

  12. “He Was Not Just a Cook Anymore; He Was a Real 3D Person”

  13. “I’m Not Gonna Censor the Guy”: Editing and Publishing Kitchen Confidential

  14. “The Brass Ring Comes Around Only Once”

  15. “He Never Came Off Book Tour”

  16. “I’d Love to Travel the World”: A Cook’s Tour Begins

  17. “Tony Was So Reluctant to Do Television”

  18. “He Was Ahead of His Time”: The End of A Cook’s Tour

  19. “He Was Prepared to Piss Off Everybody”: Travel Channel

  20. “He Was Very Untethered”: The Early No Reservations Years

  21. “Basically, He Kidnapped My Cat”: Tony Meets Ottavia

  22. “Let’s Spin the Wheel Again”: Beirut, a Baby

  23. “It Was Not the Easiest Thing”: Life on the Road as a Family

  24. “Don’t Bother Tony”: Navigating Friendships and Fame

  25. “We Got Shit Done”: Making No Reservations

  26. “You See a Person Who’s Come Full Circle, and He’s Seen the World”: Medium Raw

  27. “I Knew I Could Write the Story I Needed to Write”: Tony as Publisher, Graphic Novelist, and Screenwriter

  28. “I Felt Like I Knew Him All My Life”: David Simon Recalls Tony

  29. “He Could Have Sat in a Santa’s Throne in a Shopping Mall”: The Onstage Experience

  30. “He Was a Curator of People”

  31. “He Was a Man of Extremes”

  32. “Darker, More Transgressive, and More Lurid”: Roads & Kingdoms

  33. “Everyone Felt They Knew Him”: Charisma and Reserve

  34. “Get a Big Fucking Body Bag”: Frustration and Isolation in the Field

  35. “Tony Had a Burden of Leadership That Was Real”

  36. “He Always Had to Perform the Role of Tony”

  37. “Such an Unlikely Program for Him”: The Taste

  38. “Push the Boundary Really Hard, Really Fast”: The Move to CNN

  39. “I Really Wasn’t Doing It for the Cronut”: Tony Tries a Talk Show

  40. “Middle-Class White People Going to Poverty-Stricken Parts of the World . . . without Being Dicks about It”

  41. “It Was Too Much of a Dream”: The Bourdain Market

  42. “You Don’t Direct Tony Bourdain”: Life on the Road with Parts Unknown

  43. “You Were That Guy Who Got Arrested”: Jason and Yeganeh Rezaian in Iran

  44. “This Is Just Another Tribe”: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

  45. “Maybe You’ll Find Another Chance at Love”: The End of the Marriage

  46. “Tony’s Changed; Tony’s Very Different Now”

  47. “He Was Attracted to Chaos”

  48. “They’re Gonna Tear You Apart”: Alienating Friends

  49. “He Was Like a Young Kid in Love”

  50. “Every Good Band Eventually Breaks Up”

  51. “Embracing the Chaos”: Rome and Puglia

  52. “We Bolstered Each Other’s Incorrect Assertion That Asking for Help Is Somehow a Mistake”

  53. “Call It Impostor Syndrome, If You Want, but Tony Definitely Had It”

  54. “We Should Do Something Together”: Kenya with W. Kamau Bell

  55. “I Knew Someone Was Doomed”: Hong Kong

  56. “You Can’t Put Your Arms around a Memory”: New York, Asturias, Florence

  57. “All OK”: Alsace

  58. “It’s Hard to See Things as They Really Are”

  59. “He Was an Extraordinary Witness and Voice for the World”

  Acknowledgments

  Index of Contributors

  Photo Section

  About the Author

  Also by Laurie Woolever

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Cast of Characters

  (in order of first appearance)

  Note: Nearly everyone in the list that follows, with the exception of family members and those few with strictly business relationships (such as journalists), considered Tony a friend. Therefore, the designation is reserved here for school friends and those who otherwise had no professional association with him. It is generally understood that Tony befriended his coworkers in the realm of restaurants, television, publishing, and elsewhere. “TV sidekick” refers to those who appeared alongside Tony on his various televised endeavors.

  CHRISTOPHER BOURDAIN, brother.

  GLADYS BOURDAIN, mother (born 1934, died 2020).

  NANCY BOURDAIN, wife (married 1985–2005).

  SAM GOLDMAN, childhood friend; kitchen colleague in Provincetown and New York.

  JEFF FORMOSA, childhood friend.

  HELEN LANG, college friend.

  ALEX GETMANOV (A.K.A. “DIMITRI” IN KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL), kitchen colleague in Provincetown and New York.

  ROBERT VUOLO, kitchen colleague in New York.

  HILLARY SNYDER, kitchen colleague in New York.

  JAMES GRAHAM, kitchen colleague in New York.

  LENNY MOSSE, kitchen colleague in New York.

  JOEL ROSE, frequent writing collaborator.

  PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, writer, profiled Tony for The New Yorker (“Anthony Bourdain’s Moveable Feast”) in 2017.

  SCOTT BRYAN, fellow New York chef.

  STEVEN TEMPEL, kitchen colleague in New York.

  PATTI JACKSON, kitchen colleague in New York.

  MATT WALSH, TV fixer and translator.

  BETH ARETSKY (A.K.A. “GRILL BITCH”), kitchen colleague in New York; former assistant.

  DAVID ROSENTHAL, editor and publisher of Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo.

  ROB STONE, would-be writing and publishing partner in the nineties.

  WEB STONE, would-be writing and publishing partner in the nineties.

  KAREN RINALDI, former editor and publisher at Bloomsbury USA, now at HarperCollins.

  PHILIPPE LAJAUNIE, Les Halles restaurant owner; coauthor of Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook; TV sidekick.

  SAM SIFTON, former New York Press editor, now a New York Times editor.

  KIMBERLY WITHERSPOON, longtime literary and business agent.

  PANIO GIANOPOULOS, writer; former book editor at Bloomsbury USA.

  BILL BUFORD, former New Yorker fiction editor; author (Among the Thugs, Heat, Dirt); TV sidekick.

  DAVE MCMILLAN, chef-restaurateur; TV sidekick.

  FRED MORIN, chef-restaurateur; TV sidekick.

  JOSÉ ANDRÉS, chef-restaurateur; TV sidekick; published a book (We Fed an Island) through Tony’s imprint.

  DANIEL HALPERN, poet; Tony’s longtime
editor and publishing partner at Ecco.

  NIGELLA LAWSON, writer and television host in the United Kingdom; costar on The Taste.

  CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN reporter and anchor.

  ERIC RIPERT, chef-restaurateur; frequent collaborator on various TV, speaking, and publishing endeavors.

  MICHAEL RUHLMAN, writer; TV sidekick.

  ANDERSON COOPER, CNN anchor.

  LYDIA TENAGLIA, cofounder and executive producer of Zero Point Zero Production.

  EILEEN OPATUT, former executive VP of programming, Food Network.

  CHRIS COLLINS, cofounder and executive producer of Zero Point Zero Production.

  PAT YOUNGE, former president, Travel Channel.

  MUSTAFA BHAGAT, editor for Zero Point Zero Production.

  RENNIK SOHOLT, producer-director for Zero Point Zero Production.

  ASHA GILL, former TV host.

  MIKE RUFFINO, composer for Zero Point Zero Production; published a book (Adios, Motherfucker) through Tony’s imprint.

  PAULA FROELICH, writer and travel journalist.

  OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN, wife (married 2007–2018).

  DIANE SCHUTZ, producer for Zero Point Zero Production.

  TODD LIEBLER, cinematographer for Zero Point Zero Production.

  ALEX LOWRY, director for Zero Point Zero Production.

  HELEN CHO, producer-director for Zero Point Zero Production.

  DAVE CHANG, chef-restaurateur; frequent TV and publishing collaborator.

  NATHAN THORNBURGH, editor-writer; partner in Roads & Kingdoms.

  ADAM EPSTEIN, lecture tour producer.

  JOSH HOMME, musician (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal); TV sidekick.

  DEAN FERTITA, musician (Queens of the Stone Age); TV sidekick.

  PETER MEEHAN, journalist; TV sidekick; frequent publishing collaborator.

  ARIANE BUSIA-BOURDAIN, daughter (born 2007).

  TOM VITALE, producer-director for Zero Point Zero Production.

  NARI KYE, producer-director for Zero Point Zero Production; co-director of Wasted! documentary.

  JARED ANDRUKANIS, producer for Zero Point Zero Production.

  SALLY FREEMAN, director for Zero Point Zero Production.

  JOSH FERRELL, producer for Zero Point Zero Production.

  MICHAEL STEED, director for Zero Point Zero Production.

  MORGAN FALLON, director-cinematographer for Zero Point Zero Production.

  SANDY ZWEIG, series producer for Zero Point Zero Production.

  ROY CHOI, chef-restaurateur; TV sidekick; published a book (L.A. Son) through Tony’s imprint.

  NATASHA PHAN, Roy Choi’s business partner and coauthor.

  BONNIE MCFARLANE, comic; published a book (You’re Better Than Me) through Tony’s imprint.

  YEGANEH REZAIAN, journalist; TV sidekick.

  JASON REZAIAN, journalist; TV sidekick; published a book (Prisoner) through Tony’s imprint.

  DAVID SIMON, cocreator, Treme.

  LOLIS ELIE, journalist; writing colleague on Treme; TV sidekick.

  ERIC OVERMYER, cocreator, Treme.

  LAURIE BARNETT, lecture agent.

  DAVID CHOE, artist; TV sidekick.

  MATT GOULDING, editor-writer; partner in Roads & Kingdoms.

  ALISON MOSSHART, musician (the Kills, the Dead Weather); TV sidekick.

  JEFF ALLEN, producer for Zero Point Zero Production.

  MARIA BUSTILLOS, journalist (“Bourdain Confidential,” on Popula, and “Searching for the Real Anthony Bourdain,” on Eater).

  NICK BRIGDEN, director-cinematographer-editor for Zero Point Zero Production.

  AMY ENTELIS, executive vice president for talent and content development, CNN Worldwide.

  JEFF ZUCKER, president of CNN Worldwide.

  LIZZIE FOX, former vice president of CNN Original Series, now senior vice president of nonfiction programming at HBO Max.

  SHANT PETROSSIAN, TV producer, formerly at CNN.

  ROBIN STANDEFER, production designer, Roman and Williams.

  DARREN ARONOFSKY, film director; TV sidekick.

  BEN SELKOW, director for Zero Point Zero Production.

  WHITNEY WARD, friend.

  JOE COLEMAN, artist; TV sidekick.

  JOHN LURIE, artist and musician; TV sidekick.

  W. KAMAU BELL, CNN colleague, host of United Shades of America; TV sidekick.

  Introduction

  I met Tony Bourdain in 2002, when he hired me to help with a cookbook he’d just begun writing, in the wake of Kitchen Confidential’s life-upending success. We got together in person once or twice during the whole process, conducting most business by email. Toward the end, we had a long sit-down editing session at his apartment, and he handed me a big bonus check.

  That was a signature Tony move. He wasn’t constantly handing out money, but when he did, it was always a generous amount, beyond what he owed, meant to signify gratitude for a job well done. It indicated an awareness that his luck had recently changed. It also signaled, I think, his desire to be a tide, lifting helpful boats.

  Tony wrote a hyperbolic paragraph about me in the book’s acknowledgments. This was another signature Tony move: outsize public praise, almost more than one could really live up to, as a sly form of appreciation, which I think was far easier for him than expressing his thanks and admiration face-to-face.

  Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook was published in 2004, Tony’s television career really took off, and I went to work as a magazine editor.

  In 2007, he hired me to pinch-hit at a cooking and speaking gig in Montana, as his assistant was then pregnant and unavailable to travel. Tony was newly married with a six-month-old baby at home, full of optimism and ecstatic about the unexpected turn his life had taken. We prepared a lavish dinner at the home of the local college football coach, using the Les Halles cookbook for our menu. I remember how happy he was to make a super-rich lobster bisque, using double the usual number of lobsters, which, he said conspiratorially, wasn’t something you could get away with in a restaurant and still expect to stay within the food-cost margins.

  A few years later, I had a baby and was looking for a flexible part-time job. I emailed a few dozen people, just kind of putting it out there, and one of them was Tony. He wrote back right away—another signature Tony move.

  He said, “My assistant’s leaving; would you want that job? Here’s what it entails. What would it cost?”

  I suggested what I thought was a reasonable number, and he actually raised it a bit. I started working for him then, and in some ways, I haven’t yet stopped.

  Tony’s unexpected death in June 2018 meant the end of anything new from him; all that he had ever written, drawn, recorded, or filmed in the world was done, a complete body of work.

  Tony’s death also marked the beginning of a yearslong process of discovery, in which I interviewed ninety-one people who’d known him, to hear their stories and learn more about him than what he’d already shared in the pages of Kitchen Confidential, his subsequent works of nonfiction, and on television. This book is the result of that process.

  As his assistant and occasional coauthor, I thought I’d already gotten to know Tony quite well. I knew where he was nearly every minute of every day, whom he was with, what he was planning to do, and why. I was steeped in his work, deeply familiar with his voice and all the beats of his highly public origin story. However, in talking with the people who knew him in his youth, as a wayward college student, fledgling cook, dedicated beach bum, thrill-seeking drug addict, journeyman chef, ambitious young writer, semireluctant television star, steadfast spouse and father, supportive friend and collaborator, I came to realize that I’d really known only a fraction of who Tony was, what motivated him, his ambivalence, his vulnerability, his blind spots, and his brilliance.

  Need it be said that memory is fallible? That two or more people may remember the same event in very different ways? That we’re each always the protagonist of our own stories, even when those stories are centered
on an extremely charismatic and well-known public figure?

  In reading this book, you’ll come across the occasional contradiction, the varying recollection or interpretation of events between two or more parties, and this calls to mind Tony’s own well-known habit of sometimes sanding down or finely sharpening the edges of an anecdote, in order to make it a highly repeatable story.

  Though filled with words of love, admiration, respect, and gratitude, this book is not a hagiography. Tony was extraordinary, but mortal. He did great things, and made a lot of people very happy, and he made some bad choices, and he hurt some people. As he insisted in the introduction to our 2016 cookbook, Appetites, again with a touch of that characteristic hyperbole, “I am a monster of self-regard.”

  I would guess that it’s hard not to be vain, when one is constantly the center of attention, at work and at rest. At times, it seemed that Tony’s responses and contributions were the barometer in every conversation, at every meeting, wherever he went. Well-meaning people would approach him on what they assumed was his level, making crass jokes they hoped he’d find funny, or otherwise parroting their interpretation of his oratory back at him.

  As he said to his friend Patti Jackson, once he became famous, “You’ll never know the consequences of getting what you want until you get what you want.”

  When I agreed to be Tony’s assistant, I’d been juggling “real” writing and paycheck-type work for many years, and there were times when I grew frustrated with the more mundane aspects of the job, especially as I aged out of the socially acceptable range for such endeavors. But: if I was going to do the work, I knew there was no one better than Tony to do it for.

  And I now feel compelled to add that I’d gladly trade this life of being a “real writer” to resume the privileged burden of making his hotel reservations and scheduling his dishwasher maintenance, if it meant that Tony could still be here among us. Barring that, I’ll settle for having helped the people he loved tell the following version of his story.

  —LW

  1

  “I Absolutely Always Saw a Talent in Him”

  Early Life

  CHRISTOPHER BOURDAIN, BROTHER: Our parents were very politically aware. Our dad [Pierre Bourdain; born 1930, died 1987] went to an amazingly globalist school, the Birch Wathen School, when he was a kid, in Manhattan. It was founded by these two very progressive individuals who were all into the obligation of the citizenry to be informed in a proper democracy. Our dad spoke French with his parents, at home, growing up.