Letter to the editor | Anthony Bourdain: An ambassador of the people, lost to memory

Dear Editor,

“People are generally nice…

if you’re nice”

(Anthony Bourdain in an interview with Money Magazine)

Writer, travel raconteur and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain passed on 8 June, having left behind inspiration, acceptance, and a sense of lively enlightenment to his simple yet effective message when engaging people outside of his own culture.   

All of this, despite the contradiction of his suicide, was to pursue life curiously, with intensity in love, respect and disdain for malarkey from dominant paradigms.

He was a true rebel.

The outpouring of love, yet shock and disbelief, that has over taken traditional media and social media has extended across the globe, which exemplifies his own outreach through life to better understand the world through uncompromising, unfettered conversation, rarely treating any guest or host as less than his equal, so long as they had humanity in their heart.

Through his two long running travel shows, “No Reservations” and “Parts Unknown”, he has set the tone on how modern travel shows should be run, honest, bare, with depth and openness towards his hosts and ensuring a platform for those that are underrepresented and underappreciated to tell their story without judgement.  Those stories were often elicited over meals which provided an authentic humanizing peek into worlds that both he and his audience would have likely never encountered.

When you went on the journey with him, you learned, you listened, you grew a little each time, or you got the hell out of the way.  Tony tended to abhor trends or movements that put either politics and philosophy before the human experience such as this quote he had given to Playboy Magazine concerning vegetarians:

“They make for bad travelers and bad guests. The notion that before you even set out to Thailand, you say, ‘I’m not interested,’ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude.  You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.”

It’s in this spirit that perhaps the message he was trying to convey was to be open to everyone’s experience, and to put others before yourself.  A clear clash with egocentric trends in today’s travel and lifestyle media which seem to accentuate, if not elevate, exoticism of place or experience to serve the self rather than the people you are with.

Though with balance, he did acknowledge the importance of self-indulgence.

In 2011, Bourdain visited Macau, admitting in the opening of this “No Reservations” episode that he personally knew very little of our little enclave, but would spend much of the episode exploring the indulgences and human connections Macau has to offer.  Yet by the end of the episode, in tribute to simple delights, such as the humble pork chop bun, he would proclaim that “In the end, it’s all about me.”

Luke Lienau  – Central Macau