Bourdain

by Laurie Woolever

  I took Tony to India for the first time. I had a wedding I was invited to, at the Devigarh hotel in Udaipur. We’d been dating three months. This is a guy who couldn’t pick up a phone in a hotel room, and hated answering doors. He was like, “I don’t really talk to people.”

  He had never been to India. I went to Delhi for a few days by myself, and he met me, we went to Jaipur. There was this rinky-dink restaurant, dating back from 1897, on the second floor of the port. You had to know people who know people. It was really good food. He asked, “Are we gonna get sick?” I told him, “Nah, dude. You get sick at five-star hotels.”

  Later he was feeling pretty good, wheeling and dealing for scarves and bargaining. They strike a bargain, and the guy holds out his left hand. And I go, “Absolutely fricking not,” and I slapped his hand away. “This guy just insulted you. After all that bargaining, he gave you his left hand.” Which is considered unclean; it’s very rude to offer it. He was like, “But I like that scarf!”

  He cooked for me only three times. Twice he gave my dog the runs, and once he gave me the runs. But, to his credit, he always said he was never a great chef. He made it very clear.

  LYDIA TENAGLIA: Our relationship [with Tony] was—there was a lot of love and fun, and we fought like siblings. He was like that friend who went to a party, got too high, and needed you to come get him, because he found himself in a place he shouldn’t be. We got a call one night; he was somewhere on a superyacht, somewhere in the Mediterranean with a bunch of, I think, Saudi royalty. He called from the boat and said, “Can you help me get home? I might be in over my head here, can somebody please come help me out?” It was like three o’clock in the morning. I don’t know how much of that was fueled by having fun and drinking and so on.

  CHRIS COLLINS: That was the beauty of Tony—“You’re where?” He found his way into some weird places. We kind of laughed about it, got ahold of him the next day, and he said, “I’m OK, I’m on my way home, it’s all good.”

  LYDIA TENAGLIA: He was prone to hyperbole, though. He had that amazing gift of taking a story and turning it into an epic adventure.

  WEB STONE: It had to be 2004, 2005, I threw a big fortieth birthday for my brother, in Charlie Chaplin’s old house above the Chateau Marmont. And, you know, god bless, Tony was there. I was there for the week, with Jay McInerney, who was staying at the Chateau. And that’s what Tony was built for, a night like that.

  PAULA FROELICH: Listen, I loved him. He was great. We were very similar, in different ways. I don’t think he ever said a bad word about me. We’re both outgoing but very private. We had similar egos. And we did end up traveling well together.

  I have very fond memories, and I know I changed his life for the better, and he changed my life for the better. But at the time, I said, “What are we gonna do? Get married and have kids?”

  He said, “I’ll get married, but I never want to have kids.”

  And I said, “Then you can leave right now, because I want the option. I mean, your children are your legacy.”

  He said, “My books are my legacy.”

  And I said, “Oh, shit, Tony, please. That’s baloney. Do you know how many people write best-selling books?”

  He said, “Let’s do it. Let’s have a kid.” And then I said no.

  By the end, he was very much into having a child. I’m glad he met Ottavia and that they had a kid. It’s really important.

  21

  “Basically, He Kidnapped My Cat”

  Tony Meets Ottavia

  OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN, WIFE (2007–2018): I used to be the manager at this restaurant, Geisha, and Eric Ripert was the consulting chef. I had known Eric for a few years, because one of my first jobs in New York, when I first arrived, was being a hostess at Le Bernardin for a few months, so that’s when we met. We weren’t friends or anything.

  Then, when Eric became the consulting chef at Geisha, we started seeing each other at work, quite often, and his wife, Sandra, used to come in most nights and hang out in the lounge. And coincidentally, [Tony’s assistant] Beth [Aretsky] was coming in at Geisha, because she lived two blocks away, and her neighbor Dwight would come in, more often than Beth, and he would always tell us all these crazy stories about Tony, all this drama.

  I didn’t really know who Tony was. At Geisha, most people working in the kitchen would talk about the book Kitchen Confidential, which was like a bible for the people in the restaurant industry.

  So there were all these little connections—Beth, and Eric, and everybody talking about Kitchen Confidential. So I read it, and I thought it was great, it was hilarious, and brutal, and I had this idea of Tony in my head that didn’t quite correspond to reality. I thought he was just like a no-fucks heathen, you know, bad boy, leather jacket . . . but I knew he had a girlfriend at the time, because Beth’s neighbor was, like, [the] official gossip. So I knew everything. But then, one day, he came in: “There’s this big drama. Tony broke up with his girlfriend.”

  I was completely unattached, because I was working a million hours a day. I thought, That would be interesting to meet him; maybe we’ll get along. Sandra [Ripert] actually made the connection. She talked to Tony about me. On Thanksgiving Day 2005, he sent me an email, asking if I wanted to go out with him.

  A couple of nights after, he picked me up at work, and we went to Merchants, we drank a lot, and then we went to his apartment, and we had a lot of fun.

  On our first date, he actually told me that, after his marriage ended, he was in Saint Maarten, and he was suicidal. He rented a car, and he was driving, in the middle of the night, on these really, really tiny roads, going up the hill, and he was like, you know, “If I die, I don’t care.”

  I think he really liked the fact that I worked in the restaurant business, because he missed it, all these stories, and the drama, and he enjoyed listening to me talking about things that he also lived. So we really hit it off, having that in common.

  The day after, I woke up with a horrible hangover, and he asked me if I wanted to go out that night to have sushi. I was just so hungover, the thought of sushi—and I was just, like, “You know, we had this perfect night; I think it’s enough for a while.”

  So we didn’t talk to each other for maybe a couple of weeks. And then, I don’t remember if he texted me, or I texted him, and we went out again. And it would happen every few weeks, and then more and more often.

  He started asking me to spend more time at his apartment. It was nothing fancy—it was a one-bedroom railroad apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, a walk-up, but it was filled with things from his travels.

  I worked, and I had to go home at night, because I had a cat, so he asked me to bring the cat. I brought the cat, and then he didn’t want me to take the cat back home. Basically, he kidnapped my cat. He was like, “If you want to see your cat, you have to come see me now.”

  So me and the cat spent a lot of time at his place.

  MIKE RUFFINO: When he met Ottavia, there was a shift. I don’t know that his overall behavior changed that significantly, but certainly his general attitude toward life changed. His cynicism was a bit tempered, and the conversations wouldn’t necessarily twist toward the dark as quickly. He seemed very happy.

  ASHA GILL: I knew that he’d met somebody. He used to call her his Sophia Loren, and just was like, “She’s amazing.” I was so happy that he found that connection.

  MICHAEL RUHLMAN: I met Ottavia at Tony’s fiftieth birthday party—that would have been 2006. I loved her outspokenness, and I loved that she was quoting Noam Chomsky. I called her “the fascist.”

  ERIC RIPERT: I was extremely surprised by how fast it went, and how strong their relationship was, and how much love was in that relationship from the beginning. And I have an anecdote about that. It was my birthday, they’re dating for a few months, and everybody was about to make a toast for my birthday. Then Ottavia stopped the toast, and she said, “No, I want to do something else.” She said, “I want to toast to the love that I have wi
th Tony,” and went on, and Tony start to cry. I was very surprised. It was very emotional, extremely emotional, and I was like, “Whoa, she really created something powerful.”

  22

  “Let’s Spin the Wheel Again”

  Beirut, a Baby

  OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN: It was July 2006, and Tony went to Beirut. We were more seriously dating. I never thought about getting married, or anything like that.

  We talked about having children in a really hypothetical way; we had, like, no plans whatsoever. He said, “I always liked the idea, but I never thought I was going to be a good father.” He also told me he was afraid that he was gonna die young, like his father. So he didn’t think it was fair, you know; it would have been selfish for him to have a kid.

  BETH ARETSKY: In the beginning, I think doing TV and traveling was very exciting for him. And then in 2006, when he was in Beirut while there was a whole war going on, we were having difficulty being in touch with each other. Things went really out of hand.

  PAT YOUNGE: It was just a normal day in the office, and I’d seen the events around Beirut, on the border. But then, when James Ashurst, the head of communications, came in and said, “The Israelis have just shut down Lebanon, and Tony’s trapped in Beirut,” I just remember that was a whole—What do you do?

  Luckily for us, we had access to all sorts of high-powered, international extraction bodies, safety experts, and they said, “You’ve got to get him to this hotel. Get him to keep his head down, because he’s probably the highest-profile American in the country at the moment, outside of the embassy.”

  DIANE SCHUTZ, PRODUCER: I was on the Beirut shoot with Tony in 2006. It was surreal. We were stranded in the city; there was a naval blockade at first, so we couldn’t leave by ship. You couldn’t just drive over the border to Israel, because that’s “shoot first and ask questions later.” And we’d heard stories about Americans getting turned back at the border of Syria. At the same time, the network was still asking us to pull some kind of show together, so there was a sense of, “Well, let’s do our best, though we’re not war reporters, and we don’t want to be.”

  PAT YOUNGE: So we got them all into this hotel, and then Tony asked, “Why can’t we drive to Syria?” Now, Syria, at that time, wasn’t Syria like it is now, but I said, “A high-profile American, and four other Americans, of which, I think, three are Jewish, driving through Lebanon to Syria probably isn’t a good idea.”

  And he said, “OK, fair enough. But this place is killing me, it’s driving me nuts. I can’t get any decent cigarettes.” So next thing I know, I’m in charge of getting him cigarettes. Then, the next thing I know, he’s on CNN. And I said, “I thought I told you to keep your head down!”

  He said, “This is so boring. You have to be here to understand how boring it is.”

  STEVEN TEMPEL: When he was over in Beirut and the bombs were hitting a mile away, I remember talking to him after that; he said that he wanted to slow down and have a family. The bombs going off that close made him realize that he wasn’t immortal.

  PAT YOUNGE: We got our international [fixer]—I don’t know where this guy came from, but he appeared at the hotel, and he’s the sort of guy who drives Tony mad. He’s telling him all these stories about when he was in Baghdad, when he was in Syria, and when he was in Russia. And Tony’s telling me, “This guy, one, he’s fucking nuts, and, two, he’s driving me bonkers. He won’t shut up and leave me alone.”

  Then the Americans got an agreement to take this ship, to take people out, and the guy says to Tony, “All right, we’re getting you at three in the morning.” And then Tony told me it was just incredible: this guy was turning right from the wrong lane, and doubling back on himself to make sure he’s not being followed, and all this sort of stuff. And Tony says, “It was the ride of my life; this guy might be a boring old bastard, but he really knew what he was doing.”

  And then they get to their rendezvous point, and there’s chaos, and the guy disappears underneath some truck, and then, finally, he comes back, and says, “OK, I’ve got it sorted.” And he takes Tony and the crew through some bizarre pathway, and then they’re through, they’re processed. The guy waves goodbye to them, and then they’re on the ship, and on their way home. And when they got to Cyprus, we had the company jet there, and we flew them all back to Teterboro. And I met Tony at Teterboro, with two packets of Lark cigarettes, which he was interested in, but not as interested as meeting this very gorgeous young woman whom he then went on to marry.

  BETH ARETSKY: When he got back, he was pretty shaken up. At that time, he was dating Ottavia. And he said to me that shoot changed his life. He decided that he wanted to have a child. He said, “I definitely have to leave a legacy after this. Life is too short and you don’t know when—” That trip really scared him.

  OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN: He got stuck in Beirut, and I remember I would see everyone leaving—every other country was leaving, and the Americans were still there, and there was less and less contact. I was really panicking, and he was telling me, “Maybe we are not going to be able to be in touch anymore. Maybe this is the last time we talk to each other.”

  So it was really, really dramatic. And when he came back, I went with Chris [Collins] and Lydia [Tenaglia] to Teterboro [airport], and they landed, and I was so happy. It was one of those moments when you realize, things can happen any moment, you know—life is fleeting, let’s really try to make the best of every day.

  And so, we went home, we had sex, and we didn’t even think about protection or anything. We just went for it. And that night, I was thinking, my calculations in my head, I said, “I think that I should take Plan B, because, you know, it’s those days.”

  And he told me, “No, let’s spin the wheel again.” So we did it again. And I said, “OK, maybe you’re right, because, after all, your sperm is old, so it’s never gonna make it.” I used to really make fun of him, torture him a little bit, in a loving way. We had that kind of a relationship.

  But then, two weeks after, I was like, “OK, I feel really weird. My breasts are really hurting me.”

  I did a blood test, and then we went to LA—I think he was shooting Top Chef. And on our way to Chateau Marmont from the airport, my gynecologist called and said, “From your levels, it looks like you’re pregnant.”

  We went to the pharmacy and bought two boxes filled with pregnancy sticks. I still have the pictures of Tony with the million pregnancy sticks, with a big grin on his face, saying that I was actually pregnant. And I couldn’t believe it, because, I mean, what are the chances?

  But, you know, I was happy. And I thought we could make it work. And he was really happy. He was like, “Yeah, it’s gonna work. We’re both adults, good jobs . . .”

  If Beirut hadn’t happened, I don’t know if we— I would have probably taken the Plan B that night. And I don’t know if we would have even had children, honestly, because it was not really in our mind. We really liked to drink, and smoke, and party.

  So I had to quit smoking and drinking. It was a big change. We had been together only seven months. Through those seven months, we were just having lots of fun. Things changed quite drastically. We got an apartment together on the Upper East Side.

  It was a surprise when he proposed. In December [2006], we were supposed to go to Miami—the Raleigh, because we loved going to the Raleigh. I was watching Dancing with the Stars. He went to the closet, and he came out, and he opened this ring, and he asked me if I wanted to marry him, and I was like, “What the heck?”

  He said, “I wanted to ask you in Miami, but I couldn’t wait.” I said yes. It made sense. I was pregnant, and it was like, why not?

  We thought maybe after Ariane was born, we could have a barefoot ceremony in the back of the Raleigh, with our close friends coming. Then we actually got married before I thought we were going to, right after we had Ariane, because Tony was going to shoot the [No Reservations] Tuscany show, and he wanted me and Ariane to come, but I was in the middle o
f getting another visa, and it looked like it was not gonna happen for me, the Tuscany show. So it was like, “Fuck it. Let’s just get married now, and so you can come with us, and not worry about any of this.”

  Ten days after Ariane was born, we just went to City Hall and got married.

  BETH ARETSKY: I think I was their only witness, and then we all had hot dogs after. And they weren’t even, like, Papaya King dogs, they were just the dirty cart dogs, right outside the courthouse.

  LYDIA TENAGLIA: While Tony had this lifestyle that required him to travel around the world, the fact that he had that anchor point of family was actually really meaningful for him.

  We saw this shift in him, experiencing a real love, probably for the first time in his whole life, an unequivocal love that’s not based on how it comes back to you. For the first time, when Tony had Ariane, he actually asked us, “How are you guys? How are your kids?”

  When he had Ariane, it was the first time I saw him engaging in a way that felt deeply authentic. The way he talked about her, the way he spent time with her, their interactions felt deeply real.

  TODD LIEBLER, CINEMATOGRAPHER: He would talk about Ottavia and Ariane in the most idealized, most precious light. His eyes would sparkle. And it was lovely to hear and to see him engaged with someone. Of course, it left no room for anyone else’s engagement. He’d ask, “How was your summer?” and I’d say, “Oh, great, we went to—” and then he would start talking. It was really an excuse for him to tell me all about his summer, you know? His expression of interest in others was short lived, let’s just say it that way.

  23

  “It Was Not the Easiest Thing”

  Life on the Road as a Family

  OTTAVIA BUSIA-BOURDAIN: Ariane was a few weeks old when we went to Tuscany, and everyone was there—family, friends. Tony wanted me to be on the show, and I didn’t want to.

  Before I was pregnant, we went to Miami, because he shot an episode of Miami Ink, and he really wanted me to be in the episode. We went there early in the morning, and we had mimosas on the plane, so I was not completely sober when I agreed to do it. And then I didn’t think much of it, but when the episode came out, people were merciless.