Zweig, Sandy, 176–77, 178, 238, 270, 323, 339, 340, 394–95, 407, 423, 431–32
Photo Section
Tony’s parents, Pierre and Gladys Bourdain, summer 1954.
Gladys Bourdain (née Sacksman) and Pierre Bourdain on their wedding day, August 20, 1954, in New York City.
Gladys Bourdain at home in Leonia, New Jersey, with newborn son, Anthony Michael Bourdain, June 1956. Gladys was very close with her parents, both of whom died during her pregnancy. Later she would speculate that Tony’s dark outlook was a result of her profound grief during pregnancy.
Pierre Bourdain at home with infant Tony, summer 1956.
Tony at home, summer 1961.
Tony and his brother, Christopher Bourdain, at home, summer 1962.
Tony’s first-grade picture, spring 1963, from the Anna C. Scott Elementary School in Leonia, New Jersey. According to Gladys, Tony was academically far ahead of his classmates and, according to Christopher, he was mercilessly bullied, to the point that administrators suggested that his parents enroll him in private school.
Tony and Chris, Halloween at home, 1963.
Tony and Chris Bourdain, smartly dressed as usual, at the home of family friends, 1964.
Chris and Tony in Amagansett, New York, summer 1965.
Tony and Chris, 1964.
Chris and Tony at home, dressed to celebrate Chris’s birthday, 1964.
Tony, Pierre, and Chris Bourdain in Barnegat Light, New Jersey, summer 1964. The family would regularly vacation at the New Jersey shore, renting a modest house for a few weeks, with Pierre taking the bus down from New York on the weekends.
Tony on a family trip, exploring the Wisconsin Dells by plane, summer 1965.
Tony’s passport photo, taken in 1966, in preparation for the family’s first transatlantic trip, which would have a transformative effect on his relationship to France, food, and travel.
Chris, Tony, and Gladys en route to France aboard the Queen Mary, summer 1966.
Pierre Bourdain, 1966, outside the family home in Leonia, at the start of an extensive renovation, which was left incomplete when they ran out of money.
Tony and Chris on the beach in Cap Ferret, France, August 1967, enjoying cookies called Cigarettes Russes.
Tony at Boy Scout camp, August 1968.
Tony washing the family car at home, June 1969.
Tony (bottom row, second from left), showing off his signature subversive style at Forest Lake Camp in the Adirondacks, summer 1969.
Tony at his home drawing desk, September 1972. He long harbored the dream of becoming a professional cartoonist, but he became discouraged in early adulthood.
Tony at home, 1972.
Tony’s high school graduation day, from the Dwight-Englewood School, 1973.
Paris, summer 1973.
Tony on his graduation day from the Culinary Institute of America, November 1978.
Nancy Bourdain (née Putkoski) and Tony on his graduation day at the CIA, November 1978.
Tony, Sam Goldman, and Alex Getmanov outside the restaurant WPA, New York City, 1980. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
Sam, Tony, Alex, NYC, 1980. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
Tony in the Hotel Wales kitchen, circa 1988, New York City. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
Tony at the Supper Club, circa 1995, New York City.
Correspondence from Tony to Joel Rose, who was then the editor at Between C & D, a downtown literary magazine. Joel would become a lifelong friend, mentor, and writing partner to Tony. (Courtesy of the archive at Fales Library, New York University)
Tony in his office at Les Halles, circa 1999, New York City. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
Tony and Nancy at the Larchmont home of Chris and Jennifer Bourdain, in the mid-1980s.
Tony reading at the Great Bay Hotel in St. Maarten, during his first visit to the island, with Nancy, in 1982. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
St. Maarten, 1982.
Nancy and Tony’s wedding day, September 3, 1985, New York City. As befits a busy chef on a budget, the wedding was held on a Tuesday morning, followed by a brunch reception. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
Tony, Nancy, and Pierre Bourdain at his son’s wedding. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
Nancy, Chris, and Tony at the home of Chris and Jennifer Bourdain, Larchmont, New York, mid-1980s.
Tony and Nancy at their post-wedding party, at the St. Regis Hotel, New York. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
Tony and Nancy on their honeymoon, September 1985, in St. Maarten, at the Oyster Pond Hotel and Yacht Club. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
Tony at the Oyster Pond Hotel. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
Tony at home with his mother, Gladys, mid-1980s. (Courtesy of Nancy Bourdain)
Tony at home, holding his niece, Isabelle Bourdain, late 1990.
Tony at home with baby Isabelle, Nancy, Chris, and Gladys, late 1990.
Tony, Ariane, and Ottavia in Tuscany, summer 2008.
Ariane and Ottavia at home in New York, 2009.
Tony and his daughter, Ariane, fall 2007.
The Polaroid of Tony, taken for a promotion at Les Halles, that his editor and friend Karen Rinaldi would claim for the cover of Kitchen Confidential, asking, “Don’t you want to hear what this guy has to say?”
Tony’s author headshot, 1995, for his first novel, Bone in the Throat.
Tony signing copies of Bone in the Throat at the Union Square Greenmarket, 1995, assisted by Nancy Bourdain (in a chef’s coat) and a trusted cook, Orlando Preciado, serving gazpacho to passersby. In the foreground is Maggie Topkis, the owner of Partners & Crime, a Manhattan bookstore, now closed.
Tony, Chris, Lydia, and local crew on the Sangkae River in Cambodia, headed to Battambang, for A Cook’s Tour. (Courtesy of Ottavia Busia-Bourdain)
Tony and hosts shooting a meal scene in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for A Cook’s Tour, season 2, 2002. “Tony’s awkwardness was in full swing,” recalls Chris Collins. “He just wasn’t able to engage with the folks we were eating with—thus the look on his face.” (Courtesy of Ottavia Busia-Bourdain)
Tony and Chris Collins in Melbourne, Australia, for A Cook’s Tour, season 2, 2002. (Courtesy of Ottavia Busia-Bourdain)
On the Jersey Shore boardwalk in winter, late 2000s. (Courtesy of Ottavia Busia-Bourdain)
Tony during his first, formative visit to Vietnam, for A Cook’s Tour. (Courtesy of Ottavia Busia-Bourdain)
Tony in a helicopter on a 2006 shoot in Ghana, for No Reservations, season 3. (Courtesy of Rennik Soholt)
Tony and the author, Laurie Woolever, in 2016, at a day of interviews in Toronto, promoting their cookbook, Appetites. (Courtesy of Philippa Croft)
A weary but game Tony in a No Reservations crew van. In the early years, Tony would fly to locations and ride in the van with the crew. “We all fit in one van, and we went everywhere together,” recalls producer Nari Kye. “[Tony] would play music. He would always be DJ, and we would always tell jokes and be gross and silly.” As the shows became more demanding, Tony would become more isolated. “One thing Tony always valued was the camaraderie with the crew,” says producer Diane Schutz. “But as time went on, our budgets increased, and you wanted to respect his time, so then he gets his own van to set, and the crew advances for an hour. Well, now he’s just lost an hour in the van with the crew, and he’s just there alone.” (Courtesy of Rennik Soholt)
About the Author
LAURIE WOOLEVER is a writer and editor, and spent close to a decade assisting Anthony Bourdain, with whom she coauthored Appetites: A Cookbook and World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, a number one New York Times bestseller. She has written about food and travel for the New York Times, GQ, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, Saveur, Dissent, Roads & Kingdoms, among others, and has worked as an editor at Art Culinaire and Wine Spectator.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Laurie Woolever
World Travel: An Irreverent Guide
(with Ant
hony Bourdain, 2021)
Appetites: A Cookbook
(with Anthony Bourdain, 2016)
Copyright
BOURDAIN. Copyright © 2021 by Anthony M. Bourdain Trust UW. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Ecco® and HarperCollins® are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers.
Excerpt from Karen Rinaldi’s (It’s Great to) Suck at Something (New York: Atria, 2019) reprinted with permission.
Cover design by Allison Saltzman.
Cover photograph courtesy of CNN.
Frontispiece courtesy of CNN.
Epigraph photograph courtesy of Helen Lang.
All other photographs are from the collection of Christopher Bourdain unless otherwise noted.
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-290912-1
Version 08282021
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-290910-7
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*Gordon Howard, now deceased, would, more than two decades later, become Tony’s de facto first literary agent.
*Tony took James Graham with him when he was hired to run a large Italian restaurant called Gianni’s, at the South Street Seaport. In Kitchen Confidential he refers to it as “Gino’s.”
*In 1985, Tony enrolled in a creative writing course with the renowned literary editor and writer Gordon Lish.
*Russ Smith declined to be interviewed for this book.
*The New Yorker published the piece, titled “Don’t Eat before Reading This,” in 1999.
*Tony, Nancy, Chris, and Lydia went to Spain in 2003, to shoot what they hoped would be the first episode of season 3 of A Cook’s Tour. When the network and the production company (New York Times Television) balked at underwriting the cost of the endeavor, they decided to self-finance the project, eventually releasing it as a stand-alone film, called Decoding Ferran Adrià. It would later appear as a special episode of No Reservations.
*Chef and entrepreneur Roy Choi wrote a hybrid cookbook-memoir, L.A. Son, with coauthors Natasha Phan and Tien Nguyen, that Tony published through his imprint in 2013.
*Bonnie published her memoir, You’re Better Than Me, through the Anthony Bourdain Books imprint in 2016.
*In January 2019, Tony’s imprint published Jason Rezaian’s Prisoner, his account of being arrested and jailed for eighteen months in Iran.
*Tony and Joel Rose coauthored a total of three graphic novels together over the span of seven years.
*In 2010, David Simon asked Tony to join the writing staff of the HBO series Treme, beginning with the second season. The series, which ran for four seasons, depicted life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and it featured a chef and restaurant storyline.
*The name of the tour was, in fact, Guts and Glory.
*Nari Kye codirected, with Anna Chai, a 2017 documentary about food waste, called Wasted!, with Tony attached as executive producer. He also appeared in the film.
*In late 2017, Tony issued a press statement regarding the market’s presumed home, at Manhattan’s Pier 57: “Launching what is admittedly a very ambitious venture has proven to be challenging at every turn,” he said. “It seems increasingly clear that in spite of my best efforts, the stars may not align at Pier 57, which is an especially complicated site for which we still do not have a lease. I promised a certain kind of market to New Yorkers and to potential vendors, and if that vision becomes clouded, diluted or compromised, it is no longer something that our city needs,” he said. “I remain hopeful that New York will someday have such a market—I still passionately wish to create this resource that New Yorkers deserve.”
*At the conclusion of shooting a scene, the director will call for wide shots, to establish the visual context of the area in which the subjects are speaking. On Tony’s sets, this was generally understood to mean that enough dialogue had been captured. Tony would sometimes call for wides himself, when he felt he was done with a scene.
*Tony met the Italian actress and director Asia Argento in Rome, on the set of Parts Unknown, in April 2016. They went public with their romance in February 2017.
*Argento canceled plans to meet him in France, shortly before the July 2016 trip.
*Tony relayed the episode to Patrick Radden Keefe, in the New Yorker profile, in which he’d had too much to drink, combined with some prescription drugs, while in France in July 2016. He lost consciousness just outside a bar and woke up speaking, as he recalled, perfect French.
*Grape, Olive, Pig is a book about the culinary culture of Spain, written by Matt Goulding and published by Tony’s imprint at Ecco.
*Asia Argento was one of several women who spoke to Ronan Farrow for an October 2017 article, published in the New Yorker, about their experiences of being sexually assaulted by the film producer Harvey Weinstein. She was in New York at that time and had recently introduced Tony to her friends Joe Coleman, an artist, and his wife, Whitney Ward.
*The band Eagles of Death Metal, for which Homme is the drummer, were playing at the Bataclan theater in Paris, France, on November 13, 2015, when ninety people were killed in a terrorist attack.
*On December 10, 2017, Tony tweeted, in response to news reports of Homme having kicked the photographer: “Waking up in Bhutan to the Josh Homme @QOTSA shit and still in the WTF!!!??!! Phase. Senseless. And a weak ass apology.”
*On December 12, 2017, news broke on the restaurant industry website Eater, and then in the New York Times and the Washington Post, about several women’s allegations of sexual harassment by Mario Batali and Ken Friedman in the workplace. Tony, who had once considered Batali and Friedman friends and peers, had become a vocal supporter of the #MeToo movement, and was made aware in advance that the stories were in development.
*Tony and Kamau traveled to Kenya in February 2018 to shoot an episode of Parts Unknown.
*Andrukanis was one of two producers on the Hong Kong episode of Parts Unknown.
*A few days into shooting the Hong Kong episode, tension over creative differences between the director, Asia Argento, and the director of photography, Zach Zamboni, came to a head.
*Zach Zamboni declined to be interviewed for this book.
*Tony closed the Hollywood Reporter essay with the following lines:
“It was the most intensely satisfying experience of my professional life and a show that I a
m giddily, ecstatically proud of. I plan to get a Du Kefeng tattoo, in the original Mandarin, as soon as possible. As you might have guessed, I already have an Asia Argento tattoo.” [“Anthony Bourdain: My ‘Cinematic Dream’ Filming with Asia Argento and Christopher Doyle (Guest Column),” Hollywood Reporter, June 2, 2018.]
*Tony’s daughter, Ariane Busia-Bourdain, visited him on the Lower East Side set one day, shortly before her eleventh birthday.
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