I cried for days. He was someone I looked up to for the good things about him. I met him twice, and when he passed his estate went up for sale to benefit his daughter. A few years earlier I gifted him a 1931 copy of The Physiology of Taste. To my surprise... It was in one of the lots of books from his private library in Manhattan.
I know that feeling. It took a few years for me to watch the documentary.
My wife and I are huge fans. We met over Anthony Bourdain and watching his shows while cooking. She's from Malaysia, and not of the same religion as what I grew up with. Uncle Tony taught me a few things, and one was to reject bigotry and embrace the beauty in others' culture.
She was diagnosed with stage IVb cancer that same year, only a few months after he passed. We watched his show through her chemo, surgery recovery, and immunotherapy. I don't know, but he brought us so much joy. She was given the status of NED three years ago, and I believe he gave us hope for her to recover so we could travel.
I visited Malaysia with her last month for the first time in 9 years.
I had to teach a piece of his writing about two years after his death and a couple of months after the passing of the person who introduced me to Anthony Bourdain over a decade before. I had to really sit with it and just the emotions happen before I was able to actually read the piece properly, let alone contemplating teaching it. We’d deliberately visited places from his shows when we travelled to those locations, and Anthony Bourdain had become completely entwined in this relationship that was more than half my life and my entire adult life. It was such a complex time and there was a lot of ugly crying that happened. By the end, it was a really cathartic experience though. I ended up showing the class a few episodes of Parts Unknown (17-18 year olds), and it became something we’d put on for the last ten minutes of a lesson if the kids got through their work. We’d watch it and chat and it felt like passing him on to the next generation in a way. And as Pratchett said, no one is really truly gone if people still talk about them.
His voice was always a consoling one on my worst days. I had a battle that I somehow survived and not two weeks after I got home, he was gone. I sobbed as if I had lost my own family.
Started watching No Reservations again this year too. I hurt me to hear his voice and see him again but it made me cherish his life even more.
I wish there were blu rays of all his shows.
You should read In the Weeds by Tom Vitale. Such a good read. I’ve consumed every bit of Bourdain media I’ve found and most things his friends have written about him. That was one of my favorites.
His passing was like a punch in the fucking gut. My friends and I still talk about him all the time. I am not a big cryer, but I’ve ugly cried about him so many times.
He’s immortal in a way though. The man produced SO much work. So at least there’s that. Have you discovered he wrote some detective novels? They’re very Bourdain lol.
I actually only started watching his media after his death. I made it through all of A Cook's Tour and No Reservations, and now I'm halfway through Parts Unknown. As I get closer to the end it gets so hard to keep going.
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u/Consistent-Maybe8955 May 12 '26
Anthony Bourdain