The New Yorker Radio Hour - Anthony Bourdain’s Interview with David Remnick

Episode Date: June 8, 2018

Anthony Bourdain—the chef turned author, food anthropologist, and television star—died this week, at sixty-one. Bourdain made his début in The New Yorker in 1999, with an essay called “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” about working in the restaurant industry. {{}}   It was an account of what really goes on in restaurants—extremely vivid, funny, gross, and, in parts, genuinely disturbing. After the success of that article, Bourdain went on to publish his best-selling memoir, “Kitchen Confidential,” and it’s no exaggeration to say that a star was born. When he took to television, it wasn’t for a typical celebrity-chef “stand and stir” show, but for a much more ambitious endeavor. On “Parts Unknown,” Bourdain travelled the world with a film crew, in search of authenticity.  It was never just about the food: his focus was on the people who make it and the people who eat it—from the farmers to the cooks to the diners, including President Obama, who Bourdain shared a meal with in Vietnam. He spoke with David Remnick in 2017.   New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

Hi, this is David Remnick, and this is a special episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour. The news came this morning that Anthony Bourdain had died at the age of 61 in apparent suicide. And I first heard from Anthony almost 20 years ago when I was a freshly minted editor of this magazine, and my wife called from the office Esther Fine, and she said that a woman named Bourdain had given her a manuscript in a yellow envelope by her son, Mrs. Bordane was an editor at the New York Times, and she passed this manuscript along to me with no expectations, and she just said, just be polite to Mrs. Bordan. It's her son, after all. And I tore the envelope open, not expecting much, and what I read inside was funny, a little gross, and above all, it was an electrifying picture of what it's like inside a restaurant kitchen. and the author was Anthony Bourdain, of course. And it was really like nothing else we had ever published.

It was called Don't Eat Before Reading This. The greatest pleasure an editor has is to say yes. And I was able to call up this guy, Tony Bordan, on the phone, and said, I read what you wrote and I want to publish it. In fact, I want to publish it within the next couple of weeks. He was shocked. He was delighted. And his career as a writer, as a best-selling author, began. He then left the kitchen and he took to television

with the show on CNN that you know as Parts Unknown where he traveled the world to film ostensibly people at their table, what they're cooking, what they're eating, but what he did was show you more corners of the world than you really ever see on television. He was a special person and he gave you a real sense of place. It's delicious. As you can see, people don't eat meat.

Meat is quite expensive, almost $2. It is a lot. That's more than most people make in a day or even two days. What are the first things you buy if you're very, very, very, very poor? Very poor. Soap. Anthony and I were in touch fitfully, I'd say. But I was lucky enough to interview him here for the radio hour last year in 2017. You know, in an era of celebrity chefs, Bourdain was after something completely different.

It was never just about the food, certainly not. fancy food. It was about the people who make the food, the people who eat it, being all over the world, giving us a picture of that, the farmers, the chefs, and one time even in Vietnam, the president of the United States. So you were in Vietnam, I don't know how many months ago, in a show that's now aired on CNN, but I want to know everything about your meeting with President Obama, because in my slight experience of him, he doesn't eat much at all. It's funny. I asked him at one point

about his guilty pleasure. I mean, we've all got him. You know, shameful. I was looking for something shameful. I said, come on, Captain Crunch with crunch berries at 2 o'clock in the morning. And his are what, like six walnuts or something?

Well, there's apparently some caramel corn, I think, that they make in Chicago. Yeah. Apparently, Michelle steps in and says, uh-uh, uh-uh. He's very fit. It's disgusting. And he struggled to think of a guilty pleasure

that he eats. I think he eats very healthy. That said, I've never seen anyone so happy to be drinking beer out of the neck of a bottle, sitting on a low plastic stool, eating what's essentially a street food classic in Hanoi with chopsticks. Now, but wait a minute. Did the White House not make sure that there were no poison chicken gizzards or whatever you were eating there? What place were you at? Said the seat. Okay. Well, very early on, the White House reached out to us. expressing an interest in doing something together. And we were looking and kicking around various locations, some of which didn't work out, some of which weren't very interesting.

But the minute we heard that the president was going to be stopping over in Vietnam, that was it. I will go to Vietnam. Any excuses is enough of an excuse for me to go to Vietnam, and this was a particularly good one. I love it there. I'm always happy there. Why is that?

I just, it was one of the first places outside of the U.S. that I'd been, I'd read a lot about it. You know, I have an over-romantic affection for the quiet American. It was really the first place in Asia I really fell in love with. So you got to pick the place where you're going to take the president. Yes. This was a working class, a beloved local joint, family-run joint, the second floor of a not particularly clean and certainly not fancy,

Buncha joint in the old quarter of Hanoi. What's put in chah? It is little pork patties, grilled pork patties and pieces of pork dipped into a cold fish sauce dressing, served with room temperature sticky rice noodles and herb. It's delicious. And I think significantly, it is a uniquely Hanoi thing. Nowhere else in Vietnam is it a specialty, and they hold it very dear. They had no idea who was coming to dinner.

No one did. the Secret Service would have preferred, I gather, a more controllable environment with many exits. A banquet room at Hilton would have been more in their comfort zone. But as far as the president himself, incredibly comfortable. He put us all at ease. I mean, he was one of the few people who've ever been on the show in 15, 16 years of making television, who's turned to the camera crew mid-scene and said, have you guys eaten yet? Do you get to eat?

But what happened afterwards was in many ways more amazing because people from Hanoi the next day, it had been in all the papers. And I would ride around alone on my scooter, as I'd love to do in Hanoi after the before and aftershoots. And people would come up to me, absolutely convulsed by tears, incredulous that the president of the United States chose not spring rolls or fa or to eat at a banquet room, but that he, he chose to eat at this accessible working class place and that he chose to drink Hanoi beer and Bun Cha, which is really a Hanoi thing. And the pride and shock of all of these ordinary people who would just sort of waylay me in the street was really gratifying. That's an amazing thing. Now, we grew up in similar, well, we grew up in the same state.

And you became a cook and you were at Lézal for years, cooking state. and Freight and all the rest. Did you think that your life was going to go in that direction, onward and forever? Yeah, before you called. I was standing there in the kitchen, I think, filleting salmon, and the kitchen phone rang, and it was you on the other end. But you had written fiction before that, right?

Yeah, but I mean, I'd written those in a rather cynical way. I mean, my old college roommate who I used to write his papers for him had essentially bribed me into writing these proposals. I expected nothing to happen and nothing did happen with them. I'd long ago given up any hope or dream of ever doing anything but what I was doing, which was standing in a kitchen, dunk in French fries and cooking steak-free, rather happily. I'd had a long and frankly checkered and not particularly distinguished career in the business,

30 years of sling and hash. But you invented this character of you. It was partly reality. Partly you were drawing on your somewhat misbegotten past. You've drugs and booze and. and all the rest of it, and you created a larger than life presence on television, which is very much, I imagine, is part you and part something that you write a little large and primary cards.

Maybe inspired to, I think. How do you mean? Well, I mean, I grew up, you know, Hunter Thompson loomed large in my life as a 13-year-old reading fear-loathing. Were you reading food writers at all? Or was that something that you were pursuing? Or was just reading writers. I was reading writers, a lot of writers. Who?

Orwell, his essays, Somers. mom, Graham Green was huge for me. Leibling, I guess arguably of kind of a food writer. I mean, people who had,

who enjoyed eating. Orwell, I don't know if they're not famous for you. I don't think I think Orwell ate was cigarette butts. Barely anything. Orwell's down and out in Paris and London

was a big book for me. And I was very much thinking of that. Where he's working in a kitchen. Yeah, he's working and I think, what was actually the Ritz in Paris as a young man. I remember the effect that reading that book had on me when I was a dishwasher, and it was very much a template and inspiration for a kitchen confidential.

You know, this is a book written in the 20s, and the fact that it was so recognizable, and I felt such kinship with these characters so long ago that so little had... Kitchens haven't changed since the 20s? I mean, you know, people who found themselves in kitchens were... the refuse and the refugees and, you know, people for whom things had gone wrong. They were the second smartest kid in the family who, you know, the family couldn't afford to send two of them to college or to, and to some extent, that's who was working in the 70s when I started cooking.

That's changed now. But that connection was something that I kind of, I yearned for what I wrote the first article. I had hoped for nothing more than to inspire that feeling of I'm not alone in a few other cooks in the New York area. That was my goal. And what was the reaction to that first article? What were you hearing? I mean, there was a news crew waiting for me the next day. At the restaurant?

I came out of jury duty, and there was a television crew waiting for me. And then I figured, look, I better keep my day job here, but eventually the restaurant was filling up with journalists. It was like a hard news story. I never got it. I had no idea. I had no clue that this was coming. I had no expectation that anything would come of this. Even after the book came out, I thought, you know, I kept working. Who could reasonably expect to make a living writing? It seemed like a delusional notion. And how did it become a television invention? How did it all start? It was an opportunistic thing. I mean, some guys came into the restaurant and said,

we'd like to make television with you. And I'm sure you've had this. Someone comes to pitch you an article. I got a great idea for an article. Best beaches of Southeast Asia. You're going to say, Nice try, buddy. Yeah. But I figured I was in good odor with Kitchen Confidential, and I went to my publisher and said, I got a great idea for a second book. I travel all the cool places I always dreamed of going, and you pay. And so that's what I had for the TV guys who came in, and to my complete surprise,

they actually went for it. I thought that they were just going to shoot over my shoulder as I ate a lot of stuff to write this book. That was, I figured it would last a year. But at some point, I remember I was laying in a bed in Vietnam, one of the first. or earlier shows, and I'm looking up, they're filming me laying, they're feeling sick to my stomach, and I'm laying there,

and I look up and I saw the ceiling fan overhead, and I said something like, oh, it's like the first scene in apocalypse now, and they shot it. And I started to realize, this could be a creative enterprise. We might actually be able to have fun here. So I take this as both a compliment to you,

but also a frustration with television news. I watch your show with the knowledge that you're going to places the TV news crews generally don't go. I'm not seeing Burma in my living room. I'm not seeing Thailand. I'm not seeing so many places in the world. And I don't think that you make any pretense

in your show of being Edward R. Murrow or pure news. But you're accomplishing something more than eating rattlesnake or whatever it is you're eating. I haven't seen Congo on television news I'm really proud of that because nobody shoots, very few people shoot an hour at television

in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is very difficult. And generally speaking, I think most networks would say our audiences don't even want to see it. What goes into preparing for a trip like Congo? If I go to do a story, and I still do some here and there, I mean, I basically bring a pencil. Yeah.

And that's it. It's just me. And maybe if it's someplace dangerous or complicated, I might get a fixer here or there. What do you have to do? Well, I'd read a lot on the Congo. It's why we were there. It's a subject I was obsessed with.

But you're shooting in a place like Congo. You need a good fixer. And in this case, we were very, very fortunate. We had a great fixer with great local contacts. They knew exactly when, when confronted with these various people claiming to be the local secret police chief, when to say,

Do you know who I am? And when to say, oh, I'm terribly sorry for having disrespect to you. So what might we do to ameliorate the situation? Was that your most dangerous trip, Congo? Probably. I mean, we shot in post-Benghazi Libya, you know, wartime, Beirut, in Iraq. But I think, you know, Congo is a place where everything's fine until it's not. And that can happen really, really quickly.

To some extent, do you feel that you're carrying the burden of, television news and foreign correspondents. No, I feel really, really, really lucky, given the way things are and the pressures that are clearly on every news organization as far as, you know, how many bureaus they can maintain and what stories people are willing to watch. Because they're clearly given a choice between a Kardashian and a story in Congo. Everyone's going to go with a Kardashian every time. What I do is I'm telling stories in places about people. that it's probably useful to know a little more about. So when news does happen, maybe you've seen my show so you know who we're talking about.

How much is the show still about food in your mind? Is that a diminishing proportion of the way you block out the show? I never lose sight of the fact that most of my adult life was spent preparing food. That that is the way that I often connect with people talking about asking simple questions. You know, I think I discovered that really early on, kind of accidentally. If you ask people simple things like what food makes you happy, they also start telling you these rather extraordinary things many times that they might not tell a journalist in a hurry asking about a specific issue that people are often very cautious. For example. And careful about.

Well, they might not want to talk about the way they feel about the government. But after a few beers and talking about what makes you happy at two o'clock in the morning, when you're drunk and you're hungry. Also, there's nothing more political than food. I mean, we shot at Egypt before the Arab Spring. And, of course, we had fixes happens in places like Cairo. Chances are some of your fixers and drivers work for some interior ministry group. Their job is to keep an eye on you and to make sure that you don't wander or point your camera at military infrastructure.

We wanted to do a scene showing the ubiquitous. street food fool. It's basically these watery beans with a stack of bread that everybody in Cairo and much of Egypt seems to eat as a staple. We want to shoot a full seat. No, no, no, we can't do this. You must not do it. It's not interesting. You must not shoot fool or we will cancel your permits and you're out. One of our executive producers feigned an attack of violent diarrhea to distract the fixers and we shot the scene. What was it? They understood what we did not. most of the country, that's what they eat. That's the meal.

Yeah. That's not just a meal. That's the meal. There had been bread riots. The army apparently controlled of flour and bread production. And I don't think it was that they were worried about what other people outside of Egypt would think. Our show was shown in Egypt. And I think they were worried that there'd be a France show and then, you know, like an Italy show.

And then they see themselves eating full. I think they saw it as a. is potentially angering to their own people when they saw how they, I mean, they knew well that this is all we got. Who's eating what is something that we inadvertently started to show and had maybe more importance than we realized. You've been around a lot of cooks, a lot of chefs for a long period of time, and there are people that have meteoric careers and they burn out. Even for people who've come into big financial success, it seems to be a brutally difficult business as opposed to some others. what do you want ahead for yourself? I'm not goal-oriented.

I have a few business principles. One is the quality of life is really, really important to me. I live by something, I hope I can use a word. I live by something called the no-asshole rule, meaning... You don't want to deal with them. I'm very fortunate. I like everyone I do business with. Absolutely everyone I do business with, I like.

I always ask myself, look, there's a lot of money involved here, but if the phone rings at 10 o'clock at night, am I going to go, oh, damn? I'm not going to do that. I'm just not going to do it. Life is too short and bad things as I found on the road and my travels can happen at any minute. I want to be happy. And I want to be having spent a lot of my time, a lot of my life waking up in the morning, looking in a mirror and seeing somebody I'm ashamed of.

I don't want to be ashamed of anything I do from this point on either. When you come off the road from Hanoi or Paris or wherever it is, are you just having hot water? and maybe a slice of toast with no butter? When I get back to New York, no matter how delicious the food is wherever I've been, when I come back to New York, I want a pastrami sandwich or a burger. You know, America.

I'll call out there, get shake shack or something. So it's your last day on earth, and that's what you're having as a burger? No, my last day on earth, if I had to choose one meal, it would be sushi. It would be, you know, I'd be at Giro or Mossa or something like that. I'd eat some high-end sushi, and then, you know, around the time they serve the omelet, the tamago, I, you know, I'm ready to go then.

Tony, thanks. Thank you.