INTERVIEW WITH JILL DUPLIEX
ON STAGE AT THE SYDNEY WRITERS’ FESTIVAL
MAY 21, 2011
JILL DUPLIEX: I was looking to give a very quick introduction to Anthony for you, and I’ve found the most ideal one, online, existing on the Urban Dictionary, and I quote:
“Anthony Bourdain (n) (adj); Anthony Bourdain is an author, chef, and television host. This is ironic because he is also Satan. He is one of the baddest motherfuckers to grace television. His books are well written, conscious, and can be quite humorous. His restaurant Les Halles serves amazing French Cuisine and is located in New York.”
Ladies and gentlemen, Anthony Bourdain.
BOURDAIN: Thank you.
DUPLIEX: I’m not sure who’s going to have as much, much fun up here. I think it’s going to be me. Okay. You wrote your first book Kitchen Confidential in the year 2000 and it hit the New York Times Bestsellers List and you followed that with A Cook’s Tour, with The Nasty Bits, with crime novels, with TV shows. And now, this latest book Medium Raw is a sequel in effect to Kitchen Confidential 10 years on, part exposé, a memoir trekking life since leaving the kitchen. How have you changed in that last 10 years?
BOURDAIN: Well, when I wrote Kitchen Confidential I was a completely broke, stressed-out, forty-four-year-old working as he had always worked his entire life—in a not particularly great or famous restaurant kitchen, you know, standing next to a deep fryer…I’d never had health insurance, I’d never owned a car, I never paid my rent on time, I hadn’t filed my taxes in ten years. I was a frightened, angry, desperate character who had seen almost nothing of the world outside of kitchens.
You know, it’s ten years later, eleven years later, I’ve had almost ten years of the best job in the world, traveling around. I go anywhere I want, I’ve stayed in a lot of nice hotels, I’ve eaten in some of the best restaurants in the world, I’m friends with a lot of the greatest chefs, I’ve seen life high and low…I’ve lived a life of incredible—almost overnight from who I was back then, my life changed so drastically! You know I’m older, I don’t know that I’m wiser, but I’ve seen a hell of a lot more than I ever thought I would have seen. I’ve become corrupted by the process in the sense that I’ve become one of those TV characters that I had no understanding of at all when I was in the kitchen. And maybe the largest difference, you know, I’m a daddy now! I have a four-year-old little girl at home. You know, all the clichés about parenthood are of course absolutely true.
DUPLIEX: So one of the big changes is of course that you were a chef and now you’re a celebrity…
BOURDAIN: I don’t work for a living. I mean…
DUPLIEX: You’re making it sound good.
BOURDAIN: I mean, writing—I have no sympathy for anyone fortunate enough to get paid any kind of money to write whining about writer’s block or how hard it is, or some sort of internal torture. You’re doing it in a sitting position, so right away, you know? I spent my whole adult life on my feet. I feel very, very lucky that anybody even gives a shit what I think. It’s not something I’m used to, and it is a privilege to be able to write and have even eight people care what you’re saying.
DUPLIEX: There’s a great line in Medium Raw where you said being a heroin addict was fantastic preparation for being a celebrity.
BOURDAIN: Yeah!
DUPLIEX: [Laughing] Could you please explain?
BOURDAIN: Well, particularly in the world of television, but it’s also true I think in any media: there are a lot of people out there who are full of shit. People will tell you, especially in Hollywood, you know, they’re telling me, “We love your work,” “We really want to work with you,” “We’re terribly excited about this new project”—all of those things. You know, when you’re a junkie it is necessary that you very quickly—because you’re desperate, you only have ten dollars and you need to get well with it and you’re buying it on the street from some pretty hardcore characters, you’re surrounded by hustlers with a real imperative to hustle—you just develop a sort of a sixth sense. You become a pretty good judge of character: Is this person reliable, or are they full of shit? Are they the sort of person who is going to do what they say they’re going to do? And you develop this sort of feral sense, which I think is true of chefs as well. You look into someone’s eyes and you ask yourself—you believe there are only two kinds of people in this world. There are the type of people who say they’re going to do something tomorrow and they actually do it, and then there’s everybody else. And having been a heroin addict you have to develop at least some skills as far as judging which type of person that it might be you’re dealing with, or you end up dead, or well, you don’t end up on the street very long.
DUPLIEX: Do you think that’s why you were drawn to the kitchen or to the restaurant industry in the first place? To get some sort of structure?
BOURDAIN: I fell into the business accidentally. But it was certainly the only time in my life that I responded well to any kind of structure. I was grateful for it. It was the first time that I went home with any reason to be proud of myself. It was the first time that I cared about anybody else’s opinion of me. It was the first time I respected myself or anybody else. It was definitely the perfect mix of romance and, you know, piratical attitudes, and sex, and drugs, and rock and roll—that’s true. But you’re absolutely right. It was that structure, it was that first hierarchy and structure, and quantifiable organization, and value system, that I recognized that I needed it, and I was grateful for it. And I liked it, obviously. I fell in love with the life long before I started to get serious about food.
DUPLIEX: But it’s that anger, isn’t it, that you brought to your writing in a way? And that’s what made the writing so compelling, because it was very short, very direct, very short order in a way, very direct, very no-bullshit about your life. You had a lot of—
BOURDAIN: A lot of hyperbole. You know, in the kitchen, as a chef, when you’re angry at a cook or a waiter, they are for the moment, the worst, most miserable rat bastard on earth. But five minutes later, I love you, I want to bear your children, you are the greatest human being who ever walked the Earth. Those feelings can coexist or change pretty quickly. But you know I am angry. Clearly that fuels me. But I like to think that—like a number of other authors I can think of—the flip side of that is a sense of spoiled Romanticism, a disappointment with the way the world turned out. You know, it was supposed to be far more beautiful and romantic, and gentle, and I learned pretty early on it wasn’t going to be like that.
DUPLIEX: And now you punish people.
BOURDAIN: Yeah! Well, you know, it doesn’t make everything better to insult somebody, but…it helps.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: I’m going to throw you another question about this whole celebrity chef caper, because it is so much a part of our world at the moment. We had Marco Pierre White in town this week, you’ve described him as an icon, an iconic figure in our gastronomic universe. And yet here he was in Australia flogging Continental Stock Cubes, which broke my heart because I fell in love with him at the beginning—he was the hottest young chef I’d ever seen in my life and his food was just so beautiful and his head was in a very great place. But he’s a fucked up character, too. But—
BOURDAIN: Well, we all are, anyone who cooks.
DUPLIEX: Yes, we are, we are. But I found that a bit depressing. I mean he’s probably thinking he’s doing good business, and he’s running around the world and doing all that. But do you think that that is the trajectory of someone who—
BOURDAIN: Why should we hold chefs—Cooking is hard. It’s really hard. It breaks you down. A chef’s lifespan used to be, in the thirties, was thirty-seven years old. It is now about fifty-seven. Why do we demand, or insist, or expect chefs to die behind the stove, broken-assed, flat-footed, varicose veined, at fifty-seven? Why do we hold chefs to a higher standard than Keith Richards, or Iggy, or anyone else who’s incredibly cool and changed the world?
You know, Marco Pierre White—I would compare him to Orson Welles. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane. If he wants to end up making commercials for bad wine, good for him. I wish he’d been paid more money for it. He still made the greatest goddamn movie in American history to that point. He changed the world for the better. Marco has done his good works. What I admire about Marco in particular is that he reached the mountaintop—he got three stars*1 earlier than I think just about anyone else in the world had ever done. An Englishman who had never been to France cooking French food—and he didn’t want it anymore. He gave his stars back and said I’ve done my thing. I was to spend my days cashing checks, walking around in the English countryside shooting animals.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: That’s true.
BOURDAIN: And you know what? God bless him. Who better deserves to sell out any way they want, make a little money in their old age, than chefs?
DUPLIEX: Okay, but—
[Applause]
BOURDAIN: I mean, I’ll say this: I feel a lot better about Marco Pierre White cashing paychecks now for whatever he may do than for Paris Hilton getting paid for anything.
[Applause]
DUPLIEX: It’s true. Yeah, absolutely. However, where do you draw the line? Do you have a personal line in the sand that you will not cross, or is there some level of behavior that you go, “That chef can do this, can do that, can flog bad wine,” et cetera—is there a line where you go—
BOURDAIN: Okay, we all have a—let’s make it personal. There is a line for me: You know, Olive Garden, or Kentucky Fried Chicken…I would have a very hard time personally standing there saying this food is really delicious when I know it’s crap.
DUPLIEX: So, lying.
BOURDAIN: No, I’m happy to lie. [Audience laughter] It is not an integrity issue with me. It is a vanity issue. I don’t care how much money in the world, I’ve had plenty—I know what it’s like to wake up in the morning ashamed of what I did yesterday and I don’t like that feeling. It’s just, I don’t want to look in the mirror and see the Olive Garden or the TGI Friday guy. I just, it’s vanity. It doesn’t have anything to do with integrity.
DUPLIEX: Okay. My line for that, my line if they cross then I lose sight of them, the point of no return, is going on Dancing With the Stars.
BOURDAIN: Ah! Well I’ve been offered twice.
DUPLIEX: Offered twice?
BOURDAIN: Twice.
DUPLIEX: Again, it’s probably a vanity issue…?
BOURDAIN: Yeah, I mean, I’m not going on Celebrity Rehab yet, either. [Audience laughter] But, you know, talk to me in ten years. I mean, I’m doing well now!
DUPLIEX: Yep, it’s true. And I will. Okay, as a chef, what’s your idea of the customer from hell?
BOURDAIN: The customer from hell, the worst customer on earth, is the customer who’s decided beforehand, they’re already miserable the minute they walk in the door. And they’ve decided that they’re gonna feel better if they bully, speak condescendingly to, or mistreat floor staff. This is an unforgivable act to me. I mean if we go out to lunch together and you’re rude to your waiter and treat them like a piece of shit, talk down to them, or blame them for the kitchen’s mistakes, our relationship is dead and will always be dead. That sort of person working through personal issues—they’re not there to relax, get a little drunk and let things happen, have a meal. They’re just a miserable person who will probably bring that same misery to ruin every experience whether it’s a musical performance, or the food, a dinner, or the sex act.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: Quite. And do you have an idea of a chef from hell?
BOURDAIN: The chef from hell is the chef who’s been broken and just doesn’t care, you know? They have no pride, they’re unhappy, they don’t like their customers, they don’t like their owner, they don’t care whether their customers are happy anymore—I’ve been there! You know, all pride is gone…A heartbroken chef is the chef from hell.
Because almost all of them start out wanting to make good food, and for many, many years you were punished for that. You know, if you dared to try to serve food the way you knew it to be great, that you’d had it in France, or the way your training had taught you, you’d get slapped down by the customer. You know: There’s still blood in this steak! Tuna? That’s for cats! Squid? Ew, it’s ookie! Fish is oily and dark! You know, these were very much the common attitudes back in the 70s and 80s, so I think a good side effect of this admittedly annoying celebrity chef phenomenon is that people actually give a shit about what the chef thinks now, and are willing to give them a shot. But the one who’s out there toiling, just kind of slopping it out and doesn’t really care…that’s the chef from hell.
DUPLIEX: And is there such a thing as a novelist or a writer from hell for you?
BOURDAIN: Um…I don’t know. I don’t really know many writers. I don’t hang out with writers. I mean, ask yourself, you’re in a lifeboat adrift in the sea about to wash up on an island—which would you prefer to be marooned on an island with, a bunch of cooks or a bunch of writers?
[Audience laughter]
You know I enjoy a good book as much as, if not more than, anybody…but writers? [laughing] I have mixed emotions.
DUPLIEX: Okay, well, related to that I guess: restaurant critics. You’ve said a few mean things about restaurant critics in your day.
BOURDAIN: Well, in general it is a degraded profession. I’ve known a lot of bent—you know you said in the dressing room there are venal sins versus…
DUPLIEX: [Addressing the audience] Well, Anthony got into a bit of trouble for calling restaurant critics corrupt, and I actually said I’ve never met any restaurant critics that are venally—financially—corrupt, but I have met some that are what I’d call socially corrupt. So that they do have relationships with chefs, restaurateurs—
BOURDAIN: So, there’s a difference. First of all, there are plenty of food writers I know—The New York Times critic—that year after year after year, they go to extraordinary measures to insulate themselves from the swamp. Certainly, Jonathan Gold*2 is a hero of mine…I can think of a lot of people offhand who I would exclude from that description. But there are those who, I mean I know food critics also who demand free vacations, for instance—“I would like a free vacation in the Caribbean for my wife and myself”—demanding from the subjects of their reviews. Imagine! “You know, I’d really like a five-day vacation. I understand you’re working with a hotel in the Caribbean. You know my wife and I would really enjoy a week down there all expenses paid, with bungalow, and free room service…Can you arrange that?”
DUPLIEX: Are you talking about anyone in particular?
BOURDAIN: Mmm, that’s hypothetical speaking. [Audience laughter] Your libel laws here—I think it’s libel tourism, right? You could sue if you get bad reviews, so I’m gonna leave that alone. There are people who, back in the day, and some of these characters are still around, who I can well remember shaking restaurateurs down for cash. But much more common are the people who become corrupted by what is inevitably a corrupting process. It would be impossible for me to be a food critic, okay? All my friends are chefs. I’ve been compromised by my personal relationships with these chefs over the years. My palate has become corrupted, because unlike most of you I’ve eaten at El Bulli*3 a lot. I’ve eaten at Robuchon*4. To me, a 12-course tasting menu at one of the great restaurants in the world is often a burden. I’m bored with truffles.
[Audience laughter]
What kind of critical ability can I, what can I say that is meaningful to an ordinary person when I’ve lost my ability to be delighted by things that to most others would be a once-in-a-lifetime and incredible experience? But the most common form of corruption is of course just like reporters, you know, White House correspondents—the pressure is on food writers. I don’t want to write about my favorite lemon meringue pie every week. I don’t want to write muffin recipes. I want to go to restaurants and live a good life and write interesting things. In order to do that I need access. I need people in that life to tell me things. Now these people have their own interests which is, I want food critics to write good things about me. So I’m going to send you a few extra snacks, I’m going to take you for a little private tour of my kitchen, we’ll have special little candlelight meals together where I’ll preview my new menu, maybe I’m gonna give you a backrub, invite you over to my house…
[Audience laughter]
You know, at the end of the day you’re going to be less likely to say anything bad about me. There’s a popular food guide in New York, it’s the industry standard. Every high-end restaurant in New York buys them by the thousands—five, six thousand copies of this guide. And if they don’t buy five or six this year, they get a call saying, “How come you’re not buying as many?” “Well, you weren’t so nice to me this year.” “That’s okay, we’ll fix it.”…That ain’t right, you know? So, when a journalist needs access and the only access they’re going to get is, especially when they’re not getting paid to eat at these restaurants a lot—they don’t have as much of a budget as, say, the Times, do to go out to fine dining restaurants—they rely on their subjects to give them good stuff. Whether that’s money, or free food, or extra courses, but more often than not just access. And if they don’t get it, some of them tend to get cranky. And then there’s payback involved. So, I don’t think it’s necessarily the most evil thing in the world, but I think it’s useful if you’re writing about food, certainly if you’re critiquing food, maybe there should be term limits.
DUPLIEX: Term limits?
BOURDAIN: Yeah, maybe after five years you should gracefully move on to some other sector. Because you’ve been swimming in the same sort of blood temperature hot tub for a long time—you’re gonna catch something.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: Well I suppose the restaurant critic is in some sort of position between the restaurant industry, the chef, the kitchen, and us the diners, and it’s just trying to explain one to the other a little bit in many ways. And that is your unique position, as well, because as a chef you know what’s going on out there, and yet as a writer you’re at the front many times observing quite rigorously what’s going on.
There’s one story in Medium Raw, my favorite, that is simply a morning in the life of a fish filleter in a restaurant in New York called Le Bernardin. The fish comes in in the morning, this guy’s got his knives, he fillets the fish, he places it in the way the chefs want it, ready to go for their lunch—that’s it. That’s the entire story. But actually, had a chef written it, with all the knowledge of what had to go down, it could still be boring. If a writer, a journalist, a rigorous observer, had written it, it could still be boring. But somebody who can fuse those two things with respect—so much respect was coming off the pages about this guy because he’s so good at what he does—
BOURDAIN: A thousand pounds of fish this guy cleans in four hours, every day—
DUPLIEX: Yes! It’s a beautiful story.
BOURDAIN:—off the bone, and into perfect, three-star Michelin portions. It takes three trained sous chefs all day long, seven hours—three of ‘em working together—to replace this guy when he goes on vacation. But this is a perfect example! I would have never been able to write that, I never would have had access to this guy, I never would have known about him if I hadn’t been best friends with Eric Ripert,*5 and been in this weird, compromised—the very thing that allowed me to write that was the fact that I should never be trusted to be a critic of a restaurant…I live in a half world, you know?
DUPLIEX: Yeah, yeah, between heaven and hell there’s a chaos…
BOURDAIN: Life is good. I like my job.
DUPLIEX: I like the Urban Dictionary because they went on to say “on his TV shows, he’s known for eating way too much yet being tall and skinny, smoking excessively,” so this was written a few years ago, “and getting drunk most everywhere he goes. [Bourdain laughs] He can also be extremely obnoxious and arrogant when doing any of these three things.” But you’re not, are you?
BOURDAIN: I can be, I—
DUPLIEX: He’s been so well mannered, we’re all so disappointed.
[Audience laughter]
BOURDAIN: Umm, I can be, I can be really obnoxious—
DUPLIEX: But you’re not exactly biting the heads off chooks*6 or screwing the waitress over the hot grill.
BOURDAIN: You know, that’s so last week? [Bourdain laughs] I mean, I’m older now, you know? First of all, I’m the father of a little girl. That means a lot to me. I’m not gonna apologize for my previous life—that’s what daddy was, that’s what daddy did—but I don’t want her reading terrible shit about me on the internet, behaving badly towards women, for instance. I’m not gonna do that.
You know, I was referred to, when Kitchen Confidential came out, as a “bad boy chef.” Now, I was forty-four years old when that book came out, so already it was ludicrous. I never really took it that seriously. And I’m certainly not that bad, I’m certainly not a boy, and I’m not even a chef anymore! But one of the reasons I wrote this book was to kind of correct that impression. But I think I’ve benefited very much from the fact that Kitchen Confidential was so over-testosterone and so obnoxious. I didn’t think anyone would read it outside of the restaurant business so it was written for the consumption and entertainment of my fry cook, essentially—that was the only person I could ever imagine buying a copy. So it was intended to be entertaining and amusing to a very tiny group of people who were working in New York restaurants, and the tone reflected that. It would sound softer and more familiar to them.
But I benefited from—because the book was so obnoxious, people are surprised when I can eat with a knife and fork and not bark obscenities indiscriminately at least. You know I benefit very much from low expectations.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: The voice in all the books is very strong. Were you born with that voice? Is that your natural voice? Do you write as you speak, speak as you write or did you have early influences, did you have something to model yourself on?
BOURDAIN: I’m gonna tell you something that aspiring writers or writers here will really hate me for: I’ve never written anything in my life that hasn’t been published.
DUPLIEX: Yeah, we hate you.
BOURDAIN: I have never toiled away in a garret for years writing unsuccessful or unpublished manuscripts. I wrote the article that Kitchen Confidential was based on for a free paper in New York. I figured they were lame enough to buy my piece. It ended up in the New Yorker. I got lucky. I’m always talking, telling stories. Being a little provocateur with a way with words was something that was true of me when I was a little kid. I’ve always used that skill to get the things I want, to manipulate events to my liking, to get myself into trouble, to get myself out of trouble, to hurt my enemies, to seduce people, or make people do things I would like them to do. So I was always a little…you know, my parents very early on said “You should really be a lawyer, you’ve got such a way with words.”
I write like I talk. But yeah I pretty much…Yeah, I’ve always been like this.
DUPLIEX: Right.
BOURDAIN: If there were influences, writing influences, who really turned on the light for me—I always did read a lot—certainly you can hear Hunter Thompson in my writing. When I was twelve years old I opened Rolling Stone magazine where they were serializing what then became Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and that clicked for me. His rage, that someone could write, could put into words the way I felt—this bitter disappointment with the way the sixties turned out. The hyperbole, the lush, violent language, the humor—clearly that was an influence. But he was maybe not the best role model for a twelve year old. [Audience laughter] I sought to emulate him in all ways but actually writing, you know. I just figured maybe if I take a lot of drugs for the next thirty years, I’ll be able to write like that! [Bourdain laughs]
But he was also a cautionary tale because I think I learned that—by the time the book hit—I realized I don’t want to end up like Hunter Thompson either. I’m not gonna go out there and play the bad boy chef, you know, and get paid for it. I’m just, you know…You’ll notice the most perverse thing I’ve been able to do the last few years, I’m very proud of is, I’ve done a couple of really fuzzy, warm, family-friendly shows. I say that’ll really stick it to my fans. They’ll be so disappointed.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: Yep. You’ve also eaten some very strange things in your life and I don’t want to say “Okay, what’s the worst thing you’ve ever eaten?” So, instead, I’m going to give you a list of some of the nastiest things—
BOURDAIN: Quick fire? Love that.
DUPLIEX:—in the world, okay, and you just tell me if you’ve had them and if it’s relevant, what they tasted like. Because you might have swallowed some, you might have spit, I don’t know. Okay! Sheep testicles.
BOURDAIN: Had ‘em, delicious, good texture, much better than beef nuts.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: Good to know. Seal eyeballs.
BOURDAIN: Good when fresh, like good quality sushi. In context, it could be a heartwarming family experience.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: The beating heart of a giant cobra.
BOURDAIN: I’ve said it’s like an angry, over-athletic oyster. Is it food, or is it some sort of weird boner medicine for anxious Asians? I kind of regret it.
DUPLIEX: You regret that?
BOURDAIN: Not much going on there flavor wise. You know, what are your expectations? [laughing] It’s more like a weird male bonding, is-it-medicine or is-it-food kind of situation. I wouldn’t do it again. It wasn’t bad, it wasn’t an unpleasant experience, but you know…poor cobra.
DUPLIEX: Yeah, yep…Um, the unwashed rectum or anus of a warthog.
BOURDAIN: Okay. It tasted exactly like you would expect it to taste.
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of.
BOURDAIN: But this was a—I knew I was going to be ill, I did get very ill, I knew it was going to be terrible, but this was a tribal situation. I’m a good guest.
DUPLIEX: You are, you’re very well mannered.
BOURDAIN: I’m in a tribal situation, the whole tribe was looking at me, the chief is handing me the best, most treasured part, it’s taken him three days to track this thing—I’m taking one for the team.
DUPLIEX: [Laughing] Oh yeah.
BOURDAIN: I’m actually polite in such circumstances.
DUPLIEX: Yes.
BOURDAIN: You know, I do something called the “grandma rule”—if I’m at grandma’s house I will eat what grandma offers and I will say yes grandma it’s delicious I’ll have seconds. I passed on the seconds this time [laughing] but I did my best to soldier through.
DUPLIEX: That was in…
BOURDAIN: Namimbia. In the Kalahari with the bushmen.
DUPLIEX: In Iceland there’s a thing called a stinking rotten fermented shark…
BOURDAIN: Rotten, rotten shark
DUPLIEX:…that you can smell from ten kilometers.
BOURDAIN: Yeah. It’s unspeakably vile. Gill and I were both—A. A. Gill and I were both asked the other day*7 what’s the worst the worst thing you’ve ever tasted. We both agreed. That is just far and away, it’s just, it’s that reek of ammonia and urine, it’s beyond—they handle it with gloves! I mean, they don’t even touch the stuff when they serve it to you!
DUPLIEX: But that’s mostly the smell surely?
BOURDAIN: No, it’s the flavor. Unlike durian*8, for instance, that smells like hell but to my mind tastes awesome, has something real going for it, something wonderful—this tastes just as bad as it smells. And I don’t think anyone actually likes it. It’s a nod to their proud, Viking roots and harder, more austere times when this was the only way they could preserve protein during the summer months. I mean, you see them handling it with gloves, they put it in their mouth, and they chase it with this big shot of, like, rocket fuel—you know, how good can it be?
DUPLIEX: Well you would, yeah…All right, well now I do have to ask you what’s the worst thing apart from all those? Because I have heard you give a different answer…
BOURDAIN: Well I mean, would I eat rotten shark before I ate a Chicken McNugget? Um…I’d feel better about myself eating the rotten shark.
DUPLIEX: Yes, you would.
BOURDAIN: You know, I feel compromised, a part of an evil empire, when I eat a McNugget. There’s something morally wrong about it. And it’s just—what is it? What part of the chicken does it come from?
[Audience laughter]
DUPLIEX: All those other things we talked about you knew exactly what they were and where, particularly where, they had come from. And so the thing that scares you the most is the…
BOURDAIN: I’m scared that my daughter, the thought of my daughter eating one and liking it just fills me with terror. It is—we should feed our enemies Chicken McNuggets.
[Audience laughter]
You know, Osama Bin Laden wouldn’t have lasted anywhere near this long if he just had, you know, a regular McNugget diet. You know, Tora Bora, he wouldn’t have been able to squeeze his fat ass into a cave. [Audience laughter] We would have seen him from space! [Bourdain laughs]
DUPLIEX: The drones would have seen him, yeah.
BOURDAIN: Yeah!
DUPLIEX: So you spend your life traveling around the world. Now, do you feel an urgency at the moment to get out to certain countries relatively quickly before their street food, their authentic regional food, all the things that you’re going for to try, while they’re still around and before they start turning into Chicken McNuggets?
BOURDAIN: I don’t know, I’m kind of optimistic about the future of the world. It’s one of those things I—you know, the Chinese are increasingly buying everything in America, and buying all of our real estate and certainly all of our debt, and a lot of people are frightened. Will they come over here, and you know, pretty soon, they’ll be all over the place! Well, we’ll be eating a lot better. A lot better. So I think the expanding Asian influence, this power shift away from the West to the East, is probably, to me, at least for food, arguably a good thing!
I mean Singapore may be Disneyland with the death penalty, as I think R. W. Apple*9 called it, but it is a foodie wonderland. And they figured out—they are the nanniest of nanny states and they’ve got all of the same concerns you have here, about hygiene and zoning, and what if oh-my-god it might hurt you, we better make it illegal. You know, like the cheese situation here which is so shameful, or the oyster situation here which is so shameful. But they figured it out. You know, the food court in Singapore, to me, is a shining beacon of how we could live in a perfect world. So, I’m encouraged!
The places that I feel like I’m rushing to before they change, I mean, I’m not sentimental about Communism, I’m no big fan of the regime in Cuba, but I sure as hell wanted to see it before it changed. And it was indeed, it is indeed, something extraordinary. But the food scene there, you know—not so great. People are really, really hungry. I’d like to get to Burma then Myanmar but that’s a situation where I’m waiting for the government to change. I’d like to get to Tehran as soon as possible, but again, not right now.
DUPLIEX: Yeah, exactly. So you’re a bit like a canary, really, that we can send out into the world—
BOURDAIN: [Laughs] Yeah, when I keel over you’ll all know: don’t go there!
DUPLIEX: Yeah, exactly. Don’t go there! But, okay, if you are that canary and you are one of the first to note, in our food world, various changes, or drops of temperature, or cultural sort of shifts—is there anything your nose is telling you at the moment?
BOURDAIN: Paris is fun again. You can eat really, really well in Paris. You know, fifteen years ago they were rude, particularly to Americans, and it would cost you forty euros for a bowl of soup at a really good restaurant. You know, just spectacularly expensive. Now you can eat a terrific, world-class, Michelin-quality meal for forty euros, thirty euros, fifty euros, and they’ll even be nice to you—in a casual setting.
DUPLIEX: Yeah, we love a global financial crisis, don’t we?
BOURDAIN: But it’s these young chefs, you know—the gastronomy movement is really exciting. David Chang is a big influence in Paris. You hear French Chefs saying “Oh yes, we’d like this man David Chang, from New York.” This was unthinkable fifteen years ago, that, you know, any French chef would even acknowledge that Spain existed much less New York! [audience laughter] So that’s an exciting place to eat. Certainly, I see Singapore as a hopeful, culinarily, as a hopeful example, as an alternative. That’s fast food, too. It’s also good food.
Um, places I’ve been excited about…Tukey is amazing. I’d like to see more good Turkish food. You know, a wider range of Turkish foods than the usual suspects. Um…Brazil…Columbia—just in general, go to Columbia. It’s awesome. I went to Medellin which, ten years ago, was the worst place on Earth. The murder capital of the world. And now it is really—I came out of Columbia really optimistic about the world. Wow, it’s possible to improve a really fucked-up place in a short period of time. You know, there’s no excuse for inner city Detroit, having been to Medellin.
DUPLIEX: I think the beautiful girl on Modern Family’s done an awful lot for Colombian tourism as well. [Bourdain laughs] But, tell me, I mean, they’re famous, they export all their coffee beans to here, amongst other places—did you get a decent coffee in Columbia?
BOURDAIN: Yeah, but it was the food and the people. I mean, these are inseparable. Listen, I love food, I’m guilty of being a food pornographer, I fetishize it—but it is only one part of a full life.
You know, recently I married into a large, Italian, Sardinian family, and seeing how they live, their relationship with alcohol, and with food, and ingredients, has really been an education, you know? Good food, at whatever income level, is a birthright to them. Gotta have it. Wine with every meal, must have. But you never see drunk-ass Italians staggering around vomiting in the streets. They do everything in proportion. They understand that it’s about good food and good liquor, but also hopefully you’re getting laid on a regular basis and you’re having good conversation and there’s music somewhere, and company, and you know…those are all part of a thing. A life.
DUPLIEX: The reason you like Paris at the moment is, as you said, that next generation of chefs. Are you picking up that this generational change is actually changing all the cities around the world and all the different food cultures, restaurant cultures.
BOURDAIN: Well look how differently, you know, look how different the kinds of businesses that are popping up here now—you know, a lot of these people who are opening up small places, or pop ups or just little, you know, stripped-to-the-bone casual eateries, they’re cooking their hearts out with maybe one other cook or a dishwasher. Listen, in the end of course they’ll give in, they’ll open a 300-seat restaurant, and they will have a place in a casino, and they will have a cookbook and a boil-in-a-bag dinner line. You know, Robuchon, and all the great French—Roger Vergé*10—all of those people started out that way, too. But what we’re getting is a lot more of ‘em and, you know, it’s just good times. It’s part of cyclical wave, and we’re eating—it’s certainly new to us, in the English-speaking world. So, you know, to my way of thinking there’s never been a better time to cook in the English-speaking world and there’s certainly never been a better time to eat.
DUPLIEX: Adrian Gill was talking the other day about that most depressing term, “fine dining”—you know, the chef likes to serve this warm, etc.—and he said, in this voice of wonderment, “And we let them get away with it!” Which I thought was gorgeous. So—chef hat back on—what do you think of this current restaurant trend towards fusing art and landscape and technology on the plate?
BOURDAIN: It depends, I mean—ask yourself before you start dabbling with what somebody somewhere is calling molecular gastronomy: Am I a genius? Am I Ferran Adrià?*11 Am I anywhere near as talented and as visionary and as firmly rooted in a place with as much food culture as Catalonia…or am I just kinda jerking off here?
[Audience laughter]
You know, I love Jimi Hendrix. Can I, will I, ever play guitar as well as Jimi Hendrix? Because you better. If you’re gonna mess around with that stuff, my way of feeling is don’t try. Find your own style.
A lot of those styles are going to end up standard practice in the industry, you know—sous vide for sure, a few others. I think people misunderstand Adrià for sure. But you know, short answer, some of the very worst, most painful meals of my life have been with people, talented young chefs, who become over-impressed and over-enthusiastic about a cargo cult version of what they believe to be happening at places like El Bulli and they’re just playing out of their depth.
DUPLIEX: But there is surely an opportunity, surely, for those young chefs to adopt the technology but then turn it ‘round and use where they are and who they are to create something new.
BOURDAIN: Yeah. I’ll come back to Dave Chang, Wylie Dufresne, people like that who, you know, they cherry pick: “Hey, that looks really interesting! We can make a really delicious dish that’s actually soulful and reminds people of their childhood, but we’re using a technique that Ferran Adrià developed.” Nothing, nothing wrong with that. It’s when it becomes like an eye gouging experience, you know it’s something hanging on the edge of a long prong and it’s not very good. You know, if it takes your waiter ten minutes to describe the dish and two minutes to eat it…
[Audience laughter]
Is it fun? That’s all. Is it fun and is it delicious? If the answer is yes then I’m for it.
DUPLIEX: You’ve recently written, not quite an episode, but scenes, a sort of a stream, for an amazing television series called Treme, which must be—Oh and your face lights up every time somebody says Treme!—it must be a thrill. I mean, it’s a thrill to watch the bloody thing so it must be a thrill to write for it.
BOURDAIN: I found suddenly, I don’t know when it happened, but I found myself at this weird point in my career where I realized that…opportunities would pop up to work with really amazing people who I really admire, or worship. And you know, I can actually, you know, just to hang out with some of these people is, is—you know, I’m stammering here. So out of the blue, I mean, to me, The Wire was the greatest thing ever in the history of television. I mean, there’s never been a better use of the television medium, never been a better dramatic series. So to get a call out of the blue form David Simon was just this devastat—
DUPLIEX: That happened like that? He just rang out of the blue?
BOURDAIN: Yeah. “Would you be interested in doing some writing for me?” It was like you’re a football fan, you’re home, you’re a little kid, you’re a football fan and David Beckham calls up and says, you know, “Let’s kick the ball around.” You know, I teared up, I hyperventilated, I would have done it for free. And in fact, there are a few things that I’m doing in my life right now where, you know, it’s not about the money. It’s really…fun. It’s the most fun I’ve ever had writing or doing any kind of work, working with people much smarter than me, these incredibly creative people, it’s just…You know it’s like you get invited to join the cool kids. And, um, so I am.
I’m doing a graphic novel with a really amazing artist named Langdon Foss and a friend of mine named Joel Rose, because, you know, it’s not gonna make me rich, I’m doing it because I can, and it’s fun and I like comics and, you know, it’s cool.
DUPLIEX: And you’ve set up your own TV production company for your own TV—
BOURDAIN: I’m partners in a production company that I started with—the camera people on my first series of A Cook’s Tour and I all quit Food Network at the same time because we’d set up a show with Ferran Adrià and the network was not interested. So, they go like “Who is this guy? He talks funny, he’s from Spain, it’s too smart for us, we’re not interested.” So we all reached in our own pockets—we figured well we’ve set this up, we’re gettin’ this. This is history here, we have incredible, amazing, once-in-a-lifetime access, we’re getting this show up. We had no customer, no money, we just reached in our own pockets and went out and shot a documentary about the experience. And that was the beginning of this entity that then that continues to create No Reservations, the same group of people.
So really, we owe it all to Ferran. If he hadn’t said, “Yes, I invite you to come into my life and film it,” I might be riding a pony from barbeque competitions to barbecue competitions on Food Network…
DUPLIEX: Bringing out a line of burgers or something, yeah, we look forward to that. The Bourdain Burger line.
BOURDAIN: [Laughs] Yeah, not gonna happen. Not in this life.
*1 Michelin stars, a rating system used by France’s Michelin Guides series. Three stars is the highest rating, and rarely granted.
*2 Jonathan Gold (1960-2018) was a food and restaurant critic for Gourmet magazine and the Los Angeles Times
*3 El Bulli was an award-winning restaurant located in the Catalonian countryside. It was known for its association with molecular gastronomy, and was run by several well-known chefs, perhaps most notably Ferran Adrià. It closed in 2011.
*4 Jöel Robuchon (1945-2018) was a French chef and restauranteur who operated restaurants around the world. He won more Michelin stars (32) than any other chef.
*5 Eric Ripert is a French chef known for his abilities as poissonier, and as the head chef and proprietor of Le Bernardin in New York City, a three-star Michelin restaurant that is regularly noted on best-of lists in culinary magazines as one of the world’s top restaurants, and as the “Temple of Seafood.”
*6 Chickens.
*7 Bourdain had done a speaking event with Adrian Anthony Gill, the noted British food writer, two days earlier at the Festival.
*8 Durian is a notoriously foul-smelling fruit found in southeast Asia.
*9 An acclaimed New York Times reporter and editor who wrote about politics, travel, and food, and was a renowned gourmand.
*10 Roger Vergé (1930–2015) was one of the most influential chefs and restauranteurs of the 20th century, renowned as one of the creators of nouvelle cuisine. At his restaurant Moulin de Mougins in the French Riviera, he trained numerous chefs that went on to fame, including David Bouley, Alain Ducasse, and David Boulud.
*11 The highly-regarded Spanish chef often associated with molecular gastronomy. He was, for many years, the head chef at the El Bulli restaurant in Catalonia.