Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain (born June 25, 1956, New York City, New York, U.S.—found dead June 8, 2018, Kaysersberg, France) was an American chef, author, and television personality who helped popularize “foodie” culture in the early 21st century through his books and television programs.

Early life and writing

Raised in New Jersey, Bourdain first took an interest in food when he ate an oyster as a young boy on a trip to France with his family. He attended Vassar College for two years before ultimately graduating from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978.

Bourdain later moved to New York City, where he ran the kitchens at a series of respected restaurants. While working as a chef, he began to try his hand at writing, which resulted in two crime novels: Bone in the Throat (1995) and Gone Bamboo (1997).

Kitchen Confidential

In 1999, while he was working as the executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, Bourdain published an exposé of the restaurant industry in The New Yorker titled “Don’t Eat Before Reading This.” The article became something of a cause célèbre, as many of the ugly inner workings of the restaurant world were brought to light to the wider public for the first time via Bourdain’s caustically witty writing.

He expanded his article into the popular memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000), which contained not only additional accounts of the inner workings of restaurant kitchens but intimate details of Bourdain’s personal life as well, including his long battle with heroin addiction.

Television fame

Kitchen Confidential established Bourdain as one of the “bad boys” of gastronomic culture, and he parlayed his book’s success into a cable-television travel show called A Cook’s Tour (2002–03). He then took the basic concept of A Cook’s Tour—Bourdain providing a humorous guide to a locale with a focus on local cuisine and offbeat cultural features—and developed it into an hour-long cable program, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (2005–12). Bourdain also saw his memoir adapted into a short-lived sitcom (2005–06).

Bourdain’s newfound television fame led to frequent stints guest-judging the cooking reality show Top Chef as well as an appearance on The Simpsons. He later launched another travel show, The Layover (2011–13), which centered on Bourdain spending between 24 and 48 hours in a select destination. In 2013–15 he was a judge on the cooking-competition program The Taste.

Are you a student?

Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

Subscribe

His other TV credits include the travel show Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, which premiered in 2013 and won multiple Emmy Awards for outstanding informational series. Fellow celebrity chef José Andrés appeared in multiple episodes with Bourdain. While filming the show’s 12th season in 2018, Bourdain died by suicide. Later that year he posthumously won an Emmy for outstanding writing for nonfiction programming.

Other writing

In addition to Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain published A Cook’s Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal (2001), The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones (2006), Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook (2010), and another foray into crime fiction, Bobby Gold (2001). He also wrote for numerous magazines, blogs, and newspapers.

Appetites (2016; written with Laurie Woolever) is one of Bourdain’s cookbooks. World Travel: An Irreverent Guide (written with Woolever), which features essays by family and friends, was published posthumously, in 2021. Later that year the documentary Roadrunner, an exploration of his life and career, was released.