Why I Love Anthony Bourdain

Opening Instagram and TikTok has become a bombardment of chefluencer content. Now everyone knows how to cook (apparently). However, it feels less like actual, cultural food but rather an influx of food substitutes, of dieting advice from non-qualified influencers and is acting under the rules of the new ozempic era. In other words, these online chefs seem to care less about the actual dish they make but rather making sure it hits their macros and protein, even at the expense of important food factors like flavour. And now what was once learning to cook has become a circulation of toxic food behaviours that seem to discourage eating rather than promote it. A high contrast to Bourdain’s line from Kitchen Confidential that “..your body is not a temple, it’s an amusement park. Enjoy the ride.” 

Nevertheless, the consumption of chefluencers is a pretty hard cycle to escape algorithmically. However there has been one solution I found to work very well - watching Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. 

Anthony Bourdain was a timeless New York chef - you may also recognize him from the Euro-Maxing meme where he is sat at a table in France, sunglasses and leather jacket on, with his coffee and Marlboros set before him. No matter where you know Anthony Bourdain from, here is your sign to get to know him better and abandon your chefluencers. 

Now, you may ask - there are so many TV chefs that have gone on tours, why would Anthony Bourdain be any different to them? Well, in many ways he is just your run of the mill TV chef. But his charisma, his sarcasm and his utter honesty makes his programme so much more refreshing than the typical smiling chef. Not only this, but unlike the much scripted Chef programmes, to watch Bourdain travel is to experience it with him for the first time. He doesn't know what to expect and neither do you, it’s all a journey. 

I am also not a long form content girl anymore, (the last complete series I watched was probably in Summer 2024) so for me to impatiently wait for each study break to put the next Bourdain episode on says a lot. In many ways it feels like I’m healing from the overstimulation of reels that have attacked me this year. It’s like touching grass - except it’s actually enough. It’s actually teaching me to hold onto patience for long form content media - so much that I’ve bought one of his books to continue embracing this slow pace of life that people deserve to enjoy. I think one thing anyone from Gen Z can take away from a character like Anthony Bourdain is that life should be lived and when you’re stuck in the digital world it can be hard to actually do that. 

Unlike the typical chefluencer, Bourdain teaches his audience a lot. While a chefluencer shares a quick 60 second dish they made, Bourdain explores food and culture, two entities that can never fully be separated. Nowadays, food has suddenly become this task to nourish your body and we care more about what a certain food can do for us rather than what it actually means to us. Bourdain proves food is not just meant to nurture the body but also meant to nurture the soul. The best way to understand a culture is through food. The history we learn can be biased and easy to forget, but a dish serves more than just another platter. Bourdain teaches us that a dish reveals the true rituals and factors that rule people's lives in ways we could never have known. The fact that few people know the actual recipe to real Aioli in Provence, the fact that Porcupine is an accessible delicacy in rural Vietnam, the fact that wild greens became a staple in the Cretan diet due to a famine caused by occupying forces. These are all facts you can only learn from trying to deeply understand and value a culture in ways that short form media can simply not achieve. Bourdain encourages curiosity and travel not because he’s doing a brand deal but because he wants to show what these can achieve for a person’s life. 

Especially in times like these when there are many different populations of people starving on a daily basis and are being prohibited from food supplies, the chefluencer feels ignorant. An erewhon haul, a rant about clean eating and shaming people who cannot curate a shopping list as fresh as theirs does not read well at all. What’s more is there is rarely any attempt to embrace the true cultural roots of a dish and feels discrediting to the many societies that have sustained on certain dishes out of necessity. But the nature of any good travel cooking show is the range and depth of populations it explores. From refugees to nomads to small islanders, Bourdain has exposed us to so many different experiences, showing the true value of what life is all about to different people. In the context of recent UK immigration decisions, it feels as though we are purposefully losing touch with so much varying culture that we are having even less access to understanding the lives of people around the world. But it is programmes like these and people like Bourdain who actively try to show the importance of intercultural societies and how much we have as people to offer each other. 

Out of the range of witty and wise lines I’ve archived, my favourite Bourdain quote by far is “Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.” And truthfully, even when one has no culinary skill, food holds a very special part of your identity. It determines a lot about who you are, the values you hold and the people who have passed those onto you and that is simply a fact one can never escape. Food will always be defined culturally, but as global citizens that is never a barrier but rather a reason to branch out. 

Bourdain will never not have a place in my heart and I don’t see how after this piece he could not have one in yours.