![]() Today, he lives in a posh apartment in New York's Upper East Side with Ottavia and their 7-year old daughter, Ariane. ![]() I had nothing resembling a romantic life. His first marriage, to his high school sweetheart, had unraveled after 20 years under the strain of his extensive traveling. "I was home only three or four days a month," says Bourdain. At the time, she was working 16 hours a day managing a restaurant for which Ripert was consulting, and Bourdain was traveling the world shooting for TV, keeping an apartment above a sandwich shop near the Port Authority Bus Terminal. In 2006, Ripert set him up on a blind date with Ottavia Busia. And he is often listed among them, not due to his cooking skills, which he downplays, but because he can describe their often-arcane food world in vivid terms even a noncook can understand.īourdain has also abandoned his rakish reputation, now leading a steadier life as a family man. He now rubs shoulders with celebrity chefs. Of late, having met some of the objects of his derision, he has mellowed. He would skewer television cooking shows mercilessly, especially those of Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Rachael Ray and Paula Deen. When he started to write and appear on television, he quickly earned a reputation as the bad boy of the food world for voicing those same thoughts. As he worked his way up through kitchens of various levels of repute, he carried a huge chip on his shoulder, given to snide, often profane comments among friends and colleagues about trendy foods and celebrity chefs. Drugs and alcohol kept him from rising beyond anonymous cooking jobs. He's no-nonsense."īy his own admission, Bourdain wasted the first 44 years of his life. We have the same admiration for craftsmanship. "Although we come from different backgrounds and different kitchens, we became close because we share the same values. "That was the beginning of a great friendship," says Ripert. ![]() To express his gratitude for nice things Bourdain said about his restaurant in the book, he invited the author to lunch. Ripert, the France-born chef of New York's Le Bernardin, says Kitchen Confidential was the first book he ever read in English. "He's also really funny, just naturally hilarious." ![]() "He speaks his mind, and since he's so damned smart, it's worth broadcasting," says Michael Ruhlman, who has co-authored cookbooks with Thomas Keller and Eric Ripert and appeared in several episodes with Bourdain. "I can't tell you how many times since the program's launch we have had other people come to CNN and say to us, ‘I want to do a show like Bourdain's,' " says Jeff Zucker, the network's president.Ĭhef José Andrés, who has made more than 300 TV episodes of his own, puts his finger on it: "He connects the dots in ways you don't always imagine." Using the shared experience of eating and drinking to draw out insights and information that traditional reporting often overlooks, Bourdain seems to have created a whole new genre of television journalism. Although he has written several well-received books, most of America knows him as the star and producer of several groundbreaking television series.īourdain's current show, Parts Unknown, airs on CNN, where it is the network's highest-rated series, no doubt because it goes well beyond standard foodie-travel fare. Now 58, his knowledge of food, passion for storytelling and intolerance of fakery make him one of America's best-known culinary personalities and, not incidentally, an astringent cultural commentator. In April 1999, The New Yorker published his essay "Don't Eat Before Reading This," which Bourdain describes as "a short entertaining story meant to please my friends in the business." It extolled the virtues of traditional French cooking, told some unpleasant truths about the restaurant world, kicked up a media storm and led to a best-selling book, Kitchen Confidential. He wanted something better, so he decided to write about his life in the kitchen. Hard work paid his bills, but an appetite for the low life chained him to the stove. ![]() At the age of 43, Anthony Bourdain had found a niche cooking traditional French food at a casual bistro in New York. ![]()
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