The first thing I ever asked Anthony Bourdain when I met him in 2005 was, “How do you maintain your girlish figure when you’re eating all the time?” Without missing a beat, he shot back with “two packs a day.”
Needless to say, that didn’t make the Health magazine story I was interviewing him for, but it — as well as the rest of our 10- or 15-minute conversation — did stick with me. I remember how open and forthcoming he was — a relief since I had been terrified to speak with him, given his “bad boy” image. I also quickly understood that he wasn’t like other emerging celebrity chefs; he had no interest in being the smiling cooking show host who impressed viewers with his knife skills while uttering witty catchphrases. Unlike so many of us, he wasn’t chasing trends or celebrities. He wasn’t even looking to be liked.
Bourdain was simply trying to find the core of a place through its food culture, whether that was in Buffalo or Beirut. That spirit of adventure is what inspired so many people, including me.
[See: Here’s What People Eat for Breakfast in 9 Other Countries.]
I never met Bourdain again. But I didn’t have to to be changed by him through his shows. He taught me to look beyond food with my nutritionist eye, which typically sees it as fuel and an aggregation of protein, carbs, fat and micronutrients. He helped me understand that trying food that I might not like — that I might actually initially be repelled by — still has its merits. He taught me that I can learn a lot about a country’s culture just by looking around, talking to people and sitting down for a plateful of whatever they’re serving.
This open-mindedness has served me well as a food writer and editor, and has allowed me to say, “Why not?” to a breakfast of aquavit and smorrebrod with pickled herring in Copenhagen and a dinner of pachamanca in Peru. I can’t pretend that I’m as daring an eater as Anthony Bourdain (I didn’t eat the street food in Mumbai), but I’m far moreso than had he never entered my universe. If nothing else, Bourdain showed me that there’s way more to life than staying in a safety zone of protein powder and quinoa bowls.
[See: 6 Darn Good Reasons to Eat Sugar and Not Apologize for It.]
I’m certainly not the only one who Tony — as his friends called him — made a permanent impact on. Andrew Zimmern, a four-time James Beard Award-winner, TV personality, chef, writer and teacher, was close to Bourdain and remembers him fondly. “Tony was the smartest, funniest of friends, perpetually curious and endlessly charming,” Zimmern says. “There were few people with whom I shared more of myself and I always relied on his sagacity and insight as a great barometer of whatever my next move would be.”
Bourdain’s reach went far beyond the culinary community, and affected people in unexpected ways. One of my friends, Christina Goldschmidt, for example, was touched by Bourdain’s coverage of Vietnam, a country from which her mother emigrated in her early 20s. “His passion for Vietnamese food helped me connect with my roots through food in a way that I wasn’t able to with my own family,” says Goldschmidt, a New York City-based design director at Accenture Bloom. “He gave me access to foods and tastes and cultures that were closed off for me through family drama and the pains of emigration.”
I like to think Bourdain would be comforted to hear that. As he told me in that interview over a decade ago (when he was in Lapland, Finland, with nomadic reindeer herders, no less), “The history of the world is the history of food. You can learn a lot about a country and its culture by breaking bread with the locals. Sampling local foods also tells others that you’re interested in their culture and traditions that aren’t discussed in guidebooks.”
[See: Here’s How People in 8 Other Countries Stay Healthy.]
Of course, sampling foreign foods comes with risks too — most practically in the form of stomach bugs. But when I asked Bourdain if he had picked up any during his travels, he admitted that he had violated pretty much every traveler’s warning about which foods to avoid and yet, he had only gotten bad food poisoning in France. “When you spin the wheel,” he said, “sometimes you lose.” Chef, you will be missed.
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I Met Anthony Bourdain for 15 Minutes, but He Made a Lasting Impact originally appeared on usnews.com
