A big thanks to Steve Penhollow at the Fort Wayne (IN) Journal Gazette today! Penhollow posted a fantastic feature on celeb chef (and my own personal culinary cardinal) Anthony Bourdain. Tony talks food, family, and his much-ballyhooed riff with fellow celeb chef, Emeril Lagasse.
“I get along well with Emeril,” Bourdain says. “I had him on the show. He was really gracious to do that. Emeril’s a nice guy. He’s got a sense of humor. He was for many years a real chef. He can take a (expletive) busting and deal one out, too. I made a lot of fun of him early on but that was because his TV persona was so strikingly different from the person I knew.”
It seems Bourdain, a CIA graduate and trained French chef (see: Brasserie Les Halles), never fancied himself good in the kitchen. And the celebrity status? He’s just trying to take it all in stride.
“It’s weird,” he says. “I think that that’s the truest and best way to describe it. Especially since it happened very late in my life. I feel like I have a pretty reasonable perspective on it. With the Internet, with the press, it’s all like some big bathroom wall. Anyone’s free to write anything they want about you and you have to be comfortable with that.”
You can keep up with Anthony Bourdain’s latest food travels by catching his Travel Channel show, “No Reservations”. Be sure to stop by his blog as well for recent rants and raves.
I love Anthony Bourdain’s show! He is very clever, entertaining, but at the same time knowledgeable and respectful of the culture he is visiting.
The voiceovers are what make the show so hilarious! When he is eating an unappetizing animal body part, the voiceover says, “Massive doses of antibiotics will be given, doctors will be called. I can feel the bacteria eating my intestines away as I swallow each bite.” Gotta love him!