Photo by Neeta Lind
Culinary
icon Anthony Bourdain isn’t one to mince words. So it wasn’t surprising that
during a recent conference call interview promoting his new show The Layover, the chef turned author
turned TV star was an open book. Here are ten things that you might not know
about Anthony Bourdain.
1. He’d Go Dive Bar Over Five Star
Any Day
“Chances
are on any given day I would much prefer to be having a beer in a late afternoon
in a favorite dive bar or at a family-run place… no tablecloth, not fancy,
sleeping dog on the floor. It would be very hard to do better than… a local
pasta in Rome or a bowl of noodles someplace in Alaska or something like that
in Singapore. That's hard to beat for just pure pleasure and satisfaction,
especially for a jaded guy like me. That reliably puts me in my happy place
every time.”
2. He Knows Where to Go No Matter
Where He Is
“I'll tell
you that when we shot the Rome show, the whole crew as soon as we were headed
into town, we know exactly the place we have to go to eat and we know exactly
what we're going to eat when we get there. It was a very, very local thing. In
a lot of ways reflective of what we're doing with The Layover because we learn stuff. We've made mistakes during the
lengthier process of making No
Reservations over the years. So we're pretty good at getting right to the
good stuff even if it's just for us. And I guess to some extent we're sharing
that now. We're sharing that hard-won information.”
3. The Layover Will Be Different than Samantha Brown’s Show
“We're very
different people to start with. If things go wrong, I'll actually look at the
camera and say, ‘This sucks.’ So that would be a distinctive difference. I'm
not really interested in the best of the most iconic places in locations where
I think most other travel shows made an effort to at least make you aware of
the pyramids or the Eiffel Tower. I've gone the other direction. This is at
least trying to do my own. Like anything, it's personal. Like anything I do,
it's always point of view, it's always a personal essay of sorts. I’m trying to
do a useful, if dysfunctional, version of that kind of show in our own sort of
darkly dysfunctional way. I'm trying to be useful to the extent that I can.”
4. He Admits Some Cities Are Harder
to Cover than Others
“How many
L.A. shows have there been?... To do Layover,
yes, it's a challenge because you're looking to do an informative L.A. show
[while] trying to avoid the usual suspects. So, yes, it's hard, particularly in
L.A. I have to say [L.A. Weekly food critic] Jonathan [Gold] made it a lot
easier just by doing what he does in highlighting the kinds of places that he's
been highlighting over the years. So Korea town was a major focus, food trucks
and as [chef Roy Choi] pointed out the difference between L.A. and so many
places around the other major cities is it's not European at all. The heart and
soul and spine of L.A. is not Europe, which is a big difference from a lot of
the other cities. And I guess I missed that. I hope that this show is a success
in that I actually learn something.”
5. The Layover Will Cover More Accessible Destinations
“The Layover, these are places that any
international traveler wouldn’t be likely to find themselves. But the challenge
is making like Saudi Arabia or Liberia more accessible in the sense. And I
think the way you do that is you sit people down at a table or you show people
sitting down at a table and you relate in some way the way that I do. It takes
us four hours to do a five-minute meal scene for No Reservations. That's the end result of a lot of time spent
getting to know the family, playing with the kids, petting the dog and drinking
the local moonshine.”
6. Travel Has Not Made Him a Better
Chef
“It's taken
me out of the kitchen… I think anytime you're able to see how other people live
around the world, I like to think it makes you a more compassionate and
tolerant person, maybe. Maybe I'm a little tiny bit smarter, a little bit more
optimistic actually about my fellow man. But as a cook, if anything, it's taken
me away from cooking… If it’s changed my cooking in a useful way it is seeing how much people make with very little around
the world and how delicious so many cultures could make food that you wouldn't
think of as being delicious again and again and again and seeing how hard
people work for food and how generous they are even when they have very little.
It's made me a lot less likely to waste food. It's made me a little more
careful about the respect with which I treat it.”
7. What He Misses About the Restaurant
Business
“I miss the
first beer after being in the restaurant kitchen, that sense of triumph and
camaraderie of having survived another busy night, the sense of certainty, the
sense of closeness to the people you work with, of being part of this sort of
cult. I miss that. But I mean, I had 28 years of it. I don’t miss standing on
my feet for 16 hours, not at my age.”
8. He Won’t Be Getting Back into the
Restaurant Business Any Time Soon
“I would
never open a restaurant. If I've learned anything in 28 years of being in the
restaurant business it's that I never want to own a restaurant. That's a
marriage.”
9. He Has a Few Tips for Getting
Through Airport Security
“I'm very,
very, very good at going through security and I'm unflustered. I don't get
cranky. I just go limp like a guy who's been to prison many, many times. I'm
ready for the worst. So yes, I always wear a particular set of shoes… By the
time I'm near the machine I've got my belt off, my wristwatch in my pocket. I
dress for security… I'm not approaching that thing with any liquids or gels.
I've got my s#*t together. I don't want to be that guy that everybody else is
waiting for. But also I don't get cranky at security if it's moving slow
because there's no point. Long, painful experience has taught me that, other
than relax, there's really nothing you can do.”
10. He’s Suffered for His Craft
“I've been
really ill twice on the show. Once was after Namibia I was not well after.
There was a tribal situation. And then Liberia I was really, really badly
poisoned.”
Catch Anthony Bourdain’s new series, The Layover, when it premieres on Monday, November 21 at 9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. Central on Travel Channel.
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