As someone who has had the privilege to travel around the world, experiencing culture, people, and food, I often ponder the significance of the latter two. All three are connected, however, food and people are what I believe lead us to more colourful cultures across the globe.
One person who has influenced my opinions the most (other than my own parents) would have to be Anthony Bourdain. His views on society and how we treat each other through community were an integral part of me discovering my love for the culinary arts and contributed to how I continue to travel and interact with Indigenous communities worldwide.
Whether you’re in a three-Michelin-star restaurant or standing on the sidewalk next to the food stall at the market, the meal should be more than money exchanged. You should be exchanging stories, laughs, tears, ideas, and, most importantly, food.
Bourdain’s interest in food began as a young boy, when he had his first oyster during a family trip to France. He got the chance to learn more about the culinary world during his years spent at Vassar College and the Culinary Institute of America. Employed as the executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, Bourdain wrote an article in The New Yorker titled “Don’t Eat Before Reading This.” The article thrust him into the spotlight, as well as shone a torch to the ugly side of the restaurant industry. For the first time, people were understanding where their fancy food was coming from.
Bourdain would go on to expand this article into his memoir Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. It included many more details about how restaurants worked, but it also contained personal stories from Bourdain, including his battle with substance use, addiction, and mental health—which I relate to.
Opportunities to travel and experience different worldviews and cultures were abundant for Bourdain. From trips as a young boy to globetrotting for his TV show No Reservations, he sought out the tiniest, most unheard-of restaurants and bars that were run by locals, for locals—in his words, “Eat where the locals eat, not where the tourists are sent.” Give your money to the small business that serves their community, instead of the global corporation that does more harm to the surrounding environment than good.
I could write my own novel about him, and when asked the question “Which person, dead or alive, would you want to share a meal with?” my answer will always be Bourdain. I wish I had the chance to meet him.
“It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be,” he once said. “The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that’s enlightenment enough—to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.”
I carry this philosophy with me to the dinner table.