Bourdain in Sicily

“It was a low point,” intrepid explorer Anthony Bourdain admitted later of his ill-fated excursion to the boot of Italy in 2013 for CNN’s Parts Unknown. Swimming among “dead octopi” didn’t help — and neither did the 18 negronis.

It sounds like a scheme so loopy and so lunatic that it couldn’t possibly happen in real life. Except it did. When an obsessive, ardent bass fisherman from Louisiana set out to rig a 1983 fishing tournament by purchasing a massive largemouth bass — dead — in a neighbouring US state with the idea of sneaking it into the competition lake and then  “miraculously” landing it during the competition, he first had to thaw the frozen lunker in his bathtub before rendezvousing with his co-conspirator, an angler named “Terry” who was competing in the Roadrunner Bass Tournament in nearby Tyler, Texas. The prize money for landing the biggest bass during the competition would win a cash jackpot that, evenby fishing standards, was reallyn sweet. What could go wrong?

Well, everything as it happened.

I was thinking of the Great Bass Cheating Scam of 1983 while revisiting Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown episode Sicily the other night. Sicily originally aired on CNN during the program’s second season in 2013 — a little early in CNN’s run for Bourdain to wig out about the single worst travel experience of his life, but there it is.

As Bourdain told Forbes in 2016 — yes, it took him nearly three years to recover, he hinted, only half-jokingly — the now infamous disaster featured the intrepid host and world adventurer embarking on an excursion to catch lunch (octopus and cuttlefish) with a local fisherman/chef in shallow waters off a rocky cove, frequented by tourist swimmers, within hailing distance of the Sicilian town’s waterfront. It was actually a staged ploy on the part of his host and guide for the day. A friend of the restauranter threw shop-bought — and very much dead — fish into the sea while Bourdain swam in full snorkelling gear to pluck octopus and cuttlefish from the seabed. The horror, the horror.

When Bourdain surfaced, he was livid. And he wasn’t about to hide that from the cameras, constantly hovering in close attendance. Later, in his voiceover — no, he had not calmed down by this point — Bourdain recalled that he “snapped,” The show’s producer plonked him down in a café to calm him down. This was a mistake. By his own admission — Bourdain was a little fuzzy on the details, which is perfectkly understandable considering how much he drank — he downed some 18 negronis and drank himself into a catanoic stupor.

The scene didn’t improve when he came to. In the next filmed scene, Bourdain was blackout drunk. It was his birthday. He was unknowingly joined at his lunch table by an unsuspecting local couple. It was the wife’s birthday, too, but the cameras picked up an expression of pure disinterest on her face: It happened to be her birthday too, and she was clearly unamused to find herself across the table from a drunk and bad-tempered New Yorker. More indignities were to come. Bourdain was served a plate of tuna tartare with avocado and squeeze-bottle designs on top, on a square plate no less.

Fun fact: This all happens in the first 12 minutes of the episode, and you know what they say: the camera doesn’t lie.

Also, time heals all wounds, right? Work with me here, people.

The more time that went by, the angrier Bourdain seemed to get. At this point in the series, he had dodged malaria — and worse — in the Congo; narrowly avoided being caught in a crossfire between rival militias in Libya; managed not to get himself arrested by the military junta in Myanmar or gored by a bull in Spain (the bull gave it its best shot, and nearly ended ruined Bourdain’s manhood in the process); avoided freezing like a popsicle while ice fishing in the middle of a Quebec winter; survived leeches in the Amazonian jungle of Peru; and avoided finding himself in the middle of a shooting war in the Gaza Strip.

He doesn’t exactly say ‘Who needs this s**t?’ but you can sure as (s**t) see he’s thinking it.

“I am snakebit as far as Sicily (was concerned),” Bourdain admitted later. “You cannot make great TV in Sicily. It’s a fantastic location, the food is awesome, the people and everywhere you look is great, but for some reason both times I have made shows in Sicily, everything has gone wrong.”

But wait, there’s more.

“It’s become a hideous, funny failure. But it wasn’t funny to me down there where those dead octopi were splashing down behind my head. I felt like I was speaking in manic double-speed for the next week. I couldn’t breathe, my crew was very concerned and there were some personnel changes afterwards.”

Personnel changes! That sounds like a diplomatic way of putting it.

“I’m still pissed about it. This is sort of a dangerous paradox about the shows over the years where the producers understand that when things go really, really badly, it’s comedy gold sometimes, but it’s not fun for me.

“I don’t go out there looking to make a funny show mocking this well-meaning but thoroughly corrupt fisherman who was just trying to make things entertaining.

“I think I give up on shooting again in Sicily. Look, my wife is Italian, I love the country, I love Sicily, but I think if I went back and screwed up again it would break me. I don’t think I could bear it.

“I will go back for pleasure though.”

Sadly, as fate would have it, we’ll never know that part.

As it is, Bourdain’s powers of recovery didn’t fail him — not then, at any rate.

He would go on to film 10 more seasons for CNN, 82 more episodes in all.

Bourdain was astute enough, and giving enough too, to realize Sicily’s charms.

“There’s the simple fact of its location, tucked away under the boot of Italy — part of but not really part of that country. [It has] its own language, culture, its own history of Norman, Arab, Spanish, Roman, Turkish, Egyptian interlopers, all leaving their mark and their influence. . .

“This is what I wanted Sicily to be, something to soothe my shattered soul. It doesn’t take much: a bowl of good pasta. In this case it’s the famous spaghetti al nero di seppia (spaghetti and cuttlefish).”

He carried his ill-fated lunch excursion to the end, though.

“Is this what it’s come to, I’m thinking, as another dead squid narrowly misses my head,” he says in his voiceover. “Back in the same country almost a decade later, and I’m still desperately staging fishing scenes?

“Strangely, everyone else pretends to believe the hideous sham unfolding before our eyes, doing their best to ignore the blindingly obvious.

“Then they gave up and just dumped a whole bag of dead fish into the sea. I’m no marine biologist, but I know a dead octopus when I see one.”

And later … a flashback!

“Oh look, my octopus! I remember personally catching that one. It was a mighty struggle, too.

“(Look), I’ve never had a nervous breakdown before, but I tell you from the bottom of my heart, something fell apart down there, and it took a long, long time after the end of this damn episode to recover.”

Three years, as it happened.

Next up: South Africa.

CNN

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Bourdain in Copenhagen

Noma, actually. ln this hour of CNN’s Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain found himself a duck out of water in “the world’s happiest country,” all the while exchanging soclal and culinary pointers with world-renowned chef and Noma co-founder René Redzepi. Be happy!

The secret to happiness, Bertrand Russell once observed, is to face the fact that the world is horrible. Imagine Anthony Bourdain’s surprise, then, when he found himself — somewhat reluctantly — in the “happiest country on Earth” and quite enjoying himself. Inconceivable!

Of course, truth be told — an expression Bourdain would never have used himself, being given to speaking his truth as he saw it and telling like it is — it wasn’t Denmark that enchanted him so, or even the city of Copenhagen (pop. 660,000, established as a Viking fishing village in the 10th century), so much as the three-Michelin-star restaurant Noma and its indefatigable head chef and co-founder René Redzepi.

Noma is an abbreviation of the Danish words “nordisk” (Nordic, as in Nordic noir and high-end murder mysteries like Forbrydelsen) and “mad,” the Danish word for food, though the English root word “mad” works too, as Bourdain was mad happy about his days spent at Noma.

The Parts Unknown episode Copenhagen aired on CNN in October 2013 and there’s something winsome, nostalgic even, about watching it today. Copenhagen — even though remember, it’s not that much about Copenhagen — is consistently ranked by viewers as one of Parts Unknown’s 10 most popular episodes, according to the aggregate site IMDB, and it’s easy to see why. Following a run of gritty, rough-hewn outings like Jerusalem and, to a lesser extent, Spain and New Mexico, Copenhagen focused on finding happiness within one’s self, through good food and fine dining. Inconceivable!

Bourdain smiles ruefully and jokes a lot throughout the episode, as if affronted by the idea that anyone can be truly happy, let alone in a society that focuses on individual sacrifice for the greater good — 60% income tax! free college tuition for everyone! free health care! social security for life! — why, it all sounds … almost socialist. Bourdain can barely contain his horror. Why, it’s, it’s … un-American.

Denmark has its social problems, true — Forbrydelsen, aka The Killing, created by the Danish author Søren Sveistrup and produced by German public service broadcaster ZDF, told the story of a murdered 16-year-old girl with gritty, unflinching realism and went on to win the BAFTA Award and International Emmy Award as the world’s best television drama; think The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but set in the world’s happiest country, where dark undercurrents flow beneath the seemingly cheery, jovial surface.

Between serene canal sailings and reluctantly riding the historical children’s Ferris wheel alongside Redzepi at Tivoli Gardens, though (“Children were skared!” one inscription screams in the visitors’ book), Bourdain finds a small measure of happiness, and it’s poignant watching that today, knowing how this tale ended.

“After this, we’re going to steal a car, and I’m going to teach you to drive,” Bourdain tells the famously law-abiding, lifelong nondriver Redzepi.

Inconceivable!

What one might not have guessed, based on simply watching Copenhagen all the way through, is how difficult it was to film, according to Bourdain in his field notes, published on CNN’s website at the time.

Bourdain gave props to his long-suffering colleague and field producer Tom Vitale for, well, being “heroically suicidal” in the risks he took with this episode.

“We would provide no coverage for our editor back in New York,” Bourdain explained, “no extra footage of entrances and exits, establishing shots, alternate takes. Subjects would fall and wander out of frame. We would force post-production to be great because there would be simply no alternative.

“We would tell our entire story over the course of one meal, at one restaurant, cutting back and forth through time and space.” Inconceivable!

Bourdain samples reindeer moss at Noma (locally foraged and in-season, two of Redzepi/Noma’s tell-tale signature calling cards); fjord shrimp and smoked eel at Restaurant Grøften; shares shots of Gammel Dansk, Danish multi-herb bitters, with sailor/accordion player/boat operator and qualified, card-carrying drinker at Funchs Vinstrue, a centuries-old Copenhagen pub; and, by the end, a late-night tube steak at John’s Hot Dog Deli, a sidewalk stand famous for “The Deluxe,” an “organic sausage” (one can almost picture Bourdain sniffing, ‘Oh, please, organic sausage? Really?’) garnished with wild garlic, beer-pickled onions (“These are good!”) and house-made mustard.

“Noma for lunch, John’s for dinner,” Bourdain says.

Noma is famous for sourcing most, if not all, of their ingredients from forests, fields, farms, beaches, and marshes within 60 miles of Copenhagen’s city centre.

Bourdain: “They have pioneered the notion of foraging and (have) taken it to an extreme that would be damn easy to mock if the results weren’t so genuinely brilliant and delicious.”

If you’re considering booking a reservation, please note: Noma is slated to end its days as a full-time restaurant at the end of the year. Part of the reason is a lingering post-Covid malaise and hangover — fine dining is becoming increasingly unsustainable, especially in this economy — but part of it, too, is Redzepi’s plan to widen his horizons. Noma will become a full-time lab and test kitchen, Noma 3.0, for online ordering. Noma will also open on occasion as a series of pop-up restaurants

“To continue being Noma, we must change,” the restaurant revealed on its website late last year. “Winter 2024 will be the last season of Noma as we know it.”

And so, post-Bourdain, Noma is about to become the latest player in the fast-growing world of direct-to-consumer e-commerce platforms like Wild Rose Vinegar and Smoked Mushroom Garum. Fine dining is going online, it would seem, where it hasn’t done so already. So much for hygge after all.

By the end of Copenhagen, it’s clear Bourdain was enchanted, if not smitten. Only a couple of days before his visit, he wasn’t so sure, as he reveals at the hour’s outset.

“I do not, by temperament or inclination, gravitate towards Scandinavian countries. I am intimidated and made uncomfortable by safe, clean, orderly places where everything works and people seem creepily content. I’m a guy who tends to fall in love with hot, messy, barely functional places” — hello, Congo! hello, Libya! —  “where fiery arguments are common, and one is pleasantly surprised if one’s luggage arrives in good order, if at all.

“So, it comes as something of a surprise that what we came back with after shooting in Copenhagen is perhaps the finest, most technically accomplished, best-looking hour of television we’ve ever made. It’s just (expletive) … gorgeous.”

Inconceivable! (apologies to William Goldman and Vizzini/Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride.)

Next up: Sicily.

Spoiler alert — Bourdain would later describe Sicily as his worst travel experience.

You’ve been warned.

CNN

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Bourdain in Spain

El Fandi, flamenco, tapas, Holy Week, the fortress of Granada, the Sierra Nevada mountains and a Triumph TR3: this is Anthony Bourdain’s Spain.

“Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honour,” Ernest Hemingway wrote in Death in the Afternoon, in 1932.

Fast-forward to September 2013 and the second episode of Parts Unknown’s second season on CNN, and it will surprise no one to learn that Tony Bourdain had a somewhat different take on the blood sport.

The episode is called Spain, but the focus is on the old city and ancient ramparts of Granada, traditional capital of the province of Andalucía. The Alhambra, site of one of the ancient pillars of Islam, sits at at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence of the Darro, Genil, Monarchil and Beiro rivers, and is just one hour’s drive from the Mediterranean coast. In 1492 — yes, that 1492 — a Christian army wrested the Alhambra and its centuries-old ramparts from the grip of Moorish occupiers who’d been there since 1238. Ferdinand II and Isabella I, the Catholic monarchs of Aragon, Castile and Leon at the time, were so chuffed by their lording it over the Muslim infidels that they thought, what the hell, and decided to finance the absurd expedition of a diminutive Italian explorer named Christophorus Columbus in his equally absurd ambition to prove that a shorter, quicker route to the riches of India — shorter and quicker than the Silk Road, anyway — lay to the West, across the ocean. No doubt Ferdinand and Isabella just wanted to get rid of him, but, who knows, perhaps the gentleman from Genoa was onto something.

This is all worth knowing before watching Bourdain’s take on Spain for Parts Unknown because, just before the end of the hour, before the part where Bourdain hot rods down the Mediterranean coast in a spiffy set of wheels — that, my friend, looks like a Triumph TR3 — Bourdain spends some quality time, cameras in tow, poring over the Alhambra with its intricate designs and shadow play of darkness and light. Well, yes, this Alhambra thing is kind of cool after all. To this day, the Alhambra remains one of the most distinctive examples of Islamic architecture in the known world, and a showcase of early Spanish Renaissance art besides.

This part of Spain so captivated Bourdain’s long-time cameraman and confidant Zach Zamboni that Zamboni went native — literally — and set down roots there, becoming engaged and then married to a local resident, Fuen Sánchez, who appears on and off throughout Spain’s early moments.

Zamboni is worth noting, too, because the episode is Bourdain’s homage and tribute to his longtime cameraman and confidant. It is Zamboni, after all, who comes within a couple of inches of being nailed by a frisky young bull in Spain’s opening minutes — this, after El Fandi, one of Spain’s more famous and respected bullfighters at the time (circa 2012), invites Bourdain to La Marquesas Ranch, a privately owned bullring where El Fandi likes to practice, to get a taste of Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon — for realz. Firsthand.

“No one likes to look like a pussy on TV,” Bourdain admits in voiceover, “so when El Fandi jokingly suggests I join him in the ring to wave a pink cape at an aggressive young bull, who just moments ago charged my cameraman, I said what any idiot would say: si.“

The chastening comes quickly. After El Fandi flicks his cape with style and élan — with afición, as Hemingway might say —  the bull comes within a hair of nailing Bourdain in the unmentionables, not once but twice in quick succession, then sweeping back again: left-right-left-right.

And yes, while it’s a young bull — just a baby really — those horns still have a wicked curve on them.

Bourdain again: “It all starts well enough. Hey, this is fun. This is easy. Until I get a horn hooked right up next to my nut sack. Then it's not so fun. Thanks, guys. This youngster [the bull] shall live, perhaps to gore a future TV host with his mighty horns.”

Meanwhile, no doubt, Zamboni is having his own private moment of schadenfreude.

Bourdain means his longtime colleague well, though.

“Not too long ago, before Zach basically defected to Spain, he met Fuen,” Bourdain says.

“The next thing you know, he's living here. Part of an extended Andalucían family. Eat in the hand, drink in the wine, living the life of the Spanish dandy. In freaking Granada, no less.”

The next bull in El Fandi’s practice session is a 500 kg behemoth, with a temper to match, and as Parts Unknown is supposedly about culinary pleasures — in part, anyway — the “five hundred freaking kilos of aggressive charging four-legged Killdozer aiming at your meat and two legs,” as Bourdain describes this particular bull, ends up as stew.

What comes next is pure Bourdain:

“Nothing like a roaring fire in a spread of calico ham, homemade chorizo, Spanish cheeses, bread, and good olive oil to take the sting out of a near genital mutilation.”

Bourdain is philosophical about bullfighting itself. “There is no denying the terrible beauty of a very complex tradition,” he says, seeking neither to praise it nor condemn it.

Well, yes.

In 2024, though, bullfighting is a dying tradition. If the present public temperature is anything to go by, few will miss bullfighting’s passing, except those who elevated it to a high art and the stuff of Hemingway novels.

Family lies at the heart of Spanish culture, we learn, and for Zamboni, family ties fit together: Fuen’s brother Alejandro is the one who introduces Bourdain and the crew to El Fandi, and it’s Bourdain’s hanging with Alejandro, Fuen and El Fandi that opens doors to the Alhambra.

Spain aired on CNN the week after Jerusalem, and the shift in tone is palpable, and no doubt deliberate. The old  Bourdain edge is there — it’s hard not to watch these episodes of Parts Unknown and not appreciate how Bourdain seemed incapable of creating a tedious hour of television — and Spain, with its Old World charm and Bourdain’s eccentricity, is a delight to watch.

The country ain’t too bad, either, Bourdain allows. “Spain is the sort of place that never really made any sense anyway. But in the very best possible way. This is the country that gave us the Spanish Inquisition. Also, anarchy. This is where devout Catholicism mixes with surrealism, modernist cuisine with traditional tapas. Christianity and Islam traded places, shared space. And the effects and influences of all those things are right here to see.”

Granada, says Bourdain, is “not like Barcelona. It's not like San Sebastian. It ain't Madrid. Any reasonable, sentient person who looks at Spain, comes to Spain, eats in Spain, drinks in Spain — they're going to fall in love. Otherwise, there's something deeply wrong with (them).”

For Zamboni, Spain — this part of Spain, anyway — has become home.

Zamboni on the Alhambra: “It's … a cinematographer's paradise. Everything is about light and man. Obviously, they weren't cinematographers, but everything is framing (to) them.”

Bourdain: “How long did it take them to build this?”

Zamboni: “Hundreds of years.”

Bourdain: “That's why it takes so long for you to get the shot?”

Zamboni: “Oh, snap!”

We opened with Hemingway, why not close with Shakespeare?

If you prick me, do I not bleed?

Zamboni: “Hope we don't suck on television.”

Bourdain: “Dude, I think I'm setting a pretty low bar. I'm going to tell you, this relaxed lifestyle, you know, lounging around eating and drinking. And no nap is long enough for me. Life is good. I envy you, Zach Zamboni. And we're out. Nice end.”

Next up: Copenhagen.

CNN

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Bourdain in Gaza

Did Anthony Bourdain ever make a more important hour of television? Viewed today, 10 years after ‘Jerusalem’ first aired on CNN’s ‘Parts Unknown,’ it’s hard to think of one.

"They are all nice. But if you scratch, if you push, they'll all say,:’ Throw them in the sea.’”

Ten minutes. That’s about as long as it takes watching Jerusalem, Anthony Bourdain’s eerily moving second-season opener of CNN’s Parts Unknown, for it to sink in: This is going to be an emotionally wrenching gut check, both for what it says and what it doesn’t say about what’s going on today, right now, in that corner of the Middle East.

What Bourdain has to say in the program has relatively little to do with Jerusalem itself, except at the beginning, when the restless wanderer and worldly philosopher in Clark’s Originals desert boots sums up in a few succinct, well-chosen words what the Old City means to three of the world’s established religions. “By the end of this hour,” Bourdain says, perhaps even more prescient than he knew himself to be at the time, “I’ll be seen by many as a terrorist sympathizer, a Zionist tool, a self-hating Jew, an apologist for American imperialism, an Orientalist, socialist, fascist, CIA agent, and worse. So here goes nothing.”

Well, hardly nothing.

It’s what comes next is both poignant and unspeakably sad, given what we know today about what happened on October 7th, four short months ago.

Jerusalem-born, British-Israeli chef, accompanied by chef, restaurateur and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi, who was conscripted into the Israel Defence Forces in his younger days and served three years in IDF’s intelligence headquarters sits quietly in the peaceful, sun-dappled homes of homesteaders who live alongside Israel’s border with Gaza while Bourdain does what he did best as he shares meals with artists, musicians and, yes, peace campaigners: He listens, while others talk.

This section in the program is hard to watch, because these were some of the very homes that were laid waste to last October, taking with them the dreams, aspirations and futures of those who lived there, raised their families there, and were laid to rest there, in more peaceful times. These are not the angry, rage-twisted faces of extremist settlers seen on the nightly news in the months and years leading up to today’s war, but rather the faces of peace campaigners and those who, on October 7th, may well have taken the secrets of a future, lasting peace with them.

Bourdain may have been a born peacemaker without realizing it. Later in the hour, he spends time with families in Palestine’s occupied territories in the West Bank and, in Gaza itself, sharing fatit ’ajir, a dish made of baby watermelon and unleavened bread, and maqluba, a traditional Palestinian dish made of layers of fried eggplant, while sharing ideas about what it will take to forge an enduring peace in the region. He finds himself moved by his visit to the Jewish-Arab-owned restaurant Majda, “You could almost believe for a minute or two that some kind of peace, some kind of reconciliation, meeting of the minds, sanity is possible after you visit Majda,” he says, in improv mode. “It feels like an alternate universe, for a number of reasons.”

For all the keen thoughts and basic beliefs Bourdain shared with his television followers over his years in TV’s spotlight, it was his capacity to listen while others spoke that gave him the insight that allowed him to move so many people with seeming ease.

For all his outsized personality and frequent mood swings — capably captured in field producer and self-confessed Bourdain guinea pig Tom Vitale in his book In the Weeds — Bourdain was at his best when drawing out other people’s internal monologues.

He was always looking for answers to the eternal truths. “I am instinctively hostile to any kind of devotion,” he confesses.

“Certainty is my enemy. I’m all about doubt — questioning oneself and the nature of reality constantly.”

He doesn’t hide his Americanism while a guest in Palestinian homes. “Many, if not most, of these guys are not too sympathetic to my country or my ethnicity, I’m guessing. But there’s that hospitality thing. Anywhere you go in the Muslim world, it seems, no matter what, you feed your guests and do your best to make them feel at home.”

Possibly intending to be ironic, though probably not, the Israeli-born, London-based chef Ottolenghi finds similar parallels in the origins of falafel. “The one thing that is very clear in this part of the world,” Ottolenghi notes, “Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, is that (falafel) has been cooked for many, many generations. There’s actually no answer to it, but the question of food appropriation — who owns the food — you can go on arguing about it forever.”

Bourdain had an unerring ability to size up his surroundings in less time than it takes most people to swipe a smartphone screen. In the Aida refugee camp two km north of Bethlehem — “a graveyard of dreams for Palestinians,” as Spain’s El País described Aida this past December — Bourdain tells his host, theatre director Abed Abusrour: “Six thousand people, (and) of that number 66 percent are under the age of 18. I don’t care where that is in the world; that’s pretty much a recipe for unruly behaviour.”

“Well, yes,” Abusroour replies. “Especially when you don’t have any possibilities to (release) the anger and stress in a creative way … after I finished my studies, I came back here and I started using theatre as one of the most amazing, powerful, civilized, and nonviolent means to express yourself, to tell your story, to be truthful.”

Amazing, powerful, civilized, and nonviolent:

That pretty much sums up Bourdain’s time in Gaza, Israel’s West Bank and in the calm, once quiet garden groves of kibbutzes and family homes that run along Israel’s border with the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.

All this in 42 minutes of television, give or take.

Bourdain: “It's easily the most contentious piece of real estate in the world. And there's no hope, none, of ever talking about it without pissing somebody, if not everybody, off.”

Early in the program, while walking alongside Ottolenghi on Jerusalmen’s Via Dolorosa, “the "last trip Jesus did before he was crucified,” Ottolenghi tells him, then adds they may be walking in the very steps made by Jesus Christ.

“As I often do,” Bourdain says, then adding, after a pause:

“Jesus was here. I feel like I should be more … something,

“A little bit more pious?” Ottolenghi prompts helpfully.

“A little bit?” Bourdain says, with a rueful laugh. “It’s a bit too late for me.”

Not that late, though. The big picture was never far from his mind.

“One can be forgiven for thinking, when you see how similar they are, the two peoples, both of whom cook with pride, eat with passion, love their kids, love the land in which they live or the land they dream of returning to, who live so close, who are locked in such an intimate, if deadly, embrace, might somehow, someday, figure out how to live with each other. But that would be very mushy thinking.”

He is missed.

CNN

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Bourdain in Congo

In which intrepid explorer and restless wanderer Anthony Bourdain channelled his inner Joseph Conrad and (nearly) went full-on Kurtz on the Congo River.

The demarcation line between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DMC), or just plain “Congo” to seasoned travellers like the late Tony Bourdain, is easy to spot, if not that easy to navigate, according to more than a few present-day explorers, including writer Thurston Clarke in his compelling travelogue Equator.

The meticulous, painstakingly maintained road comes to a sudden end, and you’re suddenly driving through a pool of mud and brackish, brown floodwaters. Welcome to Congo. Please don’t neglect to notice the border guards in jungle fatigues and sporting AK-47s — they may want a gratuity. It’s just the polite thing to do. You’re in somebody else’s country, after all. Be patient and courteous. Oh, and gratuities are best paid in USD, preferably in mint condition bills. Ben Franklins will do.

Bourdain wanted to go down the river —yes, that river — ever since he first read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Francis Coppola’s landmark film Apocalypse Now — Bourdain was a noted admirer — came later, long before A Cook’s Tour set Bourdain on his true path.

In 2013, following Bourdain’s jump to CNN from the Travel Channel — bugger budgets, more prestige and, most importantly to Bourdain, a more serious geopolitical and philosophical worldview — he finally got his wish.

True, it almost killed him, but, as another noted writer-philosopher put it, what does not kill you makes you stronger.

Fun fact: As serious and bracing as the Parts Unknown episode Congo is — the final episode of Parts Unknown’s debut season — it’s nothing compared to what really happened behind the scenes when Bourdain channelled his inner Col. Kurtz a little too closely and mayhem ensued. Bourdain, feeling the effects of late-night heat, humidity, swirling insects and one shot too many on an empty stomach, suddenly got the urge to whip up an impromptu coq au vin for himself and the crew. He insisted every member of his inner circle, including — especially including — his terrified director/producer Tom Vitale, who did as he was told, to kill their own chicken. Vitale botched the job, as he feared he would, and suffered a near full-on nervous breakdown as a result.

The rumble in the jungle takes up a full chapter in Tom Vitale’s confessional In the Weeds, and the real story, believe it or not, is every bit as harrowing as what we see on the screen today.

You don’t say no to the boss late at night in the middle of the jungle, on an untrustworthy boat where some hapless fool has neglected/forgotten/never intended to put down the anchor and the boat is now drifting aimlessly Christ knows where down a  snake and crocodile infested river noted for the sheer number of people who go down the river and never return, not to mention the fact that the generator, never much good in the first place, keeps kicking out and Bourdain, wielding a huge knife and cursing everyone and everything in the middle of the Congo night — well, let’s just say this isn’t like sipping piña coladas on a tropical beach somewhere, say, La Playuela Cabo Rojo in Puerto Rico.

Coq au vin might not sound that ambitious — it’s simply chicken braised with wine, preferably a red Burgundy, with lardons, mushrooms and garlic.

The Congo poses its own unique set of challenges though, especially late at night, surrounded by venomous snakes, spiders and giant jungle moths with poison for blood and the fixer/head-of-expedition security is shouting at the top of his lungs, telling people not to swat away the giant moths because God only knows what might get under your skin if you do that — and, oh, did we mention, the hapless director/producer is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

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“Casually attired in a khaki shirt, Clark boots and his trademark Persol sunglasses, Tony made trekking through war-torn Congo look effortless,” Vitale opens the chapter Heart of Darkness with.

By the end, Vitale has changed his tune.

“Like many travellers who find themselves in a moral inferno, we’d begun in search of Tony’s childhood heart of darkness adventure fantasy.

“What we’d found was something different… maybe Tony could still say something that would justify why we’d risked life, limb, and sanity to go to the middle of the freakin’ Congo. I needed to know if it meant something to Tony. That I wasn’t disposable. I wanted to know if it had all been worth it. Or if he thought it hadn’t.”

Bourdain touches on that in his voice-over.

“Nine days of threats of imprisonment, confiscation of footage, and what was the most chaotic, difficult, yet amazing trip of my life,” he begins.

Then, the coq au vin:

“Our chickens are thin, scraggly, and tough. In order to make anything any kind of edible, I'm probably going to have to stew the crap out of ‘em."

“You want to eat?” he tells his crew at one point.  “You gotta kill your own chicken, and pluck it, too.”

And then, the bugs.

“Crush the wrong one of these moths while swatting at your face and you will blow up like a balloon,” Bourdain says. “Seriously.”

On realizing his childhood dreams:

“It is written that I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. I think I understand what that means now.”

And finally, when it dawns on him that this may have been a very bad idea:

“They'll find us ten years later, naked in the bush with a necklace of Spam cans.”

And finally, in his field notes at the very end, blessed perspective:

“At the time that my crew and I drove across the border into Goma, there were nearly 30 different rebel groups and militias — many of them aligned with the Congo’s neighbouring countries, fighting it out across the country.

“One of them, M23 [short for March 23 Movement] were fighting amongst themselves only 10 miles away.

“The official armed forces of the Congo, the FARDC, were said to be on their way — an outcome generally considered to be a worst-case scenario, as they are widely regarded as professionals in the business of extortion, murder, mass rape, and robbery, rather than simply amateurs.”

Perspective!

“We were, during our shoot, extremely fortunate. Relative to most, we had a luxuriously unmolested, violence-free time.

“We were extorted, detained, and threatened daily. But such is life in the Congo.”

Bottom line:

“The Congo is a place where everything is fine. Until it isn’t.”

Enjoy the show!

The view, this one anyway, looks so much better from the comfort and safety of the couch.

CNN

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