Bourdain in Shanghai

“What are our expectations? Which of the things we desire are within reach? If not now, when? And will there be some left for me?” Ten years ago, Anthony Bourdain asked existential questions of the rising economic power that is Shanghai in Parts Unknown’s 4th season opener.

When Anthony Bourdain raised the curtain on Parts Unknown’s fourth season of culinary globetrotting by holding his life’s lens to Shanghai, financial capital of China’s merging of the Old World and New in September 2014, 10 years ago, give or take, the die was cast. Regular CNN News viewers and Bourdain acolytes alike knew what to expect — or at least thought they did.

Hardly anyone would have expected that the season opener’s look at modern China would open, not with Bourdain’s by-now familiar voiceover, acerbic and laden with a sharp, cutting wit, but with a single, spoken musical note, a mezzo-soprano — nǚ gāoyīn — rising into an almost ethereal realm while Bourdain, wearing a coloured pocket square or foulard, made his way through the densely packed nighttime streets of what is now arguably the 21st century’s seat of economic power. Not New York, Bourdain’s hometown. Or London. Or Hong Kong. Shanghai. “This is not, you might have noticed, normal for me,” Bourdain would later admit in his field notes — not in the program itself — for CNN.

Right from the beginning, viewers would have noticed the change. This was going to be a different Bourdain. More reflective. Confident but gracious.
“What are our expectations? Which of the things we desire are within reach? If not now, when? And will there be some left for me?”

Comfortable in the company of outrageous wealth — everyone appreciates a dinner companion who can hold a conversation with style and wit, even those with enough money that they don’t have to care what anyone else thinks — and yet still close to his working-class roots. Here, today, more than five years after his sudden passing, newcomers to the Tao of Bourdain, of which I’m one, are singing his praises on Reddit, Instagram and the other present-day town halls of social media.

“There is a method to my madness,” Bourdain wrote — words that would not make it into the actual show. “These tiny notes of colour are our first venture into actual production design — a calculated effort to give the episode a specific look.”

Shanghai would not be TV. It was cinema. One can only imagine what the business suits inside CNN’s executive offices thought when they first saw Shanghai in its final cut. One doesn’t have to imagine what people in Shanghai, or what the increasingly inscrutable government seat in power in China thought, yesterday or today. By this time, everyone, anyone with a working TV and access to the Internet — which includes virtually all 26.32 million people (2019) of China’s most wired, most socially, economically and politically influential city — knew who Bourdain was.

Back to the episode itself.

Bourdain was a rock star by this point, but he understood, as well as anyone did or could have, that it is about the band, not the frontman.

“I have long been besotted with the works of Chinese director Wong Kar-wai and his frequent cinematographer Christopher Doyle,” Bourdain continued in his Field Notes. “Their films In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express are gorgeous meditations on longing and desire and missed connections. They are spectacularly shot — and a while back I noticed how tiny elements of colour in the foreground of the frames are often connected to similar colours in the background, giving scenes a lush, unified atmosphere that feels natural and undesigned.

“So we tried — as best and as cheaply as possible — to do that. You will notice scenes tied together by colours.

“Cameraman Mo Fallon and cameraman/editor Nick Bridgen did, I think, truly epic work on this one.”

The familiar Parts Unknown signatures are there. The food, for one. Starting with FuChun XiaoLong, where, joined by Professor Zhou Lin, dean of Shanghai Jiao Tong University at the time, Bourdain talked about Chinese economic growth and global geopolitics over steamed soup dumplings and fried pork chops with brown sauce.

Bourdain’s odyssey continued from there to Chun Restaurant, a restaurant with “no menu and no waiting list,” as he described it, “and you only get served if the chef and proprietor knows and/or likes the look of you.”

As the website Eat Like Bourdain posted this past January, the food was served hot and ready: you bao xia (wok-fried whole shrimp with ginger, garlic, salt, and soy), hong shao rou (braised pork belly with cinnamon, sugar, and anise), yan du xian (clay pot soup with bean curd stock, pork belly, tofu, and bamboo), and snail, duck, and fish dishes with rich sweet and soy sauces.

The coup de grace: French oysters in champagne at Shanghai’s Roosevelt Sky Bar as the special guest of Roosevelt China Investments president and CEO Tim Tse, followed by an elegant sitdown meal at Bund 27 and House of Roosevelt with a gathering of some of Shanghai’s more successful and politically connected citizens, among them architect and designer Zeva Wang and real estate developer Daniel Yung.

Crossing over to the other side of the street — literally, as well as figuratively — Bourdain shared a dish of ziran paigu (cumin-rubbed ribs) with hacker-turned-entrepreneur Thomas Yao at Di Shui Dong restaurant. The two talked about freedom on the Internet and the future of technology, dangerous topics to discuss in public, then as now.

Bourdain again:

“I mentioned longing and desire. And in many ways, that’s what this episode is about. China is experiencing an explosive period of change and growth as millions of people are joining the middle class. Millions and millions of people who want and will soon demand the cars, TV screens, apartments, gasoline, access to information, and mobility most of us take for granted.

“China — Shanghai in particular — is a very different-looking place every time I go. And I believe that the world as a whole, largely because of what’s happening in China, will be a very different-looking place. If you live in New York, as I do, and think you live in the most modern, sophisticated city in the world — or even at its centre — Shanghai can come as a rude surprise. In spite of its nominally communist system, it is the most go-go, unfettered, money- and status-mad, materialistic place on Earth. Its skyline alone is confirmation that money talks loudest. In no other city could you build the world’s largest, tallest ominously curved phallus —stick it right up into the clouds like a giant F**K YOU! to the world — and not have trouble with the NIMBYs.”

Oh dear. No one wants trouble with the NIMBYs. Except, of course, when they do.

The thing about Shanghai is, they no longer care. They don’t have to.

Bourdain ended Shanghai as he began it:

“What are our expectations? Which of the things we desire are within reach? If not now, when? And will there be some left for me?”

Nǐhǎo.

CNN

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Bourdain in Brazil

Candomblé, capoeira, and caipirinhas. This was Anthony Bourdain’s pilgrimage to Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, 10 years ago next month. After the end of a long, arduous season of Parts Unknown, Bourdain just wanted to kick back and give viewers a taste of fun and relaxation. It worked.

It’s worth noting that when Anthony Bourdain’s Brazil closed Parts Unknowns’s breakout third season 10 years ago, in June 2014, on CNN, it capped a season that included sobering visits to drug cartel Mexico and Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which, while gripping, didn’t exactly make for comfortable viewing.

The season also featured some of yeoman director/producer Tom Vitale’s then-best work to date, as Parts Unknown took on a more widescreen cinematic vision with each passing hour, beginning with the Punjab in India through Lyon, France, through the Mississippi Delta and finally into the green-limned rice paddies of northern Thailand.

It’s worth noting, too, that Brazil is vast, not so much a country as a subcontinent in its own right, not unlike India. The South is not like the North, and the Atlantic Coast is not like the Amazon.

Bourdain focused on Salvador da Bahia, a city of 3 million people, the original capital of Brazil, in the state of Bahia, situated in the Zona da Mata in Brazil’s sprawling northeast. Though Salvador and the more familiar — to outsiders, anyway — Rio de Janeiro share the same Atlantic coast, Salvador is not Rio, and by this point, Bourdain simply wanted to kick back and enjoy the moment.

“The wellspring for everything African and spicy,” Bourdain said in his opening voiceover, where things seem to sway and move constantly.
”It’s a place where everybody is sexy, where even the ugly people are hot. … This is where artists come from. African spiritualism, occult magic, Candomblé, capoeira. And caipirinhas. Did I mention caipirinhas?”

Oh yes, the caipirinha. “This indispensable icon of Brazilian beach culture is known to start with fresh lime. Muddle and mash with more lime juice, sugar, ice, (and) the magic ingredient, cahaça — that’s basically the distilled liquor of sugarcane — shaken, not stirred, and you’ve got yourself one of the world’s truly great cocktails.”

But wait, there’s more.

“I love nature and caipirinhas. Oh!”— startled by a hand pouring a glass in front of him— “What’s going on here? Caipirinha. Please. Sweet! This alone is an argument for the greatness of this country.”

Sweet indeed.

Bourdain journeyed to the northeast coast of Brazil mere days ahead of the 2014 World Cup, when the tourist hoards had yet to descend, supplemented by planeloads of lager louts from Germany who, as luck would have it, would have themselves a merry old time.

Bourdain found a Brazil cautiously optimistic about hosting a World Cup for the ages, and a chance to make history.

Soccer is to the national soul what samba is, after all, and Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pelé to you and me, had long ago elevated the Beautiful Game to a worldwide religion, followed everywhere from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe.

As luck — and some shocking defending — would have it, though, Germany would thump seven goals against the host nation in the semi-final, and dreams of a record World Cup win for Brazil dissipated in the tropical heat like so much sea spray.

The good citizens of Salvador da Bahia did what any sensible, happy-go-luck people with access to a warm ocean would do: they hit the beach.

This, people, is the meaning of life.

Today, ten years later, Germany is miserable — “We need to accept the situation,“ Germany manager Julian Nagelsmann murmured just this past November, hours after Germany lost back-to-back home games against Turkey and their smaller next-door neighbour Austria, “but we can’t fall into the role of being victims” — and Brazil still has the beach.

That 7-1 appointment with Ignominy seems a long time ago now.

For his part, Brazil caught Bourdain in a sunny mood.

Uncharacteristically sunny, you might say, given the rigours of the previous 11 months of making Parts Unknown.  His working relationship with Tom Vitale was always complicated — just read Virtale’s book — but this time everything clicked.

“I try to go to Brazil whenever I can find an excuse,” Bourdain said in his program notes.

“The fact that I haven’t made a show in the city of Salvador since A Cook’s Tour, over 12 years ago, seemed like reason enough for another visit. Salvador is all the best things about the country boiled down into a thick, spicy African stew. It’s mystical, magical, incredibly colourful, and has its own choreography that we worked hard to capture.”

That meant shooting at hip level as much as possible, moving the camera “to convey the sense that, unique to Salvador, everybody is beautiful. Young, old, fat, thin, every hue and shade on an extraordinarily diverse colour spectrum—absolutely everyone in Salvador is beautiful.

“Even ugly people are beautiful. Everybody seems likely to start dancing at any moment, and they often do. There are drums and music everywhere. Large, cold beers and powerful beverages of crushed limes and sugarcane liquor, along with spicy fried things, seem to appear from all directions. It seems, from a visitor’s point of view, utopian.”

It’s not, of course, utopia at all. Brazil in general — and Salvador in particular— face enormous problems.

“I stopped trying to figure out Brazil years ago and after many visits just decided to go with the flow,” Bourdain reasoned. “The show we came back with, I hope, reflects that attitude.

“After nearly a year on the road and a solid block of shooting on five continents, this was the last new episode of the season. Given the rigours of all those miles and all those airports, I felt a “low-impact” episode was appropriate.” That meant somewhere warm where the music is good and the water is fine.

“Someplace that definitely doesn’t suck.”

It doesn’t.

And neither does the show Bourdain, Vitale and their crew produced. The music is alluring, seductive even, the ambiance terrific. “Sweet,” to use Bourdain’s word. Brazil was a fine way to close what was, by all accounts, a tough season to film.

Bourdain again: “I don't know if it's the booze or the music or the tropical heat, but after a while bouncing from place to place, wandering down old cobblestone streets, different music issuing from everywhere, a different party, people flowing out of buildings, one gathering, commingling with another, the music mixing, it really does seem that everybody is moving to some mysterious unknowable pulse, some unheard throb that moves people to constantly touch each other, stroke hips, necks, limbs…

“If you, say, found yourself in Brazil and have a chance to hire a boat, head for the beach with a bunch of new friends, and bring along a skilled mixologist, expertly trained in the fine arts of caipirinha making — why wouldn't you?

“Charge across the water, head for a nice, quiet island, order up some sun to come out from behind dark clouds right about now.

“Sometimes clichés are clichés for a reason. Because they're good ideas to start with, which is why people keep … using them over and over.”

In a perfect world, upon reaching said enchanted island, there’s not much to do but jump into the warm, inviting Atlantic waters, with a classic soundtrack playing in the background. Samba, say.

“Splash around for a while, maybe enjoy a nice cold beer or two,” Bourdain said in his voiceover.

“You truly have not taken a beach until a man has set up the caipirinha station. Then you know the LZ is secure.”
The LZ is indeed secure. Time to land the eagle.

CNN

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Bourdain in Thailand

“I’m a big believer in a healthy, nutritious breakfast,” Anthony Bourdain famously, or not so famously, said during a visit to Thailand, little more than 10 years ago. “It's the most important meal of the day. My doctor said that. Of course, he also said that everything I love and hold dear is killing me, so what does he know?”

Thailand changed everything, Anthony Bourdain said.

“I remember the moment I first realized I've been living my whole life in black and white,” Bourdain said in the Thailand episode of Parts Unknown, which first aired on CNN 10 years ago in June.

“It was like discovering a colour I never knew existed before. A whole new crayon box full of colours. That was it for me.

“From then on, there was no putting the pieces back together. No going home. Things were different now. Asia had ruined me for my old life.”

Thailand, By the numbers: 67 million people. One hundred bottles of whiskey: the number of bottles of whiskey produced each day at the distillery Bourdain visited in the Chiang Mai region in Thailand’s northwest, as far removed from Bangkok, geographically and spiritually, as Venice is from Rome.

Countless: The number of whiskey shots consumed during Bourdain’s stay during the Parts Unknown shoot.

Thailand was the second-to-last episode of Parts Unknown’s third season and it marked a decided change, in both pace and tone, from the political and societal tensions that roiled previous episodes in Russia and Mexico. Bourdain was determined to live life to its fullest in a land that, long before Parts Unknown, had claimed a piece of his heart and soul.

Thailand was also a break for Parts Unknown’s followers, then and now.

The emphasis was on food, and joy — not just ladyboys and joy luck clubs but on the simple joys that make life worth living.

There was the food. Khao kha moo (stewed pork leg) at the Khao Ka Moo Cowboy Hat Lady sidewalk stall in Chang Phueak, Muang. Yes, Cowboy Hat Lady wears a cowboy hat, and she shares a disarming anecdote in Thailand’s first half about when, where, how and why she came to wear a cowboy hat.

There’s the deep-fried chicken and Thai chili nam phrik num at Gia Tod Teing Keun in Muang, in Kanchanaburi province. Not to mention the Khao soi (curry coconut milk noodle soup), som tam (green papaya salad), and Thai rice tea at Khao Soi Lam Duan, also in Muang. And French fries — yes, those French fries — and how they came to be a staple of Thai cooking in Thailand. Bet you didn’t know that.

And don’t forget the pad kee mao (drunken noodles — no jokes, please), kra pao gai (Thai basil chicken) and pad cha talay (seafood stirfy) at Krapao on Chiang Mai-Mae Jo Road in San Sai district

Bourdain’s sidekick, spiritual minder, and culinary host for the hour was Pok Pok restaurateur and US expat Andy Ricker, seven years Bourdain’s junior and renowned for his knowledge of and expertise in cuisine specific to the northern Thai region.

Bourdain: “The good stuff comes from places like here. Rice country. Chiang Mai Province. In this part of the world, you live and die by the harvest. Thai food is intensely regional. Northern Thailand in particular, has many distinctive features. This is a world of fresh, delicious, spicy, meaty, salty, sour, sweet, bitter. Often with a just-picked herby dimension.

“Once known as the kingdom of a million rice fields, it's a fertile, green and gorgeous area, home of the ancient Latta people. Welcome to Chiang Mai Province, tucked up near the borders of Burma, China, Laos, and India, not too far away. All of them have left their mark on the food.”

Enter Andy Ricker.

Bourdain: “Andy has been constantly back and forth from America to Thailand for nearly 25 years now, looking for recipes and techniques and digging deeper and deeper into an amazingly complex and widely misunderstood cuisine.

“And getting his ass chastised by a few aunties as he goes.”

Aided and abetted by copious quantities of the local eau-de-vie.

“He drinks half a bottle every day,” Ricker marvels at one elderly gentleman. So, it's pretty much the Keith Richards health and preservation plan.”

“All right,” Bourdain replies, not one to miss a beat. “We will get healthy, too. The whiskey, I have to say, is taking hold. In some clinically fascinating ways. …  In Chiang Mai, you can move in and out.

“From the quiet green of the countryside to just a few miles away, the madness and chaos of Chiang Mai City. Second largest in Thailand. Spirituality, reflection, the serene beauty of the rice paddy, village life. Maybe next episode.

“This time, it's all about consuming medically inadvisable amounts of food and drink. If Thailand is one of the best countries to eat in, Chiang Mai is a particularly good city to find yourself hungry. Oh, that's the frog.”

On your mark, get set, go.

But first, a clarification.

Bourdain: “This may surprise you, but I am not an alcoholic. I don't drink at home ever. There's no beer in my fridge. If I'm not working, I'm not hanging out in bars. But if I was an alcoholic, and I did hang in bars, I would hang here.”

Bourdain tells Ricker later, “You famously said that you hate the word authentic. “What does that word mean?”

Ricker: “Depends on the context. If you're in the United States and you say traditional authentic Thai restaurant, to me, that has come to mean a standard Thai restaurant in America. That menu. When you come here, authentic is different. You're the daughter of the woman who made this, then to you this is the most authentic version of that dish. If you are from Nan province, you still make larb but it doesn't taste like this. A little bit different.”

Now for some karaoke, maybe?

Bourdain, surprise to say, has his limits.

“The very mention of karaoke makes my blood run cold with fear,” he says, and for a moment there, it’s hard to tell if he’s serious or joking.

“That could be me someday, I'm thinking. Things go just a little wrong, and I go off the rails. This would be all too attractive. I could well see myself singing Happy Birthday in German to tourists at a hotel bar in Jakarta or Bangkok.

“This is gonna stick in my head now, this song. … Chiang Mai at night.

“We are well on our way. To where, to what, I don't know, I don't much care. But I do know it's time to eat. In Thailand, it's almost always time to eat.

“Yes, and drink. We shall be doing that, too.  …  When the journey is coming to an end, when the movie is over, what's left to do?

“Oh, yes, wrap things up. I think we've learned something here today in Chiang Mai; I can't summon what it might be right now,

“Or maybe just say, screw it and have a good time. It is quite beautiful. Thank you so much.”

He is missed.

For supplementary reading, check out this behind-the-scenes account for CNN by longtime Thailand resident and US-born guidebook author Joe Cummings: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/anthony-bourdain-thailand/index.html

CNN/Joe Cummings

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Bourdain in Russia

“With the [sic] possible Russian invasion of Ukraine all over the news,” locations photographer David Scott Holloway posted on Reddit two years ago, “I’ve found myself thinking a lot about when we travelled there for Parts Unknown.” Today, ten years after that episode first aired, Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Russia’ is as trenchant — and poignant — as if it had aired yesterday.

Where to begin?

As with so many things to do with Anthony Bourdain’s restless, eyes-open wanderings and soulful ruminations in his Parts Unknown verite docuseries for CNN, you can’t go too far wrong by beginning with Bourdain himself. In truth, Bourdain sowed the creative, philosophical and geographical ground for Russia years earlier, in 2002, during his nascent A Cook’s Tour program for the Food Network. That is when Bourdain first broke bread — or rather downed a vodka or two (or three or four) — with his soon-to-be friend, sidekick and semi-frequent travel companion Iazamir “Zamir” Gotta.

As an older, more self-reflective Bill and Ted of the travel-TV set, Bourdain and the Moscow-born Gotta, just a year apart in age at the time (Bourdain was born in 1956, Zamir in 1957), were philosophical peas in a pod, so to speak. Where Bourdain was caustic and observant and not a little cynical — ideal attributes for a life as a chef in a restaurant kitchen — Gotta was, and remains, somewhat of an innocent abroad, cheerful, ebullient and soulful by turns.

It was their shared sense of humour, one acerbic and always looking to burst the proverbial balloon with a sharp, well-timed verbal barb and the other making it up as he goes, zany and full of life, coupled with their shared humanity and deep-rooted respect for the hopes and dreams of decent, ordinary, everyday working people — that made Bourdain and Gotta such an agreeable pair in Parts Unknown.

Zamir first appeared in a pair of A Cook’s Tour episodes, aptly titled The Cook Who Came in from the Cold and So Much Vodka, So Little Time, but it was in No Reservations, years later on Travel Channel, that they truly made their mark with the TV-viewing audience, with seven episodes over an eight-year period, in visits to Uzbekistan, Russia (specifically, St. Petersburg, aka Petrograd, or to Soviet enthusiasts, Leningrad), Romania — arguably one of the zaniest, most outrageous hours of TV that Bourdain and his long-suffering cameraman/producer/director Tom Vitale ever made together — Ukraine (yes, that Ukraine) and, interestingly, the U.S. heartland: the Rust Belt, Kansas City and Brooklyn, NY, unofficially the heart of Bourdain’s native NYC.

Russia, for Parts Unknown, would prove to be fortuitously timed, happening as it did just weeks before the Sochi Olympics and not long before Russia’s invasion of Crimea, Vladimir Putin’s bid to rewrite the history of the Crimean War — 1853-1856, updated for the 21st century.

Russia opens in a field of snow amid a stand of birch trees — “Beautiful, right?” Zamir says off-camera, “We can already indulge ourselves into something special. Such a beautiful day! … Ah, what a place.”

He’s being both literal and ironic, of course, irony being one of the hallmarks of Russian literature — and as a writer myself, I can honestly say that Russian literature is just about at the very top of the field, up there with Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Shakespeare.

Bourdain famously hated the cold, and the making of Russia coincided with one of the most bitter winters in Russian memory at the time. Bourdain famously said that an ill-advised shoot in Lapland in mid-winter just about killed him; it’s not hard to imagine that, years later, sunning himself in Goldeneye, Ian Fleming’s retreat in Jamaica, Bourdain took one long look at the beach and thought to himself, I could get used to this.

It isn’t long before Bourdain tells viewers what he really thinks of Russia’s fearless leader — still is today, ten years later — “All hail the Maximum Leader. Now, let’s dance!” — but it doesn’t bear repeating here. Bourdain had an inimitable way of describing his irritation at certain people in the public eye, and he is unsparing in his assessment of Maximum Leader. It’s the kind of descriptive way with words that made Bourdain famous, and really should be seen for oneself (Parts Unknown episodes are available for streaming on the (HBO) MAX streaming site, co-owned by CNN owners Warner Bros. Discovery, and are available for purchase on Apple’s Apple TV (formerly iTunes) site).

“It's February 2014, and the Sochi Olympics are just coming up when I arrive in Moscow,” Bourdain says in the opening. “It's a different Moscow every time I come here. The '80s style, go-go capitalist conspicuous consumption see-who-can-spend-the-most-money disco-techno thing that I encountered when I first came here back in 2001 — it's still going strong.

“In fact, these days, Moscow has one of the highest concentrations of billionaires in the world. But as never before, it's imperial Russia now, a one-man rule.

All power emanates, every decision must consider, this guy.”

Russia is full of characters with murky pasts and shadowy connections, Bourdain continues. “But one of them I've called a friend for more than a decade.”

“Tony, wow,” Gotta replies, humbled and awed. And genuine.

And that’s what really works throughout Parts Unknown, not just in Russia but in all the episodes. This is genuine.

“I guess I’m switching to vodka, Zamir.” Bourdain tells him. Switching? When travelling in Russia in the dead of winter, when was he ever off vodka?

“Listen, as a born Muscovite, I'm trying to be a good patron,” Gotta tells him. “So I really want you to tell me, frankly, a week from now, ‘Zamir, now I understand why stereotypes sometimes send a bad message about Russia.’

Bourdain: “I have an open mind. Everything's great. Russians have everything they want.”

Zamir: “Listen, why don't we just taste the vodka.”

Discussions of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Alexander Litvinenko, Viktor Yushchenko and a sit-down dinner over pelmeni,   a modern riff on borscht, at Moscow’s Yornik restaurant (now closed), with former deputy prime minister (under Boris Yeltsin) Boris Nemstov, a prominent dissident and vocal critic of the Maximum Leader, who would not be long of this world after that dinner with Bourdain. A coincidence? Probably just that — Maximum Leader’s issues with Nemstov ran much deeper than one chance meeting for the TV cameras for US TV. CNN is not a thing in Russia, after all — there, it’s all about Rossiya 1, Channel One, NTV and Russia Today.

A quick scan of Reddit shows that Russia remains one of the five favourite programs for many of Bourdain’s followers

One of the more remarkable things about Bourdain’s body of work in Parts Unknown is just how many episodes count as “five favourite episodes” for someone. There truly was something special in every hour Bourdain, Vitale and Zero Point Zero Production made for CNN, something to appeal to at someone somewhere on a deep, fundamental level. And not just in the US, either. Parts Unknown’s appeal was worldwide.

How to end?

Not with Bourdain this time, though Bourdain does end Russia on a particularly powerful and trenchant note — how could he not?

On the Parts Unknown companion website ExplorePartsUnknown.com, taken offline for several weeks until just the past few days, possibly because it was hacked — that’s what the AI-generated browser blockers said at the time, anyway — there’s a telling, warm reminiscence of behind-the-scenes filming with Russian photographer and film-maker Darya Tarasova. (Also worth a look is the work of veteran set- and locations photographer David Scott Holloway, who has shared links to his Bourdain work, some featured here, on Reddit, and through his website at https://davidscottholloway.com).

The Q&A, conducted and written by Nathan Thornburgh (https://explorepartsunknown.com/russia/behind-the-camera-darya-tarasova/), sheds light on some charming moments that explain, as well as anything in the actual episode, Bourdain's unique relationship with Zamir.

“There was a funny moment in Moscow,” Tarasova recalled. “Tony and Zamir had a kind of skiing competition, because we were filming the episode ahead of the Olympic Games in Sochi. They decided to have fun with the Olympic theme. Anthony was wearing a big jacket that had ‘USA’ on it, and Zamir had his own jacket that said ‘Russia.’ So we had Russia versus the USA. Zamir kept shouting, ‘I will break you!’ He was there to win.

“Zamir knows how to ski, but he wasn’t very proficient when he was trying to go down this hill. And Tony wasn’t in great shape either, but he won the race.

“Zamir just fell down in the middle of the hill and then rolled to Tony’s feet.”

Then there’s the moment with the 122-mm D-30 Howitzer cannon, fired to commemorate the occasion of the October 1917 revolution that ushered in decades of rule — or misrule, depending on your point of view — of Soviet Communism.

Bourdain is invited to load a shell into the Howitzer, and — stand back, everybody… — Bang! It goes off.

Bourdain is happily handed the empty shell, all 21kg of it, once it’s ejected from the Howitzer.

“Enemy is destructed!” Zamir tells him. “Congratulations, you are the hero of Russia now.”

Bourdain: “Sweet.”

Zamir: “You can't take it on the plane, though. They won't understand.”

Bourdain: ”Not even carry on?”

CNN

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Bourdain in Mexico

Eerie and prescient: Anthony Bourdain’s parting words in Parts Unknown’s Mexico City episode. “As I have come to know in my own life, drugs, even drug addiction, can be a survivable event. Death is not. Death is final.”

“I had begun my trip to Mexico in a mood of dejection and self-pity, feeling shunned, overlooked, ignored, rejected—easily identifying with migrants and Mexicans … I’d hoped the trip would be salutary, a cure for my sour mood, and so it proved. I was uplifted, smiling when I set off for home, my hand on my heart, promising to return. …

“One of the greatest thrills in travel is to know the satisfaction of arrival, and to find oneself among friends.”

That was not Tony Bourdain but rather the distinguished writer Paul Theroux, who Bourdain would later break bread with in the Hawaii episode of CNN’s Parts Unknown.

Mexico, which first aired in May 2014, marked a return of sorts for Bourdain to the rich, layered world he first traced in No Reservations five years earlier, in 2009, but this would prove a very different experience. In the prescient way Bourdain had of divining and foreshadowing future events, the Mexico he shepherded viewers through in Parts Unknown is eerily reflective of events in Mexico today. No Reservations cast a brighter, more sunny light on a country of more than 750,000 square miles with more than 130 million people — the 10th most populous country in the world and the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking country.

Human presence in pre-Columbian Mexico dates back to 8000 BC; Mexico is one of the world’s six Cradles of Civilization and a familiar and yet inscrutable neighbour to the United States.

That is not the Mexico that is on Bourdain’s mind, though, as he makes plainly clear in his show-opening opening voiceover, even as he resolves to reveal the human story behind the brutal headlines. Then and now.

“Mexico is a country where every day, people fight to live,” he tells viewers. “All too often, they lose that battle.

“(This is) a magnificent, heartbreakingly beautiful country. The music and food, and a uniquely Mexican, darkly funny, deeply-felt worldview. Right down there, cuddled up in ethos, our brother from another mother.

"Holy mother of Santa Muerte, please protect my stash of cocaine. Let it not be interfered with by the cops, or the competition. Let any who would mess with me be killed. My enemies destroyed. Please forgive us our sins, for they are many."

Drugs, cartels, corruption, murders and convoluted, labyrinthine politics — clearly, we’re no longer in the sunny optimism of Lyon, which Bourdain visited on Parts Unknown only a week earlier.

Recent history is much on Bourdain’s mind, and it says a lot that what was recent in 2014 is still recent in 2024.

Bourdain: “More Mexican civilians have been killed since 2006 than all the American military lost in ten years of the Vietnam War and eight years of wars in Iraq. … 80,000 Mexicans have died in the last seven years in narco violence.”

Bourdain is not interested in the vacation resort side of Mexico with its turquoise coastlines and conveniently pristine white sand beaches, but rather in what lies underneath. This is what made Parts Unknown tailormade for CNN and not the Travel Channel.

The closer Bourdain gets to Latin America’s heart of darkness, the more fulfilled he seems — no longer a chef on the frontlines of the restaurant trade but a cultural anthropologist; part ambassador, part interpreter and part sage for those of us curious about and willing enough to look beyond the glossy surface of travel brochures and self-serving spin from politicians jumping from one positive press announcement to the next.

Bourdain’s strongest suit was the humanizing sensibility he brought to complex, uncomfortable subjects, and it doesn’t get much more complex or uncomfortable than the real Mexico.

“Tepito is a city within its city. Its own thing. Either the dark centre or the beating heart of Mexico City, depending on your point of view. It's the home of Santa Muerte, the skeletal St. Death. This is where they come: the impoverished, the oppressed, the marginalized, the criminal. People for whom the traditional church has less relevancy. For the unforgiven and the unforgivable. For those on whom the Catholic saints have turned their backs, there is Santa Muerte.”

There is grace here, too. Among his many, many attributes, Bourdain had a way of finding grace among the ruin.

And, as often as not, that had to do with food. Good food. In fine quantity, and full of sustenance. And drink. Here’s Bourdain sampling the micheladas in the mercados of Tepito, for example, a delectable concoction of beer, lime, Clamato juice, Worcestershire sauce, spices and chilli peppers, served in a chilled, salt-rimmed glass:

“A lot of good smells here, man. A lot of good-looking food. My happy place is somewhere in here. Oh, there it is. … Wherever there's bones and guts simmering in broth, chances are I'll be happy.”

Interestingly, some of Bourdain’s most poetic, stirring words do not appear in the program itself but rather in an accompanying essay he wrote at the time for the social media platform Medium.

“(Mexico) has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for its gorgeousness. Its archeological sites — the remnants of great empires, unrivalled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over a tortilla chip. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply ‘bro food’ halftime. It is, in fact, old — older even than the great cuisines of Europe and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. …

“The received wisdom is that Mexico will never change. That it is hopelessly corrupt, from top to bottom. That it is useless to resist — to care, to hope for a happier future. But there are heroes out there who refuse to go along. On this episode of Parts Unknown, we (got to) meet a few of them. People who are standing up against overwhelming odds, demanding accountability, demanding change — at great, even horrifying personal cost.

“This show (was) for them.”

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