Bourdain in Rome

Il Duce v. Il Douché. The year 2016 found Anthony Bourdain in Rome for CNN’s Parts Unknown, and as luck and misfortune would have it, 2016 would turn out to be an inauspicious year, both for Bourdain and for the world. Bourdain’s home country was about to elect a new leader. And history was about to repeat.

I watched the infamous Parts Unknown episode Rome for the first time just a couple of nights ago. I was dreading it. I had put it off for, well, ever since I first immersed myself in the Tao of Bourdain, many years ago now, during a long-haul overnight flight down the length of Africa from northern Europe, looking for something on my iPad to watch. I had recorded an episode of Parts Unknown at random, having known Bourdain by name and reputation only. I had done some work with CNN that year, and it was impossible at the time to have anything to do with CNN and not know the name Bourdain. In a few short years he emerged to become an indelible presence at the network, both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. Parts Unknown had become the news network’s most watched, most talked-about program. By far.

Even now, all these years after his passing on June 8, 2018, the name Bourdain carries special import at the now beleaguered news channel.

I don’t know what I expected to see in Rome, but not that exactly.

The spectre of Asia Argento — that’s the one and only time I’ll mention her by name here — permeates every single frame and hangs over the hour like an all-enveloping fog, and the resulting effect is, well, weird and oddly discombobulating.

As sidekicks go, it’s hard to see how this person — the actress daughter of horror schlockmeister Dario Argento, a filmmaker who, for my taste and perhaps this is just me, made some of the ugliest, nastiest, most heartless and pointless films ever made — warranted so much attention when so many of Parts Unknown’s other sidekicks evolved over the years to provide Bourdainophiles with some of their fondest and most warmly recalled memories of the man and who he was. Eric Ripert, Zamir Gotta, Darren Aronofsky, the list goes on — sidekicks who were, by turns, witty, warm, perceptive, loquacious, receptive, thoughtful, introspective, given to listening, and giving of other people. She was none of those. Bourdain spends time in the episode with the enfant terrible filmmaker and fellow New Yorker Abel Ferrara — perhaps you know him from such neo-noir film works as Bad Lieutenant (1992), Ms .45 (1981) and King of New York (1990), chronicles of violent crime in urban settings, but with spiritual overtones — who considered the Eternal City his second home. Frankly, I could have used more of him and less of her, but that is not the episode Bourdain set out to make. (The whole sorry chapter of Rome gets thorough treatment in both Tom Vitale’s personal tell-all In the Weeds and Laurie Woolever’s definitive Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography; Woolever was Bourdain’s longtime personal assistant and Vitale directed  and produced the episode in question. In the many, many lists of Bourdain followers’ favourite episodes, Rome rarely rates a mention, and it’s easy to see why.

Food, the raison d’être of Bourdain’s TV persona — in the beginning, anyway — gets short shrift here. In a 22-page account of Bourdain’s three visits to Rome, for A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations and Parts Unknown posted on the all-encompassing foody site Eat Like Bourdain, food in the Eternal City gets scant mention, other than brief references to Osteria dal 1931 (“By Bourdain’s standards, it’s a light meal of antipasti (with) prosciutto and artichoke, followed by an entree of cheese and basil ravioli”) and Trattoria Morgana, where he dines on ragù fettuccini and Roman snails with filmmaker Ferrara and Ferrara’s family.

Together they share a lively conversation about the clash of cultures between Italian and American dining, the joys — and perils — of raising a family, and the life ritual growing old with grace and wisdom.

As I say, I could have used more of Ferrara and less of, well, her.

For me, the biggest surprise of the hour, a reminder — once again, yet again — of how, if anything, Bourdain’s Parts Unknown’s programs have become even more relevant over time, Rome holds a lens to the dark underbelly of fascism and the ruinous rule of dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini and its warnings for us today. Think of it as Il Duce vs. Il Douché.

After leading Italy into a catastrophic war that saw much of Italy razed and flattened, Mussolini was summarily executed by partisans in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy in April 1945; his body was taken to Milan and hanged by the feet from a metal girder in a suburban square, the Piazzale Loreto, after angry crowds beat the body with sticks.

In its most powerful — and eerily prescient — moments, at the beginning and again at the very end, Rome finds Bourdain in a pensive mood, warning against the perils posed by fascism in our own times.

Rome was filmed in the spring of 2016 and aired later that year, after today’s US president The similarities between Il Duce and Il Douché are uncanny; the latter has consciously styled himself after the former, and made no bones about it. In virtually every posed photograph, with few exceptions, he strikes a Mussolini-esque pose.

Bourdain felt strongly about this, as strongly as he felt about anything in the world of politics — anywhere.

“As so many have found throughout history, it’s easy to fall in love with Rome. She is seductively beautiful. She has endured and survived many things. … You fall into a trance here. You think, no matter what, this beautiful dream will last forever, and then suddenly, s**t gets real. Before World War I Benito Mussolini was considered a bully and a crackpot, a short-tempered, ever-pontificating soapbox orator from the small town of Predappio. In time, though, the country was divided and in crisis, It saw itself as besieged by enemies within and without. It needed someone who said he could make Italy great again. He was a man on a horse saying, ‘Follow me.’ And they did.When fascists marched on Rome, the prime minister resigned and Benito Mussolini was appointed leader by the king.

“It can happen [pause] anywhere.

“It happened here.”

Supplementary reading:

https://medium.com/parts-unknown/mamma-roma-2362271634cc

https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-rome/

https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-rome/

CNN

---

Bourdain in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Exploring Brazil’s culinary heartland, Anthony Bourdain in Parts Unknown: “African culture saturates all corners of the society. This is especially true of the food.”

Late in Parts Unknown’s eighth season, Anthony Bourdain took in a part of Brazil that, despite Minas Gerais’ being Brazil’s fourth-largest state by land mass and being home to some 21 million people, rarely makes the news, let alone tourists’ to-do lists. Minas Gerais lies to the north-by-northeast of São Paulo, west of Espírito Santo, southeast of the Amazon, and northwest of Rio de Janeiro. It is also completely landlocked, as Bourdain notes in the program, which first aired on CNN in November 2016. This is inconvenient for those visitors who want to laze on a sunny beach in the tropics, and so the mere mention of the name Minas Gerais doesn’t exactly set hearts racing.

It is, however, thanks to Belo Horizonte, the state capital and Minas Gerais’ largest city, one of Brazil’s major urban and financial centres, and as we all know, nothing quite says, ’Man, I gotta go there!’ than ‘major urban financial centre.’

That, Bourdain noted at the time, and many of Brazil’s finest chefs, cooks, and culinary creators. The region is known for nurturing some of the finest chefs in the world. Minas Gerais is a hotbed — or hot pot, if you will — of fine food and Bourdain, ever curious, wanted to find out why. He got his answer early on: the family farm, coupled with traditional African cooking, is embedded in the culture. Traditional cooking revolves for the most part around slow-cooked stews using coal-or wood-fired ovens and cast-iron pans. Corn, cassava — mandioca brava in the local lingo — chicken and, especially, pork play a key role. Minas Gerais’ cuisine is renowned for its unique, particularly tasty flavour, and has become a signature calling card throughout other parts of Brazil. They say that to truly understand the Minas Gerais menu, you should learn at least three words: arroz, for rice, feijão, beans, and torresmo, pork rinds.

Oh, and Minas Gerais is also — in a wild scene toward the end of the hour — where Bourdain was almost shot in a drive-by shooting. Now that would have made a headline, though perhaps not the headline tourism officials were seeking.

So much for shooting the breeze, so to speak, in a street-side café over some fine covida mineira cooking. When shots rang out, Bourdain found himself flattened by director/cameraman Morgan Fallon and, close behind, assistant cameraman Josh Flannigan, not unlike the Secret Service agent played by Bruce Willis in The Last Boy Scout.

Later, in an essay for Medium, culled from his CNN Field Notes, Bourdain admitted  his surprise at Fallon’s act of self-sacrifice, not because Fallon dropped his camera in the middle of filming a scene — ‘You had one job!’ — but because Fallon thought to shield Bourdain in the first place.

“Two car thieves,” Bourdain recalled, “struggling with the ignition, had allowed their stolen vehicle to drift into the curb in front of the cafe where we were shooting a scene … witnesses tried to drag them out of the car — at which point one of the thieves produced a weapon. … Somebody shouts “gun!” and the next thing I know Parts Unknown director Mo Fallon drops his camera, drags me to the floor, and covers me with his body. A split second later, assistant cameraman Josh Flannigan piles on. Mo has his back to the potential shooter, shielding me … After a tense moment the two were (wisely) allowed to flee the scene unmolested.”

Oh, dear.

Bourdain took the moment in stride, or in about as much a stride as one can be in after potentially becoming another crime statistic in Brazil.

“As I got up from the ground,” Bourdain recalled in Medium, “I think my first words to Mo were, ‘If your wife finds out about this, she is going to kill you.’ My crew is not the Secret Service. And I sure as s**t ain’t the president. This kind of behaviour, while flattering — and, well, frankly, heroic — is above and beyond the call of duty. I can — let’s face it — be replaced.”

But wait, there was more. Ramifications, ramifications.

“I returned to the table to continue talking about the cuisine of Minas Gerais. But in light of what had just transpired, I was thinking, ’Damn! Now I’ve gotta be nice to them.’ What does one do for people who risk their life for you? A fruit basket isn’t enough.”

True that — though perhaps not the about being replaced.

“I don’t want you to think Minas Gerais, a beautiful and mountainous agricultural area of Brazil, is a dangerous place,” Bourdain continued. “Brazil can be dangerous, for sure. It’s a country where the divide between rich and poor is striking and severe. But shit happens. It could have happened in New York or Dubuque. That it happened with us right there, cameras rolling, was one of the many flukes of the road. Travel long enough and you see stuff like that. A rule of the road, learned long ago, is that everything is fine. Until it isn’t.

“Do not let this brief moment discourage you from visiting Minas Gerais. It is beautiful. It is soulful, with a cuisine and a style all its own. It is unlike Rio or São Paulo or Salvador or Belém or anywhere else we’ve been in Brazil. It’s where so many of the cooks from the best restaurants in Brazil come from — and when you spend time there, you discover exactly why the best chefs in São Paulo brag that their cooks “come from Minas.” It is truly a ‘part unknown,’ in that it is relatively undiscovered by tourists. And the bats**t-crazy amazing art gallery, Inhotim—it’s spread throughout acres of jungle — is reason alone to visit.”

Ah yes, Inhotim.

Inhotim, a gallery of modern art tucked away in a massive jungle clearing miles away from, well, anything, is like a scene out of a James Bond villain’s eccentric — and expensive — hideout coupled with Gregory Peck’s jungle lair in The Boys from Brazil. It helps the visual effect, too, that the eccentric billionaire who created Inhotim from the ground up has even better hair than Bourdain. If only Eric Ripert had been Bourdain’s sidekick in Inhotim, they could have gone for the trifecta in perfect hair.

Mo Fallon is alive and well, by the way. It’s hard to keep a good man down. Bourdain lives on, in spirit if not in the temporal world.

Supplementary reading:

https://medium.com/parts-unknown/where-the-cooks-come-from-2e100d823428

https://tim.blog/2022/05/26/morgan-fallon/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfuvp35uSSU

CNN

---

Bourdain in Japan with Masa

“Outside tastes much better,” sushi chef Masayoshi “Masa” Takayama told Anthony Bourdain during their time together in rural Japan, in 2016. “Everything taste better outside,” Bourdain agreed, in what would become one of Bourdain’s most fondly recalled outings of Parts Unknown.

“It’s always great when you can tell the story of a place through the eyes of an individual,” Tony Bourdain said of Masayoshi “Masa” Takayama in his Parts Unknown sojourn to the rural farming community of Nasushiobara, Japan in November 2016. “It’s even better when that individual is an extraordinarily creative and talented artist with a unique way of looking at the world. How did they get from there to here? What mysterious forces shaped them? What was it about the place and circumstances of their upbringing that helped push them, gave them the drive and the hunger to be different, to be bold, to insist on carving out their own path?”

What indeed.

Japan with Masa bowed on CNN midway through Parts Unknown’s eighth season, mere weeks ahead of visits to Buenos Aires, Minas Gerais in Brazil, and famously — or not so famously, depending one’s Bourdainophile point of view — Rome.

Japan found Bourdain in a reflective, lives-lived mood, and Masa, chef, restaurateur and owner of Masa, the three-Michelin-starred sushi restaurant in Manhattan, was happy to oblige. Japan remains a favourite among Bourdain aficionados; the episode rated more than 850 comments, all favourable, on the social media gathering room Reddit.

Masa was born in 1954, two years ahead of Bourdain, in Nasushiobara, a small town three hours north of Tokyo. Parts Unknown followed the pair to Ishikawa Prefecture, where Masa has friends and family, where they sampled foods at Omicho Market Kanazawa, including sea urchin, Kano-Gani snow crab, grilled unagi eel livers, and giant oysters. From there they sat down to a formal aiseki, a traditional, formal, multi-course meal with Masa’s friend Yaeko Taguchi, owner of the Fujinoya teahouse. They dined on sea bream over rice, grilled rockfish steamed in smoking wormwood and bamboo shoots, cod and sake-cured roe, flounder with grilled tomato rub, a clam hot pot with plum, clam, sea urchin and Japanese broccolini blossom, and Wagyu beef with soy and Mirin table sauce.

Food is one thing but conversation is quite another, and Bourdain and Masa found common ground in discussing life’s strange twists and turns. It’s the reason the Japan episode claimed so many hearts, even today, years later.

“I am grateful that I had the opportunity to go all the way back with him,” Bourdain wrote in an essay for Medium of his time with Masa and his beginnings as a chef. “I gained a truly different view of Japan than on previous visits. I ate spectacularly well—from family meals with the Takayamas and kaiseki in Kanazawa to some of the best sushi at Ginza Sushiko and mountain sukiyaki with Masa’s old friends from high school.

“[This episode] is food porn at its finest — but first and foremost [it’s] a portrait of an artist and his journey.”

Fans, followers and casual viewers noticed, and responded in kind.

Sample comment: “This is my favourite episode of Parts Unknown. When they're chillin’ in Masa's friends’ house with the grill in the middle of the floor — Tony looks so happy.”

And so it goes.

“Mr Takayama said it best: What I liked about Anthony Bourdain it wasn't really about the food, as much as it was about the culture behind the food that interested me in his shows.”

And another:

“He had this child-like wonder that never dimmed with age. And he always had such a genuine, respect and appreciation for foreign cultures that I never felt with any other western personalities.”

And another:

“For those who know what Masa is talking about in the first segment, Mr. Bourdain’s death is all that more tragic. Tony, you were my only hero growing up. I’ll miss you forever, my friend.”

And another:

“I am watching that episode now. His descriptions of meals is so detailed and precise. I could listen to his voice for hours. Goddamn it.”

And then there’s Bourdain himself, in a back-and-forth with his friend Masa, from the program:

“Is umami a flavour or a sensation?”

Takayama: “Umami is essence, strong essence.”

Bourdain: “So it’s a mysterious force?”

Takayama: “Yeah. Much bigger than the universe.”

Bourdain: “Bigger than flavour?”

Takayama: “Of course.”

The family moments are, well, just like family.

Bourdain, to Masa’s older brother, Kazuo: “So, back in the days of the family catering business, when you looked at your younger brother, did you think, This guy’s gonna make something of himself?”

Kazuo Takayama: “Not particularly.”

“The Japanese often bear a heavy burden of responsibilities,” Bourdain reflected at the time, ruminating on the restorative powers of an onsen bath [hot spring to you]. “Societal expectations, family obligations, tradition, work.

“But when they relax, they really do it well. They are better at it than anybody.”

As for the meaning of life and words of wisdom from the tao of Bourdain, this:

“Get together with some friends and cook up some alfresco, mountain-style sukiyaki, bitches, maybe a little tempura made from foraged wild asparagus and fukinoto [a kind of green leafy shoot].

“And when it’s sukiyaki time after a whole lot of, shall we say, home-brewed sake, you just kick back, stir in the maitakes and the shiitakes and some Tochigi beef, and enjoy the day.”

It was a beautiful day.

Supplementary reading:

https://medium.com/parts-unknown/country-boy-5418627439bf

https://explorepartsunknown.com/masas-japan/bourdain-off-the-cuff-japan/

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/8puqwp/michelin_star_chef_masa_takayama_speaks_about_his/?rdt=50666

CNN

---

Bourdain in London

“As I’ve become older,” a reflective Anthony Bourdain noted during a visit to London for Parts Unknown’s eighth season, “I realize that the food I yearn for is the food I react to in an entirely emotional way.“ Cue the pig’s head and potato pie. “Salt and fat. Nothing better.”

In the various lists and polls of favourite Bourdain episodes, London rarely rates a mention, aside from the occasional comment — on Reddit, for ex. — that the Parts Unknown outing, which bowed in October 2016, is one of the more underwhelming of his 100 or so shows for CNN. (A handful of those 105 shows were clip shows or specials; the real number is closer to 91.) More than a few Bourdainophiles, it seems, took issue with the program’s early focus on Brexit — which passed a public vote just as Bourdain  arrived, crew in tow — while others grumbled that he spent too much time with overly familiar sidekicks who you may remember from such earlier Bourdain works as A Cook’s Tour (ep. 22, season 4),  No Reservations (ep. 9, season 1) and The Layover (ep. 4, season 8).

Brexit was a no-brainer — and not just the Brits who voted that, all in all, they’d be better off without Europe — in part because, as Bourdain himself noted in his Field Notes, London was yet another example of “my crew and I heading out to do one thing and, due to a sudden change in circumstances, finding ourselves doing something else entirely.”

“What we wanted and expected to be a happy, carefree, food-centric show became squeezed by the sudden arrival of an elephant in the room. I love London and have many dear friends there. I thought, what a simple thing to do: Make a show about the typical, simple pleasures of old-school British cookery, revisit some cherished favourites, connect with some old friends. A bit of lighthearted fun, some great, traditional food, some nice scenery. But I woke up the day after arriving in London to a very different country than the one I’d gone to sleep in.”

In other parts of the world, mind — known and unknown — that would be the pretext for an army coup, followed by a panic rush to the airport and many jittery, handheld camera shots of throngs of evacuees on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And you thought booking a flight on American Airlines can be a hassle.

“I woke up to a London blinking in shock. Stunned. Within hours, the prime minister announced his resignation, the leadership of both of the main political parties was in disarray, the value of the British pound plummeted to horrifying new lows and the country’s credit rating was downgraded. The future looked very different than the day before. This was a new phase, reflective of another England than the admittedly rarefied bubble of London. An inward-looking, fearful, angry, even xenophobic England, mostly rural, mostly white; their vote in many ways a mirror of the same feelings of disenfranchisement, frustration, and rage—the sense that no one cares about their disappearing way of life—that we see in Donald Trump’s base.

“In times of uncertainty and unpleasantness, when all around me seems to threaten to spin into chaos, it’s nice to have friends. It’s especially nice when those friends can cook.”

And so … we’re given  an hour with Fergus Henderson of London’s St. John, “probably the most inspiring chef I know;” Nigella Lawson, “a true and loyal friend, a person of great kindness and dignity, who has always looked after me and my knucklehead colleagues when we have worked together”; and Marco Pierre White, “the chef we all wanted to be when I was coming up as a young cook and wannabe chef. A legend.

“To see him at rest, surrounding himself with beautiful things, in the countryside he has always felt strongly connected to, went a long way towards reassuring me that there are happy endings.”

All that, and a side trip to kiss the ring and have a chinwag with the legendary cartoonist and unapologetic curmudgeon Ralph Steadman, who you may remember from such anti-establishment classics as Roger Waters-era Pink Floyd and bomb thrower writer Hunter S. Thompson, a Bourdain hero if ever there were one.

Ruminating on the political state of affairs — in the UK and elsewhere — with Steadman allows Bourdain to fire off one of his more acerbic quips, that seeing Boris Johnson and Donald Trump together is like bearing witness to “a supernova of bad hair.”

London, as Paul Theroux wrote in his travel classic, The Kingdom By the Sea (Penguin, 1983), is not England, and Londoners are as different from Scousers and Geordies as Brighton is from Bristol — or Trump Tower from Woodstock NY.

It’s worth remembering — I can say this, as London is my birth city — that London was not exactly a bastion of culture and ancient civilization in the beginning; Londinium, as it was known then, was founded as a garrison town for the Romans when they invaded England in 43 AD, chosen for the point in a river where it was narrow enough to bridge — not unlike Rome itself, which predated London by some 700 years (Rome was founded also at the narrow point of a famous river, in 625 BC).

Athens, Lisbon and Naples are all older than London, and they have better winters.

For Parts Unknown, Bourdain dined on such English staples as roast bone marrow with parsley and caper salad; pickled calves tripe with radish, shaved carrot and watercress; skate poached in court bouillon and pan fried kidneys on toast; and, last but not least, pig’s head and potato pie. McDonald’s, watch your back.

For Nigella Lawson, it’s a pub crawl — but posh! — at the Princess Victoria in West London, complete with scotch eggs, whitebait and thick-cut chips (don’t you dare call them fries, and if you call them French you’re liable to be drawn-and-quartered on the spot).

Bad hair and Brexit aside — sounds like the name of a dodgy new wave punk band — Bourdain finds time for a little fun and pointed barbs.

Even Brexit, and the inevitable economic crash to follow, can be mined for humour, Bourdain found, as he tells indie rock guitarist Jamie Hince, of The Kills: “I’m enjoying your currency lately. (London) has suddenly become very affordable.”

His respect and admiration for Nigella Lawson comes naturally. Fighting a hangover on his way to Lawson’s home, he ruminates, “When the world seems like it’s spinning out of control and the inside of your skull feels like it’s being gnawed on … when you wake up still tasting tequila, feeling shame, fear, and regret in equal measures, it’s good to have friend who without judgment gives you a shoulder to cry on and maybe a simple good thing like some eggs and sympathy.”

Not to mention bread fried in rendered beef fat — spice, runny eggs, and grease.

“It’s really a matter of how many Guinness's you’ve had.”

Marco Pierre White: “As the French say, ‘We never grow old round the table.’ They also say, ‘Only the first bottle is expensive.’”

You know, perhaps it’s true what they say. Perhaps happy endings are possible.

Supplementary reading:

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/bourdain-the-definitive-oral-biography?srsltid=AfmBOorzxQvRtxjrvU5AkAtrf9JUBG6Bih2o4O-sXaZJwjgeJqKCumyJ

Nigella Lawson offers some poignant, profound remarks about Tony Bourdain in Laurie Woolever’s absorbing, compelling compendium Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography (Ecco, 2021). The entire book is worth reading, in fact, for any would-be Bourdainophile.

Key art: Photo by ©Alex Welsh/The New York Times/Redux

CNN

---

 

Bourdain in Sichuan

“That resistance, that boing! that rubberiness, that elasticity — it’s kind of the last frontier for Western palates.” This was Anthony Bourdain in Chengdu, China, tormenting his friend Éric Ripert, co-owner and executive chef of New York’s Le Bernardin restaurant and famously doubtful about anything hot or spicy, in one of Parts Unknown’s more joyous, life-affirming hours.

Tony Bourdain, as we all know, was not just a solo act. Take, for example, Éric Ripert.

By the time Parts Unknown rolled round to Sichuan in that program’s eighth season, Tony Bourdain had indulged in one of his favourite pastimes — prodding, probing and poking Ripert into a kind of culinary ecstasy, coupled with mortal fear of what Bourdain might do to him next — on seven separate occasions. First, in April 2002, there was The French Laundry Experience in Ripert’s native France, for Bourdain’s nascent program A Cook’s Tour. This was followed in short order by Chicago, Paris and Brooklyn for No Reservations from 2009-‘12, capped by Peru and Marseille in Parts Unknown, in 2013 and ’15 respectively.

“My friend Eric Ripert,” Bourdain wrote on Medium in 2016 (Hot, Hot, Hot!), “maybe you know him from such previous buddy films as Peru or Marseille, had never been to mainland China. Due, perhaps, to his adherence to the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism — and a friendship with Richard Gere — he had concerns about what kind of a welcome he’d receive. For the first few nights he slept with a tinfoil helmet around his head, convinced ‘they’ were onto him every time his cellphone dropped a call. I assured him he was the very last person any Chinese secret service agent would give a shit about, but he was unconvinced. His paranoia was acute.”

In Sichuan, which bowed on CNN in October 2016, Bourdain subjected Ripert to some of the reddest, hottest chilli peppers ever known to humankind. Ripert, famously is about as fond of hot spices as Elvis Presley was of fish. Parfaite!  Bourdain must have though to himself. All the better to test, torment and torture Ripert with.

Bourdain’s livelong love affair with life, his joie d’vivre, if you will, his exultation of spirit and general happiness, would be sorely tested by the time Parts Unknown’s eighth season wrapped in December 2016, but for this one moment, with arguably his bestie Ripert — one of them, anyway — he allowed himself to indulge in the joy of conversation, the joy of eating, and the joy of anything he might do.

To this day, Sichuan remains a favourite episode, if not the favourite, of many Bourdainophiles. It’s fast, funny, frenetic, and by the end, given how Bourdain’s life story ended, surprisingly poignant.

Today we  Bourdainophiles can watch Sichuan and be happy, a moment’s escape from the vissisitudes of life, and a respite from reflection and regret. Sometimes, as one viewer commented on Reddit at the time, memories good and bad can trick you into believing what you want to believe about the past. Sometimes, one can gain a small measure of solace from how we glorify and romanticize our past lives.

Enough of that shit! Bourdain might interject at this point. Bring on the red hot chilli peppers.

Sichuan is the spiciest, sensualist heartland of all the things Bourdain loved about China, he readily confessed in his voiceover … “food that can burn you down to a charred, smoking little stump.”

For Parts Unknown, that meant dropping in on Dan Dan Tian Shui Mian for some “old traditional Chengdu dishes” — welcome to the weird neurological effect of Sichuan peppers — followed by a trek to Tian Tian Fan Dian, as the site Eat Like Bourdain describes it, “a more intense Sichuan dining experience,” with La zi ji, spicy chicken to you; Mapo tofu, granny tofu to you (ground beef and tofu in a fiery chilli sauce of oil, bean paste, garlic shoots, Sichuan peppercorn, and MSG); and Qing hua jiao yu, green peppercorn fish to you.

Then there was Liang Lukou Hot Pot, for a volcanic broth leavened with fish, tripe, vegetables, tofu, seaweed, and quail eggs, washed down with copious — and we’re talking Bourdain here, so we’re talking truly copious — quantities of Baijiu (a colourless Chinese liquor between 35% and 60% alcohol content) and beer.

To help keep the heat under control, you know.

In case you were wondering — and, seriously now, how could you not — prototypical alcohol making in China dates back to the Neolithic Age, with archaeological discoveries of “alcoholic beverage containers” dating back some 2,000 to 10,000 years BC, aka the latter days of the Stone Age in Europe, Asia, Mesopotamia and Africa. Now you know.

“More comically,” Bourdain continued on Medium, “the level of heat in the Sichuanese specialties he sampled in Chengdu, where we spent most of our time, was, shall we say, rather more than his delicate French palate was used to. Coddled by years of foie gras, runny cheese, flaky pastries, and the subtle notes of many fine wines, the searing burn of dried chilies and the numbing, delightfully disorienting effects of Sichuan peppercorns were a challenge.”

Chengdu, China did impress Ripert on one basic, subconscious level, Ripert admitted early in the program, telling Bourdain: “I’m very surprised already of what I see in the city here. I was expecting, like, a gigantic Chinatown.”

Jeez, an exasperated Bourdain shoots back: “That’s some racist shit, right there.”

Later, Bourdain advises him, “Drinking culture is very important here. If we go to a formal meal, your ability to drink leads to a number of assumptions about you: your general manliness, penis size, your worth as a human being…”

“I’m comfortable with my size,” Ripert assures him.

Hello!

But wait, there’s more wisdom where that came from.

The idea that MSG is bad for you, for example. A myth, Bourdain insists.

“You know what causes Chinese restaurant syndrome?” he tells Ripert. “Racism. ‘Ooh, I have a headache; it must have been the Chinese guy.’”

If you can’t stand the heat … well, you know the rest.

Here’s Bourdain on mapo tofu: “And if you ever have a hangover — and you will, my friend, you will — this will scare the evil right out.”

Sichuan is pure Bourdain, never more evident than in the moment when he regards Ripert struggling manfully with piping hot peppercorn fish.

“Any second now,” he notes dryly, ”that perfect hair is going to burst into flames.”

Touché.

Sichuan may not have been Parts Unknown’s finest hours, but it was one of the funniest.

“Who would you rather see in a Speedo?” he asks Ripert with during one spontaneous tête-à-tête: “Wolf Blitzer, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, or Anderson Cooper?”

Ripert: “Ooh, that’s a tough one.”

Bourdain: “No, actually, there’s an easy answer.”

Supplementary reading:

https://medium.com/parts-unknown/hot-hot-hot-fed7957e65cf

https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthonyBourdain/comments/16gcmo0/bourdain_and_ripert/

https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-sichuan/

---