herman said:
I don't know much about him, but I appreciated that he used his influence and privilege to help the MeToo movement, as well as his show teaching people how to participate in and enjoy other cultures outside the comfort zone.
Now that I've had a few days to stew on it and be all bummed out I thought I'd write something real quick about his show and I'm just using your post as a jump off:
I think after the last few days of seeing people try to eulogize him and distil his work into a simple message there's been a lot of "Food can be used to unite us" or, as you put it, "Try to understand the unknown" and that's all true, even if the slightly more heartwarming/trite former interpretation that's been taken by people like President Obama is one Bourdain was pretty skeptical of(Watch the Jerusalem episode of his show to see how his attitude seemed to change from "Food can bring us together" to "Eh, eating together probably can't hurt the process anyway").
As someone who read his book 20 years ago and who's followed his career ever since I don't think his career can be summed up in a neat little message message but one of the things I take from it is that you should never stop learning, never stop changing. He's someone who wasn't famous until his mid or late 40's but even then he didn't stick with what got him there. In the last few years he's sort of come to reject the sort of "Bad Boy, Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll Chef" thing he was a big part of and, like you said, very much embraced the MeToo movement.
And his shows constantly changed. From "We're going to City X to find out what they eat" to "We're going to City X to examine how what they eat is reflective of their culture" to "We're going to City X to talk about whatever is on my mind and probably eat while we're there". He was never satisfied with a formula no matter how successful. He cared about art and film and music and in spite of the punkish/working class vibe he aspired to, he never seemed to think it was wrong for those things to matter to him.
But it was never trivial. He talked about food as politics, as economics, and how it informed the issues of class and of race. He talked about alienation, gentrification and our vanishing traditions. How you can appreciate a terrine of fois gras as much as a street dog. How there was meaning in what we ate and we should care about it in a way that we too often don't.
Probably more than anyone except my own mother, he influenced my relationship with food the most. It's because of him I tried things like Uni, Pho, Blood Pudding and Chicken Feet. He's very much responsible for turning Offal from something I turned my nose up at to one of my favourite things in the world. Trying those new things didn't always work, I'm never going to understand Durian, but there was a purpose in trying those things even if they weren't for you. A purpose in pushing yourself and never thinking the ridiculously small corner of the world you knew was enough when there's so much more to discover. Always knowing that the next thing you try might be your favourite.
At the same time though, it was important to learn your family recipes. To understand where they come from and why they mattered. To cook them slowly because a lot of them came from back when your family didn't have much and cooking slowly is how a tough cut of meat can be tastier than any filet. He spent as much time cooking with Grandmas as he did with Michelin-Starred Chefs because he was always interested in what real people ate(and knew that it was usually just as good).
Anyways, I didn't know him and realize my feelings don't mean much when there are people out there personally grieving so I won't speak about anything other than my relationship with his work but it was, I've sort of realized, pretty meaningful to me. It inspired my very brief and disastrous restaurant career but also my far more successful home cooking career. His books and shows brought a lot of good things into my life. I'm very sorry he's gone.