One dining critic’s reflections on “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain”

Anthony Bourdain made three appearances in St. Louis during his career, the last two of them at the Fox, in 2010 and 2016. His first visit, while in a considerably smaller venue, was by far the more memorable. In 2002, Bourdain, on a tour for his Kitchen Confidential bestseller, did a reading and signed books at Left Bank Books. Afterward, he decamped across the street to Duff’s, where an informal potluck mushroomed. Chefs and restaurant workers gathered. What could have been a brief meet, greet, and retreat appearance turned into an evening of camaraderie and story sharing until long after closing time.

It was one of those moments in St. Louis restaurant history that happened spontaneously, unexpectedly, like an uncharted comet that streaks across a night sky, leaving all fortunate enough to have seen it wondering both how amazing it was and what the hell it was. In a way, the event encapsulates Bourdain’s life. And now, with a new documentary about Bourdain, those in the restaurant business are reflecting on how that comet came and went all too quickly.

Bourdain once perfectly described the volatile, shimmering, pepper-studded liquid of a Szechuan hotpot as “hell broth.” He compared the taste of cooked iguana to what might be scraped from inside the glass of a long-neglected aquarium.

Writing and speaking about food and dining is less strenuous than, say, working on an offshore oil rig and less critical to civilization than neurosurgery. It does, however, present challenges, and describing tastes and eating experiences is tricky; one must constantly be on guard to try, while making the content entertaining and informative, not to take the easy road and fall right off into the ditch of cliché. So when a writer of Bourdain’s talent comes along, one reads him and comes across a gem (he produced many), there is that response, one that all writers cherish to hear: “I wish I’d written that.”

The turn of phrase, the wry remark, the unexpected observation all became part of the enjoyment of reading Bourdain’s books and watching his TV programs, as was his spontaneous iconoclasm. He deflated Alice Waters, lampooned Rachael Ray. He’d plop a Coney dog into the middle of a haute cuisine dinner. He was fresh, lively, articulate, and made readers and viewers care about the food and the places that he visited.

Bourdain’s first book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, was the author’s exemplar vintage. It was effervescent and nuanced, with all the behind-the-scenes description about life at a restaurant. The book was stoutly oaked with stories of druggy debauchery and drinking, the outlandish excesses of dope fog and cheap wine in the ’60s that gave way to the powdered frolics of the ’70s. One read of his accounts, and from the tone came the conclusion—the hope—that for all of the life-on-a-bender experiences, the author had righted the ship, that the compass was finally pointing true north.

Not long after Kitchen Confidential was published, there was a photo of Bourdain and his first wife, high school sweethearts, in a magazine. They were cuddled on a couch, impossibly young and in love. It looked like an image of a man who had lived through the folly and myriad self-indulgent stupidities of adolescence and emerged successful and happy.

Then the compass needle began to twitch. After a couple of decades, that marriage ended and Bourdain remarried. Then there was a second divorce. It was sobering to watch the course of Bourdain’s career. It was marked—literally—by the accretion of tattoos that he sported, a collection that grew with each TV season. In nearly every episode, whether in Singapore or Detroit, it seemed that Bourdain would find an indie band, another attempt to remain hip. What had been a charming iconoclasm suddenly felt contrived, studied. One felt that Bourdain had become lost, uprooted, without an anchor, constantly seeking a port in inner storms.

There were two public moments in the TV career of Bourdain that stand out. One was an extended interview that he conducted with Jacques Pépin, an exchange in which Bourdain clearly realized that Pepin, while certainly a public figure, was not a “celebrity.” He was a master craftsman, utterly sure of himself, humble, gracious, composed. Bourdain was like a Little Leaguer in the presence of a Hall of Famer, and he had the sense to know it.

The second memorable moment came on a program filmed in Lyon, France, where the host found himself sitting in the countryside pied-a-terre of Paul Bocuse, perhaps the greatest chef of the last century. Bocuse, at age 80, was surrounded by family and friends; he presided over a simple meal that was magnificent, with the perfect wines poured. His face glowed with the contentment of a man who had accomplished much. Again, Bourdain looked on and appeared to wonder if all of this could have been his as well.

Bourdain was as readily armed in his atheism, as he was in the quiver of barbs that he released at vegans, pretenders, and others. He wrote entertaining books and informative cookbooks. He was funny, personable, talented as a TV host and gifted as a speaker. He should not have died alone by his own hand in a hotel room so far from home, so sadly missing whatever it was that would have given his life the essence that it so tragically needed.