Wild, profane and heartbreaking: A guide to Anthony Bourdain’s best TV

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In the parlance of the business in which Anthony Bourdain made his name, the film Tony is the first course in an extended tasting menu. It’s the appetiser of a degustation menu that will run over many servings and involve many ingredients and helping hands.

The film, which is now in cinemas, is a coming-of-age drama about a restless, angry and punch-drunk teenager (played by Dominic Sessa) on a summer-season bender of rebellion, booze, unrequited first love and soul-searching. It’s the origin story of the man who decades later would become executive chef of a feted Manhattan restaurant, a bestselling author and a frighteningly prolific TV presenter.

The film foreshadows the book that propelled chef Bourdain’s meteoric second act in 2000, when Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (it’s worth remembering the book’s full title) became a global bestseller. It kicks off with this memorable passage from the book’s opening chapter. “I was … a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking”. His words.

It vividly pinpoints many of the qualities that would make Bourdain one of the unique, original and treasured figures TV has ever known. He was a mercurial and mouthy personality who wore his heart on his sleeve, ever inquisitive, with a yen for adventure, food, pleasure and companionship, and a well-documented taste for drugs and addictive behaviours. Bourdain died by suicide in 2018, reportedly after the breakdown of a relationship, though the toxicology report indicated he wasn’t taking drugs at the time.

It’s not entirely surprising nor unexpected that Tony has also renewed interest in his TV shows.

It was here, Bourdain’s third act, as a TV presenter after quitting professional cooking following his book’s success (and revelations of the restaurant world’s unglamorous secrets), where the magic really happens.

First came A Cook’s Tour (SBS On Demand, Tubi). Made for the US Food Network between 2002 and 2003, it has Bourdain visiting the world’s “foodie” hotspots (Sydney and Melbourne included), eating in starred restaurants and local greasy spoons, meeting with food-scene celebrities and what would decades later be known as influencers. It’s very much in the boilerplate format of food and travel shows, and the least interesting of his TV work. The middling quality of the video has certainly not helped its longevity.

It was in No Reservations (2005-12, Amazon Prime Video) and Parts Unknown (2013-18, Amazon Prime Video, 7Plus, 10Play) that Bourdain, his crew and creative partners took flight. They invented a format and style that transcends most if not all the norms of the food and travel genre. These shows aren’t about plugging destinations or theme parks, or even to paint a rosy picture of a place.

In the Beirut episode of No Reservations, for instance, Bourdain and his crew arrive the day before war breaks out. From their luxury hotel they keep the cameras rolling, ever aware that despite their safety and boredom the rest of the population is in peril. The episode ends with this heartbreaking passage: “Maybe in the real world, the one without cameras and happy food and travel shows, everybody, the good and the bad together, are all crushed under the same terrible wheel. I really hope I’m wrong about that.”

These are shows that use travel and food as their starting points, but are mostly about people living in diverse parts of the globe, their cultures, habits and histories, their dreams, disappointments and hopes.

They are also about how Bourdain saw himself. The shows are opinionated, brash, wild and profane, as well as tender and occasionally heartbreaking – much like Tony in the film. In many episodes of No Reservations and Parts Unknown, Bourdain openly and unsentimentally discusses his depression. In Tony, the character finds salvation in the kitchen after a particularly dark and unpleasant night on the town by learning how to cook and then observing the joy that brings to diners. He also finds companionship among the fellow dirtbags toiling in the kitchen’s insufferable conditions (shout-out to Stavros Halkias as Dimitri, a character who also appears in Kitchen Confidential).

Just as Kitchen Confidential lifted the lid on the dirty secrets of the hospitality trade, Bourdain’s TV shows are no less scathing of food porn and fame, not to mention his role in the dog and pony circuit of book signings and celebrity-chef talks.

“Look at me now travelling the world like a Borscht Belt comedian,” he says while visiting a food festival in New Zealand in No Reservations. The willingness to make himself the butt of the joke is evident in Tony too.

It’s hard to fathom the scale of Bourdain’s output: 104 episodes of Parts Unknown and 142 episodes of No Reservations. Bourdain died during filming of Parts Unknown, leaving a few episodes without his narration (there’s also two posthumous tribute instalments). Each episode has its own unique flavour and style, invariably shaped around a destination’s depiction in popular culture, such as a movie associated with that place. Apocalypse Now for the Congo, Mad Max for “the arse end of the world”, Australia.

The final course of the Bourdain feast is arguably the most challenging. It’s the little seen 2021 feature-length documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain (Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video). It’s a difficult and painful reckoning by those who intimately knew Bourdain, focusing largely on his globetrotting, TV career after Kitchen Confidential and how his life unravelled in the months leading up to his suicide.

Many of the people that director Morgan Neville interviewed in Roadrunner appeared in one or more episodes of No Reservations and Parts Unknown. Bourdain’s TV family included chefs, artists, filmmakers, musicians and writers. There’s a lovely nod to that in Tony, in a pivotal scene where the charismatic French chef Eric Ripert has a blink-and-miss cameo. Ripert frequently appeared in the shows and his presence is a touching reminder of how loyal people were to Bourdain.

In many ways Tony and Roadrunner are perfect bookends of Bourdain’s career and life. They shine a light on the unique talent he brought to his still luminous TV shows.

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