Two of the most prominent chefs in the business want us to take a moment and remember the man who exposed their world, elevated their world and personalized their world like no other before him. Last month, in a playful video posted to Twitter, Eric Ripert and José Andrés set the stage for Bourdain Day on Tuesday, on what would have been Anthony Bourdain’s 63rd birthday.
CNN, which was rewarded handsomely for taking a risk on Bourdain, has been working hard to make sure the “Parts Unknown” host’s memory does not fade to black. In May, the network released “Anthony Bourdain Remembered,” a coffee-table book of photos culled from the host’s countless trips, interspersed with quotes and anecdotes from famous chefs, writers and dedicated fans. CNN also has a documentary on Bourdain in the works, though it’s in the early stages of production.
— Eric Ripert June 19, 2019With time, it’s easy to forget or ignore the way in which Bourdain exited the stage: by his own hand, during a dark night of the soul that most of us will mercifully never know. When news outlets first started reporting Bourdain’s death, some underscored the rising rates of suicide in the United States, as well as ways to help those souls thinking about taking their own lives, including the number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
I have been thinking about the role that others play in our mental health, even when every “instinct” rattling around our skulls tells us to isolate, turn on Netflix and forget about the world for a while. Kat Kinsman, the food writer who has become a patron saint to restaurant workers and managers by providing them a safe place to vent and find support, recently shared with me that there are more than 3,000 members of her Chefs With Issues Facebook group.
Still, amid the tongue-in-cheek disclosures that bad airport hamburgers send him into a “spiral of depression that can last for days,” Bourdain did, in fact, reveal something important about himself. Outside the psychiatrist’s office, he told the shrink, over a drink, that “I’m not going to get a lot of sympathy from people, frankly. I have the best job in the world.”
And male suicide. Males are 75% of suicides in Canada. Where is the federal inquiry into this national shame. Oh right, it's just males so it doesn't matter.
True. And yet there’s no byline.