Anthony Bourdain: No Abbreviations.

In this unabridged 2006 interview with Anthony Bourdain, the late author, chef and traveller argues street food’s superiority over haute cuisine, his fondness for Graham Greene, the attractions of the east, and why whining writers should try working “an honest job.”

Christian Barker: It’s great to meet you Tony, I’m a huge fan. Obviously, you’re quite a big fan of Singapore [where the interview took place]. It really is a mecca for good, cheap, clean, multi-ethnic food, isn’t it?

Anthony Bourdain: It certainly is.  It’s easily one of the most exciting places to eat on earth, no question about it.

CB: What’s your can’t miss dish? You’re big into chicken rice, right?

AB: I am, I am, among other things.  It’s such a wonderland of food, it’s difficult to single out any one particular thing.  Laksa, perhaps?

CB: In your programs, you seem to really concentrate on the cheap eats, the local foods.  What’s the thinking behind doing that, rather than covering the high-end Michelin-starred places?

AB: There are a couple of reasons.  One, as somebody who has worked in restaurants his whole life, I guess I’m to some extent suffering from fine dining fatigue.  People are more and more around the world beginning to cook in very similar ways on the high end when you’re talking white tablecloth dining.  I don’t want to be a food critic.  I’m much more interested in context, as far as who’s cooking, why they’re cooking that way in a particular area.  I’m looking at food as a reflection of a cultural identity or history, ethnicity, or even a personality that I’m interested in, a style statement or technical proficiency.

Also, I just don’t think it’s very dynamic.  I guess it just doesn’t interest me to bounce from one fine dining restaurant to another.  To be honest, I’m beginning to take that for granted.  Those are my friends around the world.  That’s what they do for a living.  That’s where I hang out when I talk shop.  It’s just not a focus of interest.  I’m more interested in traveling and seeing what goes on around the meal as much as I’m interested in the meal.

CB: So even off-camera, you stick with the authentic local fare?

AB: That’s what I like.  If I’m passionate about anything, it’s the everyday food of countries.  It’s simple, pretense-free, authentic and good.

CB: With the rise of the celebrity chef in recent years, you have a lot of these big name guys who have five, ten restaurants or whatever under their name.  But that marquee chef probably isn’t there in the kitchen a lot of the time.  Even though it’s a menu that they’ve designed, they’re not physically present — it’s a bit like watching a covers band, rather than seeing the real thing, isn’t it?  What’s your response to that whole phenomenon?

AB: Well, I think it’s sort of an elitist concept that, in fact, we’ve sort of dug our own grave in that respect in that we’ve deliberately fomented and prolonged the illusion that we are cooking every meal you eat in our restaurants.  It adds to the romance.  It adds value to what otherwise would be less glamorous, particularly now where food is branded and associated with brand names.  It’s been very much in the interest of the chef, the restaurant and their PR agent to let you think that they’re cooking every meal that you eat when that is, in fact, rarely the case.  Guys like Ducasse and Robuchon probably haven’t touched food in years.  As well, no quality restaurant, no high-end fine dining restaurant is able to operate lunch and dinner seven days a week without the chef taking time off and then being able to produce the same quality food consistently. 

Listen, I would agree that some chefs are able to multiply their operations well.  Others have not been able to do it so well.  It is a rare thing to find a chef who is both a great cook with a great concept that you might want to eat, as well as being a great leader and business person.  Some guys, I think, can do it without diminishing quality and have been able to do it very successfully and bring something very interesting to whatever operation, wherever that might be.  Others haven’t been so successful at that.

CB: One of my first jobs out of school, I was a waiter in a great restaurant in Sydney called Cicada. The chef / owner, Peter Doyle, he was there in the restaurant just about every night of the week and had his finger in everything before it went out, was tasting everything.  Utterly hands on.

AB: He has a couple of places now, too, doesn’t he?

CB: Yes, I believe he does.  Yes.

AB: Who deserves it better than a chef?  It’s a little tragic if you’re still standing at a stove at age 50, so I think it’s entirely appropriate that a chef, after a lifetime of service, makes a little money for themselves.  If they were, indeed, great chefs, chances are, restaurants being what they are, they are, in fact, schools.  You over time develop a loyalist, who presumably cooks just as well as you, shares your vision and they deserve to be rewarded with their own outposts. 

I don’t have a problem with it when it’s done well.  When it’s done cynically as a sheer moneymaking venture, slapping your name on a sub-standard product, well then, I think those places make themselves apparent right away.

CB: For sure. Talking about the hard slog of being a chef, I read in an interview with you somewhere saying that you find writing a lot easier than cooking, but a lot of writers would argue that writing can be an exhausting process. 

AB: I think they should get an honest job. Listen, you’re sitting down when you write.  Time is something you learn in a restaurant business or any physical job, where you work with your hands, standing on your feet for hours every day.  You understand that time, time to think, time to reflect, time to ponder the big issues, time to write, that’s a privilege.  Time spent sitting down for that matter is a privilege in this world, where most of us, most people are trying to scrape out a living.  I consider it a luxury and a privilege to be able to write and to make a living at it.  It’s something that 30 years in the restaurant business made me very aware of how lucky I am. 

CB: You’re quite an anomaly, to have the dual talents of being such a good writer, as well as a great cook.

AB: I have a good work ethic.  I mean, I tell stories.  A lot of chefs tell stories.  I sit down and actually write them down.  Frankly, honestly, it comes easy to me.

CB: But I have lots of friends who are chefs and yes, they do tell great stories, yet they’re not necessarily so great at writing — even an email or a text message.  It does take a certain skill. 

AB: And good work habits.  Listen, there are some writers I respect, who I think you could make a very good argument.  Guys like Malcolm Lowry, who spent essentially their entire life writing one great book, I think they can say that writing is hard and make a believable case for it.  Unless you’re James Joyce, I think it’s tough to not say or at least admit that you have a pretty good job if you’re making a living as a writer.

Anthony Bourdain in Vietnam (from ‘Roadrunner’, CNN / Focus Features)

CB: Most would imagine TV presenting isn’t exactly a hugely challenging job, but then the episode you recently made in Beirut, it sounds like that was pretty harrowing. (Armed conflict erupted as Bourdain and his team were shooting in the city.)

AB: It was more discouraging and heartbreaking than anything else.  I was very aware of the fact that I’m home; I’m back in a comfortable apartment with my life going on as it went before.  As harrowing as it was at times and as heartbreaking and as discouraging, I was at all times very aware that it wasn’t my city being dismantled piece by piece. 

CB: My dad lived in Beirut in the ’60s when it was the “Paris of the Middle East”…

AB: It was very much coming back to that.  It was an absolutely lovely city filled with mostly incredibly nice, proud, generous people who just rebuilt.  I don’t want to say it was devastating for me and the crew I was with, because it was truly devastating for the people who live there.  It’s very hard to summon any kind of optimism or idealism after that experience, I can say that.

CB: I’m looking forward to seeing the episode. 

AB: I’m very proud of it.  I was very dubious about being able to do anything, but I think my producers and camera people and editors, we all worked on it very hard and I’m really proud of the result.  I think it’s a pretty amazing piece of television.

CB: You spend a lot of time filming here in Asia. Why’s that?

AB: I’m happiest in Asia, so it’s always the highlight for me, anytime I get to go out to Asia.  In fact, the whole television thing, it’s frankly a scam on my part.  I’ve gotten the television network to enable me to spend lots of time in Asia, and that’s really a passion.

 CB: I’ve read that you’re possibly looking at moving fairly permanently into Vietnam or Indonesia or somewhere like that.

 AB: I do hope to spend a couple of years there, yes.  I have a book contract.  That’s exactly the project.  I’ll spend a year, two years in Asia.  I hope to divide my time now.  I just had an incredible time in Indonesia.  That was a real highlight for me.  I loved Bali.  Between Vietnam and Bali, just living there and seeing what happens, I hope to come up with a book.

CB: The food there is absolutely outstanding, isn’t it, in Bali?

AB: Vietnam as well, but in both cases, it’s really extraordinary.

CB: Speaking of Vietnam, I share your fondness for Graham Greene’s The Quiet American — I believe you re-read that once a year.

AB: Yes, I love it.  I think in many ways, it’s a perfect book. 

CB: What is it about Greene that strikes a chord with you?  

AB: I very much wanted that kind of a life, travelling around to really interesting places and writing sad, romantic books.  His life, Greene himself, seems always fascinating to me.  It’s an incredible history:  former spy, writer, failed Catholic.  That kind of failed romanticism always appealed to me.  The places that he loved, it always struck a cord.  It always looked to me like the kind of life that would appeal to me.  Yes, anytime I find myself in a place that a Greene novel occurred or should have occurred, I’m always very happy to be there.

CB: You seem to quite appreciate the sense of foreignness one experiences as a westerner exploring Asia. 

AB: I’m comfortable.  I very much enjoy being forced to learn, being forced to learn how to do simple things, like feed yourself or order food at a restaurant, do the simple things to exist in a new place.  Those little challenges, when overcome, that’s very satisfying to me. 

I guess I would love to be able to allow myself the delusion that I could blend into a Vietnamese village and be accepted as one of them.  I think that would be unrealistic, and I don’t mind.  I am who I am.  I’m a New Yorker.  I think that contrast, remembering the past and remembering one’s roots makes the new that much more interesting.

CB: I had an interesting experience in Saigon recently when I was there with a few Singaporean friends, of Chinese background, and we were standing on a street corner looking at a map.  I went, “Geez, I feel like such a tourist.  I must look like such a tourist.”  They were like, “Of course, you do, man.  You’re always going to look like a tourist here,” which you kind of forget every once in a while, that you do stand out like a sore thumb.

AB: I don’t mind being the big, amiable freak.  As long as I’m seen as good-hearted and amiable, non-threatening and grateful, I can live with that.

CB: It must be great fun for you, with your notoriety or fame, whatever, around the world with the television show and books and things, to just arrive in these new places and have people want to be your mate, show you around and take care of you.

AB: It is an extraordinary life change, no question about it, to be recognised in Sarawak, Borneo all the way up river, the mountains out of Sichuan Province.  To have total strangers from extremely rural areas point at me and say, “It’s that American guy who likes our food,” and want to be nice to me, yes, that’s a good place to be.  I like it.  I think it is also great being recognised by chefs and cooks all over the world because it’s nice to feel part of this international mafia of cooks.  There’s a camaraderie that cuts across languages and borders.

CB: Yeah, and you’re often commenting on the fact that chefs all kind of see the world in the same way, no matter where you are or what language barriers.  You seem to have a kind of common philosophy on things.

 AB: It’s an upstairs/downstairs sort of world view, yes, very much so.

CB: Preparing for this interview, I read a bunch of interviews you’d done, from around 2000 when it all started going mad for you, up until very recently.  There seems to have been quite a change in your tone, your outlook and attitude. You seem to have grown less acerbic, I guess, less cynical. Do you think that’s down to all of this travel and things that you have done, and having seen all of these far flung corners of the world?

AB: No question about it.  I mean, travel changes you and seeing what people do to get by is a humbling experience.  Having total strangers with very little again and again be generous to you, that also is life changing.  So yes, to be honest, I was in a very cheerful, relatively cheerful, optimistic place before Beirut.  I’m just kind of coming out of now a really, really deep funk after that.  For a while afterwards, I really didn’t know whether I could make television again. I started to really question my basic belief that somehow the meal at the table was some kind of common ground where people could get together. 

Bourdain in Cuba filming ‘Parts Unknown’ (CNN)

Yes, I’m a different person than I was in the kitchen.  I don’t have to be that person to get by anymore.  I’m not running a crew of dysfunctional misfits.  I’m not penned up in a tiny little submarine-type space.  I actually have a life outside of the kitchen now.  I’ve seen a bit of the real world, how normal people live, not just in my own country, but around the world.  Yeah, sure that changes you.

CB: Is it all too easy for a chef to turn into a domineering autocrat, when they have to keep all those ‘dysfunctional misfits’ in line?

AB: You may be a dictator, but you better be a benevolent and understanding dictator.  You can’t be a leader, a good leader, having your employees go home every night feeling like fools for working for you after nothing but abuse. 

I think it’s something that people have misunderstood, really, seriously misunderstood about Gordon Ramsay and about good chefs.  You may see them or read about them yelling and screaming, but it is a mentoring profession.  A successful chef has to inspire great loyalty over time. 

It’s a totally involving business to be a chef.  On one hand, yes, it’s a carrot and stick situation, but at the end of the day, it’s about being a good and fair leader.  Otherwise, you’re just not good at it.  I think one of the things, just the sheer momentum, the speed and momentum of working in a kitchen, you miss a lot.  You don’t have time to look out the window or look around you.  You’re so focused on looking down a narrow tunnel that you don’t see much of what’s going on outside that tight circle.

CB: Your approach, going into a country blind and rolling with it is a little unusual for an American. Like here in Singapore, you’ve got all this incredible local food, and still, you’ll see queues of tourists snaking out of the Hard Rock Café. If you’ll forgive me for saying, a lot of Americans do seem to travel around the world just eating burgers wherever they go.

AB: Nothing could be more pathetic to me.  Why bother to travel?

CB: Do you think you’re having any impact with the success of your program in the States, with people broadening their horizons a little bit, maybe?

AB: I’ve noticed that a lot on book tours with people I meet around the country.  I certainly hope so.  If I’m responsible for a few more Americans getting passports and opening their eyes, sure, that would be a great thing. 

Final thing I wanted to ask — given that you’re famously a massive fan of The Ramones, whats your take on the Lindsay Lohans and Paris Hiltons of the world prancing about in Ramones t-shirts, when they’re almost certainly oblivious to the band’s music?

AB: Yeah, well, listen, if the surviving Ramones and families can make a little money off idiots wearing their t-shirts, all for the good.  I mean, just because idiots are wearing the t-shirt doesn’t make the music any less great.  I suspect that Joey would have loved it.  In a lot of ways, they celebrated the moronic, so in that sense, Lindsay Lohan wearing your t-shirt is the realisation that the circle is now complete.