Solitary chef in a commercial kitchen
via Shutterstock
Today is a rough one. We have lost a beautifully imperfect voice.
We could talk about how I interviewed Bourdain and how he was so sharp and fluid, convincing me that it was ok to lie to my kid about McDonald’s, because it was just beating them at their own game (and how Jake still believes that Chicken McNuggets are coated in lighter fluid).
We could talk about how three years ago I walked into the tiniest alley-way ramen shop in the town of Sapporo in Japan, and how it was unassuming in every way, except for the glossy laminated photo of Bourdain on the wall. Smiling with the owner, sitting at the very counter I was, he had been there and it had meant everything to them.
We could talk about the clutch of 15-year-old boys who sat in my kitchen last night, plundering my hot sauces and reviewing/rating them while talking about how next year we all plan to grow Carolina Reapers in my garden. The first thing that came to my mind this morning when I heard the news, was that night could never have happened without Bourdain.
Because he cracked it all open. He brought forth the edgy and subversive world of kitchens and restaurants and he changed the way we looked at and talked about food.
But we also have to talk about the darkness, because we owe him that. We have to talk about the way that the restaurant world can be a gift and a curse. For those of us who don’t fit on “traditional” career paths or have everything lined up perfectly upon graduating school, the industry beckons with a promise of the counterculture life—loose on rules, vibrating with energy. It welcomes the ambitious and the misfit equally. Work these hot-sweaty-demanding jobs, and without a college degree you can make enough money to own a house. Dishwashers can rise to the rank of CEO, heroin-tracked line cooks can become best-selling authors and global personalities. That’s the gift.
The curse is more subtle. It rattles around in the 4 a.m. hour when the mainstream world is sleeping and the industry is letting off steam under no one’s gaze. It’s seductive to own the world at that hour, it keeps you there longer than you thought it would. The darkness creeps in every time someone asks you what your real job is, every time someone driving a Bentley stiffs you on a tip, when after busting your ass all night you do the math and you still don’t know how you’ll keep the doors open and your people employed. But because you’re misfits, you wear the darkness like a badge of honor and you take enough drinks to get to the next day. And you don’t talk about it. And you don’t say its name.
I remember when Jon Radle, the beloved chef at the old Grand Café “died unexpectedly” in 2010. Nowhere in print, nowhere in broadcast did it ever say that he took his own life—though we in the industry all knew it. I felt so ashamed that I knew it and couldn’t write it, and that his people wanted to pretend the darkness didn’t exist. It was saying it shouldn't exist in any of us.
That’s part of what makes Bourdain so hard for all your restaurant friends today. He was a misfit, and he owned that status—championed it, really. But he seemed to have faced the darkness and wrangled it to a place where it couldn’t win. There’s hope in that when you’re chopping cilantro in the trenches.
But the lesson he taught us today is that the darkness can still come. Despite your money and influence and “success” and number of likes and importance. I just hope it’s not his last lesson.
One of his more famous quotes is “As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small.” As I’ve spent the day on my industry-stacked feeds, I see so much raw sadness and despair, but I also see hope. The pain is being named and called out. There is no shame, there is no desire to keep it hidden. It feels like people want to own all of the imperfect, unfair mess so that they don't have to carry it silently.
Change has been coming in town. Just last week I had a very open and public chat with a chef about the need to redefine the mental struggles in the industry. Anne Spaeth of The Lynhall recently hosted a few events and dinners in a Nourish Series, in which speakers and cooks talked about addressing mental health through food. There was a specific industry-only night that easily filled up, and proceeds from all events go to benefit The Long Table Fund, which works to empower those in the restaurant industry affected by trauma, mental health issues, and chemical dependency. Nalini Mehta is an Ayurvedic chef who has landed in town, and offered a special industry dinner to those who sought to balance the chaos of the kitchen with the healing properties of Indian cooking.
But hoping that people reach out to get help isn't enough. We need to flip the badge. We need to honor those who speak up, get help, and give help. I truly believe there is such a thing as a healthy misfit.
My hope is that this is Bourdain’s last gift to us, that he’s cracked it all open again. That we in the food industry never look at or talk about mental illness and the darkness in the same hushed tones again.
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