It happened sometime after midnight, in late March, early April about a quarter century ago, just before the world welcomed a new millennium. The Matrix just opened up in theaters that Spring. Google was barely a year old taking its first few digital footprints online. Derek Jeter was leading off on Opening Day for what would become another World Series winning season for the New York Yankees. And at 42 years old, Anthony Bourdain was sitting at home in his underwear after a 14-hour shift at Les Halles on Park Avenue South, surrounded by clumps of cat litter, boxes of junk food, and ashtrays filled with cigarette butts. He was venting into the void, molding his manifesto, puking up secrets from the kitchen. He was spewing out prose with no filter, no filler, and no reservations that anybody would ever read the words on his computer screen that night. The New Yorker did. They made sure the whole world did too.
That single essay, born out of a single night staying up late after work, led to his famous book, Kitchen Confidential. Roughly a year later he hit the road and found himself in Vietnam for the first time. For Bourdain, it was love at first sight. It was raw. It was real. It was addictive. It was unpretentious. It was full-on sensory overload. Bourdain’s experiences in Vietnam were what led a lot of people to visit Vietnam for their first time ever too. To better understand why Bourdain loved Vietnam I went back and looked at the New Yorker essay that started it all. It was love at first sight for me, too. It was also raw. It was also real. It was also addictive. It was also unpretentious. It was also full-on sensory overload. Bourdain’s essay in the New Yorker was what led a lot of people to follow him on his journey in the first place. And for the next twenty years, we couldn’t take our eyes off of him.
The part I find interesting is that on the surface it looks like that single night came out of nowhere, but in fact it had been already brewing underneath the surface for twenty years. As he explains in the essay, he dropped out of college in the early seventies, transferred into the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), and sought to climb the chain of command from new guy to man in charge. He did. First, he was a dishwasher. Then, a prep drone. Next, a line cook. Soon, a sous chef. And eventually, a head chef. The years of experiences were what allowed him to spill secrets of the trade like a veteran agent from the other CIA. Like when he writes about the rawness of food. Or about the reality of the kitchen. Or about the addictive nature that accompanies the profession. And finally about the full-on sensory overload that his words cut through with precision like a well-maintained knife. In sum, when Bourdain spoke, we listened.
Why, though? Why did we fall in love with Bourdain at first sight the same way he fell in love with Vietnam at first sight? And why in particular did his New Yorker essay from 1999 strike a nerve with millions and change everything for him overnight? Because it wasn’t just some New York chef spilling trade secrets as the article’s subtitle suggests, it was a dispatch on escapism. It was about more than just food. It was about more than just the kitchen. It was about more than just his profession. It was about more than just how to maintain a kitchen knife, his principal hatred for brunch, or his warning towards ordering fish before Tuesday. It was about a guy in his mid 40’s who had done everything you weren’t supposed to do and screwed up in every possible way. A guy who was bored with his life, fed up about what it had become and was becoming, but instead of retreating to another night of drugs or illusions of becoming a rock star, he sat down and wrote down exactly how he felt — raw and real and true. He didn’t escape outward into fantasy. He escaped inward with honesty. His truthfulness of his situation, and his life leading up to that night, was unpretentious and addictive. That’s what made it feel like you just heard a secret too good not to share.
What started as a personal escape in the moment became a collective escape for millions of others for many moments to come all the way up to this very day. It’s why so many fell in love. He created an escape for others, a trap door, a rabbit hole to reality. So, it’s no wonder he ended up in Vietnam and loved it at first sight. As the Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz wrote, “Home is not where you are born, home is where all your attempts to escape cease.” For Bourdain, Vietnam was the escape he always dreamt of: a place where you didn’t need to. For Bourdain, Vietnam was home. And perhaps that’s why so many people read his writing, watched his shows, and followed him to Vietnam and beyond — chasing the chance to feel, even if only vicariously, what it’s like to go somewhere you weren’t born to somewhere all your attempts to escape finally cease. To feel, even if just for a moment, what it's like to be home.
