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Anthony Bourdain in November 2007
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A few years ago, I wasn't surprised to hear rumors of a study of the nation's prison population which reportedly found that the leading civilian occupation among inmates before they were put behind bars was "cook." As most of us in the restaurant business know, there is a powerful strain of criminality in the industry, ranging from the dope-dealing busboy with beeper and cell phone to the restaurant owner who has two sets of accounting books. In fact, it was the unsavory side of professional cooking that attracted me to it in the first place.
—Anthony Bourdain, "Don't Eat Before Reading This", The New Yorker, April 19, 1999
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Anthony Bourdain (June 25, 1956 - June 8, 2018) was a New Jersey born American writer, chef, and television personality. He was a proud, sarcastic jerkass. Beyond his surface, though, he could be very deep and profound, almost philosophical in his writer's and monologues. If there was a real-life Mr. Vice Guy he'd be the poster boy; he was a former drug and cigarette addict and still a huge drinker as well as punk rock fan. A famous chef within cooking circles for years, he gained celebrity level of fame with his 2000 book Kitchen Confidential, a dark, auto-biographical look at the cooking industry from the inside. Ironically, the book was filled with hatred and Take Thats at other celebrity chefs. He was also very trope and clique savvy, often hanging lampshades on the tropes that happen in real life within the shows he was on.
In addition to this, he also appeared on the Travel Channel's No Reservations and The Layover
He died in 2018 while working on his show Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.