RIP Tony

I can't even begin to describe my level of sadness.  I loved Anthony Bourdain.  I am not a follower of cooking shows or chefs, but many many years ago I fell in love with Tony's philosophies about food and humanity.  He knew that food was the true leveler of people.  Everyone eats and food is sacred.  No matter what your heritage is, food is central to your culture. Food is our first worldly experience.  It comes from the person that loves us the most. If we don't get it, we don't survive.  Food is love.  Food is memory.  Food is the basic human need.  I can tell you after years and years of cooking for the people closest to me and for many more people I never really knew, food is always perceived as love.  When I have inevitably stopped cooking for someone for whatever reason, the first thing I hear is...you don't love me anymore. It always makes me sad.  Like Tony, wherever I have traveled, I run to the people and eat their food.  Without exception, when you eat their food and try to speak their language, you grow so much as a human and make friends for life.  No plastic "safe" river cruises for me.  I want to eat the culture.  Tony was a brave explorer that took us all along with him.  He made me brave. He made me cook with my heart.
 

"As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life — and travel — leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks — on your body or on your heart — are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt."

“Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonald's? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.”

On my day off, I rarely want to eat restaurant food unless I’m looking for new ideas or recipes to steal. What I want to eat is home cooking, somebody’s — anybody’s — mother’s or grandmother’s food,” Bourdain wrote in Kitchen Confidential. “A simple pasta pomodoro made with love, a clumsily thrown-together tuna casserole, roast beef with Yorkshire pudding, all of this is pure exotica to me, even when I’ve been neck-deep all day in filet mignon and herb-infused oils and all the bits of business we do to distinguish restaurant food from what you get at home. My mother-in-law would always apologize before serving dinner when I was in attendance, saying, ‘This must seem pretty ordinary for a chef…’She had no idea how magical, how reassuring, how pleasurable her simple meat loaf was for me, what a delight even lumpy mashed potatoes were — being, as they were, blessedly devoid of truffles or truffle oil.”

The world will not be a better place without you.