Anthony Bourdain's Lost Li.st's

Bourdain had a way of writing that made even throwaway lines feel meaningful, but so much of that era of content is basically disappearing. It’s nice to see someone do the unglamorous work of gathering the fragments before they fade completely.

t0lo · 19 days ago

It's funny because his, and Chuck Palahniuk's (fight club, etc) way of seeing the world- that brand of anti corporate- pro human- enjoy the waste- cynicism seemed so permanent and authentic- and like nothing could take it away from you- it felt like a staple of the human experience that was a place you could go to in your mind.

It's amazing to see how quickly that all got shovelled away and replaced with productised, streamlined, sterile groupthink- and one in which authentic sexuality and sex jokes are shunned. I think in some part he knew which way this world was heading and made a decision based off of that.

As a young person who stakes a lot of my headspace in the former, it's definitely an interesting, ridiculously two faced and contradictory cultural moment we're in right now.

jasonwatkinspdx · 19 days ago

If you're lumping together Bourdain and Palahniuk I think you've completely failed to understand Bourdain.

And then diagnosing his suicide as a result of your apparent culture war grievances over sex jokes is just revolting behavior.

woodruffw · 19 days ago

From my vantage point, Anthony Bourdain is immensely popular with friends of all kinds of political and cultural flavors. I actually can’t think of a single person I know who dislikes Anthony Bourdain. If there’s some kind of cultural headwind against his style, it certainly isn’t manifest in mainstream consumer culture itself.

jyounker · 18 days ago

It was only a staple in your mind. Those views you remember were very much reactions against what already existed, and where things were headed. Things never changed direction, and here we are.

ozgrakkurt · 19 days ago

Have to love the content about how some sociopathic crazy guy is so “successful”.

Awesome. I refer to https://bourdain.greg.technology/#food-im-thinking-about about once a year. One of my favorite vacations was going to a different hawker stall on his list each night in Singapore. Unsurprisingly, his picks are all pretty good, and #1 is justified in crowning the list.

t0lo · 19 days ago

Also for general bourdain tourism- eat like bourdain is a really passionate and fleshed out blog that tells you where and what he ate in each city/country. I use it pretty frequently.

https://eatlikebourdain.com/

phist_mcgee · 19 days ago

I've never ordered it, it always looks so incredibly bland, am I missing something here?

zrail · 19 days ago

Chicken and rice is anything but bland. I haven't had Hainanese style but the Thai style khao man gai that Nong's serves in Portland is a flavor that I still remember more than a decade later.

dewey · 19 days ago

If you would order it once, you could stop wondering if you are missing something.

decimalenough · 19 days ago

The chicken is indeed bland, although the non-canonical roasted version is more flavorful than the traditional poached one. The rice, which is cooked in chicken stock and spices, is anything but, but it's the fresh chili sauce that really makes it zing, in the same way that wasabi makes "bland" sushi work.

Tian Tian is overrated and not worth the lines though. Every Singaporean has their favorite but I like Loy Kee, partly thanks to their amazing slogan, "Chicken Lickin' Good".

https://order.loykee.com.sg/

0_____0 · 19 days ago

Oh! #1 ended up with a Bib Gourmand from Michelin later that year.

fredoliveira · 19 days ago

One of the few people that has a voice (written and otherwise) so distinctive that even reading those lists, I read them in his voice. I miss that guy.

Dead Comment

deeptishukla22 · 22 days ago

bink · 19 days ago

For those who haven't read it yet, the book "In the Weeds" does a pretty good job of showing the hidden side of Bourdain (if there was such a thing). He was as imperfect as you might imagine. I personally enjoyed learning how cruel he could be as I always had a tremendous amount of respect for him and it made him more human to me.

They even cover an incident where the crew played a practical joke on him with a clown (his fear is mentioned in a li.st).

randycupertino · 19 days ago

Down and Out in Paradise by Charles Leersen about Bourdain was also very interesting, highlighted how predatory his ex Asia Argento was with him (financial abuse- he constantly wired her money and paid her 400k sexual assault settlement for her statutory raping a 17-year old, cheating on him with multiple people including Hugo Clement, constant drama, supplying him with drugs, emotional neglect when he was struggling with depression).

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59366129-down-and-out-in...

His final text to her was "you were reckless with my heart."

https://people.com/food/anthony-bourdain-asia-argento-last-t...

EnPissant · 19 days ago

He dumped his wife and abandoned his child to be with this woman 18 years younger than him, and he used drugs his entire adult life, long before he met her. No, I would not describe her as a predator.

jonah · 19 days ago

So very very sad.

Take care of your loved ones (but also take care of yourself)!

yawpitch · 22 days ago

Hands down the funniest thing I ever saw, live and in person, was Anthony Bourdain staring with naked, enraptured joy at the woman doing the American Sign Language translation of what he’d just said, then stopping just after she did to let us all know that “I just had to know what it looks like to sign ‘felching Mrs. Butterworth.’”

Thank you, Tony, wherever you are… if for nothing else, then for the Pho Chay I the Lunch Lady made just for my newly vegetarian self in Saigon.

dataviz1000 · 22 days ago

I went to the 'Obama restaurant' in Hanoi for bun cha (not vegetarian) more so because Anthony Bourdain. Like a good American I smoked a Cuban cigar afterwards in a cigar bar under an image of Che Guevara I passed on the way back to the hotel which was out of the way likely guided by Tony's spirit if such things exist. Nonetheless, the Bun Cha up in the mountains of Sa Pa is better as are Dominican cigars.

linhns · 19 days ago

I’m a local from Hanoi, always surprised with Bourdain picking that place to eat with pres Obama (I still believe because of presidential food safety standards). I’d not pick that place any day of the week. Having lived in Singapore as well, RIP Anthony, but your picks aren’t that great.

SoleilAbsolu · 22 days ago

It's honestly hard to think of a better title for the definitive Anthony Bourdain biography then "Felching Mrs. Butterworth"!

thadk · 19 days ago

It seems like li.st was founded by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._J._Novak#The_List_App — unlikely to show on HN but maybe someone knows him.

adamm255 · 19 days ago

WUPHF

lurk2 · 19 days ago

> The app allowed users to make lists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRNEUc5k7Jw

gregsadetsky · 19 days ago

I got to cross something off my bucket list - I just LinkedIn message'd B. J. Novak about this.....! Thanks for digging!

If anyone can find a contact for Devin Flaherty, let me know! Cheers

walletdrainer · 19 days ago

devflaherty at the google email service, linked to a now-deleted LinkedIn account

rgovostes · 21 days ago

yakkomajuri · 19 days ago

Didn't know he was such a fan of rap, interesting point about brioche buns.

Also: "Karaoke should only be performed with people who have already seen your genitals." :D

astura · 19 days ago

I absolutely love brioche buns but I only eat veggie burgers, and they make a lot more sense for veggie burgers.

pimlottc · 19 days ago

There used to be a mirror of the Wayback Machine [0][1] hosted at the new Library of Alexandria in Egypt [2]. Sometimes you could pull pages from them that otherwise errored out on the main archive.org site. Sadly, it seems the mirror has been offline [3] for some years now.

0: https://www.bibalex.org/en/News/Details?DocumentID=1550&Keyw...

1: https://www.bibalex.org/isis/frontend/projects/ProjectDetail...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina

3: http://web.archive.bibalex.org