Anthony Bourdain on food, travel and politics

It was a pleasure meeting you, Guru Drew, and following you for years. I think I think every man I know wants to be half the women because it's really exciting, but no, or tell me it's been really hard work, um, horrible, no, I'm having it. I had a great time, I mean, I worked essentially as a laborer for thirty years of my life. Now I have the best job in the world. One of your most famous meals was in Vietnam with Barack Obama. Yes, it seems like it's just the two of them. Can? I like hanging out, but I imagine it could have been a little more intense.

No, actually, from the looks of it, the Secret Service wasn't thrilled with our vegetarian options because it was this local favorite, fun, family-run, not particularly sparkling clean, local noodle place in an old section of town life. Hana there was no room in the room for Eddie, other than the clients you see in the background, the cameramen, a producer, everyone else, secret service, everyone else had to be in another room, so that was great of her take that opportunity and to offer it to us, did you try to get them to eat anything on a small tray?

Oh, President Obama spent a lot of time in Indonesia when he was young and, like I said, a mentality about street

food

and smells and those flavors, so, and he's very proficient with chopsticks in Asian

food

and I don't think have no difficulty with anything, this is murderous without a family, it's really good, would you do that with Donald Trump? No, I mean, me. I'm open to sitting down with anyone who is nice to me. I sat down with an old friend of Ted Nugent, former head of counterintelligence for the KGB, Hezbollah. You know people I disagree with on many, if not all, of the fundamental issues, but I have no expectations.

I just find it personally objectionable. I don't think he likes food and from people I know who have had to endure dinner with him, if you like sitting there listening and talking about yourself, you know God bless you and you know the man I'm talking about. He only eats steak well and if he knows how to use chopsticks he is much less able to grab them with those little protuberances. I would be surprised if you went with Livia and thought about the change. Oh, well, they kind of change before our eyes. We plan to do it.

We went before Benghazi, we woke up as Benghazi hosts and while we were there, literally, the first day we were there, there was a burst of optimism and we were welcomed into the suite and the next day you could feel a change if things started to change. go wrong before. our eyes, it was a very, very complicated shootout, downright dangerous, we meet like we do everywhere, we've had a lot of really lovely people come in with a gun, hello, you know? In fact, I wonder if we had a superior local militia to support us. sure when he went to Misrata and since then I heard that many people who were nice to us and invited us to a barbecue took care of us, they joked with us and made fun of us and played with us and many of these guys eventually also situation changed, he moved to the other team, I guess he won't be able to come back well, let's hope things change, I mean, I did a lot of places where I'm not supposed to have a good time or but honey, we had a great time in Tehran , they treated us very, very, very well, like random Americans, regular people on the street and very welcoming to us, you know, the country is not necessarily its government, where the people are not necessarily the people in charge. as found in places like Iran, where we were overwhelmingly treated with great generosity and kindness.

I'm not going to say that this mitigates the government's behavior or its policies at all, but what we find on the ground is often completely at odds with our expectations and the image we may have received from the news and the newspapers you dedicated your book to. family, yes, the joy of being normal, you thought about it and now you broke up, I just like it, are you thinking about being normal or realizing it? What is normal? I think you know what the American family is like. I mean, I

travel

250 days a year. Do you know how normal I could expect to be?

I think maybe it was an unreasonable expectation. I tried it and at one point, you know? I was feeling really bad about being away from my daughter for so long and at one point I came home exhausted and said honey, I'm really thinking about you, you know, I'm done maybe in a year or two so I can spend more time with you. She burst into tears she said no dad your job is very interesting what will I tell my friends okay then you are still cooking for your daughter I still cook for my daughter when I say okay shout it she likes me not to repeat so when I sent her to school with school lunch.

She would like it to be something that scared her classmates when she was young. You lived a crazy life as a young chef. You used a lot of drugs and I wonder now. these opioids and everything, would you have survived with all the crazy things on the street that you faced? um, I don't know, I mean, I think it was probably harder back then, I mean, I was a heroin addict long before the current opioid crisis. I know people weren't overprescribing a pharmaceutical pain reliever, oxycontin, and all of these things hadn't happened. If you like the feeling of opioids, you had a street score, you know that was the option, it was very difficult, it was very dangerous.

My case just broke me down to the point where, you know, my options became very stark: get better or go down. I looked in the mirror and saw someone worth saving or someone I wanted to at least try hard and save. they can very easily find themselves in this situation and you know, I look back on that and I think about you know, I think about what I'm going to teach my daughter, you know it was dad, no doubt, but I hope I can be I can say it was dad so it's not dad it's very different now you know the football team and small white towns in America are just as likely as you know the stereotype of troubled inner city youth um it's everywhere now I mean it's a huge It's a big problem, but from my point of view, from many people's point of view, it is directly related to the spread of legitimately or overprescribed drugs, so food is just one way to tell the story of a life.

I think it's a very personal thing, people tend to be proud of their food, they let their guard down when they talk to you, you see them at their most vulnerable and revealing in many ways, so even people you have really fundamental disagreements with and maybe even complete different belief systems if you go to cross paths wherever it's going to be about food and how open you are to receiving that food and receiving whatever intention behind it, you know, I've gotten along with people in all of them. parts of this world and heard some incredible stories largely because I sit without an agenda and just asked a very simple question what's for dinner what makes you happy I really enjoyed the conversations with you thank you