Chefs And Fans React To Anthony Bourdain's Death

Originally published in Forbes.

The restaurant industry woke up to very sad news on Friday, when CNN reported that star chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain was found dead in a hotel room. According to CNN, the cause of death is suicide; an unresponsive Bourdain, 61, was found by his friend and fellow chef Eric Ripert. They were in France working on a new installment of Bourdain's food show, Parts Unknown.

It was a shocking end to a life and career that spanned media and burned white-hot for close to two decades.

Bourdain's star turn came in 2000 with the publication of  Kitchen Confidential, a memoir that delivered on the promise of "wild-but-true" restaurant stories and which inspired an entire generation of emerging talent. The book's honest-no-matter-the-cost tone would become the template for Bourdain's second career, as a globe-trotting TV host who reimagined the travel food show. He trademarked himself as a proud anti-snob and a critic of overwrought culinary conventions.

When Bourdain had a chance to have dinner with then-President Barack Obama, for example, they met not in a tony white-tablecloth establishment but a casual Hanoi restaurant with plastic stools, where the total cost of the bill was a reputed $6. Last year, the New Yorker described the dinner between Bourdain and the President. “Dip and stir,” Bourdain said to the President as they were served steaming bowls of bún chả, a Vietnamese noodle dish. “And get ready for the awesomeness.”

Read the full story on Forbes.