What's Eating Suzy Weiss?

Anthony Bourdain is Down and Out in The Free Press Culture Section

The impact of Anthony Bourdain can be understated, as Suzy Weiss shows with her master class on missing the fucking point.

Suzy - culture critic for The Free Press, a center-right rag founded by her sister and fellow gobshite Barry Weiss - is strident in her conviction that Bourdain left in his wake a toxic generation of men who take food too seriously. Bourdain's legacy, to Weiss, was spawning a legion of "travel bros" convinced the only way to find authentic Pho is to dose up on Mefloquine and trek the Ho Chi Minh trail.

She paints a bleak picture of the post-Bourdain landscape. "I thought we had enough shows in which middle-aged American men, who fancy themselves gourmands, travel, eat things, and talk about it […] it's been done." There is a case to be made for the deluge of copycats since Tony's passing in 2018. However, she cites Phil Rosenthal, Guy Fieri, and Bourdain himself – three of the best to have ever done it - so I’m inclined to think she just doesn’t watch food TV.

But all that has changed for Suzy, thanks to Stanley Tucci's new show, Tucci in Italy.

She praises the show's "light history, interviews with locals, and demonstrations of ancient meat-curing techniques." Tucci is "very watchable," she says. But when it comes to Bourdain's No Reservations or Parts Unknown? In 774 disjointed words, she casts aspersions on plenty of people who may have been influenced by Bourdain but doesn't levy any meaningful, substantive commentary on the man himself.

The little she says about his work makes me wonder: has Suzy ever read his books or seen a full episode?

Had she thumbed through one of his books, scanned one of his myriad interviews, or watched even a single episode of his shows, she would find the same themes that attract her to Tucci’s show - locals, traditions, and historical context - are present throughout Bourdain’s work.

She mentions in passing Kitchen Confidential, the book that thrust Bourdain out of the kitchen and into the spotlight, where he details his early start as a dishwasher in Provincetown and the years of misadventures that followed.

In best-selling detail, readers are introduced to a rogues gallery of chuckle fucks, self-destructive geniuses, terminal line cooks, and titans of the New York dining scene, intertwined with his inevitable affairs with heroin and cocaine.

Kitchen Confidential wasn't a manifesto. It was a memoir that captured the piratical, debauched, yet noble and underappreciated life of the working cook.

The book is chock-full of reflections on his own misbehavior, but they're unvarnished (albeit humorous), often with shame and self-flagellation – and Tony himself was openly critical of fans who took the darker moments as a guide rather than a warning.

If the book celebrated anything, though, it was the honesty of the kitchen and those who could survive it.

"Your past didn't matter. Your education didn't matter. Your nationality didn't matter. All that mattered was: Can you do the job?"

I would expect someone dubbed a "culture critic" to be knowledgeable about their subject. Armond White of National Review may have made a career off writing contrarian polemics about an Oscar-worthy film. He at least had the decency to sit through There Will Be Blood before panning it.

To Weiss, knowledge of a subject is for nerds, and time is better spent concocting rage bait and yucking yums she's never tasted. But Suzy's ignorance extends well beyond her quarry. You don't need to be a fan of Tony's to refrain from writing like, "We have a chef culture wherein tatted up, foul-mouthed cooks—that is, the people who heat up entrées—think they're rock stars."

It's a low blow. With one facile swoop, Weiss denigrates an entire class, of which she clearly knows fuck all.

Tony did sing the praises of these Ed Hardy-themed microwaves. They work harder, longer, and with more passion than many of those they serve – while remaining among the most underpaid and overworked laborers in America. Many of whom are undocumented immigrants.

One of Tony's most profound impacts came from showing the world who really runs our kitchens - immigrants from Central and South America - and challenging public perception of their role in American society. "Our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers."

As the Trump Administration tweets Ghibli memes of terrified immigrants being hauled off to a Central American gulag, the restaurant industry is serving as the vanguard against this fascist fever dream of masked ICE agent raids. Go to any forum for American cooks and you'll find a collective front determined to help each other protect their fellow workers.

One would not be overstating matters to say that fans of Bourdain are more likely to be cognizant of the gravity of these times, as he told their stories from his first book to his last episode. But to refer to any of those cooks as one who "heats up entrées" should earn her a lifetime ban from anywhere that serves something more complex than a bag of chips.

Her need to knock cooks down a peg and her aversion to food lovers is made all the more curious when you consider her affection for Stanley Tucci.

You know, Stanley Tucci, who co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in Big Night - one of the greatest cinematic homages to restaurant cooking. The Stanley Tucci that wrote not one but two fantastic books exploring the depth and gravity of his connection with food.

Stanley Motherfucking Tucci, who said of his Emmy-winning show, Searching for Italy, "It's simply just showing how hard [chefs] work, and how necessary they are. That's really what it's about. They are necessary in so many ways."

Clearly oblivious to any of this, she continues on, pointing out that Tucci's show seeks to "chase the high" of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and Parts Unknown, blissfully unaware of why the hype exists in the first place.

Bourdain's indelible personality, the talented team at Zero Point Zero, and his sincere, thoughtful message were the once-in-a-lifetime combination that set the bar at a height. The power vacuum left in the wake of Anthony's death has given way to some pretty good (and pretty shit) travel television, the merits of which are worth debating. But in this shallow, enigmatic bit of commentary, she once again reveals her devastatingly vapid grasp of Tony's work.

Tucci isn't an antidote to Bourdain – he's building on it. Every producer and every host of every show is aiming to strike the same central nerve Tony did – to be the cultural phenomenon that was Anthony Bourdain.

In Suzy's assessment, “[Bourdain’s] brand was so ascendant” because he ate cobra hearts and rocked a punk-chef aesthetic. That, she assesses, is what ultimately led to his famous Hanoi lunch with then-President Barack Obama. One could forgive her for misattributing the event to an episode of No Reservations - a show that had been off the air for six years - and hand-waving the cultural, political, and personal significance of this moment, as both Bourdain and Obama have their own unique ties to Vietnam.

One could also say I'm being a defensive fanboy and reading too much into the little she gave us…if one incongruous line after another didn't betray her obliviousness to the entire fucking journey that led them to that moment.

Tony's first show, A Cook's Tour, was exactly what the title implied: the bitter chef who wrote Kitchen Confidential and scared people off Monday's fish was going to travel the globe eating whatever he could for all to see. And for a few seasons, yes, Anthony Bourdain, the chef-turned-author-now-turned-travel-host, became the "beating cobra heart" guy. He was the loud-mouthed irreverent shit-stirrer who drank to excess on an epic international bar crawl, dined on strange food, and peppered his commentary with dick jokes and innuendo. And people loved him for it.

But if that was your only takeaway, even in the early days, you weren't paying attention.

He was interested in the people behind the wok, the clay oven and the freshly dug roasting pit. Those seated around the dinner table in the thatched roof hut, at the next stool in the working man's bar, or reclined on a blanket under a starlit Saharan sky. He listened to their stories about life, family, and food and helped us connect, in some incredible way, to the world beyond our own.

What came out of that journey, aside from the gastrointestinal trauma and jungle hooch hangovers, was a chance to see these strangers in a new light beyond the lens of news cameras and movies that fuel our preconceptions.

His time at the Food Network ended abruptly after the pig fuckers canceled a trip to Ferran Adrià's El Bulli—a once-in-a-lifetime, never-before-seen, all-access pass to one of the most important chefs in modern history—and asked Bourdain and his team to do more ratings-friendly (and inexpensive) BBQ-themed shows at home.

The folks at Food Network, much like Suzy, felt that anything more introspective than deep-fried, gust-busting Americana was navel-gazing (a funny thought considering a decades-long civil war rages from Texas to the Carolinas over the best ways to smoke a pig). Immovable in their convictions - though astute given the network’s explosive rise in popularity - Bourdain cut ties and moved over to the Travel Channel, launching his second show, No Reservations.

Having seen No Reservations in and out of sequence more times than I can count, I once again struggle to understand what the fuck Suzy Weiss is talking about when she says Tony's central message was "a meal is only worth eating if you nearly die in a tuk tuk to get there."

I do remember Bourdain lamenting the pain he suffered from eating the aforementioned warthog ass while telling his audience to live by the Grandma rule.

"You may not like Grandma's Thanksgiving turkey… But it is 'Grandma's Turkey…so shut the fuck up and eat it."

This wasn't a throwback to his "guy who eats weird shit" days. It was one of his stark reminders that, for millions of people, these "gangrenous street meats" (as Suzy calls them) were often a rare, life-giving meal, and he would have slit his own throat before insulting his hosts.

No Reservations evolved as Tony committed himself to experimentation and exploration. Amid all the food porn and pastiche, the camera's lens shifted slightly away from the food - before taking a hard swing in July 2006.

Bourdain and his crew were filming an episode in Beirut when war broke out between Hezbollah and Israel. Bearing witness to a city in the Middle East that defied Western notions of Arab civilization - and having it cut violently short - was a moment that perfectly captured the best of Tony's spirit.

In the episode that followed, when others would have focused on the threat to themselves and the crew, Bourdain chose to focus on the people outside the safety of his hotel. He would later write of those events and the people of Beirut:

"One day I was making television about eating and drinking, the next, I was watching the airport I'd just landed in a few days earlier, being blown up across the water from my hotel window.

I came away from the experience deeply embittered, confused—and determined to make television differently than I'd done before…the days of 'happy horseshit', the uplifting sum-up at the end of every show, the reflex inclusion of a food scene in every act, that ended right there.

The world was bigger than that. The stories more confusing, more complex, less satisfying in their resolutions. As I noted in my utterly depressing last lines of Voice Over in the eventual show we put together: in the real world, good people and bad alike are often crushed under the same terrible wheel.

This was a city where nothing made any damn sense at all—in the best possible way. A country with no president for over a year—ruled by a power sharing coalition of oligarchs and Hezbollah, neighbor problems as serious as anyone could have, history so awful and tragic that one would assume the various factions would be at each others throats for the next century—yet you can go to a seaside fish restaurant and see people happily eating with their families and smoking shisha, who, in any other place would be shooting at each other."

This dignified, humanizing and honest portrayal of the world around him became a central theme of No Reservations. The eating, drinking, and self-indulgences of the past, as Bourdain would say, "were so Season 3." (Thankfully, he never relinquished his more lurid urges – See No Reservations episodes: Food Porn 1 & 2, Holiday).

In her only direct comment about the show, Weiss quips, "Dessert on No Reservations was always the same, and it was shaking your head at Imperialism." It is here, as we sift through her poorly qualified contempt for the Bourdain Bro Boogeyman, that I believe we find her actual trouble with Tony.

See, Tucci's show is relegated to the politically sterile safety of modern Italy. The "light history" and ancient cooking techniques are not accompanied by the uncomfortable focus on geopolitics and genocide.

Where Tucci's excellent show has him dining at an agriturismo in Umbria, Anthony was traveling to Vietnam and Cambodia – breaking bread with former Vietcong and the victims of America's illegal bombing campaign. Hundreds of thousands of tons of unexploded ordinance litter the countryside, still claiming victims - many, these days, who weren't alive to see them dropped.

The warm, gentle voice of Tucci encouraging the viewer to have a Negroni from Nonna's front porch is much more palatable than Bourdain's sips of rice whiskey as the one-armed man recounts the day he lost the ability to provide for his family.

With each visit to the Middle East, he tore from our minds images of violent extremists shown on Fox News and CNN, replacing them with the people—the real people—that an audience his size might have never seen. Much of this came at a time when America was still in the throws of post-9/11 Islamaphobia.

On a visit to Iran, a country typically depicted chanting “Death to America!” he wrote:

"I have said that Iran is the most outgoingly warm, 'pro-American' place we've ever shot — and that's true: in Tehran, in spite of the fact that you are standing in front of a giant, snarling mural that reads 'DEATH TO AMERICA!', you will, we found, usually be treated better by strangers — meaning smiles, offers of assistance, curious attempts to engage in limited English, greetings and expressions of general good will — than anywhere in Western Europe."

It is likely that this introspective confrontation with history - his willingness to show how it shaped the world outside of our livingroom - makes Suzy Weiss so uncomfortable.

She doesn't want her food to be political.

Except food is one of the most political fucking things, no matter how you slice it. From who cooks the food to the ingredients they choose, it's steeped in every dish.

In a clip titled "Anthony Bourdain's Insufferable Legacy," which seems to be a "pretending-to-podcast" style clip to promote the article, Suzy signs off, "Eat the pizza… it's not that deep!" with a sickly smug smile before turning off the camera to do something more important than talk about food, like torturing mudbloods.

Did Tony, or any serious person, ever say you need to listen to a podcast on 19th-century Neapolitan cuisine before calling up Domino's?

I am sure Suzy is aware that pizza, as we know it in America, was the product of Italian immigration.

I wouldn't blame her, however, for not knowing that it was a working-class food dismissed as "ethnic" by racist upper-class Americans. That pizza is a prime example of cultural appropriation, mass commercialization, and immigrant erasure as the identity shifted from an Italian-American to an "American" dish.

The message was attainable for everyone except Suzy: knowing where your food comes from, how it's made, and who is making it can be both personally fulfilling and, perhaps, make the world a better place. As the man once said, "The least interesting thing about a dish is usually what's on the plate. Who made it, why they made it, and where - that's the story."

Anthony waxed poetic in Kitchen Confidential about the seafood in Japan. In Medium Raw, the chapter Lust is a series of tumescent vignettes from Hanoi to Mexico that describe, in lurid detail, intensely delicious dishes from one locale to the next.

One of the few signs Suzy may have actually read Bourdain's work is when she references a passage from that chapter, observing that "Bourdain turned eating a prawn into an Allen Ginsberg poem."

Okay, so flowery prose about crustacean brains isn't Suzy's thing – no surprise, considering she can't fathom giving food thought beyond dipping sauces for nuggets. (Ketchup, if I had to guess.) But she glosses over the fact that it was the entire fucking point of the chapter.

After a love letter to Pho, Bourdain makes the intent pretty clear:

"But writing about sights and sounds and flavors that might otherwise be described as orgiastic—and doing it in a way that is calculated to inspire prurient interest, lust, and envy in others … that raises more questions in my mind as to… I don't know … the moral dimension.

Sitting here, choosing words, letter by letter, on the keyboard with the explicit intention of telling you about something I did or something I ate and making you as hungry and miserable as I can—surely that's wrong.

But fuck it.

Who doesn't like a good wank now and then?"

Food is about pleasure above all else. "Is it good?" is the quintessential, universal question for all things edible. So whether or not Ms. Weiss cares for commentary beyond that is irrelevant.

What is relevant is her worthiness to criticize anything with more depth than the kid's menu at Ruby Tuesday.

Bourdain's work isn't secret, underground, esoteric, art-house slop coveted by hipsters and wonks. His range and creativity ensured that his shows have something for everyone; the messages are universally resonant, and they're available on every bookshelf and streaming platform for all to see.

Despite Suzy's caricature of his fans, Bourdain was not a food snob. He chided arbiters of the authentic while holding one-dish Singaporean hawker stands in higher esteem than most heads of state. Bourdain was just as appreciative of a pot-au-feu as a Michelin-tasting menu. In fact, he often preferred the former, believing "Good food is very often, even most often, simple food."

As Tony’s television persona evolved, his shows grew from what he described as a "gonzo-travelogue of vérité footage and thrown together voice-overs" to a first-class ticket around the world. He succeeded in showing his viewers the beautiful, sometimes heartbreaking, differences from one location to the next – while emphasizing that, in the end, we all share a love for good food and warm company.

For the series premiere of Parts Unknown, he travels through Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank, where he reveals a human side of a people the West, until recently, had been content to view as subhuman. He opines in the opening narration, "By the end of this hour, I'll be seen by many as a terrorist sympathizer, a Zionist tool, a self-hating Jew, an apologist for American imperialism, an Orientalist, socialist, fascist, CIA agent, and worse. So here goes nothing."

Bourdain was a force for good. A voice that is sorely needed today. But in the dense primordia that bounces around Suzy's skull, the legacy of Bourdain is infecting men with brain worms, causing them to lust for a hike through the Andes to dine on alpaca testicles. And her views are not likely to be changed, as she wrote of the criticism she received from her piece:

"I learned from my assessment of Anthony Bourdain not to criticize beloved television shows, so I'll just wish the Survivorheads a dramatic 50th season."

Suzy could have made an assessment of Bourdain and his work. Instead of some half-baked clickbait where she inexplicably asserts, "I have nothing against Bourdain the man" while contradicting herself at every turn, she could have watched a few episodes, talked to some fans, and tried to understand the thing she clearly hates.

Through Tony, many gained a newfound respect for those who cook and serve in restaurants. He showed us who resides at the heart of the kitchen and spoke against prejudice. He showed us the “good shit” and opened people's eyes to new tastes and experiences.

He went on an incredible journey and took the world along for the ride.

Anthony Bourdain had an intense cult of personality. With any fandom, there will be fanatical obsessives who deify their idol and miss the point. But I guaran-fuckin-tee you those people, and his millions of other fans around the world, understood his message better than Suzy Weiss.