Anthony Bourdain bridged the gap between the dive and divine

The food writer and TV host didn't see cheap and luxury, only a good time or a bad one

(CNN/Parts Unknown)

‘Finally,’ I thought when I first saw an episode of an Anthony Bourdain TV show. Finally a person deserving of what is surely one of the world’s greatest jobs - travelling the world eating local food and nursing beers - because he actually does it right.

Television food journalism has a reputation for phoniness and broadly has two very remote poles that shows are split between. At one are the Guy Fieri (Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives) and Adam Richman's (Man v. Food) of this world, where food is simply a challenge to one’s masculinity, a chance to atavistically show off one’s appetite or resilience to spice. At the other is the likes of Chef’s Table, where self-awareness is psychopathically short in supply and sauces are splashed onto plates with the flair of an artist's brushstroke.

Anthony Bourdain stood alone in the middle ground, neither taking the pretentious view that food is a work of art nor seeing it as some sort of 'man fuel'. Places where the tablecloths are cheap or non-existent but the food is honest and made with love were his kind of establishments, and they usually came with a sense of history, not to be poured over in a leather-bound book with an expert but idly pondered while staring at the multitude of rings made by thousands of glasses on the bar counter in front of him.

Sometimes the hosts of food shows feel merely deployed in them. As though the producers had an intern google 'good food Miami' and then draw up a shortlist before briefing the host on where they were headed and giving them interesting factoids to narrate. But with Bourdain you always felt like the places he visited were plucked out of real, hazy memories he had of each of the towns and cities, the bars discovered during drunken walks at 3am and the friendships with the people he met up with genuine.

In one episode of his brief but excellent series The Layover he visited London, which usually sends Londoners like myself scurrying behind the sofa as we prepare for cliché cutaways to Big Ben and red phone boxes, but this American knew his stuff, heading to a tiny, idiosyncratic and un-signposted bar I'd only recently discovered myself after decades of drinking here.

The rockstar persona stuff was sometimes a bit much and betrayed his work's otherwise humble feel, though his penchant for early morning drinking in a bathrobe will give viewers pause on repeat viewings in light of his historic struggles with addiction and apparent suicide this week. But, just as he threw open the doors of the kitchen with the tell-all book that made him famous, Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain tore down the wall of food TV bullshit and captured what really makes travel exciting: the experiences and the people. Tragically, he was here for a good time not a long time, but he supremely succeeded in this regard and paved the way for a new, more personal style of food journalism. Some people want to keep their favourite little places secret, but Bourdain wanted to throw an arm around you and invite you in for shots.