Be a Traveler, Not a Tourist: The World According to Anthony Bourdain

A look into the principles and perspectives of the iconic chef.

By Natalie Shin

Graphic by Creative Team

My first memory of Anthony Bourdain involved CNN and my mother.

CNN reported the premature loss of the chef-turned-author-turned-television-host on our TV screen, while my mother—a woman who turned to his shows for a taste of worlds she never quite got to experience—shook her head and muttered about how young he was. I don’t remember thinking much about this headline at the time. I do remember thinking, in childish solipsism, that it was I who was young, not this white-haired man on the screen in front of me.

Fast-forward five years later, I am sitting in my comparative government class, learning about Iran’s political system. Words like “Expediency Council” and “Majlis” flit across the projector screen, but nothing sticks in my head. That is, until my teacher plays an episode from Bourdain’s trip to Iran from his show, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. I watch as Bourdain builds rapport with a family simply by striking up conversation around the food on the table: heaps of saffron rice, slow-cooked lamb, and fried tilapia fish. Their dynamic reminds me so much of my own family dinners that I feel transported.

This memory was my second exposure to Bourdain, and what an awakening it was. The more I looked into him, the more I wanted to learn. With a career spanning nearly 100 countries, there is no argument that Bourdain was well-traveled. However, there is a difference between someone who is well-traveled and someone who is worldly, and Bourdain was arguably the latter. He had a lot of philosophies about the world, but perhaps the most resonant was that in order to truly understand your environment, you must walk in the shoes of others.

This philosophy rings especially true in Bourdain’s travel diaries, which are marked by conversations with everyone from local street vendors to political leaders. The common theme among these conversations? They take place over a table of food.

Bourdain drew a clear distinction between being a traveler and being a tourist. Food, in particular, showed him how to be the former: it was a cultural relic of a location’s heritage and, simultaneously, a common ground between Bourdain and the person sitting across from him. Whether in Istanbul, Copenhagen, Gaza, or Hanoi, familiar flavors are tied to memory, and memory to personhood. And what is the best way to understand an area you are traveling to, if not by understanding its people—their values, their stories, and the jokes they make?

Nestled in this philosophy was Bourdain’s belief that a traveler should not expect or ask for anything from the places they visit. He tried to enter new destinations as a blank slate, asking for nothing but good food (which, as he revealed, could come simply in the form of cheap noodles from a kitchen with plastic stools and tables).

Above all else, Bourdain revealed that the most interesting people and stories are right around the corner. Someone could explore all borders of their state and still be more of a traveler than someone who has visited countless countries as a tourist. As someone who had always been secretly apathetic towards my hometown, this resonated with me. There always seemed to be something more exciting out there, waiting (as life so often does) for me around the corner. And as grateful as I am now to live in a larger and unfamiliar city, I now realize that there is nothing inherently lesser about my own town.

Bourdain’s raw approach to traveling is particularly refreshing in an age of travel influencers and curated, spoon-fed social media pages. More often than not, distant lands are portrayed as getaways, escapes from the stress of everyday life back home. In an episode from his show No Reservations, Bourdain had this to say about travel: “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you; it should change you.”

In a life marred by struggle, it is easy to view travel as a means of escape. And maybe it is okay to run away from time to time, but only if you make a conscious effort to run towards something new in the places you visit—food, culture, and community.

Now, as easy as it is to paint Bourdain as some enigmatic, modern-day Kerouac, his complex and lengthy battles with depression and anxiety are nothing to romanticize. They were, however, integral factors in his outlook on travel and life, giving him the incentive to learn as much as possible from the places he visited. There is also something to be said about the fact that amidst his torment, he still managed to find pockets of hope and connection in the communities he visited.

Ultimately, if there is anything beautiful to be said about the world, Anthony Bourdain embodied it. His loss is immeasurable—to travelers, to chefs, to immigrants, to anyone whizzing through life and to anyone bearing it head-on. However, we must remember that above all else, Bourdain was an advocate for leaving behind some good in the places you visit. If living in this world can be considered visiting it, then Bourdain surely planted the seeds he hoped to grow.