Bourdain in Senegal

“A rebuke to those who’d paint a whole continent as a monolith of despair, or Islam as something to be feared.” This was Tony Bourdain in Senegal, in the fall of 2015.o be feared.” This was Tony Bourdain in Senegal, in the fall of 2015.

Senegal.

In Tony Bourdain’s words, “A rebuke to those who’d paint a whole continent as a monolith of despair, or Islam as something to be feared, Senegal turns simple-minded assumptions and prejudice on their heads at every turn.”

More than a few people who followed Bourdain on his travels over the years — including some of those in this group, quite possibly — may have been surprised by how taken Bourdain was with the West African country of Senegal, which he visited just once in his many years on the road, in the fall of 2015.

The essay he penned for the social media platform Medium, the day before Senegal premiered on CNN’s Parts Unknown in May 2016, left little doubt, however.

Bourdain had set foot in Africa before, a vast continent with more than 50 countries, in Congo for Parts Unknown’s debut season, followed in short order by Morocco, South Africa, and Tanzania in 2014, Madagascar in 2015, and Ethiopia a year later.

He would go on to visit Nigeria and—famously, in his final season of Parts Unknown, which aired posthumously in 2018—Kenya with Kamau Bell.

Years earlier, for Travel Channel’s No Reservations, Bourdain wound his way through Ghana, Namibia, and Liberia, ending with Mozambique in No Reservations’ last season, titled — somewhat portentously — The Final Tour.

Senegal, though, was different, as he made clear in his essay for Medium.

“So let this episode in Senegal, an African nation which is over 90% Muslim, serve as both rebuke and example. It is a country that proudly elected as their first president after independence a Christian — because they felt, in their best judgment, that regardless of his faith, he was the best person for the job.

“It is a country that defies stereotypes and expectations at every turn. Emerging from French colonial times as a functioning multi-cultural, multi-lingual, extraordinarily tolerant society, it has managed to avoid coups, tribal wars, dictatorships and most of the ills that afflicted so many of its neighbours. It remains an absolutely enchanting place to visit, with delicious food, absolutely extraordinarily beautiful music, and a relatively free and easy attitude towards intermarriage, mixed race, intertribal relationships and foreign visitors. It has a powerful and proud tradition of hospitality that endures to this day.”

This was in 2015.

Remarkably, the same is still true today, nearly 10 years later, despite everything that’s happened in the outside world in the years since.

And is still happening, as Bourdain himself would have been quick to point out.

The fascinating thing to me, as a frequent visitor of that vast continent, is that all 54 countries are different. That may seem like a trite thing to say, condescending even, but then you must understand that most — virtually all — Africans see themselves that way, as the residents and citizens of strikingly different countries, with separate cultures and separate languages. I have heard it said that while South Africa — possibly the most westernized of African countries, certainly in the big cities of Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town, has 11 official languages, in fact, the country of 64 million people is thought by some to be home to 86 different native languages. To homogenize the entire continent in a single word — Africa — is the height of condescension, but that’s what colonial thinking does to one.

Tony Bourdain got that.

That’s why he was openly welcomed wherever he went on the continent — that, and his love for good music in all its forms. And African cultures have indelibly close ties to music in all its forms. The Sahara Desert and the Sahel hinterlands — possibly a vast, seemingly empty wasteland to you and me — are home to some of the most respected, well-attended music festivals on the planet. And here’s the fun part. Those music festivals are about 95% local and only 5%, if that, touristy.

Bourdain got that, too.

And so, in Senegal, he sits down and breaks bread with Senegal’s native-born Youssou N’Dour, not just sharing quality time with N’Dour but thanks to CNN’s Parts Unknown and Zero Point Zero Production’s cameras allowing us, the viewers, to share quality time not just with a remarkable singer and musician but a poet-philosopher, a political activist, an active humanist, who is Christian, secular and Muslim all rolled into one.

A truly remarkable person. Peter Gabriel is a frequent musical collaborator of N’Dour’s, and he’s not alone among Western musicians of note. Gabriel will tell you he’s the pupil and N’Dour the mentor, not the other way around.

It’s worth noting, too, that N’Dour performed his anthemic 7 Seconds, featured in all its gorgeous fullness in the Senegal episode, in 2005’s Live 8 concert in an extended duet with Dido, who was born in Kensington, London and hails from a background as different from N’Dour’s as is humanly possible.

Think on this: Live 8 — sobering and deeply moving to look back at today, given the fractious state of world affairs today— was performed live, and I’m not making this up, from London, Paris, Rome, Philadelphia, Barrie (Ontario, Canada, my home country), Chiba (Japan), Johannesburg, Moscow, Cornwall and Edinburgh. Think about that: good music brings the world together for a common cause.

Tony Bourdain got that, too.

“So what’s the future?” he asks N’Dour, about midway through what, with the benefit of 10 years’ hindsight, is one of my favourite Bourdain sets.

The two met in Dakar’s Bazoof restaurant over plates of mafe, a Senegalese stew of beef thickened with ground peanuts. To hear Bourdain tell it, “There are similar preparations throughout West Africa, but the Senegalese version is particularly great. Sear the beef; cook the onion, garlic, peppers, and carrots; deglaze with ground peanuts and broth, bringing up all that good stuff from the pan; then simmer until tender and awesome. Serve hot over rice.”

“The future?” N’Dour replies, perhaps surprised by the question.

Bourdain: “Yes, the future. Twenty years from now, where will Senegal be?”

N’Dour: “What I hope is, in 20 years, Senegal is going to be the place for great and big contributions of what we call Islam.”

Bourdain: “Do you think there's any danger of the kind of radical Islam that we see taking hold in many places in Africa?”

N’Dour: “All these people who are using the religion, the Muslim religion, to do bad things — I think Senegal sets (a good) example. This country I love, my country has many different models of the religion. This country, you know — you are here. I'm doing my local bissap “ — a drink made from a hibiscus flower known as the Roselle; the sepals of the hibiscus, when infused in hot water, leave a pink, red, magenta or dark shade of water — “and you are here, with your beer, in a country that is 95 percent Muslim.”

Bourdain: “Right.”

N’Dour: “And I think this example can help all the world.”

Bourdain: “I hope so. Inshallah.”

By the end, Bourdain is profoundly moved by this country of 18 million. Shaken to his core. What better way to close this, then, than with his own words,.

“Senegal is one of the best arguments for travel I can think of. Because the more we see of the world, actually meet who we are talking about — or think we are talking about — the more we take a walk, however briefly, in other people’s shoes, see how other people live, people who are supposedly so different than us, and find ourselves — as so often and so inevitably happens — recipients of random acts of hospitality and kindness from total strangers, then the better we shall be.

“And the happier. Knowledge — exposure — to ‘the other’ is not a contaminant.

“It enriches us. It makes — or should make us — more humble.

“Senegal. It’s someplace that everyone, given the chance, should go.”

Inshallah.

Supplementary reading:

https://explorepartsunknown.com/senegal/senegal-women-equality/

https://explorepartsunknown.com/senegal/senegal-episode-facts/

https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-senegal/

CNN

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Bourdain in Georgia (Sakartvelo)

“I don’t know what it says about a place that since I’ve arrived in this country … I’m either drinking or hung over.” This was Tony Bourdain in Georgia (the country, not the state), faithful sidekick Zamir Gotta in tow.

One of the many joys of Tony Bourdain’s sojourn to Tbilisi, Georgia, for CNN’s Parts Unknown in November 2015 comes near the end of the hour, when gallery owner Tamuna Gvaberidze, the friend of Keti Borchorishvili, Georgia’s Deputy Minister of the Economy (“I like to show off my country! You know, I want to sometimes scream, ‘Look! This is my country! Come and visit!’” ) tells Bourdain that he bears a striking resemblance to the filmmaker David Lynch.

This is not entirely flattering to Bourdain, as Lynch is a full decade older.

Not true, Bourdain protests. “I’m David Lynch? Really? He has better hair.”

Gvaberidze turns to Borchorishvili — who, remember, is the country’s deputy minister for the economy —and tells her friend: “I’m so happy he says he likes Georgia, really.”

“Why would I not?” Bourdain says, downing another shot of chacha, the local brandy.

This, after noting in his voiceover that, “The ladies convinced us to make the 90-minute drive to this village and this restaurant, and I’m glad they did. By the time I’ve had some more of the delicious and lethal chacha and many glasses of Georgian wine, after boiled beets in a wild plum sauce and freshly foraged mushrooms with chilli pepper and mint tarragon, baby lamb stewed in its own fat with cumin and cooked together with wild rice biryani-style… after all this, I am convinced. I am co-opted. I am recruited. Count me as a useful idiot, a witting agent of the Ministry of Tourism, for I may as well be.”

“You’re becoming a Georgian,” Gvaberidze tells him. “Be careful.”

Georgia. Sakartvelo. [sak”art”elo]. A country in Eastern Europe (pop. 3.7 million) — transcontinental, meaning it links Eastern Europe with Western Asia.

Wenn der wind von osten weht. “When the wind blows” — from the north and the northeast.

Neighbours: Russia (north and northeast), the Black Sea (west), Armenia (south), Turkey (southwest), and Azerbaijan (southeast), aka in Russia’s long shadow. Not far from those bastions of peace and civility, Iran and Syria. Best not mention Abkhazia or South Ossetia. That’s how wars start.

Georgia is also known — and this is where Anthony Bourdain and his ever-faithful fixer, sidekick, erstwhile host and one-time travelling companion Zamir Gotta enter the frame — as one of the world’s earliest known sites of winemaking (“‘World’s oldest wine’ found in 8,000-year-old jars in Georgia,” BBC News, 13 Nov. 2017).

Georgian wine has the reputation it has, fresh and pure, because of its unique fermentation process, free of the additives that would be needed if it were bottled and exported but which would affect the natural taste.

And then there’s the food.

Food is considered one of the pillars of Georgian society. You do not mess with the food.

Bourdain’s interest would have been piqued right there. Enter CNN, to pay the bills, and Parts Unknown, to provide the excuse to go.

First, though, there was the small matter of of history, recent and past. Georgia, originally part of Tsarist Russia, was an independent republic under German protection briefly, in 1917, following the Russian Revolution, but found itself invaded and annexed by the Soviet Red Army in 1921.

Georgia, always one of the more rebellious of the former Soviet republics, carved out the independence of a kind with secession from the Soviet Union in 1991 some 70  years later, just two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the die was cast.

The bad blood between Georgia and Russia goes back a long way.

Georgia officially adopted Christianity in the 4th century — you can practically sense the seething hostility from the country’s Islamic neighbours — not to mention those non-believing Soviet Marxists, never too keen on any religion, let alone one with reminders of Russia’s own Orthodox Church, banned by the Soviet apparatchiks at the time.

After the Rose Revolution (peaceful) and official breakaway from post-Soviet Russia in 2003 —“More vodka, Comrade Yeltsin?” —  Georgia actively pursued a pro-Western foreign policy and introduced the democratic and economic reforms needed to win the appreciation of — and full integration into — the European Union and NATO.

For Russia, led by Vladimir Putin at the time (yes, Putin has been around that long, pulling strings the entire time) and his ideological partner in crimes against humanity, Dmitry Medvedev, this was distinctly uncool.

And so — the Russo-Georgian War, also known as “the Russian invasion of Georgia” [sic], which broke out in August 2008.

The entire South Caucasus became a fire zone, complete with the bombing of civilian towns and villages and accusations of genocide. Sound familiar? Today, the Russo-Georgian War is considered to be the first European war of the 21st century. It would not be the last.

Human Rights Watch accused both sides of breaching international rules governing war — again, does this sound familiar? — and again, decent, ordinary, everyday working people and their families got the worst of it.

In the end, the International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights couldn’t figure out what was going on, let alone who was primarily to blame, so why should you?

Enter Bourdain, ZPZ camera crew in tow, with CNN paying the bills, coupled with Georgia’s historic relationship with good food and fine wine.

Of course, having Zamir Gotta in tow — affable, loquacious, willing to put up with all kinds of nonsense at the hands of the famously irascible Bourdain, including, and I’m not making this up, a semi-naked pole dance — helped.

“You need some nightlife,” Zamir tells him, after they fail at a game of roulette in the off-season resort town of Batumi, Georgia’s second city. “I mean, the losers deserve some relief, right?”

“Yes,” Bourdain replies. “(There’s) nothing like a loser in a nightclub and I emanate loser, so let's go.”

“Unsurprisingly,” Bourdain adds in voice-over, “Zamir and I suck at gambling with a force equivalent to a thousand suns. I should have just pulled my pants down and handed over my money the second we walked into the door. But actually, that came later.”

Cue the pole dance. Zamir on the pole. Some sights, once seen, are hard to unsee.

But wait, there’s more.

Together, they sample the local chacha (brandy to you) in Batumi’s aptly named Clouds Bar—as in, the clouds are where your head’s likely to be after downing one too many shots of the local hooch.

They retire t5r8to Sazandari Restaurant, a traditional Georgian eaterie known for its hangover cures. Those cures include chashushuli, slow-cooked veal with tomato and onion seasoned with chillies, coriander and fennel, and khashi, a broth made with beef bones and tripe served with fresh garlic, though Bourdain admits in a moment of weakness that perhaps khashi might not be the best cure for a hangover.

Ditching Zamir temporarily — the semi-naked pole dance might have been a bridge too far — Bourdain moves on to Tbilisi, Georgia’s foremost city (pop. 1.2 million), where he noshes on local culinary delights and debates the meaning of life at Gabriadze Café with expat journalist Paul Rimple, local bureau chief for the online food resource Culinary Backstreets.

Together, they pick their way through a salad of orange, almonds and honey before turning to manly-sized portions of shkmeruli, chicken slow-baked in an oven and simmered in milk and garlic, together with lamb ribs, grilled and served in a pomegranate sauce with slices of fried eggplant and a walnut filling.

Excursions to Sofia Melnikova’s Fantastic Douqan Restaurant (that’s its name) follow, where Bourdain samples khinkali, dumplings filled with broth and spicy beef, eaten in the traditional way using one’s hands, and finally to Culinairum Khasheria, known for its fusion of traditional Georgian soup with caramelized onions and wild trout tartar, and chakapuli stew, made with mussels simmered in tarragon and wine sauce … coupled with yet more shots of chacha — a digestive, naturally; why, what did you think it was for? — and tonis puri, Georgian bread cooked in an outdoor tandoori-style oven.

If by this point you’re thinking the episode is focusing more on food than some of Parts Unknown’s more politically and geographically minded outings, well … you’re not far wrong.

In the end, for all Georgia’s troubled past and geopolitical tensions of the present, Georgia is a remarkably uplifting and life-affirming episode.

I reached out to Zamir before filing this post to the group.

Keep in mind that of all the people who met and had chance encounters with Bourdain along the way. Zamir is one of a relative few who got to know him at his best, and less than best. What better way, then, than to close with Zamir’s own words, in the present day — Zamir Gotta, on the tao of Bourdain and the legacy he’s left behind.

“The Georgia episode happened to be my last one with Tony. While there, he inspired me to come up with my own ‘Zamir Vodka’ brand, which I eventually did. It helps me keep up his legacy. I hope ‘the Bourdain congregation’ follow me and revisit his footsteps in countries like Georgia and Uzbekistan. I’m a lucky man to be able to continue my Peacemaking mission with his blessing. [Georgia] is symbolically sad but a very meaningful episode for me.”

And there it is.

Supplementary reading:

     https://medium.com/parts-unknown/georgia-7d4c84411ffd

     https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthonyBourdain/comments/j1ndki/tbilisi_georgia_episode_parts_unknown/

     https://explorepartsunknown.com/tbilisi/bourdain-off-the-cuff-tbilisi/

CNN

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Bourdain in the Greek Islands

And now for something completely different: an escape from the news headlines. “Pretend that everywhere is just like here: beautiful, sleepy, delicious food. Everything is just fine.” This was Tony Bourdain, getting away from it all in the summer of 2016.

It's a restive world right now. Lebanon. Gaza. Ukraine. The climate crisis. Growing signs of financial turmoil in the markets. An endless litany of horror stories on the nightly news.

Anyone looking to get away from it all — as Tony Bourdain did in October  2015, nine years ago now, during a swing through Greece’s Cyclades islands for CNN’s Parts Unknown — could do worse than to revisit, or perhaps visit for the first time, Bourdain’s Parts Unknown episode set in the Greek islands.

Bourdain gave the familiar tourist hotspots — Mykonos, Santorini, — a pass in favour of the island of NaxosThe Greek Islands, settle on the Mediterranean isle of Naxos for several weeks, far away from news headlines of a global market crash, street riots in Athens, refugees fleeing a widening war in the Middle East and the ever-present threat, now a clear and present danger worldwide, of the climate crisis.

This is actually a perfect time to revisit the Parts Unknown episode The Greek Islands, if only because the more things change— well, you know the rest.

Bourdain was coming off a year of travelling through hardcore conflict zones, regions beset by civil unrest and roiled by poverty, growing inequality and political turmoil. Through his lifetime affinity for Greek mythology and a desire to kick off a new season of Parts Unknown by taking a break from CNN’s usual fare of fire and fury, Bourdain, tailed by veteran producer/director Tom Vitale and a crew that included Bourdain’s longtime cameraman Zach Zamboni among others, started out with a simple premise, as he put it in his Field Notes at the time for CNN, to “go to a really nice, laid-back Greek island — one with an actual local culture, businesses and income streams outside of tourism — and slide gently into another year of making television whilst maintaining my suntan from summer vacation.”

Preferably an island without a sea of other visitors. Leave Crete to the cretins, as he might have said — but only in a moment of weakness.

And so, lo and behold, this. The Greek Islands. Praise the gods of Ancient Greece. Mt. Olympus and their human enablers:  Apollo, Aphrodite, Poseidon, Athena, Dionysus, Hera, Demeter and the gang, ably aided and abetted by their human enablers, heroes all (well, nearly all): Achilles, Theseus, Odysseus, Heracles, Aeneas, Orpheus,  Helen of Troy (actually, she was from Sparta, but why quibble over a mere detail).

Think of it: an idyllic two weeks or so of languishing in the Mediterranean, hoping and dreaming of a better world, surrounded by good food and good people. Bourdain’s idea was to resurrect a sense of not just what the Mediterranean was during Homer’s time, not the cartoon character but the worthy wordsmith behind those classic epic poems of Ancient Greece, Iliad and The Odyssey. Those heady times could return, Bourdain insisted, after several glasses of Mylonas “Naked Truth,” a wine easy on the nose  —those in the know say)  “evolved and complex with quince, cheese and a certain nuttiness,” while on the mouth, “full and round, warm and nutty — the finish is long!” If only those-in-charge had the wisdom and foresight — yes, that’s a touch of Bourdainesque sarcasm in play there, clever of you to catch it — to nurture and encourage the pursuit of pleasure, be it philosophical or physical, public or ion private, far away from the madding crowds and a world beset with trials and tribulations and, in the Eastern Mediterranean and much of the Middle East, governed by religious fanatics. Enough of these Netanyahus and Yahya Sinwars — bring back Pericles, Leonides and Agamemnon (during his better days; his worse days, not so much).

Of course, reading Greek poetry in peaceful, contemplative solitude wouldn’t be Bourdain without his ready wit and caustic observations of the human condition. And The Greek Islands, while bucolic and pleasantly restoring, has all that and more.

Naxos, for one.

Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades and the centre of ancient Cycladic culture is not a tourist island. It’s best known for its being the source of emery, a rock rich in corundum, and for being the place where the young Zeus of Greek mythology was raised in a cave on an island the poet Homer lionized as Dia, the sacred island “of the Goddess.” There is no nightlife. Not even Coldplay. The party scene is virtually non-existent, or at least it was at the time Bourdain visited. This was about as close to the classic Greek islands as anyone was likely to get in the early 21st century.

Vitale and his camera team wanted to keep the camera constantly moving, ever-so-slowly even, to create a kind of dreamy drift through the chill life in the Greek islands. Naxos is relatively secluded, despite its size, and steeped in a deep small-island tradition of locally sourced food and good wine, a place where close friends and family are what matters, not catering to cruise ships and the great unwashed who board them.

“We shot an offshore dive on a sunken shipwreck, drank raki with the local governor and his in-laws, and sampled fresh fish right off the boat,” Jerry Risius, the episode’s director-of-photography, wrote in his blog at the time, shortly before Greek Islands aired on CNN.

“We had an amazing meal with the politically outspoken group the Stray Bitches, and travelled to the mountainous village of Apeiranthos, where we shot Tony enjoying a traditional celebration in the town square.

“Sometimes, we luck out with local crews … and in Greece, we lucked out. We had the most amazing crew. They helped keep our cameras in constant movement. It was solitary Tony magic with a location-appropriate tempo, and it created a Greek epic.”

Parts Unknown was all about showing us the world through Bourdain’s eyes, in his own words, and on that front, he didn’t disappoint. Bourdain wouldn’t be Bourdain without, well, Bourdain.

On Greece’s financial crisis in 2015, about to happen again? “It’s bumming me out. It’s harshing my total buzz.”

Sorry, Homer, but Odysseus, aka Ulysses, was somewhat of a cad. “I can tell you this: Ulysses was kind of dick. I mean, he left his wife alone for how long?”

On getting away from it all: “The pressures of the outside world I don’t want to think about. I’m on a Greek Island here. It's a beautiful day. I’m planning on passing out on the beach, snorkelling, you know, maybe doing some watercolours, doing a little cooking, napping, eating, more napping, contemplating the mysteries of the universe, or napping, either one or eating cheese — all of those are honourable options. I mean, that’s a vacation to me: staying put and doing nothing.”

The party scene in small-town Greece, in Apeiranthos: “The sort of place where you can still walk into a town square and find yourself caught up in a celebration. This one celebrates Greco-American actor John Stamos’ return to ‘Full House.’”

Bottom line: In the end, Bourdain sought a little peace and quiet, and peace and quiet is pretty much what he found. “The narrow slices of life depicted in this episode,” he wrote in his Field Notes at the time, “are me learning right there along with you.”

Can’t go wrong there.

Supplementary reading:

     https://explorepartsunknown.com/greek-islands/greece-episode-facts/

     https://explorepartsunknown.com/greek-islands/bourdains-field-notes-the-greek-islands/

     https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-greece/

CNN

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Bourdain in Istanbul

Is there still a place in the modern world for romantics, or will they slowly be crushed by modernity? This is the question Tony Bourdain wrestled with during his 2015 visit to Türkiye for CNN. The question stil applies, perhaps even more so today.

It’s uncanny how even today, all these years later, Tony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown episodes remain relevant on a global scale — not just the domestic US-based hours, as relevant as those are, but the foreign-based hours, with their global, international implications. Turkey, for example. Who can watch his  Parts Unknown episode about Turkey, his second visit to that country, and not think about the situation facing viewers in his home country of the US, today.

Here’s Bourdain at the end of Istanbul, which first aired on CNN on the 8th of November in 2015:

“Democracy is always a fragile thing. Ninety-two years ago, modern Turkey was assembled from the fragments of the Ottoman Empire. It always struggled to find a balance between those in power and the consent of its widely diverse population.

“Since the filming of this episode, Turkey's newly-elected parliament failed to form a coalition, and President Erdogan quickly called for new elections. … Many claim that he effectively plunged Turkey into conflict to take advantage of an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty and improve his party's chances of success. This is not an unreasonable assumption on anyone's part. Fear works. Fear gets votes. The opposition had hoped that the tide was turning. It remains to be seen if they have any reason to hope.”

Hope, too, it would appear, is a fragile thing.

Earlier in the program, talking to Sezar Dallaryan, the son of Armenian restaurateurs in a diverse ethnic neighbourhood of Istanbul — Greek, Turkish, Jewish and Armenian —  slated for redevelopment, like much of Istanbul during Recep Erdogan’s drive to modernity through a construction boom and the economic might a construction boom will bring, Bourdain asks his host if there’s still a place in Istanbul for romantics and the old way of life.

Political protesters, he is told, were kidnapped, and many disappeared. Ordinary, everyday people. “They were romantics,” Dallaryan tells Bourdain. “They killed those people. They used real guns. … It's the way people feel now. Because of the way that our president talks. It's not only a political issue; it's a reality. Somehow, he let people fight with hate. … That's what I'm afraid of. That's why I'm telling you that the young generation, Armenians, will leave this country.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Bourdain tells him. “I mean, I’m not really an optimistic person, but I hope you're wrong about Istanbul, because it's an amazing place.”

“I hope you will be the one who's right,” Dellaryan replies.

Don’t think the episode is a total downer, though. That isn’t who Bourdain was, deep down, and it isn’t the reason so many of us follow him to this day.

There is always time for good food, for example. Bourdain never said so in so many words — that would have been too obvious for him, and Anthony Bourdain didn’t do obvious — but for people with disparate views, breaking bread together was, and still is, the great peacemaker.

Food now, Bourdain says. “We’ll save the world later.”

So — cue raki, Turkish anise liquor.

Iskembe çorbasi, tripe soup.

Pide, Turkish flatbread, with ground meat, cheese and onions.

A traditional spread of mezze, Bourdain notes, “an extremely tasty, very diverse assortment of dishes originating in every corner of the former Ottoman Empire” — Circassian chicken, fava beans, rice with mussels, eggplant, stuffed grape leaves, poached eggs with yogurt — ”all classic and all delicious.

“Man, this is so... Let me say, this food is extraordinary. I mean really, really, really amazing.”

Restaurants visited: Akar Lokantasi, next to Mihrimah Sultan Camii, Fatih; Poyraz Sahil Balik Restaurant in Istanbul’s Beykoz neighbourhood; Mutfak Dili Ev Yemekleri, Terane Caddesi, Ziyali Sokak No. 8, Karaköy; Karpi, Beylerbeyi Mahallesi, No. 2 Üsküdar, Istanbul; Mikla, the Marmara Pera, Mešrutiyet Caddesi, No,. 15, Beyoglu, Istanabul.

And if that sounds like a mouthful, it is a different country, different culture. Different language.

Bourdain’s sidekicks for the outing included Esra Yalçinalp, his longtime friend from his No Reservations visit — Esra opened and closed that hour as well — Ìhsan Aknur, Istanbul’s most famousest — and most garrulous — taxi driver (“How can you ask a taxi driver, did you make an accident?!” he shrieks at Bourdain, narrowly avoiding just that, on-camera at that); and Gündüz Vassaf, psychologist and author, and Vassaf’s friend, Serra Yimaz, an actress.

“What does it mean to be Turkish?  Bourdain asks them.

“Serra, are you Turkish?” Vassaf asks Yimaz playfully.

“Yes,” she replies. “But it’s not my fault.”

Speaking for himself, Istanbul finds Bourdain in an alternatively pensive and hopeful frame of mind.

“Ten years from now,” he asks Nuri Egeli, a prominent, successful businessman and avowed supporter of Erdogan’s policies, at a posh rooftop bar overlooking the night lights of Istanbul’s fast-growing skyline, “will we be able to come to this bar, or a bar like it, and drink lots of gin drinks and misbehave?”

“No problem,” Egeli replies. “This is still a party town. We drink hard.”

Bourdain: “So it's all about money.”

Egeli: “It's all about money. Everything is all about money in the world.”

Well, not exactly. Don’t forget the food.

There’s always room for food.

Na zdorovie.

Supplementary reading:

     https://medium.com/parts-unknown/istanbul-812a0d6b30d6

     https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-istanbul/

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Bourdain in Ethiopia (with Marcus Samuelsson)

“This stuffing of food in your fellow diners’ face is called gursha, and that’s what you do to show your affection and respect. Try this at the Waffle House some time and prepare for awkwardness.” Tony Bourdain in Ethiopia, in 2015.

“Admit it. You hear the name Ethiopia, and you think of starving children with distended bellies. You just think famine and despair are so awful you frankly do not want to even think about it anymore.

“But take a look, Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia. A cool, high-altitude urban center that will both confirm and confound expectations. Fueled largely by direct foreign investment and a returning Ethiopian Diaspora eager to be part of the new growth, things are changing in Addis. It is one of the fastest growing economies in the world.”

The music. The food. Diaspora. Returning to one’s roots. The value of friendship. The importance of family.

These are the things Tony Bourdain chose to focus on in his Parts Unknown episode Ethiopia, which first aired on CNN in October, 2015. The famous — or perhaps that should be infamous — famine of 1983-’85, Bob Geldof and Live Aid rate just a brief mention, not because Bourdain chose to ignore it but because, he implies, others have done it before him, and better. Geldof, for one.

Instead, there’s the music: Mahmoud Ahmed, performing as Mehamud Ahmed, on Embeba Gora, Bemem Sebeb Litlash and others; Hailu Mergia, with Musicawi Silt, from the album Tche Belew; Thomas Gobena, aka Thomas T. Gobena, with Brothers, from the album The John Prester Sessions; and Abegasu Shiota, with Wonchi Breeze, as performed by Shiota and bandmates Misale Legesse, Girum Mezmur, Yared Tefera, Misale Legesse, and too many othersa to mention here.

If I’ve been overly specific with the song names and tracks — Bourdain and Parts Unknown background composer Mike Ruffino also found room for a Western standard, Sha-la-la, performed by his writer/composer friend Josh Homme and Mark Lanegan of Queens of the Stone Age — it’s because music plays such an important role in Ethiopia, and because, thanks to our modern-day age of technology and global access to world music at the touch of a button, any song, anywhere, is yours for the asking. Bourdain was at his best when combining specificity — attention to cultural detail — with existential bigger-picture questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? It’s one of the reasons Bourdain is still with us, why we’re still watching his shows and talking about him today.

And there’s Africa. The lure and pull of that amazing, enthralling, contradictory and maddeningly complex continent, with its 54 countries and 3,000 tribes and languages with roots that underpin many of the world’s major language families, drew Bourdain in as it has countless others, myself included. Ethiopia finds Bourdain in a relaxed, joyous frame of mind, but also quietly reflective. Africa is the birthplace of humankind — noted anthropologist and paleontologist Mary Leakey more-or-less settled that issue on July 17, 1959, with her discovery of the fossil remains of Zinjanthropus boisei, one of humankind’s earliest known ancestors, later nicknamed “East Africa Man,” aka “Nutcracker Man,” at Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti plains of Tanzania, a stone’s throw down the Great Rift Valley from southwestern Ethiopia. Bourdain finds himself profoundly moved by Ethiopia, and not for the first time in that part of Africa, and is momentarily caught at a loss for words — which, as any avid viewer of Parts Unknown knows, was rare indeed.

Bourdain’s friend, companion and spirit guide on his Ethiopian expedition is Ethiopian-born, Swedish-raised, Harlem NY chef Marcus Samuelsson — birth name Kassahun Tsegie —whose family fled Ethiopia in the turmoil of Ethiopia’s 1974 civil war, a blood-soaked conflagration that saw then-emperor Haile Selassie deposed by a motley crew of Soviet-backed Marxist-Leninist rebels in a coup d’état that vaulted an ambitious young army officer and reluctant bureaucrat Mengistu Haile Mariam to power, a self-righteous dude and diehard Communist who would go down as one of history’s more notable bad guys, if not an out-and-out nut job. Selassie died in 1975 of “natural causes,” according to the official record, though evidence later emerged that he was strangled on orders of Mengistu’s military government; Mengistu’s apparatchiks no doubt irritated by Selassie’s presence and his continuing insistence on staying alive.

Samuelsson, who first became interested in cooking through his maternal grandmother in Sweden, would go on to become the executive chef of Aquavit, the Scandinavian fusion restaurant in midtown Manhattan, at the ripe old age of 24.

He was voted New York’s finest chef in 2003 by the James Beard Foundation and would go on to pen the African-inspired cookbook The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa in 2006.

You might say Samuelsson comes by his culinary roots honestly, as did Bourdain. They both put in the labor and long hours necessary to get where they did in the cooking world.

You might also say that New York as a town was big enough for the two of them: They became fast friends.

Samuelsson’s literary efforts didn’t end with Soul of a New Cuisine: the Wall Street Journal wrote of his 2013 memoir Yes, Chef (co-written with journalist Veronica Chambers): “Plenty of celebrity chefs have a compelling story to tell, but none of them can top [this] one.”

(Bourdain, from somewhere Up There, might lay claim to equal time on that one but, truth is, that wouldn’t be his style.)

A shout-out is due here for Parts Unknown director-producer and cameraman Morgan Fallon, who took on all three duties for Ethiopia. His official bio — not to mention his Instagram and Twitter accounts — note he was nominated ten times over the years for an Emmy but didn’t win as often as he could have — should have. Would it be overcooking things to say that makes him the Stanley Kubrick of cameramen? (Kubrick, let the record note, never won an Oscar for directing, though he did win one for special effects, for 2001: A Space Odyssey — an insult, really, that smacks of condescension more than anything else.)

Ethiopia is about food and family and life itself, but little can top the final few minutes when Samuelsson, trailed by Bourdain, is reunited with his frail, elderly biological father, Tsegie, in the Ethiopian village where Samuelsson was born.

Their reunion is especially poignant because Samuelsson’s mother died in a tuberculosis epidemic when he was just three years old. As recalled in Parts Unknown, Samuelsson and his older sister Fantaye were separated from their family in the tumult and chaos of the 1974 civil war, and were adopted by Swedish geologist Lennart Samuelsson and his wife Anne-Marie and raised in Göteborg, Sweden (Gothenburg to you and me) before Samuelsson’s cooking apprenticeship in Switzerland, Austria and, in 1994, the US.

It’s a remarkable story of sacrifice and success, and refutes this idea of today’s populists that immigration is a scam.

“So, how does it feel to be back?” Bourdain asks Samuelsson at Ethiopia’s end. “I have to tell you, if I can be honest, you seem conflicted.”

“Yes,” Samuelsson says quietly. “There are a thousand thoughts going through my head. I feel a little guilty that I got out.”

Bourdain: “If you stayed, what do you think you would be doing right now?”

“I would have been a farmer or dealt with some type of cattle.”

“I’m pretty sure you would be a shit farmer,” Bourdain says, with a wry smile. “You’d be the best-dressed goddamn farmer, though, that’s for sure. Where is home for you, man? What do you think?”

“That’s the eternal question for me, you know,” Samuelsson replies. “I feel at home in New York. I feel very much at home when I am in Africa. But I also feel out of place, and coming to this very place, Abru Gundana, it gives me a lot of humility, but I can’t say it’s home. I can’t say it’s home.”

As for his happiest moment in Africa, when Bourdain presses him:

“Happiest moment, I think, is … the village. For me, when the whole village comes together — music, food, culture bringing everybody together. Eating together, being together — that is by far the happiest to me.”

That’s a hell of a way to end.

Supplementary reading:

     https://medium.com/@Bourdain/ethiopia-98c2bf948d90

     https://explorepartsunknown.com/ethiopia/on-my-african-mother/

     https://eatlikebourdain.com/?s=ethiopia

CNN

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