“As I’ve become older,” a reflective Anthony Bourdain noted during a visit to London for Parts Unknown’s eighth season, “I realize that the food I yearn for is the food I react to in an entirely emotional way.“ Cue the pig’s head and potato pie. “Salt and fat. Nothing better.”
In the various lists and polls of favourite Bourdain episodes, London rarely rates a mention, aside from the occasional comment — on Reddit, for ex. — that the Parts Unknown outing, which bowed in October 2016, is one of the more underwhelming of his 100 or so shows for CNN. (A handful of those 105 shows were clip shows or specials; the real number is closer to 91.) More than a few Bourdainophiles, it seems, took issue with the program’s early focus on Brexit — which passed a public vote just as Bourdain arrived, crew in tow — while others grumbled that he spent too much time with overly familiar sidekicks who you may remember from such earlier Bourdain works as A Cook’s Tour (ep. 22, season 4), No Reservations (ep. 9, season 1) and The Layover (ep. 4, season 8).
Brexit was a no-brainer — and not just the Brits who voted that, all in all, they’d be better off without Europe — in part because, as Bourdain himself noted in his Field Notes, London was yet another example of “my crew and I heading out to do one thing and, due to a sudden change in circumstances, finding ourselves doing something else entirely.”
“What we wanted and expected to be a happy, carefree, food-centric show became squeezed by the sudden arrival of an elephant in the room. I love London and have many dear friends there. I thought, what a simple thing to do: Make a show about the typical, simple pleasures of old-school British cookery, revisit some cherished favourites, connect with some old friends. A bit of lighthearted fun, some great, traditional food, some nice scenery. But I woke up the day after arriving in London to a very different country than the one I’d gone to sleep in.”
In other parts of the world, mind — known and unknown — that would be the pretext for an army coup, followed by a panic rush to the airport and many jittery, handheld camera shots of throngs of evacuees on the verge of a nervous breakdown. And you thought booking a flight on American Airlines can be a hassle.
“I woke up to a London blinking in shock. Stunned. Within hours, the prime minister announced his resignation, the leadership of both of the main political parties was in disarray, the value of the British pound plummeted to horrifying new lows and the country’s credit rating was downgraded. The future looked very different than the day before. This was a new phase, reflective of another England than the admittedly rarefied bubble of London. An inward-looking, fearful, angry, even xenophobic England, mostly rural, mostly white; their vote in many ways a mirror of the same feelings of disenfranchisement, frustration, and rage—the sense that no one cares about their disappearing way of life—that we see in Donald Trump’s base.
“In times of uncertainty and unpleasantness, when all around me seems to threaten to spin into chaos, it’s nice to have friends. It’s especially nice when those friends can cook.”
And so … we’re given an hour with Fergus Henderson of London’s St. John, “probably the most inspiring chef I know;” Nigella Lawson, “a true and loyal friend, a person of great kindness and dignity, who has always looked after me and my knucklehead colleagues when we have worked together”; and Marco Pierre White, “the chef we all wanted to be when I was coming up as a young cook and wannabe chef. A legend.
“To see him at rest, surrounding himself with beautiful things, in the countryside he has always felt strongly connected to, went a long way towards reassuring me that there are happy endings.”
All that, and a side trip to kiss the ring and have a chinwag with the legendary cartoonist and unapologetic curmudgeon Ralph Steadman, who you may remember from such anti-establishment classics as Roger Waters-era Pink Floyd and bomb thrower writer Hunter S. Thompson, a Bourdain hero if ever there were one.
Ruminating on the political state of affairs — in the UK and elsewhere — with Steadman allows Bourdain to fire off one of his more acerbic quips, that seeing Boris Johnson and Donald Trump together is like bearing witness to “a supernova of bad hair.”
London, as Paul Theroux wrote in his travel classic, The Kingdom By the Sea (Penguin, 1983), is not England, and Londoners are as different from Scousers and Geordies as Brighton is from Bristol — or Trump Tower from Woodstock NY.
It’s worth remembering — I can say this, as London is my birth city — that London was not exactly a bastion of culture and ancient civilization in the beginning; Londinium, as it was known then, was founded as a garrison town for the Romans when they invaded England in 43 AD, chosen for the point in a river where it was narrow enough to bridge — not unlike Rome itself, which predated London by some 700 years (Rome was founded also at the narrow point of a famous river, in 625 BC).
Athens, Lisbon and Naples are all older than London, and they have better winters.
For Parts Unknown, Bourdain dined on such English staples as roast bone marrow with parsley and caper salad; pickled calves tripe with radish, shaved carrot and watercress; skate poached in court bouillon and pan fried kidneys on toast; and, last but not least, pig’s head and potato pie. McDonald’s, watch your back.
For Nigella Lawson, it’s a pub crawl — but posh! — at the Princess Victoria in West London, complete with scotch eggs, whitebait and thick-cut chips (don’t you dare call them fries, and if you call them French you’re liable to be drawn-and-quartered on the spot).
Bad hair and Brexit aside — sounds like the name of a dodgy new wave punk band — Bourdain finds time for a little fun and pointed barbs.
Even Brexit, and the inevitable economic crash to follow, can be mined for humour, Bourdain found, as he tells indie rock guitarist Jamie Hince, of The Kills: “I’m enjoying your currency lately. (London) has suddenly become very affordable.”
His respect and admiration for Nigella Lawson comes naturally. Fighting a hangover on his way to Lawson’s home, he ruminates, “When the world seems like it’s spinning out of control and the inside of your skull feels like it’s being gnawed on … when you wake up still tasting tequila, feeling shame, fear, and regret in equal measures, it’s good to have friend who without judgment gives you a shoulder to cry on and maybe a simple good thing like some eggs and sympathy.”
Not to mention bread fried in rendered beef fat — spice, runny eggs, and grease.
“It’s really a matter of how many Guinness's you’ve had.”
Marco Pierre White: “As the French say, ‘We never grow old round the table.’ They also say, ‘Only the first bottle is expensive.’”
You know, perhaps it’s true what they say. Perhaps happy endings are possible.
Supplementary reading:
Nigella Lawson offers some poignant, profound remarks about Tony Bourdain in Laurie Woolever’s absorbing, compelling compendium Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography (Ecco, 2021). The entire book is worth reading, in fact, for any would-be Bourdainophile.
Key art: Photo by ©Alex Welsh/The New York Times/Redux
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