Bourdain in Cologne

A conversation over schnitzel and Kölsch: This was Tony Bourdain on the immigration debate in Germany in 2016, though it could just as easily have applied to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Michigan and Wisconsin in November 2024. “As often happens on Parts Unknown,” Bourdain said at the time, “the show you are going to see Sunday night is not the show we intended to make.”

Ying and yang, For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Or, put another way, one of the remarkable things about Tony Bourdain’s Parts Uknown for CNN those 10 years ago now, give or take, is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Take the past week’s events, for example.

Germany, Cologne-style.

Bourdain visited Cologne and its sister city, Dusseldorf, in season 7, episode 7 of Parts Unknown. It was his only visit, though he alluded to other visits in the past that inspired filming an episode comparing the two with a view to the outside world.

First, Cologne. The ying. Carnival. and the restaurant Bei Oma Kleinmann, which opens the episode that first aired on CNN on the 5th of June, 2016.

“Bei Oma Kleinmann handles enormous crowds of revellers,” Bourdain sniffed at the outset of what would prove to be what one commenter on Reddit labelled “the best episode of the season IMO. Maybe because I've been to Cologne and had a great time there, or maybe it was because it was a bit more ‘food-centric.’ Either way, I thought it was the most interesting one this season.”

Back to Carnival. Back to Bourdain.

“Fortunately, the madness is still a few weeks away. And this is my old friend Tracey [Gudwin, friend and one-time producer for No Reservations], who had the good or bad fortune, depending on how you look at it, to travel and produce shows around the world with me for many years. Anke [Lönne] is from Cologne and makes me feel better about my Carnival phobia.”

The trio swapped anecdotes over schnitzel, in Bourdain’s words, “surfboard-sized slabs of veal and pork filled with many wonderful things, dredge in breadcrumbs and fried in magical, deep fat.”

The restaurant Bei Oma Kleinmann, even today, rates four and a half stars on TripAdvisor, based on more than 1,500 reviews.”Die Gaststätte "Bei Oma Kleinmann" ist eine traditionsreiche, alte, kölsche Kneipe mit jungem Herzen!

“Outstanding,” one commenter noted on TripAdvisor just this past month. “Great food, fabulous service and an unbeatable atmosphere. What's not to like? The best Wiener schnitzels we've had.” No, this review is not an inside job, as TripAdvisor’s (somewhat defensive) caveat notes. “This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.” On second thought, save yourself the trouble.

“Carnival,” Bourdain repeats. To Tracey Gudwin: “I do, and I'm not ashamed to say it.”

Bourdain: ”Will jesters and bards and medievally attired pranksters be popping up during my stay here?”

Tracey: ”You're missing out. You're really ar—“

Bourdain: “Mimes? No mimes, troubadours, jugglers, uh, human statues?”

Tracey: “Oh, come on.”

Anke Lönne: “All of them are wearing bonkers costumes and look like shit. I don't like it. No, I always get embarrassed about those people.”

Bourdain: “I hate Carnival.”

Anke: “I hate Carnival, too.”

Bourdain: “Are there parades?”

“Yes.”

Bourdain: “I hate parades.”

Tracey: “OK.”

Bourdain: “Are there clowns?”

Tracey: “You hate clowns.”

Bourdain: “I hate clowns.”

“Jesters?”

“Yeah, occasionally.”

Bourdain: “Festive attire? I have beer right now. I don't need no stinkin’ Carnival to drink beer, man. And as I understand it, I am urged to drink beer as part of a community of beer drinkers with other bros. I hate bros.”

Tracey: “It's not just bros. It's a whole community of people speaking in dialect, singing songs in dialect.”

Bourdain: “Singing, I forgot to mention that.”

Tracey: “Singing is good.”

Bourdain: “I hate that too.”

Tracey: “There is another side, and if you open your heart, you would see it.”

Bourdain: “My heart is a cold, cold place, and there's no room in it for jugglers. What did you think when you heard that I wanted to come to Germany and go to Cologne?”

Tracey: “I thought that’s awesome because Cologne is unlike any other city in Germany that I can really identify with. It's like I have this love affair with it.”

Bourdain: “I often say that the places I go, there's a pheromonic decision made very quickly. You step outside the airport terminal, and then you go, maybe you know right away: There's something about this place that's … that I think I'm going to like.”

And so, on to Kleine Glocke, “a hangout for Cologne’s artist community since the First World War,” where Bourdain sampled sauerbraten (pot roast) with chef René Srtessi; Ox & Klee Köln, where Bourdain met former rocker Irmin Schmidt of the Krautrock band Can, where they discussed the state of the world — and world music — over grilled lobster with a dash of eel and fermented and grilled scallop with black salsify served with a consomme of burned hay, lemon gelee and walnut oil.

Up next: Brauerei zur Malzmühle, where Bourdain dined with Heinz Grüne, a connoisseur of — and world-renowned expert in — German beer, in particular Kölsch, a pale ale created and brewed in Cologne. They downed Kölsch over a meal of cured pork, Gouda cheese on rye, mettbtötchen, raw minced pork on a roll, and Himmel und Erde, blood sausage served with fried onions, mashed potatoes and applesauce.

Overall, Bourdain had himself a merry old time — the ever-looming threat of Carnival aside.

And now the yang.

Bourdain again: “So, let's talk about the elephant in the room. We know that Cologne is a proudly tolerant, fun-loving, beer-drinking, pork-happy and friendly little city. But just a few days before we arrived, Cologne became the focus of the whole argument over Europe's refugee crisis.”

Immigration.

“Cologne, of all places, is now the example for both sides of an increasingly bitter argument over whether Europe, and by extension the world, should turn their backs on the millions of refugees spilling out of Syria, Iraq, and a Middle East spinning into chaos and slaughter.

“With the bodies of children washing up on Greek beaches and few other countries willing to help, Germany has taken in 1.1 million people fleeing ISIS, Russian and Syrian bombs, and war. One should, I believe, be admired and even celebrated for doing the morally right thing over the probably wise thing.”

Sound familiar?

At this point there’s probably a small minority of followers of this page who are starting to grumble, ‘Leave politics out of it; keep your politics to yourself,’ but to think that is to fundamentally misunderstand Bourdain and the tao of Bourdain and everything that made his television so compelling, in a way that speaks to every corner of the globe, all these years after his passing.

Bourdain again: “So here we are, Cologne, one of the most liberal, if not the most liberal cities in Germany. A city doing the right thing. And on New Year's Eve, the whole attitude towards refugees, not just European policy, but the whole moral question, was thrown into doubt.

“Cologne found itself the test case, both the example of tolerance and hope and worst-case scenario. … On the night of December 31, 2015, witnesses saw crowds of up to a thousand men described as predominately Arab and North African near Cologne Central Train Station. Some broke off into small groups, assaulting hundreds of women as they left the train station. Police were completely unprepared. The situation reportedly continued for hours.

“Three weeks after the incident, the official numbers were as horrifying as first reported. 766 criminal complaints, of which 381 are sexual offences, including three rapes. Many across the world, of course, saw this as the perfect ‘I told you so’ moment. A sadly understandable reaction. There is no minimizing 381 sexual offences in one night.”

Bourdain discusses immigration and, yes, politics — ick! — with friends and family of some the earliest refugees and immigrants to find a new home in modern-day Germany, at the Artistanbul Restaurant Innenstadt — gotta love that name — over Raki and a mezze of spicy mashed vegetable, hummus, tzatziki, beetroot and olive dip, friend eggplant, pastries with feta, and meatballs with tomato sauce and mint.

“Do you think it will change the political climate is what I'm asking,” Bourdain asks his hosts. “Before, it was relatively easy for a German politician to say, ‘Look, have a heart here. Let's do the right and moral thing." And it is being used as a club to beat any politician or leader who would like to have a more conciliatory or more welcoming attitude towards people who clearly need help.”

Food cures all, and good food over a fraught situation is what Bourdain was all about — a meeting of cultures and a way to settle differences of opinion free of violence, prejudice and seemingly intractable philosophical differences.

“We are open-minded,” Bourdain is told — by both sides in the immigration debate. Yes, this is Germany, the new, post-war Germany, but still. It’s a global message. "We try to be fair to everybody,” his German hosts tell him. “We are welcoming. We're proud of that. That will never change.”

Or will it?

“I’m not that optimistic, to be honest,” another of Bourdain’s hosts tells him. “Because I’m convinced that it’s not just a German problem. It’s a world problem. It’s a European problem. We’re all stuck in the same boat.”

Like so many others, I watched last week’s US election results with a growing sense of unease, sadness and revulsion. Don’t kid yourself — immigration played a large part in voters’ decision-making. I saw what happened, and then, looking for succour, I turned to the Bourdain video library and watched a food-centric Parts Unknown made nearly ten years ago, heard what Bourdain had to say, listened to the people around him speak, and I thought, wow, wow, wow.

Bourdain was one of the greats, and he made a lot of sense that could help fix the problems in the world. Some of them, anyway.

Supplementary reading:

https://medium.com/parts-unknown/the-right-thing-af88aff2aa08

https://www.postcard.inc/@partsunknown/l/4aBvthoBjJh/cologne

https://explorepartsunknown.com/cologne/episode-intel-from-cologne/

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 Manila

You can’t go home again. Or can you? In this one, Anthony Bourdain examined the cultural impact of ‘OFW’s,’ “Overseas Filipino Workers,” and left at least one viewer in tears by the end.

If any longtime Bourdainophile had any doubts that Anthony Bourdain was no longer doing a strictly “food travel show” with Parts Unknown, those doubts were dispelled once and for all by the seventh-season opener, which kicked off on CNN with an eccentric, hard-to-read look at Manila, Philippines on April 24, 2016.

When Bourdain and his by-then close-knit team — Zach Zamboni, Todd Liebler, Tom Vitale and others at Zero Point Zero, a team that had been together thick and thin through countless excursions around the world for more than a decade — made the jump to CNN from the Travel Channel, the clue was in the name: The focus would be more on culture, politics, history, philosophy and, yes, the news, as opposed to the primarily food-focused lean of A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations and The Layover. It’s hard to look at A Cook’s Tour today and not see it for what it was — Anthony Bourdain Unplugged, the acoustic Bourdain, the brash, outspoken born-and-bred New Yorker, food enthusiast and frontline chef behind Kitchen Confidential, his tell-all “Hide the Kids, This Is Going to Get Ugly” look at how a busy, top-of-the-line restaurant kitchen really works. If A Cook’s Tour was Bourdain’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Parts Unknown was his Dark Side of the Moon: sophisticated, serious, meditative, studious, solemn, profound, handsomely mounted, mature, all grown up, and a global, worldwide smash. This was Bourdain in his pomp, no longer playing to a tiny audience of hardcore devotees on some obscure, out-of-the-way cable channel but rather playing to a global audience of everyone from hard-working, decent, everyday blue-collar folks to world leaders and global celebrities — basically, anyone and everyone with a working Internet connection. If the world was truly a global village, Bourdain was its town crier, librarian, historian and father confessor, a man of the people, for the people, and by the people.

And so, Manila.

Not everyone was a fan. Manila, with its curious shifts in tone — it’s Christmas in April! Here’s a biker cover band! Mom’s cooking is always the best, and don’t you forget it! Filipinos are some of the hardest-working people on the planet! The Philippines and Filipinos have endured an awful history of colonialism, invasion, exploitation, oppression, climate chaos, and some of the most rapacious, murderous and incompetent leaders who ever lived, and yet they're some of the nicest, neatest people you’ll ever meet!

It was never going to be for all tastes. Looking at viewers’ posts on Reddit today, a couple of points jump out.

1. Can it really have been nine years ago? It seems like only yesterday.

And 2, the world has changed so much in just nine short years.

Not just Bourdain’s world, but our world. Gaza. Lebanon. Ukraine. October 7th. The ongoing environmental destruction of the Amazon rainforest. The collapse of ecosystems around the world. Climate chaos. MAGA. The UN on the verge of total collapse. If there’s one comment — you couldn’t really call it a criticism — about Bourdain’s work in Parts Unknown today, it’s that much of it doesn’t seem too relevant to today’s world.

And yet … the more things change, the more much of Bourdain’s truthtelling seems prescient today. Eerily so.

In his essay for Medium at the time — see the link below — Bourdain explains that production of the Manila episode was hampered by an oncoming, full-blown typhoon, which restricted their movements around one of the largest, most populous and poverty-stricken cities on the planet.

And so, rather than visit every culinary nook and cranny in a city renowned for its wide variety of food experiences — familiar and unfamiliar eateries like Van Gogh is Bipolar in Quezon City, Neil’s Kitchen in Manila’s Westgate Center, Sebastian’s Ice Cream (“the Premiere Artisinal Ice Cream in Manila!”), and so on — Bourdain and his creative colleagues chose to focus on families cooking at home, biker cover bands, balikbayan boxes (corrugated boxes containing Christmas packages sent home by overseas Filipinos), the Filipino diaspora and the undeniable cultural, economic and social influence of “OFWs,” overseas Filipino workers who have scattered around the world, doing the menial jobs no one else will do and sending the money back home.

Manila was special, as one Reddit reader commented, because, for all the talk about despots like Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the tribulations endured under Japanese occupation during World War II, and the flattening of Manila by US carpet bombing during that same war, “he always throws us a bone with a food-centric show here or there anyways.”

And another:

“The show isn’t necessarily about food tourism like No Reservations was … Bourdain wanted to tell his personal story along with one of his directors, who was raised by the Filipina nanny in the episode. That Filipinos give and care for strangers’ kids, even when they had to sacrifice decades of getting to know their own children. He wanted to show the love that all those balikbayan boxes represented. That even our fast food is literally ‘Jolly Bee, and we export it around the world. He wanted to show the joy and happiness that people exude in the face of adversity, at home and abroad. I think he did a wonderful job. My mom was in tears at the end of the episode.”

Think about that.

When was the last time you watched an hour of TV that left anyone in tears at the end? Let alone a so-called ‘food tourism’ show.

That’s what CNN inherited when they somehow convinced Bourdain to leave the Travel Channel for the bigger world and a global audience, and it’s what we inherited when Bourdain emerged to become the cultural lightning rod and philosophical guidepost he still is today.

Supplementary reading:

     https://medium.com/parts-unknown/unfinished-business-8b9021ed432d

     https://explorepartsunknown.com/manila/domestic-worker/

     https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/the-sacrifices-of-an-immigrant-caregiver

     https://richardrguzman.com/ofws-anthony-bourdains-manila/

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Bourdain in Okinawa

Where King Tacos meets tofuyo and taco rice, and US military bases rub up against Chinese tourists: This is Anthony Bourdain in Okinawa, almost ten years ago to the day.

It’s a measure of Anthony Bourdain’s power as a storyteller, not to mention that he’s remembered after all this time, that even an off-the-cuff episode like Parts Unknown’s sixth-season outing to Okinawa has one commenter on Reddit saying that it made him want to go there.

It also says a lot for Bourdain that he found something interesting and little-known to say about a foreign land that has seared itself into the consciousness of a generation of Americans and others who fought in the Pacific toward the end of the Second World War. As Bourdain recounts in an episode that is by turns gripping, emotionally wrenching and oddly whimsical in parts, a history lesson reimagined as a cultural, sociological and culinary take on an enigmatic, often misunderstood corner of the world.

As Bourdain recalls, early in Okinawa, a U.S. invasion fleet of nearly 1,500 ships, a landing force of 182,000 combatants — 75,000 more than Normandy — approached Okinawa on April 1, 1945.

April 1945. Think about that. In Europe, Nazi Germany surrendered on May 7, just five weeks later. Imperial Japan would sign the official “Instrument of Surrender” four months after that, on Sept. 2 of that year.

The battle for Okinawa was hard fought, and terrible.

Bourdain reminds us in his voiceover that what came next was what Okinawans called ‘The Typhoon of Steel.’  Having island-hopped across the Pacific, Allied forces saw Okinawa as the key base from which to stage air operations and ready a landing force for the final push into the Japanese mainland and V-Day in the Pacific.

“The fighting was brutal for both sides. The cost of lives and resources for the Allied forces was tremendous. And, when it was over, military planners looked at the mainland, looked at what Okinawa had cost them, and projected even more appalling losses. What came next, we all know.”

That one line, for me, perfectly explains what separated Bourdain from the countless other travel documentarians out there: “What came next, we all know.” He didn’t feel the need to explain what happened. He took it as a given that his audience—those of us who watched his programs, rapt with attention and marvelling at his stories—were, and still are, smart enough not to be spoonfed every little detail.

“What is not widely known,” Bourdain continued — and this is another Bourdain tell, that he frequently/often/always told us things we didn’t know — “is that more people died during the battle of Okinawa than all those killed during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

There are more things we didn’t know, or at least that I myself didn’t know before watching Okinawa: that Okinawans are a separate people with a separate language, culture, cuisine and history to mainland Japan, always subservient and kept under the thumb of their larger, more traditional neighbour to the north. And during the war, Okinawans, the majority of them civilians — men, women, and children alike — paid a terrible price for being caught in the middle, an accident of geography, a footnote in history were it not for people like Bourdain who take those familiar, taken-for-granted words from Remembrance Day (the UK, Canada) and Memorial Day (the US), “Lest we forget,“ and imbue them with genuine meaning.

This is Bourdain, though, with all the wit, passion, and acerbic observations and observances we’ve come to know and expect — and enjoy — from his best work throughout Parts Unknown’s 91 hour-long episodes over 12 seasons and six years.

Bourdain: “Okinawa is a place with a fighting tradition—a history of ferocious resistance, but it’s nothing like what you might think. Not at all.”

“For all the relative rigidity of the mainland, Okinawa answers in its own unique way. Don’t eat the same thing each day. That’s boring. There’s even an Okinawan term for it, chanpurū, something mixed—bits borrowed from all over, served up for anyone to eat.”

And the playful side. This, during a martial arts (karate) exhibition:

“I’m not accusing anyone of gambling” — illegal, or shall we say “quasi-legal” in Okinawa — “but, um, I see some money changing hands.”

And the food:

“In Okinawa, pork is king. OK, they’ve got tofu, too.”

To one of the local fixer/handlers/restaurateur/chefs who share their family histories with this tall, upstart visiting American with the shock of white hair and a mouth to match:

“Your mom would’ve been like a hipster hero.”

Karate and puffer fish!

Yes, but what of the future? As anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of the news headlines knows, Okinawa is home to 30,000 US servicemen and women anchored on several of the largest, most prominent US military bases in the Pacific, casting an increasingly wary — and perhaps nervous — eye toward mainland China.

Toward the end of the hour, Bourdain breaks bread, in a manner of speaking, with Tetsuhiro Hokama Sensei (born 1944, not a terrific year to be born in that part of the world), chairman of the Kenshikai Goju-Ryu karate group, and Vivian Takeuchi, a local who has lived in both the U.S. and Okinawa. Takeuchi’s aunt, Sumiko, was an entertainer who sang at American military bases after the war.

“Okinawans may be easygoing and laid back,” Bourdain says, “but the island is also a relative hotbed of political activism, largely inspired or provoked by what Okinawans see as high-handed treatment from a central government with different cultural and historical traditions, who do not consider their needs or priorities. (Not to mention) their disproportionate shouldering of the U.S. military presence for the entire country. There are close to 30 “military installations” on Okinawa, and even though it is one of the smallest Japanese prefectures in terms of livable area, the bases account for more than half of the foreign military presence. Even more problematic, Bourdain notes, much of Okinawa's arable land suitable for farming on an island whose whole traditional identity was built around farming is being eaten up by military bases.

Everything is relative, though.

“Tourism is probably the future of Okinawa,” Bourdain tells Takeuchi at one point. “You have beautiful weather, beaches. If the bases leave, it is going to be big hotels and resorts and golf courses.

“Which is worse? Chinese tourists or American Marines?”

Takeuchi considers the question for a moment, weighing military bases against Chinese tourists and the inevitable gentrification of hotel complexes and credit card swipe machines unchecked tourism would bring, and smiles ruefully.

“I will stick with the Marines,” she says, and Bourdain laughs.

There it is.

As James Pankiewicz, Brit expat, black belt in Shōrin Ryū karate and translator for many of the karate sensei on the island, tells Bourdain: “They are saying, please eat. Less talking, more eating.”

Better than the alternative, as always. Life is about compromise, after all.

Supplementary reading:

     https://medium.com/parts-unknown/ryukyu-f7569582bbeb

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

     https://visitokinawajapan.com/discover/food-and-longevity/okinawan-food-culture/

CNN

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Bourdain in Cuba

Anthony Bourdain’s first impressions of Cuba, back in the day: “I’ve been to a lot of places, but I can’t think of another place that’s been less f**ked by time than Havana.” When Bourdain returned in 2015, it briefly looked as if that was about to change.

When Anthony Bourdain pulled back the curtain on the 2015 season of CNN’s Parts Unknown, the restless world traveller and homespun philosopher was nearing the midway point of what would prove to be his crowning moments in the TV spotlight.

Cuba was the 41st of, in the end, 95 hour-long TV episodes of Parts Unknown. In a departure of sorts for the often caustic, always irascible Bourdain, it also marked one of the few times he visited another country, cameras in tow, twice in such a short period of time. Parts Unknown’s Cuba episode followed just three years after his first visit for No Reservations’ 2011 season.

That was for Travel Channel;  the follow-up was for CNN, but that wasn’t the only difference.

In March 2016, then-US president Barack Obama announced he would be lifting travel restrictions to Cuba for American citizens. Bourdain, reasoning this was too good an opportunity to miss, made the short 90-mile hop from the Florida Keys in an uncharacteristically — for him — sunny mood, buoyed by optimism for a more hopeful future for a people snakebitten by history ever since Spanish colonization in the 15th century.

In 2015, Cuba — then as now — was a mystery wrapped inside an enigma, a historical oddity, disarmingly simple on the one hand and yet maddeningly complex on the other. Fidel Castro, still very much alive and kicking at age 89, was a bogeyman to descendants of the Cuban emigres who fled to South Florida in the wake of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959, but a hero to a significant portion of the roughly 7 million Cubans who stayed behind, not all of them by choice, for good or bad.

Today, Cuba’s population has ballooned to 11.21 million (2022), more people than live in the states of Michigan and Ohio, but many of the same old issues remain.

Dates in history can play funny tricks on one.

Castro’s death on Nov. 25th, 2016, came 51 years and three days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, on Nov. 22nd, 1963 — which, depending on how much faith you place in Oliver Stone conspiracy movies, Castro had a hand in … along with the CIA, the Russians, a cabal of disaffected Cuban emigres in South Florida, assorted Texas weirdoes, right-wing elements in the US military, and a lone nut with a gun hiding out in the Texas School Book Depository, now a museum no less, with a somewhat prosaic name, the Dallas County Administration Building.

Cuba features the work, too, of Parts Unknown director/producer Toby Oppenheimer and Bourdain’s longtime cameramen, Zach Zamboni and Todd Liebler, among too many others to name at production company Zero Point Zero.

Zamboni and Liebler must have done something right: They won the coveted Emmy Award for outstanding cinematography in a non-fiction program that year, to go with Emmys they won earlier in 2013, for Myanmar, and 2014, for Punjab.

As with so much of Bourdain’s best work — and Cuba is some of his best work if trapped in a weird political and socio-economic time warp thanks to unforeseen events, hello, President Trump! — Cuba very much has that signature Bourdain look and feel.

The rum no doubt helped. Cuba, lest we forget, is home to some all-world rum.

Bourdain repeatedly talks about how the island will drastically change, and for the better, in a matter of weeks — and, hey, What will all those people do with all those extra tourist dollars once the locals become cruise ship millionaires?

As we know now, to many’s regret, that never came to pass. Unless you’re Canadian, that is, as I am. Cuba has been something of a tourist mecca for Canadians — Europeans, too — since 1976 when then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau visited Cuba and kissed the Beard.

Richard Nixon, America’s president at the time, was singularly unimpressed. He even made a tape recording to that effect. (Nixon taped virtually everything he said, including things that were perhaps best kept to himself.)

Despite its misplaced optimism for Cuba’s short-term future, Cuba remains one of Bourdain’s more fondly recalled episodes among Bourdainophiles.

Just look at this comment, posted on Reddit a few years back:

“… watching Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and for the umpteenth time marvelling at the images. Every goddam frame — well, 90% of them — is beautifully composed with perfect depth-of-field, rich contrast, colours and textures, and striking subjects.

“And the editing is really inventive, breaking up longer shots with tiny vignettes of apparently unrelated but complementary images. … (Even) if you don't like Bourdain, you can watch (the) episode with the sound off and just groove on the images and editing. … “

And that ending!

”(It) ends with one of the most amazing shots I've ever seen on TV. For a couple of minutes, they roll slowly along a blocks-long seawall where people are hanging out in the twilight, but they frame it so they only show the people from the chest down. Two minutes of slow side-scrolling past headless bodies, graceful, casual, random, almost abstract patterns of arms and legs in the twilight.”

But wait, there’s more.

Here’s unit photographer, Zero Point Zero regular and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker David Scott Holloway, who bird-dogged Bourdain throughout his travels for CNN:

“The restaurants in Havana’s Chinatown were delicious, and surprising. Also, going to see a show at midnight in a club was great. Things could be a lot different than when we were there, but I’d still check the episode and see if any of it speaks to you. Good luck!”

And that music!

Watching Cuba is a little like watching Buena Vista Social Club coupled with Babette’s Feast.

Many of the places Bourdain ate at, and according to the site Eat Like Bourdain, are still open today, at least as of this past December: in Havana, Cafeteria a la BBQ, along with El Aljube, Fábrica de Arte and Paladar “Los Amigos” among others,  and in the small fishing town of Jaimanitas, Casy Santy, aka ‘Santy Pescador’ according to Google, where two brothers fish every morning for seafood they serve on the plate later that same day. It adds whole new meaning to the term, locally sourced.

Cuba was the first episode CNN aired after the emotional grind of Beirut, and the two make an unlikely yet oddly fitting couple. As with Beirut, the city that is, it’s clear Havana captured Bourdain’s heart.

He intimated as much in an essay for the social media platform Medium, titled Cuba!!!, which Bourdain shared in CNN's Field Notes.

“Whatever your feelings on the Cuban government of the last half-century,” he wrote, ”Cuba itself is beautiful. The Cuban people are uniquely wonderful: proud, resourceful (you sort of HAVE to be in Cuba), educated — and funny as hell. Even crumbling from neglect, Havana is the most beautiful city in all of Latin America or the Caribbean. The rum is the finest in the world, bar none. The music … fantastic.”

Bourdain saves a comment, too, for that shot at the end.

“A long tracking shot of people, mostly young Cubans, hanging out by the Malecon in Havana. We have sort of a bet among ourselves — those of us who make the show — where we challenge each other to see how long we can hold a sequence without voiceover, or dialogue. Just allow the images to speak for themselves.

“I think we outdid ourselves this time. I’m very proud of it.”

And rightly so.

Con razón.

Supplementary reading:

     https://explorepartsunknown.com/directors-cut/when-something-was-good-he-would-tell-you/

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

CNN

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