San Francisco’s Arion Press still uses decades-old machines to make beautiful books by hand. They’re one of the few remaining presses in the world that do everything from start to finish — they even cast their own type.
Arion dwells in an almost extinct corner of the book world: Call it Slow Publishing. It produces only three books a year, each a unique art object reproduced in editions of less than 300. Art is so important, in fact, that the illustrators-art-world luminaries-drive the title selection process.
“We learned that the projects went a lot more smoothly when we said to the artist, ‘What do you want to do?’” Blythe said.
Anthony Bourdain visited Arion in 2015 for a online series called Raw Craft — it’s a great look at how and why they produce books this way:
Business Insider’s Still Standing series recently profiled Arion as well:
After Anthony Bourdain died in 2018, I listened to the audiobook version of his fantastic Kitchen Confidential (read by Bourdain himself) and in retrospect, the trip he took to Tokyo documented in one of the final chapters was a clear indication that his career was headed away from the kitchen and out into the world. His long-time producer Lydia Tenaglia saw this too…she cold-called him after reading the book and pitched him on doing a TV show called A Cook’s Tour, where the intrepid Bourdain would travel to different locations around the world to experience the food culture there.
I met him at a point in his life where he had never really traveled before. He had written a book, Kitchen Confidential, and I had read somewhere that he was going to try to write a follow-up book called A Cook’s Tour. I approached him — I kind of cold-called him — and I said, “Listen, I work in television.” And at that point I was freelancing for other companies as a producer and a shooter and an editor. I called Tony, and he was still working in a kitchen at the time, and I said, “Would you mind if me and my husband, Chris, came and shot a short demo and we try to sort of pitch the idea of A Cook’s Tour — meaning you traveling the world, kind of exploring the way other people eat — as a television series?” And he was like, “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” I don’t think he had any expectations at that point. Again, he hadn’t really traveled.
A Cook’s Tour intrigued the folks at the Food Network and the show ended up running for 35 episodes over two seasons. And they are now all available to watch for free on YouTube. I’ve embedded the first episode above, where he goes (back) to Tokyo, but he also visits Vietnam, San Sebastian, Oaxaca, Scotland, Singapore, and Brazil during the show’s run. More from Tenaglia on how the show came about:
So that was the start of our relationship and our time together. We, fortunately, were able to pitch and sell that idea, A Cook’s Tour, to the Food Network. Me and Chris, my husband, and Tony, just the three of us, all went out on the road together for that first year, and we shot 23 episodes of A Cook’s Tour, and we kind of figured out the format of the show on the road. It was really Tony tapping into the references he did have — you know, films and books and things he had seen and knew about only through film and reading.
So he was able to bring all of those cultural references to the table, and the three of us together were able to kind of play with the format of what those visuals would look like, so that it wasn’t just about him eating food at a restaurant. It was really about everything that was happening around him — or the thoughts he was having internally as he had these experiences or the references that he had seen through film that he loved and books that he had read, like The Quiet American, and how those things related to what he was experiencing.
So it became this kind of sort of moving, evolving format that was very much based on, predicated on the location that we were in and those references that he could call up. The show just kind of began to take shape. I mean, really there was no format of the show going into it. We just said, “Hey, we’re going to travel around the world, and this guy … he’s a chef, and he’s written this great book, and he’s going to try food in other countries.” And that’s what sold the project to the Food Network at the time. Then, as we went and actually made the show, we really started to play with the format and turned it into something else.
I would say that 17 years later the show has gone through various iterations. We did the two seasons of A Cook’s Tour on the Food Network, and then we did eight seasons of No Reservations on the Travel Channel, and now we’re on Parts Unknown. And the show has evolved as Tony has evolved, as the crew has evolved, as the technology has evolved. The show has sort of turned into this kind of, you know, one man’s initial foray into the world, and I think today, 17 years later, he’s really kind of evolved into more of a cultural anthropologist.
The show’s very sociopolitical — it’s about people and characters. The food and the people are just the entry point. It’s really about all the context around it. The more you can bring story to that and the more you can bring references to that — film references … character references — the more you can introduce interesting, unique characters into the equation, I think that’s what keeps the show very fresh and why it’s continuing to evolve all these years later. Each show is very different from the one before it.
It’s fun to watch the prototype of what eventually became a very beloved and different show. (via open culture)
There is a moment at the end of the film’s second act when the artist David Choe, a friend of Bourdain’s, is reading aloud an e-mail Bourdain had sent him: “Dude, this is a crazy thing to ask, but I’m curious” Choe begins reading, and then the voice fades into Bourdain’s own: “…and my life is sort of shit now. You are successful, and I am successful, and I’m wondering: Are you happy?” I asked Neville how on earth he’d found an audio recording of Bourdain reading his own e-mail. Throughout the film, Neville and his team used stitched-together clips of Bourdain’s narration pulled from TV, radio, podcasts, and audiobooks. “But there were three quotes there I wanted his voice for that there were no recordings of,” Neville explained. So he got in touch with a software company, gave it about a dozen hours of recordings, and, he said, “I created an A.I. model of his voice.” In a world of computer simulations and deepfakes, a dead man’s voice speaking his own words of despair is hardly the most dystopian application of the technology. But the seamlessness of the effect is eerie. “If you watch the film, other than that line you mentioned, you probably don’t know what the other lines are that were spoken by the A.I., and you’re not going to know,” Neville said. “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”
Per this GQ story, Neville got permission from Bourdain’s estate:
We fed more than ten hours of Tony’s voice into an AI model. The bigger the quantity, the better the result. We worked with four companies before settling on the best. We also had to figure out the best tone of Tony’s voice: His speaking voice versus his “narrator” voice, which itself changed dramatically of over the years. The narrator voice got very performative and sing-songy in the No Reservation years. I checked, you know, with his widow and his literary executor, just to make sure people were cool with that. And they were like, Tony would have been cool with that. I wasn’t putting words into his mouth. I was just trying to make them come alive.
As a post hoc ethics panel of one, I’m gonna say this doesn’t appeal to me, but I bet this sort of thing becomes common practice in the years to come, much like Errol Morris’s use of reenactment in The Thin Blue Line. A longer and more nuanced treatment of the issue can be found in Justin Hendrix’s interview of Sam Gregory, who is an “expert on synthetic media and ethics”.
There’s a set of norms that people are grappling with in regard to this statement from the director of the Bourdain documentary. They’re asking questions around consent, right? Who consents to someone taking your voice and using it? In this case, the voiceover of a private email. And what if that was something that, if the person was alive, they might not have wanted. You’ve seen that commentary online, and people saying, “This is the last thing Anthony Bourdain would have wanted for someone to do this with his voice.” So the consent issue is one of the things that is bubbling here. The second is a disclosure issue, which is, when do you know that something’s been manipulated? And again, here in this example, the director is saying, I didn’t tell people that I had created this voice saying the words and I perhaps would have not told people unless it had come up in the interview. So these are bubbling away here, these issues of consent and disclosure.
Filmmaker Morgan Neville (who did the Fred Rogers doc Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) has directed a documentary about Anthony Bourdain called Roadrunner that opens in theaters on July 16.
It’s not where you go. It’s what you leave behind… Chef, writer, adventurer, provocateur: Anthony Bourdain lived his life unabashedly. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain is an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at how an anonymous chef became a world-renowned cultural icon. From Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), this unflinching look at Bourdain reverberates with his presence, in his own voice and in the way he indelibly impacted the world around him.
This trailer makes me want to buy a movie ticket — and about 10 plane tickets. So looking forward to this. I need more unabashed living in my life.
Just before be died, Anthony Bourdain began work on a travel guide with his long-time assistant and coauthor Laurie Woolever. The book was to distill the lessons learned from his life of travel as a TV personality and celebrity food enthusiast. Based on their conversations, Woolever is completing work on World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, which will be out in October.
In World Travel, a life of experience is collected into an entertaining, practical, fun and frank travel guide that gives readers an introduction to some of his favorite places-in his own words. Featuring essential advice on how to get there, what to eat, where to stay and, in some cases, what to avoid, World Travel provides essential context that will help readers further appreciate the reasons why Bourdain found a place enchanting and memorable.
Supplementing Bourdain’s words are a handful of essays by friends, colleagues, and family that tell even deeper stories about a place.
Here’s a brief taste of the kind of advice you’ll find in the book:
Skip the touristy spots, he said: “If you spend all that time waiting to get into the Eiffel Tower, you’ve completely wasted a day”; and forget the concierge: “They’re going to send you to the place with the clean bathroom. Some of the best meals I’ve had, you need a hazmat suit to go to the bathroom.”
It’s well-known that Bourdain was a champion of New York’s punk movement, he was often cited as saying that both chefs and musicians worked in similar undulating patterns. They were nightwalkers, the working men of the dark streets of New York’s bubbling underbelly. It was a theory that Bourdain took with him wherever he went. Whether he was reviewing a restaurant, often commenting on the music being played in the dining room as much as the food, or speaking with the numerous musicians and icons that littered his show ‘Parts Unknown’, Bourdain was always a muso.
CNN Films, HBO Max, and Focus Features are partnering on the still-untitled film, which is produced by Neville’s Tremolo Productions. Focus will release the documentary first in theaters before a television premiere on CNN, followed by a streaming bow on the soon-to-launch HBO Max, coming in 2020. Dates for the release have yet to be announced.
Neville is the director of Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, the Fred Rogers documentary that may have made you cry recently. It will be interesting to see what this film can add to the extensive self-documentation that Bourdain put out into the world through his books and TV shows.
For GQ, Drew Magary talked to the family, friends, and coworkers of Anthony Bourdain for this piece on the life of the late chef/traveler/writer/explorer/whatever. Here’s how he got his big writing break, which led to so much else:
David Remnick (editor in chief, ‘The New Yorker’): My wife came home one day, and she said, “Look. There’s a really nice woman at the newspaper. Her son is a writer. She wanted you to take a look at his work,” which seemed…adorable, right? A mother’s ambition for a son. I took this manuscript out of its yellow envelope, not expecting much. I started to read. It was about a young cook, working at a pretty average steak-and-frites place on lower Park Avenue. I called this guy up on the phone. He answered it in his kitchen. I said, “I’d like to publish this work of yours in The New Yorker. I hope that’s okay.” That was the beginning of Anthony Bourdain being published. I don’t know if there’s any way to put this other than to say he invented himself as a writer, as a public personality. It was all there.
Prior to becoming the best-ever host of a travel show, he’d actually traveled very little internationally (only France and Japan) and his first go of it wasn’t successful:
Tenaglia: Japan was a fucking disaster.
Chris Collins (co-founder, ZPZ): The mistakes were very clear. He did not engage with us. He would not acknowledge our presence and that we were there working together.
Tenaglia: I think he was thinking, “Great! I just got a free ride to all these countries.”
Collins: It was a ruse. It was, I’m gonna double dip here. I’m going to be able to get paid to go make something, and I’m going to write articles.
Tenaglia: We would go back to the hotel and say, “We are so screwed.”
But it turns out this inexperienced traveler & newbie TV host was the exact right person for the job.
He came alive, because those frames of reference were starting to pop. His sudden inclination was to turn and share that with us. You could sense this excitement, like, “Holy crap, I’m actually on the ground in a location that I have studied, that I know, that I have references to.” You know, Apocalypse Now, Heart of Darkness, Graham Greene, the Vietnam War. He was percolating with an excitement that was very genuine.
My only complaint about this piece is the length…I would have happily read on for hours.
Paula Froelich (author, journalist): I’ll never forget laughing my ass off because he was obsessed with my dog, who’s a small dachshund. He’d always walk my dog, and he was so tall and the dog was so long and short, they would look like this movable L.
Back in February, Maria Bustillos was set to interview Anthony Bourdain and she figured she’d get about 15 minutes of his highly scheduled time. Instead, the pair spent two-and-a-half hours chatting about anything and everything and the result is this great dialogue, one of the last extensive interviews Bourdain gave before he died in early June.
I like the idea of inspiring or encouraging people to get a passport and go have their own adventures. I’m a little worried when I bump into people, and it happens a lot — “We went to Vietnam, and we went to all the places you went.” Okay that’s great, because I like those people and I like that noodle lady, and I’m glad they’re getting the business, and it pleases me to think that they’re getting all these American visitors now.
But on the other hand, you know, I much prefer people who just showed up in Paris and found their own way without any particular itinerary, who left themselves open to things happening. To mistakes. To mistakes, because that’s the most important part of travel. The shit you didn’t plan for, and being able to adapt and receive that information in a useful way instead of saying, like, “Oh, goddamnit, they ran out of tickets at the Vatican!” or whatever, “That line at the Eiffel Tower is you know, six hours!” and then sulk for the rest of the day.
On my recent trip, I had some things that I wanted to see but largely ended up playing it by ear. And that thing about the mistakes…that hits really really close to home. I also loved his recontextualization of luxury:
I do find that my happiest moments on the road are not standing on the balcony of a really nice hotel. That’s a sort of bittersweet — if not melancholy — alienating experience, at best. My happiest moments on the road are always off-camera, generally with my crew, coming back from shooting a scene and finding ourselves in this sort of absurdly beautiful moment, you know, laying on a flatbed on those things that go on the railroad track, with a putt-putt motor, goin’ across like, the rice paddies in Cambodia with headphones on… this is luxury, because I could never have imagined having the freedom or the ability to find myself in such a place, looking at such things.
To sit alone or with a few friends, half-drunk under a full moon, you just understand how lucky you are; it’s a story you can’t tell. It’s a story you almost by definition, can’t share. I’ve learned in real time to look at those things and realize: I just had a really good moment.
Luxury as freedom of time, place, and companions. Read the whole thing…lots of great stuff in there. Like: he gave away all the royalties to Kitchen Confidential to “various deserving people”.
Who would have guessed 15 years ago that this self-styled rebel, who wrote about waitress blow jobs and shooting heroin in his best-selling 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential, would become America’s contemporary answer to, say, Mark Twain — our most enthusiastic chronicler of life outside our borders?
I’ve caught a couple of episodes of CNN’s Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and I’ve been impressed with the show so far. In it, chef/author Anthony Bourdain travels to places off the beaten path and explores the local culture. But it’s not just about food and culture as with his previous shows. In Parts Unknown, Bourdain also delves into local politics and social issues. In Iran, he spoke with journalists about their tenuous relationship with the government (and two of the journalists he spoke with were subsequently arrested). Episodes in the Congo, Myanmar, and Libya are produced with a focus on their oppressive governments, past and present. Even in the Massachusetts episode, he talks about his former heroin addiction and the current addiction of poor whites in the US. Many of the places he visits, we only hear about the leadership and bad things that happen on the news, but Bourdain meets with the locals and finds more similarities amongst cultures than differences. I’d never considered going to visit someplace like Iran, but Parts Unknown has me considering it…what a great people.
Season four recently wrapped up and they’re shooting season five now. The first three seasons are currently available on Netflix and all four seasons are on Amazon. (FYI to the web team at CNN: “Unknown” is misspelled in the
of that page.)
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<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain%3A%20Parts%20Unknown">Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/food">food</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/Iran">Iran</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/travel">travel</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/TV">TV</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2014-09-24T23:04:13Z">Sep 24 @ 07:04 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/14/09/anthony-bourdain-the-future-of-cable-news">Anthony Bourdain, the future of cable news</a></h2>
<p>When Anthony Bourdain’s hour-long food and travel show first launched on CNN, it marked the network’s step away from 24 hours news and towards more entertainment programming. But maybe Bourdain is just the reporter we need these days when most of what we see of other cultures is satellite images or shots of rubble. “I’m not a foreign policy wonk, but I see aspects of these countries that regular journalists don’t.” From FastCo: Anthony Bourdain has become the future of cable news, <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3036090/innovation-agents/anthony-bourdain-has-become-the-future-of-cable-news-and-he-couldnt-care-l">and he couldn’t care less</a>.
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<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/food">food</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/travel">travel</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/TV">TV</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2014-09-23T20:49:28Z">Sep 23 @ 04:49 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/14/09/anthony-bourdains-travel-tips">Anthony Bourdain’s travel tips</a></h2>
<p>Anthony Bourdain travels a lot; <a href="http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/anthony-bourdain-how-to-travel">here’s how he approaches flying, packing, getting good local recommendations, etc.</a></p>
<blockquote><p>The other great way to figure out where to eat in a new city is to provoke nerd fury online. Go to a number of foodie websites with discussion boards. Let’s say you’re going to Kuala Lumpur — just post on the Malaysia board that you recently returned and had the best rendang in the universe, and give the name of a place, and all these annoying foodies will bombard you with angry replies about how the place is bullshit, and give you a better place to go.</p></blockquote>
<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/food">food</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/travel">travel</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2013-03-04T18:29:28Z">Mar 4 @ 01:29 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/13/03/reminder-the-mind-of-a-chef">Reminder: The Mind of a Chef</a></h2>
<p>In case you missed it a few months ago on PBS, the excellent The Mind of a Chef is out in downloadable form <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/the-mind-of-a-chef-season-1/id594287541?mt=8&at=11l7dq&ct=blog">on iTunes</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00BCWN57A/ref=nosim/0sil8">at Amazon</a>. The first episode is available for free <a href="http://video.pbs.org/video/2299820860">on the PBS site</a> for try-before-you-buy purposes.
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<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/David%20Chang">David Chang</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/food">food</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/The%20Mind%20of%20a%20Chef">The Mind of a Chef</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/travel">travel</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/TV">TV</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2012-11-10T20:13:44Z">Nov 10 @ 03:13 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/12/11/pbs-food-show-with-david-chang">Sixteen-part PBS travel/food show with David Chang</a></h2>
<p>How had I not heard about this before now? <a href="http://www.pbs.org/food/shows/the-mind-of-a-chef/">The Mind of a Chef</a> is a PBS consisting of sixteen half-hour shows that follows <a href="https://twitter.com/davidchang">David Chang</a> through his world of food. As far as I can tell, this series is basically the TV version of <a href="http://www.mcsweeneys.net/luckypeach">Lucky Peach</a>. Episode one is about ramen:</p>
<blockquote><p>In the series premiere, David dissects the roots of his passion for ramen dishes and tsukemen on a trip to Japan. Learn the history of this famous noodle as David visits a ramen factory, has a bowl of the original tsukemen, and examines how alkalinity makes noodles chewier and less prone to dissolving in broth.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://video.pbs.org/video/2300808558">Check out an excerpt here</a>, in which Chang reveals how he used to eat instant ramen noodles right out of the bag with the pork flavor powder sprinkled on top. The series starts this weekend…check your local listings, as they say. (via <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/arts/television/the-mind-of-a-chef-with-david-chang-on-pbs.html?smid=tw-nytimesarts&seid=auto">ny times</a>)
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<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/David%20Chang">David Chang</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/food">food</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/The%20Mind%20of%20a%20Chef">The Mind of a Chef</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/travel">travel</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/TV">TV</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2012-11-09T17:35:57Z">Nov 9 @ 12:35 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/12/11/stay-small-or-go-big">Stay small or go big?</a></h2>
<p>Emeril Lagasse made an appearance on Treme on Sunday. I <a href="http://eater.com/archives/2012/11/05/watch-emeril-lagasses-totally-badass-scene-on-treme.php">watched a clip</a> of his scene a few days ago and have been thinking about it on and off ever since. In the scene written by <a href="http://www.anthonybourdain.net/">Anthony Bourdain</a>, Emeril takes a fellow chef to the building that used to house Uglesich’s, a small-but-beloved New Orleans restaurant that closed back in 2005. The chef is having misgivings about expanding her business, particularly about all the non-cooking things you have to do, and Emeril explains that the way the owners of Uglesich’s did it was one way forward:</p>
<blockquote><p>You see, they kept it small, just one spot, just a few tables. There’d be a line around the corner by 10 am. You see, they made a choice. Anthony and Gail made a choice to stay on Baronne Street and keep their hands on what they were serving. They cooked, everyday they cooked, until they could cook no more.</p></blockquote>
<p>But there’s also another way to approach your business:</p>
<blockquote><p>The other choice is that you can build something big but keep it the way that you wanna keep it. Take those ideas and try to execute them to the highest level. You got a lotta people around you, right? You’re the captain of the ship. Or what I should say is that you’re the ship. And all these people that look up to you and wanna be around you, they’re living in the ship. And they’re saying, “Oh, the ship is doing good. Oh, the ship is going to some interesting places. Oh, this ship isn’t going down just like all the other fucking ships I’ve been on.” […] You’ve got a chance to do your restaurant and to take care of these people. Just do it.</p></blockquote>
<p>kottke.org has always been a one-person thing. Sure, <a href="http://www.unlikelywords.com/">Aaron</a> posts here regularly now and I have guest editors on occasion, but for the most part, I keep my ass in the chair and my hands on what I am serving. I’ve always resisted attempts at expanding the site because, I have reasoned, that would mean that the site wouldn’t be exactly what I wanted it to be. And people come here for exactly what I want it to be. Doing the site with other people involved has always seemed unnatural. It would be selling out…that’s how I’ve thought about it, as opposed to <a href="http://kottke.org/12/02/rap-music-business-lessons">blowing up</a>.</p>
<p>But Emeril’s “until they could cook no more” and “you’re the ship”…that got to me. I am a ship. I don’t have employees but I have a family that relies on the income from my business and someday, when I am unable to do this work or people stop reading blogs or all online advertising moves to Facebook or Twitter, what happens then? Don’t I owe it to myself and to them to build something that’s going to last beyond my interest and ability to sit in a chair finding interesting things for people to look at? Or is it enough to just <a href="http://vimeo.com/50075577">work by yourself</a> and produce the best work you can?</p>
<p>Or can you do both? John Gruber’s <a href="http://daringfireball.net/">Daring Fireball</a> remains a one-man operation…as far as I know, he’s never even had an intern. I don’t have any inside knowledge of DF’s finances, but from <a href="http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/">the RSS sponsorship rate</a> and <a href="http://sponsor.muleradio.net/">the rate for sponsoring Gruber’s podcast</a>, my conservative estimate is that DF grosses around $650,000 per year. And with a single employee/owner and relatively low expenses, a large amount of that is profit. So maybe that route is possible?</p>
<p>I don’t have any answers to these questions, but man, it’s got me thinking. Emeril got me thinking…who saw that coming? Bam!
</p>
<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2010-03-11T17:20:29Z">Mar 11 @ 12:20 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/10/03/ruth-bourdain">Ruth Bourdain</a></h2>
<p>Anthony Bourdain’s potty mouth + <a href="http://twitter.com/ruthReichl">Ruth Reichl’s Twitter account</a> = the luxuriously rude Twitter stylings of <a href="http://twitter.com/ruthbourdain">Ruth Bourdain</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Have you ever smoked tangerine zest in a bong? Incredible! Me and the cat are sky high</p></blockquote>
<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/food">food</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/remix">remix</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/Ruth%20Reichl">Ruth Reichl</a></li>
<li><a href="/tag/Twitter">Twitter</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2009-09-03T01:18:40Z">Sep 2 @ 09:18 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/09/09/anthony-bourdains-disappearing-manhattan">Anthony Bourdain’s Disappearing Manhattan</a></h2>
<p>A Continuous Lean <a href="http://www.acontinuouslean.com/2009/08/02/weekend-video-bourdains-disappearing-manhattan/">recommends Anthony Bourdain’s Disappearing Manhattan episode</a> of No Reservations…with the pertinent YouTube embeds.</p>
<blockquote><p>Fuck, it’s worth a watch even if you have seen it ten times. Eisenberg’s, Manganaro Foods, Keens, Le Veau d’Or, this show is like my NYC gastro-playbook. Watch it, love it, live it.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2009/02/anthony_bourdains_guide_to_dis.html">Grub Street has some textual CliffsNotes</a> if you’re not into the video. If I had one of them <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/fashion/26list.html?pagewanted=all">life lists</a>, sharing a meal with Bourdain would probably be on it.
</p>
<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2008-01-09T19:37:31Z">Jan 9 @ 02:37 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/08/01/a-fine-av-club-interview-with-the">A fine AV Club interview with the</a></h2>
<p><a href="http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/anthony_bourdain">A fine AV Club interview with the surprisingly down-to-earth Anthony Bourdain</a>…much of it isn’t even about food. On selling out and endorsements:</p>
<blockquote><p>Yeah, I’ve been offered cookware lines, some really gruesome reality shows that would have made me boatloads of money. The usual endorsements. I don’t know. Maybe it goes back to the heroin thing. I know what it’s like to wake up in the morning and feel ashamed of what you did yesterday. I’m just having a hard time crossing that line. I’d like to sell out. I really would!</p></blockquote>
<p>I also learned that he writes crime novels.
</p>
<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2007-11-13T18:59:02Z">Nov 13 @ 01:59 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/07/11/anthony-bourdain-on-the-best-method-for">Anthony Bourdain on the best method for</a></h2>
<p>Anthony Bourdain on the best method for finding good food in any city: <a href="http://rob-donoghue.livejournal.com/275931.html">provoke the nerds</a>.</p>
<blockquote><p>Take the city you want to go to and just google up some restaurant names that serve the dish you’re after. Then got to chowhound or another foodie site, and rather than asking about restaurants, you put up an enthusiastic post talking about how you just had the best whatever you’re looking for at one of these restaurants.</p><p>At that point, […] the nerdfury will begin. Posters will show up from nowhere to shower you with disdain, tell you how that place used to be good but has now totally sold out and — most important to your quest — will tell you where you would have gone if you were not some sort of mouth breathing water buffalo.</p></blockquote>
<p>I wouldn’t have guessed that there’s actually an upside to Internet Jackass Syndrome. (via <a href="http://www.clusterflock.org/2007/11/nerdfury.html">clusterflock</a>)
</p>
<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2007-09-18T12:47:57Z">Sep 18 @ 08:47 AM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/07/09/anthony-bourdains-menu-of-overrated-trendy-items-">Anthony Bourdain’s menu of overrated, trendy items. (</a></h2>
<p><a href="http://www.radaronline.com/from-the-magazine/2007/09/anthony_bourdain_overrated_menu.php">Anthony Bourdain’s menu of overrated, trendy items</a>. (via <a href="http://www.eater.com">eater</a>)</p>
<blockquote><p>When the water sommelier comes over, I reach for my gun.</p></blockquote>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2007-02-13T19:41:36Z">Feb 13 @ 02:41 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/07/02/anthony-bourdain-critiques-food-network-and-some">Anthony Bourdain critiques Food Network and some</a></h2>
<p><a href="http://blog.ruhlman.com/2007/02/guest_blogging_.html">Anthony Bourdain critiques Food Network and some its stars</a> on Michael Ruhlman’s blog. “SANDRA LEE: Pure evil. This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time. She Must Be Stopped. Her death-dealing can-opening ways will cut a swath of destruction through the world if not contained. I would likely be arrested if I suggested on television that any children watching should promptly go to a wooded area with a gun and harm themselves.” Blogging may well be Bourdain’s natural medium…it suits his vitriolic style.
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<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2006-07-06T18:59:35Z">Jul 6 @ 02:59 PM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/06/07/great-rant-from-michael-ruhlman-about-the">Great rant from Michael Ruhlman about the</a></h2>
<p><a href="http://www.megnut.com/2006/07/its-a-wonderful-life">Great rant from Michael Ruhlman about the ethics of eating</a>. “Beyond the fact that our current hand-wringing foreshadows an America that increasingly regulates how we live our lives, which is scary enough, the more insidious danger to me is that we think clams and ducks and lobsters are people too.”</p>
<p><b>Update:</b> <a href="http://www.megnut.com/2006/07/its-a-wonderful-life#comment-834">Anthony Bourdain responds to Ruhlman’s rant</a>.
</p>
<ul class="post-tags"><li><a href="/tag/Anthony%20Bourdain">Anthony Bourdain</a></li>
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posted <time class="timeago timeago_short" datetime="2006-06-26T12:30:59Z">Jun 26 @ 08:30 AM</time> by <a href="http://www.kottke.org">Jason Kottke</a>
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<h2><a href="/06/06/chefwriter-anthony-bourdain-turned-50-the-other">Chef/writer Anthony Bourdain turned 50 the other</a></h2>
<p>Chef/writer Anthony Bourdain turned 50 the other day so his friends threw him a big party; <a href="http://www.megnut.com/2006/06/bourdain-at-50">Michael Ruhlman surveys the scene</a>.
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