Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain, Chef, Travel Host and Author, Is Dead at 61:
In everything he did, Mr. Bourdain cultivated a renegade style and bad-boy persona.
For decades, he worked 13-hour days as a line cook in restaurants in New York and the Northeast before he became executive chef in the 1990s at Brasserie Les Halles, serving steak frites and onion soup in Lower Manhattan. He had been an executive chef for eight years when he sent an unsolicited article to The New Yorker about the underbelly of the restaurant world and its deceptions.
To his surprise, the magazine accepted it and ran it — catching the attention of book editors. It resulted in “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,” a memoir that elevated Mr. Bourdain to a celebrity chef and a new career on TV.
This is very sad. From everything I’ve seen and read about Bourdain he seemed like a great person.
When I worked in the Financial District in downtown Manhattan back around 2008-09 I used to take new hires to Les Halles all the time. It was located on John Street but it closed down last year.