Part memoir, part guide of travel: in the months before his death Anthony Bourdain had started working on a book that is finally about to see the light.
"World Travel: An Irreverent Guide", an illustrated guide to reflections on the chef's favorite destinations around the globe, has been completed by Laurie Woolever, Bourdain's historical assistant and will be released on April 21st months behind the start date. of publication.
The first previews of the volume, of which the cartoonist Tony Millionaire edited the illustrations of each chapter, were published in "Entertainment Weekly".
The assistant, who worked with Bourdain for the nine years before the suicide, extracted the chef's words from episodes of "No Reservations" and "Parts Unknown" and asked best friends to add the rest.
In the passage published in the US magazine, his brother Christopher signs the chapter "A Child's View of Paris", offering a moving portrait of the city that had meant so much to both of them when they first landed there with parents after a voyage on the Queen Mary ocean liner: Tony at ten and Christopher at seven.
Unforgettable flavors, smells, emotions bring back to life the amazement of the kids of New Jersey in front of the thousand wonders of the French capital: in the first place the food, from the steak frites of the Quick Élysée restaurant a stone's throw from the Hôtel Le Royal Monceau where the family was staying Bourdain, croissants, brioche, pain au chocolat and the daily jambon beurre: "slices of sweet ham, with wonderful French butter, spread on a freshly baked baguette".
Woolever, who wrote "Appetites" with Bourdain in 2017, told CNN two years ago about the emotional earthquake she felt when she picked up her master's book again.
Announcing the posthumous release of "World Travel", Woolever commented that "the book will allow Tony's fans to continue to travel in his footsteps."
After training at the Culinary Institute of America, Bourdain rose to fame in 2000 with "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly," a behind-the-scenes exposé of the restaurant world.
Later he became host of television programs that had led him to tell the food traditions of disparate places and peoples: from the tribes of Borneo to the cosmopolitan fibrillation of Buenos Aires or Shanghai, the forests of Tanzania and the solitude of the Oman desert.
Bourdain, who was linked to Italian actress Asia Argento at the time of his death, took his own life in June 2018 while filming an episode of his popular CNN program "Parts Unknown" in France.
The chef was 61 years old and no one has yet managed to shed full light on the causes of his gesture.