The myth of Anthony Bourdain: how the bad boy chef became a hero to boozehounds and bullies

<p>The author of Kitchen Confidential has inspired a new movie, Tony, about his days as a dishwasher. But do today’s chefs still admire his self-sabotaging rock’n’roll spirit – or have they outgrown it?</p><p>The trope of the Angry Young Man was not born in a kitchen, but Anthony Bourdain’s particular myth-making created what might be the prototype for <em>fin de</em> (20th) <em>siècle</em> masculinity. As the director of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jul/29/tony-review-anthony-bourdain-bestselling-memoir-dominic-sessa-antonio-banderas">Tony, the new biopic of Bourdain</a> focusing on his first job, has said, the film is about “a magical world where nothing can go wrong and a young man who’s angry about it”.</p><p>Bourdain arrived in that job, as a dishwasher in a restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts, aged 19. He was hellbent on a life of formless, self-sabotaging rebellion, and found his tribe. But when he published his book Kitchen Confidential in 2000, a quarter of a century later, he set the ethos of that kitchen tribe in stone, and attracted an ever-replenishing pool of chefs who, if they weren’t already just like him, were prepared to die trying.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/aug/11/the-myth-of-anthony-bourdain-how-the-bad-boy-chef-became-a-hero-to-boozehounds-and-bullies">Continue reading...</a>