Anthony Bourdain recently confirmed plans for his much anticipated New York City food hall, another step in the TV personality and culinary entrepreneur’s efforts to balance a social agenda with big business.
Through his writing and television programs, Bourdain has spent much of his career putting the spotlight on those who cook amazing food. He’s hoping his new food hall, a massive undertaking spanning 155,000 square feet, will do just that: the hall will house some of what he considers the world’s great, way under-the-radar chefs (which, as a recentNY Times article reported, raises a number of labor and immigration challenges). But Bourdain has embraced the go big or go home mantra, much like London Union, the UK group including chefs and TV personalities Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson that plans to open 16 food markets focusing on street food across London in the next 5 years.
LOS ANGELES, CA – SEPTEMBER 12: Chef/writer Anthony Bourdain attends the 2015 Creative Arts Emmy Awards at Microsoft Theater on September 12, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
The Times piece provided insight into Bourdain’s much buzzed about project: On the site of an abandoned pier on the city’s booming West Side, Bourdain Market will have 100 food stalls, including a produce market, pastry shop, butcher, fishmonger, restaurant and other food-focused shops. His vision is a 24/7 food hall that reimagines Singapore’s famed hawker centers: He sees chaos (but in a good way) and a New Yorker’s interpretation of food democracy (hedge fund managers supping $3 bowls of noodles next to the guys who mow their second home lawns). As Bourdain was quoted,
The way people eat has changed: they want to be at counters and communal tables. They want heat and funk and chicken wings that set their hair on fire.”
If that’s true, then Bourdain can be credited, in part, for consumers new dining habits: He has spent the last two decades showing people how the rest of the world lives and eats. However, some question if Bourdain’s vision of food hall as global village is viable in a city with some of the highest real estate prices.
Yet public fascination with the food supply and globalization, fair trade and wages, environmental degradation and the role business plays in all of the above seems insatiable. Bourdain’s travel shows (first, No Reservations on Discovery’s TLC , then on CNN with The Layover and currently Parts Unknown, which just launched its sixth season) helped fuel these interests, bringing up issues of race, class and economic inequity.
While some have taken him to task for perpetuating the macho-chef stereotype, they can’t take issue with the fact that he reinvented food tourism (an industry that continues to grow, as I reported late last year). In fact, as the food blogs focused on his market this year, another Bourdain move that received less press was his investment in  the little known travel culture website Roads & Kingdom. That coupled with his partnership with Zero Point Zero Productions (which is behind his programs, as well as the PBS series The Mind of a Chef) suggest Bourdain is redefining food media. When it comes to the behemoth Food Network Bourdain holds his own: According to Nielsen, the premiere episode of the food channel’s Season 10 franchise The Next Food Network Star reaped 2.7 million viewers; the premiere episode of Season 5 of Parts Unknown averaged the same.
Bourdain has consciously and vocally steered clear of the traditional celebrity chef route (he has no licensing deals for cookware or pasta sauce). He’s most at home playing in the authentic space as he has become a serious arbiter of food in American culture. While estimates of his net worth are unreliable (and he probably pales in comparison to household names like Gordon Ramsey or Rachel Ray–for now), his cultural reach is wide.
Yet while food television continues on the entertainment path (competition programs like the Food Network’sChopped or NBC’s Food Fighters), Bourdain’s approach has evolved. From the excitable, profane, thrill seeking cook, he’s moved from back to front of house and clearly mellowed. CNN has had an effect on his approach as he explores the social effects of gentrification, environmental ills, poverty and war on Parts Unknown. The final episode of Season 5 he walked the streets of Beirut against the backdrop of bullet-riddled buildings and trash-filled streets. Yet it’s clear he’s no journalist as he speaks of the war-torn city with a romanticism that’s met with a frozen smile by a local who diplomatically says he would feel differently if he lived in town for a month.
Yet it’s when he stops to take a meal—at the home of a local or in a humble eatery–that his authentic self really comes through. He breaks out in the kind of smile you just can’t fake after taking a bite of a truly delicious dish made with pride. Through food, Bourdain decodes and demystifies cultures, acting as a proxy for hungry consumers who can watch his sometimes nerve-wracking exploits in the safety of their own homes. He demonstrates how breaking bread is a universal act, connecting those with seemingly disparate or tenuous connections. What remains to be seen is if he can keep that connection while building an empire.