Anthony Bourdain's Best Friend Eric Ripert Opens Up About The Food Legend

From Delish

The first time Eric Ripert met Anthony Bourdain, he had no idea he'd be on camera. This was back in 2000, when Bourdain's breakthrough memoir Kitchen Confidential was rattling the culinary world and beyond. While Bourdain's gonzo account of his life in the culinary underbelly was brutally honest about the New York restaurant scene, he wrote nothing but good things about Ripert's elite French seafood restaurant Le Bernardin. Flattered, Ripert invited Bourdain for lunch at his restaurant.

"Anthony accepted my invitation and to my surprise, he showed up with a TV crew behind him," Ripert remembers.

Casually, Bourdain explained that the film crew was following him for a British documentary and would only be around for 10 or 15 minutes. They talked on camera for a bit, then the film crew left and Bourdain and Ripert had a long, fantastic lunch.

"He was funny and witty and at the same time, knowledgeable about food. Very kind and complimentary to what we were doing. I was very surprised, he had very good manners at the table. He was not this bad boy that I was picturing from the book," Ripert tells me. "And after the meal, we decided that we would see each other for a drink."

That drink took place a week later when Bourdain took Ripert-a Michelin and James Beard-awarded chef-to a midtown dive bar called Siberia. "It was in the subway and that was a real dive bar that I had never seen in my life before. And I was very amused by the type of environment that he liked," Ripert says.

"That was the beginning of a long friendship between him and I," Ripert remembers.

That friendship became one of the most famous chef duos of all time-if not one of the most beloved real-life bromances on TV. Over the next 18 years, Ripert made nearly a dozen appearances on every Bourdain show from the early short lived Cook's Tour to No Reservations and Parts Unknown.

They were filming an episode in June when Ripert found Bourdain dead in a French hotel room.

"He was a dear friend, and in life, we don't have too many good friends. I miss him tremendously," Ripert says. "He has been a tremendous inspiration in my life."

Throughout the last four months, Bourdain's life and legacy has been deeply explored in essays, obituaries, and even in his own TV show, Parts Unknown, which has posthumously aired its final, largely unfinished, season. That outpouring of love-specifically in the penultimate episode of the show, which had the cast and crew and friends paying tribute to Bourdain-proved to Ripert that "he succeeded in his vision and the reaction of the people is exactly what Anthony was wishing accomplish."

That goal, Ripert says, was "he wanted people to be curious, adventurous, and obviously, ultimately educated."

He accomplished this over more than 15 years on TV where he traveled to more than 80 countries. He traveled to active war zones, he took part in native rituals, he got drunken tattoos from Iban tribesmen, he ate at the finest, most exclusive restaurants in the world, and drank blood fresh from a dead goat in the grasslands of Kenya. In one of his finest moments in his legendary career, he sat down with Barack Obama to eat noodles in Vietnam during the president's historic visit to lift an arms embargo on the country.

"It was the first time I saw him nervous," remembers Sandra Zweig, Bourdain's longtime executive producer who worked with him on No Reservations and Parts Unknown. "It took months and months and months of work to figure out what the location was gonna be, because Obama's schedule was changing and we had thought about a number of different locations, but then it just worked out that he was going to be in Vietnam in this sort of window of time that we had set aside for shooting with him. Vietnam happened to be one of Tony's favorite places in the world."

When Zweig told Bourdain that he'd be sitting down with the president, "I just saw a look in his eyes that was different, you know? That was the first time I had ever seen him nervous and wanting to be like, make sure that he had all the information he needed to have a really good conversation."

All the other times, when he wasn't slurping noodles with the president, Bourdain was the most confident man on television (of course he hid his nerves well during his meal with Obama). That was the crux of Bourdain's charm. He said what he wanted, he asked the questions other people didn't dare to ask, he traveled to places every other TV host would avoid. He braved the elements; he took risks both artistically and physically.

"Tony knew who he was. He knew what was right for him, what felt right for him, what was a good fit for him," Zweig remembers. "He was incredibly smart. I have to say it was hard to win a battle of words with him, because not only was he skilled with words but he also had this depth of knowledge in all these different areas that you were lucky if you found a place that he didn't know more about than you did."

But behind that toughened New York exterior was a thoughtful, sensitive, and even romantic man.

"Preparing for the segments was hilarious because, to break the ice, he would make jokes, and I couldn't stop laughing and the technicians would be laughing. Those moments were always so special," Ripert remembers. "He would get the mic on and get ready for camera and just walk into the scene and that's it. It was like that. He didn't change. He was not more careful. He was just himself."

That authenticity is what audiences connected to-especially the genuine relationship between Ripert and Bourdain. Over the years, the Ripert-Bourdain bromance episodes became known for Bourdain's practical jokes on his refined travel companion. This ranged from Bourdain tricking Ripert into eating insanely spicy food to Bourdain convincing Ripert in China it was custom to keep drinking alcohol until someone literally fell from their chair.

But, at least once, Ripert was able to get back at Bourdain. They were in Peru doing a scene with a shaman who was supposed to purify them and protect them for a trip into the mountains.

"Tony doesn't speak Spanish, so I had to translate. So, whatever Tony would tell me in English, I would say the opposite to the shaman in Spanish, and at one point, the shaman asked if he could basically spit some alcohol on Tony to purify him and Tony said, 'Absolutely not, I cannot be wet. I cannot do that,'" Ripert remembers. "So I said to the shaman, 'Yeah, he's delighted to do this. Yes, absolutely.' So, he went out in front of the shaman and he got drenched. Drenched. Completely drenched."

The scene of Bourdain getting drenched actually made it into the episode.

After nearly two decades on TV, Bourdain's life changed fundamentally. He went from a struggling chef to a world-renowned celebrity.

His final episode of Parts Unknown has Bourdain traveling back to Manhattan's Lower East Side. As he notes in the episode, he never lived there, but he went there for drugs and music. It's a tragically fitting conclusion, one that brings his personal story full circle from the gritty, wild line chef to the superstar traveler, writer, chef, and host. The episode focuses on the art and music and drugs and punks that inspired his formative years in New York-inspirations that stuck with him through his entire body of work.

"It was a time in his life that was so significant and the fact that he made it through that time, frankly, was also significant," Zweig says of the final episode of Parts Unknown. "Tony was a romantic, for one thing, so I think he had fond memories. Despite the difficulties, he had fond memories of that time."

At one point in the episode, after getting nostalgic looking at vintage dope bags, Bourdain reflects on his own stunning journey from scoring drugs in alleyways to living in a multimillion dollar uptown apartment.

There came a point in his career when Bourdain was fundamentally no longer able to be that man on the street, casually strolling into a local diner or grabbing mystery meat on a stick at a food stand.

Ripert remembers back in the early 2010s when he and Bourdain went on their Good Vs. Evil tour. After one of the shows, Bourdain was surrounded by fans. "It was taking hours after the show and we were finishing already late at night and it was like and hour and a half to two hours of pleasing the fans and I was very impressed with his generosity and patience," Ripert says. "For me, it was a challenge. I wanted to go home and he was not going home until the last one left."

This wasn't just after his own events, but during his daily life as well.

"In the last years, he couldn't walk anywhere in any place without being stopped every block or every corner or every door that he would open, someone would call him and want a picture with him," Ripert says. "He was really generous and good sport and he never said no. Except if he was with his daughter and it was a very intimate moment with her."

His professional life changed drastically throughout his career from his beginnings as a line cook to an executive chef at Les Halles to the Travel Channel and eventually CNN. He was more than a chef, more than a food personality, more than a travel show host. And he never lost his passion for it, either. Ripert and Zweig describe Bourdain's endless energy for his work. When he died, Bourdain was already beginning planning for the next season of Parts Unknown. "His goal was to do many more seasons," Ripert said. Bourdain was busying himself with writing and publishing. He liked to do stand-up comedy too (while traveling in Kenya with W. Kamau Bell, he'd asked for help writing jokes).

But, perhaps most importantly, he gave a voice to people around the world whose stories might not ever get told.

"He has changed the way we see the world. He has changed the way television covers travel shows and food shows," Ripert remembers. "Who would have known what happened in Congo or in Libya except through his eyes? He was giving a voice to people. His show was not a food show. It was not a travel show. It was much bigger than that. All of this, I think, it's something that will never be forgotten."

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