Editorial Page this week features a great column about Anthony Bourdain (RIP) by Jonathan Tobias and call for prayer and protest by Veronica Downing.

A Melancholy Anniversary

By Jonathan Tobias

I just opened my copy of Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles Cookbook. I’m thinking of making his Coq au vin tonight. One of my favorites, right up there with Julia Child’s masterpiece Boeuf Bourguignon and Thomas Keller’s Lemon-Brined Fried Chicken. Bourdain’s Coq au vin (literally “rooster with wine”) swims in a whole bottle of red wine, of course, but is a stew of whole trimmed chicken, mushrooms, pearl onions, the holy mirepoix of carrots, celery and onions, and, best of all, a slab of bacon. And since it’s French, you have to cut the bacon into lardons. Julia wants you to boil the lardons first, but Tony wants you to saute them until they’re golden brown.

I’ll take Tony for the nonce.

I’ll tell you why I’m thinking of recipes and daring to tread upon the rightful province of my friend and favorite chef (and co-columnist) Cheryl Orr of the Inner Banks Inn and utterly scrumptious Canape Club at the Patisserie beside Edenton Bay Trading Company. Why? Certainly not because I could ever hold a candle to her cuisine. 

But because I’m thinking of Bourdain, and her, and a date and a newspaper that all three of us have in common.

It was June of 2018. My wife and I had moved in permanently to Edenton the prior Thanksgiving. And Miles Layton, former editor of The Chowan Herald, asked me to write a column about Anthony Bourdain, who had died of suicide just a week before, on 8 June 2018. 

I’ve been writing a weekly column ever since, skipping an issue or two once in a while. Cheryl’s done the same. We’ve done over 300 articles each since 2018. Hers is far tastier, and in much better taste. Hers has recipes. Mine does not.

So in memoriam, I’d like to think about Bourdain, who, I could argue, was probably the celebrity most responsible for starting the “foodie movement.” He shot to fame when his mother, an editor at the New York Times, got his essay published in the New Yorker about the hard business of a Manhattan restaurant. The essay was entitled “Don’t Eat Before Reading,” which evolved into Bourdain’s wildly famous (or infamous) book, Kitchen Confidential.

That book started his career as the first hard rock celebrity chef. I know there were others before him, like the “Galloping Gourmet,” the “Frugal Gourmet,” and my guilty pleasure “Justin Wilson’s Louisiana Cookin’.” Not to mention la reine de la cuisine herself, Julia Child. 

But Bourdain’s personality was a supernova (or catastrophic grease fire) compared to the likes of these.

Kitchen fire indeed. A force of nature, his brashness, sometimes tempered with a subcutaneous winsomeness, made for irresistible viewing. I loved to watch his shows (and still do). He started with the Travel Channel with “No Reservations” and “The Layover,” then starting in 2013 and lasting until his death in 2018, the renown “Parts Unknown.” Starting in 2012, he produced and narrated six seasons of PBS’ superb “Mind of a Chef.” You can watch some of the earlier stuff on YouTube. “Parts Unknown” is on MAX, which is subscription-only, a fact that Bourdain would have disliked. Intensely.

Watching this chef/adventurer/impressario is, I know, an acquired taste. His televised gastronomic career took him to extremes. The theme song of “Parts Unknown” by rockers Josh Homme and Mark Lanegan of “Queens of the Stone Age,” warned you perfectly about what was on the menu from Bourdain. One week we might see him chewing (and grimacing over) a stewed iguana. The next week we see him feted by Thomas Keller at the French Laundry with twenty (!) courses, including a “coffee and cigarettes” course (!!) with foie gras and a tobacco-infused custard (!!!).

While I could take Bourdain on TV, I could not have taken his personal company for long, if at all. His brashness often took him to “parts unknown.” Literally. He was a drug addict. His addiction and other risk-taking proclivities were cancerous to his family life, and he subjected his friends to a toxic strain of wear and tear. And tears all too often.

I don’t know if you’ve had drug-addicted family members or friends, or people in your life, who were so restless, so deeply melancholy, that they seemed to be on a descending road that you try to get them to turn around because you knew the longer they went, the deeper and faster they fell. Once in a while these tragedians could be comic, and sometimes often. Sometimes they looked at you with a winsome smile, with open eyes but you could see the shadow deep inside. They could make you laugh, but ended up always making you cry.

No, I couldn’t have kept him company. Despite that, Anthony Bourdain kept reaching for redemption. In his many travels, particularly on “Parts Unknown,” he listened closely to people in foreign lands talk about their hardship under cruel governments and inhumane societies, with poverty, unending warfare, oppression, prejudice and bigotry. He spoke bravely of justice and civil rights. He ate with the poorest of the poor, and kept company with the suffering in the most fearful and depressing circumstances.

I’m pretty sure he wasn’t much of a religious man. But, he did the fundamentally Christian thing of recognizing his shared humanity with people of all races and places, rich or poor, wherever he went. You can’t take that away from Anthony Bourdain.

I think my viewing tastes have changed now. I’ll watch, instead, Netflix’s “Chef’s Table,” “Somebody Feed Phil” (as in Phil Rosenthal, director of “Everyone Loves Raymond”), my new guilty pleasure, Jamie Tracey’s YouTube “Anti-Chef” series, and my now favorite, “Stanley Tucci in Italy.” I prefer the company of my friends at Cheryl’s Canape Club after picking up a glass of pinot from Malcolm next door. I’m too cowardly to chew on iguana, and too pedestrian to sit for twenty courses at the French Laundry.

But Anthony, for your Coq au vin I’ll pull out my blue dutch oven and take the requisite two whole days of preparation and cooking. And yes, I’ll take your advice and serve it with buttered noodles and a Borgogne Rouge.

Requiescat in pace, master chef and humanist. It’s only fitting to close this memorial with these lines from his Stone Age theme song:

“I took a walk in this beautiful world,
felt the cool rain on my shoulder.
Found something good in this beautiful world,
I felt the rain getting colder.”

A college professor, a man of God and a member of St. Paul’s choir, Jonathan Tobias is one of a kind.

Our freedom is at stake

BY VERONICA DOWNING

There is a cry to make June 14th a day of protest against our current administration…

I am making an impassioned, national plea for pastors and clergy to make June 14th a DAY OF PRAYER for our nation.

We are in a state of national crisis.

We the people have drawn a line in the sand, forcing those who are with us to stand in solidarity against our own federal government.

The stakes are high.

Our freedom is at stake.

We have a choice to make. War or Peace.
The opposing side has made its declaration.

Let’s make ours –

This is not the way our Father in Heaven intended for us to live our lives; the life he’s given us was meant to be lived abundantly.

Let’s NOT lock arms with those who mean violence. Let’s NOT side with our broken hearts and eroded hopes.

Let’s NOT forget the mission set before us by GOD:

Matthew 5:44-45 asks us to pray for our enemies.

Luke 6:27-38 asks us to love our enemies. Do good to those who are evil. Pray for those who despitefully use you.

Ephesians 6:10-12 asks us to put on the whole armor of GOD. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

James 5:16 says the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

Those who know the words of prayer, I am CALLING ON YOU to answer and share this post with every pastor you have in your contact list. Copy and paste this post to your page, and respond by commenting “Amen”. I know the ones who will complete this task.

Those who don’t and don’t wish to participate, God bless you. Now, STAND BACK and watch the salvation of our GOD in action.

Our freedom depends on it.

A talented writer and editor, Veronica Downing is a woman of principle.