Introducing a new travel show during the pandemic to those inflicted with wanderlust is like leading a recovering alcoholic into a bar, it’s impossible to resist. That’s how I felt about “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy”. I never get why Stanley Tucci is considered the sexiest man alive – Prince William and Stanley Tucci fans can battle it out, but no middle-aged bald men for me -- but who cares when you have Italy. With its Roman ruins, Tuscany cypress landscape, magnificent churches and arts, and its delicious wine and food, Italy is a place I’ve visited twice but can go back to over and over again, even if it’s living that experience vicariously through a travel show.
The Stanley Tucci show delivers the usual goods of a travel show, the picturesque sceneries, the people, the culture, the political commentaries, and the obligatory family gathering around the dinner table scenes, which Anthony Bourdain has popularized, but by the 3rd episode, I started to cringe every time Tucci yells “Oh my God” when he tastes some delicious local cuisine. “Oh my God” are the only three words he could utter along with the predictably feigned surprise like he’s never tasted food so good in his life. It made me nostalgic about Anthony Bourdain, the man who changed the meaning of food for me, who had a way of describing food that is nothing short of divine.
So I decided to re-watch his “Parts Unknown” series. It turns out even though I started watching Anthony Bourdain shows before he blossomed into a celebrity on CNN and I’ve always watched his episodes whenever they are on TV, I missed the first few seasons of Parts Unknown, because they were broadcast in 2013 when I was living in China. And once I started watching, I could not stop – they are simply masterpieces. They were made when the man was at the top of his game, when his talent found an outlet in a powerful network with global resources and the combination was an electric burst of creativity, humanity, and life itself. They were made when he was genuinely curious, ambitious, and hopeful. This was not the Anthony Bourdain I saw in later seasons who had seen it all, done it all, and decided he could not care anymore because the world will remain a messy, hopeless place despite his caring. There was a quiet despair that came through those episodes that if you watch them carefully you would understand his suicide was no accident. But back in 2013, he had none of that. He was radiating in his brilliance and his caring of the world. He had something to say. A lot actually.
What I thought would be a quick trip down the memory lane turned into a zealous binge of all 16 episodes in the first two seasons over a few evenings. I was mesmerized, salivating… the food of course, but more than the food, the writing. “I've always wanted to get as far away as possible from the place that I was born. Far both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind… If you were a bad boy of your time, if you liked drugs, the kind of sex that was frowned upon at home, and an affordable lifestyle set against an exotic background, Tangier was for you.” That’s how he started the episode of Tangier, Morocco. It immediately drew me in with a picture I have never associated with Morocco, but a picture of such mystery and intrigue that I had to peek in. That’s the genius of Anthony Bourdain -- he saw the world from such a unique perspective. He dug in and then he would find a way to open your eyes.
That’s what his episode of Koreatown, LA did to me: open my eyes. Having lived in LA for 10 years and Southern California for 25 years, I am almost embarrassed the New Yorker had a better (or at least different) understanding of LA than I do. Only Anthony Bourdain who portrayed the restaurant industry as a mafia like business in his Kitchen Confidential, could make low riding in the gang ridden South Central look cool. Only Anthony Bourdain would interview David Choe, a Korean American artist who painted murals in the Facebook’s office and was compensated with Facebook stocks now valued over billions, and got him comfortable enough to give comments like “I would never marry a Korean girl… If you're a woman, I would never recommend dating a Korean guy. For the very few women out there into Asian guys, if you are going to go that route, definitely go Chinese.” As bizarre and politically incorrect as those comments were, you also know the guy was telling the truth and there is something charming and endearing about that. Only Anthony Bourdain had that kind of gift with people, the high lives and the low lives, the decadent restauranteurs in Montreal, the defiant politician in Myanmar, the proud railway workers in Congo, the forgotten carmaker in Detroit, the modern Geisha of the Tokyo nightlife. He could dine with them all, drink with them, laugh with them and connect with them. There were no judgment, no forced answers, no aha moments, just a lingering taste too complex to put words to, but in the mere act of attempting to describe it, he achieved the improbable: he gave every flavor a voice, a dignity it deserves, sweet, bitter, sour, spicy, salty, and everything in between.
He would take me to places like Libya, Myanmar, and Congo, the “shitholes” I would never travel to for leisure but nevertheless have a voyeuristic interest in and remind me just how privileged I am living the life I have and democracy, despite its inefficiencies and imperfections, is a million times better than dictatorship gone wrong. He would go into the settlements in West Bank and offer a glimpse of hope with a restaurant opened by a Jewish wife and a Palestinian husband, but then interview a restaurant owner whose daughter was killed by a mortar sent by Hamas. “One can be forgiven for thinking, when you see how similar they are, the two peoples, both of them cook with pride, eat with passion, love their kids, love the land in which they live or the land they dream of returning to, who live so close, who are locked in such an intimate, if deadly embrace, might somehow, some day, figure out how to live with each other. But that would be very mushy thinking indeed. Those things in the end probably don't count for much at all.” Anthony Bourdain famously said “Barbecue may not be the road to world peace, but it's a start.” Yes, it is a start, but he was also realizing the journey from the start to the end goal was mission impossible.
There wasn’t just this heaviness of course. There was food. Always. Comfort food, carbs with meat (hotdogs, tacos, dumplings), a staple in any culture. BBQ on the beach, to die for anywhere anytime. Healthy, artistic, innovative food in Noma, Copenhagen, which revolutionized the world of gastronomy. Decadent, refined, aristocratic food, like those in the Montreal episode: “A consommé of oxtail to begin. Followed perhaps by a chilled lobster a la Parisian. The devilishly difficult ala Royale, a boneless wild hair, in a sauce of its own blood, a generous heaping of fresh black truffle, garnished with thick slabs of foie gras, seared directly on the top of the cabin's wood stove.” As a chef, he talked about food the way Einstein would talk about numbers and formulas, or Picasso would talk about the dance between paint and color and light: with expertise, precision, and with love. Compare that to the Stanley Tucci “Oh my God” -- no wonder I shuddered.
As I immersed myself in my admiration for the genius of Anthony Bourdain, it suddenly hit me that Bourdain represented the “id” in Freud’s three-part psyche. The id is the impulsive (and unconscious) part of our psyche which responds directly and immediately to basic urges, needs, and desires. The id operates on the pleasure principle, pursuing every impulse regardless of the consequences. Watching an Anthony Bourdain episode is like unleashing the animal spirit in us, raw, uninhibited, unapologetic and unrelenting. It is deeply gratifying and terrifying at the same time, like a fire burning so intensely that it will eventually devour you. It is bad, but it is so bad it is good. It is good, but it is so good it would destroy you.
On the other end of the spectrum is Rick Steves’ well curated European travel show on PBS, the super ego of travel shows, representing what society thinks a good traveler should be, good mannered and deferential to the locals, polite and respectful of local customs and cultures. But let’s not go too deep, ask difficult questions and perturb the happiness bubbles travelers purposefully construct for ourselves. Travelers are passerby’s, transient and uncommitted. We might as well take the good and leave the bad.
Then there is the Stanley Tucci version, the ego, the part that mediates between the unrealistic id and the external real world. Controlled, restrained, compromised, it works out realistic ways of satisfying the id’s demands. And there lies my objection to the Stanley Tucci show – it reflects my own bourgeois way of traveling, indulging in the “good” life, or what society has conditioned me to believe what the good life is, on camera, in social media. For all its goodness, it is ultimately superficial and unsatisfying. Deep in my soul, I have a longing, a special place reserved for Anthony Bourdain, sinfully hedonistic, but authentic, liberated, and inexorable.