The paradox of Tony Bourdain has occupied my memory of him all these years A.B. (After Bourdain). My son, Gio, born on Bourdain’s 44th birthday—June 25, 2000, two weeks after Kitchen Confidential hit the New York Times best-seller list—captured this paradox hilariously one evening. “Wait, what?” Gio, then a young teen, asked. “Tony Bourdain and Anthony Bourdain aren’t brothers? They’re the same person?”
Up to that point, Gio hadn’t considered that the Tony who had come to our family holidays, or stayed at our house on the Jersey Shore, could also be the TV personality Anthony Bourdain. The moment of revelation came when we were all out in some Jersey dive and people were buzzing around us. (Perhaps inconsequentially, though somehow fused in my memory, Gio also thought for years that tofu, not a foodstuff in our household, was “toe food” and couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to eat it. I’m sure the Brothers Bourdain would have agreed with Gio on that.)
