If “The third time’s the charm” holds any truth, Anthony Bourdain’s three summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, make a compelling case. In 1972, a young, self-destructive, and, perhaps most importantly, unemployed Bourdain landed a job washing dishes at a seafood restaurant called the Flagship and slowly moved his way up to the salad station.
He returned the following summer, swaggering into the same restaurant—now under new ownership—wearing a blue Pierre Cardin seersucker suit, talking a big game, and expecting a promotion to the broiler. Instead, a hot sauté pan, a wimpy yelp, an ill-fated osso buco Milanese, and the rookie mistake of asking for a Band-Aid quickly dashed those hopes and earned him the nickname “Mal Carne” (bad meat). Determined to prove himself, he applied to the Culinary Institute of America, in Poughkeepsie, with an “I’ll show them!” attitude. Back at the Flagship after his first year, he did.
