Six on History: Food
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1) 'Roadrunner' Is a Gutting Documentary That Snaps Anthony Bourdain's Fans Back to Reality, ESQUIRE
"The last thing director Morgan Neville wanted to do in his documentary about Anthony Bourdain was eulogize Anthony Bourdain. This wouldn't be a stroll down memory lane, with everyone swapping tall tales about their dearly departed friend. This, Neville says, was his attempt to understand what he hadn't been able to before he began the two-year process of combing through 100,000 hours of footage and interviewing the people who'd been closest to Bourdain, from his second wife Ottavia Busia to his friend David Choe to the first TV producers he ever worked with, Lydia Tenaglia and Chris Collins. It was his attempt to understand why Bourdain killed himself.
In the three years since Bourdain died, his fans have erected a memorial on a foundation of his best moments: the wisdom he passed along to fellow travelers, his philosophy on being a respectful outsider, his relentless pursuance of adventure. We—anyone who felt a connection to him, his fans—had sought to be hungry for life in a way that would've made him proud. Then he fucked with us all by ending his life. He was no longer for his fans to know. Left with few answers and a shadow of doubt cast on those once-transcendent Bourdain lessons, many retreated back to easier memorial ground. Those in Bourdain's orbit couldn't, and Neville's Roadrunner gives them an outlet for their grief. Their anger, too.
Watch the touching first trailer for 'Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.'
In that way, Roadrunner rests like a ball of wet cement in the stomach. We are reminded that death was were there all along. Bourdain romanticized suicide. He joked about it. He repeatedly pondered karma and the next life on camera. He killed animals before feasting on them. As the film starts, his disembodied voiceover tells us that he finds it "useful and therapeutic" to think about death; in a later clip, he jokes that all the good karma in his life must mean his next one will be lived out as a sea cucumber.
He was an addict chasing...something. His peers agree. Maybe it was happiness, which, in its most gutting moments, Roadrunner showed remained elusive to him. His favorite song, as chef David Chang says in the film, was not a raucous rock and roll anthem but "Anemone" by Brian Jonestown Massacre—"heroin music," Chang called it. And every minute into the documentary, which starts with the sudden fame Bourdain found after Kitchen Confidential, progresses chronologically from there to his death.
As for understanding Bourdain? Neville believes he has the fullest picture of the man yet, pieced together through archival behind-the-scenes footage and all these brutally honest interviews. And his fans are reminded Bourdain is not just a man deserving a place alongside Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson in modern mythology, but also a man who never seemed able to find what he was looking for. Before Roadrunner's release, Neville spoke to Esquire about what he felt he owed to Bourdain's fans, how he investigated Bourdain's "psychiatric portrait," and the takeaway from the last third of the documentary he believes is the most important.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
"The Meals as Collective Memory (2019) is an oral history project that grew out of the interest in capturing the memory-making utility of food and document both the social and culinary history behind Black-owned restaurants in Central Brooklyn. Interviews were collected from long-time Black restaurateurs and owners of burgeoning neighborhood staples in Central Brooklyn. Apart from the oral history project was the creation of a Zine by Laurent Chevalier featuring Black-owned restaurants in Crown Heights and Bedford Stuyvesant; Workshops conducted by CCHR and Black-Owned Brooklyn regarding starting your own restaurant; public programming discussing the history of Black foodways and food journalism. Restaurants that were documented include: Lakou Kafe [195 Utica] Cheryl’s Global Soul [236 Underhill]| Pikliz [903 Franklin Ave] Kafe Loveture [903 Franklin Ave] Ital Kitchen, [1032 Union St] GrandChamps [197 Patchen Ave] Brooklyn Tea [524 Nostrand Ave] Island Pops [680 Nostrand Ave] Daddy Greens [1552 Fulton St] Abu’s Bakery [1184 Fulton St] Grand champs [ 195 Patchen Ave] Brooklyn Tea [524 Nostrand Ave] Brooklyn Beso [370 Lewis Ave]"
" ... Kuku Chicken offers a lot of chicken, obviously, and in a lot of different ways. There are Wings and Drums, served in big buckets if you want, and prepared as either "spicy," "garlic," or with a "sweet n' spicy glaze," which features a crisp garlic chip sprinkle. They don't specifically call these Korean-style wings, but the provenance is clear.
There are four varieties of fried chicken sandwich, including a piled-high Classic Spicy beauty that was messy as hell--the potato bun isn't quite up to the task--but really hit the spot after a day spent biking all over the city. Again, the meat here nails that crispy-juicy combo, the sauce is legitimately fiery, and the pickled things on top smooth the whole thing out.
There are also sandwiches drenched in Sweet Thai Chili sauce, Nacho Cheese, or House Ranch, the latter of which I had with my Poppers and was quite good. And definitely get an order of Kuku's Waffle Fries to go with whatever you order. They are excellent and can come with any number of dipping sauces, from Kuku Spicy Garlic to Buffalo Hot to Wasabi Cream to good ol' Ketchup.
All of that would be more than enough to keep me happy through multiple visits, but the Kuku's menu also has a whole page of Korean (or Japanese) classics from which to choose, featuring more entree-like fare such as Beef Bulgogi; Japchae with stir-fry vermicelli, pork, or chicken Katsu served over rice; and Tteokbokki, rice cakes tossed in gochujang and topped with both fish cakes and pork dumplings." ....
"Ramen is durable, portable, packaged in standard units, available in the prison commissary, and highly prized by those with a deep need to pad their chow hall meals.
Ramen can be used to pay for clothing and hygiene products, or services like laundry, bunk cleaning, dictation, or custom illustration. Gamblers can use it in lieu of chips.
Ramen’s status as the preferred form of exchange also speaks to a sharp decline in the quantity and quality of food in American penal institutions.
Ethnographer Michael Gibson-Light, who spent a year studying homegrown monetary practices among incarcerated populations, notes that slashed prison budgets have created a culture of “punitive frugality.”
Called upon to model a demonstrably tough on crime stance and cut back on expenditures, the institutions are unofficially shunting many of their traditional costs onto the prisoners themselves.
In response, those on the inside have pivoted to edible currency: ... "
