He was mercurial, whimsical, rebellious and voracious. An intellectual heavyweight cloaked in pure cool and swagger. He didn’t give a fuck. He ripped the lid off the New York restaurant scene with his article “Don’t Eat before Reading This”, which he sent straight up and raw to the New Yorker. 100% percent of articles sent this way don’t even get an eyeball on them…but his article was picked up and the brilliance of his writing was recognized.
He instantly became a star. His career was launched in the same improbably charmed way that he seemed to live his life on camera. He was a late bloomer having attained notoriety for his writings around my age….40. He grinded it out in the culinary industry and settled on the fact that he was a good chef but not a master. He knew his real talent was storytelling.
Equally comfortable, in a 3-star Michelin restaurant in France or at a night market, gobbling street food in Asia. He encouraged North Americans to stop being petrified of foods that were seen as exotic and perhaps unpalatable. He validated the deliciousness of food no matter its origin and by extension demystified people. He realized the food is inextricably intertwined with culture. To reject the persons food, is to reject the culture. He innately understood this. His insatiably curious palate led him to uncover and interact with peoples of all cultures and walks of life in a truly genuine manner.
For those of us bound to our homes, lives and repetitive existence. He represented what each of us secretly wished we could do. Leave unchained, explore the world and meet its most interesting people. Get shit-faced drunk, eat with reckless abandon, write about it and get paid. That is why his death has always been so inexplicable to us on a visceral level.
However, beneath the seemingly serendipitous existence, there was trouble brewing. The handsome face, the weathered leathery skin hiding a tormented soul in search of something all the travels on this earth could never provide. How many of us are like this? How many of us are holograms? Projecting a 3-dimensional existence when we are 2-dimensional, flat and truly suffering on the inside.
Over a decade of medicine has revealed to me all the pain behind people’s eyes, even when they have a smile on their face. Having that vantage, I know there is only one certainty about the human condition…People are not what they seem.
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