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Anthony Bourdain's Lost Li.st's (bourdain.greg.technology)

341 points by gregsadetsky ↗ HN
I read through the years about Bourdain's content on the defunct li.st service, but was never able to find an archive of it. A more thorough perusing of archive.org and a pointer from an Internet stranger led me to create this site. Cheers

42 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 74.0 ms ] thread
yawpitch
Hands down the funniest thing I ever saw, live and in person, was Anthony Bourdain staring with naked, enraptured joy at the woman doing the American Sign Language translation of what he’d just said, then stopping just after she did to let us all know that “I just had to know what it looks like to sign ‘felching Mrs. Butterworth.’”

Thank you, Tony, wherever you are… if for nothing else, then for the Pho Chay I the Lunch Lady made just for my newly vegetarian self in Saigon.

dataviz1000
I went to the 'Obama restaurant' in Hanoi for bun cha (not vegetarian) more so because Anthony Bourdain. Like a good American I smoked a Cuban cigar afterwards in a cigar bar under an image of Che Guevara I passed on the way back to the hotel which was out of the way likely guided by Tony's spirit if such things exist. Nonetheless, the Bun Cha up in the mountains of Sa Pa is better as are Dominican cigars.
linhns
I’m a local from Hanoi, always surprised with Bourdain picking that place to eat with pres Obama (I still believe because of presidential food safety standards). I’d not pick that place any day of the week. Having lived in Singapore as well, RIP Anthony, but your picks aren’t that great.
lippihom
Where would you go instead? Have a few favorite spots for Hanoi/Singapore?
SoleilAbsolu
It's honestly hard to think of a better title for the definitive Anthony Bourdain biography then "Felching Mrs. Butterworth"!
deeptishukla22
Bourdain had a way of writing that made even throwaway lines feel meaningful, but so much of that era of content is basically disappearing. It’s nice to see someone do the unglamorous work of gathering the fragments before they fade completely.
t0lo
It's funny because his, and Chuck Palahniuk's (fight club, etc) way of seeing the world- that brand of anti corporate- pro human- enjoy the waste- cynicism seemed so permanent and authentic- and like nothing could take it away from you- it felt like a staple of the human experience that was a place you could go to in your mind.

It's amazing to see how quickly that all got shovelled away and replaced with productised, streamlined, sterile groupthink- and one in which authentic sexuality and sex jokes are shunned. I think in some part he knew which way this world was heading and made a decision based off of that.

As a young person who stakes a lot of my headspace in the former, it's definitely an interesting, ridiculously two faced and contradictory cultural moment we're in right now.

jyounker
It was only a staple in your mind. Those views you remember were very much reactions against what already existed, and where things were headed. Things never changed direction, and here we are.
rgovostes
Awesome. I refer to https://bourdain.greg.technology/#food-im-thinking-about about once a year. One of my favorite vacations was going to a different hawker stall on his list each night in Singapore. Unsurprisingly, his picks are all pretty good, and #1 is justified in crowning the list.
t0lo
Also for general bourdain tourism- eat like bourdain is a really passionate and fleshed out blog that tells you where and what he ate in each city/country. I use it pretty frequently.

https://eatlikebourdain.com/

phist_mcgee
I've never ordered it, it always looks so incredibly bland, am I missing something here?
0_____0
Oh! #1 ended up with a Bib Gourmand from Michelin later that year.
villaaston1
Maybe someone here knows the creators of li.st and we can get the missing lists back online?
barrenko
Gentle reminder that the /kitchenconfidential reddit is a fun place to occasionally visit.
yakkomajuri
Didn't know he was such a fan of rap, interesting point about brioche buns.

Also: "Karaoke should only be performed with people who have already seen your genitals." :D

gausswho
In the SCARY SHIT!!! Things I find genuinely terrifying section:

> Switzerland: I think I must have experienced some awful childhood trauma in view of a mural of snow capped peaks and Lake Geneva. I live with a persistent dread of alpine vistas, chalet architecture, Tyrolean hats, even cheese with holes in it. You will notice I have never been there. That’s because Switzerland frightens me.

Huh. He was just over the border from there when he was finished.

fredoliveira
One of the few people that has a voice (written and otherwise) so distinctive that even reading those lists, I read them in his voice. I miss that guy.
pimlottc
There used to be a mirror of the Wayback Machine [0][1] hosted at the new Library of Alexandria in Egypt [2]. Sometimes you could pull pages from them that otherwise errored out on the main archive.org site. Sadly, it seems the mirror has been offline [3] for some years now.

0: https://www.bibalex.org/en/News/Details?DocumentID=1550&Keyw...

1: https://www.bibalex.org/isis/frontend/projects/ProjectDetail...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina

3: http://web.archive.bibalex.org

W-Stool
Was there ever a cooler guy who could actually write? I don't think so.

Anyone who rates "Dr. Strangelove" as a great movie is OK by me.

bink
For those who haven't read it yet, the book "In the Weeds" does a pretty good job of showing the hidden side of Bourdain (if there was such a thing). He was as imperfect as you might imagine. I personally enjoyed learning how cruel he could be as I always had a tremendous amount of respect for him and it made him more human to me.

They even cover an incident where the crew played a practical joke on him with a clown (his fear is mentioned in a li.st).

DocTomoe
As someone who was mildly familiar with Bourdain ("some sort of American TV cook", some badly-dubbed shows in our private TV channels which didn't really catch on, because 'cooking show') until he decided to end it ...

... it is fascinating to me that one person, especially in a very niche profession, has had that kind of cultural impact that his random writing is being discussed seven years after his death.

chubot
A chef is not a niche profession - everyone knows what a chef does, and has consumed what they make

A niche profession is, say, artistic cycling

People talk about Bourdain 7 years later for the same reason that they talk about musicians, actors, and painters 7 or 70 years later

jyounker
He is famous for his writing, and not for being a chef.

His 2000 book, "Kitchen Confidential," was a New York Times best seller, and it's what put him on the map. It's still one of my favorite books, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. The chapter on his bread baker, "Adam Real Last Name Unknown," is one of the funniest things I've ever had the pleasure to read.

diggyhole
Kitchen Confidential is an excellent read. Any reader will come away having healthy respect and fear of the restaurant industry.
cultofmetatron
his show was what inspired me to leave san Francisco and travel the world fulltime.

rest in peace king.

rishabhaiover
If there's anyone who can sell you to travel, it's Bourdain. Travel deep, travel in mundane streets without the thirst to capture each moment.
jimmydddd
greg.technology is a great person for putting time and effort into this. Faith in humanity restored!
sexy_seedbox
His Hong Kong restaurant choices are all expensive tourist traps.
ltbarcly3
I never heard of Anthony Bourdain until years after he died. I guess I wasn't the right age, I was having a family and at work all day whenever his shows took off. He seems like a genuinely interesting person, but there are so many other interesting thoughtful people that don't have relatable cooking shows and I think Anthony Bourdain, as great as he is, gets quite a bit more attention than he probably warrants. Don't take that the wrong way, he's genuinely thoughtful and interesting, but he gets a LOT of attention OVER AND OVER.

I'll throw out Tim Kreider (author of We Learn Nothing, among other books) as someone else you might find worthwhile to checkout.

IAmGraydon
I was lucky enough to meet him in 2013. A truly good guy and a massive loss. No Reservations and Parts Unknown are still some of my favorite shows to binge.
hermitcrab
"Karaoke should only be performed with people who have already seen your genitals."
mihaitodor
Nice to see Motorhead in there! I did not expect that