The Sweet Reason Anthony Bourdain Loved "Simple" Food
Most of us eat relatively simple meals at home like pasta, stir-fries, maybe the occasional "throw everything on a roasting pan and see how it turns out" meal, nothing overly crazy. We certainly aren't browning butter and making compotes on a regular basis, though we might expect professional chefs to have a bit more elevated cuisine in their homes. The truth of it is, however, that a lot of professional cooks and food television show personalities tend to eat pretty simply at home.
Adele makes a classic pot roast every Sunday, and the first dish Anne Burrell cooked for her new husband was her simple and delicious carbonara recipe. Lidia Bastianich loves a solid peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and celebrity Haylie Duff prefers cooking with frozen chicken strips. When it comes down to it, a lot of us (even famous people and those who cook for a living) prefer simple meals with basic ingredients that don't take a lot of energy to prepare, but still taste fantastic, and Anthony Bourdain, as well-traveled as he was, still preferred a lot of nostalgic meals.
Anthony Bourdain loved comfort food because it's what he made for his daughter
Bourdain had traveled the world and sampled some of the stranger edible offerings that exist, from maggot fried rice to fermented shark, cobra hearts and fetal duck eggs, raw seal eyeballs and warthog anus. There was nothing he wouldn't try, and it's safe to say his palate was probably more refined and diverse than most. It comes as a bit of surprise, then, to find out that the famous chef ate a lot of dishes that we would consider comfort food at home. In an interview with Publisher's Weekly, Bourdain was asked why some items, including mac and cheese and tuna salad, made his cookbook, "Appetites."
His response was heartwarming, "I'm a dad. That's what I make at home. I like meat loaf just as much as anyone. In fact, more than anyone." He explained that he wanted to display "food that I cook for myself, my family and friends. This is an accurate representation of the things I genuinely love to cook when I'm not working." He claimed he wasn't alone, either, "Most chefs I know eat very simply at home and are most sentimental about the things they ate as a child." It is a bit relieving to know that even professional chefs are making tuna salad when they're off of work.