F*** that POS heroin addict. All he can do is cook, and not very well.
Because of Bourdain’s liberal use of profanity and sexual references in his television show No Reservations, the network has prepended viewer discretion advisories to each segment of each episode. In early seasons, these were a simple screen of white text on a black background, but in more recent seasons, they now include animation that is related in some way to the episode.
Adding to his untamed image, Bourdain is a former user of cocaine, heroin, and LSD. In Kitchen Confidential he writes of his experience in a trendy SoHo restaurant in 1981: “We were high all the time, sneaking off to the walk-in refrigerator at every opportunity to ‘conceptualize.’ Hardly a decision was made without drugs. Cannabis, methaqualone, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms soaked in honey and used to sweeten tea, secobarbital, tuinal, amphetamine, codeine and, increasingly, heroin, which we’d send a Spanish-speaking busboy over to Alphabet City to get.” In the same book, Bourdain frankly describes his former addiction, including how he once resorted to selling his record collection on the street in order to raise enough money to score drugs.
Bourdain has been known for being an unrepentant drinker and smoker.
Bourdain is also noted for his not-so-subtle put-downs of celebrity chefs such as Emeril Lagasse and Bobby Flay, and Food Network personalities such as Sandra Lee and Rachael Ray (who is the butt of many jokes on No Reservations).
Another of Bourdain’s major concerns is acknowledging and championing the industrious immigrants — often from Latin America — who make up a majority of the chefs and cooks in many U.S. restaurants, including upscale restaurants, regardless of cuisine. Bourdain considers them to be talented chefs and invaluable cooks, underpaid and unrecognized even though they have become the backbone of the U.S. restaurant industry.