In content marketing , we might be tempted to place our brand as the central piece around which all the stories revolve. Bourdain, in his television programs, tried to focus on places, their people, customs and gastronomy, leaving his ego and his own person aside.
How can we forget the episode in season 8 of his show “ Parts Unknown” in which he sits at a table in a small, casual restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam , with President Barack Obama, as they have an open and sincere conversation. “I spoke to him as a father, as an enthusiast of the region, and he responded with real nostalgia for the Indonesian and Hawaiian street food of his youth,” Bourdain later said of the interview with the former US president.
He exposed many social problems that he found in his path without taking center stage, with humanism and empathy, and became a spokesman for those who suffered poverty, inequality and injustice. He was recognized as a defender of Hispanic immigrants in the United States. He claimed that without the hard work of immigrants from Mexico and Central America in the kitchens, the restaurant industry would collapse in his country. He felt offended by the inequality he observed, for example, when a white boy with culinary studies arrived at a restaurant and the Latino cook, who had been working there for years, gladly taught him everything that the other did not know how to do, but after a while, it was the white boy who was promoted.
Bourdain always said that when he traveled he left his political ideologies at home, in this way he focused exclusively on the people and their culture.
- Don't take yourself so seriously
Anthony Bourdain forged a strong personal brand cambodia mobile phone number list over the course of his years as a cook, writer, and entertainer. In his famous 1999 article for The New Yorker “Don't eat before reading this ,” in which he revealed the dark secrets of kitchens in general, he showed the public his “kitchen tough boy” persona. He confessed that he dropped out of college to transfer to the Culinary Institute of America because he was attracted to the unpleasant side of professional cooking. “I wanted it all: the cuts, the burns on my hands and wrists, the macabre humor of the kitchen, the free food, the stolen alcohol, the camaraderie that flourished within a rigid order.”
One of Bourdain's trademarks, which he brought to light in his stories, was his ability to poke fun at himself. He could appear sweaty, baggy and obviously hungover as he traveled by boat from one village to another in a faraway country, without pretending that everything was perfect.
For example, in his book “Malos tragos” (Bad Times) , where he shows us a collection of stories about cooking and traveling organized according to basic flavors: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and “umami,” a Japanese term that refers to something delicious but difficult to classify. He describes with skill and good humor the adventures and misadventures throughout his years as a cook and inveterate traveler. In addition to showing the real face of cooking, in this book he revealed the less than glamorous side of making television. In his stories he presents himself as a normal person, with good days, bad days and hundreds of defects.