President Obama made Anthony Bourdain start smoking cigarettes again. At least, that's Bourdain's story. After three smoke-free years, Bourdain picked up the president's bad habit around the time the two shared a meal in Hanoi, Vietnam, for Parts Unknown. "Obama made me do it," he told the New Yorker in an extensive profile in the February 13 issue.
That dinner in Vietnam highlighted Bourdain's new role as reluctant do-gooder and oft-enraged truth-speaker of the political and culinary worlds. A White House staffer told him he brought Laos's unexploded-ordinance problem to light. "I'm a little embarrassed. I feel like Bono. I don't want to be that guy. The show is always about me. I would be bullshitting you if I said I was on some mission. I'm not," Bourdain said.
The profile also jumps forward, neatly skipping the election and the new president, to describe one of Bourdain's upcoming projects, a new dining experience at Manhattan's Pier 57 called Bourdain Market, which the New Yorker loosely compared to the original Eataly. The idea is to invite street-food vendors from around the world, give them visas (uh, if possible), and set them up in an open-air food court modeled after those in Singapore. From the article:
"Imagine a post-apocalyptic Grand Central Terminal, if it had been invaded by China," Bourdain said. ... Bourdain elaborated that the market should bring to mind "Blade Runner"—high-end retail as grungy, polyglot dystopia.
Bourdain Market, which will open in the next few years, will have an old-timey butcher shop complete with blood and carcasses, and loads of quality Asian street food. Like most of what Bourdain does, and literally anything comparable to Blade Runner, it will likely be much-talked-about and intensely cool.
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