Anthony Bourdain Gets Nicer to Alton Brown, But Still Jokes About Guy Fieri

Anthony Bourdain has made a name for himself telling jokes and poking fun at his own career, cooking. He tours the country, talking to audiences about the life of a celebrity chef. But sometimes other...
Anthony Bourdain Gets Nicer to Alton Brown, But Still Jokes About Guy Fieri
Written by Mike Tuttle
  • Anthony Bourdain has made a name for himself telling jokes and poking fun at his own career, cooking. He tours the country, talking to audiences about the life of a celebrity chef. But sometimes other chefs get caught in Anthony Bourdain’s wake, especially chef’s from the Food Network group.

    For his most recent tour, the “Close to the Bone” tour, Bourdain’s website calls him “a professional gadfly, bête noir, advocate, social critic, and pork enthusiast, recognized for his caustic sense of humor worldwide. He is as unsparing of those things he hates, as he is evangelical about his passions.”

    On one tour stop, he got laughs poking fun at Food Network star Adam Richman, host of Man vs. Food, as well as Alton Brown and Guy Fieri.

    “I love Ina Garten,” Bourdain said. “She’s one of the few people on Food Network who can actually cook.”

    Alton Brown was not very keen on Bouradin’s joke.

    “I don’t have to defend my skills against anybody,” Brown said. “I’ve got 14 years and 252 episodes of a show called Good Eats that I’m pretty sure I can use as a résumé for my skills. When was the last time you saw Anthony Bourdain actually cook anything?” adding, “I’ve spent 14 years cooking my own food on television and I’ve never seen him cook a meal.”

    Bourdain recently offered an olive branch to Brown when he said of his own daughter, “She is in no way impressed by my presence on TV. She thinks Alton Brown and Andrew Zimmern are much more entertaining.”

    In fact, Bourdain says, “A major father-daughter activity around our house is watching Cutthroat Kitchen. I don’t want to get on his bad side. He’s a god to my daughter.

    And what about Guy Fieri? Bourdain had said of Fieri, “I sort of feel in a heartfelt way for Guy. I wonder about him. He’s 52 years-old and still rolling around in the flame outfit . . . What does he do? How does Guy Fieri de-douche?”

    Apparently Bourdain won’t stop taking digs at Fieri anytime soon.

    “I tell jokes about Guy Fieri,” he says. “The day you can’t tell jokes about Guy Fieri, comedy as we know it is dead. I tell jokes about those guys; it’s what I do.”

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