In 2001, Houston barbecue pitmaker David Klose got a call from a TV producer asking if he would be willing to host a New York chef at his pit factory and take him out for great barbecue at a local joint.

"Just don't send me a chef with that froufrou hair, because we'll tear him apart," Klose said, referencing the rough-and-tumble welders and crew at his shop.

He need not have worried: That chef was Anthony Bourdain, who at the time was working on a barbecue-focused episode of his still-fairly-new Food Network show, "A Cook's Tour."

Klose had never heard of Bourdain, who died Friday at 61, but felt an immediate kinship when they met.

"I looked at his eyes," Klose recalled. "I said, 'yep, you are one of us.' He was crazy as a loon. He'd been around, you know what I mean? He was sharp. I don't think there was very much in life that got past him."

That was one of several visits Bourdain made to Houston over the years, for both TV shows and speaking engagements. While he was in town he dabbled in our restaurant scene – Klose took him for ribs at Burns BBQ in Acres Homes, by the way – and made an impression on many people he encountered.

During a trip in the 1990s, Bourdain dined at Mai's restaurant in Midtown. Years later, he said it was his favorite place to eat in Houston.

"From my limited time in Houston," he told the Chronicle in a 2010 interview, "I've come to believe it has some of the best Vietnamese (food) in the country, if not the best."

The acknowledgment profoundly affected business, said Mai's general manager Anna Pham.

"That he remembered his experience here was such an honor," Pham said of her mother Mai Nguyen's restaurant. "In our history at Mai's we will always go back to that time when we were truly a hole in the wall restaurant. It put us on the map."

Later that year, she was able to tell him how much his words meant to her family – who were in the process of reopening the restaurant after a devastating fire – during one of his speaking engagements presented by Society for the Performing Arts at Jones Hall.

"He helped bring notice to the Vietnamese community in Houston and allowed people to embrace it," Pham said. "He had such enthusiasm."

In 2012, Bourdain returned to Jones Hall, this time with chef Eric Ripert on a tour called "Good vs. Evil." Ripert found Bourdain unresponsive in his hotel room Friday morning in France. His death was called a suicide.

Kathryn Lott, Society for the Performing Arts' then-director of operations, was struck by the closeness between the two men.

"They were genuine friends," she said. "He opened up so much more around Eric. When they were in their dressing rooms, they were nonstop inseparable."

Lott also noted that Bourdain always made sure he had local craft beer in his dressing room, and commented positively to her on the selection from Saint Arnold.

"The first time we presented Bourdain was the first time I realized chefs were turning into legitimate show-business stars," she said. "He could carry himself on stage, have a rapport with the audience, and for 90 minutes be as engaging as a movie star like Al Pacino or Lily Tomlin, both of whom SPA brought to Houston for their own shows."

In 2016, Bourdain was back again, this time filming for his CNN show "Parts Unknown."

One of the places he hit was Indo-Pakistani restaurant Himalaya. Owner Kaiser Lashkari remembers when Bourdain walked through the door.

"He was 6 foot 7, so he had to put his head down to come in," Lashkari said.

He also remembers Bourdain's favorite dishes at the restaurant: green curry chicken, biryani and steak tikka washed down with Shiner Bock. Lashkari was so honored by Bourdain's visit that his menu now has several dishes marked with a thumbs up as "Bourdain approved."

In their conversation at the restaurant Lashkari told Bourdain that he gave up his medical school education to become a restaurateur: "He said to me, 'I'm glad you didn't become a doctor.'"

Lashkari describes the mood during that day of filming at his restaurant as jubilant.

"People were falling all over themselves to get a picture with him," he said. "He was so talented. He was an iconic personality with great achievement under his belt."

Bourdain spent a good chunk of another day filming for "Parts Unknown" at Burns BBQ, the same place pitmaker Klose had taken him more than a decade earlier.

Burns co-owner Cory Crawford cherished the day Bourdain visited in June 2016.

"He treated you like he's known you for years," Crawford said. "He was a very down-to-earth person. You could talk to him about anything, not just food."

And they did. While eating barbecue on the Burns patio, Bourdain engaged several Houstonians, including rapper Slim Thug, on topics such as Houston's car culture, Houston flooding, diversity and the oil slump.

After the episode aired, Burns was deluged with customers – a standing-room-only rush that lasted months, Crawford said.

"People still to this day come on their layover from the airport," he said. "They even come with their luggage. He did that much for the business."

Crawford said that Bourdain understood what Houstonians treasure about the city.

"One thing that stayed with me is that he liked the diversity of Houston," he said. "The whole episode he dug deep down in Houston as one of the most diverse cities in the United States. I appreciated that."