When Anthony Bourdain speaks, people undoubtedly listen. Whether it's about Vietnamese food in Houston or immigration under President Trump, the Parts Unknown star has evolved into a food world sage. For his latest project, Bourdain directed the spotlight elsewhere, on a chef he believes has been unjustly overlooked in gastronomical history: Jeremiah Tower, America's first celebrity chef.

Tower was a rockstar. He was controversial, egotistical, and influential, traits that are ubiquitous among big-name chefs today. He began his career in the 1970s at Chez Panisse, where he pioneered California cuisine and restaurant theatrics but clashed with its founder, Alice Waters. He left and in 1984 founded Stars, the first see-and-be-seen restaurant in the country, only to leave it in 1999 and disappear from the food world for nearly two decades. Tower staged a comeback in 2014, taking over the kitchen of New York City's struggling Tavern on the Green, but within months, he was gone again.

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Bourdain produced Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent, which opens April 21 is select cities, to recall Tower's sudden rise, mysterious fall, and iconic status amongst culinary circles. He recently talked to Esquire about making the documentary, regrets, and what it means to fade away.

Bourdain couldn't let the culinary world misremember Tower.

I read Jeremiah's book, , when it first came out. I felt angered by the book. The book made this powerful case for the need to take another look at his importance, his place in history. It made me angry that he had been overlooked, that this false narrative had been put out there and nourished and maintained and repeated by people who knew better.

I felt this impish, evil desire to correct the record. That was my original impetus anyway. But of course once we started making the film and I started interviewing Jeremiah, it became something else entirely. It became a really great character study about not just a particular time and place in history, but this really compelling life—a brilliant figure who changed the way we eat in America and the way we look at chefs and restaurants and food.

He thinks there will never be a "magnificent" chef like Tower again.

Jeremiah is very much not a 21st Century man. He has a love for grand hotel- and ocean liner-style service. There aren't a lot of people out there—I don't know if there's anyone else out there—who feels that kind of deep, romantic attachment to that world and time, especially in a non-ironic way. There are a few post-ironic modern chefs out there who love riffing on that food, and genuinely love it. But there had never been anyone like him before, and I don't know if what he and Alice Waters had at Chez Panisse can ever or will ever be replicated. It was a confluence of desires and circumstances.

"I don't know if what he and Alice Waters had at Chez Panisse can ever or will ever be replicated."

This cult of personality we have in the restaurant industry now, to a great extent he was responsible for that too. There can only be one first, and he was the first fuckable American chef. That in itself was a big change. It helped alter the whole power structure as far as chefs. No one really cared about the chef's opinion before. Suddenly they did. If you went into Stars and didn't see Jeremiah, you were disappointed. You wanted Jeremiah. You wanted the chef to tell you what you should eat. Before Jeremiah no one really cared about what the chef thought you should eat. You went because you had something in mind.

And yes, that changed in part because of Tower's fuckability.

One of my favorite moments in the film is [food writer] Ruth Reichl describing Jeremiah walking into the room. She had to catch her breath just thinking about it. Jeremiah was physically beautiful. He was also smart, very talented, and manipulative, to be fair. Many men and many women alike wanted to sleep with him. And I'm guessing a fair number of them did. He was fully aware of that fact and not beyond using that fact. That was a big difference. Up until that point the public image of the chef was this dumpy Italian guy with a long waxed mustached. He would cringingly come out to the table and try to tell you excitedly about tonight's special. If you asked him for the mixed grill he would say, "Of course sir," and then creep back into the kitchen to do your bidding. That was not Jeremiah.

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Bourdain did not intend to knock Alice Waters with the documentary.

We wanted her very much to take part, but she declined. If you're looking at this film as a slam on Alice Waters, that's not the intention at all. There is no diminishing her importance to the history of American gastronomy. Chez Panisse is still open, still relevant. She created this space, this opportunity, this environment. Maybe the only space, the only environment where Jeremiah Tower could walk in the door with no professional training whatsoever and a headful of batshit crazy ideas and do what he did. And unlike Jeremiah, she's still out there running a great restaurant. My preferred narrative may be different than hers, but I don't think that diminishes her role. It just alters the narrative somewhat.

I hope she watches [the documentary]. I know her a little bit. We talk now and again. I think she had a genuine love for Jeremiah, a genuine appreciation of his talent. But I think it's a painful subject for her. I don't want to speak for her—I'm the last person in the world who should—but that was a golden time for a lot of people. And the way any of us look back on golden times is always painful and filled with regrets. I'm just guessing now, but I'm sure she was uncomfortable with it. She was apprehensive about how she may be portrayed, and again, I'm not speaking for her. I'm just guessing off the top of my head. But I'm sure it was also an emotional thing. It was uncomfortable. I look back on my 20s, my early years cooking, and I'm filled with many regrets. There's stuff I don't want to look back on or live over.

Restaurants are still imitating the "dining as entertainment" concept introduced by Stars in the '80s.

Yeah, all restaurants. Our cities are full of them. Many successful restaurants have in some way the balance, the feel, the atmosphere, the physical layout, the hierarchy of the chef. They are a reflection of what Jeremiah did at Stars. The whole restaurant model, at a certain price point, changed because of Stars and emulated him and added fire to that.

It was a mistake for Tower to take over Tavern on the Green's kitchen.

When Lydia Tenaglia, the director, my longtime creative partner, told me that Jeremiah was going to Tavern on the Green [after they had wrapped], she was like, "What do we do? We finished the film. We're going to have to make another whole film." I said, "I give it five weeks max. This is mission impossible. This is madness. It's going to be riveting footage, but Tavern on the Green is legendarily a chef killer." And I quickly heard from friends in the business that critics who hadn't even eaten there yet were looking forward to panning the place.

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Bourdain has no idea if Tower will stage a comeback after the film premieres.

I would not care to predict anything Jeremiah does or doesn't do. He's very mysterious, mercurial, very careful about how much of himself he reveals. One of the most fascinating things about the film is the way he would describe his childhood. This is a man who was sexually molested as a young boy, grew up with alcoholic parents in grand hotels around the world, and left largely to himself. And he would have us believe that he used these times and incidents as positive things. As not hurtful. And I have a very hard time believing that. So who knows what he'll do. I wouldn't put anything past him.

"The way any of us look back on golden times is always painful and filled with regrets."

He's in Mexico [now], but I see a fair amount of him in New York. Whether he has something else up his sleeve, I don't know. It's a young person's business. If you're working in a kitchen these days and you're 32, you're "Grandpa" and "Grandma." He's got a lot stacked against him. But he's Jeremiah Tower. If he walks into a room and says somebody get me a drink, a hell of a lot of people will head to the bar even if they don't know who the hell he is. He's got that kind of commanding presence.

Bourdain won't disappear like Tower did.

I talk about that a lot in my foolish, overly romantic view of myself in the world. It's pretty to think that I could do that. But I know myself a little better than that by now. I can't. I'm a guy who will work until the end. I need to make things, I need to do things, I need to stay busy. If I am not busy and I am not working or have things to do every day, then the bad brain takes over and starts whispering evil, self-destructive shit in my head. And I'm very aware of that voice and try to outwit it by staying busy.

And he's okay with people dissecting his every word.

It's hard out there for a food writer these days. Especially when there are thousands of other food writers sitting in cubicles and getting paid by web traffic. You make a list out of anything you can scarf up. I don't take it seriously at all, let's put it that way. I'm flattered by the attention, I'm grateful for it. But it's kind of awkward.

Look, I'm glad I'm alive. I worked short order for a lot of my adult life. I worked in crappy restaurants, I made no money. I'm glad people give a shit about me at all. I'm grateful for that. I'm really glad I make a living and I get to work with people like [my creative partner] Lydia who I respect and admire. I'm glad I get to do all of these projects and I have this freedom to go anywhere around the world. I'm very happy with my job. If that means I have to read people saying silly, flattering things about me, I'm not unhappy about it. But again, I don't take it seriously. If I did take it seriously, someone should really put me out of my misery.

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