The “Bad Boy” Chef

By Lori Silverbush

The sadness of reading about Anthony Bourdain’s death last Friday morning was deepened by yet another description of him as “the original bad boy chef.”

Our culture tolerates the exuberant partying of young people for a time, but certain groups, like chefs, are granted a pass — celebrated even — for ongoing excess long into adulthood. The “bad boy” trope is breathlessly trotted out to describe the generation whose muscular and irreverent approach to food — and life — came to define modern American cuisine in the 1980s and ’90s. It’s meant to invoke a salacious and unprintable past, a lusty defiance of social norms in service to the bottomless appetites of great talent.

How about we all agree to start calling it what it is: unresolved pain.

The myth of the “bad boy chef” sends a damaging message to young people — especially young male chefs — that the debauchery of great culinary figures was somehow about their coolness, their machismo, and their power.

Tony would have told you a different story.

In fact, he did. Anthony Bourdain was the first to call out the bacchanalian oblivion of his past as an escape from darker, sadder truths hidden within the folds of his complex psychology. He was an aware and thoughtful soul who rejected those very archetypes he felt his success had helped to encourage.

Kitchens naturally select for young people who prefer action over academics. It’s an environment where ADHD is an asset, where a busy, multi-tasking brain pushes one up the ladder, rather than down. But kitchens are also frenetic spaces where emotional pain goes overlooked and unsupported, fueling depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Enter drugs and alcohol, which lift the negative self-talk just long enough to rinse and repeat. The ‘bad boy’ fiction reinforces this toxic cycle: Power through, young man. Pain is for pussies.

The brawny John Wayne-ian solitude of the bad-boy myth is corrosive: Left alone, the mental chaos of early adulthood can morph into full-blown depression, a real and progressive disease. Like cancer, depression has an agnostic disregard for success, wealth, or talent. It can go into remission, or escalate overnight. Depression marinates our brains in despair and etches new neural pathways, rewiring the mind’s architecture in ways that research is still uncovering. The effectiveness of treatments like talk therapy, medication and meditation is well documented, but the feverish speculation that follows a high-profile suicide ignores the neurochemical evidence and reinforces a false narrative of weakness and blame: She had everything to live for! What pushed him over the edge? It’s not hard to imagine the added shame this could layer over the listening psyche of another soul in that fragile place.

I’m the wife of a former ‘bad boy’ chef, one lucky enough to have made it through his early wasted years intact. For two decades I’ve watched ringside as talented restaurant folk self-medicate before flaming out, with the world’s tacit back-slapping approval. Thankfully, today, we’re seeing an emergent generation of culinary leaders who celebrate vulnerability, openness and complexity — traits once disparaged as too female for a ‘real’ chef. Restaurants are searching for a new paradigm — one in which workers are fully seen and encouraged to seek help with their challenges. When people feel empowered to be authentically themselves, they can in turn lift up others, reject harassment, and do their best, most innovative work.

It’s time we recognize that the legendary revelry of “bad boy” chefs was masking something else, and talk about it honestly. The next generation needs to know that sharing their struggles with depression or mental illness is a sign of strength, and that in seeking help, they will be supported and celebrated, as Anthony Bourdain deserves to be, for their honesty and humanity above all.