We're on a road to nowhere: Anthony Bourdain and the universal desire to travel

Hatred for Jamie Oliver and the love of food

Like most British people growing up in the 2000s, I had harboured a hatred for Jamie Oliver before I could even read. His healthy eating campaign in schools, which began in 2005, eventually led to promises from Prime Minister Tony Blair and official legislation in 2008 banning junk food in primary and secondary schools. Although his actions meant I could no longer clog my arteries into obesity on a crisp Tuesday lunchtime in 2012, I still grew up with a deep love for cooking shows on Food Network.

There was just something so alluring about them to younger me: watching someone bring together disjointed yet fresh ingredients and transform them into something beautiful and fulfilling. Ten-year-old vegetarian me was simply fascinated by Guy Fieri consuming ten kilograms of beef at some trashy American joint in the middle of nowhere. Much to the annoyance of my family, Food Network became a permanent fixture of my Saturday mornings and sick days from school.

It may come as a surprise, then, that I hadn't even heard of Anthony Bourdain until I was reaching the end of my teenage years. Like most people discover their interests nowadays, I found him through TikTok, immediately captivated by the reverence with which he approached food. He quickly appeared different from every other television chef I had spent my childhood watching. His love for food transcended an obsession with ingredients and technique, instead entering the realm of cultural appreciation.

Food critic Brian Halweil beautifully summarises Bourdain's ethos by explaining that, for America's wittiest chef, food was “about other people” and allowed us to “live in another person's shoes”. Eating a meal, then, becomes about more than taste. It becomes a way of escaping yourself, however briefly, and entering the life and soul of someone else. Many people may look at a meal and see just that—a meal—but Bourdain looked deeper. He saw culture, family, and tradition, all beautifully presented through food made with love.

His holistic attitude towards food enthralled thousands, while his philosophy and writing made the culinary world increasingly approachable and relatable to the average person. I instantly resonated with Bourdain as I watched him appreciate the magic of the simple and accessible alongside the pinnacle of fine dining. For the first time, I felt as though I could have the same experiences as a television chef; they were no longer something reserved exclusively for the rich and famous.

In contrast to the polished aesthetic favoured by American cable television in the 1990s, Bourdain became someone the average person could not simply look up to, but could imagine becoming. He made the world feel accessible. And perhaps that is why, throughout the limited years of his life, he held the globe so completely fascinated.

‘Travel is not a reward for working, it is education for living’

We all know the stereotype too well: that one middle-class kid, quickly approaching their twenties, flies out to South-East Asia and returns claiming that their life is utterly different and completely changed for the better. They sit cross-legged on the floor while the rest of us rot on sofas, their arms fully adorned with swathes of bracelets collected across continents. Most of us quietly scoff and roll our eyes as they recount adventures through Thailand and Cambodia, wondering how a life outside our small and comfortable English towns could possibly be that good.

I've fallen victim to this attitude myself, allowing myself to believe that there is nothing particularly magical about stepping outside the comfort zone I have allowed myself to become far too familiar with.

Bourdain would absolutely despise this mindset.

For him, travel was a necessity. He never viewed it as a luxury, nor as something reserved for the rich and brave among us, but as an experience that every able-bodied person should pursue. How can you begin to understand the world when you refuse to see anything beyond what you have already known?

It is one thing to read and learn about societies we have never been a part of, but it is another thing entirely to experience them—even in the smallest possible way. When you keep your world physically small, your mind risks shrinking with it, leaving you ignorant of everything beyond the boundaries you have drawn for yourself.

Perhaps one of the simplest pieces of wisdom in Bourdain's bank of sarcasm is also one of his most powerful: “If I am an advocate for anything, it is to move. As far as you can, as much as you can.”

This nomadic call to arms has always resonated with me deeply. It fuels my desire to see the world while simultaneously validating the constant ache I have always felt to leave my hometown. Bourdain transforms what I imagine almost every teenage girl has felt at some point in her childhood into something resembling a philosophy for life. His words remind me that I am not entirely alone in this seemingly never-ending feeling of stagnation.

He would never want us to be the ignorant person rolling our eyes from the sofa. He would want us to spread our wings as far as the globe would allow and experience every culture we possibly could.

I bet you thought your life would change, but you're sat on a train again

This article began to piece itself together during my weekly ‘sad girl’ walk around my neighbourhood. With the familiar hum of Ethel Cain in my ears, I set off down the streets, undoubtedly looking absolutely miserable to anyone unfortunate enough to pass me.

I only call the event something as ridiculous as a ‘sad girl walk’ to distract myself from the crushing realisation that seems to manifest whenever I find myself alone on the pavement: I need to leave.

Indeed, as I am typing this now—shoes still on my feet from bursting through the door—the pressing need to jump on the next train out of here is already beginning to fade, and the words are slowly leaving my head.

Despite what can only be described as location-based amnesia surrounding my desire to leave this city, the feeling has always been present within me. Even as a little kid, I felt an unusual amount of disbelief towards older people who had never experienced the craving to move away from their hometown. The concept was positively foreign to me. Seven-year-old me spent almost every day daydreaming about a future literally anywhere other than here.

It wasn't as though my childhood was bad. In fact, it was almost as good as it could have been. I excelled in school, I had friends and hobbies, and I had a younger brother whom I was annoyingly close to.

And so the question still plagues me: if my life is so good, why do I want to escape it so badly?

The longing to break free from my hometown only grew stronger as I got older. High school teachers became increasingly frustrated with me as I stared out of the window, daring to fantasise about my future life in London instead of focusing on whatever pointless task had been set.

The word fantasy often makes people imagine a life of glamour: fashion shows, unlimited shopping budgets, and rides through the city in a tinted Rolls Royce. Instead, teenage me was dreaming about doing the grocery shopping in London, folding laundry, walking to university lectures—simply existing in a city that wasn't my own.

My dreams were never particularly extravagant. They were simple. I just wanted to leave.

I don't think my issue with my hometown was ever really the city itself. Once I remove my near-constant frustration, it is actually quite a nice place to live. I mean, what more could you possibly want than five music venues, a cathedral, and three Greggs all on the same street?

While I spend hours late into the night window-shopping on Google Flights, people are uprooting their entire lives to move to the place I have spent the last eighteen years complaining about.

My frustration, however, comes from an innate belief that nothing actually happens here. No one of note comes here on tour, and I see the same five faces in the coffee shop week after week. I truly feel as though I am stagnating here, slowly losing my motivation to keep going as I watch my dreams slip further into obscurity.

Talking to other people has made me realise that I am not alone in this feeling. There seems to be an almost epidemic element to girlhood: a constant, underlying desire to leave.

From the women my age saving every penny they can to escape their hometowns to Anthony Bourdain himself, there is something deeply human about this ache for movement. As previously mentioned, Bourdain spent much of his life travelling, championing the experience as something necessary rather than indulgent. For him, everything came back to community and connection—to meeting and understanding people from every corner of the world.

And perhaps that's all I really want. To truly belong.

Turns out everywhere you go, you take yourself, that's not a lie

No matter how much he travelled or how many people he shared a meal with, Bourdain could never escape his own mind.

He famously took his own life in 2018 while filming an episode of Parts Unknown in France. His death prompted an outpouring of grief throughout the culinary world, with former US President Barack Obama among those publicly reflecting on how much Bourdain had taught people about food, culture, and the world beyond themselves.

His death is widely understood as a tragedy: the loss of an extraordinary man who had spent much of his life teaching others how to appreciate the world around them.

I, however, also see it as a warning. No matter how much you travel, you can never entirely escape yourself.

It is easy to convince yourself that leaving home will solve all your problems—that a new place will turn you into a new person and wipe away everything that has dragged you down so far. Bourdain's life, however, offers a far more complicated understanding of travel.

You may walk into arrivals at Gatwick feeling as though your life has changed forever, but it is still your mind that steps off that plane with you.

Done well, travel can offer emotional nourishment, creative stimulation, and a renewed perspective on life. But it can also become a distraction—another way of running from the darker corners of your mind until eventually there is nowhere left to run.

The thing I find most comforting, then, is not the idea that everywhere in the world is different—although it undoubtedly is—but the knowledge that nothing needs to change when I leave.

Life can sometimes appear fixed to one place, particularly when that place is all you have ever known. Memories become attached to one town, and slowly the lie settles into your mind that memories cannot be created anywhere else.

There is reassurance, however, in understanding that I will always be myself.

This may seem contradictory for someone so desperate to change their life by moving away, but perhaps the end goal has never actually been to become someone new. Perhaps it has always been to find familiarity within the unknown. Bourdain's travels around the world teach us that, despite the distances between us, most people are remarkably similar. Wherever you go, you will find love, energy, joy, and people who bleed and breathe just like you do.

CNN's Parts Unknown displays food from every corner of the world, yet one common thread runs through all twelve series: the shared desire to cook and eat surrounded by the people we love.

Bourdain may never have been able to lose himself in his travels, but he cultivated something beautiful that can hardly be explained. He once described the body as an “amusement park” rather than a “temple”, and the way he ate around the world certainly reflected that philosophy.

Nothing was entirely out of bounds for him. He experienced societies through dishes unfamiliar to him yet deeply familiar to the people who shared them, removing a little ignorance from his own mind with every new meal.

Despite being an accomplished chef and a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Bourdain never shied away from food simply because it was unfamiliar or unpolished. He could appreciate fine dining just as deeply as he could appreciate a cheap meal eaten on a plastic stool in the middle of a crowded street.

His attitude towards food teaches all of us young people stagnating within our daily routines to simply get out there—to remember that nothing is entirely out of bounds. The world, quite literally, is our oyster.

Perhaps, then, the key to seeing the world is never to lose sight of who we are and where we have been while still allowing ourselves to experience new cultures as openly and immersively as possible. Maybe, then, I can discover who I truly am without feeling the need to become someone else.

So, as I rewatch my video of Matilda at Harry Styles' Together Together tour for the fiftieth time, I'm going to honour the seven-year-old girl still inside me and pack my things into the car and leave. It probably won't fix all my problems—not even in the tiniest sense.

Dishes will still pile up in Paris. I'll still have to figure out what to eat for dinner every night in Amsterdam. The golden sun of Perth won't magically change the sadness inside me.

But I don't really care.