Anthony Bourdain’s 10 Most Public Celebrity Feuds

Anthony Bourdain, who died by suicide at the age 61, was never shy about his opinions. During his life, he butted heads with several of his fellow celebrity chefs and even celebrities outside the kitchen.

Bourdain shot to fame with his 2000 book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, a detailed look at his own experiences in the restaurant industry that pulled back the curtain on a world many outsiders thought was glamorous. Bourdain also provided readers with several helpful hints for eating out and explored his own personal demons.

The success of the book allowed Bourdain to turn to television, where he hosted shows about food and traveling the world for more than a decade. Along the way, he never hid his feelings of other popular chefs, from Guy Fieri to Paula Deen.

Bourdain was found dead in his hotel room in France, where he was filming a new episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown for CNN.

Scroll on for a look at some of Bourdain’s public celebrity feuds.

If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Photo credit: Facebook/Anthony Bourdain

Guy Fieri

Bourdain’s most famous feud was with Guy Fieri. He once called Fieri’s Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square a “terror-dome”

“It’s actually disappointing,” Fieri told GQ in 2015 about Bourdain’s insults. “I don’t like him making fun of people, and I don’t like him talking s–. And he’s never talked s– to my face. I know he’s definitely gotta have issues, ‘cos the average person doesn’t behave that way. It’s not that I’m not open to the reality that the food world was like this from a few people’s perspective. It’s just, What are you doing? What is your instigation? You have nothing else to f– worry about than if I have bleached hair or not? I mean, f–.”

“I tell jokes about people sometimes,” Bourdain later told E! News in 2015. “But if you can’t tell jokes about Guy Fieri, comedy as we know it is dead.”

Emeril Lagasse

In Bourdain’s early career, he made his contempt for Emeril Lagasse well-known. In Kitchen Confidential, he called him “Ewok-like” and “fuzzy-little Emeril.”

But then Bourdain found himself with a TV career and when a revised version of the book came out in 2007, he revealed he changed his mind. The two went on to become friends. Bourdain even wrote him into an episode of HBO’s Treme in 2012, reports Eater.

Wolfgang Puck

Bourdain was also no fan of Wolfgang Puck.

“Listen, I’m not eating in his s– pizza restaurants,” Bourdain told Playboy in 2011. “I think it’s bulls–, and it breaks my heart to see him on QVC or whatever, but the fact is he paid his dues. He’s an important guy. It’s an Orson Welles thing: He made Citizen Kane, so it doesn’t matter what he does after that.”

After Bourdain’s death, Puck praised Bourdain in a TMZ interview, saying he will be “thankful for him for the rest of my life.”

Paula Deen

Bourdain was critical of Paula Deen for years, and he ramped up his criticism after Deen revealed she has Type 2 diabetes, even though she promoted high-fat, buttery foods. He once called her the “worst, most dangerous person in America.”

But when Deen’s empire came crashing down in 2013 because of sexual harassment and discrimination claims against her, Bourdain said her downfall brought him “no pleasure at all.”

 

Rachael Ray

Bourdain loved to slam Food Network personalities. Back in 2007, he wrote a takedown of Ray, who was at the network at that time.

“Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook,” Bourdain wrote. “She shrewdly tells us so. So…what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that ‘Even your dumb, lazy a– can cook this!’”

Alain Ducasse

As Thrillist points out, Bourdain dedicated a few pages of his book Medium Raw to French chef Alain Ducasse. Bourdain said Ducasse’s pretentiousness made dining rooms “dangerously uncool” and made customers feel angry. In the end, he called Ducasse an “arrogant f–wit.”

Sandra Lee

Bourdain also showered Sandra Lee with insults, once calling her “pure evil” and the “hellspawn of Betty Crocker and Charles Manson.” He said Lee’s infamous Kwanzaa cake made him “mad for all humanity.”

In Medium Raw, Bourdain said Lee surprised him at the Julie & Julia premiere after-party by groping his waist and calling him a “bad boy” for insulting her. He compared the scene to the film Cape Fear.

Alice Waters

In Medium Raw, Bourdain included an entire chapter called “Go Ask Alice,” in which he attempts to take down Alice Waters’ reputation bit by bit. Waters’ response to this was to join Twitter under the name “Ruth Bourdain.”

“Well, Tony has always been something of an a– to me. So there’s that,” Waters told LA Weekly. “But he also represents this tremendous dark-side of the human psyche. He is drugs, and sex, and rock music. Then to pair that with the lovely, idyllic musings of Ruth Reichl just seemed to make sense to me at the time. I’d had a glass of wine at that point, certainly.”

Gordon Ramsay

Bourdain never liked Gordon Ramsay’s series Hell’s Kitchen. For the most part though, Bourdain said he thought Ramsay was a nice guy.

“Stunned and saddened by the loss of Anthony Bourdain. He brought the world into our homes and inspired so many people to explore cultures and cities through their food. Remember that help is a phone call away US:1-800-273-TALK UK: 116 123,” Ramsay tweeted on Friday.

Donald Trump

While Bourdain usually saved his ire for chefs, he did not hold back his thoughts on President Donald Trump. After Trump was elected, Bourdain shared his sentiments in an interview with Eater.

“I’m not saying I know the guy personally, not like I’d hug him, but I’m saying that as a New Yorker, we pretty much are neighbors,” Bourdain said of Trump. “And my many years of living in his orbit have not left me with a favorable impression, let’s put it that way. There’s so many reasons to find the guy troubling. When Scott Baio’s the only guy you can find to show up at your convention, you’re in trouble.”

In recent months, Bourdain used his platform to support the #MeToo movement and his girlfriend, actress Asia Argento. In May, he pointed out a “nauseating” connection between Trump and Harvey Weinstein.

“There’s a nauseating symmetry: both Trump and Weinstein used AMI(Enquirer) and Black Cube (Israeli private Intel) to do their dirty work,” Bourdain tweeted.

“I think its very sad,” Trump said on his way to the G7 summit Friday. “I want to extend to his family my heartfelt condolences. That was very shocking. When I woke up this morning, ‘Anthony Bourdain is dead.’ And I enjoyed his show, he was quite a character, I will say. So I just want to extend my condolences, and also to the family of Kate Spade.”