This slideshow of Anthony Bourdain feuds focuses on some of the sharp-tongued "No Reservations" host's most famous adversaries. From Paula Deen to Rachael Ray, no chef or food personality seems to be safe from Bourdain's sarcastic humor and quick wit. Click through the pages below to see them all.
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Sandra Lee
The Attack: "This frightening hell-spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time," Bourdain said in a 2007 guest blog post for Michael Ruhlman.
The Response: In 2009, Bourdain encountered Lee at a premiere for "Julie & Julia." He describes the encounter thusly: "Sandra is talking. I know this cause her lips are moving and she's saying -- overtly anyway, nice things. Like 'You're a very naughty man,' and she's chatting amiably with my wife... [I'm] frozen by the bizarreness of the moment which seems to go on forever as Sandra's hand wanders upward, tugs an ear lobe and asks if my ears are red yet. (They were.)"
The Resolution: Bourdain admitted, "I learned that I am truly and deeply afraid of her."
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Rachael Ray
The Attack:Bourdain has been blasting Ray and all she represents for years. In 2009, he said, "We know she can't cook. 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 ass can cook this!'"
The Response: Ray sent Bourdain a fruit basket with a note asking him not to shoot any puppies. Last December, she said, "Not everybody is supposed to like everybody on the playground. You gotta be thick-skinned about that. I love Tony Bourdain. I love his books, I love him, I love his attitude. I think he's fantastic. Whether or not he likes what I'm doing that week in my life, or the food that I'm making at that moment, that's Tony's choice. It shouldn't affect my decision about whether or not I like his work. Otherwise I think I'm being immature and mixing up the two. But regardless, that's not my job and it's not who I work for. I work for the people who do want that type of programming or do want to cook my type of food."
The Resolution: In a 2009 blog post titled "Dear Rachael," Bourdain wrote, in part, "I thank you for your kindness to someone who has shown you no good reason for such a thing, your good humor -- and for appreciating the New York Dolls."
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Paula Deen
The Attack: We've written quite a bit about this feud (to catch up, head here, here and here) in recent months. Its original missive was when Bourdain said, "She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations, and she's proud of the fact that her food is f*cking bad for you. If I were on at 7:00 at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it's OK to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks."
The Response: Deen told Page Six, "You don't have to like my food, or Rachael's, Sandra's and Guy's. But it's another thing to attack our character... In the last two years, my partners and I have fed more than 10 million hungry people by bringing meat to food banks."
The Resolution: None -- this feud is still red-hot.
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Emeril Lagasse
The Attack: Bourdain said of Lagasse, "I've told him to his face many times, 'I love you and respect you. I just hate your shows.' But compared to who's on Food Network now, he looks like Escoffier."
The Response: Silence -- in the press and public, that is.
The Resolution: In a 2008 interview with TV Guide, Bourdain said, "Since the very beginning, Emeril's had a sense of humor about me calling him names and poking fun at him. Unlike Rachael and unlike a lot of these guys, Emeril's a professional who came up in the business the hard way. You don't make it in the restaurant business to the degree he's made it by having a thin skin. He's been very gracious and funny to me since the beginning."
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Alice Waters
The Attack: In 2009, Bourdain said, "I'll tell you. Alice Waters annoys the living shit out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the greenmarket. There's something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic."
The Response: Silence, although in 2011, Waters played a fun April Fool's joke by claiming to author the @RuthBourdain Twitter account, which mashes up Ruth Reichl and Anthony Bourdain.
The Resolution: Gothamist contacted Anthony Bourdain in 2009 to clarify his statements. Here's what he wrote:
I don't have any burning issue with Alice Waters, a restaurateur and visionary whose accomplishments clearly dwarf my own, so I doubt it. In a perfect, candy-colored world, I'd like to eat most of what she'd like to see us eat. I feed my daughter mostly organic food whenever possible -- and greatly admire what Dan Barber is doing. My comments were a heartfelt reaction to her wildly hubristic letter to the (then) president-elect, a document whose tone, timing and content I found distasteful -- particularly coming from someone who hadn't even bothered to vote in the four previous elections.
True, I am suspicious of wealthy suburbanites who preach "back to the soil" philosophies -- as if most -- or even many -- could start digging subsistence gardens in their back yards or afford expensive organic or locavore lifestyles. But Chez Panisse was inarguably a cradle of the food revolution. I respect Alice Waters' enormous contribution to changing the way we eat and cook today. No one can take that away from her. No one should try.
I intend to treat her with the respect she rightly deserves. She says some stupid shit sometimes—and she is certainly free to call "bullshit" on me when I do the same. I might, in the spirit of good fun, point out that following even my own not particularly distinguished career in kitchens -- most of it in view of the "Choking Victim" sign, I DO, at least, know the Heimlich maneuver.