Review at a glance: ★★★☆☆
That, seven years after his suicide, Anthony Bourdain remains a fluorescent presence in the food world tells of his enduring rogue's charm. By his own admission he wasn't much of a chef but after two failed mystery novels, he broke through in his mid-forties as a master chronicler of kitchens, people and places, a contradiction of puppyish enthusiasm and hangdog weariness. I imagine he sat at a keyboard the way drummers do at their kits; his sentences thrum with rock'n'roll rhythm. This week a new collection of his writing has been released, The Anthony Bourdain Reader, an album of greatest hits and lost wonderings. But his legacy is not just of scribblings but of introductions: he snuck us into the underworld of New York bistros, on to the lakes in Tanzania, under the canopy of cables that shade the streets in Ho Chi Minh.
