How to Travel in Summer like Anthony Bourdain

How to Travel in Summer like Anthony Bourdain

The market in Marseille wakes up smelling of diesel and saffron. It's 7 a.m., and the fishmongers at Marché des Capucins are already hosing down the cobblestones, their aprons bloodied with rouget and sea bream. This is where Anthony Bourdain would have started his morning, coffee in hand, watching the Algerian women haggle over sardines while the rest of the tourists slept off their rosé in air-conditioned hotel rooms three miles away.

If you want to understand how Bourdain traveled in summer, start here. Not with the postcard. Not with the algorithm. With the smell of fish and diesel at dawn, in a port city most guidebooks told you to skip.

For nearly twenty years, across three television shows and four books, Bourdain built a summer travel philosophy that had almost nothing to do with beaches and everything to do with refusing what he called the "hermetically sealed popemobile." The air-conditioned tour bus. The resort transfer. The rooftop restaurant with English menus and photographs of the food. The carefully curated Instagram itinerary that turns the Amalfi Coast into a queue of identical Reels. To travel like Bourdain, especially in summer, was to puncture that seal deliberately and put yourself in direct contact with weather, language, sweat, and the possibility of getting it beautifully wrong.

The rules he repeated, from Kitchen Confidential in 2000 through Parts Unknown until 2018, were surprisingly few. Move. Eat where locals queue. Plan badly enough on purpose to let the happy accident happen. And above all, do less.

The Anti-Tourist Manifesto

"Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonald's?" Bourdain wrote in Kitchen Confidential, the book that made him famous. "Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria's mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once."

That question, written before he'd ever held a television camera, became the foundation of everything that followed. The popemobile is the metaphor that explains his entire approach to Mediterranean summer travel. It's not just the tour bus. It's the mindset that treats a place like a museum exhibit you walk past behind glass. Bourdain's summers were the opposite: direct contact, often uncomfortable, always worth it.

His most useful travel advice appeared in an interview with Money magazine, and it's worth printing out and putting in your carry-on: "I'm a big believer in winging it. I'm a big believer that you're never going to find the perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one. Letting the happy accident happen is what a lot of vacation itineraries miss, I think, and I'm always trying to push people to allow those things to happen rather than stick to some rigid itinerary."

This is not the advice of someone who travels twice a year. This is the advice of someone who spent 250 days a year on the road and learned, through expensive mistakes, that the best meals and the best conversations happen in the margins your itinerary didn't account for.

Where He Actually Went

The Bourdain summer map is not the one that appears in Condé Nast Traveler every May. He had an almost allergic reaction to the obvious choice and a deep affection for the slightly disreputable second city (even though his choices often became the first choice years later, but for good reason). His Mediterranean canon tells you everything you need to know about how to choose your own destination this summer.

Marseille, not Nice. When Parts Unknown aired the Marseille episode in October 2015, Bourdain opened with a confession: "France's second-largest city, the oldest city in France, a victim of bad reputation, bad history. Marseille, as it turns out, exactly the kind of place I like." He spent the week eating Algerian couscous at Le Femina, Corsican charcuterie at U Mio Paese, and drinking pastis on plastic chairs in neighborhoods his Parisian friends had warned him against. The centerpiece was Chef Gérald Passédat's four-course bouillabaisse at Le Petit Nice: shellfish carpaccio, then slipper lobster and red gurnard, then dorade steamed over seaweed water with saffron potatoes, then the brown rock-crab broth itself. Sitting across from Eric Ripert with the Mediterranean glittering behind him, Bourdain said something he almost never said on camera: "I could retire here."

That moment, quiet and almost embarrassed by its own contentment, is the entire Bourdain summer ethos compressed into a single beat. He had found what he'd been looking for, and it wasn't on the Riviera yacht circuit. It was in France's roughest port city, two hundred miles from the postcard, in a place that required you to speak a little French and tolerate some grit.

The pattern repeats across his catalog. Provence over Paris. In the No Reservations Provence episode that aired in March 2010, filmed in full summer light, Bourdain spent a week simplifying. Sitting outside Bistrot de la Galine in Saint-Rémy with melon and cured ham and bull steak in front of him, he narrated: "This is a very healthy lifestyle. I mean, you eat beautiful food, lots of vegetables, you have a nice nap in the afternoon." Later, drinking wine at Château Val Joanis: "Another great meal, and significantly, even though I was the guest of a presumably fabulously wealthy vineyard owner with a spectacular beautiful estate, the food was unassumingly simple and elegant. Lesson learned."

Simple and elegant. Those two words, in that order, describe the entire aesthetic San Martini readers are already drawn to. Bourdain understood it instinctively, decades before "quiet luxury" became a search term.

Sardinia's mountainous interior over the Costa Smeralda. When Bourdain returned to Sardinia for No Reservations in September 2009, he stayed with his then-wife Ottavia's family, the Busias, in the hills near Oliena. Not a resort in sight. They cooked macarrones de busa with braised wild boar. They spit-roasted suckling pig and basted it with flaming lardo. They served roasted cheese with local honey and prosciutto of wild boar with green olives from the yard. The episode's entire premise was the inversion of the standard Sardinian vacation: stay inland, eat at the agriturismo, let the family cook, and understand that the Costa Smeralda exists for people who don't know better.

Puglia over Capri. The Parts Unknown episode "Southern Italy: The Heel of the Boot" aired in November 2017 and won an Emmy for Outstanding Writing. It was filmed in summer heat, and Bourdain's opening narration sets the tone: "Southern Italy, the heel of the boot. Remote, vast open spaces. The red earth here has a magnetic pull. Raw, alternately charming and savage." Over a plate of pasta with sea urchin, he looked directly into the camera: "Now, in the annals of food, this is, like, a divisive dish, basically anything with ricci, also known as uni. We call it sea urchin roe. This is truly one of the greatest things on Earth. Goddamn."

Lisbon before it was discovered. The No Reservations Lisbon episode aired in April 2012, years before the city became the fashionable alternative to Barcelona. Bourdain spent an afternoon at Cervejaria Ramiro eating percebes (gooseneck barnacles), langoustines, spider crab, and Sagres beer, finishing with a prego steak sandwich for dessert. His summation: "A barrage of minimalist seafood of maximum quality."

Naxos, not Mykonos. The season-opening Parts Unknown episode in May 2016 was filmed on Naxos, and it contains what may be Bourdain's most useful summer travel sentence. Sitting on a beach, speaking directly to camera: "I'm on a Greek island here. It's a beautiful day. I'm planning on passing out on the beach shortly. You know, maybe some watercolors, do a little cooking, more napping, eating, napping. Contemplate mysteries of the universe or nap, either one. That's a vacation to me, is staying put and doing nothing."

The same episode gave us the line, delivered by a local dinner companion and affirmed by Bourdain, that belongs on a refrigerator magnet: "Don't tell me what you ate. Tell me who you ate with."

The pattern is unmistakable. He chose places with weather, weight, and a degree of inconvenience. Places that required a transfer, a dialect, a leap of faith. Places where the tourists hadn't yet arrived in numbers large enough to smooth out the edges.

How to Eat Like Bourdain in Summer

The Bourdain summer meal had a specific architecture, and the remarkable thing is that you can replicate it without a television budget.

It began at the market, always. He told Bon Appétit in 2016: "I like to see what's in season, what they're selling. The little businesses that pop up in those places to feed the merchants from the market are pretty helpful. I get an immediate sense of what's going on in a town and what the food's like." This is the unhurried discipline of Italian and French marketing, done before the heat arrives. Mercato di Ballarò in Palermo at 7 a.m. Marché des Capucins in Bordeaux. Mercado da Ribeira in Lisbon. The rhythm is identical: arrive early, drink coffee at the market bar, watch what the locals are buying, and eat breakfast at whatever stall has the longest queue of people in work clothes.

The queue is everything. His method for finding the right table deserves to be memorized. From the same Bon Appétit interview: "If you're in Singapore and there are two chicken and rice places, and there's one with a huge line, go to the one with the huge line. Already, that's a clue." Then he refined it: "I look to see if locals are willing to inconvenience themselves and wait in line for a long time to get something that only costs a dollar fifty, especially if it's a mixed bag of different incomes. One of the things that's interesting about Singapore is that you'll see people roll up in a Mercedes and stand in line behind someone who lives in a housing project. They're both gonna wait the 25 minutes for the same nasi lemak."

Translate this to Mediterranean summer travel: skip the place with the English menu and photographs of the food. Choose the one with a queue of locals across every income bracket. The grandmother in line behind the architect. The plumber standing next to the gallery owner. That's your signal.

He believed in simplicity that bordered on austerity. To ShermansTravel in 2013: "It's really the simple things that are the best. Eating my first bowl of noodles in Vietnam. Having the first bowl of pasta or a simple ragu with a good wine in Italy. Eating some runny cheese in Spain. Having some spicy noodles sitting on a low plastic stool in Hong Kong."

For Mediterranean summer, this translates into a small repertoire of perfect things, ordered repeatedly. A bowl of spaghetti al nero di seppia. Bourdain wrote on his Tumblr after the Sicily episode aired in October 2013: "This is what I wanted Sicily to be, something to soothe my shattered soul. It doesn't take much: a bowl of good pasta." Fresh anchovies dressed in lemon and olive oil. A half-kilo of percebes. A glass of cold pastis at six in the evening on a plastic chair. A turbot grilled whole over coals. No reinvention. No deconstruction. Quality and restraint.

This is where Bourdain's summer philosophy and the quiet luxury sensibility meet exactly. The most expensive thing on the Mediterranean table in August is not the white truffle or the lobster. It's the discipline to order four things instead of fourteen and let each one be perfect.

What Anthony Bourdain Wore While Traveling

Bourdain was, almost against his will, a style icon. And his wardrobe is the most directly transferable element of his entire travel practice.

His uniform was visible across hundreds of episodes and never varied: a soft, lived-in button-down shirt in cotton, chambray, or linen, worn untucked with the sleeves rolled to the elbow. Faded straight-leg jeans or stone-colored chinos. Tan suede Clarks Desert Boots. Persol sunglasses. A watch that had seen better days. Nothing was new. Nothing announced itself. The label was never the point.

Edwin Zee captured it perfectly in his menswear essay "Anthony Bourdain, Unexpected Style Icon" on Put This On: "His waxed trucker jacket follows him to Montana, while his beige linen shirt returns on his trip to Brazil. It feels as if all of Bourdain's clothes are well-loved and well-worn." The trucker jacket was Levi's x Filson. The sweaters were often a single navy or olive crewneck thrown over a shirt. The chef whites came out only in kitchens. The one good blazer was a Boglioli Milano cotton piece for evenings. The wardrobe was, in essence, the quiet luxury thesis before anyone called it that: small palette, natural fibers, no logos, repaired rather than replaced.

On his footwear, he was wonderfully explicit. He told Men's Journal: "These are the most comfortable shoes on Earth. And they're dirt cheap if you buy them at the right place. You can kick them off in a second when you're going through airport security, which is a big benefit in my line of work. But they're great for anything. I buy about three or four pairs at a time. When one pair dies, I just rotate it out." He was talking about the Clarks Desert Boot, the Nathan Clark design that debuted in 1950 and looks equally correct with linen trousers in Lecce and denim in Brooklyn.

On packing, he was ruthlessly practical. To Main Line Today in 2011: "I pack for security, and it's all carry-on. Shoes that slip on and off quickly, jackets that I can beat into submission, shirts that don't require pressing." In his New York Times interview in 2017: "Dress for security. I don't carry liquids or gels, I don't wear a belt or any jewelry, I get my stuff out and in the tray very quickly and I'm through."

His luggage, when he checked a bag, was a single hard-sided Tumi. From Men's Journal: "I don't like having to worry about taking it easy on luggage when I'm throwing it in an overhead bin or tossing it on the tarmac. So I travel with a piece of near-bulletproof Tumi luggage, which can take a beating and fits absolutely everything I need."

The practical translation for summer Europe: three linen or cotton-linen shirts (one white, one chambray blue, one in a softened mid-tone like sand or olive). Two pairs of trousers, one stone linen and one dark denim, both broken in, neither stiff. One unstructured cotton blazer for evenings. One pair of Clarks Desert Boots or a comparable suede derby that takes a beating. One pair of leather sandals or canvas plimsolls. Acetate sunglasses with proper presence. One good watch. A single carry-on, hard-sided, with a real repair warranty.

That is the entire wardrobe. It will survive a Roman heatwave, a dinner at Le Petit Nice, a Marseille pétanque court, and a 6 a.m. flight to Catania. Everything else is performance.

The Rhythm of a Bourdain Summer Day

If you wanted to live a single day the way Bourdain traveled in summer, it would look like this.

Wake early. Not because you set an alarm, but because the light comes through the shutters and the market is already awake. Walk to the market. Drink coffee at the bar where the fishmongers drink coffee. Watch what they're buying. Eat whatever the grandmother next to you is eating.

Come back to your room. Read for an hour. Graham Greene if you're in Vietnam, The Leopard if you're in Sicily, Camus if you're in Provence. He insisted on reading fiction set in the place you're visiting, and he was right. It gives you the internal weather of a place in a way no guidebook can.

Lunch at one. Not one-thirty. One. Find the place with the queue. Order simply: the fish grilled whole, the pasta with whatever they pulled from the sea this morning, a carafe of the house white. Linger. The lunch should dissolve into the afternoon without a clear border between eating and sitting and talking and sitting some more.

Nap. This is not optional. The afternoon heat in Lecce or Palermo or Cassis in July is not something you push through. You surrender to it. Close the shutters. Sleep until four.

Swim. If you're near water, this is when you go. The beach at five in the afternoon, when the families are packing up and the light is starting to soften.

Aperitivo at six. A glass of pastis. A Negroni. A cold beer and a plate of olives. Sit outside. Watch people. Do nothing.

Dinner at nine or later. Eat less than you did at lunch. The evening meal in a Bourdain summer is lighter, simpler, often just a plate of prosciutto and melon and bread and cheese, or grilled vegetables and a piece of fish. If you're eating late and well, it's because you stumbled into a place and stayed, not because you had a reservation.

This is the rhythm he lived when he could. It's the rhythm of the Mediterranean summer done correctly: market, nap, swim, aperitivo, repeat. No checklist. No itinerary that requires you to see four churches before lunch. Just weather and food and time.

What Not to Do

The anti-rules are as important as the rules.

Do not eat where there is a photograph of the food on the menu. Do not stay in the resort. Do not book the rooftop with the view; book the trattoria in the alley behind it. Do not try to "do" a city in three days. Do not allow yourself to be sold the Godfather Tour, the package that promises to show you where Michael married Apollonia while the film's soundtrack plays on a loop. Bourdain tried that once in Sicily and called it madness.

Do not mistake a checklist for a journey. The most quoted line in his entire body of work, from The Nasty Bits, is this: "Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind."

A Bourdain summer is a deliberate refusal of the algorithm. It's a small wardrobe, a market at seven in the morning, a long lunch with no agenda, a four o'clock nap behind closed shutters, a glass of pastis, a swim, a second dinner. It's staying put and doing nothing. It's the European version of luxury his audience already believed in: less itinerary, more weather. Less Instagram, more salt on the skin. Fewer things, better things.

How to Start

If you are planning your first Bourdain-style summer and you have one week: choose one of his second cities. Marseille, Lisbon, or San Sebastián. Stay put. Book a small hotel within walking distance of a working market. Eat breakfast at the market bar. Have one long lunch every day. Take the afternoon off. Read fiction set in the place you're in.

If you have two weeks: pair an inland mountainous interior with a stretch of coast. His exact template was Sardinia's interior near Oliena to the coast, or Lecce to Otranto. Avoid Mykonos town, Capri, Saint-Tropez, Positano, and Hvar town. Their equivalents: Naxos, the Cilento coast, Cassis, Puglia, and Vis.

If you want to eat like Bourdain: make one reservation, maximum, before you go. Make it at the great destination kitchen: Le Petit Nice in Marseille, Asador Etxebarri in the Basque Country, Al Convento on the Amalfi Coast. Leave every other meal to the market and the queue.

Pack like Bourdain: one hard-sided carry-on, three soft button-downs, two pairs of trousers, one cotton blazer, tan Clarks Desert Boots, sandals, one watch, one pair of sunglasses with presence. Nothing requires pressing. Nothing has a logo. Add a Moleskine notebook and one work of fiction set in your destination.

The summer Bourdain would have wanted you to have is not the one with the most sights checked off. It's the one where you arrived in Marseille planning to stay three days and stayed six because you found the right café and the right table and the right time of day to sit there doing nothing. It's the one where you ate the same bowl of pasta three times in a row because it was perfect and you didn't need it to be different. It's the one where you bought one beautiful linen shirt instead of three forgettable ones, and you wore it every other day for a month, and it got better with every wash.

He would have approved of the long drive over the cheap flight. He would have approved of the afternoon you canceled because the light was too good and the wine was too cold and the conversation was too worth staying for. He would have approved, above all, of doing less.

The market in Marseille wakes up at seven. The pastis is cold at two. The nap is sacred at three. That's the entire plan. That's the summer.

It’s Martini Time. Pour it cold.

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