Celebrity Chef Anthony Bourdain found dead at 61; Cause of Death was Suicide

By JUICE Malaysia  •  08 Jun 2018 in Breaking News

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Anthony Bourdain was found dead in his hotel room today. He was 61 and in Strasbourg, France shooting his series Parts Unknown for CNN. The network also confirmed his death and the cause of death as suicide, today.

According to CNN, Bourdain’s close friend, French chef Eric Ripert found Bourdain unresponsive in his hotel room Friday morning.

Bourdain shot to fame as a TV personality and celebrity chef, and his book No Reservations is a widely-successful bestseller.

He has filmed in and featured Sarawak twice – on his TV series No Reservations for the Travel Channel in 2005 and for a previous season of Parts Unknown in 2015. In his series, he could be seen drinking beer with Barack Obama in Hanoi and chilling with the godfather of punk Iggy Pop in Miami, among other celebrities.

As a gifted storyteller, he brought cooking to life in the pages of several books he authored, including Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly and Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook.

In 1999, Bourdain wrote an article for the New Yorker entitled ‘Don’t Eat Before Reading This’. He soon expanded his article into a book – 2000’s Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly – and immediately found success.

As a humanitarian, the rockstar-like chef was known for advocating aid for marginalised populations and campaigned for safer working conditions for restaurant staffs.

When he accepted the Peabody award in 2013, Bourdain gave an insight into his work-philosophy: “We ask very simple questions: What makes you happy? What do you eat? What do you like to cook? And everywhere in the world we go and ask these very simple questions, we tend to get some really astonishing answers.”

Bourdain’s death comes only days after iconic handbag designer Kate Spade was found dead in an apparent suicide.

Suicide is reaching epidemic proportions in the world today. Not only celebrities are affect, closer to home, cases of suicide and depression are picking up among Malaysian youth.

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