Anthony bourdain death photo

Born on June 25, 1956, in New York City and raised in New Jersey, Anthony Bourdain knew he'd be a chef while vacationing on the coast on France with his parents as a boy. A local fisherman offered him an oyster fresh from the sea; he ate it, and "That was it, man," Bourdain said in a Biography.com interview.

"That was it."

Bourdain graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978 and worked his way up through the restaurant business, becoming executive chef at New York City's Brasserie Les Halles in 1998. It was during his time there he wrote an essay for The New Yorker, "Don't Eat Before Reading This," that transformed how people thought about dining out and started Bourdain on a secondary path: that of author.

The chef left Les Halles sometime around 2000, and released his first book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, which became a New York Times best sell