Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought he seemed like a jerk and think it's weird how everyone got so into him after he killed himself.

+1

+2

Did you read his books and watch his shows? There is no way any thoughtful person could simply write him off as a jerk after having done so.

And the reason there is so much attention being paid to him now is because he had a massive impact on so many of us. I have had imaginary conversations with him while cooking for years. His death, coming as it did on the heels of Kate Spade’s, was also enormously difficult for many people struggling with severe depression. I have a good friend who is a therapist who said many of her patients absolutely panicked when he died. They were thinking that if someone like him, with all his talents, friends, and a daughter he adored, couldn’t find a reason to go on, what hope did they have? My friend said that all of her therapist friends reported similar.

Wow.

He was terribly impatient with life. It was never enough.

He had an over curated life. The people who came into it were vetted in many ways, if only by the fact they were in remote places and didnt know or care who he was. He hated fame and being any sort of attraction himself (which is one of the curses of fame.) '

He showed up to the carcass of Les Halles in DC before he closed it and was so surly and pissed. He only wanted to go to the cool places, the parts unknown of DC. Literally anyone there was only there bc they were supposed to be for work (chef world) or bc they wanted to see him. The place was old and stinky needed a reno, food was terrible. It was a small crowd. Intimate. Easy to leave. We ordered shots with him and then ....? What? We sat down to think of an idea, drank shitty Beaujolais, forgot, left ourselves, in a happy mood, having had fun.

He despised the ordinary lives of ordinary people who paid his bills. Street food in Vietnam, sure. Office workers in DC, hell no. The people who were eating at his restaurants, watching his TV shows, posting this adoring crap on a random dc website after his death....He hated this stuff.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought he seemed like a jerk and think it's weird how everyone got so into him after he killed himself.

+1

+2

Did you read his books and watch his shows? There is no way any thoughtful person could simply write him off as a jerk after having done so.

And the reason there is so much attention being paid to him now is because he had a massive impact on so many of us. I have had imaginary conversations with him while cooking for years. His death, coming as it did on the heels of Kate Spade’s, was also enormously difficult for many people struggling with severe depression. I have a good friend who is a therapist who said many of her patients absolutely panicked when he died. They were thinking that if someone like him, with all his talents, friends, and a daughter he adored, couldn’t find a reason to go on, what hope did they have? My friend said that all of her therapist friends reported similar.

I always loved him. He definitely said jerk things and I wouldn't like to be around him in real life, but he cared deeply about the right things. He was thoughtful when he visited other cultures and he was honest about problems when he saw them. When I read what he said to Ronan Farrow about how Farrow needed to keep digging into Weinstein, I cried.

Was it mean of him to talk about Sandra Lee's cooking the way he did? Yes. Did I trust him when he said that Ina Garden's was a good cook and had good recipes? Yes I did.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought he seemed like a jerk and think it's weird how everyone got so into him after he killed himself.

+1

+2

Anonymous wrote:I thought he seemed like a jerk and think it's weird how everyone got so into him after he killed himself.

+1

I thought he seemed like a jerk and think it's weird how everyone got so into him after he killed himself.

Anonymous wrote:I adored his writing style.

This was most of it for me. He was an enormously talented writer with an original voice. I found his books and shorter works captivating, and was especially struck by the way he never white-washed anything when describing his somewhat sordid past.

Anonymous wrote:A bright, complicated, talented person who couldn’t escape the darkness within. I loved Kitchen Confidential and found watching him on Parts Unknown absolutely riveting.

This exactly. Miss him terribly because he pushed my boundaries.

I adored his writing style.

A bright, complicated, talented person who couldn’t escape the darkness within. I loved Kitchen Confidential and found watching him on Parts Unknown absolutely riveting.

A hot, sexy bastard. Yet I love him still.

I haven’t read the biography yet but I had a strange attraction to him. Big time crush for some reason. Not my typical type at all.

He had a great show, but I've never understood why people glorify him the way they do.

I’m horrified by the impulsive nature of his suicide. I had assumed that he had been troubled for a long time, but to find out that he did it (and was making other bad choices) due to a woman who was cheating on him was just a gut punch.

I just read the Oral Biography out last week.