From Drunken Tattoos to Noodles With Obama, These Are Anthony Bourdain’s Greatest TV Moments (2025)

In his first episode on the Travel Channel, Bourdain brought viewers right into his world as he hallucinated on absinthe and chain smoked cigarettes. It was clear from the very beginning that this wasn't a normal travel show, and Bourdain had set out to show us the real heart of a city, even one as romantic as Paris. You can't find the footage on YouTube, but the whole episode is here on another site.

"My crew and I are sitting there emptying the mini bar and the airport blows up," Bourdain later explained of his 2006 episode in Beirut, where he was filming his show when the Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out. "We along with a lot of other people were trapped there for over a week. Basically we stood there and watched whole neighborhoods getting blasted." They were later evacuated, and the episode changed the show and Bourdain forever. From then on, this program was about more than food.

This might surprise you, but not everything you see on TV is real. Yes, sometimes Hollywood magic makes even a fishing trip seem real. Thankfully, throughout his time on television, Bourdain never put up with any of that bullshit. If things didn't go right, that was part of the story. What was great about this episode was that it showed two of Bourdain's greatest character traits. He was always willing to do whatever dumb thing producers made him do, and he was always vocal about how much he hated it. He also pointed out when some Sicilian guys are trying to fake a snorkeling trip by throwing dead octopi in the water.

There was never a dull moment with Zamir. We first saw him in Season Four of No Reservations, when his and Bourdain's trip to Romania was a complete disaster. As Tony later described it, "We got my Russian friend Zamir to go to a former Soviet country where they don't particularly like Russians and stumble around drunkenly calling everyone comrade."

In a stunning moment for Bourdain and the world, the host sat down with Barack Obama in Vietnam after the President's historic lifting of an arms embargo on the country. No one knew it was going to happen; it was an authentic moment of the two drinking beers and eating noodles in a neighborhood restaurant. Bourdain even picked up the President's $6 tab.

Filmed entirely in black and white, Bourdain said his Rome episode was the No Reservations episode that he was proudest of. His entire television career, Bourdain had been pushing the boundaries of what was possible on food and travel shows, but this episode in particular pushed even further. This was art; something more along the lines of independent filmmaking—something Bourdain's show would experiment with going forward.

One of the lesser known tourist destinations in Asia, Bourdain's first time in Laos revealed the beauty and culture of a country many Americans were unfamiliar with. He became captivated with the place, saying over dinner, "You look at these mountains with the mist in the morning, and it's magical." In fact, the show did so well at capturing Laos it later won an Emmy for cinematography.

Music always was an integral part of Bourdain's life and art. He trusted chefs as much as he did musicians with finding the food and culture of a place. In many ways, Bourdain was the food equivalent of a rock star. That's why so many musicians appeared on his shows, like Iggy Pop did in Miami. In that episode, there was a great moment where the grizzled, genius punks both put on their reading glasses to see the menu in front of them. They were eating healthy, and drinking white wine, and talking about debauchery of the past.

Anthony Bourdain got his first tattoo when he was 44, shortly after the publication of Kitchen Confidential. "It's a very beautiful, very thick tribal tattoo—and my first wife was not pleased. I just went out and did it to congratulate myself on my sudden change of fortune after 30 years’ toiling in obscurity," he later said. From then on, tattoos became a regular part of his life and show. We saw the man get inked dozens of times—he eventually stopped bringing his own camera when traveling and got tattoos to remember the trip instead. One of his greatest was his second trip in Borneo, when a bunch of drunk Iban tribesmen give him a painful hammer tapped tattoo on his chest.

In his first trip to Iran, Bourdain's local guides included Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, who were later detained and released by the government. Bourdain had this incredible ability to sit at a family's table and be gracious while asking difficult questions. While dining in Iran, he discussed the relationship between the two cultures. Elsewhere in politics, these types of discussions go nowhere, but Bourdain, bonding over food and drink, showed us, as he always did, that our differences weren't so vast.