San Jose's Japantown Restaurant Mourns Anthony Bourdain's Death
By Anoushah Rasta ••
Fans and friends recall Bourdain’s wit and generosity as new details of the culinary chef and television personality’s death surface.
"We didn’t know what to expect but he turns out to be a real good guy. Exactly how he is on TV."
That's how Gene Yoneda, the owner of the oldest restaurant in San Jose's Japantown, described Anthony Bourdain.
Bourdain visited Minato two years ago and ordered Japanese curry, sashimi and tempura, Yoneda recalled. "He could eat anywhere in the world and chooses 20 or 30 restaurants a year so it’s quite an honor," he said.
Bourdain was found dead in France, where he was filming a new episode for his hit CNN show "Parts Unknown", in an apparent suicide. Wherever he went, he touched people with his kindness and empathy, including here in the Bay Area.
"His social conscience, the way he writes stories and gets into the culture, besides the food, politics even," said Yoneda on why millions of people watched Bourdain travel the world.
People even came to the restaurant Friday after they heard about Bourdain's death, according to Yoneda.
"He was 61, which is pretty young but you never know what’s going on inside someone’s head."
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Bourdain’s first love was always Swan Oyster Depot on Polk Street — which he referred to as “the touchstone in my world-wide wanderings” — where he liked sitting at the counter and feasting on, yes, crab backs (“brains — unicorn juice”), and a cold draft beer. “If I read about myself dying at the counter, I would say to myself, that is one lucky guy,” Bourdain said.
Natalie Darville
Bourdain visited this bar and lounge in North Beach, San Francisco in an episode of The Layover: San Francisco. "Owners Jeff Holinger and Jon Raglin carefully craft their cocktails but Comstock is, at root, a no-nonsense, old school bar ... It’s kind of awesome that you are wearing a tie, sir," was how Bourdain described the place.
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The famous tiki-themed Tonga Room in the Fairmont Hotel has great ambience and is the starting point of one of Bourdain's bar hops.
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If you feel nostalgic, the Tadich Grill is a place for seafood and cocktails with an old-school scene. "This is one of the things I really love about San Francisco. Here in this mountain top of political correctness, veganism, vegetarianism, fruitarinism, you get an abomination against God and civilization like this, bacon, oysters and martinis. I feel ashamed we don't have this in New York," Anthony Bourdain in "No Reservations," 2009
Eric Risberg/AP
In this photo taken Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, a man walks past the Li-Po bar along Chinatown's Grant Avenue in San Francisco. The bar is known for their Chinese Mai-Tai and dates from the 1930s. Inside red lacquered doors sits a golden Buddha statue behind a wrap around bar. "Places like Li Po just wouldn’t exist without a large buffer zone on all sides … I'm really glad I don’t live in San Francisco because I would be here every f____ night. I would be here drinking and doing this [playing liars dice]." — Anthony Bourdain in "The Layover," 2012
Eric Risberg/AP
In this photo taken Thursday, Dec. 21, 2017, a neon sign shines above the Buddha Lounge bar on Chinatown's Grant Avenue in San Francisco. The bar, a dinky, quirky dive is known for betting on your drink in a game of Liar's Dice between you and the bartender.
