The Lonely Reality Behind Bourdain’s Dream Job | Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown Season 7 Episode 8

It is January in Buenos Aires, which means most of the city has left. The porteños who can afford it are at the beach in Mar del Plata or in Uruguay or in Patagonia, and the streets Anthony Bourdain walks are half empty and, as he puts it, mournful and sad and sweet in a way he likes. Chef Francis Mallmann takes him to Bodegón Don Carlitos, a place run for forty-five years by one man, his wife and their two daughters, with no menu and no prices — if you look wealthy you get a big bill, if you don’t you get a small one. From there it is beef, and more beef. Achuras, chorizo, morcilla, chinchulines off the parrilla until, as Bourdain says, even a confirmed carnivore will fall to his knees praying for a vegetable. Argentina has more psychoanalysts per head of population than anywhere else on earth. Mallmann calls it the kingdom of doubt and says his own children started seeing someone at eight. So Bourdain, who finds the whole idea of confiding in a stranger foreign, books a week of sessions and lets the cameras in. What comes out across those conversations is the most direct he has ever been on television. He describes ordering a bad hamburger in an airport and falling into a spiral of depression that can last for days. He quotes George Orwell’s line about human beings being tubes we shove food into, and notes that this is, professionally speaking, his job. He talks about a recurring dream of a vast Victorian hotel he cannot check out of, and a second part where he is trying to get home but cannot remember where home is. He says he travels more than two hundred days a year and that it is crushingly lonely. He says he communicates for a living and is terrible at communicating with the people he cares about. Asked at the end what brought him there, he says he would like to be happier, that he knows he has extraordinary luck, that he would like to look out of a window and think life is good, and that he doesn’t. The rest of the city gets its due. Mario, a career waiter of the vanishing kind, explains why you never greet a regular by name when he arrives with a woman, and why nobody flambés anything tableside any more. Chef Soledad Nardelli, who left law school for a kitchen and cried herself through culinary school in France, plays a one in the morning football match between her restaurant’s crew and the one two blocks away. Neighbourhood murgas take over the barrios for a month of carnival that has nothing to do with Rio and everything to do with local pride. On a Friday a construction site stops for a full asado on the top floor, wine included. Bourdain eats a choripán, looks around, and admits that compared to the man loading sausages onto that grill, he has nothing much to complain about. Subscribe here to discover all of Anthony Bourdain's adventures and watch full episodes:    / @anthonybourdainpartsunknown   Travel the globe with the legendary chef, author, and storyteller Anthony Bourdain as he uncovers the soul of a destination through its food, culture, and politics. Far more than just a cooking show, Parts Unknown dives deep into the corners of the world rarely seen on TV—eating with locals, exploring diverse culinary rituals, and asking the hard questions. #AnthonyBourdain #PartsUnknown #TravelDocumentary #culture #cuisine