Yes, this. Rather than a chef-restauranteur, he was a chef who worked for restauranteurs.

I’ve been on both sides. I almost died from an attempt at 13, and this year I lost my best friend to suicide. I’m still heartbroken over her death, and I know this is how my loved ones would feel if I did it. I’m not mad at my friend, but I can’t shake the guilt of wishing I could have been there when she needed me,…

I’ve faced mental health issues all of my life, and they have presented numerous challenges and limitations I’ve had to try and navigate. But I’ve only been confronted with suicidal ideation three times.

I recall reading after the fact that the UN-designated Safe Zones ended up being the most dangerous places for civilians in Bosnia, because unlike the actual conflict areas, the Safe Zones were very poorly defended.

It really does feel like the pandemic did a hard reset on things. People forgot how to be nice to each other, people forgot how to drive, people forgot basic fucking decency.

He actually was legitimately a chef, though, not just a line cook. He may have started out as a cook, but he had already been in charge of several restaurants by the time his TV career took off. How much hands-on cooking he actually did I don’t claim to know, but he details many of his managerial roles in Kitchen…

I spent some time in the post-war NATO peacekeeping missions in both Bosnia and Kosovo. I gradually came to realize that the predominant contemporary western media narrative to describe these conflicts was dead-wrong and mostly by default favored the aggressors. The story at the time was that these were ancient ethnic…

He always referred to himself as a cook, not a chef. He’s not the guy who gets to order the brigade around, or figure out that a night wasabi foam for perfect compliment the sous-vide monkfish, he was the guy who was on his feet doing nothing but manning the grill for eight hours straight, or peeling spuds, or…

He was very honest about that. I think that’s how he and Eric Ripert became friends. He said something along the lines of “It’s not exactly like Eric Ripert is gonna call me up to get recipes”. 

“Haunted” is the right word indeed. I can imagine Eric saying “Oh no Tony...” and just trailing off with tears starting to fall. It’s horrifyingly heartrending. 

That’s a good point. And as a Northern Irish person, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t even consider me properly Irish anyway.

I continue to be haunted by the thought of Ripert being the one to find his friend’s body. I cannot begin to imagine how traumatic that must have been. I hope he’s been able to find healing since then.

It’s been my observation over the past year that the pandemic has made many people’s become much more patient and polite or much more rude and demanding.

The people who hate Ed Sheeran are those that still suffer, even if unknowingly, the grunge mainstay of punk rock guilt. I don't like his music and he seems like rather a boring person, but I hate him about as much as I hate anyone else, which is to say not at all. Just not into it but I won't hate on him for having…

No, he’s a legit terrible songwriter, and whenever “Perfect” comes on the radio I honestly can’t think of a worse song that’s been written. That one duet he did with Taylor Swift was cool, but I think that’s more to do with her than him.

I don’t think that anyone is trying to defend Argento insofar as she raped a teenager. However, she was crucified in the Italian press for being a rape victim (with a sexual appetite of her own) long before the accusations against her became public. Also (and I say this as a Bourdain fan), many Bourdain fans treat her…

I can hear him now...

People have been fighting back against assholes in ways that they haven’t before.

I laugh at the politicians and pundits who claim the labor shortage is due to federal unemployment benefits. The problem is the usual suspects that we all see all the time before and after the pandemic and now 72 million cretins who voted for that CSing traitor from Floriduh. I wouldn’t serve those MFers a glass of…

It is G/O Media’s MO to relentlessly shit on all sorts of people, some of whom appear to be quite nice. Case in point: Jezebel is engaged in a long-running campaign to prove that Kristen Bell is not sunny and funny and pleasant, as she might appear, but is in fact the personification of evil. This is, at its heart, a…