Tomorrow, celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain isn’t cooking the main course — he is the dish du jour.
The 6-foot-4, lean-cut, 56-years-aged, meat-fed, New Jersey-raised Bourdain will be roasted with plenty of saucy remarks at the New York City Wine & Food Festival’s “On the Chopping Block: A Roast of Anthony Bourdain” at Chelsea Piers.
“I’m looking forward to it with the same sense of resignation as a colonoscopy,” says Bourdain, who is as famous for his own jabs as he is for eating the likes of sheep testicles and raw seal eyeballs.
“I don’t know whether it’s karma, but I think it’s entirely within the realm of fairness,” admits the best-selling author and television food star. “I’ve certainly been talking a lot of smack about people over the years. It’s only appropriate that I should get some back.”
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“A lot of smack” is a generous understatement. This is a man, after all, who recently called Guy Fieri’s new 600-seat Times Square restaurant a “terror dome.” He bemoaned Rachael Ray for “selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough.” And he labeled Sandra Lee “pure evil,” elaborating that “this frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time.”
Some of Bourdain’s most abused targets, like Ray and Fieri, will be on hand tomorrow night to give him a live simmering of his own.
“He’s talented but he’s got a swagger that opens him up to some good roasting,” says MSNBC’s Willie Geist, who is co-hosting alongside Croc-loving chef Mario Batali. The event will include a roster of professional skewer-ers like Gilbert Gottfried and Sarah Silverman, as well as culinary insiders like Eric Ripert.
Not that Bourdain is timid about exposing his vulnerabilities.
He has published thousands of pages discussing everything including heavy drinking and cocaine and heroin use.
“He’s got a nice past that we can make fun of,” says Caroline Hirsch of Carolines on Broadway, which is producing the festivites alongside Lizz Winstead, co-creator of “The Daily Show.”
About 500 people are expected at tomorrow’s $400-a-ticket roast, which includes a dinner cooked by Michael White of Marea. Proceeds will go to the Food Bank for New York City and Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign.
“People should enjoy themselves at my expense. They get a free shot this time,” says Bourdain, who adds that he will “show up and take my beating like a man.”
Bourdain, who has a new weekend show on CNN premiering in early 2013, is already counting on his pre-roast meal of bourbon to get him through the ordeal. And he adds:
“I may have a pretty thick skin, but before you get in the ring and have the crap kicked out of you, it’s probably a good idea to eat light.”