Though Anthony Bourdain has been in the limelight for more than 16 years now, this fall has been absolutely dominated by the celebrity chef. With a new cookbook, a new season of Parts Unknown, and a new documentary in the works, people have been hanging on Bourdain’s every word—and Tony is letting the hot takes fly.
In a lengthy conversation with Thrillist last week, Bourdain had some especially choice words for the current state of craft beer. Just like pumpkin spice lattes, and parents raising their children to be "foodies," the chef basically thinks the whole thing is a bunch of BS.
Bourdain is known to sip on whatever macrobrew is available in the country he’s visiting, and apparently craft beer snobs have been getting bent out of shape in the TV host's mentions.
"I would say that the angriest critiques I get from people about shows are when I'm drinking whatever convenient cold beer is available in a particular place, and not drinking the best beer out there,” Bourdain explains. “You know, I haven't made the effort to walk down the street 10 blocks to the microbrewery where they're making some fucking Mumford and Sons IPA. People get all bent about it. But look, I like cold beer. And I like to have a good time.”
Bourdain goes on to describe an experience he had at bar in San Francisco. At first, the chef thought he was in your run-of-the-mill Bay Area watering hole, but soon he saw a bunch of hipsters (Tony hates hipsters….) sipping their bear out of tiny flight glasses and taking notes. Basically, he felt like he was trapped in a horror movie.
“This is not a bar. This is fucking Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This is wrong,” he said. “This is not what a bar is about. A bar is to go to get a little bit buzzed, and pleasantly derange the senses, and have a good time, and interact with other people, or make bad decisions, or feel bad about your life. It's not to sit there fucking analyzing beer. It's antithetical."
While even craft beer aficionados are known to throw back a few Bud Light Limes every now and then, some diehards didn’t take kindly to Bourdain’s blasphemy and fired back on Twitter this week.