Before He Was Bourdain

An advance screening of Matt Johnson’s A24 biopic, Tony, a coming-of-age story based on a few early chapters of the late, great Anthony Bourdain’s memoir Kitchen Confidential, was held in midtown Toronto on National Oyster Day. Walking into the theater, attendees were offered a freshly shucked oyster with all the fixings present: apple-shallot mignonette, grated horseradish, habanero hot sauce, a squeeze of lemon. A bit on the nose, but a free oyster is a free oyster, just like a tie-in is a tie-in. The bivalve played a formative role in Bourdain’s real-life Dionysian awakening. Bourdain had his first oyster when he was 9 or 10, vacationing in a coastal village of Gironde in the southwest of France, where his paternal grandfather emigrated from.