Laurie Woolever Told Anthony Bourdain’s Story. Now She’s Telling Her Own

They say lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice. But for Laurie Woolever, it sure as hell did.

The food writer and editor made her name as an assistant to Mario Batali and the late Anthony Bourdain, with whom she spent countless hours eating, drinking and travelling the world until his death in 2018. Her new memoir, Care and Feeding, is an all-access pass to those frenetic years, in which she balanced work, motherhood, substance issues and, between 1999 and 2002, Batali’s toxic behaviour, which would ultimately lead to his fall from grace more than a decade later.

But the books she went on to co-write with Bourdain have become New York Times bestsellers, and shortly before her interview with Broadsheet, her own book had just achieved the same status. In this wide-ranging chat, Woolever shares her thoughts on writing, celebrity chefs today, dumb luck and much more.

You’ve been instrumental in telling the stories of these two huge characters. Why did you decide it was time to tell your own?
Well, I have lived kind of an interesting life with big characters, as you said. And, you know, living in New York and being in the restaurant world, there are a lot of good stories in there. I’ve been telling myself and other people these stories for a long time, so I knew I always wanted to do something with this life I’ve been living for the last 25 years. I finished working on World Travel: An Irreverent Guide and Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography and I felt like, well – after really putting a lot of effort into telling the Tony Bourdain story – it just seemed like the right time to tell my own.

What was the best and worst thing about that process?
The best thing was just having the opportunity, and the mandate through a publisher, to just be a writer. To focus on a project I was being paid for. To tell my own story and not someone else’s. That overarching sense of taking myself seriously and being taken seriously was fantastic. But there was also a lot of comedy to mine through and some ridiculous scenarios to re-create, so there was a fun aspect to it.

But then there was the difficult stuff, the more troubling episodes. I made plenty of bad decisions that are described in the book: things I screwed up, jobs I lost, people I hurt. There was some pain and regret in reliving those things. To be honest, the idea of some people’s reactions – the people in the book, my mother – would sometimes hold me back. There were also days where I had doubts in my ability to finish the project. But, you know, I got through it.

The timing of your book is really interesting given what’s happening in Australia at the moment. Our hospitality industry is reckoning with an era that enabled people like Mario Batali, and created toxic environments where alcohol and drugs are an accepted part of workplace culture. Parts of the industry are still campaigning for better support and regulation. Given your own lived experience, do you think this project will succeed?
I’m really curious about that. I think it’s very difficult to legislate behaviour. You can write rules and you can create consequences for breaking those rules. But it’s an industry that thrives on a little bit of chaos. Because the work is so challenging and physically demanding, you do have to blow off steam at some point.

I’ve been out of restaurants for a long time but I’ve talked about this topic a lot, and my anecdotal impressions are that, because of the #metoo movement, things have gotten marginally better. People are more aware of the risks of letting things get out of control, mainly from a liability and a financial standpoint.

There’s probably some version of the long arc of justice, you know, bending toward the light or whatever. But I do think things generally do evolve for the better. There’ll probably be some backsliding and nothing is going to be perfect, but I do think having these conversations and shining a light on really egregious examples of bad behaviour and having some consequences is all really useful.

What does redemption look like for these bad actors?
People vote with their patronage, right? Once somebody has been through the legal system, if that’s a part of their consequences, then it moves to the court of public opinion. I can be specific about Mario Batali, who I wrote about in my book. I believe some of the women who have, you know, some pretty serious allegations [against him]. But those allegations weren’t borne out in a court of law for various reasons, which is, you know, a whole other interview. But some people feel that, okay, well, he wasn’t convicted of a crime. Why shouldn’t he come back? I’ve realised that every person gets one vote. It has to come down to a personal decision of whether or not you want to give these people your attention and your money and your time.

What’s your relationship with the idea of celebrity now? Do you think we’ve reached peak celebrity chef?
When I was coming up as a food writer, it was the beginning of the modern celebrity chef era in the States. It was a much more credulous time, and so I think everyone got the benefit of the doubt. There were certain people – white men, mainly – who were slotted into these roles, so it was a limited selection of folks. Cynicism is probably too strong a word, but people are much less credulous now about these guys being pure celebrities.

The whole idea of the celebrity chef doesn’t carry the same gold-standard cachet that it did in the ’90s and ’2000s. I think that’s a reflection of the media in general. Things have become so fractured, and there are many, many more platforms, all of which get fewer eyes compared to a time when there was a smaller, elite selection of magazines and television spots.

There’s always going to be an appetite for somebody having something to say about food. And everything is a 12-year cycle, right? You’re always going to have newly minted adults with their own ideas about food. They don’t care about what James Beard was doing 65 years ago. So I think there’ll always be food celebrity in some form, but the form continues to mutate and evolve. There’s a very famous Gourmet magazine cover calling chefs the new rock stars. It felt very revolutionary at the time. Now it’s a little bit of an eye roll.

Where are your favourite restaurants in New York right now?
There’s a place I go to a lot called Ernesto’s. It’s in Manhattan on the Lower East Side and it’s a Basque-Spanish restaurant. The chef’s name is Brian Bartlow, and we’re writing a cookbook together, so I have to eat there as a matter of research and diligence. But the food is just spectacular and Brian is an extraordinary chef.

I also love Superiority Burger, a vegetarian restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village. It used to be a tiny little hole in the wall, and then they took over a diner space and left the diner pretty much intact. Now they serve these delicious vegetarian sandwiches and gelato and sorbet.

Where’s your favourite New York slice?
Scarr’s on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It’s not fancy, but the pizza is extraordinarily good. It has a young, loud downtown crowd, but the pizza is very serious.

When you’re caring for and feeding someone else, what do you cook?
I like to make either a big pot of some kind of simple pasta, like orecchiette with a sausage and broccoli rabe with a little tomato and garlic. Or a big lasagne bolognaise. There’s a recipe in the cookbook that I wrote with Tony Bourdain called Appetites, and our bolognaise has chicken livers in it, which is the secret ingredient. You don’t really taste the liver, but there’s a richness and a little bit of a mineral tang that’s just so satisfying. And, you know, you don’t need a lot. We top it with fresh mozzarella, which makes it really nice and chewy and crispy. You can make it ahead, bake it at night and serve it to your guests the next day so you’re not fussing at the last minute.

Right place, right time has been a throughline in your career. Do you believe in serendipity?
I believe in it to the extent that, when it happens and it benefits you, it’s great. I think the most important thing is to acknowledge the dumb luck. People like to say, “Good luck always seems to come to people who work hard,” but that’s not always true. Sometimes people work hard and they get screwed over. Sometimes people are lazy and undeserving and they get an incredible stroke of good luck. So, you know, I don’t think the universe is inherently fair. For me, it’s important to just acknowledge that, gosh, I got really lucky.

If you’ve been the victim of sexual harassment in a hospitality workplace or witnessed an incident, read activist Jamie Bucirde’s advice on navigating the situation.

If you would like to speak with someone about an experience you have had, or would like more information, please call 1800Respect on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800respect.org.au.

You can also alert Broadsheet to misbehaviour of any kind in the hospitality industry via report@broadsheet.com.au. We cannot act on specific tips, but your valuable information may inform future coverage.