Loved this article (limited gift link). I had no idea Bourdain memes were such a thing.
”Modern Bourdain memeing” is playful, irony-tinged, knowingly unserious. One common meme uses a still from a 2006 “No Reservations” episode in Beirut, with Bourdain announcing, “I got a serious lust for shawarma.” (One user shares it with a two-word caption: “ovulation week.”) An enduring meme called “Bourdain on a train” has him wearing sunglasses and headphones, looking out a window between two trains; people deploy it to joke about the smug worldliness one feels when learning about another culture’s food. (One of the most viral examples simply reads “white people correctly pronouncing pho.”) Other popular images are even more obviously relatable: In a March 2024Instagram post, Drake included a familiar screenshot of Bourdain saying: “It’s 11:00 a.m. I’ve got like six drinks in me.”
I made this one shortly after he died:
Quote is from the end of an episode of “Parts Unknown” in Houston.