Bourdain considered

There's an article at Slate talking about the new biography, somewhat controversial for its "warts and all" approach, of the late Anthony Bourdain.   This section sounds to me like an accurate take on his appeal:

It reads as if it were written in 1999, the year that Bourdain’s life changed as a result of the publication of “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” the sensational New Yorker article that became the basis for his bestselling book, 2000’s Kitchen Confidential.

Leerhsen likes to hover over this turning point, a time when Bourdain, 43, was living with his first wife, Nancy, in a shabby Manhattan apartment where they once left a Christmas tree lying on its side for nine months. Bourdain worked as a middling chef at a middling restaurant, and Nancy spent most of her time watching Court TV. The pair were recognizable New York types, stunned remnants of the bohemian heyday of the East Village, former junkies clinging to the fringes of a city that was rapidly shedding its grit. The haut-bourgeois exaltation of chefs and restaurants was both a symptom of this transformation and the condition that made Bourdain’s midlife success possible. He was a funny, earthy iconoclast, dishing the dirt on what went on behind the scenes at the eateries that were increasingly central to New York’s culture. Most gifted chefs are meticulous and imperious, not qualities that make for charismatic personalities. Bourdain, however, was more like a musician, specifically the kind of downtown rock ’n’ roller who once played CBGB. He wanted to become “the culinary equivalent of the Ramones.”

Bourdain’s old-timey hipness is a primary source of fascination for Leerhsen, who compares him to Frank Sinatra in an extended passage in the book’s prelude: Each is “the epitome of cool, a sad-smiling Jersey boy who combined supremely high standards with the under-appreciated art of not giving a shit in ways that seemed to excite both sexes. You wanted either to be him or to do him, especially if you’d heard the gossip about his gargantuan member.” (OK, that last line is pretty lurid, but the subject never comes up again!) Leerhsen’s Bourdain was a swashbuckling “renegade” drawn to the piratical culture of restaurant kitchens and sworn to a code of authenticity that, despite his age, seems quintessentially Gen X. His drinking and smoking and his past history of drug use were badges of this street cred. “When traveling for his show,” Leerhsen writes, Bourdain “never dealt with official tourist agencies because he disdained the authorized version of things; he balked at the word ‘brand.’ ” As a kid, Bourdain rebelled against what he once described as “the smothering chokehold of love and normalcy in my house,” which, along with the bland comforts of his suburban upbringing, irked him simply because they were bland and suburban and therefore phony.