As humans, we reach for logic and reason to make sense of the world around us. And then there are days when we see, hear and feel things that don’t easily assimilate with the mental model of our reality.

I did not know Anthony Bourdain, so to speak. Rewind back a few years, I did not know Ryan Davis either. It’s weird trying to make sense of this feeling, like I’ve lost a friend, when in truth, I have never had the fortune of meeting either of them. And now I never will.

Anthony helped me feel like a million dollars, vicariously, when I had just enough to buy a few packs of ramen. Ryan made me laugh through days when I was in a new country, alone, a million miles away from friends and family. They were my friends, even if they did not know it, and they always will be.

Thank you Anthony, Ryan, for all that you were. Your love of life and your passion for humanity will continue to inspire us all. May you rest in peace.

We’ll miss ya.

Ryan was a great and kind man, I felt that through the podcast alone. I was devastated hearing about it and can't imagine how his coworkers, friends, family and wife felt. There's not a moment when Ryan was on the Bombcast or camera where he didn't "bring it," he was always ready to politely interject words of laughter or information on any topic. Ryan seemed to be a person who just spread joy everywhere he went.

The news about Anthony is a tragedy too, I haven't watched too much of him though. Reading about his work is beautiful. He believed that meals are a huge part of learning about a culture and sat down with complete strangers around the world to try their lifestyle of eating and respecting each other. It's pretty much a dream job to many, it's an example showing how serious problems like suicide can be to even "the best of us," if you will.

Two Facebook posts I made earlier, for sharing.

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It wasn't until I started getting ready for service tonight that it really hit me, by the way. So here:

To be honest, I'm a fan of Bourdain as an interview but I never seriously watched his shows. I know him best as a Top Chef guest host and a good quote. Personally, anyway. I quit reading books - what a silly sentence that is - around the time I would've got the most out of his work.

So, truthfully, I know Bourdain best as some of my best friends, all the people in this hilariously stupid industry known as hospitality that continues to employ people who mask their contempt for wide swaths of humanity behind pork loins, Manhattans, lemon tarts and a swift "safety meeting" in back by the disheveled cuts of bread and unfinished, served dishes set aside by purely animalistic impulse for staff consumption.

I know him through the long conversations at other bars once my own's been closed, through the carnivorous and joyous way we sit in clouds of cigarette smoke out back and pillory rival restaurants we all agree we love but fuck 'em anyway 'cause they ain't us. I know him through the nights we ignore our significant others just to continue cathartically reliving faux-traumatic events under the light of the moon over elements of stress relief that promise to kill us just as meticulously.

I know him through the customers that understand, just a bit better, what it means to order a New York Sour as the tickets keep on ticking through, steeling themselves with either patience or the humility to just order a pilsner in a can. I know him through most of my best days, and many of my worst, and more than anything through the knowledge that I would be a worse person than I am if I had not accepted the challenge of making other people happy - keeping people alive, and introducing them to life best lived in my own small ways - in exchange for cash.

I look forward to getting to know the man more in the days and years ahead, but I'm immeasurably thankful for all the avenues through which I've come to know him already.

Thanks, Chef.

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"I love the sheer weirdness of the kitchen life: the dreamers, the crackpots, the refugees, and the sociopaths with whom I continue to work; the ever-present smells of roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, the flames, the smoke, and the steam.

Admittedly, it’s a life that grinds you down. Most of us who live and operate in the culinary underworld are in some fundamental way dysfunctional."

Good service, Chef. Hope you're reincarnating as an oyster off some idyllic coastline right about now. We'd all appreciate the joke.