Anthony Bourdain on Toronto

[denfromoakvillemilton]

People need to lighten up. lol. Anyone criticizing Bourdain for his comments on architecture is missing the point entirely.


Again, missing the point. The show is about simple sensations and experiences, it's not supposed to be the Fifth Estate. BTW, Bourdain fully admits to milking the celebrity chef thing for all it's worth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S90Rq3yV9dY



Buildings looking the same don't make a city boring. You could have a thousand buildings being identical in the same area, and as long as they follow some basic urban design principles it could still make an exciting, vibrant city. Not everybody obsesses about architecture the way people on Urban Toronto do.

Fair point. Toronto to it benefit is also building more towers over 200m as well.

 

[freshcutgrass]

I guess everybody missed the 99% of the show that said Toronto was awesome and well worth the visit.
He had a blast and the food was excellent and it was a great promo piece.

Exactly. It was a great show. All of his shows promote the host city in a good light, with a few light jabs here and there...it's just the manner in which the show is produced.

He obviously doesn't have any personal knowledge about the city, but the producers hook him up with locals as guides. His impression seemed to be that Toronto was a kinda big Brooklyn, and seemed to be genuinely impressed with the more specialized things like shopping for cooking knives at Tosho or vintage vinyl (which Toronto has an awesome selection of).

I like all of Anthony's shows....It's junk food television...but junk food television at its best.

 

[TrickyRicky]

P.s. A lot of the comments in this thread are, if the intention is to stick up for Toronto, embarrassing for the reputation of the city.

A further comment, notice how essentially none of the interesting and notable experiences the host has occur in areas where there are high rise structures. Perhaps this is an unfair comment and hard to digest because of the general love of this built form on this forum but I think it worth mentioning as we discuss the continuing evolution of the city and how high rises are being absorbed and transforming the cityscape for good and bad.

 

[nrb]

P.s. A lot of the comments in this thread are, if the intention is to stick up for Toronto, embarrassing for the reputation of the city.

A further comment, notice how essentially none of the interesting and notable experiences the host has occur in areas where there are high rise structures. Perhaps this is an unfair comment and hard to digest because of the general love of this built form on this forum but I think it worth mentioning as we discuss the continuing evolution of the city and how high rises are being absorbed and transforming the cityscape for good and bad.

Possibly it has something to do with towers displacing interesting and worthwhile drinking, eating and entertainment establishments and as a result there being little reason to go east of bathurst unless you really like some dumb chain like five guys that only show up post-post-post gentrification. Or work in one of said towers..

Toronto is ugly, there's no denying it. At least the ugly old parts have soul. Trying to discredit Bourdain's opinion is a joke.. he's been to almost every worthwhile city in the world at this point and done a show on its culture. How many forum members can say the same or even come close?

 

[One Nut Kruk]

Why is their such snobbery when it comes to chain restaurants? I'm not saying Five Guys has the best burgers I've tasted -- definitely overrated, but good. But there seems to be this attitude that any restaurant that isn't independently owned is crap. Does The Keg not have good steak, for instance? I'm sure most of the places, Anthony Bourdain, has eaten, couldn't hold a candle to Casey's and Shoeless Joe's.

 

[jaycola]

First off I should point out that Bourdain has the greatest job in the world. He gets paid to travel, eat, drink and have adventures. I mean really, most of us work very hard for a tiny fraction of what he gets to do. He stays out of the politics of the places he visits for the most, although his visits to countries such as Viet Nam, Libya and The Congo, a recent visit to Jerusalem require some comment of recent or current events.

He visits street food vendors, local specialists in their traditional fare, their small establishments or at their homes. He is looking for the unique and the chain restaurant goes against that philosophy.

He's a semi god to me but often comes across as an asshole and entitled. Probably comes from people telling him he is a god. I think he showed the city in a good light. If each of us got to produce that episode, we'd have chosen different shots of the city, different restaurants they should have visited, different neighborhoods he could have visited, different ways to experience the city and you know what?, each of them would be great to watch and great for promotion of the city.

We should be inviting Fallon and Kimmel, John Stewart to do a shoot in the city. Ellen and even those horrid women of The View too. It's all good for promotion of the city.

 

[DtTO]

Trying to discredit Bourdain's opinion is a joke.. he's been to almost every worthwhile city in the world at this point and done a show on its culture. How many forum members can say the same or even come close?

I've probably seen more pictures of more cities on various forums than he has. Does that count? What is a joke is to come to a city and have the opinion that it's ugly before even getting out of the car (something tells me he had that "opinion" long before he arrived here). Also, why are you acting as if his opinion is a fact? That mentality is a joke as well. Bourdain isn't everyone's deity.

 

[Tewder]

DtTO, Bourdain's opinion is a fact. The fact is, it's his opinion. It's ok, we all got 'em. His was pretty favourable overall. The fact that he found Toronto ugly is neither startling nor all that controversial, surely?..

A fact that Bourdain didn't know - couldn't have known, really - is that Toronto is improving on the ugly scale, no matter what your standard for ugly is. We still have a long way to go though... fact!

 

[DtTO]

DtTO, Bourdain's opinion is a fact. The fact is, it's his opinion.

His opinion is a fact, but it doesn't make the statement itself a fact. It's just an opinion.

Treating someone's opinion as a fact: Bourdain thinks Toronto is ugly, therefore, Toronto *is* ugly.
Treating it as an opinion: Bourdain thinks Toronto is ugly, therefore it *might be* ugly (and even then, likely only to a certain demographic).

So, no, it is certainly not a joke to question someone's opinion. In fact, that should be encouraged. Like I said, Bourdain isn't everyone's deity; we don't all worship him.

 

[urbandreamer]

Why the bashing of the "English Presbyterian?" I would argue their architectural legacy was vastly superior to the junk being built today.

 

[One Nut Kruk]

Why the bashing of the "English Presbyterian?" I would argue their architectural legacy was vastly superior to the junk being built today.

Exactly. It is the modernist age that stripped us of most of our beautiful buildings. As if our English Presbyterian forefathers built or inspired the schlock he was referring to.

 

[diminutive]

Exactly. It is the modernist age that stripped us of most of our beautiful buildings. As if our English Presbyterian forefathers built or inspired the schlock he was referring to.

I don't think that's entirely fair. We're looking at pre-modern Toronto through a selective vantage since most of the uglier buildings from earlier eras have been bulldozed or replaced. Lots of good looking ones have been destroyed as well, but surely the wrecking ball falls disproportionately on the ugly or mundane.

I don't think contemporaries of pre-modern Toronto found the City to be very attractive, either. We were a b-list provincial tank-town.

 

[TrickyRicky]

I have a fondness for certain kinds of modern and contemporary architecture but it tells you something about how souless and inhuman our built form and architecture is when we have to preserve, restore, and pay a million dollars for any old workers shack built prior to 1950.

Incidentally, when I say Toronto is "ugly" what I mean is it is ugly relative to the best of human civilization. The majority of mankind live and most of the great cities of the future (likely none of which will be in the Western World) are, places somewhat uglier and potentially much uglier than Toronto.

In reference to the show Bourdain likens Toronto to Sao Paulo, a city he really likes and one that Toronto actually has a lot of commonalities with if you think about it.

 

[kicked it in the sun]

how anyone could complain about bourdain's profile is beyond me, pure manna from a promotional perspective. so he minorly slagged toronto's poor architecture, the guy's from fucking manhattan, and he has visited practically every major city on earth. by his standards, toronto's built form is like a 3/10 or maybe a 4/10, thankfully he didn't get out to etobicoke, he'd have needed ativan to get to sleep. boohoohoo, canada's best city is ugly by world standard, what a surprise! try asking a german or a spaniard what they think, visit denmark or the netherlands or even moscow. the point is the food, the food!! makes toronto look amazing.

 

[diminutive]

Well, Banksy thinks we're boring too. Can't wait for this thread to jump over him as a cultureless hack who doesn't realize urban greatness when it's slapping him in the face!

Banksy says World Trade Center 'something they would build in Canada" -

Street graffiti artist Banksy caused an uproar in the blogosphere on Monday when he wrote that the new World Trade Center is so bland, “it looks like something they would build in Canada.”
...

(Yes, yes, he doesn't mention Toronto specifically, but as Canada's biggest city obviously we're a part of that comment.)