Anthony Bourdain’s Favorite Jewish Deli Pays Tribute: His Breakfast Order And An Empty Chair

Bourdain Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer June 8, 2018

Nova Scotia lox and egg scramble. A toasted poppyseed bagel. A pot of black coffee and a glass of orange juice.

The staff at Barney Greengrass, a historic Jewish deli on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, honored chef Anthony Bourdain by serving his regular breakfast order today, at an empty table with a single chair.

Bourdain died on Friday at 61 years-old, having lived an outsized life that seemed to value respect and curiosity above all else. Staff at Barney Greengrass told Van Tieu, the CNN NY1 reporter who discovered the tribute and posted the image to social media, that Bourdain’s “humble humor is greatly missed at the deli counter.”

An empty chair at Barney Greengrass with Anthony Bourdain’s regular breakfast order: Nova Scotia Lox and egg scramble. Staff say his humble humor is greatly missed at the deli counter. @NY1 pic.twitter.com/MLvhiOWgRZ

— Van Tieu (@Van_Tieu) June 8, 2018

Bourdain devoted an episode of his TV show “A Cook’s Tour” to New York City in 2002 in his signature style (New York City “sometimes sucks” he reflected.) “Whenever I want to treat myself to the best breakfast in New York — in fact, the best breakfast in the universe,” Bourdain said, “I go to a place in my neighborhood famed for just that: the legendary Barney Greengrass.”

Bourdain spoke in the clip, as he always did, about the history of the food — Jewish immigrants, he said, brought deli food to New York City. “Like everything else in this city, the food and culture that once belonged to them now belongs to everyone,” he said, digging into his meal.

Jenny Singer is the deputy Lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO