Editor and writer Laurie Woolever first met Anthony Bourdain in 2002 when she was hired to recipe test and edit his book "Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook."
By then, the celebrity chef and travel documentarian was well known for his groundbreaking memoir "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly," which came out in 2000 and marked a turning point in both his life and the hospitality industry.
After spending nearly a decade working by his side, Woolever has published "Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography." The book includes interviews with nearly 100 people who crossed paths with Bourdain throughout his life.
Bourdain, who died by suicide in June 2018, is still missed by many.
Woolever said when she first met Bourdain, she expected a brash, outgoing character with a big personality, but what she encountered was much more reserved.
"The person that I met that day was actually much more reserved and quiet, kind of shy and almost socially awkward," Woolever told WPR's "BETA." "We had a pretty quick meeting with his other chef and the owner of the restaurant, and it was just not at all what I expected, but he was lovely. He was much more kind of ground level than I expected, and that really was the case throughout my time knowing and working with him."
But his voice came out in his writing, Woolever said, pointing specifically to "Kitchen Confidential" which became a New York Times bestseller.
"Tony had such a distinctive and really charismatic and engaging writing voice," Woolever explained. "You know, it was funny, it was sharp. It brought in a lot of cultural and historical references. It was deeply personal in as much as he skewered other people, he was also very willing to skewer himself and lay bare his own faults and, you know, bad decisions, often to hilarious effect."
The timing and subject matter of his memoir also helped it skyrocket on the charts, Woolever said.
"This was a time in food writing and food media where things were very buttoned up and all of the magazine articles really focused on high-end luxury and really just the surface of things," she said. "Tony was the first in his era to really pull back the layers and say, 'This is what really goes on. And this is the truth about the entire business, not just what you see on the plate or what you see at the front door, but really the whole thing.' And people love to be told the truth and to really know the secrets of what goes on behind the facade."
When Woolever interviewed Bourdain's editor Karen Rinaldi, she learned that Bourdain feared becoming a sellout for pursuing a career in TV.
"I think he saw television as part of this grab at the brass ring," Woolever explained. "He understood that if he wanted to keep being successful, if he wanted to figure out a way to make money and make a living and not have to go back into the kitchen, that he would have to expand his profile beyond making books. I think he understood that if you wanted to keep this thing going, he was going to have to do television."
Anderson Cooper told Woolever that "finding your voice as a writer is one thing. Making that into television is a completely other thing."
And yet Bourdain appeared to transition incredibly smoothly.
Woolever said it helped he had the right partners — Lydia Tenaglia and Chris Collins of Zero Point Zero Productions.
"They recognized right away that Tony had such a singular voice and they were really champions of him getting to keep that voice and getting to refine it for television. They were not willing to compromise and try and shoehorn Tony into what a network probably would have wanted from him, which is barbecue rodeo in a parking lot," she said. "You know, they really wanted to make sure that his voice, which was the thing that broke him out into the world, that that was maintained as much as possible."
Bourdain also wrote some kitchen scenes for the restaurant storyline of David Simon's HBO series, "Treme."
"I remember when he got the news that he was going to be a staff writer for 'Treme' and he said, this is an absolute high watermark for my career. He was so thrilled. They brought him in for at least two, if not three seasons, to write the restaurant's storyline. And he was so good at it," Woolever said.
Bourdain launched "Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown" on CNN in April 2013, letting him showcase a more serious side.
Woolever said CNN's resources, like security and clearance, made a lot of that possible: "They were able to use those things to get deeper than they might have with the other cable networks that he was involved with in the past. So he was able to tell the kinds of stories that he really wanted to tell."
When thinking about Bourdain's death, Woolever is left with more questions than answers.
"He was someone who lived life always at 11 or at a thousand percent, right? So one thing that had really taken more and more of his time and energy was a romantic relationship that he was in for the last two years of his life. So there was some trouble in his relationship in that last week before he died," she said. "So I think the short answer is he had a spasm of grief, loneliness, of extreme heartbreak, disappointment, and that led him to make a really terrible decision to end his own life."
Woolever said Bourdain left a huge legacy, inspiring a lot of people to leave their jobs to work as a line cook, a chef or a maître d'hôtel.
"I think he's also probably encouraged a lot of people to look at whatever it is in their lives, whatever their careers are, whatever their story is, and see something worth telling and that if you just tell the truth in an engaging way, that that could be something that somebody else wants to read," she said.
She also thinks he encouraged people to travel in a more mindful way and to spend time looking at the regular people who live in a place and what are their living conditions are like.
"I think in a way that wasn't really part of the conversation 20 or 25 years ago," she said. "Now people are wondering, are people making enough money? Do the people who live here get enough to eat? How does the government play into how people are living and what they're eating? So I think he just had an enormous impact on the culture."