I don’t usually join the mourning when a famous person dies because…I don’t know, I guess because non-famous people die too and there isn’t a big public fuss (naturally: that’s what “famous” means), so I at least keep mum unless it really gets to me. Oliver Sacks was one. Anthony Bourdain is another. I watched his show occasionally (I rarely have access to cable), and I learned stuff from it and I liked his way with the people he met. Just the other day there was one where he talked to guys in Nagorno-Karabakh ffs. Twitter is full of stories about what a mensch he was.

Frank Bruni remembers him:

Anthony Bourdain devoured the world. That’s not hyperbole. It’s not even metaphor. There was no place that he wasn’t curious to explore, no food that he wasn’t determined to try, no cap on his hunger and no ceiling, or so it always seemed, on his joy.

In his writing and especially on his TV shows, most recently CNN’s “Parts Unknown,” he exhorted the rest of us to follow his lead and open our eyes and our guts to the wondrous smorgasbord of life. He insisted that we savor every last morsel of it.

It turns out that he himself could not. Bourdain, 61, was found dead on Friday in a hotel room near Strasbourg, France, where he was shooting an episode of that CNN show. The cause, according to the network, was suicide.

His death ends a blazing career that contributed as much as anybody else’s to Americans’ increased fascination with, and knowledge about, food in all its multiethnic splendor. If we’re savvier to the ways of banh mi, bo ssam and dim sum than we were two decades ago, we have Bourdain in large measure to thank. With television cameras in tow, he showed us Asia, Australia, Africa — and he tasted all of them for us.

We couldn’t taste it with him, or smell it, but we could watch the preparation and hear the sounds and witness Bourdain’s enthusiasm.

Bourdain’s image, as conveyed through his epicurean odysseys, combined flavors of daring, irreverence and supreme confidence. He was appetite incarnate. He was wanderlust with a lavishly stamped passport and an impish, irresistible grin.

“If I am an advocate for anything, it is to move,” he once mused. “As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. Walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food. It’s a plus for everybody.”

But also he did things like this, from the Grand Forks Herald:

Bourdain worked across the globe exploring cuisine and culture, but he also worked with our own local celebrity, Grand Forks Herald columnist Marilyn Hagerty.

When Hagerty’s 2012 review of the Grand Forks Olive Garden went viral, Bourdain defended her column and praised her work ethic when the review was targeted by online mockery. In no time, much of the internet joined his embrace of her writing.

Bourdain also was instrumental in helping Hagerty publish “Grand Forks: A History of American Dining in 100 Reviews.” In an article published by the Herald in 2013, Bourdain called the book a “history of Hagerty,” and complimented her on her hard work ethic.

Grand Forks, North Dakota is not one of the glamour spots of the world, much as Nagorno-Karabakh is not.

Updating to add this tweet that has more details about how Bourdain reached out to Marilyn Hagerty:

https://twitter.com/celiasojourn/status/1005072388541894656

An octogenarian columnist who’d written a review about a new Olive Garden in her small city was ripped to shreds by pretentious assholes in the food blogging community and beyond.

Anthony Bourdain flew her to New York for a meal at Per Se. Then he wrote the forward to her book.