Anderson Cooper looks back on his friendship with the late Anthony Bourdain: 'He is so, so missed'

Anderson Cooper shared some of his fond memories of his late friend Anthony Bourdain during his Thanksgiving episode of Anderson Cooper Full Circle.

During the show, the 53-year-old newsman shared a clip from a 2015 broadcast with Bourdain, in which the two made ‘Sunday Gravy’ together.

The celebrity would later die by suicide in 2018.

Old friends: Anderson Cooper, 53, remember his late friend Anthony Bourdain on a Thursday segment of his show, which featured a clip of the two from 2015; seen together in 2016

‘Obviously this is a holiday that revolves around food and family — both the family you’re born with and the family that you choose or make for yourself, your friends and your loved ones,’ Cooper opened the reflective segment.

‘I was proud to call Anthony Bourdain a friend. Some of my favorite memories of him beyond his remarkable body of work on CNN, and other networks before us, was being with him in the kitchen,’ he continued.

‘From time to time he’d return from his travels, tell me about his adventures and film the segments for my program and he’d sort of try to teach me how to cook.’

Bourdain’s career began as a chef in New York City, where he rose to become the executive chef at the Brasserie Les Halles. 

Good times: ‘I was proud to call Anthony Bourdain a friend. Some of my favorite memories of him beyond his remarkable body of work on CNN, and other networks before us, was being with him in the kitchen,’ Anderson said; seen in May 2019

Fond memory: Bourdain, who would do period cooking tutorials on Cooper’s show, taught him how to make ‘Sunday Gravy’ in the 2015 clip; pictured on Late Night With Seth Meyers in 2017

He also began a career as a writer in the mid-1980s, eventually writing two poorly received culinary mystery novels in the 1990s, before breaking out with a popular New Yorker essay that was expanded into his hit book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures In The Culinary Underbelly. 

Bourdain is best known for the series of food and travel shows that he created and starred in following the book’s success, including No Reservations, The Layover and Parts Unknown, the latter for CNN. 

In his quest to introduce Anderson and his viewers to new cuisines from around the globe, Bourdain may have engaged in some playful food-based hazing with his friend.

‘He would also sort of torture me with dishes which I would normally never eat in a million years, and he loved to watch me squirm as I bit into, like, a pig’s aorta,’ he remember with a laugh.

‘I’m not sure why that was necessary but he certainly enjoyed it. Some of them actually tasted really good but not so much the aorta — it’s crunchy like you might imagine.’

Experimenting: In his quest to introduce Anderson and viewers to new cuisines from around the globe, Bourdain would make Cooper eat things that disgusted him; seen in November 2019

Tragedy: Bourdain, an acclaimed author and host of food and travel shows, died by suicide in 2018 while filming Parts Unknown in France; seen with his partner Asia Argento; seen in 2017

For the 2015 ‘Sunday Gravy’ episode, Cooper said it was a callback to his friend’s early years in New Jersey.

‘In Anthony’s 61 years he visited more than 80 countries, many of them multiple times, and he was really a citizen of the world, as well as a guy from New Jersey,’ he said before the clip.

Cooper, who in April announced that his first son had been born, was clearly moved after finishing the clip.

‘Anthony Bourdain, it is so great to hear his voice,’ he said. ‘He is so, so missed by so many.’