“Context and memory play powerful roles in all the great meals in one’s life.” — Anthony Bourdain
In the mid-1990s, Anthony Bourdain was the lead chef at a restaurant called Vince & Linda’s, which occupied the historical One Fifth Avenue space — the address that is now home to Golden Steer NYC.
Today, we often hear from chefs who speak with reverence about their time working in the kitchen with “Tony.” This was a special period. Bourdain had not yet become the sharp-tongued author, traveler, and cultural voice the world would come to know. He was still building a life in New York kitchens — leading cooks, surviving services, and learning how to tell the truth about restaurant work without polishing away its rough edges.
Decades later, Bourdain’s story returned to the address. Golden Steer at One Fifth hosted the official premiere after-party for Tony, A24’s biopic about his early years. The film opens August 7th and is available nationwide by August 21st. Hosting this celebration was an extraordinary moment — a chance to honor Bourdain’s journey in the very room where part of it began. The space filled with actors, filmmakers, writers, editors, chefs, and people whose own work had been shaped by Bourdain’s appetite for honesty.
Dominic Sessa, who portrays Bourdain in the film, settled into a banquette with a glass of red wine. His co-star Stavros Halkias worked the room in a salmon-pink leisure suit. Kareem Rahma and Cole Sprouse flipped through A24’s Bourdain coffee-table book. Gail Simmons, Jonah Reider, and a crowd of food and media figures circulated between conversations.
Frosty martinis greeted guests near the entrance. Trays of lobster Thermidor tartlets moved through the room. Food from New York institutions and modern culinary voices — a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel from Barney Greengrass, mapo tofu from Danny Bowien — made the evening feel less like a formal tribute and more like a sprawling, very New York meal.
Would Bourdain have approved of the glitz? He probably would have had notes. He was never sentimental about restaurants, fame, or the machinery that grows around both. He may have raised an eyebrow at a $240 steak and saved a sharper opinion for the reservation-obsessed, influencer-heavy food world of 2026.
But skepticism was never surrender. Bourdain understood that restaurants — and the cultures built inside them — are temporary. A dining room can close. A kitchen crew can scatter. A neighborhood can change beyond recognition. What survives are the stories, the people who keep telling them, and the rare rooms that allow past and present to meet.
For one night, One Fifth Avenue did exactly that. The chef was gone. The old restaurant was gone. The city around it had changed. Still, the room welcomed his story back — and remembered.
