Ariane is the only child born to late chef Anthony Bourdain and Ottavia Busia-Bourdain.

The Gist

Anthony Bourdain once wrote that he loved “everything about” being a father.

The late celebrity chef and acclaimed author shared his feelings on becoming a dad in 2016 tome Appetites: A Cookbook. “Fatherhood has been an enormous relief, as I am now genetically, instinctually compelled to care more about someone other than myself,” he wrote. “I like being a father. No, I love being a father. Everything about it.”

His parenting journey began nine years before he put those words on the page. Bourdain and then-wife Ottavia Busia-Bourdain welcomed their first and only child together, daughter Ariane Busia-Bourdain, on April 9, 2007.

The culinary icon later reflected on making time for his daughter in the midst of his hectic filming schedule for CNN series Parts Unknown. In his final interview with People before his death, he shared, “I’ll go back, see my daughter, unpack, repack, mimic a normal life, which is extraordinarily pleasurable to me.”

Bourdain died by suicide on June 8, 2018, leaving behind a titanic legacy as a cultural storyteller who introduced viewers and readers to much more than a good meal. The 2026 A24 biopic Tony, starring Dominic Sessa, chronicles Bourdain’s early years in the restaurant industry as told in his 2000 memoir Kitchen Confidential.

“We hope this film serves as a reminder that every journey has a start, and that audiences see the beginnings of the man who taught us how to be better explorers on our own paths,” the Bourdain estate said in a statement shared by the Cape Cod Times.

Ahead, learn more about Anthony Bourdain’s daughter, Ariane Busia-Bourdain, including how she bonded with him in the kitchen as a child, and how the 19-year-old has remembered her father in the years since his passing.

Just as he inspired the world to be more creative in their kitchens and more adventurous on their travels, Bourdain helped his daughter cultivate a sophisticated palate. Speaking to Today in 2008 about his then-1-year-old daughter, the chef said he wouldn’t “dumb down” food for his kid.

“The sooner my child eats like an adult and the more often that she does, the happier I am,” he shared, adding elsewhere in the same interview, “I very much don’t want her to fall into a groove where she wants a grilled cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off and nothing else.”

In November 2016, he gave an update on Ariane’s cooking skills while speaking to The Canadian Press, revealing that she liked making the French vegetable stew ratatouille after watching the Pixar film of the same name. “She gets to use a knife [to make ratatouille], which fills me with terror but makes her very happy.”

Ariane shared her own memories of cooking with her father in the 2021 book Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography, excerpted in Vanity Fair. “We’d cook schnitzel; he’d make little stations: one of them has the breading, one has the flour, one has the eggs, and my dad put it in the pan. He’d cook omelets for me all the time, and I’d help him flip it,” she recalled of their summer breakfasts in the Hamptons.

She added, “He taught me how to cut things and not chop off my fingers, to curl my fingers under. He gave me my own little knife, and I still have it, and still use it.”

Ariane also enjoyed jiu-jitsu, singing, and fishing with her father.

When she wasn’t tearing it up in the kitchen as a chef-in-training, a young Ariane enjoyed training in jiu-jitsu. Per People, she began the martial art at just 4 years old, again following in her father’s footsteps. (Bourdain won a gold medal at the 2016 New York Spring International Open Championship.) After Bourdain’s death, a source told People, “[Anthony] was so proud that she was into jiu-jitsu and would say that at her age she was stronger than he was. He was a tender giant. It’s a side he didn’t show too often.”

She also liked to sing. A week after Bourdain’s passing, Ariane’s mother shared a post on her now-private Instagram account of Ariane performing at the DROM music space in NYC. “Our little girl had her concert today,” Ottavia wrote in the caption, per ABC News. “She was amazing. So strong and brave. She wore the boots you bought her.”

While Bourdain and Ottavia chose to hide their daughter’s face when posting about her on social media, they did publicly share special moments with Ariane. One such instance was a father-daughter fishing trip, which the chef described on his Instagram in an August 2016 post. “My little fish killer!” he wrote alongside a photo of Ariane smiling as he held up a fish she caught. “Rough seas, rain on her first fishing trip–and she brings home dinner! 3 fluke!”

One of Bourdain’s most moving reflections on fatherhood came in a 2013 essay for The Guardian. In it, he described a picture of himself and a 4-year-old Ariane in the Cayman Islands. “She’s sitting on my lap, eyes closed. I’m holding her tight, my face sunburned and blissed-out with the joys of fatherhood.

“I was 50 when I became a father of a little girl,” he continued. “I was finally old enough to be qualified for the job. Ariane has me wrapped around her finger. All I can realistically hope for is that she feels loved. That she has high self-esteem. And good martial-arts skills.”

In 2021, Ariane remembered how her dad ‘encouraged every single thing’ she did.

While Ariane has chosen to stay out of the spotlight, she made rare comments about her father in the 2021 oral biography of his life. Among the memories she shared were watching the show Archer with Bourdain, seeing him assemble a house for her Barbie dolls, and hiking with him in New Jersey before going for hot dogs every Father’s Day.

“We had this little thing called the Weirdo Club. And I don’t really know what it was about, it was just us being weird,” she shared. “And I really liked it. He encouraged weirdness. He pretty much encouraged every single thing I wanted to do in my life, and gave me the information to back it up.”

In the same book, Ariane’s mother remembered Bourdain as “a great dad” who “always said that we were a family of weirdos, but that was great, you know.”