Anthony Bourdain Thinks Dining With Donald Trump Would Be 'F*cking Hilarious'

anthony bourdain, donald trump
Stephen Lovekin/Donna Ward/Getty Images
Stephen Lovekin/Donna Ward/Getty Images

Earlier this year, Anthony Bourdain broke bread -- actually, noodles -- with our current commander-in-chief, President Barack Obama. During a long conversation with Bourdain prior to the election, I asked him how he'd imagine that dinner at a small restaurant in Vietnam stacking up next to a meal with Donald Trump.

"Trump would be interesting," he told me, "because watching him struggle with chopsticks would be pretty fucking hilarious. And he is allegedly a germophobe and he eats his steak well-done. So you know, seeing him at a state dinner -- like, a Chinese banquet -- and trying to deal with the hospitality there would be pretty fucking hilarious. How does he even grab chopsticks with those little fingers?"

"How does he even grab chopsticks with those little fingers?"

While he's never dined with the president-elect, Bourdain did run into the candidate the majority of Americans voted for. "I've met [Hillary] Clinton -- backstage at Jimmy Fallon maybe," he recalled. "She asked me where I was going [next] and I said, 'To the Republic of Georgia.' And she said, 'Oh, my God, the drinking there, and the cheese.' We talked about food; she seemed interested."

But he'd take our nation's president over either of them as a dinner companion. "He's a foodie and he's got good taste in restaurants. And he's very sentimental about the street food of Southeast Asia. Very. You know, he spent a lot of time in Indonesia as a young man. At the meal I had with him, he talked very emotionally and wistfully about the smell of Indonesian street food -- I could see just how much he was digging bun cha. I've never seen a man so happy to drink a beer from the bottle, you know? So I think he'd be the most fun."

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John Sellers is the Entertainment director at Thrillist and awaits the photos of Trump attempting to hold chopsticks.