One of the food world's most prominent figures, alternately thought of as a tells-it-like-it-is iconoclast or a bombastic douchebag, Jersey native Bourdain attended Vassar before dropping out and washing ashore at the Culinary Institute of America. The '80s weren't very productive years for Bourdain: he eventually sobered up and went on to run the kitchens of a handful of mid-range Manhattan restaurants in the '90s.