TONY: Mythical Kitchen Confidential

In a way, Tony, a mostly fact-free biopic of the late chef, writer, television personality, and world traveler Anthony Bourdain, is a celebration of not one but two Tonys. The world of the film relates a mythical version of how a teenaged Vassar dropout discovered his passion during a summer spent in a Cape Cod restaurant kitchen. Populating that world is Antonio Banderas lending the movie both heart and soul as the (fictional) chef that inspired him.

To point out that very few things in Tony reflect Bourdain’s real life is not a knock on the movie. Director and co-writer Matt Johnson is a fabulist, who has offered eccentric takes on the Apollo moon mission with Operation Avalanche (2016) and the invention of a pioneering PDA with BlackBerry (2023), and even presented a fun-house version of “Matt Johnson” in two series of Nirvanna the Band the Show and the criminally underseen big-screen Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (2025). It only follows that Tony would fit within that framework.

And, truthfully, primarily fiction was probably the way to go when it comes to offering such a small slice of Bourdain’s life. All biopics mix fact and fiction, anyway. This one just goes a bit further. There is a chapter in Kitchen Confidential that covers his time on Cape Cod. It’s sometimes hilarious, but relatively drama free, as Bourdain describes the chaos of a restaurant kitchen.

Instead of that, Johnson and his co-writers frame Bourdain’s story as a coming-of-age tale. Borrowing a quote from Kitchen Confidential in which the chef describes his teenage self as “a thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass kicking,” they take him at his word. It’s 1975 and we’re introduced to 19-year-old Tony (Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers) as he tries to con his way into a writing fellowship. He also has a crush on a girl, Nancy (Emilia Jones), who mentions that she will be living and working on the Cape over the summer.

Tony has no job, no place to stay, not much money, and no plan, but he tilts at that windmill, anyway, following Nancy to Provincetown. Call it a romantic gesture or call it stalking, either way, when the fool and his money are soon parted, Tony is in a world of hurt. Or would be, except for the indulgence of Chef (Banderas), who gives the kid a dishwashing job and a place to sleep—the hammock on Chef’s porch.

Chef is the angel. Sal (Leo Woodall, Tuner), a larcenous, drug-abusing cook in the seafood restaurant’s kitchen—a guy who leaves notches in door frames to mark his sexual conquests—is the devil. Tony ping pongs between these two poles, while also pursuing Nancy. Chef challenges him. He has strict rules, but he also teaches and he offers Tony opportunity to advance beyond the grind of cleaning plates and cutlery. But Tony is still a boy. He doesn’t know what he wants—yet. And troubled, larcenous Sal has the attractive quality of a pirate. Also, it’s a summer gig. Fall and a return to Vassar await.

Tony’s friendship with Sal lends the movie dramatic tension, but it is the Tony/Chef pairing that gives it its lift. Perhaps inspired by “Bigfoot,” Bourdain’s mentor from a later part of his career, Chef is cast as father figure and mentor to a boy he recognizes as rudderless despite all of Tony’s big talk about his future as a writer. Tony sways this way and that is because he doesn’t know what he wants, but he’s beginning to learn. Sessa is marvelous at conveying Tony’s vulnerability as well as his obnoxiousness. But what makes the pairing between Tony and Chef fly is Banderas. He is stern yet avuncular, his growing affection for this chaotic man-child shining through as well as his disappointment when Tony inevitably lets him down.

This portrait of a chef as a young man may not deal much with facts but it captures the spirit Bourdain conveyed in his writing and in the personality he presented for public consumption on television. Tony is tremendously entertaining, a wonderful homage to its subject. Bourdain’s been gone for eight years. If he was still here, it’s easy to imagine him getting a big kick out of what Sessa, Banderas, and Johnson have made out of his life. —Pam Grady