Bourdain Visits Chicago Hot Dog Stand After All

By Anthony Todd in Food on Jul 23, 2012 7:20PM

Remember last week, when Anthony Bourdain got all riled up about Budacki's Drive In? They posted a sign announcing his visit in advance, and he publicly refused to go. Looks like he fooled all of us—he went to Budacki's and filmed anyway.

Last week, Bourdain was in town filming on his new show, The Layover. He visited all sorts of Chicago spots, but then found out that Budacki's had betrayed his visit to the masses, going so far as to create a special to encourage people to pack the restaurant. He got angry and tweeted to the entire world that he wouldn't be coming. This sparked a huge discussion, with defenders of Budacki's claiming that the producers weren't clear that the restaurant wasn't allowed to advertise the appearance.

Yeah, he faked us all out. According to Bourdain's twitter, he did show up on Saturday and did a "stealth shoot." So all of the fire and brimstone was for naught. The question is, what happened behind the scenes? Did he do all of this to get publicity? To try to counter the fake crowds at Budacki's? Given the level of vitriol expressed by their defenders, we can't imagine that they were in on all of this. However, we did get a tip in our inbox over the weekend that he had never officially cancelled the shoot. At the time, the tipster was complaining that Bourdain was being so rude by just announcing on twitter that he wasn't coming and never telling the restaurant. But perhaps, he never cancelled the shoot because... the shoot was never cancelled.

We'll see if any of this is mentioned when the actual episode airs.