Anthony Bourdain biopic 'Tony' opens to mixed reviews, capturing a young chef's formative summer

The film

Matt Johnson's 'Tony' adapts two early chapters from Anthony Bourdain's 2000 memoir 'Kitchen Confidential', zeroing in on the summer of 1975 when a 19-year-old Bourdain washed dishes at The Flagship restaurant in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Dominic Sessa plays the young Bourdain, then calling himself Tony, as a conceited, vulnerable aspiring writer who flees to the seaside town after failing to secure a Vassar writing fellowship. He stumbles into a kitchen job under a kindly-stern chef played by Antonio Banderas and falls under the wing of a louche, coke-addled line cook (Leo Woodall), all while nursing a crush on a local girl (Emilia Jones). The film frames this summer as the crucible where Bourdain first tasted the adrenaline of restaurant life and, as his own later accounts make clear, hard drugs.

“I was -- to be frank -- a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, badly in need of a good ass-kicking.”

Critical reception

Reviews published on July 29, 2026, are split. Variety's critic calls 'Tony' a film that "clears that bar" of what Bourdain himself might have accepted, praising Sessa's "first movie-star performance" and Johnson's fidelity to the spirit of the man. The Independent finds it "a lovely and deeply likeable work" but faults a jarring tendency to foreshadow Bourdain's later death. AP News is cooler, describing the biopic as "an appetizer" that leaves you hungry, arguing that by restricting itself to one summer it never lets Bourdain become the world-weary figure audiences came to love. The Guardian notes that the feelgood coming-of-age arc is "compromised by what we know of the author", with the knowledge of his 2018 suicide hanging over every scene of youthful excess.

Bourdain's shadow

Bourdain took his own life in 2018 after a painful breakup, and several reviews wrestle with how that fact colours a story about a young man discovering pleasure and danger. The Independent describes moments where the film seems to pause and turn solemnly to the audience, as if to say "you know the rest of the story". The Guardian points out that the emotional crises the drama treats as obstacles to be surmounted were, in reality, not surmounted. Even the AP review, which avoids direct mention of the suicide, quotes Bourdain's own words from 'Parts Unknown' about the summer: "This is where I bought my first bag of heroin."

Performances

Dominic Sessa's portrayal is the most consistently praised element. Variety sees an electricity in his early pitch scene at Vassar, capturing Bourdain's subversive, funny voice. AP describes him as "a surly Bob Dylan in kitchen whites", angular and rarely flashing joy. Antonio Banderas brings soulful authority to the chef who hires Tony, while Leo Woodall's Sal serves as both inspiration and cautionary tale. Emilia Jones's Nancy is noted by The Independent as a relatively thankless love-interest role, but the ensemble gives the film its warmth.