Anthony Bourdain's favourite - and least - New York neighbourhoods for eating

Born a New Yorker, late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain made a career recommending food and restaurants for people - and he didn’t shy away from letting people know when his hometown’s food offerings weren’t up to par.

When Bourdain wasn’t travelling the globe scouting out must-try eats for his TV shows No Reservations and Parts Unknown, he often scoured Manhattan and the other New York boroughs looking for hidden treasures.

But there was one neighbourhood, where Bourdain happened to live, that never appealed to the beloved chef’s palette, who died by suicide at the age of 61.

The wealthy Upper East Side, home to museums and high-end shopping, had nothing to offer Bourdain besides a fast food burger, prompting him to once refer to the area as a food “wasteland.”

In an interview with The Times, Bourdain said: “For an area as affluent as mine, and presumably as sophisticated, it’s a wasteland for food.

“When Shake Shack opened a block from my house, I dropped to my knees and wept with gratitude.”

Fortunately for Bourdain, there were plenty of other neighbourhoods in New York City that made up for what the Upper East Side lacked.

Once referring to the city as “the greatest city in the world” in an interview with Eater, the celebrated chef had a few favourites which he would frequent whenever he was in town.

One of these was Upper West Side Jewish deli Barney Greengrass, which the Culinary Institute of America-trained chef once referred to as “the quintessential New York City breakfast.”

The restaurant paid their respects to the chef by laying out an empty table on which they placed his favourite meal - Novia Scotia lox, bagels and scrambled eggs.

Others high on the chef’s list included Marea, located at 240 Central Park South, where he told the Daily Beast he’d go in and “eat three or four different pastas,” Mission Chinese located at 171 East Broadway, and all of Queens, which he once referred to as a “wonderland.”

Brooklyn and the Bronx were also rated highly by Bourdain, who travelled to lesser-known destinations in his own city on his shows and opened up an entire world of New York food that tourists - and other New Yorkers may previously have overlooked.

But despite what you’d assume about the globe-trotting chef’s life in New York City - mainly that it was filled with nights out at the best restaurants the city has to offer - in reality, Bourdain often spent his time cooking for himself and his daughter.

“When I’m home, I’m not going out to dinner… and most of the major food choice decisions are made by my nine-year-old daughter,” the chef told Eater in 2016.