How ‘Tony’ Food Stylist Christine Tobin Told Young Bourdain's Story Through Chowder, Lobster and Squid Stew

“I was really just fueled by adrenaline throughout production,” Tobin says of the shoot, “because sometimes we were making food for four scenes in one day.”Courtesy of A24Food isn’t immediately the focus of the Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony, a fictionalized account of how the celebrated chef and author fell in love with cooking in mid-1970s Provincetown, Massachusetts.But then, cooking and food wasn’t the focus of Bourdain’s life at 19, either. At the start of Tony — which is co-written and directed by Matt Johnson (BlackBerry, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie) and stars Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers) — Bourdain insists he’s a writer. When he doesn’t land his dream scholarship, Bourdain follows his crush Nancy (Emilia Jones) to Provincetown, gets a job in a random restaurant helmed by a mysterious man known only as Chef (Antonio Banderas), and learns how to cook alongside the rebellious Sal (Leo Woodall) and the acerbic Dimitri (Stavros Halkias).Seacia PavaoAs the film progresses, Bourdain’s passion for gastronomy grows as he sees firsthand the creativity required to make a dish unique, the way food brings people together, and the role it can play in the community. Making that food look desirable was the job of Christine Tobin — the food stylist on Tony, who helped to pick out, design, and create all of the dishes that are depicted in the film.“Both me and Matt knew we needed to make sure everything presented was authentic,” Tobin tells GQ. “It needed to be accurate because I didn’t want anyone coming after me if it wasn’t right.”Tobin’s been the food stylist on the likes of Little Women, Challengers, The Drama, Good Burger 2, and both seasons of HBO’s series Julia, but she’s been building up her knowledge of kitchen culture since she was seventeen, when she got her first job in a restaurant. “I actually started my food career on Cape Cod and graduated high school in a town not far from Provincetown,” says Tobin, who has also worked as a fine artist for over 30 years, as well as being a culinary creative.Tobin remembers she was working at Oleana, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when she first read Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Bourdain’s debut book that kick-started his media career. “At that point I’d had years of restaurant experience, so was completely curious about food styling and storytelling. I just completely related to his writing. It didn’t just feel journalistic, it was visual, and you could hear and smell it. It really just ignited this interest in culinary storytelling. Plus everyone who has worked in a kitchen knows someone like Anthony Bourdain.”When Tobin learned that a film was being made about Bourdain’s early life, she jumped at the chance to be involved. Once she secured the position, she read Kitchen Confidential at least four times, so she could beat out the culinary scenes, the interactions characters would have with the food, and the relevance it had to the teenage Bourdain. As a result, there are scenes of Banderas’ Chef teaching Bourdain how to make homemade ketchup and being meticulous about what salt to use in the restaurant, a nod to the area’s historical links to sea salt production.“I sprinkled and peppered in little gems of Tony’s story,” Tobin said, “so that we’re paying homage to him and his inspirations, like Howard Mitcham, a Provincetown chef, artist, author, and legend.” Read on for the story behind the main dishes in Tony, why they were selected, and what you need to know to cook them authentically at home.Squid StewThere are three sequences in Tony where — after a hard shift — the chefs all sit down to eat a squid stew that’s so rich, when he first consumes it, Bourdain spits it out in disgust. “I saw that as the family meal table,” says Tobin. “Around Provincetown there is a huge Portuguese culture. So there’s chorizo, linguiça, and rolls on the table that are from a Portuguese bakery that operates on Commercial Street.”The recipe Tobin used for the squid stew comes directly from Bourdain’s 2016 cookbook Appetites: A Cookbook. Bourdain writes in that book that he first consumed the squid stew at Cookie’s Tap in Provincetown and that the dish was “popular with local fishermen and (allegedly) sports gamblers.” For Tobin the squid stew sequences are perfect, because they show Bourdain getting more and more comfortable in the kitchen, his “loose way of interacting” with friends, over a dish that comes with a “lot of history and a lot of feeling. It’s a wonderful recipe to pay homage to him.”There’s even a delightful clip of Bourdain and his old friend Eric Ripert making squid stew in the first episode of the web series, On the Table with Eric Ripert.Sea BassDuring his time in Provincetown, Bourdain sleeps in a hammock on Chef’s porch. One night, as the pair bond over a nauseaeting liquor, a local fisherman shouts out that a huge school of fish are primed and ready to be caught. Bourdain and Chef join the fishermen in catching them, with Tobin explaining that “it was scripted as freshly caught sea bass.”Bourdain, Chef, and the locals then grilled the sea bass on the beach, underneath the moon and stars, as the ocean laps up on the sand. It’s a scene of picturesque beauty and all-round good vibes that highlights the role of food around Provincetown. Tobin calls the scene the “fisherman feast,” and explains that the freshly caught sea bass was cooked with “lots of lemon and a drizzle of melted butter.”“We grilled on the beach to a point of char,” Tobin continues. “There were also clams, quahogs, Portuguese breads..things that fishermen and their wives would have brought to share. There was no recipe, we just cooked the fish. We cooked the whole bass on a spigot, so you’d just sit and rotate it over an open flame.”Seacia PavaoThe scene was meant to show the fruits of the fishermen’s labor,; it’s also where Chef teaches Bourdain that black doesn’t always mean burnt and that a chef should always eat last. Bourdain’s ability to dish out such culinary knowledge and advice in a wise yet ritualistic manner was key to his popularity, says Tobin.“He’s always using food to evoke fun times, sexy times, memories, childhood, and he just always had the ability to translate his experiences to viewers so that they felt involved, too. For him, food was everything.”New England Clam ChowderWhen Bourdain is struck by the idea to impress Nancy with his own special, he arrives early at the restaurant to hone his kitchen skills. While he ultimately decides to cook a more indulgent and extravagant dish (see below), Bourdain shows Chef that he’s serious about using cooking as a vehicle for his feelings by concocting a New England clam chowder.Tobin used a recipe from chef Jasper White, a renowned New England chef who specializes in seafood, to make the film’s New England clam chowder. What makes the version depicted in the film even more impressive is that Tobin was asked to whip it up in under 20 minutes, after Johnson realized that he didn’t just want Sessa and Banderas to be standing in the kitchen for their heart to heart.TONY, from left: Antonio Banderas, Dominic Sessa as Anthony Bourdain, 2026. ph: Seacia Pavao / © A24 / Courtesy Everett CollectionCourtesy Everett Collection“There had always been a kale soup or chowder in the background of shots. For that scene, Matt wanted to look into the pot and then for them to taste the chowder. I spun out this quick version that wasn’t really finished, which just added to the beauty of it. It was a dish in process and Dominic added the finishing touches to it.”For Tobin, that actually enriched the sequence, because it made it seem so natural and it created such a “tender moment” between the two characters.Lobster ThermidorBourdain and Chef ultimately decide to put lobster thermidor on the specials board; it becomes arguably the most important dish in the whole film. This is what Nancy eats when she visits the restaurant and her first taste immediately makes her see Bourdain in a whole new light.“It’s a very simple dish,” insists Tobin. Rather than using Bourdain’s version, Tobin turned to a recipe from chef Auguste Escoffier, who popularized the dish when he published it in his 1903 cookbook, Le Guide Culinaire. She also used Ripert’s take on the lobster thermidor from his 2023 book Seafood Simple. “I used this method where it was cream and mushrooms and some vermouth. I also wanted to throw a nod to Ripert because he was such a brilliant friend of Bourdain’s, so I looked at his method, too.”Filming the creation of the lobster thermidor was one of the most intense days of production. Tobin had to drop the perfectly cooked dish into shot at the exact moment, all while the rest of the characters were hurriedly preparing their own food, just like they would be in a real kitchen.“We had to establish the spaces where the actors would be and I knew there would be many different pots and pans in the area. I was basically squatting just out of shot. It was very, very fast paced. I was really just fueled by adrenaline throughout production, because sometimes we were making food for four scenes in one day.”ClambakeBourdain’s Provincetown summer comes to an end when he hosts a clambake on the beach for the entire community. For the uninitiated, a clambake is when a variety of seafood — from clams to lobsters to mussels, as well as corn and potatoes, are cooked on top of garbage cans, in a sand-pit, for a large number of people.Tobin got the recipe for Tony’s clambake from Howard Mitcham’s 1975 collection, The Provincetown Seafood Cookbook. “It’s a firm part of the region’s history. I wanted to honor the people who invented it.” Mitcham was such a hero to Bourdain that he wrote an introduction for the cookbook’s 2018 re-release, where he called it one of the most influential books of his life.TONY, from left: Dominic Sessa as Anthony Bourdain, Emilia Jones, 2026. ph: Seacia Pavao / © A24 / courtesy Everett CollectionCourtesy Everett Collection“I wanted to show the soup to nuts process of a traditional clambake and all the ingredients involved,” says Tobin. “The raw ingredients are clams, fish, corn, sausage, Irish potatoes, onion, and lobsters. There’s layers of seaweed and you add in beer and white wine for the moisture. You’re steaming the food on this can and then you dump it all out along a table.”The official title for Mitcham’s clambake is actually the John J. Gaspie Clambake, in honor of the local shellfish warden and fisherman who invented the dish and died in 1961.In The Provincetown Seafood Cookbook, Mitcham insists that after the clambake is served, Gaspie must be honored in a speech, beers need to be consumed, then everyone must dance the night away—all things Bourdain himself would have undoubtedly insisted upon, too.