Anthony Bourdain coming to Asheville?

Here at Xpress, we keep an eye on Twitter throughout most of our workday. Sure, from time to time it gets distracting, but quite often we hear about news as soon as it happens, reported by citizen journalists and just plain citizens — especially, it seems, on the food front.

Of course, a responsible reporter checks his or her facts before presenting what’s culled from social media as “news.” Once in a while, however, we hear rumors that we have to share. Of course we’d never do this with cold, hard news stories, but rumors of a certain hard-drinking bad-ass celebrity chef (allegedly) visiting Asheville in a few months are a different matter — especially when there’s a rather excited food reporter on staff.

For months in Asheville (especially on the social-media circuit), there have been rumored sightings of Anthony Bourdain, that foul-mouthed chef and restaurateur who in 2000 wrote Kitchen Confidential, the memoir that exposed the often rather ridiculously unwholesome life of those who work in the restaurant industry.

For many a young cook (including myself), that book was a bit of a revelation, the first of its kind to gain any sort of popularity — and leagues more real than any of the fluffy chef’s memoirs available. Copycats have followed, aiming to achieve half the success of Bourdain’s, but few have come close (although fans of the genre would do well to pick up Gabrielle Hamilton’s new memoir, Blood, Bones and Butter). Kitchen Confidential spawned Bourdain’s No Reservations series on the Travel Channel and propelled him into stardom.

Now, a Facebook event has been created for a supposed Saturday, Nov. 10, appearance by Bourdain at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium. The page has been created by whomever handles Bourdain’s official Facebook Page, which is linked to from his official website, so it looks pretty legit. There is not yet any mention of Bourdain on the Civic Center/Thomas Wolfe Auditorium’s admittedly lightly maintained website. The Facebook invite’s rather vague, with no ticket information or explanation as to what the heck Bourdain’s going to do on stage in front of all of those people — eat a bloody steak, slurp down some whiskey and chain-smoke some Marlboros? One can only hope.

Know anything else about this? Let us know. We’ll keep you posted as we learn more.