A new film revisits Anthony Bourdain's formative summers in Provincetown, the bohemian Cape Cod town where the future chef and storyteller came of age. New York Times critic Pete Wells traces the lingering echoes of those wild years, seeking out the people and restaurants that shaped Bourdain's irreverent spirit and culinary curiosity.

Wells walks the same streets where a young Bourdain washed dishes, smoked marijuana, and absorbed the town's chaotic, creative energy. He interviews aging locals who remember the lanky, intense teenager and visits establishments like the Lobster Pot and Canteen, where the ghosts of past kitchens still haunt the grills. The piece blends film criticism with culinary archaeology, revealing how Provincetown's anything-goes ethos became Bourdain's lifelong template.

Though the film romanticizes a vanished era, Wells finds the town's rebellious heart still beating — in drag shows, late-night clam shacks, and the stubborn refusal to gentrify completely. Bourdain's shadow looms large, not as a monument but as a challenge: to keep Provincetown weird, hungry, and unapologetically alive.