The man who let the genie out of the bottle is sitting, with fine serendipity, in Cork. The scene unfolding before us has happened, will happen, scores, hundreds of times around the world - in Singapore, Sydney, Saint Louis, Paris, Barcelona, Duluth - but it is unfolding before us today with a quite particular Irishness. A chef is running up and down the street outside, popping into restaurants to tell his mates that the great Tony Bourdain is in town. Some shy, some exuberant, they are climbing to the first floor of the Hi-B Bar to pay homage, to buy him a drink, to have their photo taken. 'Tony!' come the cries, and 'Hey Tony, good on you!', and 'Jesus it that really yer man?' Someone wins a bathload of money on the National and buys Guinness for the whole room, which is starting by then to fill with fiddle music. It's a struggle to remember which year we're in. It can only be a matter of time before a horse is led up the stairs or someone bombs the neighbouring GPO.

He is trying to talk to me about the words of wisdom of, variously, Graham Greene, A J Liebling, Joseph Conrad, Henry Miller and, in his eyes the greatest of them all, Homer J Simpson, but we are continually interrupted. They offer him meals, they offer him recipes, they ask if he's tried the local cheese, they simply stand close and look at his stick-slim 6ft4in, and the gnarled boots, and the battered jacket, and stare. Personally I'd be all in favour of seeing off the drunkest of them with a stiff knobkerrie to the back of the neck, but Anthony Bourdain - he likes to be called Tony after, say, the first drink - is taking it all with good grace. This is partly because you'd have to be particularly ungracious not to, but also because two of the things he likes most in the world are drink and chefs - and also because he is quite conscious of what he has done.

Six years ago this chef at Les Halles, a Park Avenue brasserie, wrote what he now calls 'my obnoxious, over-testosteroned account of my life in the restaurant business'. Kitchen Confidential was an instant hit. The first real account of proper life in a restaurant kitchen, the cheating and the burns and the drugs and the short-cuts and the sex and the threats, and the tears, and the savage triumphs, it was written with magnifi cent flair. It delighted the rest of us, whether eager restaurant-goers or simple readers: we were being let in on the secrets of the trade, perhaps best exemplified by the chapter 'Don't order fish on a Monday', first published in the New Yorker, which gave him the confidence to do the book, and kicked off the whole phenomenon. But what he also did, perhaps more significantly, was to map a whole new community, with its mores and its language and its shared experiences: the community of cooks and chefs.

'Something has, indeed, happened. Everywhere I've gone in the last few years I've had it. There was this world, this very different world, which I knew about, and since I wrote about it cooks, chefs, have told me, everywhere, that they just went, oh, that's me, that's my life. I can remember something slightly similar happening to me, years ago, with Marco Pierre White. When his book White Heat came out. It wasn't just the recipes, the writing. It was him. Here, finally, was a guy like me, like cooks I knew, chefs I knew. Big, rugged, arrogant, real. For decades, forever, chefs had been portrayed as fat bobbing little Frenchmen with joke moustaches. They were the help.' He has problems with aspects of the 'celebrity chef racket', mainly being thought of or ever described as part of it, after 30 years of thinking of himself simply as a good professional chef, 'but, in the end, it has been good for for food. I hate some bits. I hated the Naked Chef. Fine, yes, he did good things for school food or whatever, but, you know, I don't want my chefs to be cute and adorable. Don't speak to me. You work for Sainsbury's now.

'But one thing that it has changed is the value given to the chef, and that's not just good for us, it's good for food. When I was working it was all about - if you hold up your station tonight, work properly as a line chef, don't get late, don't fall into the weeds, then you felt like a rock star ... and now some of them pretty much are. And what it means is that the customer is no longer king. What you're going to be eating in the next year is decided by chefs. If the consensus is that pot-bellies are in next season, that's what's on your plate. And I think that's a good thing, because we know, obviously, about food. I think I realised the change, the tipping-point, was the success of sushi in America. Hell, when Americans can be made to eat that, and come back for it, you know the picture is changing. It's a good time to be a chef.' The bizarre thing, though, is that for him, after all those years working, just when the profession comes good, he's not in it any more. He's travelling the world, making TV programmes, writing; he has hardly lifted a knife in anger. 'Yes, I'm probably aware of the fact I'd be crap in a kitchen at this point. My hands are like a baby's bottom.' But was this in the plan?

'The plan? Nothing was ever in the plan. Even now, I still think, this is all going to come crashing down; I'm always slightly staggered that I'm actually getting away with this. But back then? Let me say, mildly, that it comes as something of a very rude surprise. If you'd told me I'd be here when I was 30 I would have accused you of talking nonsense, but not so politely - Christ, I didn't even plan to make it to this age. My plan was, basically - fuck it, I'm going to be dead by then.'

He had, as you will know if you read the book, which you really should, been something of an avid cocaine and crack user for much of his kitchen life. He'd managed to wean himself off , but one of the upsides of his new-found fame was that he stayed off. 'Partly, you know, it was the being ripped off that made me stop. I'd just hit that stage where I thought, do I really want to spend any more of my life being ripped off by fellow crackheads? Because they will always rip you off, there is no honour. By the way - why are they still so silly in England about cocaine, they seem behind the curve on it: it's everywhere. In New York now it's seen as slightly shameful. You don't tell your friends if you do it, it's just embarrassing. Anyway, I thought, on balance, I'd rather live.' So he travelled, and filmed, and he also, importantly, got to write about it.

The process of making two series of food programmes saw him visit countries he had longed to see and eat foods he had at least wondered about - all the bad bits, the grisly bits, wrapped veal-calf's face, and the still-beating heart of a cobra: pretty much as far you could possibly be from the blandness of much American food.

The Nasty Bits, a collection of his journalism during those travelling years , is everything you would expect: acerbic, fun, occasionally rash. He's changed his mind, he says now, about a couple of things: a splendid rant, for instance, about London pubs going gastro, when he just wanted to sit and smoke and drink pints in a dirty bar. 'Gastro-pub?' he writes. 'What the fuck is that? For me, fancy food in a traditional old pub is about as inviting as the phrases 'hot male-on-male action', or 'tonight: Billy Joel live!' or 'free prostate exam with every drink' - but now he thinks this was all 'a bit misguided: they're there to stay, and can be pretty good too.' Changed his mind a little, while we're on the subject, about Billy Joel, who gets both barrels in another article about the music busy kitchens work by, and particularly that which should never be played. After that appeared, he explains, Joel actually got in touch.

'He called my sister and asked to book, and what could I say? I'm D-list and he's A-list, and he'd made the first move, and I'm not going to be rude for the sake of it. He was fine, sense of humour, more than all right. Sent me a picture later, he'd managed to get into the kitchen and have his picture taken with my chefs, and a note saying, "So I guess you do allow Billy Joel into your kitchen after all." Hard to dislike someone like that. His music? Well, of course, that's still truly shit. Uptown Girl. Jesus.'

He hasn't changed his mind, hardened it if anything, on other subjects. There are frothing and splendid rants at London's Aberdeen Angus Steak House chains, and grand personal ones against food 'purists' such as Woody Harrelson insisting on eating nothing but raw vegetables while amid the many culinary delights of Thailand. 'I meant every word of this, and still do. I shake with rage.'

He writes about customers: I ask who makes the worst customer. 'The worst? Easy. The man who comes in and as soon as you see or hear him you know he's saying, "I am determined, no matter what happens, to have a miserable time tonight. Whether the food is great or not, and no matter what the wine and service are like, I will show off in front of my companions and make life hell for the waiter, because my life is all about power and I am a seriously unhappy jerk." There are plenty of them. Everywhere. Them and the psycho food nerds. They take notes while eating, for Christ's sake. They're not the very worst but they're worrisome, demanding for the chef. Chefs and regular restaurant-goers are the best, and leave the best tips. I love other chefs.'

Bad restaurants? 'Well, you always know it yourself. When you see the owner and the chef sitting together, and the wine waiter joins them ... you know you're not going in there. Why do they keep opening? It's a dream for people. Hubris. Ego.

'But it is still a hard business. Despite it being a better time for chefs, it can still be a tough business. Even for good places. Especially sometimes for good places. Critics come. Foodies come. And if they come on a quiet night, whatever the reason, suddenly it's, oh, this place is so last year, even though you've just fucking opened. That's why you should never run the hottest place in town. So it's a shame good places go, but they do. A real shame when you see the crud that stays open.

'Those places I don't understand, just doing bad food. It takes some doing. Making good pasta is so much easier than making bad stuff. It actually takes quite an effort to make poor linguine pomodora. So those places, and your Planet Hollywoods - hell, I want to enjoy a meal, not queue for Bruce Willis memorabilia ... why does low-end food in the West suck so much? Compare it to the stuff you get in Asia, for a tenth of the price. In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

'If there's hope, and there is, it will come by looking to Singapore. There's a very timid country, with heavy heavy hygiene regulations, but they have still, somehow, managed to preserve good food: the stuff you will get at the roadside continues to be fantastic. In America, there's still too much of what Liebling called 'the crippling handicap of affluence'. When there's filet mignon everywhere, nobody has to try. Shall we nip out for another?'

Smoking is all that really interrupts him at this stage: it's a year since Ireland banned it, and its lack is all that's spoiling the mood upstairs. 'When it happened back home I was outraged. Eventually I just accepted I was on the losing side of the hysteria. Most chefs smoke. Yes, it messes up the palate, but the palate's power begins to diminish after the mid-twenties. So yes my palate's probably not as perfect but ... why else do you think they invented salt? But, then, to ban it here? Scotland? England? Well I don't think I'm exaggerating, do you, to call it the worst thing that has ever happened in the whole history of civilisation.'

His writing reads particularly true, it struck me as I read the proofs of his book on the plane, because he knows so often whereof he talks. He knows the grand French dishes and sauces, understands the language and the terms, and because he knows them he can, if he chooses, revere or lambast them with the confidence of having, for too many years, cooked them.

'I do know my stuff properly, yes,' he says. 'But you can go on too much about the thinking behind it all. All it really is is a coagulation of protein. What's interesting is what all good chefs do, even if they don't know all the science: they're applying reptile logic. We look, touch, taste, smell.' He is particularly good on this, I remember from Kitchen Confidential, when singing the praises of the nonAmericans who do so much good work in New York's kitchens: the Ecuadorians, for instance. 'He may not know what a soubise is, but he can sure make one. He may not know who Vatel was - but who cares? Vatel punked out over a late fish delivery and offed himself like a bad poet. Somebody had to cover his station the next day.'

And now he has met many of them, from all around the world, and most of them have shaken his hand, and there are another two coming up the stairs here in Cork to do the same, and then we begin slowly, as a soft smirr of rain drifts down outside, to get to the darker sides of success.

'What did it get me? It got me the world. But you do pay a price when all your dreams come true.'

Someone interrupts for an autograph, and it's a while before I can prompt him on what the price was, and a while again before his careful voice falls a little softer. 'Well. My home. My friends. My country. My kitchen. My profession.

'Oh, I enjoy the filming, the travelling - hell, the places and the things I've seen, who would have dreamed, I would never have dreamed, how can I be ungrateful for that? And the writing, much of the writing. But what did Henry Miller say about being a writer - something about it being your job to betray the whole human race.

'And, for me, writing is so much easier than cooking. I know what it's like to work hard. I know what a lot of my peers are still doing every day. I don't miss the standing on my feet for 16 hours a day. But I do miss the sense of certainty, of absolute quality, the feeling you get at the end when you can assess whether what you did, the skills you brought, have resulted in success or failure.

'Being a dishwasher, succeeding that night as part of a group - that was the first time I ever went home feeling proud of myself.

'I miss the chef talk. Five or six chefs, all talking away about someone who's a backstabbing treacherous psycho, all agreeing, completely, and then into the anger someone just says, yeah, but he can cook. I miss that. Cooking is such an intimate thing. There's no lying in the kitchen. You can't massage or spin your ability: you can't even lie about your personal life, because problems come through.'

His own personal life began to fall apart not long ago. You could blame the success of the book only in part: it was because of one physical place that success got him, and that was Vietnam.

'I'd read Greene. Conrad. Maugham. And Vietnam was just like the books, just like the movies, only better. The guileless generosity of strangers, waking up smelling those smells, seeing those sights. And having, once, one perfect meal, a confluence of everything good, a source of perfect happiness; I was almost ready to believe in God.

'But there was quite a big downside to all of that.' His eyes are intently on me now, the background chatter receding. 'I knew that my whole previous life was doomed. It was no longer going to be normal. I had seen that ... colour ... and I knew that that had changed me, altered the way I would look at things. And the first time I went back to America, I found I was right. Everything was flat. Everything.' He doesn't go into too many details, but his marriage to Nancy broke up shortly afterwards. 'She was the love of my life. But everything changed.'

There are vague mentions of girlfriends , but he is quite sure that the one regret he doesn't have is not having children. 'I would have been a shit parent. I'm a very good uncle. The evil uncle who lets them do everything. But a parent? Up until very recently I could hardly take care of myself.

'But ... look ... yes, there are regrets. But, also, and never mind this extraordinary change in life, the book - I have had so many things. So many other things. I have loved with all my heart, and I have been loved. I knew better people than I deserved. I had more fun than I deserved.

'What I do regret is letting people down. Not being able to be a complete human being. Long before I was even on TV I was always, somehow, seeing myself as if I was in a movie: selfish, narcissistic. And in being that selfish I must have disappointed people, and all my regrets are about disappointing people - as a friend, as a lover, being a letdown. Cooks. That explains why a lot of us go into the business in the first place. In there, there was something you could control, a way you could feel good about yourself.

'And I know that I was a good chef, and a good employer. If you came to me, even if you worked as a salad man or a dishwasher, I would be loyal, a mentor, a friend. Even if it was a bit like Michael and Freddo in The Godfather - you know, of course, my friend, that if you break the rules I will kill you ...'

I leave him chatting to his new friends about the Mob and go outside for a last cigarette myself and when I return there is a strange look in his eyes. He motions me over, leans across conspiratorially, and quietly says my name.

'I don't know what's happening. Just while you were out ... there was something. Something about the light, that music. Chefs nearby. I don't know what's happening but t feels really good.'

And when I glance back, a bit later, seeing him still there, smiling quietly, the image that strikes me is one from his books: the attention every good chef must pay to setting out his mise-en-place. The perfect, inviolate piles and layers and just-so angles into which the good chef arranges his knives and towels and boards for the evening, and which can make or break his performance in the night ahead. This wry, kind, thoughtful man needs, perhaps, to shake off a little more guilt at his success, and get on with enjoying the wealth of learning his travels can bring, and perhaps, slowly, he's beginning to get there: perhaps, with a quiet smile on his face and a pint of Guinness to his left and a couple of chefs talking Goodfellas to his right, we are looking at the mise-en-place for the post-50 Bourdain, the mise for the rest of his life.

But a cigarette would be perfect.