Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain gets banned from an entire country

In this April 7, 2011, file photo, Anthony Bourdain attends the Food Banks Can Do Awards gala in New York.  AP FILE PHOTO/PETER KRAMER

Culinary jetsetter Anthony Bourdain has certainly gotten himself out of tricky situations in the past, managing to squeeze himself out of unfamiliar territory in his hit show “Parts Unknown.”

The 61-year-old controversial globetrotter, however, wasn’t as lucky this time around, as he and his crew got banned from the entire country of Azerbaijan which, incidentally, he has never set foot on.

According to The Washington Post, Bourdain and his group violated the country’s law by traversing through the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Armenia, which has been at the center of both regional and ethnic conflict between the two countries since 1988.

Since visiting Nagorno-Karabakh is considered a criminal offense by the Azerbaijani government, Bourdain joins other 700 people who are labeled as “persona non-grata” by the small Caucasus state.

Meanwhile, the country’s foreign ministry Hikmet Hajiyev claimed that Bourdain’s actions were “disrespectful” to his people.

“Filming a food show on Azerbaijan’s occupied territory is an insult to one million Azerbaijani refugees who were forcefully expelled from their homes,” he was quoted as saying in the report.

It is also worth noting that the ban was given to the famed food critic even without having been in Azerbaijan in his life.  Khristian Ibarrola /ra

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