Anthony Bourdain fans have gathered to hold an impromptu memorial service outside his old restaurant

• Anthony Bourdain's fans gathered outside both locations of his old restaurant Brasserie Les Halles to remember him.
• They laid down flowers, cards, baguettes, and cigarettes.
• His fans wrote and talked about how Bourdain changed their lives and introduced them to new perspectives on the world.

Fans of Anthony Bourdain paid tribute to the late celebrity chef at the restaurant that made him famous.

Bourdain spent years as the executive chef of Brasserie Les Halles, which he wrote about in his breakthrough book"Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly," published in 2000. At the location at 411 Park Avenue in New York, which shuttered in 2016, mourners gathered to lay flowers, cards, and photos of Bourdain, who was found dead Friday at the age of 61, by suicide.

Ryan Anderson, a sommelier at The Pool — which partially replaced the legendary Four Seasons restaurant after it closed in 2016 — told INSIDER that reading "Kitchen Confidential" as a teenager working at a restaurant in Washington, DC, changed his life. It inspired him to quit his plans for journalism school and instead move to New York to work in the food industry.

"As soon as I read that book, and was also in a kitchen at the same time, I moved to New York," he said. "I started cooking here and I never looked back. It was one of the more positive experiences in my life."

He laid a baguette with a dab of butter at the doors of Brasserie Les Halles — alongside a chef's hat, a can of beer, and a wrapped bottle of wine — in tribute.

"I think that Anthony Bourdain always said that his last meal would be just a good piece of bread and some butter," Anderson said.

Other wrote cards addressed to Bourdain and taped them to the restaurant's doors and windows. Mourners wrote  about Bourdain's passion for other cultures, expressed through his love for food and travel, with projects like his CNN show "Parts Unknown."

Here are some of their messages.

"Thank you for what you gave to this world," one person wrote. "You have changed our lives forever."

"Rest in power, Anthony Michael Bourdain, and know that you are my hero."

"Though I've known you from a distance for a decade, you've left an impression on me and many more," wrote another.

"Thank you for sharing your beautiful gift of storytelling with the world."

"Legends never die."

"You brought people together."

"You are loved and will be missed."

One person laid down a pack of Marlboros.

"Down to the filter and beyond," they wrote.

In New York City's financial district mourners gathered as well. The final location of Les Halles, which closed in 2017, was on 15 John Street.

There, mourners wove flowers into the metal grille.

Some laid flowers and rice pudding by the door.

Anderson said Bourdain's TV shows pushed people like him to have a greater appreciation for world cultures and how food shapes the relationships between people and countries.

"Those shows just inspired an entire generation of people to just get out there and travel and really become a little more culturally affluent with food," he said. "It just got people out and got people to travel. It got me to travel, certainly. And it's just going to be a show that's sorely missed."

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