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Having said all of that, I enjoyed the book. It can, but it doesn't happen only there. That's okay, but the notion of hunting down the perfect meal has an appeal to me & led me to expect something different. This was good, but I didn't enjoy it as much as Kitchen Confidential. Ultimately with travel I want to actually see the place, the food, the people. I like that Bourdain gets that great food doesn't all happen at 5-star restaurants.
Often there is is drunkenness & there is the occasional oblilgatory inspired by the producers moment of Eat-This-Weird-Thing-While-We-Film-You-It'll-Be-Great-Remember-We're-Paying.
It's hard not to love someone who hits the jackpot with a best seller & says to themselves, "Hmmm.
It was fun to read about his meal at The French Laundry, but I'm not dropping $400-$500 on a meal anytime soon & I much more enjoyed his writing about his adventures in Mexico with the families of some of his cooks from his New York restaurant.
I've been trying to decide why & I think it's because ultimately this isn't so much a food book as it is a travel book.
Great food also happens at people's houses, from street vendors, down at the local.
I think I'll see if I can get someone to pay for me to travel around the world eating cool stuff & looking at cool & interesting places." That someone actually did agree to pay for this & that it was the Food Network makes it all the more amusing since he spends much of Kitchen Confidential slagging the Food Netwok & many of its chefs.
If you've seen No Reservations you know the schtick - Tony visits exotic locale, meets interesting people, talks a lot, & eats cool food.
All in all I think that this kind of thing works better as a TV series.
What works as voiceover makes for okay reading, but just okay.
I would say that the subtitle of my 2001 edition, "in search of the perfect meal" is slightly inaccurate. A humorous, dark and entertaining read. I see that the 2002 edition was renamed "Global adventures in extreme cuisines." While that may be more accurate, I would say that the book is more of a personal journey for Tony. After becoming obsessed with his travel channel show "No Reservations" I was drawn to delve deeper into the depths of Mr. Bourdain's twisted brain. The food descriptions are delicious, the stories are shocking and funny (sometimes in a dark way) and the book is terribly hard to put down. I loved it will probably tear through a few more Bourdain books.
This book doesn't evoke hunger, or foodie delight. It's a semi-abashed (because he's traveling with a camera crew, and has to cooperate) account of him going around the world seeking food without often finding it.This is not a terrible book. It just doesn't measure up to the standards set by any other foodie book I've ever encountered.Pick another at random and you'll have a more enjoyable and more educational read. If you already have this book, read it once and then (you will anyway) give it away and move on to a different author.
I have maybe 1/4 of the book left and I'm not inclinded to pick it up anymore. I guess that is to be expected, but it really got less interesting.
I couldn't wait to get this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of it, although some of the slaughter descriptions were a bit disturbing (I love animals).
I am a big Anthony Bourdain fan. Each chapter seemed pretty much like the chapter before.
There were some truly moving chapters in there and some very interesting stuff. However, it really started to slow down after a while.
And the descriptions of animals being slaughtered started to get to me after a while. Felt like he was just trying to fill pages for some of the chapters.
Bourdain is one interesting fellow, a real scamp; and he can write, too. and that's because in print, versus video, the ever-fascinating "bad boy" we've grown to know and love (well, tolerate; nah, love) doesn't interrupt an otherwise well-crafted exposition on the country he's visiting to "pull a Fellini" (but much less artfully) and digress into all sorts of asides, semi-charming castigations and "they made me do it." aspersions that many times weaken the overall flow of his television series. . His love affair with the Vietnamese people and their cuisine jumps off the page at you, his reverence for the French Laundry almost requires you to light votive candles, and his graphic explanation of preparing a farmhouse meal in Portugal may make you turn vegan. Here, Bourdain has the sense to focus almost exclusively on the landscape, the flavors, his hosts and his (extraordinarily wide ranging) reactions and leave the "inside" commentary to extended postscripts at the end of certain stories. And when Bourdain does mention his "shooter" or producer in the body of a given chapter, it's woven more appropriately into the narrative than on cable. He can also elicit a solid series of belly laughs when the situation demands; his description of writhing intestinal misery as he grapples for the remote to nix a televised homage to Jerry Lewis during a return to France had me howling.The best way to savor this one-of-a-kind culinary globetrotter is to watch the show, pick up the rascal's collection of grimaces, smirks, cigarette drags, loping marches down alleyways and "I'm almost high" style of voiceover, then turn off the set and start reading. Because his books - if "A Cook's Tour" is any indication - are better than his broadcasts.
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