Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations

Thanks to the joys of Netflix streaming, I've discovered Anthony Bourdain's Travel Channel No Reservations food and travel show. Bourdain is a long-term veteran of restaurant kitchens, someone with years of working on the line, someone who spent his summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts in the hot kitchens of seafood fry cooks, got a degree from the Culinary Institute of America, worked his way around the world and from kitchen to kitchen, before a sojourn as the head chef of Brasserie Les Halles in New York. Bourdain first caught the public eye when his revelatory, brutally honest book about what life and food in professional kitchens are like, Kitchen Confidential became a New York Times bestseller. The book was inspired, in part, by a lengthy article Bourdain wrote for The New Yorker "Don't Eat Before Reading This." Since then, he's authored three works of fiction, a cookbook, a second edition of Kitchen Confidential and, as of June of this year, a new contemplation of food, kitchens, and travel, Medium Raw, among others.

Bourdain has been criticized by lesser writers and food fanatics for his frank language, and disdain for vegetarians. He's also been overtly hostile to the "celebrity chefs" of the Food Network—with some reason, in many cases. It's true that his language is, well, similar to the language of most of the professional chefs I've ever heard who work or have worked in the hellish depths of a busy restaurant kitchen. His commentary is rife with profanity (usually bleeped out by the Travel Channel) and sexual references. It's also rife with references to film and modern literature. Bourdain is a very smart, very perceptive guy who likes good food, smart people, and traveling, and thinks deeply about all of them.

No Reservations began airing on The Travel Channel in July of 2005; they've just this week aired their 100th episode, a return to Paris, the city filmed in the very first episode. Bourdain's concept is an ideal combination of food and travel. He goes to a place, locates local experts, tries the food, looks at what the relationship of food and culture and history is in that place, and films it. His personals taste in food—a pronounced fondess for pork, and, like Leopold Bloom, Bourdain will "[eat] with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls." He's also not shy about imbibing alcohol, and exploring local cuisine via street vendors, food trucks, and the odd barbecue shack or beach hut. He knows his way around an ordinary kitchen too, as well as classical French cuisine (here's his recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon, via the Les Halles Cookbook

No Reservations is a show about food, and culture, and travel, and history, produced by someone with an intense interest in all of them—and a pronounced love of the English language, as well as the pleasures of the table. My favorite episode thus far is one set in Sardinia, the birthplace of his wife Ottavia who convinced her extended family (and vicariously, us) to accept Bourdain at their tables and in their kitchens. I've embedded a short excerpt below. You can catch No Reservations previous seasons on NetFlix streaming, on DVD, and the new episodes are still on the Travel Channel Schedule.

Image Credit: The Travel Channel