Luckily, the visual style of these Travel Channel shows has found an equivalent to Bourdain’s prose. The handheld camera, the quick-cut editing, the ambient soundtrack, put us right in the thick of his culinary adventures. Bourdain’s voice-overs are astringent, self-mocking, wry – a perfect antidote to the gushing prose usually found in travel documentaries. The segments also smartly construct a story line for each episode, turning the whole thing into some sort of post-modern Graham Greene escapade.
Nothing really fazes Bourdain — he makes a great armchair travel companion. Take this week’s episode, for example, in which Bourdain explores São Paulo, Brazil. (No Reservations is aired at 10pm Monday nights, with an encore broadcast Friday nights at 8 pm.) He leads off by declaring that São Paulo is ugly – “It looks like LA threw up on New York” – and notes cynically that every film about Brazil is conveniently set during the four annual days of Carnivale, a festival Bourdain professes to despise. What he does like, though, are the fat-laden mortadella sandwiches sold at the Mercado, a chance to play in a pick-up soccer game between cooks and waiters, and a laid back lifestyle where you can call in sick to work and swill caipirinhas at the beach. “Life does not suck,” he pronounces authoritatively after stuffing his sunburned face with bananafish. Would I like to be there with him? Yeah, you bet.
We still get fixes of Bourdain’s trademark wit, of course (“I feel like two small woodland creatures are having sex inside my head,” he groans to two friends the morning after his day of sun and caipirinhas), and there’s the added value of those glistening close-ups of food being prepared, accompanied by the audible hiss of dripping fat and steam, to whet my appetite.
All right, then, I don’t mind if Anthony Bourdain would rather roam the world appeasing his omnivorous hunger than preside over the stove in Manhattan. It’s been an odd career arc, that’s for sure, but somehow this guy has landed where he probably was destined to land all along. And me? I plan to pencil Monday nights at 10 into my datebook.
Article comments
1 - El Bicho
I am seen his screeds on blogs and appearances on other shows. The DVR is catching this season, but I haven't made time to catch him. I must remedy that soon. Good write-up.
2 - Mark Saleski
great stuff!
bourdain is a fun read and is suprisingly likeable for such a snotty bastard.
i can do without the "extreme food" portions of the show (live beating cobra heart....icky), but the rest of it is great.
3 - Chris
Check out his audio interviews on wikipedia. he's brilliantly hilarious!!
4 - Holly Hughes
Even in his unscripted dialogue on the show (I have to assume it's unscripted) he's hilarious. There are clips to check out on the
Travel Channel website.
Luckily, going for the travel angle as opposed to the food angle allows him to focus more on street food and home cooking, as expressions of the local culture -- there's fewer boar testicles and more feijoada on the menu. A lot of the show's about the locals that he hangs with in each destination. I look forward to the Cleveland episode (8/27) where he's going to go out eating with Harvey Pekar.
5 - Rhea
I loved Kitchen Confidential and am now reading The Nasty Bits (a compilation of his essays, etc.). I really get a kick of him. Take a look at "Heat," not by Bourdain, but really, really good restaurant kitchen memoir.