Customer Reviews

A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

The colossal irony of the Food Network series on which this book is based is the heart felt statements in the author's previous book `Kitchen Confidential' that he will never get his own Food Network series. He goes on in that book to say some rather unflattering things about Emeril Lagasse that seem to be a guarantee that his prediction will come true.

Well, Anthony Bourdain got his own Food Network show, and it is, to my lights, the most enjoyable travelogue style show they have ever done. I will warrant the prediction that it will also be the most enjoyable travelogue show they will ever do. I think the original 16 to 18 episodes are even better than the `second season' episodes he did which were not in this book. In the follow-up episodes, Bourdain (or his handlers) tend to start parodying themselves and make more coy, self-referential statements such as the cute business when Tony is in New Orleans and he gets slugged by matronly women for dissing their favorite son, Emeril.

In case you are not familiar with the Bourdain persona, I can quote a local paper's comparison to Emeril as the Food Network's star student, Alton Brown as the class nerd, and Tony Bourdain as the perennial juvenile delinquent. That is not to say Bourdain's view of things is juvenile. It is, in fact, as insightful as any other culinary commentary. The difference between Bourdain and other culinary travelers is that Bourdain is telling us about things from the inside, from the point of view of palate, tongue, nose, ears, and tummy. He is also talking from the inside in that he has been a working cook and chef for his whole life, who has seen just about everything the other culinary journalists have seen and more, including a stint at a childhood in France. The sardonic twist which gives Bourdain's reporting an outlaw flavor just adds to the entertainment value.

One of the more successful realizations of this book is the author's interpretation of `Extreme Cuisines' in the subtitle. This includes all the expected venues such as a boatride up the Southeast Asian River to Cambodia, with more than a few references to `Apocalypse Now' and trips to Spain, Morocco, Russia, Mexico, Japan, and Scotland. How can you expect an exotic foods show not include haggis. But Bourdain also includes the very tame and very safe venue in Napa Valley called the French Laundry. While this site may be free of iguana meat or eels or lamb testicles, it is not safe for Bourdain's psyche and self-respect. This is the home ground of Thomas Keller, arguably the most distinguished chef in the country.

To insulate himself from facing the Olympian cuisine of Keller alone, and to insure that he gets his invite for himself and his camera crew, Bourdain sits down to the meal with three very well-connected colleagues. These three musketeers are Scott Byron, the chef at the New York City restaurant Veritas, Michael Ruhlman, a journalist / chef and co-author of Keller's cookbook, and Eric Rippert, one of the most highly regarded chefs in New York City. As predicted, Bourdain is humbled by the French Laundry tasting menu. As an at best journeyman chef in a somewhat better than average New York bistro, Bourdain ponders his wasted talents when he sees what Keller has done with food. I'm sure Bourdain is crying all the way to the bank with proceeds from his journalistic products.

One of Tony's colleagues has said Bourdain is a better writer than he was a chef. I believe it, because his writing is as entertaining as the professional writer Ruhlman, and even a touch more insightful due to his true insider's point of view.

Not quite as good as `Kitchen Confidential' but it does have all the stuff the Food Network could not show on television. Highly recommended.

or Mr. Bourdain would write faster. Bourdain is not afraid to try anything in the way of victuals; sometimes it's as gross to read about what he's eating as it may have been for him to consume some of these items. And his writing is extremely vivid; I've been to some of the places mentioned in this book and he's captured many details.

I've read some recent criticism of Bourdain, but I've enjoyed all of his books. He doesn't pretend to be anyone other than who he is, glorying in all of his faults, addictions (past and present), and making this reader guffaw out loud on many occasions.

So when is the TV show scheduled on The Food Network??

Anthony Bourdain has fallen pray to the same trap as Bobbie Flay and Emeril Lagasse (as he will remind readers of the book throughout in small segments describing the pains he went through to help the TV series), but at least he is honest about it.

The premise of this book, and the TV series that it is a companion to, is for Bourdain to travel around the world looking for the perfect meal. His travels take him throughout asia, into Europe, Africa and even parts of the US, as he looks for culinary delight. He describes with admirable detail the food, people, and culture of the places he visits, often with vary favorable comparisons to our own culinary culture. He regrets the US' "refridgerator culture" and how we have lost track of where our food comes from. Mixed in with the food talk is some other random rantings and ravings, as can be expected from him. The paragraphs on Henry Kissinger, and the comparison of Cambodia to Vietnam are probably the most off topic in the book, but you can tell that he wrote them which a lot of personal feeling.

Bourdain is a pretty engaging fellow, and his writing, while not some stellar example of perfect prose, has a very personable feel to it that makes the book quite the pleasant read. What comes out more in the book than the TV series, was that this was his plan to exploit his fame from "Kitchen Confidential". He knows full well that he has become that which he has professed to despise, but his open and honest acknowledgement of it deserves some respect. It's hard to fault the guy for taking this opportunity when he could, for it's plain that he truly enjoyed touring the world, and most of the food that he found.

Anthony Bourdain admits cheerfully to selling his soul to the devil [television] in order to carry out his childhood James Bond world adventure fantasies. Along the way he experiences joy, fear, awe, and nausea. Those looking for recipes will be disappointed: those looking for hilarious and insightful descriptions of how food is cooked and served around the world will be thrilled. Bourdain never forgets the importance of food culturally; he packs the book with interesting tidbits on how a cuisine is shaped by necessity [what kind of livestock can you raise in an enclosed town?] Many of his experiences, particularly in Mexico and Vietnam, leave the reader with a feeling of loss. Food in the United States frequently consists of a fast food hamburger eaten alone in front of a television set. The "third world" may be poor but they haven't lost the ability to make food a source of shared joy.

I purchased Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour at an airport based on the recommendation of a chef who was cooking in our ski chalet. I read the two books by the time we'd returned home.

As I read the reviews here, I'm amazed by some of the negative comments. Bourdain's offensiveness, the "shock value" of the cuisine and the fact that there are no recipes in the books seem to be common points of issue. One reviewer even recommended the purchasing of Jamie Oliver's books because they have cooking information in them.

Bourdain likes to smoke, drink and use some occasional drugs. That is part of the adventure. I was laughing every time he recounted one of these stories. He's offensive, that's why he's funny and the writing is so entertaining. He also made an extraordinary number of friends in these countries (many are thanked in the notes at the end of the book) so he was hardly just trashing every foreigner he came across.

As to the "shock value", sure he ate Cobras heart and other gruesome items that clearly would "shock". But in most cases he did it because these items were regional delicacies/specialties e.g. beating cobra heart. By and large he discusses "normal" food and I found this balance extremely interesting. Tales of the seafood, soups and other dishes that he eats in Vietnam comprise the majority of those chapters, not the cobra. Get past the occasional shocking item.

I own all of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks and when I want to cook, I use those. When I want to have a bit of a laugh, Jamie Oliver's recipe for home made pasta isn't going to provide the entertainment I'm looking for. Bourdain will.

Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour are obviously not designed to be recipe books. If you've bought them for this reason then that's your mistake and not the fault of the writer. What they have done for me, is piqued my interest in cuisine from different regions of the world that I have struggled to appreciate in the past. Now if I want to practice cooking these items I'll get a suitable recipe book.

I think the two stories are thoroughly entertaining. I laughed myself all the way back home.

I can't wait for the next book.

One of the things that sets Tony Bourdain apart from the (other?) celeb chefs on the food-themed cable networks is that he's about the only one who will come right out and tell us when something doesn't taste good. All the others grin and rave about whatever gets placed in front of them. But Tony isn't afraid to tell us, "that's the most disgusting thing I've eaten in my entire life." That's why we love him.

Of course, unlike most of the TV chefs, Tony puts himself in positions where he has to eat disgusting things. That's the basic theme of this book, and he carries it off really well. Well beyond the "don't eat fish on Mondays" and "watch out for the hollandaise" revelations of "Kitchen Confidential," "A Cook's Tour" isn't just a good book-about-food, it's a very good book in its own right. Tony might not value (or appreciate) the comparison to P.J. O'Rourke's "Holidays in Hell," but as writers who can take awful places and experiences and make them downright funny to read about, these two have a lot in common.

I noted in my review of "Kitchen Confidential" that Tony's life was probably a lot more fun to read about than to have lived through (he might not agree with that), and that goes double for this title. Some of what Tony describes here is a little -- or more than a little -- squirm-inducing, while his travelogue of the road to Pailin was downright harrowing. Sensitive readers (as Miss Manners might say) should be aware that there are at least two graphic descriptions of the death of an animal intended for the cookpot -- though as he notes in his excellent section on his dinner with a bunch of vegans, not all killing is "murder," and vegetarianism is a luxury of rich societies. People on the edge of survival literally can't afford to pass on the chicken strutting around their yard in order to await the arrival of expensive and out-of-season veggies.

Some critics have accused Tony of hypocrisy (or selling out) for having a TV show on the Food Network tied into this book when in the past he's said some fairly nasty things about celebrity TV chefs. But the filming of the TV program actually plays an interesting role in his book -- with Tony somewhat undermining his own program by revealing how often what's shown on screen differs substantially from his actual experience in a given location.

The chapter on "The Road to Pailin" -- a section in which food itself barely plays a role -- especially reveals Tony's chops as a writer. But other chapters, especially those on Southeast Asia, are quite well done too. I really enjoyed reading this, and if Tony chooses to put himself in harm's way again, you can be sure I'll be there to read about it.

I take it all back. Everything I said about Kitchen Confidential I take back. The scrappy edit, the attitude, the skipping over of history, the half-told tales. I take it all back. If the success of that book meant that Anthony Bourdain was allowed to write this book - well, I take it all back.

This time around, Tony (he's Tony, like Tony Soprano) is travelling the world looking for the perfect meal. What that entails (or rather, what that entrails) is eating delicacies indigenous to specific locales: he eats a still-beating cobra's heart and drinks snake bile in Vietnam, he devours the intestines of a pig (and the everything else of a pig) in Portugal, he sucks up fish eyes, he eats a whole roasted lamb with the Tuareg (a nomadic desert community) in the Sahara, he dines with Russian gangsters, he even eats vegetarian food (and you know how much Tony hates vegetarians!). But it's more than that: he eats powdered dried king prawns, chopped toro and fresh chives, he eats tiny coronets of salmon tartare, shallot soup with English cucumber sorbet and dill-weed tuile. Your mouth aches. He eats muc huap (which is steamed squid and ginger), ca thut xot ca chu (tuna braised in tomato and cilantro) and mi canh ca (a sweet-and-sour soup of fish, noodles, tomato, onion, cilantro, pineapple and scallion, together with green crabs overstuffed with roe). You are narcotic with hunger.

But there is still more. You warm to Tony more this time around. It feels like the pressure is off. He is no longer performing (or at least not in the same way). We're old friends now, almost. What problems there are (he still skips - the book is wildly episodic and anecdotal - one chapter he is here, one chapter he is there - you get no real sense of WHY he goes to the places he does, what decisions are made concerning the passage from A to B) don't seem to matter quite so much because the episodes themselves are just so damn good.

Parts of this book are very funny; some of Bourdain's adventures make you wish you were on the road with him (but using an assumed name to protect yourself afterwards).

Unfortunately, the tale of the tour is awkwardly constructed. There are several chapters about his experience in Viet Nam throughout the book. He should have kept them together and made a more coherent view of his point of view. If Bourdain had wanted to use it as a touchstone against which to measure other places, he should have done that more clearly. Instead, his approach comes off as clumsy.

Certain portions of the tour are really well described; notably Morocco and the Basque country. Sadly, the discussions of his trip to Cambodia and Mexico are rather ..., even though it's apparent that these were two really exciting places. Too bad he didn't have Hunter Thompson as his editor.

While dining on exotic and sometimes disgusting things is the theme of the book, Bourdain tells us only that some meal is "the best [insert type of food here.. sushi, taco etc.] ever," or that it was really awful. The descriptions of the bad meals are more skillful than the good ones. Bourdain is never able to tell you why something is good, even though he's a master at letting you what a bad meal tastes like.

Bottom line... quite a few laughs; no real point; wait for the paperback.

To enjoy this book, you have to (A) really like food, and (B) accept that the whole exercise of Bourdain tramping around the world in a psuedo-quest for the ultimate food experience is rather artificial (which he admits right up front). So, bearing in mind that he's being trailed by Food Network cameramen, and has producers to prearrange a lot of stuff for him, Bourdain's global hopscotch of culinary exploration is a very readable and fun journey. He's not really looking for the "perfect meal" so much as looking for the experience that comes with food-from refined dining (there's a chapter on The French Laundry in Napa Valley), to home cooking (massive home-cooked meals in Portugal and Mexico, complete with barnyard slaughter), to street food (several chapters on Cambodia and Vietnam), to ritualized meals (in Japan and Morocco).

If you like your travel narratives to have classy guides, this definitely won't be your cup of tea. Bourdain's "bad boy" chef image is no doubt somewhat calculated and contrived, but he certainly manages to get good and drunk in virtually every chapter, and he's a chain-smoker to boot. Mix in a large number of sketchy gross-out foods (deep-fried Mars Bar, sheep testicles, beating cobra heart, etc.), and you've got a pretty fun little book. As evidenced in his fiction work (Bone in the Throat, Gone Bamboo, The Bobby Gold Stories), he's got excellent timing and can be very, very funny. He can also be very human and poignant, as in the chapter where he and his brother revisit their childhood summer vacation spot in France, and when he talks about his Mexican chefs. Some people have complained that he doesn't describe the food well enough, which I disagree with. Writing about taste is like writing about music, you can only hope to convey a vague impression, and he's really more concerned with the overall experience anyway. I defy anyone's mouth not to water while reading the Vietnam chapters.

Which is not to say to the book is perfect. I actually found his veering into the recent political histories of Vietnam and Cambodia to be rather clumsy but worthwhile. On the other hand, his anti-vegetarian screeching is just plain annoying and off-putting (I am not a vegetarian by the way). He treats all vegetarians as proselytizing, animal-lovers who want to ban any animal death-a portrayal wholly inaccurate of the many vegetarians I've known over the years. First of all, I've never met a proselytizing vegetarian, and second of all, most people I know are vegetarian, are that way for health reasons, not political ones. It's an even more irksome perspective in that he makes a big fuss over how upsetting it is to actual witness a pig/lamb/turkey getting killed for your dinner. It's as if he felt he had to put something feisty or controversial or nasty in there, just to keep his persona going, and it does nothing for the book.

The vegetarian thing aside, I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in food (and who isn't?) or other cultures. The chapters work pretty well on their own, and are the perfect length for devouring one a night before bed, although they'll likely drive you to the kitchen for a midnight snack!

I can't figure what holds me back about his book. I love Anthony Bourdain's attitude about food and his philosophy about what makes a great meal. I love his desire for absolutely fresh food, right off the bleeding stick or never touching a refrigerator, and I admire the distinctions he makes about how food looks and how it tastes--my wife is one who cannot get over the appearance of food and lets it affect her enjoyment of it, while I don't care how food looks, but simply want good-tasting stuff. I love Bourdain's sense of experimentalism, his willingness to try live cobra heart, and his sense of adventure, how he searches out a fugu chef (who knows how to properly prepare poisonous blowfish), and my wife is now relieved that I take Bourdain at his word that the stuff doesn't really have much flavor and wasn't quite worth all the excitement.

The concept of this book is fantastic--Anthony Bourdain travels to Vietnam, Japan, Cambodia, Portugal, Russia and other fine spots for the adventure of eating. And we're not just talking about the food itself--Bourdain wants the whole experience of food, from the killing of the livestock to the last shot of vodka before heading out into the night. He understands that food comes from a place and people, and he wants to know both as intimately as he can to get a true sense of what the food is about. It is a brilliant gesture in a category of writing that I find all too sterile, a style of writing often taken over by self-professed food gurus sitting in palaces removed from the real cooks and snubbing their noses at true cuisine while only praising what is served in delicate portions in a fine atmosphere. That Bourdain continually bashes Food Network stars is wonderfully brilliant and it makes me trust the man implicitely--were he to serve me brains wrapped in pig cheek and smothered with mayonnaise, I would gladly eat it if he told me it would be some good stuff.

But for whatever reason, I found this book as a whole not so engaging to read, and I can only attribute that to the writing itself. I don't know if this books suffers from Bourdain's inexperience at writing, or if this simply has been edited to death to remove a lot of life from the prose. I would love to praise this book as one of the best that has ever crossed my path, for the content itself is comforting in that it expresses the heart of a true food lover, one I will probably emulate for years to come, but as a book itself, I must say that I skipped over passages that I found highly tedious to read.