No Reservations

Disclaimer, added 1-28-08: If you saw a commercial that led you to believe this show is about “animal torture” and are resolutely refusing to watch it based on that single commercial, please note: You are wrong, quite possibly delusional, and missing out on a good show. Thanx. :-)

I admit it: I like to watch No Reservations, the Travel Channel show hosted by bejeweled Anthony Bourdain. It’s one of the few shows on television that I can sit through nowadays. I’m no chef, but I do like to eat, and I like to visit exotic locations vicariously through another, and Tony hits a lot of the spots I’d like to visit myself, along with drinking massive amounts of alcohol in virtually every variety. The show is edgy, and it’s not entirely uncommon to see dinner before it’s dead, and sometimes even while it’s being killed (no, I don’t get any kind of thrill at seeing animals killed, but I’m a realist, and I know that steak I ate last night had to come from somewhere, and there’s a very decent possibility that the methods used to kill animals in this show are equally if not more humane than those used to kill the cow who begat my steak). His commentary is entertaining, usually laced with funny witticisms, and the locations are always exotic and culturally significant. I’m fairly impressed by the website they’ve put together for him, along with a wiki, which I haven’t delved into very much but seems a near stroke of genius.

Little did I know when I started watching this show that Bourdain writes fiction; in the show’s intro he says he’s a writer, but since he’s a chef I assumed he was a cookbook writer. Of course he is a cookbook writer, but come to find out he also writes crime novels and murder-mysteries. I haven’t read any yet, but I will…

Best moments of the show:

• Bacon Doughnut (!) at Voodoo Doughnut in Portland, Oregon. Can I haz one, pleaze? And a tee shirt, too? Thanx.
• Shrimp-n-grits in Charleston, South Carolina. I’ve never had it, but I will.
• The palpitating cobra heart in Saigon. Yes: he ate the still-beating heart of a king cobra.
• The beach cookouts in Key West and Australia.
• The sensational private sushi sitting in Osaka, which according to interview transcripts, cost about $200.
• The ostrich egg in Africa. Some Bushmen cooked up the egg in dirt. Bourdain noted that it was “gritty.”
• The pig anus, also in Africa, noted by Bourdain as being his all-time low. (This from a man who said he would not eat monkey brains or rat.)
• South America, when he dosed himself with ayahuasca.
• And, of course, when he tried riding a 4-wheeler up a sand dune in Australia and it rolled on him.

From the transcript of an online interview (2006):

Washington, D.C.: I still get nightmares from that beating cobra heart that you swallowed in Saigon. Do you throw it up in this Sunday’s outtakes show?

Anthony Bourdain: No. Actually eating the cobra heart was a lot like eating a very small, very angry and rather athletic oyster. The fermented shark in Iceland was much, much more difficult.

And, finally, one last quote:

Anthony Bourdain: I would rather have sex with a crackhead clown an ebola-infected spider monkey than eat Spam on a regular basis. Does Spam qualify as food or bulding material?