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

Chef Anthony Bourdain is probably more widely known today to the public at large as that arsehole guest food critic from that morbidly bad reality TV show Top Chef who also has some weird food show of his own, in which he goes around the world, pretending to be a rowdy cowboy infused with Dr.

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Gonzo's ghastly left nut. Bourdain actually has two TV shows, A cook's tour being the first one of them but both follow a similar format. Bourdain is shown in some foreign country. Bourdain is shown getting drunk with the locals. Bourdain eats something weird. All of this in the name of looking for the perfect meal. I am not that sure how many people would find a pitch or premise like that interesting, certainly not me. I have seen the show and whilst not terrible – specially considering what the Food Network tries to pass off as TV these days – seeing Bourdain sitting down and eating whilst an annoying voice over of him narrates some dumb anecdote is not my idea of fun. Surprisingly enough I actually liked the book.

By favouring raw humour, style to facts and stretching the truth a bit here and there, Bourdain manages to make what on the screen seems like a monotonous tedium into an interesting traveling adventure with some insight from an actual cooking pro. You actually also learn more stuff about the culture Bourdain is trying to literally digest in the form, among others, of a cobra's beating heart or charred goat's testicles on the book than in 30 minutes of zealously edited and cramped television, which is never going to be enough to either flesh out the traditions of anywhere nor the flamboyant (even if exaggerated in the book) traits of some of the characters Bourdain meets along the way.

Each chapter of the book usually covers one location, with the exception of Vietnam, which as three or more of its own. It is not set chronologically, and one could easily jump in to one particular chapter and read it since they are pretty much self contained, and in most of those Bourdain makes what's probably the most interesting point of the book, relating the origin of some of the best dishes he's had to the survival of people in the old ages and the need to not waste a thing, which is something modern societies barely think of. The book also gets a more serious tone in moments when Bourdain is in view of the grim conditions in which the less favoured live in those places he visits, but his comments of inadequacy and reactions fall a little flat when 10 pages after that he is getting plastered without that much regard for anything else.

The book has enough tidbits about cooking to be considered by those serious about food looking for a light read, and its tone is casual enough to appeal to those others looking for a fun read about exotic places, even more exotic food, and a guy paving his way through those. At the end, one ends up with the feeling that one might have learnt something, even though it could be attributed to the fibre-like effect quality the book has of being more like easily digestible – although entertaining – bulk than something truly fulfilling.

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Once you get past Bourdain's profanity, you realize he's a remarkably good writer, with some excellent insights. This is well worth reading, even 8 years after it was published, if only for the love letter he writes for Viet Nam. Surprisingly, having lived through the 70's, it made me happy.

Tale of a man's travels around the world to get drunk, stoned, and eat gross stuff while trailing a television crew and sniping at other TV chefs. Self indulgent and boring.

It's certainly an interesting idea - send a chef out to sample various exotic cuisines in search of the perfect combination of food, place, setting. But they picked the wrong guy.

I cannot believe this man can taste food, much less be a professional chef. He is destroying his taste buds, through the

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abuse of alcohol and nicotine, not to mention myriad forms of cannabis and the occasional cocaine amuse-nez. His idea of a good time is to get so drunk he can't remember what he did, swear a lot, and in general behave like the kind of jerk you wouldn't want at the table next to you. I think he suffers from testosterone-poisoning.

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A wonderful companion to the TV series of the same name. Bourdain's witty prose gives a deep insight into the world he lived in behind the camera during his year abroad searching for "the perfect meal" and lets even the most the casual reader experience his horror and delight as he's confronted by

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the next plate set before him. He opens a door to countries many of us will never visit and details delicious and strange foods we may never get to eat or may be too scared to eat. In my opinion it was a great book that I would definitely read again.

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After the bravado and profanity of Kitchen Confidential, the last thing I expected from this book was warmth and tenderness. Damned if Bourdain didn't surprise me. Yes, there was a fair amount of blue language and contempt for The Man, but it's set against a backdrop of genuine affection for the

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cultures he visits. The chapter where he goes to France with his brother made me tear up. The lush descriptions of food made me ravenous. Not a good book to read for dieters, vegetarians or nuns.

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Anthony Bourdain is the gangster of the celebrity chef world and I love him. Crass and unapologetic for who he is, but utterly charming in his love for food. He travels the world for the "perfect" meal and has so many "perfects" that it is hard to pick just one. I long to eat at the many places

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that he has eaten in this book, and not just the "pretty" ones.

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Highly respected author in the food industry. Well written, funny, humerous, could not stop laughing. Honest realistic tells it like it is. Most in the industry can relate and identify with his experiences. Former executive chef of Les Halles, NYC. Graduate of Cullinary Insititute. Prolific writer

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in the food industry. Traveling around the world eating and describing his experinces to his audiences. Do not go anywhere in the world without reaing about Anthony's experiences in the country you are traveling to. Opinionated and experienced, a valuable resource for students in culinary schools.

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This was good, but I didn't enjoy it as much as Kitchen Confidential. 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. That's okay, but the notion of hunting down the perfect meal has an appeal to me & led me to expect something

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different.

Having said all of that, I enjoyed the book. It's hard not to love someone who hits the jackpot with a best seller & says to themselves, "Hmmm ... 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. 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.

I like that Bourdain gets that great food doesn't all happen at 5-star restaurants. It can, but it doesn't happen only there. Great food also happens at people's houses, from street vendors, down at the local. 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.

All in all I think that this kind of thing works better as a TV series. Ultimately with travel I want to actually see the place, the food, the people. What works as voiceover makes for okay reading, but just okay.

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Meh. I was disappointed. Bourdain's book [book: Kitchen Confidential] was so good that I couldn't wait to read this one. More of a documentation of his travels for the show No Reservations, the wit and banter is not there. Too much time is spent on the logistics of travel and it seems to drone on

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and on.This doesn't mean I won't continue to read his stuff and watch his show. I think he's funny and writes well. But this book is just not as good.

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Bourdain, along with a bunch of producers and a TV crew, travel across the world, supposedly looking for the perfect meal. What they were really looking for was a TV show. And really, that is the biggest downfall of an otherwise good book - it felt at times a little bit too made for TV.

Bourdain

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takes the reader on a journey spanning multiple countries and eating their local fare while ranting and raving about how food in the U.S. had gone down the wrong path with big box corporate restaurants and supermarkets, the erosion of farmers, fish, and meat markets, and the waste of not using all of the animal that considerately died to be used as food. He makes a lot of great points that I wholeheartedly agree with. While I wished he had stuck to his mission in some places that he visited and focused more on the food, he does let the reader in on the customs and cultures which, however off topic, is enlightening in itself.

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Definitely not as good as "Kitchen Confidential," but there still some nice Bourdain wit. I think chapters about London, Japan, and San Francisco are among the best.

Definitely not as good as "Kitchen Confidential," but there still some nice Bourdain wit. I think chapters about London, Japan, and San Francisco are among the best.

Summary: Chef Anthony Bourdain managed to parlay the success of his memoir Kitchen Confidential into the kind of deal that most people only dream about: he would travel around the world, eating local (and often strange) foods in exotic and adventurous locales. These travels would form the basis of

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this book, and of the TV show of the same name. (Both are somewhat of a preliminary version of his current book/show, No Reservations.) Each chapter takes place on a different trip, from Portugal to Russia to Vietnam to Mexico, as Bourdain travels in search of the perfect meal - both in terms of the food and the experience.

Review: Memoirs have not been a large part of my reading life up to this point, mainly because I dislike the "oh, look at my poor, tragically bizarre childhood and how I overcame it" flavor of memoir, and that's all I was exposed to for quite some time. However, the two types of memoir for which I will happily make an exception are 1) travelogues, and 2) foodie memoirs, so A Cook's Tour was right up my alley.

Bourdain's prose is not the smoothest or most polished that I've ever read, but it doesn't matter. He writes like he talks, and the effect is such that everything feels immediate, personal, and typically funny as hell. He doesn't spend a lot of time trying to describe flavors with flowery similies, yet still talks about food in such a vivid and appreciative way that I wound up wanting to eat everything he's describing. (Dieters, beware; this book will make you hungry like nobody's business, even if you have no actual desire to try some of the oddball foods he's eating.)

The best chapters are the ones in which he manages to hit the right blend of food and travel (i.e. unlike the chapter on Cambodia, which was a destination more for the adventure and less for any notable food) - and where he didn't get too off track in trying to make a point. However, even when Bourdain did get a bit rambly, I was still interested, and given his biting sense of humor, hugely entertained throughout. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: If you like travel, food, and/or reading about either of them, A Cook's Tour will keep you entertained while you plan your next meal... or vacation.

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My name is j, and I am a bookoholic. I devour the things. I could live in a house made of books, and in fact I almost do. I eat them. Quickly. Like an obese American with a Big Mac attack.

This book takes me days upon days to parse. Not that the language is poorly chosen, mind you, but because it

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is so rich. You know those fabulous and rare desserts where one bite really is enough? Remember that feeling after one perfect smoked sea salt caramel from Fran's in Seattle? That "I am in love and I can die happy" feeling? In the slow parts of this book it takes me a page or two before I feel that sated. In the best parts, I can live a week on a paragraph. If you at all like the travel channel show, buy this book. I love the show. This is infinitely better.

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I love the TV show No Reservations and this book was an interesting supplement to the show. But it was also a bit snide, and since I'm not a cook, I didn't get all the culinary references. Still, Anthony Bourdain rocks!

I picked up this book after reading Bourdin's Kitchen Confidential. Anthony Bourdain is a gourmet chef, the kind that runs his kitchen with an iron fist but writes about his exploits like a foodie cowboy. A Cook's Tour was Bourdain's attempt to get his publisher to pay for an around-the-world

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eating tour. They brought a film crew with them and turned it into a show.

What does a food cowboy want to eat? Well, he wants to eat lamb in the desert with the Bedouins. He wants to eat real fois gras and also still-beating snake heart. He wants to go to the roughest pit of the heart of darkness in Cambodia, ride a motorcycle, and laugh maniacally. And in reading this book, he gets to do quite a few of these things! How could I, as a traveller and a foodie, not read this book?

What became apparent on reading A Cook's Tour is that Bourdain can eat his way through anything, but that writing was hardly why he was there. His editor must be a saint. It's clear he wrote three chapters on Vietnam because he thought it was cool, and only quickly cobbled together bits on Morocco and Cambodia. He goes on at great length about the food in France, but goes on at equal length about the pain of bringing along a camera crew everywhere you go. He is at times brilliant in the way that a charismatic dinner guest can be brilliant, but this book held together much less well than his previous book. Kitchen Confidential gives a behind the scenes look at a career in cooking which is often hilarious and sometimes shocking. In A Cook's Tour I mostly just wished that I could go on a similar trip.

If you read one, read Kitchen Confidential. If you love food and travel, fly somewhere and eat! This does provide some good armchair food traveler fodder, but it is not a great book.

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I loved it. More of Bourdain's hard-ass storytelling...jeez, I can't get enough. Love his descriptions of the bizarre and exotic cuisines of the world. Great book. Cool guy.

A disappointing sequel to Kitchen Confidential. One feels the author is coasting on previous success.

Bourdain writes just as he delivers his monologues on his TV shows, no BS, gets straight to the point, says what he feels in his gut. The book is a series of vignettes, bouncing around the world in sixteen chapters, but some places like Vietnam he revisits. It may be a cook's tour, but food is

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really just his path to the culture and history of a place. He's a travel writer in his own right, bringing his own particular experience and his unique optic to new places. However surly and rebellious he may come off, he really models what a good traveller should be: friendly, humble, curious, respectful, and honest, especially about himself. The book isn't revelatory, but it is fun to experience these places and cultures as Tony does, with a heart wide open and a mind similarly disposed.

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Just like his TV show: a bit irreverent, a bit audacious -- but I'm selfishly interested mostly in those episodes that take place somewhere I've traveled. The others....are usually good but less compelling for me. Probably because Bourdain's show (and his writing) isn't meant to be an intro to a

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new country or culture, but is focused more specifically on exploring food (which CAN be a big part of a place's culture) and a bit of adventure -- I feel like Bourdain is like icing on the cake. He's awesome don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan -- but without the context of the cake, you can't really just eat spoonful after spoonful of icing. Alas. Three stars because I've only been to half the places in the book, which is to say I skipped through most of the other sections. Is that his fault? No, but I can't give more stars to a book that I read in such a piecemeal way. But I loved those pieces!

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An entertaining and quick read. It's probably not for everyone; people who are familiar with Bourdain's television work might get more out of it, because he talks about what it's like to shoot quite often. There are some good moments--the conflict between good television and authenticity rears its

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head often, for example.

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I reviewed this book a long time, before I fell out of love with Anthony Bourdain. However, this is how I felt about the book six years ago.

I want to make this man's babies. Chainsmoking, bitter, foulmouthed, omnivorous, foodappreciating babies. This book tracks his journeys as he films "A Cook's

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Tour" wandering around the globe in search of food. and this isn't anywhere near as pretty as Steingarten. Part of what makes it so brilliant is that it isn't clean or prissy or refined. He goes to Saigon, and becomes disgusted with the fact that he's "making a petty, useless, lighter-than-air television fucking show." He goes to a gun club in Cambodia, a sauna in Russia, kills a pig in Mexico.

I admit it it. I have a problem with food writing. I can't resist it. Cooks are sexy. Cooks who are a little nuts, even sexier. Even though he scorns vegetarians as self-indulgent prigs (and from the ones he meets, it certainly sounds like he's well within his rights to do so), i still love him. He's clever but not at the expense of being eloquent or informative. And i'm pretty sure he'll put anything in his mouth.

And hell, how many places can you read about someone consuming the still beating heart of a live cobra? or read text like "What is love? Love is eating twenty-four ounces of raw fish at four o'clock in the morning." or "We work in aprons, for fuck's sake! You better have balls the size of jackfruits if you want to cook at a high level, where an acute sense for flavor and design, as much as brutality and vigilance, is a virtue. And be fully prepared to bulldoze any miserable cocksucker who gets in your way."

this book makes me forgive him for tricking me into read that absolute atrocity of a book, A Bone in the Throat which was so bad i decide it didn't count toward my list of books read this year. in fact, reading it probably counted as anti-reading, and i should have knocked off another book along with it. So, if you're going to read anything this man writes, skip the novels. i'm keeping reading Kitchen Confidential as a carrot of a sort, i have to read more of the books i own before i'm allowed to take anything else out from the library.

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A pleasant surprise. He writes like he speaks on his shows. Insightful if over the top on a few subjects (vegetarians, Vietnam War, cook from San Francisco) he had a great grasp of where he was and very very humorous. Look forward to reading more of his books.