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Snarkology, The Sweet Science

By Anthony Bourdain on January 24, 2009 11:27 PM | Permalink | 178 Comments

As far back as the early days of A COOK'S TOUR, that earlier, less good show on that other, crummier network, when it was just me, Chris Collins, Lydia Tenaglia and Diane Schutz travelling around the world together, shooting and scouting, they started calling me "Vic" - short for "Vic Chanko," whenever I'd get testy. The name emanated from a prolonged, alcohol and fatigue, fueled fit of the giggles after an enormous meal of "chanko-nabe," a less-than-light hotpot dish favored by sumo wrestlers. We found ourselves in late night Tokyo, riffing on the word "chanko," conjuring the national film career of the imaginary star of spaghetti westerns, Yugoslavian-Italian co-productions, bad Filipino-Rambo knock-offs, "Vic Chanko". It seemed funny at the time.

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Snarkology, The Sweet Science

Rust Never Sleeps

By Anthony Bourdain on January 9, 2009 2:42 PM | Permalink | 177 Comments

I suspect that our President elect would have serious reservations about the cocktail that bears his name at Mo's Crab & Pasta joint in Baltimore. It's a scary blue, sickly sweet  coconut tasting concoction with a lethal kick. And yet—and yet; here we were; me, a group of white construction workers, our Iranian-American hosts and Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, a diminutive young black woman who after six years in Jessup for Murder Two, emerged to find herself playing what Steven King called "the most terrifying female villain in the history of television"—a character not too far from her former self. We were drinking our "Obamas" and laughing our asses off—at what, I don't even remember.

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Rust Never Sleeps

No Reservations: Now With 100% Less Pig!!!

By Anthony Bourdain on December 10, 2008 6:51 PM | Permalink | 233 Comments

They've broken out the Santa hats at the Majestic in Saigon—and at the Galle Face in Colombo, Sri Lanka, hotel staff in cheery red and white caps greet us in the heat whenever we come back from a day's shooting. They're a little more incongruous in Colombo, mixed in as they are with cammo fatigues and AK-47's. Things are made more odd there by an air of general goodwill and smiles — even at the checkpoints. Fingers are never far from triggers — and there's a gun crew manning what looks like a 50 caliber on the rooftop next door, but even in the armed camp that the hotel grounds have become after decades of civil war, holiday spirit is in abundance.

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No Reservations: Now With 100% Less Pig!!!

Goodbye to All That

By Anthony Bourdain on September 1, 2008 10:25 AM | Permalink | 285 Comments

My one and half year old baby daughter loves olives. And caper berries. And salty parmigiano reggiano cheese. Her love of rabbits (as food) is already well established. But I discovered today that she adores polenta--served with the hot, rendered fat of roasted game birds. And that she goes absolutely bat shit over risotto made with wild nettles. And when her Mom dips a finger in the local red wine, she greatly prefers it to juice. This makes me very proud.

So there's the "Labor Day" show coming up (actually a clip show/behind the scenes extravaganza--mostly sweepings from the proverbial stable floor, some previously unseen stuff of varying interest). And that's it for original episodes of Season 4.

In the interim between seasons, there will be some "specials" from time to time--stand-alone projects and ongoing mini-series-within-a series on various food and travel themes.

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Goodbye to All That

Without Pyramids

By Anthony Bourdain on August 22, 2008 9:52 AM | Permalink | 156 Comments

There's a marvelous scene in "Lawrence of Arabia" where Peter O'Toole, playing T.E. Lawrence, looks out at the vast, empty desert and says something like, " I like the desert. It's ... clean." And I've always admired that particular breed of slightly potty Englishmen -- the Arabists, cartographers, explorers, spies, scholars and mischief-makers--who fell in love with the 360 degree vistas of sand and sky they found in the Middle East. I saw that same love up close in the face of our Bedouin guide, who spends, he said, most of his time out there, roaring around in 4x4 vehicles with his buddies, sleeping under the stars, answerable to no one.

And I was happiest during my stay in Egypt sitting under those same stars, a fire crackling and throwing off sparks nearby, belly full of roast lamb, surrounded -- as far as the eye could see -- by nothing but the dark rises of an ocean of sand. But Cairo was another matter.

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Without Pyramids