It says something when the comments about a show (on my blog and on the message boards) were smarter, more thoughtful and insightful than the show itself.

The People Have Spoken.

Which made my arrival in the Philippines even more shaky. Of all the people who watch NO RESERVATIONS, it's been Filipinos who have been consistently among our biggest fans and most vocal about our having yet to film in their country.

"You've been all over Asia," I hear again and again," … so WHY haven't you come to the Philippines?!"

Well … I'm here. And the pressure is on. Luggage yet to arrive, I walk, unshaven, unwashed and in dirty clothes through the lobby of my hotel and everybody, it seems, watches the show. All eyes seem to follow my reeking carcass up to the breakfast buffet. People stop me and ask me what I plan to show the world of their country. Still stinging from the whirlwind of revulsion that followed last week's stillbirth, I wish I had a big floppy hat I could pull down over my head (if not my whole body). All I can say is "Don't worry. We're NOT doing balut. Been there. Done that." And privately think to myself, "Don't screw this up … don't screw this up ... don't screw this up."

And no. I'm not suffering from some kind of weird, late-in-life, delusional Arsenio-esque urges . Monday night's AT THE TABLE thing is a one-off (or maybe a two or three-off) idea where I get to sit down, talk about a lot of pretty obscure, insider food and travel-related issues with some opinionated friends--and at the same time--eat for free at a restaurant I respect and find intensely interesting. We may repeat may do a couple more down the road--locally based and with local chefs and guests in other cities, but this does not signify some strange new direction.

It took about five hours of my time to shoot AT THE TABLE (nice!), yet the format requires (I found) a mammoth production. WD-50, the restaurant where we filmed the show, was jammed with an invading army of camera operators, sound techs, lighting guys, portable control room, bonobo-trainers, mink-wranglers, hair and make-up -- and a crackhead to operate the smoke machine .... It was like a real television show -- something I'm not used to.

In the strangely bright center of an otherwise empty restaurant, me and four guests gathered round and ate and drank and discussed such burning issues as: "What's the butt-ugliest behavior you've ever seen in a restaurant? Or taken part in?" And the issue on everybody's mind -- at a moment when the economy teeters on the precipice: "Is it ethically okay to blow $1,800 bucks on dinner?"

Pondering these questions were four people well-suited to answer them, worldly -- some might say jaded -- veterans of many high end restaurant meals, people for whom the free dinner and comped bottle of vintage wine are no strangers: Nightclub owner/proprietor, Amy Sacco of New York City's Bungalow 8 ... author of that excellent, bestselling account of working as Mario Batali's "kitchen bitch," Heat, New Yorker editor and founder of Granta Magazine, Bill Buford ... writer, TV personality, fellow judge on Top Chef, Ted Allen .... and notorious nightcrawler, former gossip columnist for Page Six and current editor at Maxim Magazine, Chris Wilson.

Am I any good at leading and moderating a televised discussion? I don't know. I've jumped out of an airplane and eaten warthog rectum -- so I figured ... why not try this too? Frankly, after watching the rough cut, I think I come off like a drunk version of John McLaughlin -- you know, that loud, douchebag on the McLaughlin Group?

On the bright side, I got to eat -- and you get to see -- a truly extraordinary and important chef at work; Wylie Dufresne. About that, I feel unreservedly good. If you haven't eaten at WD-50? Do so at first opportunity. It's truly an adventure. I hope that comes across in the show.

By the time you read this, me, Todd, Zach, Jared, Alex and contest runner-up Augusto should be halfway across the Pacific, on our way to the Philippines. I see balut in my future.

The hapless, ZPZ tape-loggers, caffeine-jacked myrmidons who toil away in the filthy sub-cellar of our corporate headquarters, reviewing hour after hour of mind-numbingly repetitive and boring video tape, noticing this spectral apparition, began to lose their already tentative grips on reality. One scene after another, a glimpse here, a face in the crowd there, lurking suspiciously in the background in another scene, down the bar a few positions, pretending he doesn't know me in another -- or front and center; there he is.

It's Albert's very ubiquitousness in the raw footage, his omnipresence -- even in the scenes where the viewer won't see him, that tells you all you need to know about Spain -- and how damn good it is.

Understand: Albert, along with his brother, Ferran, is a chef/owner of the three Michelin starred El Bulli, the hardest to reserve, restaurant table in the world. He's a national hero, an international superstar in the world of chefs and restaurants. Suffice to say that just about anywhere in the world of fine dining, from Shanghai to San Francisco; when Albert walks in the door, the whole place goes on Red Alert. He's used to the very best. If there's a downside to his life in the culinary firmament, it's that too much foie gras, truffles and expensive wine come his way.

As a chef at El Bulli, hugely respected pastry chef -- and as the owner of a casual eatery in Barcelona, he can surely have the very best Spanish ingredients delivered anywhere he wants, quickly, with a phone call. You'd think, he'd be a bit .....jaded by it all.

Yet, there he was at Espinaler, gobbling up those supernaturally delicious, canned cockles and razor clams and mussels like he'd never had them before. Tagging along at Quimet and Quimet, shoveling in the tapas with a big smile on his face. Out in the country, with a silly red bib, a blissed-out expression, sucking down the calcots and the red wine like it was his last meal on earth.

I've never seen anyone so happy to be in Spain -- and (this is my point here) HE FREAKIN' LIVES THERE!!!

All that magnificent food -- all those cool little tapas bars, they're right down the street--and yet, it was like he just landed in Barcelona from Mars. His enthusiasm for his own country, his own heritage, the everyday places and things of Spain was something to see.

Naturally this made me misanthropic and deeply envious.

Why can't I have that? How come I gotta go halfway across the earth -- to like, Singapore, or Hong Kong (or Spain), for instance, to really get MY culinary jollies these days? He's on a magic carpet ride in his own town and I'm like a full-bloom junkie, the honeymoon period over, needing a higher and higher dosage to get off in MY home town of New York!. Why?

The sad fact is, we'll never -- and I mean NEVER have it so good as in Spain. It's not like we don't have great restaurants in Manhattan - -and will surely have many more. And certainly, we can get many of the same ingredients jetted over (more or les s-- if at a steep price). No. It's attitudinal. You can faithfully reproduce the look of a Spanish tapas bar in New York City. You can stock it with all the best, most authentic ingredients, just-jerked from the rivers, streams, soil and seas of Spain. You can staff the joint with the best cooks, dragooned off the streets of the parta vieja. And you'll still never be close to the real thing. Because what your tapas bar needs -- really needs -- is three or four or eight OTHER tapas bars (or casual Spanish eateries within walking distance).

You can't really enjoy this kind of food in a vacuum. You need to graze -- or at least know that you can graze (should the urge arise), bouncing from one place to another, a mouthful or two of what's good here, a glass of tinto, a few mouthfuls of what they do well over there -- another glass of tinto and so on. In fact, the whole customer base has to re-groove to accommodate this notion. They'll have to accept the idea that a small can of tuna -- or clams -- can actually be better than fresh stuff. And worth about $150 bucks.

That the fat of Spanish acorn fed pigs is the stuff of which dreams are made. That there's nothing unusual about growing up with Goya, Dali, Bunuel, and Gaudi. That midnite is a normal time to sit down to dinner.

The best example of What They Do In Spain that We Can and Never Will Do is to be found in the Extebarri scene near the end of the show. Here, at a rustic pub in the mountains near St. Sebastian, grilling has been raised to unthinkable zen-like heights. Hand made charcoals. A separate fire for each individual order. Separate grills -- and custom designed and crafted pans and implements to best achieve perfection.

Ingredients of a quality undreamed of by most mortals. This, in a simple, neighborhood-looking joint with a smoky bar and a self-taught chef who grew up in the village. It's where the Adrias, Arzaks and Aduriz's go for their own pleasure -- high end comfort food.

Back before cable, if you took a baseball bat and smacked it upside a television set in the middle of a show, there'd be a black and white sputter, a flash -- and then white noise and static. That was what my first bite of grilled elvers was like there. And the grilled gambas. And just about everything else in that chilly, wood-smoke smelling kitchen. A jarring, flood of endorphins, then brain overload, and for a second, a blinding light. Momentarily, the synapses shorted out. Sensation returned in a warm, intensely pleasurable afterglow of flavor. It was a sensation that related directly to the experience of a few weeks before -- in Tokyo. At Sukibayashi Jiro. Two seemingly simple things done well -- as well as they can be done. In Tokyo: old school sushi.
In Spain, grilled stuff with a little salt and a light spritz of oil.
Nothing, as it turns out, could be better

In the last three, up-is-down and down-is-up days Rocco Di Spirito bailed me out, Emeril Lagasse generously fed me, Jamie Oliver talked child rearing with me for hours. Cat Cora was civil and ... drum roll please ... Rachael Ray was unfailingly polite. I fear I might even have hurt her feelings. They might as well have worked me over with tire irons. I feel an utter beast this morning.

You know, I've mercilessly and enthusiastically made sport of Rocco di Spirito many, many times. I've said--and accused him--of a full menu of truly awful things. Some of them were even true. No matter how bizarre or inexplicable some of his career choices, I always respected him as a gifted cook. He's also--when not flogging frozen products--a thoughtful and insightful judge on Top Chef. But I have to tell you--of ALL the chefs who said they were absolutely, positively, by all means would be DELIGHTED to show up at our travesty of an awards ceremony--at the end of the day, only Rocco and Aaron Sanchez actually made it.Rocco had enough balls and sense of humor about himself to fly out of a snowstorm on an early flight so two miserable pricks who'd done nothing but make fun of him over the years could have him present the "Rocco Award" for "Worst Career Move" to Tyler Florence. Tyler, we were informed at the last minute, encountered a "problem with his calamari for the Bubble Q" and was suddenly needed elsewhere. While on one hand, I was very grateful to Tyler for (at least initially) agreeing to subject himself to our cruel ritual disembowelment, the image of Tyler Florence personally cleaning 500 pounds of squid was difficult to summon. Particularly next to the Sysco truck.I believe Aaron (who has every reason to want to give Ruhlman a kick in the nuts--after the shameful hair-hopper face-off of Next Iron Chef) accepted on Tyler's behalf.

Later, an expansive Mario Batali told us of an e-mail from an FN executive, "thanking him for NOT attending the Clogs." Similar stories filtered back all day. A relieved looking Tyler apologized for missing the gig when we saw him at the Bubble Q thing. "REALLY sorry I missed it, man," he said. "But maybe next year. It's the perfect thing for like 2 O' Clock in the morning--and maybe another venue."

He had the look of a man who just successfully dodged a bullet. And he was, of course, absolutely right about the right time and place for a loud, profane and disrespectful event as ours--only slightly better than a mob of skinheads or crackhead rodeo clowns in the eyes of family friendly outfits like FN and ... Applebees.

Which is why we're doing it all over again today, Saturday, at FIVE PM before the general public. Just me. Ruhlman. And our filthy list of "winners" and Losers--minus all the flattering shit. Yesterday, was the PG version. Today? Apocalypse NOW.

Day One:

Ruhlman showed up late for our all-important preparatory session for the Golden Clog Awards Ceremony last night, by which time I was deep into the negronis. I have only the dimmest of memories of who, exactly, is nominated for what--and NO memory at all of who's supposed to win. I think we ended up deciding on making half of it up as we go along--mid-ceremony. Our "celebrity presenters" have--for the most part, abandoned us for safer pastures.

There has been, I am reliably informed, a terror campaign of late night heavy--breathing phone calls, suggestions of "you'll never work in this town--or ANY town--again" and a wave of second, more sensible thoughts. The affected parties have suddenly remembered previous charitable commitments: (The "Putt For and End to the Heartbreak of Psoriasis" Invitational, the "Pull My Finger To Stop Chronic Flatulence" Bowlin' and BBQ Party--and the Fiji Water For Peace event claiming the lion's share of defectors). Can't say I blame them ...
The guys who've been hanging tough and not knuckling under? You'd be shocked to know (and you will..soon). This whole enterprise looks to be rapidly devolving into a shameful and ridiculous sham ... My (not unreasonable) fear is that Ruhlman and I are going to be stuck up there for an hour--trapped in some unfunny, Shecky and Dino dinner theater kind of a thing--as our audience squirms with embarrassment, waiting for the right moment to flee ...

My other concern, of course, is that Robert (Dinner Inconvenient) Irvine, deranged by his suddenly disappearing biographies and his rudely canceled event--will somehow focus some hormone-fueled rage on ... me--and wrap his tiny little hands around my neck while flexing those oversized guns. My brains would squeeze out of the top of my head like toothpaste coming out of the tube ...

After a breakfast of chicken, grilled between splints of bamboo, and an egg omelette, a soup of wild mushrooms and greens--and of course, sticky rice and fiery chili paste, we headed out into the mountains to visit a rice farmer and family, catch some swallows and have a meal.All quite wonderful--as you'll see on the show. Just about anywhere you point your camera in Laos, you see something beautiful and extraordinary. It's a mountainous landscape, thickly forested with tall bamboo, palms, fir and pine trees, impossibly vertical karsks, remote villages and few paved roads. Most mornings, it is covered with storybook mists. It's one of the few countries on Earth still barely touched by Western chains. There are No McDonalds. No Starbucks. No KFCs. Anywhere. Even in the sleepy capitol city of Vientiane. The food is spicy and mostly delicious and just about everyone we speak to is warm, generous and remarkably open about their lives, their hopes, their joys and their often considerable pain.

So little is known about this country. Less, I suspect, is known about the secret war here. Having had the bad luck to be a weak, neutral neighbor of Vietnam, Laos found itself, from 1962 until 1975, on the receiving end of more bombs than all the bombs dropped on all of Germany and Japan in all of World War Two. The equivalent of a bombing mission every nine minutes, 24 hours a day, for TEN YEARS. Pilots returning from bombing runs in North Vietnam, often dumped whatever extras they had on Laos on the way home. There were--unlike Vietnam--no rules of engagement. As supposedly, we weren't even there. About 30% of those bombs were "cluster" munitions. And about 30% of their cute, attractive-to-kids bomblets are still lying, undetonated, around rural Laos, waiting for farmers to find them--often setting them off in the process. About a hundred people a year--most of whom weren't even alive during the conflict--still die from unexploded ordinance. Many more lose limbs. We went out with a bomb disposal unit and saw for ourselves.

Much later:
The shoot is done and, fortified with "lao-lao", the local moonshine and a brief investigation of local herbs and flora (or is that fauna?), Zach, Todd and I appropriate the three rented production motorbikes--leaving the rest of the crew to drive home in the van. We tear ass across the Lao countryside, free, free, FREE and deliriously happy. Through dusty Hmong villages, past brown, fallow rice paddies, hump-backed bulls, black pigs, thatched roof homes on stilts, misty mountains, the mysterious Plain of Jars, dodging the occasional water buffalo, sometimes riding three abreast, but usually falling back into our own solitary, tripped out zones--our own individual road movies. Laos smells of wood smoke, earth, mint, lemongrass, deep forest, fermented fish (paa-dek)--and the edge.

Tomorrow, it's a 9 hour road trip across country to Luang Prabang where I am assured of a hot shower of excellent quality--And the possibility of mini-bar.