Best selling author, culinary adventurer and self-proclaimed hedonist, Anthony Bourdain has carved out a distinct place as a gastronomic Indiana Jones. In this series --Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations -- his journey introduces viewers to people and places far beyond the realm of food. This 4-disc set Includes the the following episodes: "Paris & New Jersey," "Sicily & Las Vegas," "New Zealand & Malaysia" and "Iceland & Vietnam."
View the series: No reservations. Video hosted on Google. Best-selling author, reluctant food celebrity guy, culinary adventurer, drinker, smoker, hedonist ... the list of descriptors could go on and on. But one thing is certain: In this food-obsessed world, Anthony Bourdain has carved out a distinct place as a gastronomic Indiana Jones. His quest for the perfect dining experience was smartly documented in his television series and book, A Cook's Tour. And now Bourdain's journey is shifting to the next course. In Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, his journey takes him to people and places far beyond the realm of food. Following his wanderlust will take the audience to far-out and familiar places, from Iceland to Vietnam and Tuscany to the Pacific Northwest. Anthony Bourdain is and has been a professional chef and writer for more than three decades, and his point of view will always reflect that experience. But in Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, this anti-celebrity chef is out of the kitchen ... on the road ... no holds barred. Bourdain travels the world seeking the authentic experiences and food that flavor the world's cultures. Join him on his journey.
Dubbed "the bad boy of cuisine" for his rock-star look and blunt observations about the world of restaurants, chefs and cooking, Anthony Bourdain is not your typical celebrity chef. A 28-year veteran of professional kitchens, Bourdain is currently the executive chef at New Yorks famed bistro, Les Halles.
Bourdain entertains and educates with his exotic tales of travel and lessons learned from the kitchen trenches. He shares his passion on topics ranging from "Great Cuisines: The Common Thread" to the celebrity chef phenomenon and the culture of cooking. He also imparts his drill-sergeant approach to running a kitchen, which he shared with the Harvard Business Review, in "Management by Fire: A Conversation With Chef Anthony Bourdain." "The fantastic mix of order and chaos," he says, "demands a rigid hierarchy and a sacrosanct code of conduct, where punctuality, loyalty, teamwork and discipline are key to producing consistently good food."
His exposé of New York restaurants, Dont Eat Before Reading This, published in The New Yorker in 1999, attracted huge attention in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. It formed the basis of his critically acclaimed 2001 book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, which described in lurid detail his experiences in kitchens and became a surprise international best-seller.
In late 2000, Bourdain set out to eat his way across the globe, looking for, as he puts it, kicks, thrills, epiphanies and the "perfect meal." The book, A Cook's Tour, and its companion 22-part television series chronicle his adventures and misadventures on that voyage, during which he sampled the still-beating heart of a live cobra, dined with gangsters in Russia, and returned to his roots in the tiny fishing village of La Teste, France, where he first ate an oyster as a child.
Bourdain is a contributing authority for Food Arts magazine. His novels include The Bobby Gold Stories, Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo. His work has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Gourmet and The New York Times. He describes his recent book, Anthony Bourdains Les Halles Cookbook (2004), as "Julia Child meets Full Metal Jacket."
His latest book, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Useable Trim, Scraps and Bones, is a well-seasoned hellbroth of candid, often outrageous stories from his worldwide misadventures.
Anthony Bourdain was born in New York City in 1956. After two misspent years at Vassar College, he attended the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, followed by nearly three decades of working in professional kitchens. He lives and will always live in New York City.
Each week, viewers tag along with Bourdain as he gets the inside dish on local eats in places from Beirut, Indonesia, and Korea to Miami, Sweden, and Puerto Rico. But it doesn't stop there. On each trip, Bourdain not only indulges in native flavors but also tags along with fishermen, farmers, and food merchants as they go about their daily business. He also takes in local customs and engages people he meets in conversation about their homeland and cuisine. During his visit to Peru, for example, Bourdain visited a shaman when the altitude got to him, sampled homemade ceviche with a popular restaurateur, and hopped aboard a fishing boat to go in search of piranha. Outgoing and wry, Bourdain does a good job of keeping the energy up and introducing viewers to cultures they might not have been exposed to before. But he often makes remarks that might give some parents pause (not to mention make them want to preview episodes before letting kids tune in). When sampling the ceviche, for example, he said that next time he should smoke a joint to counteract the dish's acidity. And when his local host gave him coca leaves to alleviate his headache, he made a reference to snorting cocaine in the '80s.
You can find "Bizarre Foods" with Andrew Zimmern overhere.....
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