I just saw a promo for this yesterday and already I'm interested. It premiers July 25 on the Travel Channel. According to Travel Channel's website:



I can't wait. I loved A Cook's Tour and have been wanting to see more of that kind of thing from Tony Bourdain ever since. This show could be really good.

I really enjoyed Kitchen Confidential, so I'll definitely watch this show. I love his irreverent demeanor, but it doesn't get in the way of his level of professionalism in the restaurant.

I ate in one of his NYC bistros a few years ago, and he came to our table after we complained to the maitre'd about something really yucky on the table. The maitre'd then called him over. He inspected the complaint and said not a word to us, but spoke to the maitre'd in rapid-fire French. Moments later, free drinks appeared at our table. Man's all right in my book.

I can't wait for this show to start!

There were rumors a while back about Bourdain having a sitcom. I hope this is where the rumors were coming from and not a sitcom.

Actually, the sitcom rumor is only sort of true.

FOX will be airing a sitcom based on Kitchen Confidential starting September 19. It'll be paired with Arrested Development on Monday nights.

It's actually a single-camera filmed comedy with no laughtrack. Those of us who've seen the pilot can tell you that it is actually pretty funny. Tony Boudrain is also reportedly pleased with the pilot.

You can read all about it in this thread on TwOP.

Thanks, ScaryFairy1! I remember reading about the show in the A Cook's Tour thread but hadn't gone back to see if there were any updates. It looks like I don't have to be so scared anymore.

OMG. I'm SO watching this! I like the Cook's Tour series, but it's about fifty times better if you watch it having read the behind-the-scenes snark in the accompanying book. Just last night, I was watching the Vietnam duck-and-moonshine episode and wishing he'd make another season. I hope he gives us the low-down on this series, too. TiVo season pass, here I come.

BTW, am I the only one who's wildly attracted to Tony? In real life I could never stand the smoke, but on my TV, there's no Marlboro stench -- he's just lanky and snarky and I love him.

I'm so happy about this show. I've seen every Cook's Tour many times, even if it is on at 3 AM nowadays. And you're right, the book adds a whole new dimension to it.

You're not alone. I saw him speak last year when he was touring to promote his cookbook. He was so charming and funny and sexy. Plus, he made a lot of great food = sex comments ...

I think he'd be great to have as a tour guide, but we'd need oxygen masks and gallons of Febreeze to survive the trip.

I've been watching the promos on the Travel Channel, and can't wait for the new show. I was so disappointed when the Food Network canceled his show, and now just listening to him snark on the network with chefs who aren't chefs, food shows that aren't about food and cooks with "catch phrases" has me anxious for the new series.

I totally wish there was a book before the show. A Cook's Tour ruled so much when reading and watching the show at the same time.

I wish I was AB... getting paid for getting drunk across the world and eating good food. The man doesn't even cook in the show!!

Tivo season pass! here I come.

I love this guy.

So much funny here:

*The ‘Lara Flynn Boyle’ comment when holding the bone.
*“Santa cut Rudolph’s fucking head off.”
*But the best? ‘Hi, I’m Rocco de Spirito. Please join me at my new theme restaurant: Rat Kebab. Rats a Roni, Rat-a-touille. All-you-can-east Mouse Bar. By the way, those aren’t currants.’

shuddershuddershudder, those French rats give NY rats a run for their money!

ciscokidinsf, you are so right. This is a definite TIVO!

LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!!!! Finally, Tony can do the show he wants to do. I was howling through the whole absinthe bit, not to mention the Rocco snark. Ahhhh, Tony, I luuuuuuuuuurve you, you lanky, stanky bastard.

Nothing like watching Bourdain prove that William Buckely Jr. was not the last of the pompous blowhards. It is simply amazing at all the trite and incredibly and grossly overblown generalizations he labors so hard to construct just to prove he is the exception. All the while proving just how out of touch he is with how things really are. And to prattle on and on about how edgy and off the beaten track he is and he ends up down in the sewers. Wow! How extreme! How totally bohemian. Wish my Baptist Granny was still alive to tell how hardcore she was since she camped down there for two days on her last trip. And the hotel he stayed at? Boy he's off the grid isn't he? Maybe they should call this show Let's Go with Anthony Bourdain



As much as I hate DiSpirito and consider him a true Craftsman in terms of how big a tool he is? For Bourdain of all people to take a shot at him? Bourdain who couldn't get a table fast enough at "Rocco's" during the filming of the first season of The Restaurant to bray his typical self-important foolosophy and practically wet his panties in joy the whole time he pontificated in front of the camera. its kind of like Star Jones trying to snark on Paris Hilton for being a famewhore. Or Anthony Bourdain for snarking on DiSpirito for being a famewhore.

Funniest moment for me was when he held the skull and it looked more like him than the living dead that is Rivers or Boyle. He really si looking the walking dead.

Most snarkalicious moments for us:

He bitches and whines about fat Americans then has dinner with his none too svelte French buddy.

French lessons: Um, I thought he was French?

The oh so contrived accidental meetings with experts.

The also contrived car that didn't pick him up.

If you really can wander into and out of that wine cellar via the sewers by accident, wouldn't all those valuable bottles have been stolen by now?

Hey, I was wondering about that too...

Meh. I wanted to like this but was disappointed. Aside from the segment on absinthe, the rest of the show was kind of ho-hum. Yeah, the French pay attention to the senses and appreciate good grandmere-style cooking; so what else is new? I expected more from Bourdain, in Paris especially, of all places.

Maybe he'll do better in more exotic (for lack of a better word) locales, as he did on A Cook's Tour. Here's hoping that next week's ep in Iceland is better.

I liked this a lot. I've been a Bourdain fan since first reading the deliciously snarky and informative A Cook's Tour a few months ago.

I agree that he is a pompous ass, but that's part of his appeal. He's probably a love-him-or-hate-him kind of guy. I'm definitely on the love train. I was so excited to see that he had a new travel show, and it was mostly good. The absinthe part went on a few minutes too long, like, if you don't have Moulin Rouge's budget, or Kylie Minogue, for that matter, just don't bother, please. But there were a lot of good scenes that made up for the silliness. I loved the butchers in their bloody aprons eating in their special cafe and drinking wine at 7:00 in the morning.

Okay, why don't the French suck? From last night's premier show, I gather it's because a) they care about the quality of what they stuff their faces with, and b) they make it a
point to take long cafe breaks, just sitting around doing nothing.
Sure, that would piss off some of TPTB in Washington, but I can't help thinking the issue
is more complex than that.

How the new show differs from AB's earlier F*** N****** series? Well, it's twice as long, Anthony's "license to snark" has been upgraded, and the production crew has more tech toys to fool around with.
That last one, not always a good thing. I could have lived without the absinthe-driven faux hallucination crap.
And does this show really need all those "parental discetion" notices -- not just at the top of the hour, but after every (bleep) break?!

Still, No Reservations made a promising start over all. Looking forward to next week's show out of Iceland.

arachne, that's a good point about the parental warning. I was wondering about that last night. What part was so terrible for the kiddies to see? The absinthe? The rats? The high cholestrol content?

Well, I'd keep pre-teen girls away from the smoking=thin message. There was one bleeped F-word. Other than that it was pretty tame. It is on at 7 pm on the west coast and I'd probalby not watch it with my three year old, but that's what Tivo is for.

I was wondering about the warning too...I'm thinking it was probably for the scenes of dead game. Some kids might have been traumatized by the "they cut Rudolph's fucking head off" comment. The kids would be missing out, because that was some funny shit.

I was really hoping to love this show, but I found it superficial, boring, unfunny and hokey. The only thing that I found interesting was the absinthe preparation part. That's the only time I learned new stuff. The rest felt staged and cheesy. I greatly enjoyed reading Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, but this was a big pendantic YAWN.

Awwww, I liked the show! I have liked Bourdain since reading Kitchen Confidential. His cocky attitude just adds to the charm. I enjoyed that absinthe segment, but agree that it was a leeetle convenient that he happened upon this absinthe expert. That was a bit contrived. It's nice to see that he's still somewhat out there, and doesn't toe the traditional line. It was cool to see him clearly drinking way too much, but if KC was any indication it's pretty much what he does. I half expected to see him pick up a hooker or something.

The dig on Rocco DeSpirito was funny, even though Bourdain's appearance on Restaurant basically made it disingenuous. Still funny, though.

I'll be watching the Iceland episode.

I mostly enjoyed it, but it was a bit... overdirected. Too much time spent on him having 'hallucinations' and running around the sewers, and not enough rhapsodizing about food and great markets.

I found the show to be pretty boring despite having high hopes for it. There's just something about the way it was directed. It didn't flow nicely enough for me. I agree about the wayyyy too long hallucination scene. I'll definitely give it another try with the Iceland episode.

Bourdain called L'Hotel “a hipster hangout” which nowadays is synonymous with “place where one is likely to run into Paris Hilton”. It is most definitely upscale. Oscar Wilde would not have been caught dead in any place that was considered “off the grid”.
He was born in New York. Plenty of people don't speak their ancestral tongue. Although, he probably speaks it better than he lets on. I thought it was funny that the first sentence that instructor was teaching him was "Please, kill me!" and they didn't subtitle it.
This pissed me off. Why not just say “Hey I want to know more about absinthe so I’m going to meet an expert?”
What’s Kylie got to do with Paris? Do you mean Nicole Kidman? And yes, I thought it went on way too long, too.
I think the parental warning was about absinthe, which is illeagal (in any vintage) in the U.S.. So, much like showing people using pot, they have to put up a warning.

I liked the part when he went to the old Les Halles meat market and showed how it’s nothing but beautiful wrought iron gates. I stumbled onto that area briefly once, but there were a bunch of teenage boys huddled around looking furtive, so I cut it short.

Kylie Minogue played "The Green Fairy," i.e. the spirit of Absinthe, in Moulin Rouge.

I'm not sure absinthe is illegal. You can't buy it or sell it here, but you can bring it back from Canada or Britain without it being confiscated.

Yeah, that's it in a nutshell. Liked the part at the meat market the best.

Still, I enjoy Bourdain's energetic inconsistencies.

ETA: You can also get absinthe in Spain. Purportedly, the Icelandic art crowd that eventually spun off into the Sugarcubes used to have it smuggled into Iceland from Spain all the time.

I happened to catch this guy last week doing a show on "going back to my roots". He and his brother went back to France and he went on and on and on about the house and village he grew up in from early childhood into his teen years (in France). That makes him a native in my book. I had a large needlework project on my lap and the remote was out of reach so I couldn't turn it off. I was not at all impressed with him - way too much smoking and thinking he was Mr. It - reminded me of JBlo on that hair show. At the end they went on a picnic on some beach and shot off some firecrackers. They blew the end off a wine bottle and then threw the broken bottle off on the beach somewhere (for someone to step on and slice their foot off). Very classy - not!

If what I've heard is correct (and it may not be), real absinthe with actual wormwood (or whatever the hallucinogen is) is illegal pretty much everywhere except some places in Eastern Europe. You can get "absinthe" without the hallucinogen in a lot of places in Western Europe.

He didn't grow up in France. His family vacationed there when he was a kid. He's a New Yorker.

Well poor Oscar had come down pretty far in the world by the time he died and the D'Alsace as it was called at the time, was pretty trashy. Hence Wilde's deathbed comments (not sure if they are totally accepted as truth or not) paraphrased "either this wallpaper must go or I shall" upon which he is reputed to have drawn his last gasp.

Now it is upscale indeed. Very upper-middle class tourist. Groups from Turtle Creek, Deerborn and Bethseda. Complete with shiny bus and umbrella touting (though quite chic as far as that goes) tour guide. First student trip to Paris we had to stay there. Had some of the best bacon and eggs (it was a little cheese souffle) for breakfast. Bacon. Now that's Paris for you!

Can't wait until he does New Jersey week after. And tells us that great food can be found there. Yeah like its always been the food we were scoffing at when New Jersey came up in the conversation. All these incredibly entrenched myths he keeps destroying! And the Soprano's drive is so likely to happen.

He's from New York, but his father, at least, is a bona fide Frenchman, born in France. His family spent the summer in France every year when he was a kid. He at least can make himself understood--in the Cook's Tour episode where he went back to France, he parlay-vous-ed just fine with the locals.



Hee! You can get it here, too. Isn't absinthe without the hallucinogen Pernod?

Correct. They spent summers there. IIRC, the house was the residence of his grandparents. And fwiw, I'll bet Tony speaks Spanish more fluently than French.

I thought the show was solid -- but not without some problems, which many here have already mentioned. For me the main issue is this: Bourdain has always been synonymous with cooking and eating and while his branching into other areas (general travel) seems fairly natural, it isn't as nearly compelling as Bourdain on Food. I didn't learn a whole lot about Paris from watching this episode but I was entertained by it. I'm a fan of Bourdain and I appreciate his take on things and his overall persona.

That said, I think the scripted bits need to be shorter and tighter. There were also a few narrative segments in the 2nd season of A Cook's Tour which clunked a bit too; but they were clearly the exception, not the norm. Tony, Chris, Lydia, etc. are a savvy group and they'll want to refine what they're doing. My guess is that as the production rolls along, they'll develop a more critical eye for their work on this show. Perhaps the larger budget and complete creative freedom they're enjoying has led to a bit of self-indulgence. Knowing Tony, I'm not worried about it becoming a trend.

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more episodes. Tony is a unique voice and while the first episode wasn't perfect, it certainly succeeded in delivering 100% unfiltered Bourdain. Of course, if you're not a fan, that's probably a big negative. But I doubt the show will deviate much in that respect. He is who he is and that will always be up front and center. In fact, this first episode was as much (or more so) about Bourdain as it was about Paris. But, in this relatively new (for Tony) medium, there is much to master. Still, there's no doubt that Bourdain can tell a story. Given that, I'm confident the show will accomplish its mission as he continues to develop his mastery of the medium.

I prefer Ricard, but yes. Exactly. There are a few made with a "safe" level of Thujone. And there are recipes.

Thanks for correcting my presumption. I remember AB was born in NY but thought he grew up in France.

Not trying to beat this to death, but isn't his mom French too?

For some unknown reason, I deleted this episode on my DVR as soon as I was done watching it, even though I liked it and was interested in visiting some of the places he mentioned (bad Me, bad bad Me). Does anyone remember the name of the last restaurant he visited, the one hidden behind drawn curtains on a sidestreet, where Mom still works in the kitchen?

ETA: Nevermind, I found it: Chez Robert et Louise, 64, rue Vieille-du-Temple, Marais. Of course, the Marais! Chez Robert is now on my list of places to go in Paris. Except, I'm supposed to throw away the list and just go with the flow, right?

I don't think this is an improvement on A Cook's Tour, but I guess they won't be making any more of those so I'll take what I can get.

ETA: And obviously if you don't like Tony, both of these shows will be unwatchable.

I wish the show didn't attempt to have so much narrative flow -- i.e. the snooty waiter taking him to the wine cellar and then abandoning Tony in the sewers, etc. We know the wine cellar logically can't be directly connected to the sewer without at least a locked door, so why pretend otherwise.

Also, I wish he hadn't gone for the ubiquitous "fat Americans" comment at the beginning, particularly since the bistro guy was quite a chunk-load, as were quite a few of the meat market guys.

AB is still 10 times better than anyone on The Food Network, though.

Actually, when I was in France I couldn't help but notice how much thinner (and shorter) they were than Americans in general. It's not just a mild difference, it's really noticeable amongst both sexes and all ages. The odd portly one here and there stands out as a rarity. The subject may be cliche, but so is a shot of the Eiffel Tower, and I wouldn't expect a show on Paris to be without one.

I'm not saying there isn't a difference; I just wish he hadn't tried to make a connection between the cultures, diets, weight, etc., because it's so flawed. Life expectancy in the two countries is about the same -- slightly higher in the U.S. for males, lower for females. The thing is, I don't care what Bourdain's take is on that particular issue -- he's a smoker who extolls the virtues of pastry, meat, and booze. Don't get me wrong, these are all great and wonderful things. But don't even talk to me about health issues; that's not what I watch his show for.

Tony B's stuff is so much better than the usual crap on the Travel Channel. They seem to think Vegas is the most exotic destination in the world. I will totally watch this series.

**gasp** You mean - it isn't?!!! I kid, I kid!

Along with the shows on the Travel Channel exploring haunted locations - yep, I catch every single one of those shows when they air, please don't ban me - Bourdain's show is different, entertaining and fun. Can't wait for tonite's Iceland show. And yeah, as someone pointed out upthread, there's something vaguely . . . I dunno, sexy about him. Maybe it's a chef thing, cause I also have a thing for Gordon Ramsay. But YMMV.

Agreed. I appreciated the absinthe segment, up until the 'hallucination'--not because absinthe doesn't cause hallucinations etc (in fact my late stepfather lost four entire days back when he was in his twenties and drank absinthe in Germany; he just had no idea what happened during that period), but it was just a bit overdone in this instance.

LOL'd at the "it's cold, I need a cup of hot chocolate and two chicks" comment.

nevermind

I've been kicking myself for years over missing A Cook's Tour b/c I loved AB's books so much. If this show is anything like his last one, I didn't miss much. He's boring and not funny.

Actually i found A Cook's Tour to be quite watchable as the food was co-star to Bourdain. Granted, it was a co-star that had to kick and scream and fight for that role, but most of the time it worked.



I think it depends on where you go. I went to three weddings in various parts of the heartland and was pleasantly surprised at how few overweight people I saw. Which would seem to be the expected reverse. Last year's family trip to Normandie and I kept thinking I was in Russia or the Ukraine. Talk about porkers. Bourgogne had its share as well. I guess there are always exceptions to the rule.



Problem is they followed Michael Palin's Himalayas with this. Now if they had only had Palin do this show!

I thought Tony brought the snark last night, but I'd have to be some kind of hungry to tuck into a buffet of putrified shark, smoked sheep jaws, head cheese and gelatinous sheep testicles.

In the interest of full disclosure, I've tasted head cheese made from pork. It was scrambled in with eggs and my host told me it was corned beef hash before 'fessin up after my second or third bite. We're no longer friends.

And concerning the testicles. I once visited a cousin who works on a yoooge cattle operation. While I was there, the cowpokes were castrating a couple of hundred young calves. They had a chuckwagon set up, and the cook would take the newly-freed testicles, rinse them in salted water, then in fresh water, roll them in seasoned corn meal and toss them in the fryer. They tasted like beefy hushpuppies to me, but the unnerving part was that a small herd of the emasculated calves were standing around watching us eat their nuts. One locked eyes with me and seemed to be saying, "Eat up, motherfucker, but you better pray we never meet in a rodeo, cause if we do, payback's a bitch."

I thought he said two fat chicks, but it went by so fast I wasn't sure if I heard it right. Maybe I was unconsciously projecting my annoyance after the "fat Americans" thing in the first episode. But on the other hand, my initial response to what I thought I heard was, "tasteless... but funny."

It struck me as kinda funny that Bourdain, who so often praises the creativity and skill of working class cuisines because they use all parts of the animal out of necessity, was downright squeamish about the sheepshead and the fermented shark.

xii, he did say "two fat chicks"--looking back, I can see I simply forgot to type in the qualifying word "fat" in yesterday's post. Whoopsie. Must have been an unconscious revolt against that word while I chowed down my philly beef sandwich and french fries yesterday.

Actually I enjoyed last night's episode much more than the France one. I thought it was pretty amusing when Tony was getting his ass whupped in arm and thumb wrestling with all the beefy weightlifters, and I appreciated the fact that he wasn't trying to really gloss over the fact that Iceland's cuisine is, let's face it, disgusting. I had to avert my eyes during the display of sheep's skulls and fermented shark in the kitchen, and there was some humming (by me) to drown out the sound.