A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain
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Book Summary Author: Anthony Bourdain Edition: Hardcover Format: Bargain Price Published: 2001-12-07 ISBN: N/A Number of pages: 288 |
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Book Reviews of the A Cook's Tour
Customer Review: It's a delicious world out there
Summary: 4 Stars
Anthony Bourdain has a sweet job. Traveling the world, sampling its culinary delights...its the kind of job that one would never even imagine exists until someone creates it. And it is a bit odd that he should have this job. Anthony Bourdain is not a great writer, although he manages to turn a decent phrase. I have no idea if he is a great cook or not, but by his own admission he is not one of the greats. He is a great traveler, and has enough courage and sense of adventure to give it all a try, even though things don't always go well.
Which is pretty much the same with "A Cook's Tour". I have never seen TV program that the book is based on, but I am a big fan of "No Reservations" so I suspected something along the same lines. This book follows much the same format of "No Reservations", with Bourdain hitting various culinary spots across the world and trying what they have to offer, no matter what that might be. A whole pig in Portugal. Haggis in Scotland. All the goodness Mexico has to offer. And of course the infamous cobra's heart in Vietnam. He doesn't like everything he tries, but he tries everything that is offered.
Its good. Its interesting. One of the great things about Bourdain's style of travel-eating is that we could do it too. He doesn't hit the high-priced, pretty and polished restaurants that most readers of the books could never afford. He hits the street stalls, the home cooking, and wonders at the delights of the common meals that make everyone happy. I have been to a few of the places showcased on "A Cook's Tour", and it makes for a nice walk down memory lane to think of breakfast vodka in Russia, or deep-fried pizza in Glasgow.
Strangely enough, I think the one place he didn't get it right was in Japan, which is where I happen to live. I was looking forward to see what he would have to say about the place, and what delights he tried and what he thought. Instead, he had a traditional kaiseki dinner at a ryokan in Atami, accompanied by no less than two geisha. We are talking probably a multi-thousand dollar event here, something experienced only by the very super-rich of the Japanese populace. Not exactly "eating local", and a bit of a disappointment.