A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines [Paperback]

I began this book with much excitement and anticipation in having heard wonderful things about Kitchen Confidential. However, I was gravely disappointed.

Bourdain is simply ignorant. His comments and judgements are ill-founded and demonstrate complete cultural imperialism. I have read many travel-foodie books, but never one where the author was so completely disrespectful.

Bourdain tries to position himself on a throne, above all celebrity chefs who aren't 'cooking in kitchens'. Given, that he is a judge on Top Chef, this is highly ironic and hypocrital. At the very least, food becomes more accessible through books and television - food an ordinary person cannot try or experience. Bourdain fails to see his priviledge in access to the finest in life, judging all those who consume in such mediums of access. Is his book not just that - a window into an opportunity, the average person would not have? At least Emeril, who he picks on repeatedly, is humble and attempts to make ingredients and foods accessible to people who cannot afford to visit French Laundry.

Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Bourdain has profited greatly from this supposed `selling out'. He spends endless amount of time complaining and complaining and complaining and complaining about being pushed into this Food Network world. Get off your high horse Bourdain...as he travels and encounters poverty at its worst, he still manages to feel sorry for himself for having to show up to a TV set.

Bourdain is ridiculous in the assumptions he makes about cultures, communities and people. Bourdain is not a historian, so perhaps he should fact check his books.

I completely understand that as a chef, vegetarianism isn't his desired culinary lifestyle choice. However, he makes sweeping generalizations about an entire group through seeking out the extreme case. Perhaps, he does this to justify his own brutality and unethical approach to food. As a chef, one would think he would have the common sense to see the value in ethical consumption of food products in general - meat or otherwise. Many vegetarians disagree with the mass meat factory production that has taken over the meat industry, rather than meat eating itself.I have yet to meet a vegetarian that suggest that EVERYONE, including those living in poverty, should be consuming organic vegetables and soy. He also fails to recognize (or visit) vast areas of vegetarians throughout the world based on cultural or religious beliefs. His comments are highly bigoted, given the generations of various indigenous populations that have had a vegetarian and eco-friendly food consumption cycle.

Essentially, this book is his ignorant ramblings. One would think to publish a book at his level, he would hire a fact checker.

Offensive, bigoted and a true imperialist - Bourdain proves to be nothing but a overpriviledged, White, American on a quest to affirm his own lifestyle.

This is a travelogue about eating. Bourdain decides he wants to sample the best of what's out there, and he travels far and wide to find what he's looking for. He doesn't exactly find THE perfect meal, but he does get to eat a lot of perfect meals and taste some darn good cooking. On the other hand, he also sampled some truly vile stuff, like raw cobra bile, that wiser souls would not allow past their lips. Bourdain's style is rather wild- -if profanity offends you, this book is not for you.

Bourdain is an evangelical meat eater. Indeed, a central theme of the book is his relationship to the animals that are slaughtered for his consumption. In the beginning of the book, he attends his first pig slaughter, describing to us such details as pulling the excrement out of the dead pig's anus. Similar stories are told of slaughtering a lamb in Morocco and a turkey in Mexico, culminating in his swallowing a still-beating cobra heart in Vietnam. At several points, he dissolves into a rant about the evils of vegetarianism, and he declares that the worst meal that he ate in the tour was a vegan meal in California. On the issue of to eat or not to eat meat, I am open-minded- -I will eat steaks or vegetarian lasagna with equal gusto. The question for me boils down to whether the cook knew what he or she was doing, has chosen fresh items, and is capable of preparing them appropriately. Everyone needs to make their own choices about what they put into their bodies, and nobody (with the possible exception of your own parents) should have the presumption to tell you what you should or shouldn't eat. Bourdain might have saved his anti-vegetarian rants for a specifically political tome. After all, I'm sure he enjoyed a number of completely vegetarian dishes in Asia, but considered them acceptable because their ethnicity was Asian and not vegan.

For a world tour to find the perfect meal, Bourdain picked an odd itinerary. Yes, France, Portugal, Mexico, and Vietnam were all musts. He only had one year, so he couldn't fit in Italy, Thailand, or Argentina. But somehow he found time for Russia, England and...Scotland? He must have had ulterior motives for choosing these locations besides looking for good food. Let's see- -in Russia, every good meal was accompanied by enough vodka to drown a sailor, so it's hard to believe he could remember the meals afterwards accurately enough to write about them. And in Scotland, I'm sure even the deep-fried Mars bars that he tried tasted good with enough beer. And in the end, it's hard to take this guy seriously as food connoisseur because he's a smoker. Face it, Tony, your taste buds are dead. If you want to really taste good food, you've got to give up the smokes.

Tony confesses at the beginning he sold out, but then takes us along for a great ride. I was interested because I had seen the show, I could tell he wasn't that serious, but was enjoying the opportunity. He has the New York blunt, rye attitude, yet allows us to see the human side of his mistakes and highlights them with his humor.

His style may well offend if you are too sensitive sensibilities. Though he reminds me of many career cooks I have known.

If you loved the show, it will make you look at it in a whole new light. If you enjoy food and traveling to different cultures it's a book for you. If you enjoy a good read, buy it and watch Tony's quest for the Perfect 'Free' Meal.