Customer Reviews

A Cook's Tour *pb

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

The thing about Portugal--the fattening and killing of the pig to using its bladder as a soccer ball--was wonderfully described. It's almost as if he brought us with him on the trip. But after that nothing really stood out for me, except his bashing (rightfully so, in my opinion) of Jamie Oliver and his memorable iguana eating experience, a hotel mascot no less, in Mexico. One can say, practically, these could have been found as chapters he discarded when he wrote Kitchen Confidential.

Do read the book; it's still a good read.

I'm new to reading travel books. I read "Blue Highways" in college and Bill Bryson's book about the Appalachian Trail recently. I guess I've been lucky so far...this is a good read in that vein. Neither of my last two finds are Earth shattering, but that's what makes them inspirational and sort of a bit-more-than-commonplace. What I mean is, it inspires you to try new things that you really can do on a realistic scale.

I've seen the Food Network show that the book builds upon. You'll read about what your not seeing. That's the beauty. On the TV show you may see Tony grimace through eating igauna for a moment, but in the book you get a great description of just how horrible it was. Or how he had to re-shoot his entrance to a restaurant---after a full course meal with waitress-induced drinks.

It's all about taking the cooking show out of the kitchen and getting adventurous. Can you see Emiril(sp?) sleeping in a floor-to-ceiling tiled dive hotel and then helping kill what he eats? Or haggling to buy a whole goat, riding camels over sand dunes all day (i can't see either Emeril or Mario doing that...unless it's on a Supercamel), and finally drinking beer, smoking hash, and eating the goat? Me either. And it's done with a great description of getting the goat and even the mud covered oven it's cooked in. The night sky. The campfire jokes.

In a nutshell, if you like cooking shows, like cooking, and like travelling, then give this book a whirl. This would be a great book to take traveling as it will inspire you to dig beyond the well-travelled main streets in search of the authentic experience wherever you are. Sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. Tony's NY city-boy point of view only accentuates the more rural experiences in the book.

A good read on it's own, it's really fun to watch the episodes after reading about them---or vice versa. The writing style is easily read and satisfying. A taste of what it's like to be in Vietnam or Russia in search of good food. I'd like to go on a trip like this---and with a knowledgable street-wise chef like Tony. I can't afford to yet (maybe never). Reading the book is OK for now. NOTE: Tony's experiences that involve animal slaughter are not handled lightly. Tony takes it very seriously and explains coming to terms with the realization that all meat comes via a death. Slaughters in the book, and there are only two or three, are done not in large slaughter-houses but by every-day people in various countries getting their freshest food the best way they can---live at a market or in their yard. They then have Tony eat in their homes, around their tables.

I take it all back. Everything I said about Kitchen Confidential I take back. The scrappy edit, the attitude, the skipping over of history, the half-told tales. I take it all back. If the success of that book meant that Anthony Bourdain was allowed to write this book - well, I take it all back.

This time around, Tony (he's Tony, like Tony Soprano) is travelling the world looking for the perfect meal. What that entails (or rather, what that entrails) is eating delicacies indigenous to specific locales: he eats a still-beating cobra's heart and drinks snake bile in Vietnam, he devours the intestines of a pig (and the everything else of a pig) in Portugal, he sucks up fish eyes, he eats a whole roasted lamb with the Tuareg (a nomadic desert community) in the Sahara, he dines with Russian gangsters, he even eats vegetarian food (and you know how much Tony hates vegetarians!). But it's more than that: he eats powdered dried king prawns, chopped toro and fresh chives, he eats tiny coronets of salmon tartare, shallot soup with English cucumber sorbet and dill-weed tuile. Your mouth aches. He eats muc huap (which is steamed squid and ginger), ca thut xot ca chu (tuna braised in tomato and cilantro) and mi canh ca (a sweet-and-sour soup of fish, noodles, tomato, onion, cilantro, pineapple and scallion, together with green crabs overstuffed with roe). You are narcotic with hunger.

But there is still more. You warm to Tony more this time around. It feels like the pressure is off. He is no longer performing (or at least not in the same way). We're old friends now, almost. What problems there are (he still skips - the book is wildly episodic and anecdotal - one chapter he is here, one chapter he is there - you get no real sense of WHY he goes to the places he does, what decisions are made concerning the passage from A to B) don't seem to matter quite so much because the episodes themselves are just so damn good.

Having read "Kitchen Confidential", it is evident that Bourdain has a unique approach to being a chef. In "A Cook's Tour", he travels the world in search of the "perfect meal", or to be exact, his perfect meal. He is quick to recognize that the concept of a perfect meal is very subjective, and is different for each person

He travels through Europe and Asia, searching out some of the most unusual and incredible dishes, and he has a camera crew along for the ride. Even if this was not to become a Food Network series, it would still be a great book. Bourdain considers this whole thing to be his way of selling out, which he points out early on, with some humility. Anyone who has read "Kitchen Confidential" would know that Bourdain hates celebrity chefs, Bobby Flay and Emeril being the cheif offenders in his books. For him to do something like this is, in his own worlds, selling himself out. Is it a healthy disrespect for success, or daftness? Perhaps both. But it is a fascinating journey, and exposes different and unusual culinary practices that are interesting, and sometimes hard to stomach.

As someone who aspires to be a chef, this book has presented a neat learning curve to me. The importance of embracing new techniques, and different cuisine of different cultures, is half the battle for being a good chef. The idea for this book was excellent, and it is something that most people would want to do given the oppertunity. Though not all aspects of this book are pleasant. Bourdain visits some places that most of us would rather not. In Asia, he visits a dirty, stagnat swamp hotel just so he can try the fire-roasted duck. He talks about episodes of food poisoning, bacteria, and animal slaughtering. Not all pleasant, but it only adds to the book's intrigue.

Even if you are not a foodie, this is a great read. Bourdain has a fresh and hip writing style that never meanders and keeps the reader hooked. Though I enjoyed "Kitchen Confidential" more, I think "A Cooks Tour" is a excellent book in it's own right.

Its a bit like reading the script for the show. I like the way Anthony Bourdain writes. Is it just me but doesn't all that smoking affect your tastebuds? The only thing that I didn't like was that pretty much everything is "fantastic". Everything can't be the greatest thing in the world. But he's funny and this is the first book I've paid full price for since my school days! I give this book three stars because when I was reading the chapters about his time in Vietnam, I am convinced that he kept misspelling some of the words! Horror! Horror! (not to mention the pig slaughter)

While "A Cook's Tour" includes descriptions of interesting places, people and some bizarre meals, it simply doesn't hold up to the raw impact of "Kitchen Confidential." I enjoyed Anthony's passionate writing about his experiences in Vietnam, but I didn't like his extremely liberal slant on the Vietnamese maimed and injured during the war. Anthony, we lost 50,000 young men trying to provide freedom for the Vietnamese people and the leaders of the old VC that you so enjoyed eating with were responsible for the murders of thousands of their own people after the war was over....

I must admit that I really like Bourdain. I'm a strict vegetarian, and he really knocks them in this book. But, simply put, he is a passionate writer. While I might not have liked to eat most of the things he describes, he describes them so well that I feel like I didn't miss out on anything--in the same way that I like war stories but have no desire to actually be in the fray. However, he is compassionate and honest. He witnesses a pig slaughter and describes it as an unpleasent experience, but he believes that since they use every part of it, and make it taste so good, that it makes sense. He sticks to his guns as far as his sense of what is good. If something tastes good or bad--he lets you know and why: especially vegetarians who overcook their vegetables, which could be the worst sin of all.