"wrong on so many levels"

i must admit it. i LOVE anthony bourdain. lately i have been spending all my free, waking hours (of which there are surprisingly few) watching chopped up episodes of 'no reservations' on youtube. i fucking love it.

the man is slowly making his way up my list of heroes and people i would like to sit down with over a beer and a meal. he just has the right outlook on life, and beyond that, a fantastic turn of phrase. and well, let's face it - the man knows food.

in truth, i basically envy his job. he writes. he travels. he eats. and he gets paid to do all of those in an unendingly sarcastic tone and with a helluvalotta humour. where do i sign up? i've eaten weird stuff! remember all that bamboo back in anji? or how about the pork brain hot pot. or the scorpions!

the more episodes i watch, the more difficult i find it to choose a favourite. what about the one in japan where he eats himself out of house and home with twin comics that force him to do karaoke? or the one where he takes a boat into the jungles of borneo and is greeted with an axe for slaughtering a pig? the one i watched today was pretty good - he was running around uzbekistan with zamir, the crazy russian, and that brings me to the romania episode, in which zamir also featured, and also included a rather amusing incident with a bad tourist castle on halloween night.

bourdain just knows. he'll tell you to eat without fear, something that all people have trouble doing on some level. he approaches each culture he visits with a clean slate - no preconceived notions or tales of "well when i was in hong kong, they did it THIS way. screw you uzbekistanis."

so i will leave you with a quote and a link and encourage you all, if you haven't experienced the wonder of 'no reservations' to immediately drop what you are doing and spend the rest of your day on youtube.

and remember, if you're ever in iceland, "when packing a picnic, keep the booze on your person."

"Rachael Ray does to food what Hitler did to Poland." - AB