Nicole Bemboom - Quicklet on Anthony Bourdains No Reservations

No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach is based off the content and experiences of Anthony Bourdain during filmings of the widely popular Travel Channel show, No Reservations. Anthony Bourdain, the host of the show, travels the world, showcasing foods ranging from late night street food, to a meal cooked by a Maharana.

Not intending for this book to be some cynical, cheap-ass companion book to the series, Bourdain includes photos that were taken along the way mostly by the shows production assistants. Although this book does complement the show, and gives a more in-depth view of many favorite episodes, it could also stand on its own as a photographic travelogue.

As Bourdain says in the introduction, the books photos try to give viewers a brief taste, a sense of what [they] felt during the relatively short time [they] were there , instead of doing a best of, or, even worse, attempting to create a comprehensive view of the place.

The show feels like travelling, if youre the sort of traveller who gets away from hackneyed cruises and guided bus tours. The book in no way attempts to be an exhaustive guide to the show, as the show does not attempt to be a comprehensive guide to a country.

Bourdain doesnt speak for anyone except himself, giving the book (and show) a very individual point of view. This is very refreshing, compared to the many travel shows that try to reduce a country to lists and bullet points. This is also a more honest approach, as no travel show or book can begin to encompass any country or city or village in its entirety.

Even though this tone is set in the show, the photos in the book really reinforce that rambling feeling. It also gives Bourdain more of a chance to involve the crew and the way their amazing, frequently quirky personalities and experiences drive the show. It also delves deeper into the strong friendships and relationships of the crew, and its significance to No Reservations in general.

Anthony Bourdain left his previous show, A Cooks Tour on The Food Network, with some of the staff, and began No Reservations. He studied at Vassar College andgraduated from the Culinary Institute of America, according to the Travel Channel.

He started working in a restaurant as a dishwasher and moved his way up. He is the Chef-at-large at Brasserie Les Halles in Manhattan. When he is not travelling for the show, he lives in New York City with his wife, Ottavia, and daughter, Ariane, who the book is dedicated to. They also appear on the Sardinia episode, where Ottavias family lives.

He is the author of Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook; Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking; Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical; The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones. He has also written three fiction novels: Gone Bamboo, Bone in the Throat, The Bobby Gold Stories: A Novel. He is also famous for his humor and no-nonsense take on the culinary world, as well as for his enthusiasm for truly great food.

You can follow him on Twitter @NoReservations , or on his blog on the Travel Channel, to read real-time updates and plenty of snarky observations.

Anthony Bourdains No Reservations follows his team as they travel the world making the show. Frequently travelling with Bourdain are Tracey Gudwin (field producer), Todd Liebler (cameraman), and Diane Schutz and Rennik Soholt (assistant producers). The crew took photos throughout in almost thirty countries, meeting an incredible diversity of people and eating an insane variety of foods.

Bourdain hopes these photos, along with the show, will reveal a real sense of the places they see the smells and the sounds, as well as the visual elements. The cast allows the country and the circumstances (and misadventures) of their travels to drive the content and style of the show. They often also heavily use the cinema of the country they visit.

To begin this journey around the world, Bourdain declares that deep inside every great cook anyone who knows what the good stuff is and what to do with itlurks the heart and soul of a Chinese guy . Generally considered to have one of the greatest cuisines in the world, China serves as Bourdains go-to locale.

Amazing photos of people, markets, rice paddies, rivers, and festivals bring us through the Asia section. Photos of calm landscapes, boats going up rivers, and sculptural kimchi pots are interspersed with images with frenetic energy, festivals, neon lights, and market places.

Bourdain travels in two countries, Ghana and Namibia, in Africa. His trip through Ghana is made without official governmental escorts. However, Namibia even though many of the people were sweet and hospitable was an uncomfortable experience for Bourdain.

Bourdain and his crew began filming a show in Beirut, eating at Le Chef, a popular and homey local restaurant. Soon after, war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah. Residential and industrial neighborhoods were bombed, as well as the international airport. There was also an Israeli naval blockage and leaving was no longer an option. Bourdain and the team had to be moved to a luxury hotel, overlooking the city being destroyed, and wait to be evacuated by an amazing team of Marines and Navy sailors.

In Europe, Bourdain alternately travels through countries that he loves (Ireland and Paris), and two that he finds beautiful, but boring: Iceland and Sweden. The tones of the photography also move between the cold blues and whites of Iceland and Sweden, and the warm, red tones of the Irish pub and Parisian evening street scene. He also visited Sicily, a city that would have been a failure if it werent for a great meal with a group of caper farmers.

Bourdain then visits the United States, stopping in a few incredibly diverse regions, with a swing up into Quebec. He finds amazing food and amazing people, encountering a few celebrities along the way.

Bourdain loves each country he travels through in South America, although less for the beautiful vistas and scenery, and more for the incredible people he meets there.

China

A calm and beautiful landscape of Sichuan Province opens up into the next page, showing a gorgeously rich and red photograph of Beijing at night, with lanterns hanging beautifully over a street. The text accompanying this red scene reads like a Valentines card, with Bourdain professing his love for Asia.

The ensuing pages bring China to life with hot red peppers from the Sichuan Province, and street foods in Beijing.

On pages 24 and 25, a subtle, but amusing juxtaposition emerges. A man in the Sichuan Province calmly smokes a pipe, while on the other page, Bourdain inhales from an oxygen mask in the Himalayas.

Hong Kong

A photo in a bleak kitchen shows a man making noodles in a traditional way, by bouncing on a bamboo pole. As is explained in the Hong Kong episode of the show, this way of noodle making is a dieing art, and he has found one of the very last people to practice it. It is probably the most breathtakingly beautiful food preparation scene that Bourdain has ever seen, but it is also heartbreaking, as he is alone practicing a traditional craft that also causes physical disfigurement.

India

Bourdain finds that that there are two types of visitors to India: Those who quickly find themselves frustrated, irritated, frightened of the food and water, intimidated by the all-too-evident poverty others, like [him] are charmed