The Travel Memoir Review

A New York chef eats the world for TV but not everything goes down smoothly

Review by Sam Baldwin

• Author: Anthony Bourdain
• Book First Published: 2001
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Rating: ★★☆

How our ratings work:

★★★ – Loved it. Highly recommended. Transcends interest in the location alone
★★☆ – Liked it. Recommended, especially if you’re interested in the location
★☆☆ – Didn’t like it. But may still appeal to those interested in the location

The Gist

In A Cook’s Tour, Anthony Bourdain – the New York Chef-cum-bestselling-author-cum-TV-show-presenter – gives us the behind-the-scenes account of his travels whilst filming the TV series that first brought him to the screen.

Each chapter covers Bourdain’s culinary adventures in one country. Locations in Morocco, Mexico, Scotland, Spain, France and others, are all stops on his culinary world tour. Bourdain shares accounts of what he ate, with who, where, but goes beyond tasting notes alone. We learn of the people, the history and flavour of the places he visits, enlivened by his sharp humour and often cutting honesty.

You might think that roaming the globe eating gastronomic delights would be a dream job for a chef. The arrangement, however, sometimes leaves him with a bad taste. And being Anthony Bourdain, he’s not shy in saying so. As the film crew attempt to convert Bourdain’s insight and love of off-beat, backstreet cuisine, into ‘video gold’, he’s not always onboard with the lights, camera and action. The “Reasons Why You Don’t Want To Be On Television” subsections dotted throughout the book offer an unvarnished account of making TV; combined with Bourdain’s wit and wonder of the world, this makes for entertaining prose.

The Guts

Bourdain had a love for the underdog, and a disdain for the well-to-do. He champions the low-paid kitchen foot soldiers who toil anonymously over searing stoves. And lambasts the pretentious restaurant owners, and their hipster customers. At times his tongue is a sharp as his paring knife, as the vegans who prepared a 10-course meal for him found out:

“Not one of them could cook a fucking vegetable. The knifework was clumsy and inept. The vegetables – every time – were uniformly overcooked, under-seasoned, nearly colourless, and abused, any flavour, texture and lingering vitamin content leeched out.”

And when he’s been goaded into eating some god-awful ‘speciality’ – for example, Bird’s Nest Soup – for the sake of the cameras, he is equally honest:

“It’s disgusting…..when the pigeon’s head, beak, eyes and all, comes popping up between the eggs and dates and bones and the rubbery sheets of coconut meat, peeling off the shell, I have had enough.”

But Bourdain admirably seeks out the unusual too. In Morocco, he goes to considerable effort to secure the whole lamb – testicles and all – required for meshwi, a traditional meal of the Berber people who roast the entire thing in a mud oven in the desert.

And he gives credit where due, often gushing over the simplest culinary experiences. Despite having dined frequently in Michelin-starred restaurants, Bourdain was no food snob. Street vendors and mom-and-pop establishments could win his affection, as long as they were friendly and serving fresh, flavourful dishes.

The chapters on Japan and Vietnam are perhaps the most entertaining. His excitement of discovering entirely new tastes and textures, pours onto the page. His account of Cambodia is equally enjoyable, though for the opposite reason; Bourdain finds the country quite unpalatable:

“Cambodia is a dream come true for international losers – a beautiful but badly beaten woman, staked out on an anthill, for every predator in the world to do with what he wishes.”

Why read A Cook’s Tour?

If you’ve never read Bourdain, I advise you start with Kitchen Confidential first. Having sold over a million copies, it’s the book that brought him out of the kitchen and onto the world stage. It’s straight memoir rather than travelogue but it’s gritty, funny and real: a highly entertaining reveal of the restaurant world’s grimey underbelly.

If, however, you already have a taste for Bourdain, then A Cook’s Tour could be your next meal. Ever wanted to know what eating the still-beating heart of a cobra is like (and then the guts, bones and muscle of the snake)? Bourdain will tell you.

There’s no real overarching narrative to the book; each chapter is a stand-alone course. Nevertheless, Bourdain had sharp wit, a wicked way with words, and an eye for the interesting trimmings. Foodies, travellers, and Bourdain appreciators will come away with a full stomach.