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‘No Reservations’ about food

Stir it up Anthony Bourdain

Anthony Bourdain, a professional chef and writer for more than three decades, is out of the kitchen and on the road. His travel experiences are presented in the popular series “No Reservations”. He talks about all things food and his show. Excerpts

Are we moving towards a global palate? Is this killing indigenous cuisines and produce?

No. No way. It’s a big, big, big world and a lot of really amazing places to go. I can easily spend ten years just shooting in China, it is such a gigantic country with such a diverse culture. So no, that’s really not a concern at all.

Are chefs the rock stars of the millennium?

It is impossible to live a full time bohemian lifestyle and also be a good chef in New York. Chefs may party hard after work but their habits on the job have had to become much more responsible with increased media attention and responsibilities. Cooking professionally is hard, repetitive, intensely physical, high-pressure work. Can you tell us something about the genesis of No Reservations?

Discovery Travel & Living, fantastically enough, gave us total freedom to make the kind of television we wanted to make. So I get to choose where we go. I’m in no way censored by the network. How important is experimenting to cuisine?

I’m having fun. If people tell me something is good in their country, I’m going to try it. If I show up in Vietnam and they say, “Well, you have to try the cobra heart,” I’ll try it. I like to eat whatever people are enthusiastic about in a particular place. I’ve had many bad experiences while eating around the world. But the bad experiences are well worth enduring for all the really, really great ones. I don’t even know what “strange” means anymore when it comes to food.

What can we look forward to in the new season of No Reservations?

In the new season I have travelled all over from Vancouver to New Orleans and Scotland to Greek Islands. My quest for the perfect bite has taken me to Romania, Jamaica, Hawaii and Tokyo.

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations airs on Discovery Travel & Living every Saturday at 10 p.m., from July 12

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