Anthony Bourdain's Blog

As our final episode of NO RESERVATIONS approaches, I’ve been asked to write a top ten list of personal favorites. That’s hard to do. It’s been a mixed bag—and deliberately so. Travel and food shows necessarily tell more or less the same story: somebody goes someplace, eats and drinks a lot of stuff, comes to some kind of conclusion (rightly or wrongly) then goes home. My partners and I—a rotating band of cinematographers, producers, editors and post production people—have worked very hard ov...

Calling all Anthony Bourdain fans in Birmingham, AL, Memphis, TN, SanAntonio and Midwest City, OK:Your time has come to see the host of No Reservations and The Layover up close and personal. An Evening With Anthony Bourdain kicks off Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. Find a location near you — and quickly, because tickets are selling out fast.

Tune in for the final season of No Reservations every Monday at 9|8c. And don’t miss the series finale of No Reservations, on Monday, Nov. 5, at 9|8c.

Austin, Texas is one of those cities where any excuse to visit is a good one. Any time of year, there’s great music, an ever enlarging and ever more interesting restaurant scene. One of the best food truck environments in the country. Great bars. Nearby, there’s like lakes and nature and shit (so I’m told). You can buy yourself a pair of very nice cowboy boots. And they have the best barbeque in the country.

Yeah. I know. Bold words. Especially coming from a guy who has said many times that No...

by Anthony Bourdain

Monday’s episode in Penang is, in my opinion, one of the best shot, best edited episodes ever. It helped that we were in what cinematographers call a “shot rich environment”—where it seems that everywhere you point, there are bright colors, characters, beautiful things. The food is generally thought of (even by many proud food nerds in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur) to be among the very best in the Straits— and I think you’ll see why. Penang is the kind of place that ruined me...

by Anthony Bourdain

Generally speaking, there are two distinct audiences for this show: people who like to look at images of food and areinterested in where it comes from and how it got to the plate—and people who like to travel—or like the idea of travel—and enjoy watching images of faraway places and cultures.Oh—and there’s also a smaller group who apparently enjoy watching me get falling down drunk and stupid. But that’s another matter.

This week’s episode is about food. More specifically, i...

by Anthony Bourdain

I’ve referred only half jokingly over the years to the early days of my television career when, after two seasons of making shows around the world for A COOK’S TOUR, I was advised thataudiences just didn’t respond to all those foreign locations where people talked funny and sometimes (horror of horrors) even had to be subtitled. My cruel masters sat back in their chairsand with dreamy, wistful looks suggested how wonderful it would be if I could just confine my interests to...

by Anthony Bourdain

Eight seasons of NO RESERVATIONS.  Who would have guessed?  I sure as Hell wouldn't have. How long could we get away with it? Not very long was the prevailing wisdom. And yet here we are.  Nearly 700,000 air miles later, about two thirds of the way through shooting—and it's looking pretty good. Mozambique—airing tonight—looks SO good, in fact, that our Emmy Award winning cinematographer Zach Zamboni says it's the finest work he's ever done.  (Personally, I think the...

by Anthony Bourdain

What do Norah Jones, Christopher Walken,  the band " ****edUp", Vegan Black Metal Chef,  Sam Brown, nightmare of Eastern European folklore Krampus, the Catalonian Pooping Log, Dave Arnold, chefs Lidia Bastianich,  April Bloomfield, Kurt Gutenbrunner, Eder Montero, Alexandra Raij, Carlos Llaguno Morales and the voices of Adam Richman and Andrew Zimmern have in common?

They all foolishly agreed to appear in our scandalous, dark, action-packed fever dream of a Holiday Show...

I just got back from family vacation, where, for ten days, I violated all my rules and everything I've ever preached about how to travel.  I stayed put. I rarely left the hotel grounds.  I ate in the same two restaurants for most of my trip—rarely deviating from pasta, pizza and gelato. Though there was a lake a few hundred yards walk down, I never put so much as a toe in it—spending the bulk of my days instead, splashing around in the shallow end of the pool with a Barbie pail , an...

In the end, we were all fine–as untouched and untroubled as we'd been before Iraq.

If anything changed, if there was a single takeaway from what we saw in Kurdistan and what we learned during three days of "Hazardous Environment Training" in what our British instructors called "Virginiastan", it was the absolutely jaw-dropping realization of exactly how physically difficult it is for our military personnel on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.And I'm not talking about the fighting. I'm...