Product Description

"No Reservations" is Bourdain's fully illustrated journal of his far-flung travels throughout the world. The book traces his trips from New Zealand to New Jersey and everywhere in between, mixing beautiful, never-before-seen photos and oddball mementoes with Bourdain's hilarious and outrageous tales of what really happens when you give a bad-boy chef an open ticket to the world. Want to know where to get good fatty crab in Rangoon? How to order your reindeer medium rare? How to tell a Frenchman that his baguette is invading your personal space? This is your book. With his trademark wit and soulful charm, Bourdain takes readers with him on a hell-for-leather world tour, eating, drinking, hazing his producers, and generally getting in and out of international trouble. For any of Bourdain's growing army of rabid fans, this is an indispensable opportunity to hit the road with the man himself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51053 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
#39;Bourdain #39;s enthusiasm is so intense that it practically explodes off the page #133;Bourdain shows himself to be one of the country #39;s best food writers. His opinions are as strong as his language, and his tastes as infectious as his joy. #39; New York Times Book Review #39;I #39;ve spent far too much time this year reading kitchen books. One that I particularly enjoyed was Anthony Bourdain #39;s collection, The Nasty Bits, especially his commentaries on his own essays in which he tends to say: "I think I had my head up my ass when I wrote this thing" #39; Monica Ali #39;Bawdy, bolshy and bursting with energy. #39; The Daily Mail on A COOK #39;S TOUR #39;Fantastic: as lip #45;smackingly seductive as a bowl of fat chips and pungent aioli #39; The Daily Telegraph on KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL

About the Author
Anthony Bourdain is the author of the bestselling Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour, which was turned into a successful series by the same name for the Food Network. He has also written many thrillers and, recently, a successful cookbook, Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. Anthony Bourdain lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

Not his best book by a long shot
Anthony Bourdain has produced some wonderful television programmes aimed out the outer fringes of culinary experience. The sort of person whose idea of a travel guide is showing a meal of snake bile and wichity grub.

When I got this book I had hoped for more of the same. What we actually have is largely a collection of photos of his travels around the world while making his programmes accompanied by a short text telling us how wonderful the people were. Very little about food, in fact very little about anything. Now Anthony Bourdain admits that his journeys are not a real quest in search of the ideal meal or anything so ideallistic. Rather they are a foodies journey to collect as much bragging power as possible when he wants to gross someone out about worst meals possible (while of course collecting a few very good meals en route).

To be fair in the introduction he admits that he was not trying, as so many TV tie ins do, to just reproduce the original programme. However what we are left with is little more than his holiday snaps. It's not large enough and glossy enough to be a coffee table book, it's not detailed enough to be a travelogue, it doesn't reproduce the programme well enough to be a foodie book. If you want a TV tie in buy some DVDs, if you want a travel book buy some rough guides and if you want a book on food then Anthony Bourdain has written some far better books than this.

Too many pictures, not enough words
This is a coffee-table picture book, rather than the next proper Bourdain book. It seems to have been cobbled together in time for the Christmas season. The photos are excellent, though, but if you have seen the TV shows, you've probably seen most of this already.
My advice? For a Bourdain fan's present, buy them the DVDs of the series.