Product Description

Anthony Bourdain, life-long line cook and bestselling author of Kitchen Confidential, sets off to eat his way around the world. But being Anthony Bourdain, this was never going to be a conventional culinary tour. Inspired by Apocalypse Now, Bourdain heads out to Saigon where he eats the still-beating heart of a live cobra (washed down with its blood), and then into Cambodia, the Heart of Darkness, where he travels deep into landmined Khmer Rouge territory to find the rumoured Wild West of Cambodia (Pailin). Other stops include dining with gangsters in Russia, a medieval pig slaughter and feast in northern Portugal, the Basque All Male Gastronomique Society in Saint Sebastian, paladars in Cuba (Commie Beach Party), rural Mexico with his Mexican sous-chef, a pilgrimage to the French Laundry in the Napa Valley and a return to his roots in the tiny fishing village of La Teste, where he first ate an oyster as a child. Written with the inimitable machismo and humour that has made Tony Bourdain such a sensation. A Cook's Tour is an adventure story sure to give you indigestion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17838 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
A Cook's Tour is the written record of Tony Bourdain's travels around the world in his search for the perfect meal. All too conscious of the state of his 44-year old knees (Crunch! Pop! Snap!) after a working life standing at restaurant stoves, but with the unlooked-for jackpot of Kitchen Confidential as collateral, Mr Bourdain evidently concluded he needed a bit more wind under his wings.

The idea of "perfect meal" in this context is to be taken to mean not necessarily the most upscale, chi-chi, three-star dining experience, but the ideal combination of food, atmosphere and company. This would take in fishing villages in Vietnam, bars in Cambodia and Tuareg camps in Morocco (roasted sheep's testicle, as it happens); it would stretch to smoked fish and sauna in the frozen Russian countryside and the French Laundry in California's Napa Valley. It would mean exquisitely refined kaiseki rituals in Japan after yakitori with drunken salarimen. Deep-fried Mars Bars in Glasgow and Gordon Ramsay in London. The still-beating heart of a cobra in Saigon. Drink. Danger. Guns. All with a TV crew in tow for the accompanying series--22 episodes of video gold, we are assured, featuring many don't-try-this-at-home shots of Tony in gastric distress or crawling into yet another storm drain at four in the morning.

You are unlikely to lay your hands on a more hectically, strenuously entertaining book for some time. Our hero eats and swashbuckles round the globe with perfect-pitch attitude and liberal use of judiciously placed profanities. Bourdain can write. His timing is great. He is very funny and is under no illusions whatsoever about himself or anyone else. So far, so PJ O'Rourke. But most of all, he is a chef who got himself out of his kitchen and found, all over the world, people who understand that eating well is the foundation of harmonious living. --Robin Davidson

Mail on Sunday
'This is the stuff of real writing ... Bourdain is a great original'

Evening Standard
'Brilliantly written in a raw, stylish gonzo prose, with pitch black humour and a devilish turn of phrase'

Customer Reviews

Mmmmm... Fried Mars Bar....
To enjoy this book, you have to (A) really like food, and (B) accept that the whole exercise of Bourdain tramping around the world in a psuedo-quest for the ultimate food experience is rather artificial (which he admits right up front). So, bearing in mind that he's being trailed by Food Network cameramen, and has producers to prearrange a lot of stuff for him, Bourdain's global hopscotch of culinary exploration is a very readable and fun journey. He's not really looking for the "perfect meal" so much as looking for the experience that comes with food—from refined dining (there's a chapter on The French Laundry in Napa Valley), to home cooking (massive home-cooked meals in Portugal and Mexico, complete with barnyard slaughter), to street food (several chapters on Cambodia and Vietnam), to ritualized meals (in Japan and Morocco).

If you like your travel narratives to have classy guides, this definitely won't be your cup of tea. Bourdain's "bad boy" chef image is no doubt somewhat calculated and contrived, but he certainly manages to get good and drunk in virtually every chapter, and he's a chain-smoker to boot. Mix in a large number of sketchy gross-out foods (deep-fried Mars Bar, sheep testicles, beating cobra heart, etc.), and you've got a pretty fun little book. As evidenced in his fiction work (Bone in the Throat, Gone Bamboo, The Bobby Gold Stories), he's got excellent timing and can be very, very funny. He can also be very human and poignant, as in the chapter where he and his brother revisit their childhood summer vacation spot in France, and when he talks about his Mexican chefs. Some people have complained that he doesn't describe the food well enough, which I disagree with. Writing about taste is like writing about music, you can only hope to convey a vague impression, and he's really more concerned with the overall experience anyway. I defy anyone's mouth not to water while reading the Vietnam chapters.

Which is not to say to the book is perfect. I actually found his veering into the recent political histories of Vietnam and Cambodia to be rather clumsy but worthwhile. On the other hand, his anti-vegetarian screeching is just plain annoying and off-putting (I am not a vegetarian by the way). He treats all vegetarians as proselytizing, animal-lovers who want to ban any animal death—a portrayal wholly inaccurate of the many vegetarians I've known over the years. First of all, I've never met a proselytizing vegetarian, and second of all, most people I know are vegetarian, are that way for health reasons, not political ones. It's an even more irksome perspective in that he makes a big fuss over how upsetting it is to actual witness a pig/lamb/turkey getting killed for your dinner. It's as if he felt he had to put something feisty or controversial or nasty in there, just to keep his persona going, and it does nothing for the book.

The vegetarian thing aside, I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in food (and who isn't?) or other cultures. The chapters work pretty well on their own, and are the perfect length for devouring one a night before bed, although they'll likely drive you to the kitchen for a midnight snack!

Bang on!
A friend of mine bought me "Kitchen Confidential" for my birthday. It led to me going out and searching for offset-serated knives, sagely telling people to "avoid the swordfish" and was a damn-good read.

I holidayed in Vietnam and Cambodia last year and so I was well chuffed to find that Bourdain's follow up was a foodie-travel book including visits to these places. His descriptions of Saigon and back-water Cambodia are spot-on, as is his descriptions of the food. Plus there is loads of good stuff about Portugal, France and even fish'n'chips!

I read this book on two train trips, ensconsed in the restaurant car with cheap red wine, reminiscing about my own travels, salivating over the descriptions of the food and cackling to myself at the killer one-liners.

Highly recommended.

A great companion
Since I haven't been able to travel a lot the past five years this book really has been a treat to me. The thing with Bourdain is not the fact that he is a chef. He is a natural writing talent, In his previous book, Kitchen Confidential, he could just as well had been telling the story about a guy working as a brick layer. It is his ability to tell a story that makes him so readable. Of course, food and eating, is an important part of experiencing a foreign country, and Bourdain certainly makes great sacrifices when he is eating "mountain rectum" in Japan. He makes me want to go there. Just as well as he makes me want to visit Vietnam. This is travelling without moving at it's best.