Product Description

Dodging minefeilds in Cambodia, diving into the icy waters outside a Russian bath, chef Bourdian travels the world over in search of the ultimate meal.

The only thing Tony Bourdain loves as much as cooking is traveling, and A Cook's Tour is the shotgun marriage of his two greatest passions. Inspired by the question, 'What would be the perfect meal?', Tony sets out on a quest for his culinary holy grail.

Our adventurous chef starts out in Japan, where he eats traditional Fugu, a poisonous blowfish which can be prepared only by specially licensed chefs. He then travels to Cambodia, up the mine-studded road to Pailin into autonomous Khmer Rouge territory and to Phnom Penh's Gun Club, where local fare is served up alongside a menu of available firearms. In Saigon, he's treated to a sustaining meal of live Cobra heart before moving on to savor a snack with the Viet Cong in the Mekong Delta. Further west, Kitchen Confidential fans will recognize the Gironde of Tony's youth, the first stop on his European itinerary. And from France, it's on to Portugal, where an entire village has been fattening a pig for months in anticipation of his arrival. And we're only halfway around the globe...

A Cook's Tour recounts, in Bourdain's inimitable style, the adventures and misadventures of America's favorite chef.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26299 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12-07
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Amazon.com Review
A Cook's Tour is the written record of Anthony 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 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 salarymen. 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 the author 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. 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, Amazon.co.uk

From Publishers Weekly
In this paperback reprint, swashbuckling chef Anthony Bourdain, author of the bestselling Kitchen Confidential (which famously warned restaurant-goers against ordering fish on Mondays), travels where few foodies have thought to travel before in search of the perfect meal: the Sputnik-era kitchen of a "less-than-diminutive" St. Petersburg matron, the provincial farmhouse of a Portuguese pig-slaughterer and the middle of the Moroccan desert, where he dines on "crispy, veiny" lamb testicles. Searching for the "perfect meal," Bourdain writes with humor and intelligence, describing meals of boudin noir and Vietnamese hot vin lon ("essentially a soft-boiled duck embryo") and 'fessing up to a few nights of over-indulgence ("I felt like I'd awakened under a collapsed building," he writes of a night in San Sebastian hopping from tapas bar to tapas bar). Goat's head soup, lemongrass tripe, and pork-blood cake all make appearances, as does less exotic fare, such as French fries and Mars bars (deep fried, but still). In between meals, Bourdain lets his readers in on the surprises and fears of a well-fed American voyaging to far-off, frugal places, where every part of an animal that can be eaten must be eaten, and the need to preserve food has fueled culinary innovation for centuries. He also reminds his audience of the connections between food and land and human toil, which, in these sterilized days of pre-wrapped sausages, is all too easy to forget.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
If anyone could sell you on the idea of drinking cobra bile, it's this flamboyant chef. His con gusto reading of his second book (the first was KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL) may alternately delight and dismay you. As he eats and drinks his way around the globe, Bourdain describes the slaughter of a pig in Portugal with almost the same enthusiasm as he has for the makings of near ideal repasts in Vietnam or the Napa Valley. Nothing about his reporting is half-baked; he bestows praise (upon Scotland's native foods) and disdain (upon vegans) with equal vigor. So much of his personality comes through that you can't imagine anyone else in the performing role. The abridged itinerary jumps from one continent to another--more pauses would help. Not for the faint of heart--or stomach. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Some good stuff in there, but overall just average book. And animal lovers beware
I am a big Anthony Bourdain fan. I couldn't wait to get this book. I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of it, although some of the slaughter descriptions were a bit disturbing (I love animals). There were some truly moving chapters in there and some very interesting stuff. However, it really started to slow down after a while. Each chapter seemed pretty much like the chapter before. I guess that is to be expected, but it really got less interesting. And the descriptions of animals being slaughtered started to get to me after a while. I have maybe 1/4 of the book left and I'm not inclinded to pick it up anymore. Felt like he was just trying to fill pages for some of the chapters.

More Focused Than Bourdain's Television Escapades
... and that's because in print, versus video, the ever-fascinating "bad boy" we've grown to know and love (well, tolerate; nah, love) doesn't interrupt an otherwise well-crafted exposition on the country he's visiting to "pull a Fellini" (but much less artfully) and digress into all sorts of asides, semi-charming castigations and "they made me do it!" aspersions that many times weaken the overall flow of his television series. Here, Bourdain has the sense to focus almost exclusively on the landscape, the flavors, his hosts and his (extraordinarily wide ranging) reactions and leave the "inside" commentary to extended postscripts at the end of certain stories. And when Bourdain does mention his "shooter" or producer in the body of a given chapter, it's woven more appropriately into the narrative than on cable.

Bourdain is one interesting fellow, a real scamp; and he can write, too. His love affair with the Vietnamese people and their cuisine jumps off the page at you, his reverence for the French Laundry almost requires you to light votive candles, and his graphic explanation of preparing a farmhouse meal in Portugal may make you turn vegan. He can also elicit a solid series of belly laughs when the situation demands; his description of writhing intestinal misery as he grapples for the remote to nix a televised homage to Jerry Lewis during a return to France had me howling.

The best way to savor this one-of-a-kind culinary globetrotter is to watch the show, pick up the rascal's collection of grimaces, smirks, cigarette drags, loping marches down alleyways and "I'm almost high" style of voiceover, then turn off the set and start reading. Because his books - if "A Cook's Tour" is any indication - are better than his broadcasts.

Fun!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and Anthony Bourdain's irresistible writing style. Friendly--not flowery or snobby. I guess I'm one of very few who found it much more entertaining than Kitchen Confidential. I liked reading about what went on on the other side of the camera and that some of the feasts and locations were not his choices. I was surprised that a star of a television show was flying coach class to Asia. Could that be true? I do know that the average tourist or even a very wealthy one would never be able to duplicate some of the special attention and exquisite meals he was served--especially in Japan.