No Reservations
 

Does any one else watch this show? It's become one of my favorites.

My two favorites on that channel are "No Reservations" and "Bizarre Foods". Both of them are great shows.

Wasn't there a movie called this lately? Absolutely horrible.

I like Bourdain. With him, what you see is what you get. A nice guy who is a straight shooter. A nice thing, is while he is a chef and understands cuisine, doesn't proclaim himself as a chef in terms of a Gordon Ramsay, Thomas Keller, and such.

No. No Reservations is a show on the Travel Channel hosted by Anthony Bourdain.

I'm watching it right now. One of the few things on TV I go out of my way to watch.

I absolutely love Bourdain and his show. It's not often you get a travel host that will audibly shriek in horror whenever the indigenous folk threaten to break into song and/or dance.

All of the 'Zamir' episodes, Uzbekistan, Russia, Romania, arre truly wonderful television.

Yep, I've got 10 or 11 eps of NR recorded that we're eventually going to watch once the Spring shows we're watching end and we can get to them. Great show.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0481141/

Bad movie..

Isn't this the guy (and the show he hosts) who nearly blacked out in the Himalayas (or some similarly highass mtn range) and smoked a cigarette to feel better?

If so, yeah, I find him pretty watchable.

If not, that sure SOUNDS like him.

I enjoy watching, and have quite the buildup on DVR right now.

...that's him, and speaking of:

Did anybody notice that if you watched this season Anthony WASN'T smoking. At one point in the Romania episode he mentioned "Geez, this almost makes me want to pick up smoking again."

It's understandable, that even though he kind of built smoking as a primaary part of his personal ethos, when he did decide to give it up, for whatever reason, he shouldn't have had to have a whole show, and formally announce that he's given up smoking in some sort of ceremony....but on the other hand it's kind of weird to a regular viewer, to not mention it at all, and it blew my mind when I realized I'd actually been watching an entire season of No Reservations and hadn't noticed that he wasn't smoking.

He stopped smoking when his daughter was born.

I like this show and I've read both of his books. He's hilarious.

I honestly don't understand though, how a chef can smoke. How can you taste the food you're preparing? I thought smoking killed the taste buds?

Must be not.

LOTS of cooks smoke. Sometimes it can seem like the rule rather than the exception. Cooks can have 1-2 hours of intense stress and pressure followed by periods of intense boredom, and smoking is a habit that can very easily slip into those cracks, while also offering some kind of release, as well as offering an excuse to just plain get out from behind the burners for five minutes. Smoking also seems to be part of restaurant culture, to some degree (even to a global extent) and all of that combines to give you more cooks who smoke than you might expect.

...but it certainly does effect your sense of taste.

I wish the full seasons would come out on DVD.

The London/Edinburgh show was especially good. Particularly the part with Marco Pierre White.

I'm pissed. Without getting into too many details (don't want to spoil any upcoming episodes), I had the opportunity to hang out during an upcoming taping of NR, and I love Anthony Bourdain. Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to make the trip. I don't think I'll be able to watch that episode... I'll just get too annoyed.

This is code for Mrs. CamEdwards would have kicked your ass if you got to hang out and she didn't...

+1

Anthony Bourdain goes to different counties and eats food, drinks alcohol, and hangs out with the locals. He'll eat anything (he had chicken anus in Korea, said it was chewy) and he hates karaoke. My description doesn't do it justice, it's really an entertaining show. Here's the homepage.

To add to your description as I watch the show in Belfast right now, a big part behind his 'idea' of the show is to experience and learn about different cultures through their foods. The show can give a little history lesson and relate it to the current time, like with story of Belfast right now.

Depending where he goes, who he's with and what he's doing, the show can take on a slightly different flavor every week. Sometimes it's travel show, sometimes it's a food show, sometimes it's like a bad 'buddy road trip' movie. Sometimes it's goofy, sometimes more serious. Etc. Etc. That's part of the show's charm for me, the flavor's always a teeny bit different and you're never quite sure what you're going to get.

The show is great because Bourdain is a fantastic writer, which comes through in his narratives/voiceovers, and each show has a specific theme and history lesson about the country/culture he's visiting. If I ever traveled to any of these places, I'd do the same touristy things everyone else does. So he takes me to the places I would miss, AND I learn a little something in the process. And he's entertaining as hell.

This thread needs a bump for obvious reasons. New season of 'No Reservations' begins tonight (7/7/08) on the Travel Channel. Woot!

Our 2 months without cable is starting to kill my wife. Now it begins to kill me too. :(

Time to start looking for a feed somewhere on the internet. :)

I was wondering why that showed up on my recording list again. Cool! I still have 8 or so from last season I haven't gotten around to. Need to make that a habit again before the fall TV season comes around.

His show on Beirut was stellar. He and his crew essentially arrived just before Israel started bombing parts of the city. The whole episode traced their experiences as they watched the bombs fall wondering when they would be airlifted out. They finished the taping on a US aircraft carrier after having been shipped away from the city. It was pretty intense to hear Bourdain share his thoughts and feelings about the whole thing.

Any idea of the locations this year?

Found this on a blog:




Tonight is Laos.

In addition to the episodes that Ksyrup listed, there will also be a Labor Day special episode. No word yet on what it will cover.

I noticed that all of the previous episodes are available at iTunes for those that want to catch up on those episodes.

Visiting DC, is he?

Or perhaps South Carolina or Missouri.

Either would be better than D.C. College towns > murder capital.

Ditto. I did a Zimmern impression at a cookout Saturday and it killed. I had a little piece of chicken and was saying that it was pickled pidgeon uterus and "oh...this is fantastic. It's not gamey like you'd expect, but you definitely know you're eating uterus."

Bourdain is great as well. Loved his Florida Keys episode and loooooooooooooove him on Top Chef as well.

Speaking of Top Chef, my fiancee has no interest in FOF Central, so I can get this off of my chest: I think Gail Simmons, the judge they have from Food and Wine magiazine is gorgeous. My finacee "hates her face" and her "floppy looking boobs" but I don't care what she thinks. It seems to me, that I'm only allowed to find women who she thinks are better looking than her attractive. Scarlett Johansson...fine, Megan Fox...fine, Sarah Silverman..."oh my god you're weird." If my fiancee didn't exist, and I was given the option on who I'd choose to marry, assuming the three afformention women were in love with me, I'd take Silverman every time.

From pickled pidgeon uterus to marrying Sarah Silverman, I am the king of digression.

My personal favorite is when he refers to any food as 'gelatinous'. Pig's snout and lukefish are the two things that come to mind that he's called gelatinous.

He's love his pig, duck, and goose (and that includes all parts). I like the one show where he goes to Montreal and eats at the Foie gras restaurant. The chef just keeps sending out dish after dish that are twists on foie gras. I thought he was going to die.

I'm looking forward to Tokyo.

Yeah, some professions just lend themselves to much higher rates of smoking. I notice a large percentage of Hell's Kitchen contests smoke, for whatever that's worth. :D

Retail is another professions that has a greater percentage of smokers than the general population. Same basic concept: high-stress job that can have periods of intense boredom if nobody's shopping.

I'd never seen the Vietnam episode that aired tonight after the Laos premiere.
Classic stuff with the "Central Committee" guy.

that was amazing TV

Didn't he get an Emmy nomination for that show?

i believe so

It's quite interesting. The one, rich guy was pretty interesting.

Should be an interesting show tonight.

You know, he went out of his way to point out several times that Columbia is such a changed country. I'm sure it's better, but I'm not going to be booking vacations to there anytime soon. It's always much safer when you have a full television crew with you.

I really enjoyed the show in Saudi. It was very entertaining, and very interesting.

After watching last night's show on Tokyo, it just enforces why it's one of top places I want to go visit.

Do they serve Chicken-House-of-Pooh there?

Heh. Sitting here watching the Southwestern US episode with my son as we wind down, they show the segment with Ted Nugent and my son turns and says "Y'know, Ted just seems like a normal guy".

Proud moment for Dad I tell you, proud moment indeed ;)

New season premieres tonight at 10:00 PM EST. Mexico is the first stop on this tour.

i watched the one on Spain the other night - sounds like some amazing restaurants up there in basque country

Great, Great Show!! The Brazil and US/Mexico Border shows have to be my faves thus far.

Spain has some of the best restaurants in the world.


Real Mexican food looks amazing. What was that one dish they were making at Carlos' parent's house that was the star of the meal (it takes over 24 hours to make)?

Mole

UGH.

So, the Onion did an interview with Bourdain this past year, and he mentioned that he'd soon be filming an episode (of something) where he goes back to Les Halles for a night (Tuesday night) and works a double shift like he used to. He fully expected to crash and burn.

Anyone know what series this was a part of, if it's aired at all?

They showed it last season. Pretty funny stuff. He did well, but he was exhausted by the end of the night.

It was a good show. I think it's on YouTube as well. What was fun was that he brought Eric Ripert to join him.

i gotta set a series recording for no reservations

New season starts in about 30 minutes from now.
First up: Chile

I've really become hooked on this show - interesting places, great host, and great food.

I hate his persona, and pretend punch him whenever I see him, his show is ok.

That's how I feel too. I like the show because it's really interesting, but he acts like a douce a lot.

"I don't want to be sitting on a stool enjoying my coffee while the guy next to me is spanking his monkey."

(case in point there)

I watch this show a lot and really like Man vs Food as well, I have earmarked many of the places he visits if we are ever near them.

I love Bourdain's persona, but I have a bunch of friends who hate him, and also plenty who hated him at first but grew to like him after forced exposure. I can certainly see how someone could think he's a douche. He's got that writer syndrome, where he's overly verbose, and sometimes I swear you can hear him smiling at his own words. And he's not shy about sharing his opinions, but that's the whole point of the show, you kind of have to let that slide.

I personally love his cynical side. Travel shows and travel hosts are a dime a dozen these days. The places all look pretty interesting. None of the travel hosts are interesting. They're all the equivalent of Rachel Ray tasting food, oohing-aahing at whatever the hell happens to be within arms reams, and not discerning in any way, shape or form. To quote Homer Simpson "this gets my lowest rating ever: seven thumbs up." Bourdain, at the very least giving an option to that kind of banal travel show. I also share his views on a general distaste for dance and pageantry, so I get a special joy out of watching him either contemptuously run that kind of stuff into the ground, or be forced to take part in it.

This season, I hear Anthony taking his russian friend Zamir to Detroit and Baltimore, and that has me quaking with anticipation. Zamir has taken Tony on several trips through Eastern Europe, and unlike most of Tony's guests., I always get the feeling that Zamir is actively trying to deconstruct the show. He takes Tony to seemingly the worst, and most boring places in Eastern Europe, puts him in the most painful situations (literally and figuratively), usually whilst getting himself as plowed as he can, and sarcastically trying to sneak the name of the show, 'No Reservations', into casual conversation as much as possible. The result is usually absurdly funny. I can't wait to see them wandering around the ruins of Detroit.

The only time Tony grates on me is when he gets a bit too far up himself with some sort of metaphysical rant about the state of society or somesuch. Happily that's not a lot of the time, so usually I find him far more palatable than most travel hosts.

Buffalo, Detroit, and Baltimore starting right now on NR

Don't know if tonight's show is new, but I really like it. A great intro to the kitchen and techniques.

With the exception of Season 5, they're all on Netflix Watch Instantly, btw.

I went to the Hippodrome in Baltimore last night to see the "An Evening With Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert" show. I went because I'm a fan of Eric Ripert, never really watched much of Tony.

Gotta say, after last night, all of No Reservations is going on my Netflix instant queue and I went out and picked up Kitchen Confidential.

He's also got a new book coming out in a few weeks. First Look: Who Feels Anthony Bourdain’s Wrath in His New Book, Medium Raw? -- Grub Street New York

/tk

I take it you enjoyed him? :)

What was he like? That seems like it would be pretty cool to go to.

It was really cool. They talked about a wide variety of subjects (mostly related to food, but some off-food topics, too) and I felt like you could see the two just sort of being themselves (there was a moderator asking questions, followed by an audience Q&A session). I had only really seen Bourdain on Top Chef, where he'd kind of come off as gruff, I had no real clue as to his background. He's most certainly opinionated, but (based on what I saw last night), he's able to back up why he feels the way he does, and a lot of the times, it makes sense...

It was interesting to see, Ripert and he are almost polar opposites in many ways. It was definitely a good show. It was put on by Broadway Across America http://www.broadwayacrossamerica.com/ , not sure if there will be more shows anywhere else in the country, but I would go see it again if I had the chance... :)

/tk

New season starts tonight.

Also, for whatever reason the show appears to be titled "Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations" according to Comcast's listing and my DVR, whereas apparently it used to be titled as something else (perhaps just plain old 'no reservations'), so it wasn't automatically recognizing and recording these as part of the series recording I had set-up in the past. If you've got Comcast and were expecting this to get recorded automatically you might give it a once-over.

Interesting episode tonight, Rome in black & white.

Tony calls it the episode he's most proud of, no matter what it does to ratings
“This Monday night, the Rome episode is, to my mind, far and away the most beautifully crafted, technically accomplished episode of No Reservation ever.”
http://anthony-bourdain-blog.travelc...id=pCaIWuqAzJr

(Must not have hurt them too bad, I can't even get the blog to load now although I was able to read it earlier)

we agree on one thing. i hate his smug personality. he's the kind of guy that if he was hanging out with me i'd say "dude, whatever it is that makes you 'you' - just turn it off for a bit and relax and just be a normal dude." there's something "off" about his persona, so i find it amazing that someone else can see the same thing. he just doesn't have an "everyman" vibe. Adam Richman of Man vs. Food is a guy that you just wanna go on a bar crawl with.

I dunno, I think I'd probably want to punch him in his liberal face at some point (don't anybody blame me, he's alluded to his politics on the show before, fairly pointedly in the Ted Nugent segment) but if we could stay off those kind of things even while drunk, I think he's someone I'd actually enjoy hanging out with. I don't get a sense that he plays a character too often, I believe he's pretty much just as smug (or "convinced beyond discussion that he's correct") as he appears. And I'm cool with that, as long as we don't run into a subject area where he's clearly incorrect since he disagrees with me ;)

my favorite episode was the Nugent episode, and Nugent so outshined Bourdain i kinda wished Nugent had his own No Reservations kind of show. not that i'm gay but Nugent is the kinda guy that makes me want to get naked with and hunt wild boar with spears and cook its flesh over a fire we made with our bare hands and eat it while drinking American beer (non-Light, of course) and capping the nite off with large glasses of scotch and cigars.

nice show, just don't like his personality. i want to hang out with men who are black and white, not self-aware analysts who would point out "just how manly is this moment, drinking beers while sampling local meats as we take turns shooting guns as the sun sets?".

Your evening with Ted Nugent would go horribly, horribly wrong.

i have this fantasy about hunting wild boar with a spear and roasting its flesh over fire, but only after i killed it in the most unnecessarily gruesome way possible. i want to hear it gurgle blood as it fights death. i want it to die hard and slowly. i want to eat a chunk of its leg and taste its tortured soul in the meat. it adds flavor.

Ted would be totally cool with that, but offer him a cigar and some scotch and you'll probably have to sit on his (zebraskin) couch and listen to him lecture for the next hour.....but at least he wouldn't be playing the guitar.

ZING! {shuffles off stage left}

oh, i didn't know what his views are on scotch and cigars. he wouldn't necessarily need to partake. we all have our vices. we all have our own image of what heaven looks like. mine looks like scotch and cigars and underage-looking Eastern European strippers. its a material world and i am a material girl. :devil:

Well, underage chicks certainly wouldn't be a problem at Ted's house.

You're softballing me, here!

I had no idea what this was about, so I had to go Wiki Ted.

For someone who espouses shooting child molesters on site, you could pretty much spend all day on the internet googling Ted+Nugent+underage. If you're not intent on eating for the rest of the day, throw Courtney Love's name in your search as well. In an old VH1's behind the music, Ted referred to himself as a 'serial pedophile' as his daughters talked about how he used to bring home dates to their house that were younger than they were.

http://www.gugalyrics.com/TED-NUGENT...LYRICS/443844/

I used to be one of this show (and Bourdain's) most vocal supporters, but I have to admit I'm starting to sour on it, anybody else? I don't want to blame it on Tony, because I don't necessarily thinks he's the cause, but someone has definitely started to put the cart before the horse.

Last night's episode marked like the third or fourth episode, just this season (which isn't that long) where Anthony Bourdain and crew spent more time talking about Anthony Bourdain and crew, than the food or location. Frankly I like the show (and Tony himself best) when Tony is the side-show, and not the main event, as a lot of his value, and the thing that makes me relate to him most, is his semi-caustic observational wit....and you lose that feeling when he himself becomes the focus, as seems to be happening a little bit more and more each episode. 'Makings-of', nods to the crew, and dalliances into Tony's past and family, are neat when they happen once in a great while, as regular features they kinda blow.

I agree with you. I didn't initially like the show but got into it after seeing it on Netflix. Love the older episodes and find myself not liking the newer stuff. I'm much more interested in the food and history of it than him and his crew. I think as his celebrity has gotten bigger, he has sort of shifted the focus more and more on himself.

Then again, it could just be that they are running out of good locations. Some of the ones from last season did nothing for me and it seemed they struggled to fill the time with it.

At the same time I noticed today that his FB page was getting a good bit of positive feedback (paraphrasing here) asking for more personality & less food, that these recent episodes are among his best ever.

This should not be underestimated IMO.

I was wondering the same thing about how many places they have left to visit. I wonder how much of the location burn-out is them, rather than us....on one hand, it doesn't seem like you should ever run out of exciting options of interesting places to go and to eat. As an example, I remember the episode in the Caribbean earlier this season where they kept talking about how awesome and idyllic it was, but Tony and everybody involved also seemed absolutely bored as fuck, which didn't make for very compelling TV.

Anybody think they'd be better served by returning to ye olde shores of North America for a healthy amount of time (maybe even a complete season)? Seems like a while since they did a US city profile, and folks love seeing places they know. They've certainly mined some of the more obvious spots (and we probably don't need any more NY episodes), but I feel like there's still plenty of places they could go in the US (and canada and Mexico), and even some that bear revisiting, and maybe that would feel fresher than the rut they're in now.

The thought has crossed my mind but after watching the South Carolina episode & seeing how flat it was, how uncomfortable AB was (and not in a fun to watch way), I don't know how well it would work.

AB just doesn't go over everywhere & that can make for some unentertaining TV. As opposed to him dealing with the old school regime in Vietnam, being uncomfortable at times, but it being amusing to see.

Final new season premieres Sept 3. I didn't even realize he was leaving Travel for CNN.

Anthony Bourdain's 'No Reservations': Final Season Gets a Premiere Date - The Hollywood Reporter

From the article: "He’s gone to a lot of places at the Travel Channel but there are some places that he hasn’t been able to go." Wonder where that could possibly be. As someone who travels to stranger places and eats stranger things than most, No Reservations is must-see TV to me. I much prefer the food/experiences episodes to the "plot" ones (any episode with the Russian guide dude).

Just looking at the complete episode list from the start, still plenty of places I'd like to see him go. Bhutan, Mongolia, Budapest, Belgrade, Guatemala and Slovenia are just a few.

I thought that was a rather curious quote too. I almost wondered if it referred to topics/subjects rather than actual locales.

HUMAN FLESH