Rating: 
Summary: A tasty and funny world jaunt
Review: Anthony Bourdain's writing is steeped with the street-smart coolness that can only come from a lifetime New Yorker. In A Cook's Tour he manages to combine the travelogue with food writing without it being completely fruity.Bourdain travels around the world sampling local cuisine and meeting interesting characters. You can tell how passionate he is about food and life and it's wonderful to read an author who really loves his subject. He's also side-splittingly sardonic about the different situations he finds himself in. This book is also much more personal than I expected. His manic-depression shines through: one moment is a blissful celebration of life and the next is full of self-loathing. A trip to his boyhood haunts in France and a scary side trip to Cambodia are especially poignant. Bourdain gets four stars in my Michelin Guide.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of good food
Review: This is a travelogue about eating. Bourdain decides he wants to sample the best of what's out there, and he travels far and wide to find what he's looking for. He doesn't exactly find THE perfect meal, but he does get to eat a lot of perfect meals and taste some darn good cooking. On the other hand, he also sampled some truly vile stuff, like raw cobra bile, that wiser souls would not allow past their lips. Bourdain's style is rather wild- -if profanity offends you, this book is not for you. Bourdain is an evangelical meat eater. Indeed, a central theme of the book is his relationship to the animals that are slaughtered for his consumption. In the beginning of the book, he attends his first pig slaughter, describing to us such details as pulling the excrement out of the dead pig's anus. Similar stories are told of slaughtering a lamb in Morocco and a turkey in Mexico, culminating in his swallowing a still-beating cobra heart in Vietnam. At several points, he dissolves into a rant about the evils of vegetarianism, and he declares that the worst meal that he ate in the tour was a vegan meal in California. On the issue of to eat or not to eat meat, I am open-minded- -I will eat steaks or vegetarian lasagna with equal gusto. The question for me boils down to whether the cook knew what he or she was doing, has chosen fresh items, and is capable of preparing them appropriately. Everyone needs to make their own choices about what they put into their bodies, and nobody (with the possible exception of your own parents) should have the presumption to tell you what you should or shouldn't eat. Bourdain might have saved his anti-vegetarian rants for a specifically political tome. After all, I'm sure he enjoyed a number of completely vegetarian dishes in Asia, but considered them acceptable because their ethnicity was Asian and not vegan. For a world tour to find the perfect meal, Bourdain picked an odd itinerary. Yes, France, Portugal, Mexico, and Vietnam were all musts. He only had one year, so he couldn't fit in Italy, Thailand, or Argentina. But somehow he found time for Russia, England and...Scotland? He must have had ulterior motives for choosing these locations besides looking for good food. Let's see- -in Russia, every good meal was accompanied by enough vodka to drown a sailor, so it's hard to believe he could remember the meals afterwards accurately enough to write about them. And in Scotland, I'm sure even the deep-fried Mars bars that he tried tasted good with enough beer. And in the end, it's hard to take this guy seriously as food connoisseur because he's a smoker. Face it, Tony, your taste buds are dead. If you want to really taste good food, you've got to give up the smokes.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than Kitchen Confidential
Review: I enjoyed this much better than Kitchen Confidential, because this book is about more the food, and less about Bourdain. And when the author writes about himself, he really touches more upon the human experience that everyone can relate to rather than the "kitchen locker room" stories that started getting tiresome in Kitchen Confidential. As the author searches for "the perfect meal" and goes to great lengths to find it, we begin to understand how food relates to people live not only in the places he travels to, but all over the world. A major sub-plot is Bourdain's self-parady as a culinary celebrity as the Food Network films him on his travels which became the Cook's Tour series still shown on the Food Network. The book starts with Tony and his brother returning to France, and the memories they had growing up, many involving food. Rarely are the words "touching" and "Tony Bourdain" used in the same sentence, but the passage where Tony Bourdain talks about his deceased father is indeed touching. From here, we learn of Bourdain's love of Vietnam, harrowing adventures in Cambodia, a trip to St. Petersberg, Russia through a haze of vodka, eating deadly fish in Japan, and other journeys. There seems to be no place on earth the author won't go, and nothing too bizarre to ingest at least once. The chapter on San Francisco was a riot, with a long rant against vegetarians that was entertaining because of its great energy and because it held a few nuggets of truth beneath the bluster. Anyone who watches the Cook's Tour episodes on the Food Network will appreciate the "behind the scenes" commentary, which usually involve Bourdain confessing he was drunk or stoned when various segments were shot. Of course, the quest for the perfect meal is pointless, as Bourdain concedes at the end of the book. We also find out that trying exotic dishes isn't necessarily what it's cracked to be. Cobra bile tastes exactly as appetizing as it sounds. Books like this are about the quest and the truths found along the way, not the final destination itself. This is a great ride.
Rating:
Summary: Please Keep Looking for the Perfect Meal
Review: This is a great book for anyone who's ever chosen a vacation spot based on the cuisine, or driven 100 miles out of the way for a special meal. Bourdain is willing to try anything, and I liked living vicariously through his food lust. (Though a lover of food, there are definately things I would never eat) The only chapter I had fault with was his chapter on French Laundry. Having fantasized about that restaurant for years, I was hungering for a more detailed description of the 20 courses that he sampled- what exactly were those 20 courses? And the courses of the other guests. My one hope is that Bourdain decides to keep searching for great food!!
Rating:
Summary: Vegans beware!
Review: Vegans should know that a chef touring the world looking for food from different places trees will not be the only items on his plate. This is not for the faint of heart(literally!). As someone who only eats fish, this book had me wincing and groaning many times! I have better understanding of the hows and why people of other cultures eat the foods that they do. And Tony did try some vegetarian fare in California, so the book is balanced.
A lively, well written, amusing read!
Rating:
Summary: unforgettable
Review: I'm stunned. Gob-smacked, really. It's been a very, very long time since I read a book so engaging, so funny, so thoughtful and thought-provoking, AND on a subject that just sends me. Bourdain swoops from utterly enraptured adoration of incredible food experiences, right down into the often unapologetically brutal reality of their origins, and right back up into reveries on the heart-fulness of the friends he makes along the way, and their amazing other worlds. I'm chomping at the bit for more Bourdain! BRAVO!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Amusing but pretentious
Review: I enjoyed the book which I bought after reading his better known book KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL. He certainly can write and knows his subject. He is trying way too hard to always be cool rather than give us insight into his reactions to the various locales and cuisines.
Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Meal or the Perfect Free Lunch...
Review: Tony confesses at the beginning he sold out, but then takes us along for a great ride. I was interested because I had seen the show, I could tell he wasn't that serious, but was enjoying the opportunity. He has the New York blunt, rye attitude, yet allows us to see the human side of his mistakes and highlights them with his humor. His style may well offend if you are too sensitive sensibilities. Though he reminds me of many career cooks I have known. If you loved the show, it will make you look at it in a whole new light. If you enjoy food and traveling to different cultures it's a book for you. If you enjoy a good read, buy it and watch Tony's quest for the Perfect 'Free' Meal.
Rating: 
Summary: The emperor's new apron?
Review: Is it just me or did anyone else out there feel that Anthony Bourdain, while mildly amusing at times, isn't the world's greatest writer and should rather stick to what he's doing best - cooking? I dunno but I find the man patronizing and opinionated, and hence irritating. I am lucky enough to have traveled to most of the countries he describes in the book, from Cambodia to Scotland, from Portugal to Japan, from Morocco to Russia, from France to England, and I have stayed and eaten with locals. I have tried whatever local delicacies they served me there.... live crab and hundred-year-eggs to name but a couple. Some I appreciated, others I didn't like so much. So I understand where he's coming from. And I can also see his self-deprecating sense of humor which is refreshing. But all those "let's get senselessly drunk" stories become repetitive and boring after a while. Oh, and if you read this, Tony - why the heck do you keep having such a go at Germans? Not that I am one but I find your petty prejudices - from "thick-ankled German women" to "disturbing German porn" pretty darn unfair.
Rating:
Summary: Anthony Bourdain
Review: I was first attracted to Mr. Bourdain, when i recieved "Kitchen Confidential" for Christmas a few years back. However I didn't read it for at least a year. When i read it I read it through three times in a row. When I found out that he had written a book about his TV show, and that he was coming to my town to promote his book, I jumped on the chance to meet him, and get my books autographed. Let me tell you, what you read in the books is the way he is in real life. There was a dinner in his celebration, and he went into the kitchen after every course was out, and proceeded to get drunk with all of the cooks. I loved "A Cook's Tour" it really motivated me to try different food items, throwing caution to the wind about the results of eating it later, and boy have I felt some of that pain. I completely recommend this book for someone who would love to be able to eat across the world, but eat the real food that people eat everyday. And to be in the search for the perfect meal.
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