A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines Paperback – November 5, 2002

"A Cook's Tour" by the wonderfully worldly and well-traveled Anthony Bourdain, is a book about food like no other, and it is simultaneously entertaining, exciting, and revolting. Tony travels the world in search of the perfect meal; it's an exciting quest for any chef to ponder, but along the way he comes across numerous local delicacies that can be best described as only for the strong of heart.Although he encounters several problems with dishes from around the world (the Mexican sautéed ant eggs and Scottish deep-fried haggis with curry sauce and deep fried egg stand out), the most stunning for my money are the things he eats in Asia, and especially Vietnam. I for one would not be able to eat the traditional Vietnamese breakfast of soft-boiled duck embryo complete with feathers, followed by a steaming bowl of "chao muk", a hearty soup made from ginger, sprouts, cilantro, shrimp, squid, chives, pork-blood cake, and croutons; later Tony enjoyed some braised bat ("imagine braised inner tube, sauced with engine coolant"). Even worse than that, though, is the concept of eating a still-beating cobra heart, after a very special snake disemboweling ceremony.While Vietnam takes the proverbial cake, the book features other gastronomic nightmares from around the globe, with Japan coming in second in the contest for unusual and disturbing foodstuffs. The foodie tour of Japan started out benignly enough, with an appetizer of "amuse-gueule of hoshigaka goma-an" (dried persimmon and fried soy curd with sesame paste), but quickly progressed to things like "suppon-dofu" (a soft-shell turtle in egg pudding with green onion and turtle broth), and culminated in the classic and beloved Japanese delicacy, "natto", which Bourdain describes as "an unbelievably foul, rank, slimy, glutinous, and stringy goop of fermented soybeans". After the natto, Bourdain finished with a dish described as "mountain potato": of this he said, "I could only handle a single taste. To this day, I have no idea what it really was.... The small, dark, chewy nugget can only be described as tasting like salt-cured, sun-dried goat rectum".Throughout the book, Bourdain maintains his wry, sarcastic sense of humor, possibly as a survival tool to get him through his next meal. He mocks a vegan potluck dinner as the "real heart of darkness", discusses fabled and exotic foods such as the unbelievably rank durian fruit, and always manages to do it while being respectful of local traditions and cultures very different from his existence in New York City. This is a great book for anyone interested in foods and cultures of the world, and I recommend it highly!

This was my first read by Bourdain; I was entranced, not only by the range of what he managed to eat,but by the highly crafted sentence. He tries anything the chefs of various countries put in front of him. The big wood grub? Down the hatch. Haggis? Likewise. He eats it so you don't have to. Great travel and foodie memoir. Loved this book.

If you're sensitive, vegetarian, love animals, or don't want to think about that awful moment when say, a cow becomes a steak, this is most definitely not the book for you.Things become unalive and turned into meals often here, which seems in part for shock value, and in part because the author is still trying to digest - no pun intended - what he's experienced.I have not seen the TV series, and now don't need to as I've read plenty about the experiences, the cameras panned away while he shares his view.Anthony is, as ever, a unique mix of cynical, excited, and weary. He seems continually surprised that this is his life:"Things had not turned out as I’d hoped. Two days of travel up a no-name river and across the worst road in the universe – and for what? This was no gamblers’ paradise. The ‘vice capital’ was the same collection of dreary whorehouses and bars as everywhere else, only less welcoming. The citizens seemed stunned, lethargic, frightened, angry – not what you want in a destination resort."Some of the descriptions of other cultures (read: not New Yorkers or carnivores, as his disdain for vegetarians is near legendary) verges on racist, while others are more generous, even delighted.I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Anthony's noted substance issues - cigarettes and alcohol here - and obvious mental health issues, pep talking himself through things. He's missed.

I love taking the trip with Bourdain. His writing makes you feel you’re sitting next to him and enjoying and experiencing what he does.

Another great book by the late Anthony Bourdain. Most people would associate Bourdain with celebrity chef status but overlook the fact that he was a really great writer. I assume he wrote most of the dialog for his TV shows as his books have the same amazing descriptive, and often amusing turn of phrase throughout.In this book he travels to many places in the world and experiences their food and drink first hand. Most of the destinations are in Asia; Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan etc, but he also visits other odd destinations such as Portugal, Russia and Scotland. It's not all fun and games and drinking. There are some moving, souls searching moments when he first has to confront slaughtering and butchering an animal first hand.Well worth reading. My complaint is that there does not seem to be an audio book that Tony narrated himself. A real shame as he also had a great voice.