Claudia Greco

JMolinari is correct. They prefer butter up north, in Emilia-Romagna, for instance, whereas olive oil-based dishes hold sway pretty much from Tuscany (central Italy) down to Sicily. Pasta finished JUST with oil and cheese is either a "quickie meal", like pasta with olive oil and garlic is a "bachelor" dish - just something quick and easy to fix, if you're on your way out the door - or if you've just come back in from a late night out with the boys.BTW, Americans tend to serve pasta as a main dish rather than as a second course, and we sauce it heavily, as opposed to the 1/4 cup of pasta Italians eat that is lightly sauced - kissed with the sauce, basically. Italian cuisine is really regional, each regional cusine almost being a cuisine unto itself. Years ago, you would NEVER see polenta outside of Lombardia (Lombardy, home to Milan) or the Veneto (home to Venice), or rice, for that matter - risotto was strictly a northern affair. Most American cities with heavy Italian populations tend to be populated by southern Italians (by which I mean from the regions south of Rome), which made the US, for generations, a red sauce and olive oil kind of world when it came to Italian food. But, as we've seen, Tuscan food has come to the forefront in the last 20 years, so we are now (and have been getting) exposure to a lot more "regional" cusines than we have over the last 100 years or so. Claudia "White" Sauce Lover in a Red Sauce Family (!) PS: You really HAVE to trust Tony on this one, especially when he has Batali and Ottavia in tow (!)

Advance copy? LOL. Pre-orders, yes - although their ship date from Our Favorite Online Booksellers (no promo'ing here, nosirree!) is the same as the release date (10/'30). (I pre-ordered only because I have a 10% off membership card and they sent me 15% coupons online, to boot.)

10/30. Available from your favorite online bookseller as a pre-order, with a shipping date of 10/30 . . . possibly a little earlier. Hopefully in time for the book signing gigs. I suggest you track the Anthony Bourdain - No Reservations (the book) (under Food and Literature) topic, since the board administrators want to keep this board solely about NR - the SHOW (hence, Food - TV& Radio).

And I was so sure Brian wouldn't even be GOING to Colorado, when I saw the neon green "pancake" top to his rustic pie. I thought the flavors were going to be a bit bottom heavy (they were) and that Soltner, Sailhac, etc., would freak out on his lack of presentation (Dale: "It's a big green turd!"), but I guess the flavors were there after all - hearty, rustic? OK. Between Sara and Dale, though? Man, if you can't even cook chicken properly and make sure no pink slices get to the judges when you're SLICING the pieces, individually, then, yes, you deserve to go home. I think failed "conception" geta a bit more latitude than failed "execution".

Fans are eagerly awaiting his book-signing and public appearance schedule, which TB said he'd post to the Travel Channel No Rez board. It will then, I am sure, miraculously appear on eGullet on the No Rez Board under Food and Literature since it deals with NR the book, rather than this board - No Rez (Food and TV/Radio), which is restricted to discussions of the actual TV show.

I personally loved the Southern gentleman praying over Tony - "and, Lord, just take Tony as he is" - who then turned out to be a major Ramones fan. BTW, the Cook Free or Die T's are available from grillbitch.com. (Yes, Beth Aretsky!)

They've replayed it - it's just that Las Vegas, Borneo, etc. tend to get heavier replay.

← The episode itself didn't suck, I felt - as with Beirut, he made a good show out of less than ideal circumstances. Bourdain discusses the whole Sicily thing in the endnotes (t the back) of Nasty Bits. I actually rather liked the Sicily episode - the caper "farmers", the fishermen, etc. - it was poor Tony who was stuck listening to the wonders of salt over a 3-hour lunch . . . we only got a few minutes of that (!)

Oh, well, EVERYTHING went wrong in Sicily, shooting-wise, and he was in a bad place emotionally then, too. This should be a great episode - looks like everything went beautifully, everything WAS beautiful, and he had family and friends adding big fun and culinary expertise to the shoot. Should be a blast.

I, too, am totally stoked about the Tuscany NR episode - Batali's along for the ride, just to name one luminary . . .

Only because I was asked about it by another poster (and, no, I'm not an insider, friend or otherwise connected), am I mentioning that Tony Bourdain's new book, No Reservations, a companion book to the series, is coming out October 30, and is available for pre-ordering (right now) from all the usual places. Right now, his publisher has no information posted about book signings, and his speaking agents don't release his public appearance schedule. (Which I found a little bizarre, considering a number of these gigs require tickets (like NYPL with Buford and Batali) and the 92nd Street Y (with Ruhlman, Ripert and Gabrielle Hamilton), and at which he moves a lot of books. I can understand not having his private gigs - like to chef-only events or to something like the Harvard MBA talking heads - but massively public ones? That generate two income streams at once?) Hope that answers your question, Doodad.

How have I missed hearing about this book? I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy. ← You can preorder it - right now. Actually, I thought Elements might have less to do with Strunk & White in terms of style and/or substance, and more to do with it being a McGee for the home cook - but I'm just going to have to wait until 11/6 to find out (or until my pre-order arrives.) I'm intrgued, either way. And Bourdain wrote the introduction and did the illustrations for it? Lord help us!

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Maybe CJ was the one supplying her WEED! ← Or something else! Just kidding here - when she split up with Rushdie a few months ago, there were rumors bouncing around that she was getting VERY chummy with some of the chefs, but I think the implication was it was with one of the judges/chefs - not cheftestants. I don't think there was anything to it - butwasn't CJ sooooo-ooo-oooo charming and come hithering when Padma went in to wake him up? (!!)

And where did Gail Simmons go? Back to F&W? Home with the baby? (OK, she looked kind of preggers last season, but I really shouldn't speculate so loudly!)I was really sorry to CJ go, but there was no other call to make. Padma looked like she was going to cry - the only time I've ever seen her so upset to see a cheftestant go.

Those guys were a riot - so loopy, even Tony was given them backhand glances! But obviously his kind of glacier-climbing buds. Someone should've told Guacho #1 that, traditional garb aside, ponchos are so not a good a idea to go glacier-climbing in (!)

BTW, Gordo's wife Tana has denied Gordo's story, saying he made it up just before making some public comments at an awards ceremony. Apparently, Gordo is actually suffering from a dull ache in one ball - and his doctors told him it was just age. But Gordo wanted to make it sound better. Why Gordo feels the need to discuss his balls at all - on TV or at an awards ceremony - escapes me. But given the fact he discussed them a lot on the F Word (the supposed sterility/low sperm count issue of male chefs in front of hot stoves), I guess Gordo's fixed on his bollocks.And the lying! First, he lied about Marco Pierre White swiping his reservation book from one his restaurants (Marco is now suing for libel), and now, his bollocks! He keeps up this grandstanding and sensationalism, he's in danger of becoming anotyher Rocco di Spirito - even as good as Gordo is.

You know, I don't Jaymes - but I'll ask a few people who still live there.

Oh, so those tighty whiteys were really doing a good job of either (a) providing a layer of insulation from Gordo's raging Aga/Viking or whatever, or (b) restraining those mighty surging twins from the surface of same? Ummm . . . he had to have been pretty close in. Burned his bollocks and not his schlong - a narrow escape, I'd say (!)

I taped it, Vinotas, but since the season is almost over, they'll be re-running it soon. You might want to check travelchannel.com/bourdain under schedule - monthly. It'll show everything upcoming.

To reinforce the feeling of HK's fast, frenetic pace, I, too, noticed that ZeroPointZero was doing a lot of jump cuts and slow-mos into freeze frames with the added 3D effects (like the subject is pulled forward out of the background of the frame), very like Guy Ritchie's brilliant Snatched. Of course, they storyboarded the Clevelaned episode like a cartoon strip, because of the Pekar aspect. So I guess the production team is not only refining their cinematography and "art direction" for each episode, but tryin g to make them more appropriate to each locale. Tony, a lifelong film fanatic, is getting even more "cinema verite" with his own work (!) Remember the Sicily episode? Very Fellini-esque and B&W towards the end? I thought the "action sequence" was hysterical, but I liked the cinematography throught the entire episode.

Having been raised in Hong Kong, I was totally blown away by last night's episode. Tony really did his home work - no tourist would think to eat their way through Taipo Market or Yuen Long, even though, as we all saw, the food in Taipo is . . . well . . . miraculous. I can't believe Tony even ferreted out my favorite goose/plum sauce dish, on top of the fabulous pork, etc. And the race track at Happy Valley? My family are lifelong members of the Royal HK Jockey Club, and I could see the track below me, at the end of my street. The old footage of all the Hakka sampans lashed together, for a people who live their entire lives on boats? Loved it. Dim sum as a contact sport? Well, now my husband and in-laws see why I get pretty physical when we have dim sum here in NY. And the motif of HK as a pinball machine on tilt? FINALLY, someone got that right. The only thing he might have addressed was the floating restaurants in Aberdeen, where your dinner is still swimming around in tanks under the restaurant/boat, but I thought the typhoon crab segment might have made up for it. After being back in the States for nearly 30 years, someone finally was able to make me "homesick". Thanks, Tony. Really good job.

Watched the marathon, loved Uezbekestan, Peru, and Russia. Then missed the new one. Anyone heard about next season? ← I believes Laos is on deck, but I don't know what form the next season is taking - a full 8 in January, or a split season like this year (5 in January, and a whole pile in July-September).

“If there’s no in-room porn, I’m not hitting any exercise at all.” Nearly choked on my biscotti. Must remember not to eat or drink watching NR or reading the ruhlman.com blog. Both my keyboards and coffee tables are suffering . . . (!)