Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain

[Simon Majumdar]

GR ( Gordon Ramsay ) is a three star Michelin Chef in London.  He is hailed by many as one of the best chefs in Europe and by me as a loud mouth tosser who robs people blind with risible food at appalling prices.

He is without doubt a loudmouth yob ( in fact he predicates his whole schtick on this talent ) although in his favour, his staff are very loyal to him.

I used to question his methods but not his talent, until trying his new place in Claridges.  It was one of the worst meals I have ever had ( and I have been t a Dairy Queen )

Anthony ( I wont say Bourdain this time as I am not in pompous Brit book critic mode - sorry Anthony!) and I disagree vehemently about him and this will soon be sorted out Mano a Mano in a London based drinking competition which will no doubt see me refusing my 20th pint of mild in The Cock waving my hand and shrieking No Mas like old Hands of Stone Himself, while Anthony makes me sign a piece of paper saying " Ramsay is God and Simon is my bitch" or is that the other way round?

[Andy Lynes]

Simon - just keep it dry between you and Ant, thats all I ask. You know how people talk.

[Simon Majumdar]

You're are absolutely right Andy.  I promise not to take any free meals off him:)

[Andy Lynes]

Thats OK then, just so we know. We demand full transparency on this site.

[tommy]

i thought the show was quite entertaining.  i must admit, i'm a little envious of the journey that tony embarked on.  next week is vietnam (yay!).

also, it was the first time i've ever heard anything remotely resembling "big f*cking tuna sandwich" on the food network.  you gotta get a chuckle out of that.

nicely done.

[Andy Lynes]

Does anyone know if the show will be screened in the UK?

[Stone]

My problem with David Rosengarten was that I was consumed with figuring out how to break into the t.v. set and punching him in the face.  I don't know why.  It's kind of a Jim Carrey thing.  Everytime I see him, I want to punch him.

I think Bobby Flay needs to get off the Santa Fe bandwagon.  Aren't we done with that?  How many ways can you shove a chipotle down our throats anyway?  I thought the Iron Chef Masumoto (?) said it best after their little contest when Bobby jumped up onto his own cutting board -- "He's not a chef, he has no respect for his tools."

I agree that Mario -- who should spend a little more time studying English rather than Italian -- is probably the best show -- notwithstanding that bufoon he carries around with him.

Emeril is good if you need ideas about how to build a bigger pile of food.  But a friend of mine sat at the counter on one of his episodes and said that the food was actually very good.

[Simon Majumdar]

My estimation of Anthony, which was not low to begin with has shot up on reading the section on "what books are on your bedside table" in last Sunday's Observer.

Amongst others he chose Greil Marcus' Lipstick Traces and Motley Crue's The Dirt.  Both of which are sublime in very different ways.

'

Now if he had added in Pter Guralnick's trilogy on American Music ( Feel Like Going Home, Lost Highway & Sweet Soul Music ) and Dave Lee Roth's Autobiography, Crazy From the Sun, I might have had to admit he knows everything and write GR an apology letter.

I was going to send GR some flowers for christmas, but Interflora don't do triffids

S

[robert brown]

Anthony, my wife called me in to see the segment on Siem Reap tonight. Did Raffles buy a plug on your series for Le Grand Hotel d'Ankor? We were there this past June and ate in the dining room that serves the local food. It was awful and, opposite of you, I got the runs; something that didn't happen to me with the food at the local restaurants my wife and I ate at. I let the German guy who was managing the hotel know how bad the food was throughout the hotel, but, of course he didn't really care, as all that mattered was the money earned from all those uninformed international tourists staying there who didn't know one bite of food from another. It's unfortunate that they grab you on the food by making you pay for two meals a day. Did you really think it was indicative of fresh, authentic local food? Weird because a dinner I had at their hotel in Phnom Penh, Le Royal, was excellent.

(Edited by robert brown at 11:30 pm on Jan. 22, 2002)

[Brett]

I think Jackie Malouf is totally sexy...she is the ONLY reason I tune into Hot Off the Grill.  As for Ming, he really is good, but a bit of a control freak when he has guest chefs on his show.

[Wilfrid]

Lipstick Traces is hardcore.  I had suspected Bourdain was posing, but if he knows about that book, he has some street cred.  (Guralnick's work is magnificent too; add in his two volume bio of Presley!).

glad someone else said Jackie Malouf is sexy.  I was too shy.

[Fat Guy]

I think she's terribly sexy.

Has anybody noticed that Chef Bourdain now has a semi-regular gig with Dwell magazine?

[Bux]

Okay. I caught the last two episodes of Cooks Tour-Vietnam & France-on TV. The Vietnam show was not without some exotic interest of the background footage and even the little that was about food had some value as frustrating as the general lack of content and dialog was. I thought the France "tour" was about the most vacuous 30 minutes I've witnessed on TV. Did anyone find value, information or entertainment in this segment? Watching two forty year olds set off firecrackers on a deserted beach in the winter and diving for cover in the sand was almost painfully embarrassing, but then I've not watched much in the way of "reality" TV. Amid all the lost opportunity to enlighten the audience, I was struck by the translation of pain aux raisins as "raisin bread." I doubt pain au chocolate would have been translated as anything other than chocolate croissant and certainly not as chocolate bread. Pain aux raisins is a pastry and what we'd call a raisin danish in a non-French bakery in the U.S. It's a petty point perhaps, but I think it's illustrative of the fact that the show makes no attempt to illuminate and every attempt to obfuscate or gloss over the possible content. The dialog was banal from start to finish.

[tommy]

i like when tony smokes at the table.  that's cool.

[Simon Majumdar]

I have been in the US for a brief while and managed to get a glimpse of the COOKS TOUR show while I was there

The direction was appalling and reminded me of nothing more than Floyd ( Keith, that is not Pink ) c 1977.

The voiceovers sounded laboured and the producers had managed to surpress Anthony's personality.  A feat I would have considered impossible from the way he writes both in his books and on here.

Again, my main criticism was the contrived nature of the set ups. The programme lacked spark and spontenaity.

A great shame and a real missed opportunity

S