Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations Seasons 1-5

[rockandroller]

Wait, Tony is in a TUX? My eyes! My eyes!

[jclaar]

I"ll keep my eyes open as far as the book goes, any possible appearances related to that. When is that due out again? or is it out now?

[Claudia Greco]

I"ll keep my eyes open as far as the book goes, any possible appearances related to that.  When is that due out again?  or is it out now?

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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).

[Kevin72]

Excellent episode! That cheese!

THough I'd love the behind the scenes story on that director.

[Naftal]

Excellent episode! That cheese!

THough I'd love the behind the scenes story on that director.

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Hello- I have two questions: Bourdain claimed that Italians/Tuscans? on the show prefered pasta dressed with olive oil and cheese. Is that correct? He also said that meatballs are served on the side with pasta. Is this also correct? I do not want to accept this fact simply because Tony Bourdain says so, I woul like some confermation(sp?) from the experts.

Edited September 25, 2007 by Naftal (log)

[Ce'nedra]

I could never forget the episode where Anthony shared a freshly killed, raw seal with an Inuit family...

[jmolinari]

Naftal, yes, it is correct. Meatballs are never served with the pasta. It is unheard of.

If meat is cooked in the sauce, the meat is served as a 2nd course after the pasta.

I haven't watched the show yet, but Tuscany being the epicenter of italian oil, is oil based, rather than butter based cuisine. And pasta is finished with fresh oil and parmiggiano often. But i'm not sure if you meant that Tuscans like plain pasta with oil and cheese. If that is what you're asking, then no...unless they're in a real hurry!

[Claudia Greco]

Naftal, yes, it is correct. Meatballs are never served with the pasta. It is unheard of.

If meat is cooked in the sauce, the meat is served as  a 2nd course after the pasta.

I haven't watched the show yet, but Tuscany being the epicenter of italian oil, is oil based, rather than butter based cuisine. And pasta is finished with fresh oil and parmiggiano often. But i'm not sure if you meant that Tuscans like plain pasta with oil and cheese. If that is what you're asking, then no...unless they're in a real hurry!

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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 (!)

[Kevin72]

Excellent episode! That cheese!

THough I'd love the behind the scenes story on that director.

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Hello- I have two questions: Bourdain claimed that Italians/Tuscans? on the show prefered pasta dressed with olive oil and cheese. Is that correct? He also said that meatballs are served on the side with pasta. Is this also correct? I do not want to accept this fact simply because Tony Bourdain says so, I woul like some confermation(sp?) from the experts.

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Yes, it is more commonplace in Italy to see meatballs served separate from the pasta course, with the pasta dressed in the sauce that the meatballs cooked in. Puglia, however, does have a "pasta and meatballs" traditional dish, as desribed by Nancy Harmon Jenkins in her cookbook Flavors of Puglia.

Pasta dressed only with olive oil and cheese is a common dish not just in Tuscany but all over Italy.

Actually, I was a little shocked that Jamie Oliver would have that kind of recipe in one of his books. It just looked gross. But Tony isn't holding back lately, between the broadside on RR last week and Oliver this week . . .

[Zeemanb]

That episode made me reconsider what to tell the magic genie when he says I've got three wishes........one of the three will now and forever be "party with that crazy butcher". Seriously. Damn.

[kristin_71]

I read Buford's book and it was nice to be able to put a face to the name in regards to the butcher and to really hear him quoting Dante! Felt like my college Engish class all over again!

[jmolinari]

Oh GAWD, that "carbonara w/ meatballs" look horrific.

[kathryn sossen]

Is it just me... or did the director in this episode look a lot like the fixer in the Sicily episode?

[jmolinari]

The director in Tuscany had some role in Sicily, but i don't know what role.

[Claudia Greco]

The director in Tuscany had some role in Sicily, but i don't know what role.

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The "director" is a cineaste from Sicily - if you recall, he wasn't the fixer (that was the hated Cicciu, or "Dario", as Bourdain refers to him in Nasty Bits), but rather, the filmmaker who took Tony to eat cannolis, up Etna, etc.

I, too, was horrified by both the meatballs in the carbonara AND the agredolce (sweet-sour) caponata served with it - absolute wrong combination of flavors. And caponata, a Sicilian dish, served to Tuscans? And a Sicilian auteur shooting a Tuscan episode? OK, I GOT that it was a joke - Tony cooked for Florentine restuaranteur Pino Luogo back in the day in NYC, so he knows perfectly well not to do what he did (plus he had his Italian wife, Ottavia, right there - and she would never have let him commit such an atrocity and become a brutta figura in front of other Italians if it wasn't a set-up for the subsequent Inferno leitmotif). I got that he was setting the scene up a la Dante's Inferno - a man who has lost his way (in this case, foodwise) and has to travel through hell to find redemption and love out on the other side - I got it. I got that he was doing a little cinema verité by having Vincenzo shoot the chiaroscurro starkness of Tony in dark woods and with gargoyles, entering the portals of the Inferno (nice bit of Terry Gilliam meets Dante Alighieri there, BTW). I got that Tony was trying to set up the inner conflict between the warm, sunny gloriousness of Chianti and the dark, Fellinesque inclinations of his Sicilian director, between the beauty of Tuscany and Dante's dark journey through the Inferno. I GOT it. And, yes, I got that not only was he using Dante as the underlying theme for the Tuscan episode because he is to Italy what Shakespeare is to the English-speaking word (OK, poetry vs. playwrighting, but that's splitting hairs), but to tie it in with Dario, the Dante-loving and prolifically-quoting butcher - I GOT IT. But the opening scene shook me badly, and rhythmically speaking, I could not get into the rest of the episode. I loved Dario, the lardo (and yes, even the surly and uncooperative Maremma cowboys), but I think a lot more could've been done with the episode. Sorry, Tony.

BTW, for those who don't know, the initial subtitled text was the first canto of Dante's Inferno. In the original 13th century Tuscan Italian, it is:

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

che la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Tant' è amara che poco è piu morte . . .

And the very beautiful Robert Pinsky translation (which I think NR should've used, rather than a literal, word-for-word one, since Pinsky is not just a translator and a professor of poetry, but the freaking Poet Laureate of the United States, hello!):

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself

In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell

About those woods is hard -- so tangled and rough

And savage that thinking of it now, I feel

The old fear stirring: death is hardly more bitter.

Sorry - had to vent.

[foodE]

I thought the segments with the "director" were too contrived. I enjoyed the segments when he was absent. Normally, I love NR, but this was not one of the best. Sorry, Tony. Still looking forward to seeing you in Philly in December, though!

[Vinotas]

I thought the segments with the "director" were too contrived.  I enjoyed the segments when he was absent.  Normally, I love NR, but this was not one of the best.  Sorry, Tony.  Still looking forward to seeing you in Philly in December, though!

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I agree, while it was OK, this was not one of his best episodes.

I would love to see him back in Paris and perhaps exploring more of the French countryside as well (hello, Burgundy!).

Cheers!

[Claudia Greco]

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[Kevin72]

Huh. I dunno, I liked this episode. He did seem alot more enthusiastic this time and gushed about the food the way he's done in his Asian travels or in France. As to all the contrived stuff, I just took it as another thematic experimentation like they seem to have done each episode this season.

Although, if Tony were feeling sheepish, still, about doing the "Tuscany thing" and showcasing a part of Italy everyone's beaten him to, I'd suggest his next Italy jaunt cover Puglia, Basilicata, or Calabria. I'd throw Sardinia in there but Tara Reid did go there on her show, and I can only imagine how he'd feel following her.

[jmolinari]

Oh man, if he went to Sardegna he'd showcase one of the most beautiful areas of Italy by far.

[Claudia Greco]

Oh man, if he went to Sardegna he'd showcase one of the most beautiful areas of Italy by far.

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That's what I'm thinking. He said he wanted to eat the Sardinian cheese with the maggots in it, but there's all that other beautiful food, too - the "music sheet" bread, all the other cheeses, malloreddus - c'mon! And, culturally, the Sardinians aren't just Italic - what about all the other cultures that have influenced their food and language, etc.? Phoenicians! Greeks! Catalans! And it's still pretty unspoiled/untouched, except for the Costa Smeralda. But he could go INLAND. To the beating heart of Sardinian cuisine. And check out some nuraghi, too. The invaders belonged to the sea, the Sardinians to the mountains . . .

If he was worried about following Jamie Oliver, he could have gone to Abruzzo or, as you said, Puglia . . . Basilicata . . . hell, even Venice, as much as that's been done. Just as long as he skips the obvious places.

Oh, and can someone give me an amen to Trento-Aldige? Friuli? The Marches, for Chrissakes? (Hey, they DO have truffles, ya know!)

"Fredo, I know it was you. And you broke my heart."

[foodE]

Tuscany is a beautiful, culinarily rich area. That's another reason this episode was disappointing. So what if Jamie Oliver, Nigella, etc. have been there? Tony hadn't and I was looking forward to seeing his take on it, at least a less scripted take on it than was presented.

[Claudia Greco]

Tuscany is a beautiful, culinarily rich area.  That's another reason this episode was disappointing.  So what if Jamie Oliver, Nigella, etc. have been there?  Tony hadn't and I was looking forward to seeing his take on it, at least a less scripted take on it than was presented.

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Amen to that, FoodE. Oh, and this, courtesy DTucker:

www.movable-feast.com

Tony at the Emmys

[aliaseater]

I just caught the (second?) Shanghai episode.

Forgive me if I have not searched extensively enough, but has anyone found a source for good yak's milk cheese in the U.S.?

Thanks

[Vinotas]

I just caught the (second?) Shanghai episode.

Forgive me if I have not searched extensively enough, but has anyone found a source for good yak's milk cheese in the U.S.?

Thanks

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I had some once in NY, but I can't recall if it was Ideal Cheese or Murray's. I am sure if you called either up they could point you in the right direction.