{"id":2475,"date":"2010-12-30T17:13:57","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T23:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/?p=2475"},"modified":"2011-01-08T23:23:53","modified_gmt":"2011-01-09T05:23:53","slug":"tony-bourdain-well-done-or-raw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/?p=2475","title":{"rendered":"Tony Bourdain: Well Done or Raw?"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>

<\/a><\/a><\/a>About a month ago, Leslie and I went to see Tony Bourdain<\/a>‘s show at the Overture<\/a>\u00a0in Madison.\u00a0 For those of you who don’t know who he is, Bourdain is a former chef now writer\/travel show host known for his acerbic nature and his\u00a0ardent appreciation for “peasant food”.\u00a0 His show, No Reservations, is a favorite\u00a0at Driftless Appetite HQ.\u00a0 The show at the Overture was essentially part book tour (for his new book Medium Raw<\/a>) and part stand up comedy act.\u00a0 Most of the stories I’d heard before (on his show\u00a0or in his books), but still, the crisp\u00a0delivery (and perfect comedian’s timing) made everything seem fresh.\u00a0 We were also lucky enough to get tickets to the post show meet & greet (many thanks to Leslie’s friend H who told us about it and helped us get a second ticket) and meet Tony.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

To set the scene for you, here is (approximately)\u00a0the conversation\u00a0Leslie and Tony were having when I took the above photo (with my crappy\u00a0blackberry camera phone):\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leslie<\/strong>: Oh my gawd, do you know who you are?\u00a0 You’re Tony Bourdain!\u00a0 I love you!!!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tony<\/strong>: Thanks!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leslie<\/strong>: So why did your Philippines episode suck so much?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tony<\/strong>: (Laughs) Well, I clearly went with the wrong Filipino.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leslie<\/strong>: Yes, you did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tony<\/strong>:\u00a0 I’ve actually never gotten so much feedback as I have from the Filipino community on that episode.\u00a0 I feel bad for the guy, it wasn’t his fault that it was awkward and he has been castigated by people over it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leslie<\/strong>:\u00a0 You must make this right.\u00a0 You have disappointed a nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tony<\/strong>:\u00a0 Hey, it was the best. pork. ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Some people in attendance were disappointed when he admitted to having eaten his dinner in an\u00a0airport, having hoped he would have tried out a local place.\u00a0 The way these tours are (not) planned out though, that’s really not a feasible option.\u00a0 He has so little time in each city and, after this show, for instance, he had to fly down to Florida\u00a0for the next one.\u00a0 It’s the old Traveling Salesman Problem<\/a> (I guess booking agents aren’t well versed in graph theory…).\u00a0 Try doing that for more than a few days and see if you have the energy to explore each city, or whether you want to grab the nearest warm food and go to your hotel.\u00a0 I can confirm, though, for those of you who were present, that Tony did have a Spotted Cow<\/a> before the night was out.<\/p>\n

There is one thing\u00a0that has me a bit annoyed though: one of\u00a0the recent episodes of\u00a0his show, titled “Heartland”.\u00a0 See if you can tell from the blurb about the episode on the No Reservations website why it might have bothered me:\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s easy for the foodies of New York or Los Angeles to overlook the cuisine of America\u2019s heartland. Anthony Bourdain is not going to make that mistake. He\u2019s digging deep to find the foods that inspire average Americans.”<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’m sure they mean well, but that’s a lot of\u00a0condescension\u00a0to pack into three sentences.\u00a0 First of all, the very idea that Austin, Columbus, Denver, Detroit, Minneapolis and Milwaukee are all in the same “region”\u00a0is, well, stupid.\u00a0 And anyone who is surprised that these cities (with a combined metropolitan population of 15.2 million people: the same as LA,\u00a03\u00a0x San Francisco\u00a0or\u00a03\/4 of NYC)\u00a0have some good food is either pretty dense…or they live in NY, LA or San Fran.\u00a0 I’d glad you\u00a0went to Milwaukee Tony, but you’ve made three episodes about Vietnam: I think you can give Milwaukee (and Denver, Austin, etc) more than 5 minutes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

All this (good natured) whining aside, we had a great time at the show and\u00a0we are looking forward to the new season of No Reservations.\u00a0 But, Tony, for your sake I hope there’s a new Philippines episode in the works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About a month ago, Leslie and I went to see Tony Bourdain‘s show at the Overture\u00a0in Madison.\u00a0 For those of you who don’t know who he is, Bourdain is a former chef now writer\/travel show host known for his acerbic nature and his\u00a0ardent appreciation for “peasant food”.\u00a0 His show, No Reservations, is a favorite\u00a0at Driftless […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[133,91],"tags":[206,208,207],"class_list":["post-2475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-culture","category-events","tag-no-reservations","tag-overture","tag-tony-bourdain","no-featured-image"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2475"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2598,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2475\/revisions\/2598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}