Bourdain's Got a New Show. So Watch it.

If you don't like Anthony Bourdain, then, well...damn. What's wrong with you? No Reservations has been in off season now for about a month and a half, which is quite the happiness-killer when paired with the start of an academic term, but now (yes as in this week) that I am in the ******* middle of midterm examinations, papers, and presentations--my true love decides to return to me, though this time my prancing little black-lunged cavalier has traded his never-should-be-worn-in-public cutoff jean shorts for what looks like....wtf? Is that a suit? Anthony Bourdain: Travel Chanel's newest talk show host. Oh la la.

The inaugural address of At the Table with Anthony Bourdain graces cable and satellite waves this monday the 20th of October at 10h00 in the hours that dance in the sun's retreat. Not in America? Sucks to be you. Watch it on youtube.



For my hubris, I would love to review a show that has yet been graced by my eyes--but I will instead let the talented prose of those over at the Travel Chanel website do it for me:

As you'd expect from an Anthony Bourdain vehicle, opinions fly and no topic is off limits as Tony hosts a no-holds-barred dinner with four featured guests. Joining Tony around the table are celebrated writer Bill Buford, "Nightlife Queen of New York" Amy Sacco, TV personality Ted Allen, and gossip columnist Chris Wilson. They'll debate the ethics of an $1,800 dinner, and Tony will reveal how he always, secretly hopes the waiters like him. Food and travel stories will run wild from Wylie Defresne's restaurant wd~50 in New York City. Anything goes "At The Table With Anthony Bourdain.

I'm getting excited. For anyone who sheepishly knows nothing of Bourdain--I forgive you. But listen. Chef, traveler, smoking alcoholic, writer, and kind of a bastard. Tony is known for his harsh and sometimes crude opinions, such as if you put ketchup on your dog i will fucking kill you, or that vegetarians really don't deserve oxygen (is he really so far off though? hehe). On the other hand he has been caught, on a few occasions, showing squishy pangs of sensitivity, such as tearing up after a homemade feijoada in São Paulo, or hanging his head in acknowledgment at the site of a cattle slaughterhouse in Argentina. He respects the concept of food on a level only scraped by other high-profile personalities--with an emphasis on history, tradition, change, cultural perspective, meaning, and purpose---there is no food in this world without a story and a purpose. So in the words of Tony: As citizens of the world, we should know what came before. How we got here. Why we do things the way we do them. Where food comes from. Preach it.

Lawrence??

Señor Bourdain has published cookbooks (Brasserie Les Halles), novels (Bone in the Throat), biographies (that would be biography--Kitchen Confidential), and short essays (collected nicely in The Nasty Bits). His television career kicked off with the stimulating A Cook's Tour on the Food Network, and then actually took off when he left Rachel's cesspool of extra-virgin OO to film No Reservations for the Travel Channel and where currently, though now in re-runs, you can watch him scampering about the globe eating real food you could only dream about getting your greedy little hands around. He's also appeared as judge on Bravo's Top Chef. Yeah you saw that one eh?

So Tony in his drive to dominate the entire industry now hits us with his culinary Inside the Actors Studio. Wait, didn't another tv chef personality have a talk show? Perhaps miss Ray's Daytime Drama? Hoo hoo I kid--Mr. Bourdain will not fail to entertain us with his witty turn of phrase-- so cook free or die good sir, but now we speak free or--change the channel.

Monday. 10:00. Be there. I will leave you with this clip from No Reservations. And of course it's Paris you dopes.

all photos were stolen from The Travel Channel.

a bientot

Miss Browns Passport

She has quite a few stampsThe Travel Channel. They Travel, you sit and pay the cable bill. Is it a cruel joke? Do we find the punchline of "enjoy the world from the comfort of your couch" unjust in mockery? Who wouldn't rather be out there doing the travel themselves? Exactly. However, we cannot travel all the time. The wretched truth is that many of us cannot travel at all, and a book, a blog, a photo, a show is no replacement for a pressence. But it's a start.

For some, the medias are inspirations to get out there and travel soi-meme, while for some they are reminders of being there, for others tools for planning the next months voyage, and yet even for others a secret peek at an exotic land that otherwise would never have been dreamed. We travel when we can, we prioritize travel over other luxuries, but when we can't be out there getting sick off of pickled Portuguese bar-beans, missing night trains in Prague, and performing animal sounds in cheese shops, we turn to the words and experiences of others to give us thrills, smiles, slaps, and wonder.

You are all aware of my very public adoration of the vagabond writer Anthony Bourdain, his books, cookbooks, novels, blog, dead Food Network show (A Cooks Tour), and current Travel Channel Show (No Reservations), but there is another traveler on the tele--Samantha Brown, and she travels...well everywhere.

Passport to (insert destination here) is a hit series on the Travel Channel; previous editions include passport to Latin America and Passport to Europe, and now Passport to Great Weekends (in the US, Canada, and Mexico). Now the show is not food-centered like Anthony's, it is a more rounded "guide" similar to Rick Steves show...though you don't find yourself in a drowsy comotose stuper at the end of the hour that is often a result of a Steves viewing (sorry Rick).

Sams Passport to Lisbon sent my mind realing with anticipation before my own trip to the city--I recall thinking as i slid just short of falling on my face, she was right, the stones are deathly! As a preperatory guide, the show is quite useful.

The new show Passport to Great Weekends explores destinations all across the US, Canada, and Mexico as well, weekend vacations. Not big trips, but destinations more local than say Timbuktu. The show emphasizes the idea of travel as travel---that travel is anywhere that you do not live. The next town over, an hours drive north, a new side of the city, anywhere you have not seen, have not yet discovered is travel. You can follow her travels airing on the Travel Channel (new episodes thursdays at 10:00 eastern standard time) or at the Samantha Brown Blog.

Orlando, Austin, San Fransisco, Myrtle Beach, New Hampshire, las Vegas, DC, (hell she just had a panda on her lap in China)--Samantha is entertaining, (appropriate to watch with the kids) and helpful if one of her many locations also happens to be a future destination of yours as well.

We put travel above a lot of other luxuries--but when we cannot, we explore through the travles of others knowing that someday we will go too.

à bientôt

Does 2 + 2 Equal 4 or 22?

Happy Birthday to MYSELF - Some Mario Batali, What! - and "The Very French Bakery" in SeattleI'm 22 now. It is not as exciting as 21. Was 21 exciting? I worked last year. Right now I don't have a job. Because I'm a lazy-ass nobody. Ah well, at least there is cake.

What do yo want for your birthday? I was asked. My answer: Bourdain on DVD, Cake, lots of wine, and more cake. And I want to eat the whole cake by myself. And the wine too for that matter. No for serious mallory, you don't turn 22 every year. Well that's for damn sure. So, my dear old dad invited me out for lunch, and then like a good agent--i have many an agent propelling my career as executive food journalist--he led me to a French bakery at Pike Place Market, a bakery actually called "Le Panier: The Very French Bakery" should we be a little skeptic?...Just a little? We are pretentious snobs. But this is Seattle, so i'm hopeful. Let's investigate. On y va.

Le Panier is a "traditional French boulangerie" --do you not agree that the French probably are tired of hearing that--where could we find credentials. Upon entering one is thrown into a cute little bakery with an atmosphere wholly uuncommon to those in France, though on the other hand, after quickly glancing through the sugary scented glass, it must be noted that they did in fact stock the essentials. Pain au chocolat, croissants, financiers, palmiers, quiche, Madeleines, macaroons, meringues, and of course, le baguette held vertical in its stall behind the counter operators. Alright, so they had it all. So what. I don't feel like i'm in France. mallory--that is because you are not in France. So instead of so what we decide rather on so plenty: Le Panier is a perfect representation of what a parisian bakery is like. It is a bit of something good trying to show what else is out there--maybe one day a good-to-do Seattleite will watch a flaky skin slowly fall from his pain au chocolat to his knee, resting softly on his trouser, giving him the idea of do they taste like this in France? What else, I wonder, could they have as well? And the next day he is at the departures gate at Seatac on a direct to CDG. All of that from a French pastry shop? Yes, yes indeed. And it's right here in Seattle.

Le Panier was opened in 1983 on Pike Place and the corner of Stewart Street by a Frenchman and a University of Washington French studies graduate. The boulangerie has been serving hot baguettes year round ever since to not only the bubbling hot tourist crowd, but to old and new locals as well. The new line of multi-million dollar condos built just above the market on the hill gives the area a new "residential" crowd, so watch out tourists, you've got Seattleites to deal with now. Don't make them angry. You might either get a fish thrown at you, or perhaps a coffee burn. Stereotyping my own city into a Travel Chanel cliche? Why yes. Flying fish, coffee junkies, tree hugging sea people in Sperry Topsiders and North Face fleece? Alright alright, but there is one description i have heard that I am beginning to think is right--Seattle: obsession.

What does one find inside the shop? Surprisingly it was not overcrowded. Living in Paris one knows that the morning and evening baguette queue at nearly every corner boulangerie can oftentimes snake out the door and wind around the corner as if reenacting a 1940's rationing bread line. Today at Le Panier, the wait was not bad at all, the hot weather, of course, could well be a factor. Whereas Parisians can and do eat baguette everyday regardless of time of year; bakeries in the United States statistically are overwhelmingly more popular in the autumn and winter months. Seattleites--if the weather gets above 17 degrees (fine, 65F) then pull out the ice box, put on the bathing suits, it's summer time! Screw the bakery, we're getting ice cream and margaritas! Don't forget to put on the sunscreen.

Once inside, one finds seated around the room at the many available tables (what one would never find in a boulangerie in france) patrons sipping cappuccinos and oranginas straight out of the little round bottle. A busy staff in crisp blacks running to a fro behind the counter, restocking the tarts and crisps as they quickly disappear. On the whole the place is an A+ for a little France outside of France--but not France itself, that, is impossible. The prices--a little hefty i must say at $2.50 for a pain au chocolat, though, on the other hand, the $1 for the meringue, which yes, I once again have become the slave of, is a deal as its Parisian brother runs at the much higher 1euro. Chouette.

But what is it that makes it different besides it being in Seattle (obviously)? Well, there is the smell--where is it, what is it? All Patisseries and boulangeries in Paris have the smell; it permeates the sidewalk for meters, and hits you like a shot of liquor as you cross the threshold into one. It is the smell--is it flour? The mixture of sweets? Maybe just a different kind of four, any way, I have no idea what it is, but it is unique to the boulangeries of France. If I can smell the smell, no matter what where or how, if the smell is there, then France has finally been duped and cloned. Until then, we have Le Panier, a little piece of France, rather a little representation of the good things, and my friends, France, is the goods things.

A quick purchase of a baguette for my dad, and a meringue for myself, and we leave Le Panier to flaner a little around the market, ending at the flower stalls for the choosing of yes, the most beautiful bouquet in the market. I very much so love flowers. Have you caught on to that yet? Pike Place market is the mecca for beautiful fresh flowers. Wanna impress? Get a Pike Place bouquet.


It is awfully nice to see Seattle again; it truly is the emerald gem of the US. A quick day trip there and back--my Seattle stays the same, but now, now it looks just a bit smaller. But, they say, the smaller the cozier. After the bakery we returned home--where my family, and the myriad windows of which earlier I had graffitied with the phrase chouette awaited my return. My mom, after my brat-like answer of "cake and wine for dinner" planned her own menu of poulet cooked in wine and mushrooms (some call it coq au vin) along with a risotto and green salad. Awfully nice....but where are my presents!

The star of the evening--aside from the autographed Mario Batali "Italian Grill" book which my dad secured for me along with a photo of the man himself autographing the thing (thanks dad--c'est trop chouette) --was the three layer gf birthday cake of vanilla and chocolate with a raspberry butter cream, baked by mom and decorated by GR (Ryan, her name is Ryan, Ryan Noel, actually, would you like her social security number? her favorite color is green and she has a fear of velvet) beautiful, very beautiful. A decor of flowers, did I mention i love flowers? perhaps, I received many. Many alongside the mini-barbeque, chouette! It is for my new back yard--complete with grilling utensils, napkins, (wine) glasses, trays, and all that jazz. Let us see if Mario can teach us a few tricks.

Just glad it wasn't Bobby. No I jest--I'd grill with Bobby anytime, because im a slut for celebrity what can I say. Though the minute Bourdain arrives, I throw my 360 and it's all trash talk on you grill boy. Mario, you're safe though. You're safe. N'inquietez pas.

Twenty second birthday; why do I feel like a little kid still sticking my tongue out. Ah, n'importe de quoi, maybe I am. This means now that I really do need to start eating 22 haricots verts instead of 21.

Cake, famous chef autographs, cake, family, cake, my poulet, cake, wine, cake, and a little reminder that just because I am no longer in France, doesn't mean I cannot see, find, and create France around me. Thank you family, for the wonderful birthday, it is great to be back in my cidade; my cidade....for now.

à bientôt

Celebrity Foodie Sighting

I don't just mean I looked in a mirror. Eh eh eh eh.
Check it out though--Clotilde Dussolier, celebrity food blogger of the legendary Chocolate & Zucchini, cook book author, owner of a 60sec cooking demo on the Today Show, and all around iconic-queen of the food blogging community, signed MY version Francais of her cookbook. Neener neener neeeener. Tartar and I dragged little cousin PJ along with us last week to La Cocotte, a small and incandescently charming cook book store in the 11eme. Clotilde, her French version of the book that i already own in English, tapas, and, aperitifs were present. As well as many, many chouette readers.

I will be sure to inform you all of when my signing tour will begin---the napkins i will be signing will be free of course, but you must provide your own sharpie pen. Naturally.

A bientôt