“Clearly, I have the best job in the world,” celebrity chef and
author Anthony Bourdain told an enthusiastic Bryan Series audience in
his lecture Thursday, Feb. 19. “I get to travel around all these places
in the world that I’d only dreamed of going to my whole life, so I can
hardly complain if I find myself waking up in Columbo, Sri Lanka,
feeling not too fresh.”
“No Reservations: An Evening With Anthony Bourdain” was the first
series event to take place outside of Greensboro. A sold-out house of
2,700 sometimes raucous fans filled the new Durham Performing Arts
Center. Bourdain, who has been called the “bad boy” of cuisine,
encouraged the audience to shout questions and comments.
In “No Reservations,” his popular television show on the Travel
Channel, Bourdain ventures into hidden corners of the world,
interacting with locals and sampling traditional food and drinks.
“I understand well the feeling of dread and resignation that comes
when somebody in the developing world says, ‘Ah, Mr. Bourdain, we have
something very special for you.’ This usually means there’s live
reptile parts or something squiggly coming your way. That’s well and
good. When people are giving you their very best on a regular basis,
every now and then that very best is going to involve bear bile or
lizard head or something.”
Bourdain talked about his journey from a professional chef whose
“inside baseball” riff on the restaurant industry written for a New
York street newspaper turned into Kitchen Confidential, his
best-selling memoir. That, of course, led to “A Cook’s Tour” on the
Food Network, and that to the Emmy-nominated “No Reservations.”
He also discussed the possible effect of the financial crisis on the
restaurant industry, and on American food culture in general. Maybe, he
said, “we will be forced by difficult conditions to cook well again
…We’ll have to find ways to be creative.”
