New season of No Reservations kicks off tonight

by Jeremy Kressmann on

The holidays are inevitably a time of excess. LIke many of you, I spent the last two weeks eating and drinking my way through way too many parties and get-togethers, and I’m feeling a bit of a holiday-induced hangover at the moment. Thankfully, starting today, I can now redirect my guilt at overindulgence away from myself and project it onto somebody else – Anthony Bourdain. Everyone’s favorite badboy chef is back starting tonight with all-new episodes of No Reservations, kicking off what is sure to be another season consuming copious amounts of booze, street food and local culture along the way.

No Reservations enters its 5th Season coming off a watermark year for the show in 2008. The past season’s top-notch content featured culinary hot spots such as Spain and Tokyo as well as some unexpected gems such as Colombia and Laos. This season offers an interesting mix as well. Tonight kicks off with a journey to Mexico, where Tony dines on some of “the best tortillas ever” before making a visit to a Lucha Libre training center to pay his respects. Season 5 will also feature episodes on such far flung locales as the Azores and Sri Lanka as well as more traditional U.S. destinations like Chicago and New York City.

The curious can stop by the Travel Channel site where Bourdain will be posting new insights into season 5 on his blog. And if you’re looking to catch up on previous seasons of No Reservations, make sure to check out Gadling’s summaries in our archives. Keep your eyes peeled for some great No Reservations giveaways courtesy of Gadling and the Travel Channel, coming soon.

2008’s best travel writing

by Jeremy Kressmann on

While browsing my local Barnes & Noble earlier this week, I stumbled upon a display of The Best American Series – a collection of books recapping the year’s best writing. Among the collection is a travel-themed edition, curated this year by travel “badboy” Anthony Bourdain.

Gadling has given great reviews to these anthologies in years past, so I decided to pick up a copy. As a fledgling travel writer myself, I’ve found the pieces in this year’s edition to be highly compelling. The featured content covers a surprisingly broad array of topics. Foodies will savor writer Bill Buford’s account of Extreme Chocolate, which finds the author deep in the rainforests of Brazil in search of the perfect cacao beans. Adventurers will want to dive into James Campbell’s look at the Kapa Kapa Trail, a grueling overland route of American soldiers fighting in Papua New Guinea during World War II, in Chasing Ghosts.

For anyone who’s interested in the travel genre, this is a great recap of this year’s best-written and most interesting stories. Travel writing is a well-worn style – pithy descriptions of swank hotels and delicious meals can only take you so far. It’s the stories that are able to rise above the cliches and well worn metaphors to truly give a sense of place and its people that truly does these locations justice.

Let’s continue to encourage this sort of high-quality travel writing. Stop by Barnes & Noble or hit up Amazon and pick yourself up a copy.

Dining with Iron Chef Michael Symon at Lolita in Cleveland

by Jamie Rhein on

Until last Sunday, I wasn’t sure who Iron Chef Michael Symon is. Now, I do. My first introduction came with tickets to the Fabulous Food Show in Cleveland–my friend’s pick.

Symon, who is from Cleveland, was one of the featured chefs who put on a show to an audience filled with foodies. While we stood in line like some sort of sheep waiting to claim our reserved seats, I still wasn’t clear about why I should care about him.

That’s changed. Symon is a Clevelander through and through. Celebrity chef or not, he knows how to talk to his people. Plus, the guy can cook, talk at the same time, and give tips about how to crush garlic and which part should be taken out to keep from being bitter. (You take out the green sliver in each clove. He called it the germ.)

Although we didn’t get one of those scrumptious looking date appetizers at the show, afterward we ate at Lolita, one of Symon’s restaurants. The dates were on the menu.

Lordy! Manna from heaven, pure and simple. Lolita is the companion restaurant to Lola–the high end eatery that Anthony Bourdain visited in the Cleveland episode of ” No Reservations.“

Lolita, in the Tremont district of Cleveland–a historic, once gritty neighborhood that is on the rise–is a bistro type place that may have been a neighborhood bar years and years ago.

The exterior reflects its time period, but the inside has been transformed into an upscale edgy, artsy environment. The lighting is intimate and low, and the tables are far enough apart to add to the ambiance. Both my friend and I loved the decor, although I could barely read the menu since I was the one tucked next to the wall. The candle helped.

We had already ordered three appetizers and an entree to share, plus a glass of wine each, when Michael Symon appeared to eat dinner with his wife and friends. Like any good restaurateur, he stopped to chat with customers and laughed heartily at their conversations.

He didn’t notice me tucked in the dimly lit corner, however–or my friend who was about an inch from him when he visited with the folks at the table closest to us. She’s one of his ardent fans.

Being that he was in the middle of hobnobbing in between ordering and eating, we didn’t interrupt him–not even when we left after splitting our bill–about $26 or so a piece. I would have told him how much I loved those dates.

From what I remember from his show, they were baked for 10 or 15 minutes and covered with almonds that had been sauted along with chopped up panchetta. He promised to put the recipe on his blog, but it’s not there yet.

The dates weren’t the most creative item we ordered. That distinction goes to the Crispy Chicken Livers with “soft polenta, wild mushrooms and panchetta.” My friend wasn’t too fond of them. She’s not a liver gal after all, but I thought they were brilliant and felt sort of Andrew Zimmern-like eating them.

We also had the Fried Brussel Sprouts. They were chopped and fried up with anchovies, capers, walnuts and chilies. Quite wonderful. My friend adores brussel sprouts. Generally, I’ll eat them, but they’re not my fave. Symon’s version were a different story. Yum!

For an entree, I was saved from the pizza with pork belly by the waiter who said that he liked another sausage version of the pizza choices better. My friend, who was angling for the pork belly since she said everyone is cooking up dishes with pork belly these days, settled for the waiter’s recommendation.

My response to eating pork belly is this. “If everyone is jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you?”

By the way, we had two slices of pizza each and took the rest away with us. The starters were filling enough, and I made my $6.50 glass of wine last the whole meal. An interesting touch to the wine service was that the waiter poured each serving from small cruet like pitchers into our glasses at the table. My friend had white and I had red. Mine was the cheapest and was quite good. Cheapest or not, it felt classy.

[The food photos by edseloh are from Flickr under Michael Symon. The food is not exactly what we ordered but has a certain similarity. There are other gorgeous shots that will make you hungry.]

China coverage on Travel Channel

by Jamie Rhein on

In preparation for the Olympics, The Travel Channel has been offering several China-themed options this week and is continuing with its coverage by repeating various episodes. Here they are in case you’ve missed them and want to catch up.

For those interested in China’s natural landscape and wildlife and how the natural world fits into Chinese culture and sensibilities, check out Wild China. Episodes range from panda bears to the ecosystem and take armchair travelers from Tibet to the Great Wall and from the deserts to the sea. (For schedule.)

Samantha Brown’s Passport to China is focused on three places: Beijing, Sichuan, and Xian. The show offers a potpourri look at life in China from a variety of angles. (For schedule)

Great Cruises is offering an episode “Royal Passage to Asia.” Like the others, it is being aired a few different times.

For the gastronomic delights–or the opposite of delightful, depending on your tastes, Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods and Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations are repeating episodes that are China related. (No Reservations schedule; Bizarre Foods schedule)

The photo of the Bird’s Nest, the stadium where the Olympic ceremonies will take place is from the Travel Channel Web site’s page that highlights Beijing’s attractions.

“No Reservations” season 4, episode 14: Uruguay

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Location: it’s a Bourdain family vacation to Uruguay, the hidden secret of South America. Quietly tucked between beach-strewn Brazil and boisterous Argentina, Uruguay is the unsung hero of grilled meats, beautiful scenery and a quintessential “laid-back” lifestyle.

Episode Rating: Four bloody meat cleavers out of five. The cleavers are extra bloody this week from the insane amount of meat Tony eats during his Uruguayan odyssey. It’s worth noting that the high ratings so far this season are not inflated – every single new episode this summer has made for highly-watchable television.

Summary: Little did we know, but the Bourdain family has a colorful family history, starting with Tony’s grandfather who headed across the Atlantic in 1918 to settle for a few years in Uruguay. It is this mysterious voyage across the ocean which frames Tony’s trip. Who were his ancestors? What was life like in early 20th Century Uruguay? To help in his quest, Bourdain invites along his brother Chris, and the siblings set off to try and find some answers (and possibly eat some animal flesh during their downtime).
There’s no better place to begin a trip to Uruguay then by visiting the country’s capital, Montevideo. It’s a majestic old gem of a city, full of crumbling old buildings and picturesque streets. And perhaps no landmark is more emblematic of Uruguay than the Mercado del Puerto, arguably the “beating heart” of the country. The market is filled with vendors selling a virtual cornucopia of meat of every shape and size, slow-cooked a la parrilla (on the grill) over the burning coals of a huge wood-fed fire.

It’s here that Tony lays out his “meat manifesto” for his brother while the two gorge themselves on steak, sausages and loins served with a side of the ubiquitous chimichurri sauce. The consumption of potatoes, vegetables or bread of any kind while eating meat is forbidden! It only serves to fill you up so you can eat less meat. Mercado del Puerto truly seems tailor-made for Mr. Bourdain.

But this is Uruguay after all – there’s much more grilled flesh to be eaten, so Bourdain and his brother travel to “Gaucho country” near the village of La Galleja to visit a Uruguayan estancia. While there, Tony is hosted by a family originally from Canada that has made the Uruguayan countryside their home. The family cooks a huge feast in honor of Chris and Tony’s visit, including a whole piglet a la parrilla, an Estofado (a South American stew) made with sweet potatoes and Nandu and the centerpiece: an armadillo. Tony’s reaction: it tastes like chicken. Really Tony? Is this not the cardinal sin of food television?

Next up is the sleepy village of Garzon, population 200, where Tony pays a visit to renowned chef Francis Mallmann. Mallman has retreated from the glitzy dining scene of nearby Punta del Este to focus his energies on simple, traditional Uruguayan cooking. To demonstrate his new focus, he prepares Tony a meal using the traditional styles of asado – meat cooked between two iron grills, meat cooked in salt crust, vegetables cooked in hot ash and a pascualina spinach-egg pie on the side. As they eat this simple, delicious meal, Francis and Anthony discuss virtues of patience and the ultimate simplicity and primal nature of barbecue. The normally vitriolic Bourdain is downright mellow and rightfully so – an enormous simple meal of grilled meats seems to be perfectly suited to Bourdain’s temperment.

Seemingly satisfied with his time in the interior, Bourdain heads for the coast where he relaxes in Punta del Este, Uruguay’s infamous summer beach retreat for the rich and famous. After sunning himself on a beautiful stretch of sand, Tony and Chris have dinner seaside at La Huella, where they dine on fire-roasted prawns and sauteed octopus. Not surprisingly the Uruguayan seafood is just as good as the barbecue.

The two brothers then head up the coast to the hippie enclave of Cabo Polonio. They drink at a small bar with a local named Raoul, downing shots of the local moonshine made from grapes while the bar’s pet penguin, Pancho, scurries about beneath their feet. How did the penguin get there? He just sort of got lost one day and decided to stay. About the same way most wanderers find themselves in Cabo Polonio.

Upon their return to Montevideo, Tony and brother Chris conclude their visit at a raucous street fair featuring chorizo sandwiches, some drum based candombe music and siete y tres cocktails made from a mixture of red wine and coke. Though Bourdain and his crew clearly planned the event for television, the scene quickly becomes a full-fledged party as the friendly locals notice the commotion and begin to gather. It’s fairly typical of Uruguay – it just sort of sneaks up on you with its beauty, its surprising and fantastic food and the unassuming friendliness of the locals. But don’t expect Uruguay to stay under the radar much longer – a place this good can only stay a secret for so long.