A different kind of travel guide
“World Travel”: The entire culinary world of star chef Anthony Bourdain in one book
On a culinary journey of discovery: Anthony Bourdain traveled the world for his CNN reports.
© CNN / Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown
Celebrity chef and presenter Anthony Bourdain has traveled the culinary world like no other. Now, with “World Travel”, a “mercilessly subjective travel guide” has been published posthumously: It is a homage to a great explorer and connoisseur.
New York, 2018. On a spring afternoon, Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever embark on a grand journey. It starts with an A for Argentina and ends with a V for Vietnam. It’s a journey crisscrossing the globe, a journey where Bourdain smoked non-stop. He smoked, although he had actually stopped smoking. He smoked so much that Woolever quickly stank “like after a bar crawl through 1990s hell”. And it’s a trip they didn’t leave New York for, no, not even the dinner table. Because it was a narrated journey, nourished by memories and anecdotes, which would later become “World Travel. A mercilessly subjective travel guide”. The book has now been published posthumously. It’s a tribute to a great adventurer and an even greater storyteller.
Anthony Bourdain was a rock star at the stove. celebrity chef. bestselling author. travel reporter. The American became famous through his book “Confessions of a Chef” and through countless travel reports such as “A Question of Taste”, “No Reservations” or “Parts Unknown”, for which he was awarded several Emmys. They all had one major theme in common: culinary delights. Anthony “Tony” Bourdain was not only a great explorer, but also a great connoisseur. But also one who in the end could no longer do it. A few months after meeting Woolever in New York, Bourdain took his own life. He was 61 years old.
“World Travel”: A travel guide that may not be one at all
“If I had known that this meeting was the only one we had about this book, I would have asked when he said: ‘We’ll discuss that in more detail’ or ‘Let’s see what you can find’,” remembers the co-author herself in the introduction to the book. She struggled: give up or keep going? And decided that maybe the world needed yet another guidebook, “with Tony’s crude wit, his thoughtful observations and some sly remarks from the deepest recesses of his battered heart, stitched together from the brilliant and hilarious sentences he wrote about the world and said and wrote his view on it”.
She had on tape the afternoon Bourdain jumped from subject to subject, chain-smoking. He could always listen to the globetrotter remembering dishes, hotels, people, all the things that, after almost 20 years of traveling for television, had burned themselves so deeply into his head and into his heart that he couldn’t remember them could tell. This recording was to form the basis for “World Travel“, a travel guide that may not be one at all.
Instead of the essays that Bourdain wanted to write, friends, family members and colleagues who remember shared experiences have their say. The book thrives on its anecdotes, the atmospheric scraps of memory, the narrative tone and does without detailed information on travel routes, prices and the like. If you’re looking for that, you’ll have to “buy a thick, detailed travel guide for a specific city or country, or just look it up on the Internet.”
Bourdain: “You know what? You have to enjoy life.”
Bourdain traveled more throughout his life than anyone can even imagine. His work has taken him to the most remote and exciting corners of the world. “World Travel” is a collection of his travel experiences, full of personal favorite places and culinary recommendations. It is more a source of inspiration than a travel companion. The book is a reference work like a wild ride through 43 countries in alphabetical, not geographical order. So it goes from India directly to Ireland, from there on to Israel. In some chapters the reader gets a deeper insight (USA, France), in other countries Bourdain and Woolever only make a short stopover. Salvador in Brazil is one such place. Salavador is definitely worth a trip, even for people who are afraid of travelling.
“No! You know what? You have to enjoy life. You can’t miss a place like that, because there aren’t that many equally great places and cities in the world,” Bourdain describes in his inimitable Bourdain style in an episode of ” Parts Unknown”. “Salvador is right in the heart of Brazil – this is where the magic is at home. To get here, all you have to do is follow the lure of the drums. Everyone’s hips are swaying and they’re always moving. Everyone’s sexy here. I don’t know if It’s the alcohol, the music, or the tropical heat.” What is there to eat with it? Queijo coalho, of course, grilled cheese on small skewers that the street vendors sell.
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