“World Travel: an Irreverent Guide” - Anthony Bourdain with Laurie Woodlever

 

🍜 tl;dr this really is more of a travel guide interspersed with AB’s wry, witty, and sometimes furious, observations. I have a couple of AB books on my TBR, and this one was maybe not the best one to start with as it’s more of a reference book.

🍜 AB outlined and brainstormed his ideas for this book with Woodlever during a single meeting prior to his death (may he RIP). Along with his family, friends, and associates, Woodlever completed this book in a manner she feels is true to his original vision for it. She utilized commentary in his tv shows, conversations with producers, and Tony’s local friends to flesh out each section. The countries appear in alphabetical order with short passages on cities visited. I personally could have done without the “get around” information in each section as the information therein is easily obtainable and likely more current online should travelers be interested.

🍜 The Tony that so many loved from his marvelous tv shows, was a culinary anthropologist. His level of preparation was remarkable - he’d research the history, culture, even literature of a locale, and then he’d present his findings through the lens of a local. We’d benefit from his chef’s know-how, but he’d always let the local guide serve as the thematic framework for each segment. 

I love that he would go beyond the common western narratives, and dig into lesser known immigrant history (i.e. the Japanese immigrant community in Peru), as well as indigenous traditions, or perhaps a human element in the form of a work colleague returning to her homeland after many years. If you could possibly distill Tony’s approach to culinary exploration, I think it would be that he would always look beyond the dominant culture or the superimposed colonial facades, to find other truths hiding in plain sight. In Oman, he told us about the Ibadis, a sect of Islam, and noted how the west mistakenly either treats Islam as a monolith or as a simplistic Shia/Sunni model. And I loved places where fired-up Tony emerged from his typically laid back nature. His passion and fury about the Cambodian genocide was palpable, as was his rage at the hypocrisy of US immigration policies (whereby the service industry collapsed without Mexican labor). 

Surprisingly, my older kids also enjoyed some of Tony’s commentary. I think his sometimes blunt, sometimes rough edges appealed to all of us because it made us believe he was being totally honest with us.

🍜 A number of the chapters matched tv episodes I had watched before (Bhutan, Cambodia, Tanzania). His description of the Ngorongoro crater in Tanzania was sublime. It was fun to get some more personal overlay for these particular locales - like a BTS of these tv episodes.