[Televisionary]

I love the Travel Channel's Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations . It's a travelogue with a bit of snark, a love letter to the culinary world from a guy you'd sooner expect to sneer than smile. So why did last night's episode, in which Tony traveled to London and Edinburgh, leave me so cold? At the start of the episode (in addition to footage of Tony recording a song with British trip hop group Morcheeba ), Tony posed an interesting question: what happened to British cooking? With the very best traditional ingredients, centuries of good food, and a history of uniting those two things, where did British cuisine go wrong? It's an intriguing thought to ponder, even if it does seem, in the age of London gastronomy, a little outdated. But still, in a land that can produce Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver, Nigel Slater, Tom Aikens, Nigella Lawson, Marco Pierre White, and a slew of other celebrity chefs, why does the turkey twizzler exist? I was excited to see Tony tackle the Lond...

While a new season of the Travel Channel's No Reservations may have begun last week (shame on you for not watching!), I can't get enough of the series' host, Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain, an accomplished chef (Les Halles, anyone?), novelist, and memorist ("Kitchen Confidential" and "The Nasty Bits"), and all around enfant terrible , is the kind of guy you want watching your back in a knife fight (literal or figurative). If you've ever read any of his books, you're aware of his biting wit, astute observations, and love of well-turned phrases, as well as his, er, excessive behaviors. So I was overjoyed on Friday to learn from Televisionary reader Whitney about an in-depth Q&A with Bourdain in The Onion A/V Club about his writing, his discovery of food, his love for punk bands, and his disdain for Food Network TV personality Sandra Lee. Well worth a read. What's On Tonight 8 pm: How I Met Your Mother /The Big Bang Theory (CBS); American Gl...

Last night brought us the conclusion of the first half of Season Three of Travel Channel's series Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations as Tony, the enfant terrible and poison pen of the chef set, took a look into the underbelly of Los Angeles . Is it just me or did this season just fly by? I'm not sure if it was the scarcity of the episode count (reduced to one less this season after the events in Beirut ) or the fact that some installments (i.e., last week's Russia episode) seemed to have nothing to do with food whatsoever and couldn't hold my interest. But let's put that issue firmly in the past and look at last night's episode of No Reservations , which showed me a whole side of Los Angeles that, while I knew existed, I had never actually seen close up. Tony's mission was to investigate a side of Los Angeles that had nothing to do with Hollywood glamour or the film/TV industry, but to showcase a Los Angeles that had been carved out by people who do the real...

Welcome back, folks, to the 2007 edition of Televisionary. I'm now just back from the tropical paradise that is the Big Island of Hawaii and ready to start another year of highlighting my favorite television series... and perhaps making a few choice scathing remarks at the ones that don't quite match up to my expectations. It's New Year's Day, a day for all of us to recover from the previous evening's debauchery and what better way to do that than with the launch of the third season of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on the Travel Channel? For those of you not immediately in the know , Bourdain is the enfant terrible of chefs/travel writers/food writers, a recovering addict and unrepentant bad boy famous for blowing the lid off of what was really going down in the kitchens in his bestselling book "Kitchen Confidential." He's a sarcastic (and at times caustic) personality with a genuine love for food, from fine cuisine to street food to what's ...

Anthony Bourdain: War Correspondent? The New York Post 's Page Six has an interview today with Anthony Bourdain, the famed Les Halles chef and host of the Travel Channel's No Reservations (a fave here at Televisionary HQ), who appears to have gotten himself and his crew stranded while filming an upcoming episode of the series. According to Page Six : "Celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain was stranded in war-ravaged Beirut yesterday after Israeli forces bombed the city's international airport and blockaded all of Lebanon's ports. [...] After the thunderous assault on the city in response to Islamic extremist group Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers, Bourdain and his crew holed up at the Moevenpick Hotel while they waited for evacuation instructions from the State Department. 'Our network, our friends and our families just want us out of here as soon as possible,' Bourdain told Page Six yesterday afternoon, as Israeli shells exploded in the distance...

I was feeling a bit glum when I noticed (via my TiVo's To Do List) that tonight's episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations would be the last original episode for a while. Bourdain's show is, after all, the highlight of my Monday evening television . So I was quite excited to run into Tony himself yesterday morning at the Hollywood Farmers Market (the one on Ivar), signing copies of his latest book, "The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones." Anyone who watches No Reservations (or has read "Kitchen Confidential") knows that Tony is not the most, um, people-friendly person around. So it was quite a sight to see the man that once ate a cobra's still-beating heart looking a little out of his element: too-wide smile plastered on his face, posing for the cameras, greeting fans, and signing copies of his latest book. You could tell just by looking at him that he was simply dying inside for a cigarette. Or a large drink. ...

Anthony Bourdain is commonly referred to as the enfant terrible of the culinary set. The author of the critically acclaimed foodie memoir "Kitchen Confidential" (itself the basis for an unfortunately failed FOX single camera comedy this season), Bourdain is a chef (at the world famous Brasserie Les Halles restaurant in Manhattan), writer, critic, and life-long cynic. He's also the host of the Travel Channel's brilliant series No Reservations (gotta love that culinary pun). No Reservations isn't a cooking show or a travel show. Really, it's a travel show about cooking. But even that designation doesn't really capture the essence of the show. Bourdain's previous show, A Cook's Tour , on the Food Network also depicted Bourdain traveling the world in search of exotic foodstuffs. But that series relied more heavily on the shock value of witnessing Bourdain eat anything that came his way (see Anthony eat a still-beating cobra heart!) than No Reservati...