813: Anthony Bourdain in 2005: Direct From Cassette

27:33Is it male or female? No, no, no, men and women. People are crying. I mean, screaming and crying and singing and, you know, musicians, you know, there are horn sections and percussion sections and cheerleaders that are assigned seating often. But in general seating, whole companies will go and they will assign, you are over here, over here, over here. It's very cool. And I got to meet my first New York Yankee in Osaka, strangely enough. I'm standing there on the field meeting the players, and here comes Shane Spencer. It's cool. Oh, no shit. So you were on the field as a part of the show or as a guest of the show?

28:10A little bit of both because I'm published there, and it's always easy to get credentials to get down there. What did you talk about with Shane when you were like at Monsanto? How he was digging the food. He was having a good time. He likes the – he has no problem with the food, which was, to my mind, a good thing because I could eat Japanese food every day for the rest of my life. I love sushi. Right, right. As does he, apparently. That's great. JBL Sweakers, you take your hotel room, take it to me. Well – Are you unwinding for your day with some kind of soundtrack? No, it's mostly for the car.

28:41I had a Years ago while crossing The Sahara in a rented van With a Moroccan driver I was subjected To the greatest hits of Judy Collins For you know 12 Continuous hours the same album Over and over and over and over And something had to be Done I bought the iTrip Which works fine with most Car radios but when it doesn't You know As a backup system the JBLs throw out a lot of power They get good bass response. I'll just, you know, I'll play that in the car for the crew. We could all plug our own iPods in. You know, after I've used up my songs, they could plug theirs in. What's the longest, I guess, if you were to use the iTrip, what's the longest car ride you've had in your last couple of years of filming?

29:31You said across the Sahara. I mean, are you driving through Uzbekistan? Are you flying through? Generally, you know, the average long trip, We try not to drive for more than six hours before staying over someplace. Morocco is particularly long. Six hours of French pop is a fucking eternity. After that, you're ready to listen to Journey after that. Have you been back to that village that you wrote about in Morocco? The Chester? No, I haven't been back to Morocco. That was a wonderful chapter I thought. I want to tell everyone to. Digital camera, are you a photographer? No. It's an HP, a gift. I finally, you know, I was carrying a 35mm SLR for a while, not getting good pictures, wasn't able to share them with others.

30:23In spite of the fact that I'm technologically a cretin, I actually almost know how to use this thing, and it's given me good pictures, and I can send them and share them. Most importantly, I'm able to post. We take pictures for the Travel Channel website with commentary, sort of behind-the-scenes stuff. Here's the crew, projectile vomiting, just funny or illustrative moments on the road. It's useful. The assistant producer carries a camera for that purpose. Some of the shooters, in addition to their video cameras, bring their own cameras along, and I bring mine. Cool. the actual notebook that you have you described playing movies but are you checking email?

31:08What else are you using it for? I'm checking email of course I desperately need email it's vital I hate it when I have to most good hotels have high speed internally at least you can use a dial up though you can find internet cafes everywhere now even in the middle of the Sahara I use it largely for email And for writing and for watching films On the When you've seen the latest Jim Belushi movie On the plane It's really good to bring your own What's the craziest kind of email you can get back from home? Any examples of you just being Generally they're from James Crazy? I don't know Like lunatic fans They have my Assistance email I read the thing in the Times about your assistant too That was pretty cool Mostly it's for my assistant With things to do I like to stay in touch because if I'm gone for a week And come back it's like 200 emails And I'll have a heart attack I like to knock things down As they come in Craziest I get a lot of requests from foreign From other countries For either to write articles or do interviews, and a lot of the questions are sometimes kind of silly.

32:31Right, right. Or different. Any examples?

32:39What some countries see as, feel as an appropriate question for the circumstance, they're different from others. In one Asian country, it's like, Bourdainsan, what is your favorite color? And the next question is, how big is your penis? So you really, you don't know what's coming next. And I actually, I kind of prefer those to the same old, say, how come I shouldn't eat fish on Monday? What's the weirdest thing you ever ate? So you have this like variety of your traveling pharmacy there. You had your codeine mix. Well, it's an aspirin with codeine mix. It's an over-the-counter painkiller from Canada.

33:21But, you know, if you're, like when I was seriously fucked up in Uzbekistan after that quote-unquote massage, you know, that saved my life. You know, it's not an everyday thing. Aspirin for hangovers, Valium for, you know, when you're in a plane for, you know, 12 to 16 hours and shooting the day you arrive, you better sleep on the plane. Is that in Korea or Brazil? Flying to New Zealand is a long trip. I'm sorry, the valuable pick-up? Pick those up in Peru. Peru, that's right, okay. Though, you know, I could get a prescription for them here when I need them. I just pick some up in Peru. Right, right, right.

34:00You know, I think everybody in the crew takes something on the planes because otherwise you're – if you don't sleep on the plane, if you don't take advantage of that sleep, in fact, every bit of sleep, and we shoot off at 12, 14 hours a day, you don't have the luxury of jet lag or adjusting to altitude like in Peru. so sleep is important. And the longest flight you can do is basically New Zealand? New Zealand would be the longest. 14 hours? No, it's if you're going an eastern route. The longest flight I've been on is like 20, you know, with connections. Generally it's someplace like Australia via Singapore, Vietnam via Singapore, something like that.

34:41What do you do with your miles? I mean, are you, you're up? I have a lot of miles. Do you have any tips to, you know, ways to spend your miles? Free flights and upgrades. Free to upgrades, I guess. I mean, when you're 6 '4 and you travel as much as I do, you better be flying business class. Especially if you're on an American carrier. Right, right. What's your favorite airline? Singapore Airlines. Yeah. Is it because of food or because of comfort? They know how to take you. They're polite. They're competent. They get your luggage offloaded. It's seven minutes waiting for you when you arrive at the carrier.

35:14the in-flight attendants are helpful you get a choice of like 30 movies the food is actually edible it's comfortable you know so I'd say Virgin Cathay Pacific Singapore, Cathay Pacific Virgin British Air are all, I'm generally very pleased to fly them being stuck back in the plane on a domestic carrier is a living hell So I save my miles for upgrades mostly or the occasional free trip for me or a friend. Best airport in the world that I've been to, Changi in Singapore. It's great. I mean you can take a good shower with like a towel guy or fancy fluffy towels. Get shaved, get a massage, swimming pool, decent restaurants, multiple smoking sections.

36:08What is multiple? More than one or like different levels of smoking? You can smoke in the lounges. There's an outdoor smoking lounge, an indoor smoking lounge, a bar where you can smoke. These are important when you're changing planes and haven't had a puff in 14 hours. You're a little – you've got to see them though. Well, I used to put like three patches on my arm and chew gum. The Nicolette. Yeah. I mean, it's just – you've got to search that out for your trip. Anyways, so when you get these extra pages in the Passport, are they giving you these pages at the border? No, no, no, no. You have to go to the State Department or Passport office and get additional blank pages because I had no room left for stamps or visas.

36:50I was right down to my last little box there. Did your assistant do that or do you have to – I mean, it's like going to the State Department. I sent my assistant. The flask that you have, what are you packing it in? Well, that was given to me by a restaurant in Melbourne, a chef friend, the cooks. And, you know, it's useful. they frown on drinking in some parts of the world and you know it's nice to have a discreet nip on hand at times Morocco is this one place that you may have to do? Yeah Morocco, parts of Uzbekistan, Malaysia What's the fine for drinking in some of these countries? There's no fine, it's just bad manners So you know you're not likely to find a local bar so you know it's nice to have a nip of you know good bourbon or vodka you know, back at the hotel or nearby.

37:39What about some local spirits now that we're on the flask? I mean, are there any crazy spirits that you've had? You're a fan of that, Seth? It is a regular feature on the show in my life that as honored guest, I am offered the local beverage, and I feel that it's only polite to accept in good faith what is offered in good faith. And if that means, you know, unfiltered rice moonshine or rice whiskey, as is often the case, sometimes flavored with bare bile, sometimes not, you know, sorghum liquor, you know, various homemade grappas and moonshine, that this is something, you're not making friends around the world if you don't accept their kind offer and keep up.

38:24In more uptight cultures, the only way you kind of make friends is by getting hammered with people. So it's part of the process. Yeah, no, what's the most blitz you've ever, like, drunk you've been from, like, one of these foreign vodkas? Russia. Russia. There's just, you're no way out. There's no way you're not crawling home every night in Russia. Right. They drink heavily. China, they like to toast one at a time also. But Russia, they're just, you know, breakfast, lunch, dinner, it's vodka, vodka, vodka, vodka, and not just a couple of drinks. You drink until you're, you know, drooling, singing, weeping, I love you, man, falling down, drunk.

39:02And that's rough. Well, there's specific toasts in Russia, too. This is to our countries. This is to cooperation among nations. This is to our mothers. What are you going to do? Say, fuck you, mother. I'm not taking that toast? Phone charger. Essential. I mean, what are your long-distance bills like when you come back to the States and you're like, it's just like... Six, seven hundred dollars. Like, you get the fat envelope in your mail. They can be as much as six or seven hundred dollars, sure. I guess you said the anecdote about having the clear signal on the Chinese countryside. But what is it essential that you have service?

39:39You've got a crew with you, but I guess in terms of you as a traveler and you're alone in the streets of whatever. I need to hear from my publisher. I need to hear from my assistant. I need to hear, you know, there are calls that I need to hear, need to get, and calls I need to make. You know, local ones often as well, or the next country, as has happened. A friend will set me up with a friend in Borneo. A friend in Kuala Lumpur will set up a meeting in Borneo. I need to check in with them. If I'm going from there to Tokyo to do an article or some publicity, there might be some pre-interviews, things like that.

40:19The next points of the show, you can even do that a bit. Are you booking a lot of these segments on the fly as you go? So how tight is your itinerary when you pee? It's really, the production schedule is really tight. Meaning we have to shoot within certain shows, within certain dates. We try to knock off, if we're doing China and Japan, for instance, we try to do them in one swoop rather than fly back and forth, which is expensive. We try to set up, I pick the destinations. We try to then, working from either, I reach out to friends or contacts I've met in either publishing or the restaurant world or among chefs to see if I know somebody on the ground who would be good to who knows me, who will be good as either on-camera fixer or at least helpful in suggesting places I should see or go the production company reaches out as well and I basically choose from a menu of things to do that being said, a lot of those things don't work out you know What are some scenes that we haven't seen?

41:22We won't see, I guess. Just scrapped. Lunch with squid fishermen in Sicily, in a little island in Sicily. They all sat there like stunned trout. It was awkward, it was boring, and it wasn't visually interesting. Other times, it's a really great meal and a great restaurant. It's not interesting. Seeing me eating really good food isn't necessarily a good scene. Other times we'll just scrap a location. You know, we were going to see fish being smoked and cured and smoked and served in Iceland and drove for hours out in the middle of nowhere only to find ourselves in an empty warehouse. The smoker turned off and, you know, the proprietor's standing there with some plastic-wrapped, pre-smoked fish.

42:10We knew right away this is not going to be a scene and we needed to substitute something else on the fly. Other times we'll be just driving down the street in Thailand or something in a tuk-tuk. You look out the window, you see a lady grilling sausages on the side of the road, and you think, that's cool, let's shoot there, let's ask her if it's okay. So we do it on the fly. We like to have things set up and prepared in advance, but you don't know until it happens. Right, exactly, like any show or be organic. Have there been any scenes that you've shot that you've cut out that you were like, they were good, but something?

42:42No, the network's been great, And I think we have a pretty reasonable idea of what audiences will bear. I mean, I was called upon to kill a pig, staying with a tribe of Iban, former headhunters in Borneo. And as a ritual of honoring their hospitality and their dinner, I was called upon to kill a pig with a spear. Not something I looked forward to doing or enjoyed doing. but obviously though we filmed the spear going in and the pig screaming it was a much more lurid scene as you can imagine than what you ended up seeing on TV there was no desire on my part or anyone involved we're not even sending the network that stuff I mean why?

43:34who wants to see it? it doesn't make me happy I don't think it added anything to the show or to the experience you know I had to live through it that's enough right right it was a good thing delicious you know I mean there's a lot of stuff we might find funny personally but I you know and I'm sure there's even some sick sector of the public that you know would probably want to know more about you know what the restroom facilities look like in Uzbekistan but you know we're not gonna we're probably not gonna show you that we you know there are some things we shoot that we hadn't planned you know when the leech you know when the camera Everyone got a leech on her ass.

44:13Well, that was funny. And it gave you a good sense of what it was like in the moment. We put that in the show. When I rolled a quad bike over myself down a mountain. You know, hadn't planned on doing that. But, you know, apparently watching me... Fell on a quad bike? I tumbled down a sand dune with 1 ,200 pounds of quad bikes, you know, over me. And it rolled over me twice. And I wasn't hurt. And it was, you know, it's pretty damn funny. So, of course, that went in, you know. You know, why don't we cut? Yeah, if it's boring. If it looks cruel. If it's somebody who was kind to us, not looking their best.

45:00You know, like looking silly or ridiculous. It's going to cause them a real embarrassment. You know you're the one. I can't do that. Yeah, I mean, I think they're all just sort of the personal choices that you make as a traveler. There's never been a question of, we really want this scene in, but the network won't let us. They've been very cool about everything. And we've, you know, we've stretched the format, I think. There's no question in my mind, I'm proudest of the fact that there's no four, that the show, each episode is very different from the one before, with a different mood. There are happy shows, snarky shows, shows where I'm clearly unhappy.

45:39Other ones are very sentimental. Other ones where I'm ecstatic and engaged. Is that Vegas? The Vegas show, I went out hostile and afraid. Because of the idea that the food there is just, I mean, I'm afraid of like. I just hated the whole idea of Vegas. It's the ugly shorts heart of darkness, I thought. I was out there doing an article on celebrity chefs opening restaurants out there as part of my time. We ended up making a I don't really know what we made But it's kind of like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas And kind of a food show Personal nightmare adventure And I can only imagine What the networks thought when they saw it I'm very proud of the show It's a really good writing in it Where did you stay?

46:21Stayed at the wind But we really hit the underside of Vegas As well as the more obvious spots Right, can't wait to see it So, but we've had, you know, there's never been a time where they said, you know, you can't put that in a show. It's just too weird. You had some books there. I am prescribed by network policy and, of course, adhere to the network policy of never partaking of psychoactive or illegal drugs or depicting them or discussing such an activity directly on camera. So, on a trip to... Peru, for instance, visiting a shaman, a native witch doctor type who prepares a psychoactive root substance called ayahuasca, in which you get in touch with your spirit animal.

47:11Knowing me, as my fans do, they can rest assured that I would never, of course, take part in any such activity or refer to it. Were such an event ever be rumored to have happened. Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan. It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation. Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash. No ID, prescription or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN recommended brand of emergency contraception, and it won't impact your future fertility.

47:52That's freedom to be. Use as directed. Did you know Sam's Club isn't a store? It's actually a club with cool finds and like a whole community. It's a club. Of course, Jason. It's in the name, Sam's Club. Oh, yeah. Come join us. Sam's Club. At ZocDoc, we know being a healthy adult is like living in a video game. Every day has side quests, taxes, laundry, birthdays. And just when you're leveling up, you have to book a doctor. The insurance portal crashes, they put you on hold, your doctor doesn't take your plan. Game over. We see you, so we made booking a doctor easy. Download SockDoc. Search by specialty, insurance, and availability.

48:35Book instantly. No cheat codes required. Find a doctor you love with SockDoc. Talked about Vizine. Always key for a travel bag. And this kind of goes into our... Vizine, nothing sinister about it. You know, the fact is... you wake up with a hangover, you have blood red eyes, or actually, I was just in, we were when frog gigging in the Everglades, you know, zipping around at high speed on an airboat with this sort of seven foot long fondue fork, spearing frogs and cooking them. You know, your face is basically, especially at night in the Everglades, it's sort of like a windshield, you know, with all these insects.

49:15So my eyes were just like, you know, peppered with mosquito parts. and Vizine was helpful as I mean I really looked you know like a horror movie also my lip was swollen up I looked like Faye Dunaway or Melanie Griffith it was you know I got a mosquito bite right here my lip like so fucking pumped up they hit the frogs as they're jumping in the water and they can spear multiple frogs onto the no no no you see them you can see their eyes reflect it's pitch black the guy above you has a little like miner's hat on and he was zipping along and he sees their little eyes or the underside of their neck reflect and he comes right at him and ka-choon and into a bucket and then we went back and supped on their delicious legs and they were good or was it game?

50:03no delicious absolutely delicious yeah it's a protected area this area we were allowed to go no no we were on a leased area but it was quite good but i came back with the angelina jolie lips and like blood red eyes and it was good to have uh anihistamines around and uh you know visine uh your books that you have a fortress of solitude you have some other i'll just try to take a lonely planet guy to whatever country i'm going to in a folder of briefing material yeah you know you're always in your packets okay last thing is the uh you're talking about your show with just for walking to mario battalion you what is this going to be?

50:43Oh, no, no. I think it would come as, well, I've talked about it with Mario and Christopher Walken. This will come as a complete surprise. But as a dream project, I would love to develop and write, write and develop and produce or co-produce a food-centric, you know, talk show format show with like, you know, Christopher Walken as, you know, Johnny and Mario as, you know, the Ed McMahon, or vice versa. You know, just talk with chefs, have them cook, do remote reports, something that will make full use of the genius of, the wisdom and genius of Mario Batali, and the wisdom and genius of Christopher Walken is well established.

51:27What most people don't know is that he's a passionate amateur cook with a burning desire, I'm told, to do his own cooking show. I would like to enable that if I could. Yeah, no, he'll read this, and, I mean, have you reached out to him? Have you talked to Mario? Mario, this is your scheme. This is your plan. I've talked about it with Mario. Mario was in the Jersey show. We're very good friends. I would love to make television with him at some point in the future. If he's willing, if more sensible people in his organization don't veto it. As far as Christopher Walken, I don't know. He's so cool.

51:57I don't know. He might be too – I don't know if I'm cool enough to even speak with Christopher Walken. I'm not worthy. Has he cooked for you? No, no. I don't know. I never met the guy. I just think he's ultra cool. And I'm encouraged by the fact that he loves to cook. So, you know, maybe someday. What's his killer dish? You know they cook. Does he have? I don't know. I read an article in The Observer where he was cooking. And I've heard from Food Network that he, I'd heard that he pitched show ideas to them. It would seem a terrible waste for anyone other than the Travel Channel to have a fantastic show like that.

52:35Will you ever do Iron Chef? Never. Why? With my luck. He's done it. Yeah. He's the master. American master. Don't you want to throw it down? No. With my luck, I'd get tofu or veggie burgers as my secret ingredient. Nah, I don't. And you get the food chemist guy to judge. Being on television is quite degrading enough in its current form. I don't think I will. It's a freak show. I enjoy it. I much prefer the Japanese one. All right, well, I'm going to let you go. This is good. You got it all.

53:16This is Taste is hosted and produced by Eliza Abarbanal and me, Matt Rodbar. The show is edited by lead producer Clayton Gumbert and supervised by Pat Stango, director of media production and development at Penguin Random House. Thanks to Shalia Harris and the production team at Penguin Random House. Theme music by Steve Rydell Episode portraits by Louise Zergon Pomeroy Logo design by Ellie Skirzat and Ian Dingham Visit Taste Online at tastecooking.com And make sure to subscribe to our newsletter To keep updated on all cool things in the world of taste Are thoughts about food, exercise, and your body Taking up too much space in your brain?

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