Monday, July 21, 2008

Be a Traveller, Not a Tourist

First of all, I need to publicly admit that Ben is almost always right. Like with the 29ers. And Pizzeria 712. And those apple cider ribs. And yet, I often find myself questioning some of his recommendations. One of Ben's recent recommendations was that I check out Anthony Bourdain's show "No Reservations" on the travel channel. To that point, my only exposure to Tony was his work on "Top Chef." As a judge on top chef, he was negative and a bit smug. So, I resisted Ben's recommendation. Then, one evening after I'd been through everything interesting on the DVR, I switched it to Tony's show. And it was great. I'm pretty confident that Tony would hate Kneader's as much as I do. I wouldn't imagine he'd have good things to say about Cafe Rio either. (Though it is a guilty pleasure for me). On the last episode Cindy and I watched last night Tony went to Namibia and spent some of his time with the Bushmen. The Bushmen were eating some pretty awful stuff. The worst of which was a pig anus that had only been squeezed out and then cooked. Tony choked it down and did his best to be gracious. In his narration, he noted that though it was the worst meal of his life, that in order to experience the truly great food, you've got to be willing to leave yourself open to getting some bad. So Ben, I'll try and do better at leaving myself open to your suggestions, though some of them may end up being bad.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

You're being too kind. For every p712 recommendation, there's an "I Heart Huckabees" - which was, apparently, analogous to Anthony's pig anus. It was painful to watch you choke that one down :)

Morkthefied said...

Noooo Reservations is the best thing on television currently. He'd be a friend similar to GR; really interesting conversations but probably not a great guy to be around 24/7. I love his take on vegetarians--a blessing to my soul. And he's so cute! ;)