I ate an amazing meal at Vue de Monde, widely considered Melbourne’s best restaurant, but the stand-out was the butter that came with the crusty bread – salty, creamy, perfect.I thought about my ‘perfect’ meals and the memories are as much about time and place as what was on my plate. It’s a fleeting thing, ‘perfect’ and, if you’re anything like me, it’s often better in retrospect.”

‘Perfect’, like ‘happy’, tends to sneak up on you. “The whole concept of the ‘perfect meal’ is ludicrous. Bourdain’s account of his travels through various places including Vietnam, Scotland, Cambodia, Portugal and Russia, where he ate weird, delicious, revolting and memorable foods is immensely satisfying. Let’s be glad that his publisher didn’t object to the fact that there would be no ‘perfect’ conclusion to this book, and funded the tour regardless. Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.” I knew how important factors other than technique or rare ingredients can be in the real business of making magic happen at the dinner table. “…I knew already that the best meal in the world, the perfect meal, is very rarely the most sophisticated or expensive one. It was cheeky, because Bourdain knew from the outset that there was no such thing – the ‘perfect’ meal isn’t only about what’s on the plate, it’s the time, the place, the company and the memory. The idea for A Cook’s Tour was simple – travel the world and find the perfect meal. Inexplicably, it had flown off the shelves.” “I’d just put down a very nice score with an obnoxious and overtestosteroned account of my life in the restaurant business. I’m not sure how he fills his days now, whether it’s behind a grill or a keyboard, but a number of books and documentaries followed Confidential, including my most recent read, A Cook’s Tour.īourdain is amusingly self-deprecating and plays up to his role as rascal, saying that since Confidential, he’ll never shrug off being a ‘sound-bite’ chef – His rock’n’roll tales from the kitchen were gripping and yet wonderfully repulsive.

When it comes to writing about food, Anthony Bourdain pretty much redefined the genre in 2000 with Kitchen Confidential.

A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain