Bourdain in Cologne

A conversation over schnitzel and Kölsch: This was Tony Bourdain on the immigration debate in Germany in 2016, though it could just as easily have applied to Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Michigan and Wisconsin in November 2024. “As often happens on Parts Unknown,” Bourdain said at the time, “the show you are going to see Sunday night is not the show we intended to make.”

Ying and yang, For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Or, put another way, one of the remarkable things about Tony Bourdain’s Parts Uknown for CNN those 10 years ago now, give or take, is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Take the past week’s events, for example.

Germany, Cologne-style.

Bourdain visited Cologne and its sister city, Dusseldorf, in season 7, episode 7 of Parts Unknown. It was his only visit, though he alluded to other visits in the past that inspired filming an episode comparing the two with a view to the outside world.

First, Cologne. The ying. Carnival. and the restaurant Bei Oma Kleinmann, which opens the episode that first aired on CNN on the 5th of June, 2016.

“Bei Oma Kleinmann handles enormous crowds of revellers,” Bourdain sniffed at the outset of what would prove to be what one commenter on Reddit labelled “the best episode of the season IMO. Maybe because I've been to Cologne and had a great time there, or maybe it was because it was a bit more ‘food-centric.’ Either way, I thought it was the most interesting one this season.”

Back to Carnival. Back to Bourdain.

“Fortunately, the madness is still a few weeks away. And this is my old friend Tracey [Gudwin, friend and one-time producer for No Reservations], who had the good or bad fortune, depending on how you look at it, to travel and produce shows around the world with me for many years. Anke [Lönne] is from Cologne and makes me feel better about my Carnival phobia.”

The trio swapped anecdotes over schnitzel, in Bourdain’s words, “surfboard-sized slabs of veal and pork filled with many wonderful things, dredge in breadcrumbs and fried in magical, deep fat.”

The restaurant Bei Oma Kleinmann, even today, rates four and a half stars on TripAdvisor, based on more than 1,500 reviews.”Die Gaststätte "Bei Oma Kleinmann" ist eine traditionsreiche, alte, kölsche Kneipe mit jungem Herzen!

“Outstanding,” one commenter noted on TripAdvisor just this past month. “Great food, fabulous service and an unbeatable atmosphere. What's not to like? The best Wiener schnitzels we've had.” No, this review is not an inside job, as TripAdvisor’s (somewhat defensive) caveat notes. “This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.” On second thought, save yourself the trouble.

“Carnival,” Bourdain repeats. To Tracey Gudwin: “I do, and I'm not ashamed to say it.”

Bourdain: ”Will jesters and bards and medievally attired pranksters be popping up during my stay here?”

Tracey: ”You're missing out. You're really ar—“

Bourdain: “Mimes? No mimes, troubadours, jugglers, uh, human statues?”

Tracey: “Oh, come on.”

Anke Lönne: “All of them are wearing bonkers costumes and look like shit. I don't like it. No, I always get embarrassed about those people.”

Bourdain: “I hate Carnival.”

Anke: “I hate Carnival, too.”

Bourdain: “Are there parades?”

“Yes.”

Bourdain: “I hate parades.”

Tracey: “OK.”

Bourdain: “Are there clowns?”

Tracey: “You hate clowns.”

Bourdain: “I hate clowns.”

“Jesters?”

“Yeah, occasionally.”

Bourdain: “Festive attire? I have beer right now. I don't need no stinkin’ Carnival to drink beer, man. And as I understand it, I am urged to drink beer as part of a community of beer drinkers with other bros. I hate bros.”

Tracey: “It's not just bros. It's a whole community of people speaking in dialect, singing songs in dialect.”

Bourdain: “Singing, I forgot to mention that.”

Tracey: “Singing is good.”

Bourdain: “I hate that too.”

Tracey: “There is another side, and if you open your heart, you would see it.”

Bourdain: “My heart is a cold, cold place, and there's no room in it for jugglers. What did you think when you heard that I wanted to come to Germany and go to Cologne?”

Tracey: “I thought that’s awesome because Cologne is unlike any other city in Germany that I can really identify with. It's like I have this love affair with it.”

Bourdain: “I often say that the places I go, there's a pheromonic decision made very quickly. You step outside the airport terminal, and then you go, maybe you know right away: There's something about this place that's … that I think I'm going to like.”

And so, on to Kleine Glocke, “a hangout for Cologne’s artist community since the First World War,” where Bourdain sampled sauerbraten (pot roast) with chef René Srtessi; Ox & Klee Köln, where Bourdain met former rocker Irmin Schmidt of the Krautrock band Can, where they discussed the state of the world — and world music — over grilled lobster with a dash of eel and fermented and grilled scallop with black salsify served with a consomme of burned hay, lemon gelee and walnut oil.

Up next: Brauerei zur Malzmühle, where Bourdain dined with Heinz Grüne, a connoisseur of — and world-renowned expert in — German beer, in particular Kölsch, a pale ale created and brewed in Cologne. They downed Kölsch over a meal of cured pork, Gouda cheese on rye, mettbtötchen, raw minced pork on a roll, and Himmel und Erde, blood sausage served with fried onions, mashed potatoes and applesauce.

Overall, Bourdain had himself a merry old time — the ever-looming threat of Carnival aside.

And now the yang.

Bourdain again: “So, let's talk about the elephant in the room. We know that Cologne is a proudly tolerant, fun-loving, beer-drinking, pork-happy and friendly little city. But just a few days before we arrived, Cologne became the focus of the whole argument over Europe's refugee crisis.”

Immigration.

“Cologne, of all places, is now the example for both sides of an increasingly bitter argument over whether Europe, and by extension the world, should turn their backs on the millions of refugees spilling out of Syria, Iraq, and a Middle East spinning into chaos and slaughter.

“With the bodies of children washing up on Greek beaches and few other countries willing to help, Germany has taken in 1.1 million people fleeing ISIS, Russian and Syrian bombs, and war. One should, I believe, be admired and even celebrated for doing the morally right thing over the probably wise thing.”

Sound familiar?

At this point there’s probably a small minority of followers of this page who are starting to grumble, ‘Leave politics out of it; keep your politics to yourself,’ but to think that is to fundamentally misunderstand Bourdain and the tao of Bourdain and everything that made his television so compelling, in a way that speaks to every corner of the globe, all these years after his passing.

Bourdain again: “So here we are, Cologne, one of the most liberal, if not the most liberal cities in Germany. A city doing the right thing. And on New Year's Eve, the whole attitude towards refugees, not just European policy, but the whole moral question, was thrown into doubt.

“Cologne found itself the test case, both the example of tolerance and hope and worst-case scenario. … On the night of December 31, 2015, witnesses saw crowds of up to a thousand men described as predominately Arab and North African near Cologne Central Train Station. Some broke off into small groups, assaulting hundreds of women as they left the train station. Police were completely unprepared. The situation reportedly continued for hours.

“Three weeks after the incident, the official numbers were as horrifying as first reported. 766 criminal complaints, of which 381 are sexual offences, including three rapes. Many across the world, of course, saw this as the perfect ‘I told you so’ moment. A sadly understandable reaction. There is no minimizing 381 sexual offences in one night.”

Bourdain discusses immigration and, yes, politics — ick! — with friends and family of some the earliest refugees and immigrants to find a new home in modern-day Germany, at the Artistanbul Restaurant Innenstadt — gotta love that name — over Raki and a mezze of spicy mashed vegetable, hummus, tzatziki, beetroot and olive dip, friend eggplant, pastries with feta, and meatballs with tomato sauce and mint.

“Do you think it will change the political climate is what I'm asking,” Bourdain asks his hosts. “Before, it was relatively easy for a German politician to say, ‘Look, have a heart here. Let's do the right and moral thing." And it is being used as a club to beat any politician or leader who would like to have a more conciliatory or more welcoming attitude towards people who clearly need help.”

Food cures all, and good food over a fraught situation is what Bourdain was all about — a meeting of cultures and a way to settle differences of opinion free of violence, prejudice and seemingly intractable philosophical differences.

“We are open-minded,” Bourdain is told — by both sides in the immigration debate. Yes, this is Germany, the new, post-war Germany, but still. It’s a global message. "We try to be fair to everybody,” his German hosts tell him. “We are welcoming. We're proud of that. That will never change.”

Or will it?

“I’m not that optimistic, to be honest,” another of Bourdain’s hosts tells him. “Because I’m convinced that it’s not just a German problem. It’s a world problem. It’s a European problem. We’re all stuck in the same boat.”

Like so many others, I watched last week’s US election results with a growing sense of unease, sadness and revulsion. Don’t kid yourself — immigration played a large part in voters’ decision-making. I saw what happened, and then, looking for succour, I turned to the Bourdain video library and watched a food-centric Parts Unknown made nearly ten years ago, heard what Bourdain had to say, listened to the people around him speak, and I thought, wow, wow, wow.

Bourdain was one of the greats, and he made a lot of sense that could help fix the problems in the world. Some of them, anyway.

Supplementary reading:

https://medium.com/parts-unknown/the-right-thing-af88aff2aa08

https://www.postcard.inc/@partsunknown/l/4aBvthoBjJh/cologne

https://explorepartsunknown.com/cologne/episode-intel-from-cologne/

CNN

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Bourdain in Senegal

“A rebuke to those who’d paint a whole continent as a monolith of despair, or Islam as something to be feared.” This was Tony Bourdain in Senegal, in the fall of 2015.o be feared.” This was Tony Bourdain in Senegal, in the fall of 2015.

Senegal.

In Tony Bourdain’s words, “A rebuke to those who’d paint a whole continent as a monolith of despair, or Islam as something to be feared, Senegal turns simple-minded assumptions and prejudice on their heads at every turn.”

More than a few people who followed Bourdain on his travels over the years — including some of those in this group, quite possibly — may have been surprised by how taken Bourdain was with the West African country of Senegal, which he visited just once in his many years on the road, in the fall of 2015.

The essay he penned for the social media platform Medium, the day before Senegal premiered on CNN’s Parts Unknown in May 2016, left little doubt, however.

Bourdain had set foot in Africa before, a vast continent with more than 50 countries, in Congo for Parts Unknown’s debut season, followed in short order by Morocco, South Africa, and Tanzania in 2014, Madagascar in 2015, and Ethiopia a year later.

He would go on to visit Nigeria and—famously, in his final season of Parts Unknown, which aired posthumously in 2018—Kenya with Kamau Bell.

Years earlier, for Travel Channel’s No Reservations, Bourdain wound his way through Ghana, Namibia, and Liberia, ending with Mozambique in No Reservations’ last season, titled — somewhat portentously — The Final Tour.

Senegal, though, was different, as he made clear in his essay for Medium.

“So let this episode in Senegal, an African nation which is over 90% Muslim, serve as both rebuke and example. It is a country that proudly elected as their first president after independence a Christian — because they felt, in their best judgment, that regardless of his faith, he was the best person for the job.

“It is a country that defies stereotypes and expectations at every turn. Emerging from French colonial times as a functioning multi-cultural, multi-lingual, extraordinarily tolerant society, it has managed to avoid coups, tribal wars, dictatorships and most of the ills that afflicted so many of its neighbours. It remains an absolutely enchanting place to visit, with delicious food, absolutely extraordinarily beautiful music, and a relatively free and easy attitude towards intermarriage, mixed race, intertribal relationships and foreign visitors. It has a powerful and proud tradition of hospitality that endures to this day.”

This was in 2015.

Remarkably, the same is still true today, nearly 10 years later, despite everything that’s happened in the outside world in the years since.

And is still happening, as Bourdain himself would have been quick to point out.

The fascinating thing to me, as a frequent visitor of that vast continent, is that all 54 countries are different. That may seem like a trite thing to say, condescending even, but then you must understand that most — virtually all — Africans see themselves that way, as the residents and citizens of strikingly different countries, with separate cultures and separate languages. I have heard it said that while South Africa — possibly the most westernized of African countries, certainly in the big cities of Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town, has 11 official languages, in fact, the country of 64 million people is thought by some to be home to 86 different native languages. To homogenize the entire continent in a single word — Africa — is the height of condescension, but that’s what colonial thinking does to one.

Tony Bourdain got that.

That’s why he was openly welcomed wherever he went on the continent — that, and his love for good music in all its forms. And African cultures have indelibly close ties to music in all its forms. The Sahara Desert and the Sahel hinterlands — possibly a vast, seemingly empty wasteland to you and me — are home to some of the most respected, well-attended music festivals on the planet. And here’s the fun part. Those music festivals are about 95% local and only 5%, if that, touristy.

Bourdain got that, too.

And so, in Senegal, he sits down and breaks bread with Senegal’s native-born Youssou N’Dour, not just sharing quality time with N’Dour but thanks to CNN’s Parts Unknown and Zero Point Zero Production’s cameras allowing us, the viewers, to share quality time not just with a remarkable singer and musician but a poet-philosopher, a political activist, an active humanist, who is Christian, secular and Muslim all rolled into one.

A truly remarkable person. Peter Gabriel is a frequent musical collaborator of N’Dour’s, and he’s not alone among Western musicians of note. Gabriel will tell you he’s the pupil and N’Dour the mentor, not the other way around.

It’s worth noting, too, that N’Dour performed his anthemic 7 Seconds, featured in all its gorgeous fullness in the Senegal episode, in 2005’s Live 8 concert in an extended duet with Dido, who was born in Kensington, London and hails from a background as different from N’Dour’s as is humanly possible.

Think on this: Live 8 — sobering and deeply moving to look back at today, given the fractious state of world affairs today— was performed live, and I’m not making this up, from London, Paris, Rome, Philadelphia, Barrie (Ontario, Canada, my home country), Chiba (Japan), Johannesburg, Moscow, Cornwall and Edinburgh. Think about that: good music brings the world together for a common cause.

Tony Bourdain got that, too.

“So what’s the future?” he asks N’Dour, about midway through what, with the benefit of 10 years’ hindsight, is one of my favourite Bourdain sets.

The two met in Dakar’s Bazoof restaurant over plates of mafe, a Senegalese stew of beef thickened with ground peanuts. To hear Bourdain tell it, “There are similar preparations throughout West Africa, but the Senegalese version is particularly great. Sear the beef; cook the onion, garlic, peppers, and carrots; deglaze with ground peanuts and broth, bringing up all that good stuff from the pan; then simmer until tender and awesome. Serve hot over rice.”

“The future?” N’Dour replies, perhaps surprised by the question.

Bourdain: “Yes, the future. Twenty years from now, where will Senegal be?”

N’Dour: “What I hope is, in 20 years, Senegal is going to be the place for great and big contributions of what we call Islam.”

Bourdain: “Do you think there's any danger of the kind of radical Islam that we see taking hold in many places in Africa?”

N’Dour: “All these people who are using the religion, the Muslim religion, to do bad things — I think Senegal sets (a good) example. This country I love, my country has many different models of the religion. This country, you know — you are here. I'm doing my local bissap “ — a drink made from a hibiscus flower known as the Roselle; the sepals of the hibiscus, when infused in hot water, leave a pink, red, magenta or dark shade of water — “and you are here, with your beer, in a country that is 95 percent Muslim.”

Bourdain: “Right.”

N’Dour: “And I think this example can help all the world.”

Bourdain: “I hope so. Inshallah.”

By the end, Bourdain is profoundly moved by this country of 18 million. Shaken to his core. What better way to close this, then, than with his own words,.

“Senegal is one of the best arguments for travel I can think of. Because the more we see of the world, actually meet who we are talking about — or think we are talking about — the more we take a walk, however briefly, in other people’s shoes, see how other people live, people who are supposedly so different than us, and find ourselves — as so often and so inevitably happens — recipients of random acts of hospitality and kindness from total strangers, then the better we shall be.

“And the happier. Knowledge — exposure — to ‘the other’ is not a contaminant.

“It enriches us. It makes — or should make us — more humble.

“Senegal. It’s someplace that everyone, given the chance, should go.”

Inshallah.

Supplementary reading:

https://explorepartsunknown.com/senegal/senegal-women-equality/

https://explorepartsunknown.com/senegal/senegal-episode-facts/

https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-senegal/

CNN

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Bourdain in Georgia (Sakartvelo)

“I don’t know what it says about a place that since I’ve arrived in this country … I’m either drinking or hung over.” This was Tony Bourdain in Georgia (the country, not the state), faithful sidekick Zamir Gotta in tow.

One of the many joys of Tony Bourdain’s sojourn to Tbilisi, Georgia, for CNN’s Parts Unknown in November 2015 comes near the end of the hour, when gallery owner Tamuna Gvaberidze, the friend of Keti Borchorishvili, Georgia’s Deputy Minister of the Economy (“I like to show off my country! You know, I want to sometimes scream, ‘Look! This is my country! Come and visit!’” ) tells Bourdain that he bears a striking resemblance to the filmmaker David Lynch.

This is not entirely flattering to Bourdain, as Lynch is a full decade older.

Not true, Bourdain protests. “I’m David Lynch? Really? He has better hair.”

Gvaberidze turns to Borchorishvili — who, remember, is the country’s deputy minister for the economy —and tells her friend: “I’m so happy he says he likes Georgia, really.”

“Why would I not?” Bourdain says, downing another shot of chacha, the local brandy.

This, after noting in his voiceover that, “The ladies convinced us to make the 90-minute drive to this village and this restaurant, and I’m glad they did. By the time I’ve had some more of the delicious and lethal chacha and many glasses of Georgian wine, after boiled beets in a wild plum sauce and freshly foraged mushrooms with chilli pepper and mint tarragon, baby lamb stewed in its own fat with cumin and cooked together with wild rice biryani-style… after all this, I am convinced. I am co-opted. I am recruited. Count me as a useful idiot, a witting agent of the Ministry of Tourism, for I may as well be.”

“You’re becoming a Georgian,” Gvaberidze tells him. “Be careful.”

Georgia. Sakartvelo. [sak”art”elo]. A country in Eastern Europe (pop. 3.7 million) — transcontinental, meaning it links Eastern Europe with Western Asia.

Wenn der wind von osten weht. “When the wind blows” — from the north and the northeast.

Neighbours: Russia (north and northeast), the Black Sea (west), Armenia (south), Turkey (southwest), and Azerbaijan (southeast), aka in Russia’s long shadow. Not far from those bastions of peace and civility, Iran and Syria. Best not mention Abkhazia or South Ossetia. That’s how wars start.

Georgia is also known — and this is where Anthony Bourdain and his ever-faithful fixer, sidekick, erstwhile host and one-time travelling companion Zamir Gotta enter the frame — as one of the world’s earliest known sites of winemaking (“‘World’s oldest wine’ found in 8,000-year-old jars in Georgia,” BBC News, 13 Nov. 2017).

Georgian wine has the reputation it has, fresh and pure, because of its unique fermentation process, free of the additives that would be needed if it were bottled and exported but which would affect the natural taste.

And then there’s the food.

Food is considered one of the pillars of Georgian society. You do not mess with the food.

Bourdain’s interest would have been piqued right there. Enter CNN, to pay the bills, and Parts Unknown, to provide the excuse to go.

First, though, there was the small matter of of history, recent and past. Georgia, originally part of Tsarist Russia, was an independent republic under German protection briefly, in 1917, following the Russian Revolution, but found itself invaded and annexed by the Soviet Red Army in 1921.

Georgia, always one of the more rebellious of the former Soviet republics, carved out the independence of a kind with secession from the Soviet Union in 1991 some 70  years later, just two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the die was cast.

The bad blood between Georgia and Russia goes back a long way.

Georgia officially adopted Christianity in the 4th century — you can practically sense the seething hostility from the country’s Islamic neighbours — not to mention those non-believing Soviet Marxists, never too keen on any religion, let alone one with reminders of Russia’s own Orthodox Church, banned by the Soviet apparatchiks at the time.

After the Rose Revolution (peaceful) and official breakaway from post-Soviet Russia in 2003 —“More vodka, Comrade Yeltsin?” —  Georgia actively pursued a pro-Western foreign policy and introduced the democratic and economic reforms needed to win the appreciation of — and full integration into — the European Union and NATO.

For Russia, led by Vladimir Putin at the time (yes, Putin has been around that long, pulling strings the entire time) and his ideological partner in crimes against humanity, Dmitry Medvedev, this was distinctly uncool.

And so — the Russo-Georgian War, also known as “the Russian invasion of Georgia” [sic], which broke out in August 2008.

The entire South Caucasus became a fire zone, complete with the bombing of civilian towns and villages and accusations of genocide. Sound familiar? Today, the Russo-Georgian War is considered to be the first European war of the 21st century. It would not be the last.

Human Rights Watch accused both sides of breaching international rules governing war — again, does this sound familiar? — and again, decent, ordinary, everyday working people and their families got the worst of it.

In the end, the International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights couldn’t figure out what was going on, let alone who was primarily to blame, so why should you?

Enter Bourdain, ZPZ camera crew in tow, with CNN paying the bills, coupled with Georgia’s historic relationship with good food and fine wine.

Of course, having Zamir Gotta in tow — affable, loquacious, willing to put up with all kinds of nonsense at the hands of the famously irascible Bourdain, including, and I’m not making this up, a semi-naked pole dance — helped.

“You need some nightlife,” Zamir tells him, after they fail at a game of roulette in the off-season resort town of Batumi, Georgia’s second city. “I mean, the losers deserve some relief, right?”

“Yes,” Bourdain replies. “(There’s) nothing like a loser in a nightclub and I emanate loser, so let's go.”

“Unsurprisingly,” Bourdain adds in voice-over, “Zamir and I suck at gambling with a force equivalent to a thousand suns. I should have just pulled my pants down and handed over my money the second we walked into the door. But actually, that came later.”

Cue the pole dance. Zamir on the pole. Some sights, once seen, are hard to unsee.

But wait, there’s more.

Together, they sample the local chacha (brandy to you) in Batumi’s aptly named Clouds Bar—as in, the clouds are where your head’s likely to be after downing one too many shots of the local hooch.

They retire t5r8to Sazandari Restaurant, a traditional Georgian eaterie known for its hangover cures. Those cures include chashushuli, slow-cooked veal with tomato and onion seasoned with chillies, coriander and fennel, and khashi, a broth made with beef bones and tripe served with fresh garlic, though Bourdain admits in a moment of weakness that perhaps khashi might not be the best cure for a hangover.

Ditching Zamir temporarily — the semi-naked pole dance might have been a bridge too far — Bourdain moves on to Tbilisi, Georgia’s foremost city (pop. 1.2 million), where he noshes on local culinary delights and debates the meaning of life at Gabriadze Café with expat journalist Paul Rimple, local bureau chief for the online food resource Culinary Backstreets.

Together, they pick their way through a salad of orange, almonds and honey before turning to manly-sized portions of shkmeruli, chicken slow-baked in an oven and simmered in milk and garlic, together with lamb ribs, grilled and served in a pomegranate sauce with slices of fried eggplant and a walnut filling.

Excursions to Sofia Melnikova’s Fantastic Douqan Restaurant (that’s its name) follow, where Bourdain samples khinkali, dumplings filled with broth and spicy beef, eaten in the traditional way using one’s hands, and finally to Culinairum Khasheria, known for its fusion of traditional Georgian soup with caramelized onions and wild trout tartar, and chakapuli stew, made with mussels simmered in tarragon and wine sauce … coupled with yet more shots of chacha — a digestive, naturally; why, what did you think it was for? — and tonis puri, Georgian bread cooked in an outdoor tandoori-style oven.

If by this point you’re thinking the episode is focusing more on food than some of Parts Unknown’s more politically and geographically minded outings, well … you’re not far wrong.

In the end, for all Georgia’s troubled past and geopolitical tensions of the present, Georgia is a remarkably uplifting and life-affirming episode.

I reached out to Zamir before filing this post to the group.

Keep in mind that of all the people who met and had chance encounters with Bourdain along the way. Zamir is one of a relative few who got to know him at his best, and less than best. What better way, then, than to close with Zamir’s own words, in the present day — Zamir Gotta, on the tao of Bourdain and the legacy he’s left behind.

“The Georgia episode happened to be my last one with Tony. While there, he inspired me to come up with my own ‘Zamir Vodka’ brand, which I eventually did. It helps me keep up his legacy. I hope ‘the Bourdain congregation’ follow me and revisit his footsteps in countries like Georgia and Uzbekistan. I’m a lucky man to be able to continue my Peacemaking mission with his blessing. [Georgia] is symbolically sad but a very meaningful episode for me.”

And there it is.

Supplementary reading:

     https://medium.com/parts-unknown/georgia-7d4c84411ffd

     https://www.reddit.com/r/AnthonyBourdain/comments/j1ndki/tbilisi_georgia_episode_parts_unknown/

     https://explorepartsunknown.com/tbilisi/bourdain-off-the-cuff-tbilisi/

CNN

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Bourdain in the Greek Islands

And now for something completely different: an escape from the news headlines. “Pretend that everywhere is just like here: beautiful, sleepy, delicious food. Everything is just fine.” This was Tony Bourdain, getting away from it all in the summer of 2016.

It's a restive world right now. Lebanon. Gaza. Ukraine. The climate crisis. Growing signs of financial turmoil in the markets. An endless litany of horror stories on the nightly news.

Anyone looking to get away from it all — as Tony Bourdain did in October  2015, nine years ago now, during a swing through Greece’s Cyclades islands for CNN’s Parts Unknown — could do worse than to revisit, or perhaps visit for the first time, Bourdain’s Parts Unknown episode set in the Greek islands.

Bourdain gave the familiar tourist hotspots — Mykonos, Santorini, — a pass in favour of the island of NaxosThe Greek Islands, settle on the Mediterranean isle of Naxos for several weeks, far away from news headlines of a global market crash, street riots in Athens, refugees fleeing a widening war in the Middle East and the ever-present threat, now a clear and present danger worldwide, of the climate crisis.

This is actually a perfect time to revisit the Parts Unknown episode The Greek Islands, if only because the more things change— well, you know the rest.

Bourdain was coming off a year of travelling through hardcore conflict zones, regions beset by civil unrest and roiled by poverty, growing inequality and political turmoil. Through his lifetime affinity for Greek mythology and a desire to kick off a new season of Parts Unknown by taking a break from CNN’s usual fare of fire and fury, Bourdain, tailed by veteran producer/director Tom Vitale and a crew that included Bourdain’s longtime cameraman Zach Zamboni among others, started out with a simple premise, as he put it in his Field Notes at the time for CNN, to “go to a really nice, laid-back Greek island — one with an actual local culture, businesses and income streams outside of tourism — and slide gently into another year of making television whilst maintaining my suntan from summer vacation.”

Preferably an island without a sea of other visitors. Leave Crete to the cretins, as he might have said — but only in a moment of weakness.

And so, lo and behold, this. The Greek Islands. Praise the gods of Ancient Greece. Mt. Olympus and their human enablers:  Apollo, Aphrodite, Poseidon, Athena, Dionysus, Hera, Demeter and the gang, ably aided and abetted by their human enablers, heroes all (well, nearly all): Achilles, Theseus, Odysseus, Heracles, Aeneas, Orpheus,  Helen of Troy (actually, she was from Sparta, but why quibble over a mere detail).

Think of it: an idyllic two weeks or so of languishing in the Mediterranean, hoping and dreaming of a better world, surrounded by good food and good people. Bourdain’s idea was to resurrect a sense of not just what the Mediterranean was during Homer’s time, not the cartoon character but the worthy wordsmith behind those classic epic poems of Ancient Greece, Iliad and The Odyssey. Those heady times could return, Bourdain insisted, after several glasses of Mylonas “Naked Truth,” a wine easy on the nose  —those in the know say)  “evolved and complex with quince, cheese and a certain nuttiness,” while on the mouth, “full and round, warm and nutty — the finish is long!” If only those-in-charge had the wisdom and foresight — yes, that’s a touch of Bourdainesque sarcasm in play there, clever of you to catch it — to nurture and encourage the pursuit of pleasure, be it philosophical or physical, public or ion private, far away from the madding crowds and a world beset with trials and tribulations and, in the Eastern Mediterranean and much of the Middle East, governed by religious fanatics. Enough of these Netanyahus and Yahya Sinwars — bring back Pericles, Leonides and Agamemnon (during his better days; his worse days, not so much).

Of course, reading Greek poetry in peaceful, contemplative solitude wouldn’t be Bourdain without his ready wit and caustic observations of the human condition. And The Greek Islands, while bucolic and pleasantly restoring, has all that and more.

Naxos, for one.

Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades and the centre of ancient Cycladic culture is not a tourist island. It’s best known for its being the source of emery, a rock rich in corundum, and for being the place where the young Zeus of Greek mythology was raised in a cave on an island the poet Homer lionized as Dia, the sacred island “of the Goddess.” There is no nightlife. Not even Coldplay. The party scene is virtually non-existent, or at least it was at the time Bourdain visited. This was about as close to the classic Greek islands as anyone was likely to get in the early 21st century.

Vitale and his camera team wanted to keep the camera constantly moving, ever-so-slowly even, to create a kind of dreamy drift through the chill life in the Greek islands. Naxos is relatively secluded, despite its size, and steeped in a deep small-island tradition of locally sourced food and good wine, a place where close friends and family are what matters, not catering to cruise ships and the great unwashed who board them.

“We shot an offshore dive on a sunken shipwreck, drank raki with the local governor and his in-laws, and sampled fresh fish right off the boat,” Jerry Risius, the episode’s director-of-photography, wrote in his blog at the time, shortly before Greek Islands aired on CNN.

“We had an amazing meal with the politically outspoken group the Stray Bitches, and travelled to the mountainous village of Apeiranthos, where we shot Tony enjoying a traditional celebration in the town square.

“Sometimes, we luck out with local crews … and in Greece, we lucked out. We had the most amazing crew. They helped keep our cameras in constant movement. It was solitary Tony magic with a location-appropriate tempo, and it created a Greek epic.”

Parts Unknown was all about showing us the world through Bourdain’s eyes, in his own words, and on that front, he didn’t disappoint. Bourdain wouldn’t be Bourdain without, well, Bourdain.

On Greece’s financial crisis in 2015, about to happen again? “It’s bumming me out. It’s harshing my total buzz.”

Sorry, Homer, but Odysseus, aka Ulysses, was somewhat of a cad. “I can tell you this: Ulysses was kind of dick. I mean, he left his wife alone for how long?”

On getting away from it all: “The pressures of the outside world I don’t want to think about. I’m on a Greek Island here. It's a beautiful day. I’m planning on passing out on the beach, snorkelling, you know, maybe doing some watercolours, doing a little cooking, napping, eating, more napping, contemplating the mysteries of the universe, or napping, either one or eating cheese — all of those are honourable options. I mean, that’s a vacation to me: staying put and doing nothing.”

The party scene in small-town Greece, in Apeiranthos: “The sort of place where you can still walk into a town square and find yourself caught up in a celebration. This one celebrates Greco-American actor John Stamos’ return to ‘Full House.’”

Bottom line: In the end, Bourdain sought a little peace and quiet, and peace and quiet is pretty much what he found. “The narrow slices of life depicted in this episode,” he wrote in his Field Notes at the time, “are me learning right there along with you.”

Can’t go wrong there.

Supplementary reading:

     https://explorepartsunknown.com/greek-islands/greece-episode-facts/

     https://explorepartsunknown.com/greek-islands/bourdains-field-notes-the-greek-islands/

     https://eatlikebourdain.com/anthony-bourdain-in-greece/

CNN

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Bourdain in Manila

You can’t go home again. Or can you? In this one, Anthony Bourdain examined the cultural impact of ‘OFW’s,’ “Overseas Filipino Workers,” and left at least one viewer in tears by the end.

If any longtime Bourdainophile had any doubts that Anthony Bourdain was no longer doing a strictly “food travel show” with Parts Unknown, those doubts were dispelled once and for all by the seventh-season opener, which kicked off on CNN with an eccentric, hard-to-read look at Manila, Philippines on April 24, 2016.

When Bourdain and his by-then close-knit team — Zach Zamboni, Todd Liebler, Tom Vitale and others at Zero Point Zero, a team that had been together thick and thin through countless excursions around the world for more than a decade — made the jump to CNN from the Travel Channel, the clue was in the name: The focus would be more on culture, politics, history, philosophy and, yes, the news, as opposed to the primarily food-focused lean of A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations and The Layover. It’s hard to look at A Cook’s Tour today and not see it for what it was — Anthony Bourdain Unplugged, the acoustic Bourdain, the brash, outspoken born-and-bred New Yorker, food enthusiast and frontline chef behind Kitchen Confidential, his tell-all “Hide the Kids, This Is Going to Get Ugly” look at how a busy, top-of-the-line restaurant kitchen really works. If A Cook’s Tour was Bourdain’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Parts Unknown was his Dark Side of the Moon: sophisticated, serious, meditative, studious, solemn, profound, handsomely mounted, mature, all grown up, and a global, worldwide smash. This was Bourdain in his pomp, no longer playing to a tiny audience of hardcore devotees on some obscure, out-of-the-way cable channel but rather playing to a global audience of everyone from hard-working, decent, everyday blue-collar folks to world leaders and global celebrities — basically, anyone and everyone with a working Internet connection. If the world was truly a global village, Bourdain was its town crier, librarian, historian and father confessor, a man of the people, for the people, and by the people.

And so, Manila.

Not everyone was a fan. Manila, with its curious shifts in tone — it’s Christmas in April! Here’s a biker cover band! Mom’s cooking is always the best, and don’t you forget it! Filipinos are some of the hardest-working people on the planet! The Philippines and Filipinos have endured an awful history of colonialism, invasion, exploitation, oppression, climate chaos, and some of the most rapacious, murderous and incompetent leaders who ever lived, and yet they're some of the nicest, neatest people you’ll ever meet!

It was never going to be for all tastes. Looking at viewers’ posts on Reddit today, a couple of points jump out.

1. Can it really have been nine years ago? It seems like only yesterday.

And 2, the world has changed so much in just nine short years.

Not just Bourdain’s world, but our world. Gaza. Lebanon. Ukraine. October 7th. The ongoing environmental destruction of the Amazon rainforest. The collapse of ecosystems around the world. Climate chaos. MAGA. The UN on the verge of total collapse. If there’s one comment — you couldn’t really call it a criticism — about Bourdain’s work in Parts Unknown today, it’s that much of it doesn’t seem too relevant to today’s world.

And yet … the more things change, the more much of Bourdain’s truthtelling seems prescient today. Eerily so.

In his essay for Medium at the time — see the link below — Bourdain explains that production of the Manila episode was hampered by an oncoming, full-blown typhoon, which restricted their movements around one of the largest, most populous and poverty-stricken cities on the planet.

And so, rather than visit every culinary nook and cranny in a city renowned for its wide variety of food experiences — familiar and unfamiliar eateries like Van Gogh is Bipolar in Quezon City, Neil’s Kitchen in Manila’s Westgate Center, Sebastian’s Ice Cream (“the Premiere Artisinal Ice Cream in Manila!”), and so on — Bourdain and his creative colleagues chose to focus on families cooking at home, biker cover bands, balikbayan boxes (corrugated boxes containing Christmas packages sent home by overseas Filipinos), the Filipino diaspora and the undeniable cultural, economic and social influence of “OFWs,” overseas Filipino workers who have scattered around the world, doing the menial jobs no one else will do and sending the money back home.

Manila was special, as one Reddit reader commented, because, for all the talk about despots like Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the tribulations endured under Japanese occupation during World War II, and the flattening of Manila by US carpet bombing during that same war, “he always throws us a bone with a food-centric show here or there anyways.”

And another:

“The show isn’t necessarily about food tourism like No Reservations was … Bourdain wanted to tell his personal story along with one of his directors, who was raised by the Filipina nanny in the episode. That Filipinos give and care for strangers’ kids, even when they had to sacrifice decades of getting to know their own children. He wanted to show the love that all those balikbayan boxes represented. That even our fast food is literally ‘Jolly Bee, and we export it around the world. He wanted to show the joy and happiness that people exude in the face of adversity, at home and abroad. I think he did a wonderful job. My mom was in tears at the end of the episode.”

Think about that.

When was the last time you watched an hour of TV that left anyone in tears at the end? Let alone a so-called ‘food tourism’ show.

That’s what CNN inherited when they somehow convinced Bourdain to leave the Travel Channel for the bigger world and a global audience, and it’s what we inherited when Bourdain emerged to become the cultural lightning rod and philosophical guidepost he still is today.

Supplementary reading:

     https://medium.com/parts-unknown/unfinished-business-8b9021ed432d

     https://explorepartsunknown.com/manila/domestic-worker/

     https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/the-sacrifices-of-an-immigrant-caregiver

     https://richardrguzman.com/ofws-anthony-bourdains-manila/

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