Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations on Romania…Not So Good
We eagerly awaited chef and globe-trotter Anthony Bourdain’s show on Romania…only to be very disappointed. In addition to spending over ten minutes just hanging out in a ghastly Vlad the Impaler tourist joint–a terrible waste of time given how much we saw of worth in Romania when we were there–Bourdain also let that Russian guy who previously showed him, well, Russia, and a Central Asian country return to guide him through Romania. Why Bourdain would do this is beyond me. He could easily have found any number of Romanians who could have shown him stuff beyond Dracula’s Castle. Not to mention, the Russian acted like a lout the whole show. Anyway, given what a good time we had in Romania and how weak this episode is, we suffered through it, but we weren’t happy. It’s strange, because we think his episode on the Mexican-U.S. border was a classic, and several others have also seemed much more “authentic” than this one. It’s making us re-evaluate our opinion of some of his other shows. Ah well.
Jeff
February 27, 2008 at 8:00 am
I think Meg was watching a little bit of this. Didn’t they just show him Bran Castle? Although tourists are told this was the home of Vlad III, there is no historical data to back this claim up.
February 27, 2008 at 8:47 am
From Poppy Brite’s last journal entry :
I don’t dislike Anthony Bourdain; he can be a fine writer, and he was kind and fun the one time I met him, but he told us then that he’d eaten at Jacques-Imo’s and it was “schlock.” Now he’s going there again and giving it a big grinning thumbs-up and posing in the back of their stupid shitass pickup truck, and I find that incredibly hypocritical, especially when there are so many other restaurants that had a much harder time reopening and are much more deserving of national attention.
February 27, 2008 at 10:08 am
Bourdain is hit or miss. Some of his stuff (books, shows, etc) are great, others make you want to just flip the channel. Not sure if it is his smugness or something else, but I gave up on him a bit back. But yeah the Mexico/US border eppy was pretty solid along with the one where he imbibed in the absinthe.
February 29, 2008 at 8:17 pm
You have to give bourdain some credit, most of his episodes are pretty good
November 10, 2008 at 5:33 am
I like Anthony Boudain because he does like everything i think i would do if i went to a country, he eats at all the main Meat joints, drinks with the locals, and his shows are off and on, but that just shows he meets random locals and hope for the best, and he makes me want to visit these places unlike the Exotic Foods guy, he makes every country look crazy, with 90% of the people in each country that dont eat the shit he does….