Tabbouleh, a popular Iraqi salad.

Iraqi cuisine or Mesopotamian cuisine has a long history going back some 10,000 years – to the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Ancient Persians.^[1] Tablets found in ancient ruins in Iraq show recipes prepared in the temples during religious festivals – the first cookbooks in the world.^[1] Ancient Iraq, or Mesopotamia, was home to a sophisticated and highly advanced civilization, in all fields of knowledge, including the culinary arts.^[1] However, it was in the Islamic Golden Age when Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) that the Iraqi kitchen reached its zenith.^[1] Today, the cuisine of Iraq reflects this rich inheritance as well as strong influences from the culinary traditions of neighbouring Persia, Turkey and the Greater Syria area.^[1]

Meals begin with appetizers and salads – known as Mezza. Some popular dishes include Kebab (often marinated with garlic, lemon and spices, then grilled), Gauss (grilled meat sandwich wrap, similar to Döner kebab), Bamieh (lamb, okra and tomato stew), Quzi (lamb with rice, almonds, raisins and spices), Falafel (fried chickpea patties served with amba and salad in pita), Kubbah (minced meat ground with bulghur wheat or rice and spices), Masgûf (grilled fish with pepper and tamarind), and Maqluba (a rice, lamb, tomato and aubergine dish). Stuffed vegetable dishes such as Dolma and Mahshi are also popular.^[2]

Contemporary Iraq reflects the same natural division as ancient Mesopotamia,^[3] which consisted of Assyria in the arid northern uplands and Babylonia in the southern alluvial plain.^[3] Al-Jazira (the ancient Assyria) grows wheat and crops requiring winter chill such as apples and stone fruits.^[3] Al-Irāq (Iraq proper, the ancient Babylonia) grows rice and barley, citrus fruits, and is responsible for Iraq's position as the world's largest producer of dates.^[3]

History[link]

Archaeologists have found evidence from excavations at Jarmo in northeastern Iraq,^[4] that pistachio nuts were a common food as early as 6750 BC.^[4]

Among the ancient texts discovered in Iraq is a Sumerian-Akkadian bilingual dictionary,^[5] recorded in cuneiform script on 24 stone tablets about 1900 BC.^[5] It lists terms in the two ancient Iraqi languages for over 800 different items of food and drink.^[5] Included are 20 different kinds of cheese, over 100 varieties of soup and 300 types of bread – each with different ingredients, filling, shape or size.^[5]

One of three excavated cuneiform clay tablets written in 1700 BC in Babylon,^[2] 50 miles south of present-day Baghdad, deals with 24 recipes for stew cooked with meat and vegetables,^[2] enhanced and seasoned with leeks, onion, garlic, and spices and herbs like cassia, cumin, coriander, mint, and dill.^[2] Stew has remained a mainstay in the cuisine.^[2] Extant medieval Iraqi recipes and modern Iraqi cuisine attest to this.^[2]

Iraqi cuisine[link]

Ingredients[link]

Some characteristic ingredients of Iraqi cuisine include:

• Vegetables such as aubergine, tomato, okra, onion, potato, courgette, spinach, leeks, artichokes, garlic, peppers and chilli.
• Cereals such as rice, bulghur wheat and barley.
• Pulses and legumes such as lentils, chickpeas, green beans, green grams, and cannellini.
• Fruits such as olives, dates, raisins, apricots, plums, figs, grapes, melons, pomegranate, apples, cherries, and citrus fruits; orange, lemon and lime.
• Cheeses such as baladi, feta and halloumi.
• Herbs and spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, fenugreek, cumin, oregano, mint, thyme, saffron, dried lime, cassia, dill, turmeric, baharat, advieh, sumac and za'atar.
• Nuts and seeds such as sesame, pistachios, almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts and pine nuts.

Other Iraqi culinary essentials include olive oil, sesame oil, tamarind, vermicelli, tahini, honey, date syrup, yogurt and rose water. Lamb is the favourite meat, but chicken, beef, and fish are also eaten. Most dishes are served with rice - usually timman anbar, a yellowish, very aromatic, long-grain rice grown in the provinces of Anbar and Qadisiyyah.^[6] Bulghur wheat is used in many dishes, having been a staple in the country since the days of the Ancient Assyrians.^[1] Flatbread is a staple that is served, with a variety of dips, cheeses, olives, and jams, at every meal.

Mezza[link]

Dried fruit, a selection of dates, apricots, figs, prunes and raisins

Mezza is a selection of appetizers or small dishes often served with beverage, like anise-flavored liqueurs such as arak, ouzo, raki or different wines, similar to the tapas of Spain or finger food.

• Fried aubergine, a dish often served cold, consisting of fried aubergine with tahini sauce, lettuce, parsley and tomatoes, garnished with sumac and served on pita bread or sliced bread, often grilled or toasted. Variations include bell peppers, or a garlic lemon vinaigrette.
• Fattoush, a salad made from several garden vegetables and toasted or fried pieces of pita bread.
• Tabbouleh, a salad dish, often used as part of a mezze. Its primary ingredients are finely chopped parsley, bulgur, mint, tomato, scallion, and other herbs with lemon juice, olive oil and various seasonings, generally including black pepper and sometimes cinnamon and allspice.
• Turshi, pickled vegetables in the cuisine of many Balkan and Middle East countries. It is a traditional appetizer, meze for rakı, ouzo, tsipouro and rakia.

Dips[link]

Hummus, with olive oil and pine nuts

• Baba ghanoush, a dish of baked aubergine mashed and mixed with various seasonings.
• Hummus, a dip or spread made from cooked, mashed chickpeas, blended with tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic.
• Muhammara, a hot pepper dip originally from Aleppo, Syria.
• Tzatziki, an appetizer of Ottoman cuisine origin, also used as a sauce for souvlaki and gyros. Tzatziki is made of strained yoghurt (usually sheep's-milk or goat's-milk in Greece and Turkey) with cucumbers, garlic, salt, usually olive oil, pepper, dill, sometimes lemon juice and parsley, or mint added. The cucumbers are either pureed and strained, or seeded and finely diced. Olive oil, olives, and herbs are often used as garnishes.

Soups and stews[link]

• Fasoulia, a soup of dry white beans, olive oil, and vegetables.
• Harissa, a dish similar to keşkek that is a kind of homogeneous porridge made of previously stewed and boned chicken and coarsely ground soaked wheat.
• Lentil soup
• Margat Bamia or bamia, a stew made with okra and lamb or beef cubes and in a tomato sauce.^[7]
• Kebabs, a dish consisting of grilled or broiled meats on a skewer or stick.^[8] The most common kebabs include lamb and beef, although others use chicken or fish.
• Qeema, a minced meat, tomato and chickpea stew, served with rice. Traditionally prepared at the annual Ashura commemorations in southern Iraq. The name qeema is an ancient Akkadian word meaning 'finely chopped'.^[9]
• Maqluba, an upside-down rice and aubergine casserole, hence the name which is literally translated as "upside-down". It is sometimes made with fried cauliflower instead of aubergine and usually includes meat - often braised lamb.^[10]
• Masgouf, a traditional Mesopotamian dish made with fish from the Tigris.^[8][11] It is an open cut freshwater fish roasted for hours after being marinated with olive oil, salt, curcuma and tamarind while keeping the skin on. Traditional garnishes for the masgouf include lime, chopped onions and tomatoes, as well as the clay-oven flatbreads common to Iraq and much of the Middle East.
• Margat Baytinijan, an aubergine based dish of the Balkans and the Middle East. All versions are based primarily on sautéed aubergine and tomato, usually with minced meat.
• Pomegranate soup, called Shorbat Rumman in Iraq. It is made from pomegranate juice and seeds, yellow split peas, ground beef, mint leaves, spices, and other ingredients.^[12]
• Quzi, stuffed roasted lamb.^[8][11]
• Tashrib, a soup made with either lamb or chicken with or without tomatoes eaten with Iraqi nan. The bread is broken up into pieces and the soup is poured over in a big bowl.
• Tepsi Baytinijan, a very popular Iraqi casserole. The main ingredient of the dish is aubergine, which are sliced and fried before placing in a baking dish, accompanied with meatballs, tomatoes, onions and garlic. On top of the aubergine, potato slices are placed on top of the mixture, and the dish is baked. Like many other Iraqi dishes it is usually served with rice, along with salad and pickles.

Dumplings and meatballs[link]

• Dolma, a family of stuffed vegetable dishes. The grape-leaf dolma is common. Zucchini, aubergine, tomato and pepper are commonly used as fillings. The stuffing may or may not include meat.^[13]
• Falafel, a fried ball or patty made from spiced chickpeas and/or fava beans. Originally from Egypt, falafel is a popular form of fast food in the Middle East, where it is also served as a mezze.
• Kibbeh, a dish made of burghul, chopped meat, and spices. The best-known variety is a torpedo-shaped burghul shell stuffed with chopped meat and fried. Other varieties are baked, poached, or even served raw as famously done by the Lebanese. They may be shaped into balls, patties, or flat.^[12]
• Kofta, a family of meatball or meatloaf dishes in Middle Eastern, Indian, and Balkan cuisines. In the simplest form, koftas consist of balls of minced or ground meat — usually beef or lamb — mixed with spices and/or onions. The vegetarian varieties like lauki kofta, shahi aloo kofta, and malai kofta are popular in India, as is kofta made of minced goat meat.
• Manti, a type of dumpling stuffed with meat and vegetables.
• Sarma
• Sambusak, a small fried or baked pasty, which may be either half-moon shaped or triangular. Sambusac is popular throughout Southwest Asia, the Horn of Africa, and North Africa.

Processed meat[link]

• Pastırma, a highly seasoned, air-dried cured beef in the cuisines of the former Ottoman countries.
• Sujuk, a dry, spicy sausage eaten from the Balkans to the Middle East and Central Asia.

Rice dishes[link]

Rice (timman), especially long-grain rice is a staple in Iraqi cookery.^[8][11] The Iraqi word for rice (timman) is unique to Iraq and is of Akkadian origin.

Iraqi rice cooking is similar to the method used for Persian chelow,^[6] a multistepped process intended to produce just-tender, fluffy grains of rice.^[6] A prominent aspect of Iraqi rice cooking is the hkaka, a crisp bottom crust.^[6] It differs slightly from the Persian tahdig, which is a single thick piece; the hkaka contains some loose rice as well.^[6] Before serving, the hkaka is broken into pieces so that everyone is provided with some along with the fluffy rice.^[6]

• Biryani, a set of rice-based foods made with spices, rice (usually basmati), and meat/vegetables. It was brought to India by Muslim travellers and merchants, and is collectively popular in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and among Muslims in Sri Lanka.
• Khichdi, a food of Indian origin made from rice and lentils. Khichdi is commonly considered to be a comfort food, and was the inspiration for the Anglo-Indian dish of Kedgeree.
• Mujaddara, a dish consists of cooked lentils together with wheat or rice, garnished with onions that have been sauteed in vegetable oil.
• Pilaf
• Tabeet, a chicken stuffed (and buried) with (and within) rice, tomatoes, dried apricots and raisins, with a strong cardamom flavor.

Sandwiches and wraps[link]

• Sabich, a Middle-Eastern food consisting of pita stuffed with fried aubergine and hard boiled eggs. Local consumption is said to have stemmed a tradition among Iraqi Jews, who ate it on Shabbat morning.
• Shawarma, a Middle Eastern Arabic-style sandwich-like wrap^[8] usually composed of shaved lamb, goat, chicken, turkey, beef, or a mixture of meats. Shawarma is a popular dish and fast-food staple across the Middle East and North Africa.

Dairy[link]

• Baladi cheese, a soft, white cheese originating from the Middle East. It has a mild yet rich flavor.
• Jameed, hard dry laban (yoghurt) made from sheep's milk.
• Jibneh Arabieh, a simple cheese found all over the Middle East. It is particularly popular in the Persian Gulf area. The cheese has an open texture and a mild taste similar to Feta but less salty.
• Geimar, a creamy dairy product, similar to clotted cream, made in the Balkans, Turkey, the Middle East, Central Asia, Iran, Afghanistan, and India. It is made from the milk of water buffalos in the East or of cows in the West.
• Labaneh, yoghurt which has been strained in a cloth or paper bag or filter, traditionally made of muslin, to remove the whey, giving a consistency between that of yoghurt and cheese, while preserving yoghurt's distinctive sour taste.^[12]

Breads and pastries[link]

lahm b'ajeen, garnished with parsley, tomato, red onion, and a wedge of lemon

• Burek, a type of baked or fried filled pastry. It is made of a thin flaky dough known as phyllo dough (or yufka dough), and are filled with salty cheese (often feta), minced meat, potatoes or other vegetables.
• Ka'ak, refer to several different types of baked goods produced throughout the Arab world and the Near East.
• Kadaif, a very fine vermicelli-like pastry used to make sweet pastries and desserts.
• Kahie, layers of thin dough phyllo usually consumed warm for breakfast by adding cream Kaymak and light sugar syrup.
• Khubz, an Arabic flatbread that is part of the local diet in many countries of Western Asia.
• Laffa (an Iraqi pita or Naan bread)
• Lahmacun, a thin pizza topped with minced meat and herbs.
• Lavash, a soft, thin flatbread.
• Manakish, a pizza consisting of dough topped with thyme, cheese, or ground meat.
• Markook, a type of flatbread common in the countries of the Levant. It is baked on a domed or convex metal griddle, known as Saj. It is usually sizable, about 2 feet, and thin, almost transparent.
• Pita
• Sammoun, a flat and round bread, similar in texture and taste to the Italian ciabatta.^[11]
• Sfiha, a pizza-like dish traditionally made with ground mutton rather than the more modern addition of lamb, or beef in Brazil. They are "open faced" meat pies with no top dough. Sfiha were much like dolma; simply ground lamb, lightly spiced, wrapped in brined grape leaves.

Kadaif, a sweet made with vermicelli, sugar syrup and rose water

Condiments, sauces and spices[link]

• Amba, a tangy mango pickle condiment. Commonly eaten as a side dish and sometimes as a sandwich topping.
• Baharat, a spice mixture. Typical ingredients include: allspice, black pepper corns, cardamom seeds, cassia bark, cloves, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, nutmeg, dried red chili peppers or paprika.
• Jallab, a type of syrup popular in the Middle East made from dates, grape molasses and rose water.
• Mahlab, an aromatic spice made from the seeds of the St Lucie Cherry (Prunus mahaleb).
• Dibis, a thick, very sweet date syrup. Often mixed with tahini to create a dip.
• Rose water (Mayy Wared)
• Tahini (t'heena), a paste of ground sesame seeds used in cooking. Middle Eastern tahini is made of hulled, lightly roasted seeds.
• Za'atar, a mixture of herbs and spices used as a condiment

Desserts[link]

A typical Iraqi Kleicha, a national Iraqi cookie.

• Baklava, a rich pastry^[11] made of layers of phyllo dough filled with chopped nuts and sweetened with syrup or honey.
• Halva
• Kanafeh, a pastry made with layers of semolina, white cheese and a sugary syrup sprinkled with rose water.
• Kleicha, a national cookie of Iraq. Kleicha comes in several traditional shapes and fillings, the most popular being the molded ones filled with dates (kleichat tamur). The sweet discs (khfefiyyat) are also favoured along with the half moons filled with nuts and sugar (kleichat joz).
• Qatayef, an Arab dessert reserved for the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, a sort of sweet crepe filled with cheese or nuts. It was traditionally prepared by street vendors as well as households in the Levant and more recently has spread to Egypt.

Beverages[link]

• Arak, a clear, colourless, unsweetened aniseed-flavoured distilled alcoholic drink. Arak is usually not drunk straight, but is mixed in approximately 1/3 arak to 2/3 water, and ice is then added.
• Beer, a drink that originated in Iraq over 6,000 years ago.
• Coffee, an Iraq national drink that has a strong and bitter taste.
• Sharbat, a chilled, sweet drink prepared from fruit juice or flower petals.
• Shinēna, a cold beverage of yogurt mixed with cold water, sometimes with a pinch of salt or dried mint added.
• Tea, also known as Chai, is widely consumed throughout the day, especially in the mornings, after meals, and during social settings. It is prepared in a special way involving boiling tea in hot water, then placing it over a second tea pot with boiling water to let the tea infuse. Iraqi tea is renowned for being considerably stronger, richer and sweeter than those found in neighbouring countries, and is usually brewed with cardamom (heil).

See also[link]

Food portal

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• ʻAlī Akbar Mahdī, (2003) Teen life in the Middle East, Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 40 -41 ISBN 0-313-31893-X
• Jacob, Jeanne; Ashkenazi, Michael. (2007) The World Cookbook for Students, Greenwood Publishing Group p. 1 - 5 ISBN 0-313-33455-2
• Nasrallah, Nawal (2003) Delights from the Garden of Eden: A Cookbook and a History of the Iraqi Cuisine, 1stBooks, ISBN 1-4033-4793-X

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Cuisine of Iraq

Wikibooks Cookbook has a recipe/module on Iraqi cuisine

• Iraqi Food and Cuisine
• Delights from the Garden of Eden - A Cookbook and History of Iraqi Cuisine
• Ancient Mesopotamian cuisine

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Anthony Bourdain

Bourdain in June 2006
Born	Anthony Michael Bourdain (1956-06-25) June 25, 1956 (age 56) New York City
Cooking style	French
Education	Vassar College Culinary Institute of America
Spouse	Nancy Putkoski (1980s–2000s) Ottavia Busia (April 20, 2007–present)
Television show(s) A Cook's Tour Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations The Layover

Anthony Michael "Tony" Bourdain (born June 25, 1956) is an American chef, author and television personality. He is well known for his 2000 book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, and is the host of Travel Channel's culinary and cultural adventure programs Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and The Layover.

A 1978 graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of numerous professional kitchens,^[1] Bourdain is currently a chef-at-large, whose home base is Brasserie Les Halles, New York^[2] where he was executive chef for many years.

Early life and family[link]

Anthony Bourdain was born in New York City to Pierre (d.1987)^[3] and Gladys Bourdain, and grew up in Leonia, New Jersey.^[4] Bourdain has French ancestry on his father's side; his paternal grandfather emigrated from France to New York following World War I.^[5] Bourdain's mother worked for the New York Times as a staff editor^[6]. Bourdain was a student at Englewood School for Boys, graduating in 1973.^[7] He attended Vassar College before dropping out after two years, and graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978.

Bourdain married his high-school girlfriend, Nancy Putkoski, in the 1980s, remaining together for two decades before divorcing; Bourdain has cited the irrevocable changes that come from traveling widely as the cause of the split.^[8] He currently lives with his second wife, Ottavia Busia. Together, they have a daughter, Ariane, born on April 9, 2007; the couple wed on April 20, 2007.^[9] Busia has appeared in several episodes of No Reservations – notably the episode on Sardinia, her birthplace; the Tuscany episode, in which she plays a disgruntled Italian diner; the Rome episode, and the Naples episode.

Culinary training and career[link]

In Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain describes how his love of food was kindled in France when he tried his first oyster on an oyster fisherman's boat as a youth while on a family vacation. Later, while attending Vassar College, he worked in the seafood restaurants of Provincetown, Massachusetts, which sparked his decision to pursue cooking as a career. Bourdain graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1978, and went on to run various restaurant kitchens in New York City – including the Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue, and Sullivan's – culminating in the position of executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles beginning in 1998. Brasserie Les Halles is based in Manhattan, with additional locations in Miami and, at the time of Bourdain's tenure, Washington, D.C. and Tokyo, Japan.

Media career[link]

Writing[link]

Bourdain gained immediate popularity from his 2000 New York Times bestselling book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, an outgrowth of his now famous article in The New Yorker called "Don't Eat Before Reading This".^[10] The book is a witty and rambunctious exposé of the hidden and darker side of the culinary world, and is a memoir of Bourdain's professional life as well.

Bourdain subsequently wrote two more New York Times bestselling nonfiction books: A Cook's Tour (2001), an exotic account of his food and travel exploits across the world, written in conjunction with his first television series; and The Nasty Bits (2006), another collection of exotic, provocative, and humorous anecdotes and essays mainly centered on food. Bourdain's additional books include Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook; the culinary mysteries Bone in the Throat and Gone Bamboo; a hypothetical historical investigation, Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical; and No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach. His latest book, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, the sequel to Kitchen Confidential, was published in 2010.

Bourdain's articles and essays have appeared many places, including in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Observer, Gourmet, Maxim, Esquire (UK), Scotland on Sunday, The Face, Food Arts, Limb by Limb, BlackBook, The Independent, Best Life, the Financial Times, and Town & Country. On the Internet, Bourdain's blog for Season 3 of Top Chef^[11] was nominated for a Webby Award for best Blog – Cultural/Personal in 2008.^[12]

Television[link]

The acclaim surrounding Bourdain's racy memoir, Kitchen Confidential, led to an offer by the Food Network to host his own food and world-travel show, A Cook's Tour, which premiered in January 2002. In July 2005, he premiered a new, somewhat similar television series, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, on the Travel Channel. As a further result of the immense popularity of Kitchen Confidential, the Fox sitcom Kitchen Confidential aired in 2005, in which the character "Jack Bourdain" is based loosely on the biography and persona of Anthony Bourdain.

In July 2006, Bourdain was in Beirut filming an episode of No Reservations when the Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out. Bourdain and his crew were evacuated with other American citizens on the morning of July 20 by the United States Marines.^[13] Because of the unexpected conflict only a few hours of footage were available from the first restaurant on their agenda. Bourdain's producers compiled the Beirut footage into a No Reservations episode which aired on August 21, 2006. Uncharacteristically, the episode included footage of both Bourdain and his production staff, and included not only their initial attempts to film the episode, but also their firsthand encounters with Hezbollah supporters, their days of waiting for news with other expatriates in a Beirut hotel, and their eventual escape aided by a "cleaner" (unseen in the footage), whom Bourdain dubbed "Mr. Wolf" after the character portrayed by Harvey Keitel in the movie, Pulp Fiction. The episode was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2007.^[14]

Bourdain has appeared five times as guest judge on Bravo's Top Chef reality cooking competition program: first in the November 2006 "Thanksgiving" episode of Season 2; and then again in June 2007 in the first episode of Season 3, judging the "exotic surf and turf" competition featuring ingredients including abalone, alligator, black chicken, geoduck and eel. His third appearance was also in Season 3, as an expert on air travel, judging the competitors' airplane meals. Bourdain also wrote weekly blog commentaries for many of the Season 3 episodes, filling in as a guest blogger while Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio was busy opening a new restaurant. Bourdain next appeared as a guest judge for the opening episode of Season 4, in which pairs of chefs competed head-to-head in the preparation of various classic dishes; and again in the Season 4 Restaurant Wars episode, temporarily taking the place of head judge Tom Colicchio, was at a charity event. He is also one of the main judges on the Top Chef All-Stars Season 8.

Bourdain appeared in an episode of TLC's reality show Miami Ink which aired August 28, 2006. Artist Chris Garver tattooed a skull on Bourdain's right shoulder. Bourdain, who noted it was his fourth tattoo, said that one reason for the skull was that he wished to balance the ouroboros tattoo he had done on his opposite shoulder in Malaysia while filming Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations.

Bourdain made a guest appearance on the August 6, 2007 New York City episode of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern; Zimmern appeared as a guest on the New York City episode of Bourdain's No Reservations airing the same day. On October 20, 2008 Bourdain hosted a special, "At the Table with Anthony Bourdain," on the Travel Channel. Bourdain also has a brief cameo appearance in the 2008 movie Far Cry.^[15]

In 2010, Bourdain appeared on Nick, Jr.'s Yo Gabba Gabba! as Dr. Tony. He is currently consulting and writing for the HBO series, Treme.^[16][17]

Travel Channel announced in July 2011 that it would be adding a second one-hour ten-episode Bourdain show to be titled The Layover, premiering November 21, 2011.^[18] The show's concept is that each episode features an exploration of a city that can be undertaken within an air travel layover of 24 to 48 hours.

Also in 2011, Bourdain voiced himself in a cameo on an episode of The Simpsons entitled "The Food Wife" in which Marge, Lisa, and Bart start a food blog called "The Three Mouthkateers" and Homer winds up in a meth lab.^[19]

In May 2012, Bourdain announced that he would be leaving the Travel Channel to host a show for CNN focusing on other cuisines and cultures.^[20]

Publishing[link]

Ecco Press, a division of HarperCollins, announced in September 2011 that Bourdain would have his own publishing line, which would include acquiring three to five titles per year that "reflect his remarkably eclectic tastes".^[21] The first books that the imprint will publish, to be released in 2013, will include Spaghetti Junction: Riding Shotgun with an L.A. Chef by Roy Choi, Prophets of Smoked Meat by Daniel Vaughn, and Fight Shark by Mark Miller.^[22] Bourdain has also announced plans to publish a book by Marilyn Hagerty.^[23]

In describing the line, Bourdain said, "This will be a line of books for people with strong voices who are good at something – who speak with authority. Discern nothing from this initial list – other than a general affection for people who cook food and like food. The ability to kick people in the head is just as compelling to us – as long as that's coupled with an ability to vividly describe the experience. We are just as intent on crossing genres as we are enthusiastic about our first three authors. It only gets weirder from here."^[24]

Public persona[link]

Bourdain in Chicago in 2007

Because of Bourdain's liberal use of profanity and sexual references in his television show No Reservations, the network has placed viewer discretion advisories on each segment of each episode. In recent seasons, the advisories include animation that is related in some way to the episode.

Known for consuming exotic ethnic dishes, Bourdain is famous for eating sheep testicles in Morocco, ant eggs in Puebla, Mexico, a raw seal eyeball as part of a traditional Inuit seal hunt, and a whole cobra – beating heart, blood, bile, and meat – in Vietnam. According to Bourdain, the most disgusting thing he has ever eaten is a Chicken McNugget,^[25] though he has also declared that the unwashed warthog rectum he ate in Namibia^[26] and the fermented shark he ate in Iceland^[27] are among "the worst meals of [his] life."

He has been known for being an unrepentant drinker and smoker. In a nod to Bourdain's (at the time) two-pack-a-day cigarette habit, renowned chef Thomas Keller once served him a 20-course tasting menu which included a mid-meal "coffee and cigarette": a coffee custard infused with tobacco, together with a foie gras mousse.^[28] Bourdain stopped cigarette smoking in the summer of 2007 because of the birth of his daughter.^[29] He is also a former user of cocaine, heroin, and LSD. In Kitchen Confidential he writes of his experience in a trendy SoHo restaurant in 1981: "We were high all the time, sneaking off to the walk-in refrigerator at every opportunity to 'conceptualize.' Hardly a decision was made without drugs. Cannabis, methaqualone, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms soaked in honey and used to sweeten tea, secobarbital, tuinal, amphetamine, codeine and, increasingly, heroin, which we'd send a Spanish-speaking busboy over to Alphabet City to get."^[30] In the same book, Bourdain frankly describes his former addiction, including how he once resorted to selling his record collection on the street in order to raise enough money to purchase drugs.

Bourdain is also noted for his put-downs of celebrity chefs, such as Paula Deen, Bobby Flay, Sandra Lee, and Rachael Ray, and appears to be irritated by both the overt commercialism of the celebrity cooking industry and its lack of culinary authenticity. He has voiced a "serious disdain for food demigods like Alan Richman, Alice Waters, and Alain Ducasse."^[31] Bourdain has recognized the irony of his transformation into a celebrity chef and has, to some extent, begun to qualify his insults. He has been consistently outspoken in his praise for chefs he admires, particularly Thomas Keller, Gordon Ramsay, Eric Ripert, Ferran Adrià, Fergus Henderson, Marco Pierre White, and Mario Batali.^[32] Bourdain has also spoken very highly of Julia Child, saying that she "influenced the way I grew up and my entire value system."^[33]

Bourdain is also known for his sarcastic comments about vegan and vegetarian activists, saying that their lifestyle is rude to the inhabitants of many countries he visits. Bourdain says he considers vegetarianism, except in the case of religious strictures as in India, a "First World luxury."^[34] He has clarified that he believes Americans eat too much meat, and admires vegetarians who allow themselves to put aside their vegetarianism when they travel in order to be respectful of their hosts.^[35]

Bourdain's taste in music is also a matter of public record. His book, The Nasty Bits, is dedicated to "Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee" of the Ramones. Bourdain has declared fond appreciation for their music, as well that of other early punk bands such as The Stooges, Dead Boys, Television, The New York Dolls, and The Voidoids. Additionally, Bourdain writes in Kitchen Confidential that the playing of music by Billy Joel in his kitchen was grounds for immediate firing (coincidentally, Joel is a fan of his and has subsequently visited the restaurant^[36]). In the 2006 No Reservations episode in Sweden, Bourdain proclaimed that his all-time favorite album (his "desert island disc") is the groundbreaking punk record Fun House by The Stooges; he also made it clear that he despises the Swedish pop group ABBA. On his 2007 No Reservations Holiday Special episode, the rock band Queens of the Stone Age were the featured dinner guests, adding food-inspired holiday songs to the episode's soundtrack.

Interests and advocacy[link]

Bourdain is an advocate for communicating the value and tastiness of traditional or "peasant" foods, including specifically all of the varietal bits and unused animal parts not usually eaten by affluent 21st-century US citizens.^[37] Bourdain has also consistently noted and championed the high quality and deliciousness of freshly prepared street food in other countries – especially developing countries – as compared to fast food chains in the U.S.^[38]

Bourdain often acknowledges and champions the industrious Spanish-speaking immigrants – often from Mexico or Ecuador – who make up a majority of the chefs and cooks in many U.S. restaurants, including upscale restaurants, regardless of cuisine.^[39][40] Bourdain considers them to be talented chefs and invaluable cooks, underpaid and unrecognized even though they have become the backbone of the U.S. restaurant industry.^[41][42]

Awards and nominations[link]

Bourdain was named Food Writer of the Year in 2001 by Bon Appétit magazine for Kitchen Confidential.^[43]

A Cook's Tour was named Food Book of the Year in 2002 by the British Guild of Food Writers.^[44]

The Beirut episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, which documented the experiences of Bourdain and his crew during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Programming in 2007.^[14]

Bourdain's blog for the reality competition show Top Chef^[11] was nominated for a Webby Award for best Blog – Culture / Personal in 2008.^[12]

In 2008, Bourdain was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America.

In 2009 and 2011, Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations won a Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Cinematography for Nonfiction Programming.

In 2010, Anthony Bourdain was nominated for a Creative Arts Emmy for non-fiction writing.

In 2010, Anthony Bourdain was awarded an Honorary CLIO Awards, which is given to individuals who are changing the world by encouraging people to think differently.

Bibliography[link]

Nonfiction

• Bourdain, Anthony (2000). Kitchen Confidential. New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 1-58234-082-X. 
• Bourdain, Anthony (2001). A Cook's Tour. New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 1-58234-140-0. 
• Bourdain, Anthony (2001). Typhoid Mary: An Urban Historical. New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/1-58234-133-9|1-58234-133-9]]. 
• Bourdain, Anthony (2004). Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-58234-180-4. 
• Bourdain, Anthony (2006). The Nasty Bits. New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-59691-360-8. 
• Bourdain, Anthony (2007). No Reservations. New York: Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-59691-447-6. 
• Bourdain, Anthony (2010). Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. Ecco/HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-171894-7.

Fiction

• Bourdain, Anthony (1995). Bone in the Throat. New York: Villard Books. ISBN 0-679-43552-2. 
• Bourdain, Anthony (1997). Gone Bamboo. New York: Villard Books. ISBN 0-679-44880-2. 
• Bourdain, Anthony (2001). Bobby Gold. Edinburgh: Canongate Crime. ISBN 1-84195-145-5. 

References[link]