Wendy's "Films" of 2010 #43: Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, Season 3 (2007)

Man, I really want to go to Singapore now. I almost went there before, as a sea cadet on exchange back in 2003. But then SARS happened. Like a virus, it spread, ruining my chances of seeing the faraway country I'd been dreaming of. Even better, a friend of mine was chosen to go the next year and I was sent to Fort Lewis, Washington. Basically a desert, and I was a sea cadet.

Bourdain's third season of travelling the world and eating delicious food, besides giving me cravings and a bursting desire to hop on a plane, is just as excellent as the first and second. He visits NYC, Shanghai, Brazil, French Polynesia, Hong Kong, and Singapore, among other countries and cities; he feasts on bone marrow in a food court, yak's milk cheese in the hills near Shanghai and his favourite cheap hot dog and papaya drink place around the corner from his old apartment.

Really, this show is about enjoying food and people as much as possible, and enjoying the best the place you're in has to offer. I just love how he dives in whether or not it's disgusting chili cheese spaghetti in Cleveland or a huge meal lovingly made by a new friend and eaten over an entire afternoon in São Paulo.

And apparently, Singapore has some of the best food in the world. Go figure.

Wendy's "Films" of 2010 #17: Anthony Bourdain No Reservations, Season 2 (2005)

Imagine, if you will, perfect happiness. For me this would include food, delicious food, travelling to familiar and unfamiliar places all over the world, thinking about films, watching films, friendly people and perhaps even writing. It seems Anthony Bourdain lives this seemingly impossible existence.

If only I could show you the food they eat, the way it looks, and how I imagine it smells; it would be a dream to actually be there and taste it. Don't get me wrong, I know the woes of travelling: sitting on a plane for countless hours, wading through airports, the eventual desire for familiarity. But it would be infinitely worth it just to experience what this show can only attempt (which it does very well) to express through a television.

To the right you see Bourdain gazing down at what might be his favourite meat: pork. He consumes it everywhere, Puerto Rico, Indonesia, and Seattle to name a few, the cheek is his favourite part, he says, and we hear him crunch into its skin. His biting eloquence and utter honesty when it comes to food are combined with an enthusiasm and appreciation for the generous and kind people he often meets. On top of this, his love of film is obvious, in the first season (which I watched last year), he speaks of his love of Italian Neorealism, and while in Sweden in this season he references Ingmar Bergman. Film references aside, it's a show that surpasses the conventional view we typically see of travel destinations and shows us what we really want to see: people eating everything from street food to high-end restaurant fair, but all delicious and almost all something I'd love to sink my teeth into.