The Nasty Bits is a collection of articles Bourdain wrote for various publications and it covers a huge variety of countries and topics. On one assignment, he spent 5 days on a giant boat that's kind of a luxury bunch of floating condos for multi-millionaires. You can buy an apartment on it and drop in whenever you feel like it, get off wherever you feel like it, and it makes stops at swanky events around the world- Cannes film festival and the like. You've got tennis courts, putting greens, a library, and more. An incredibly bizarre thing I never knew existed. My favorite articles were the one recounting a trip to Greece where pretty much everything went wrong and he found himself in a cliff jumping situation with an annoying host...it was just so hilariously written...and The Evildoers, where he talks about his favorite fast food from other countries (tapas, pho, tacos, etc.) and how America has unfortunately got it so wrong in this area.
...is fast food inherently evil? Is the convenient nature of the beast bad, in and of itself? Decidedly no. Fast food- which traditionally solves very real problems of working families, families with kids, business people on the go, the casually hungry- can be good food. If you walk down a street in Saigon, or visit an open-air market in Mexico, you'll see that a quick, easy meal, often enjoyed standing up, does not have to be part of the hideous, generic sprawl of soul-destroying sameness that stretches from strip malls in San Diego, across the U.S.A., through Europe and Asia and around again, looking the same, tasting the same: paper-wrapped morsels of gray "beef" patties with all-purpose sauce. The unbelievably high-caloric horrors of beef-flavor-sprayed chicken nuggets, of "milkshakes" that contain no milk and were never shaken, of "barbecue" that has never seen a grill, "cheese" with no cheese, and theme monstrosities for whom food is only a lure to buy a T-shirt, is not the way it has to be...I wouldn't really care what they put in those burgers- if they tasted good. And though I do care that the rivers of Arkansas are clogging up with chicken sh*t to satisfy the world's relentless craving for crispy fried chicken fingers, I don't believe that we should legislate these c***suckers out of business. My position is kind of the Nancy Reagan position on drugs: "Just Say No." Next time you find yourself standing slack-jawed and hungry in front of a fast-food counter- and a clown is anywhere nearby- just turn on your heels and head for the lone-wolf, independent operator down the street...Whenever possible, try to eat food that comes from somewhere, from somebody...Eat for nourishment, yes, but eat for pleasure. Stop settling for less. That way, if we ever do have to get in there and "smoke evildoers out of their holes," at the very least, we'll be able to squeeze in after them.
PREACH. My dad says America doesn't know how to eat and we should all be sent to Italy for basic training. Shopping at the farm is one of the high points of my week, and talking to the people who grow the food, and actually getting inspired by ingredients. Which basically does not happen at a normal grocery store. I believe there's a lot of bad in the industrialization of food and definitely in the strip mall-ization of the country. He can be harsh at times, but Bourdain's total candor in calling it like it is is just straight up refreshing.
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