Anthony Bourdain Speaks

Anthony Bourdain has once again expressed his opinions on a variety of topics.
We like Anthony, we enjoy reading his views on the world and everyone in it, so here goes:

His thoughts on vegetarians: "They make for bad travelers and bad guests. The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, 'I'm not interested,' or you're unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don't understand that, and I think it's rude. You're at Grandma's house, you eat what Grandma serves you."

His feelings toward vegans: "I don't have any understanding of it. Being a vegan is a first-world phenomenon, completely self-indulgent."

As far as to why he only smokes marijuana on the road: "When I'm in New York, I'm a dad. I'm with my daughter, or I have to be available for her, and I want to keep an active brain. If somebody suddenly calls up and says, 'Your daughter needs you,' and I'm in a position to do something about it, I'm not going to be, like, 'Oh, dude, wow, what do I do?' If I'm sitting in the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Desert, though, and it's two in the morning, we've finished shooting with a tribe of bedouins and my crew and I want to stagger up a dune and smoke some hash and look at the moon, that's a nice thing. Who is it hurting?"

On why he'll never do hard drugs again: "I had a long and extraordinarily painful relationship with heroin and, following that, methadone. Having physically kicked it, I would greatly prefer not to have to go through that again. When I remember the good times and the good feelings on heroin, sure, but when I think about the bad, it hurts and I don't ever want to go through that again. I'm clear about it. Same with cocaine. Honestly, it's not a day-to-day struggle. No. It's (effing) bad. I don't want to do it again. It was humiliating; it brought me low."

How about his fellow celeb chefs?




Emeril Lagasse: "As I've said to him many times, 'I hated your show, dude.' I made my career making fun of the poor b*stard. I miss him now. He has good restaurants and is a good chef, but the stuff he made on TV was ridiculous."



Bobby Flay: "Again, an accomplished restaurateur. But I don't understand why these guys would make this candy-colored sort of crowd-pleasing television. Why would they compromise themselves so much?"



Wolfgang Puck: "Listen, I'm not eating in his (crummy) pizza restaurants. I think it's bull----, and it breaks my heart to see him on QVC or whatever, but the fact is he paid his dues. He's an important guy. It's an Orson Welles thing: He made Citizen Kane, so it doesn't matter what he does after that. If Wolfgang Puck wants to open crappy pizzerias in airports all over America, that's (effing) fine. Wolfgang was a guy who changed things for chefs. You don't have to be on TV—everybody knew who Wolfgang was. It was about the chef now."



Mario Batali: "He's a monster of rock and roll. He's done everything right from the beginning. Mario's managed to balance making a lot of money, opening a lot of restaurants, world domination and his personal happiness and quality of life in a remarkable way. He's the smartest chef there is. There is no chef smarter or funnier or faster."

Celebrity Chef-Branded Food - Is it worth it?

We see the celebrity chefs on TV, we feel we have gotten to know them, we trust them.

You see the smiling face of Emeril Lagasse on a jar of Emeril's Home Style Marinara ($3.88) and you give a sigh of relief knowing you are buying the best.

Well hold on, not so fast.
According to a new Consumer Reports taste test of celebrity-branded food products, Emeril's Home Style Marinara is worse than Ragu's tomato sauce, but it's a lot more expensive.
It only rated "good" in the magazine's survey of tomato sauces with celebrity names.
The magazine also tasted celebrity offerings of minestrone soups, tomato soups and salad dressings.

Emeril's tomato sauce wasn't the only one that underwhelmed.
Only three of the 26 products tested got the magazine's top rating, "excellent."
10 managed to earn "very good."
But the other half all got rating comparable to much cheaper products from major companies like Kraft.

None of the minestrone soups or salad dressings were rated "excellent."
The highest rated in those categories were, respectively, Wolfgang Puck, which got just a "good," and Rao's, which was called "very good."




That said, a few products did taste as excellent as their reputations would suggest.
Consumer Reports called Wolfgang Puck's Tomato Basil Soup, which costs $3.50 a can, "A soup to sip and savor." And two tomato sauces from Italian Food Network stars were called great.




Giada De Laurentiis' tomato basil sauce at $3 a jar is apparently only available at Target. It was praised for its "buttery richness."




And Mario Batali put out a "garlicky tomato-basil sauce" that won the taster's approval, but it's going to cost you $8.

Iron Chef - Battle of the White House Vegetables

It was the holiday season.
It was the time for our favorite comfort foods and all the holiday indulgences, then there on the Food Network it happened, the First Lady, telling us to eat our vegetables.
Yes, it was, Michelle Obama, Emeril Lagasse, Bobby Flay, Mario Batali and Cristeta Comerfor in the celebrity Iron chef overload.
The last thing we want to hear is a sermon about eating our vegetables when we are only half way through our holiday apple pie.
Don't they know stuff like this crushes the spirit of the holiday chocolates?
The four chefs, divided into teams of Lagasse and Batali vs. Flay and Comerford, and they were challenged to use White House garden ingredients to "create a healthy meal."

The actual cooking battle portion of the show was really boring, so we started counting how many commercials they could cram into the program, we lost count.
Then, after the commercials we were forced to endure a boring recap of the show we just saw before the commercial.  And really, how many times did we need to hear “CULINARY SUPER BATTLE?”
Poor Emeril,  sweating like a pig,  into and onto everything.
In case you were acting in your best interest and missed the show,  Bobby Flay and White House Chef Comerford won the battle. Wow, what a surprise!!!
We really don't know how much we can expect from Iron Chef these days, but the Food Network has practically dismissed all association with Batali and Lagasse. and could we really expect  the chef from the White House to lose?