I hated the show. I couldn’t even finish it. The problem was that I watched it after Parts Unknown. I might feel differently if I had watched his shows in chronological order, but I also might never would have made it to Parts Unknown. So, I’m glad I did things this way. A Cook’s Tour - the book - is a bit better than the show. That sense of wonder I love peaks through occasionally in the book. The show is so condescending and rude about the food he eats and people he meets. It’s all about how wild can food possibly be. In some ways it feels like the opposite of Parts Unknown. The book feels somewhere in between. 

The beginning is such a similar tone to Kitchen Confidential that I wasn’t sure I was going to continue. But. Then, he gets to Vietnam. The way he talks about falling in love with Vietnam is exactly what I seek from his work. He’s not quite the person he becomes by Parts Unknown, but he’s getting there. You feel his love and it feels just as intoxicating as any romance novel I’ve read. You feel the power that wonder and awe can have. His time in Vietnam is the first time in the book he lets go of himself and is actually curious. That’s when he’s at his best. Everything after that first Vietnam chapter is extremely hit or miss. 

Tony spent so much of his life trying to atone for Kitchen Confidential and reverse what he had unthinkingly encouraged in the chef world. In A Cook’s Tour you see a little bit of that growth and the more earnest side of him. It feels hopeful. Tony was at his best when he lets go of the instinct to be flippant. Maybe that’s just easier in written form with every thought behind a flippant remark exposed instead of a quick twenty something minute episode of just the highlights and sensational bits. In this book he is sometimes scratching the surface of some of the tragedy and horror felt in his Parts Unknown journeys, but he’s not yet willing to really dive in, feel it, and center it. 

The way he talks about women is grating. I hate it. No improvement from Kitchen Confidential.