Anthony Bourdain Tells You How to Travel · Nov 30, 05:07 PM by James Martin
I like Anthony Bourdain. He lays the truth as he sees it right out on the table for you—yet he’s a fairly compassionate guy as well. It’s a yin-yang sorta thing.
You see Anthony Bourdain on TV all the time. He also gives talks and answers audience questions at places like the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. A seat at a Commonwealth Club talk can be expensive; you might have forked out up to $200 for tickets to a recent Bourdain talk.
But through the magic of the internet, you can see his Commonwealth Club talk at ForaTV for free. If you like food and travel, I suggest you watch the whole program, which consists of over an hour of reflection and revelation about food—both cooking it and eating it.
Anthony Bourdain understands the yin-yang in these things. Cooking (and serving), he asserts, is all about ultimate control. Eating (and traveling) is all about subservience. You let yourself be part of the experience. Micro-manage your food choices or travel destinations and a place no longer has the power to move you. Management, you see, is about control. Control is about subverting power.
People email me all the time wanting to know where the best place in Europe is—as if a single place could fascinate every individual on earth. These travelers will then go on to map out every step of their vacation as if it were being planned as a psychological experiment, a rat maze run while the cheese prize is rotting in a dank corner.
“When a chef goes into another chef’s restaurant, he doesn’t order a steak. He says, ‘feed me, gimme what’s good today,’” Bourdain tells us wisely.
He’s right. When is the last time you walked in a restaurant and just left everything to the chef?
People don’t do this often enough, if at all. Most people fight tooth and nail against suggestions for a better experience put forth by a waiter—I saw this fight play itself out several times last summer.
The best meal I ever had in Portugal was the time the chef came out (because he was the only person in the restaurant who spoke a bit of English) and asked me what I liked to eat. When I replied “everything” he returned to his little kitchen and commenced producing a 7 course meal with wine that cost me a mere 30 Euros and was worth twice that at least.
Why can’t we let go? Why can’t we see that sometimes being subservient allows us entry into a world wanting passionately to be discovered? Every true spiritual leader who ever lived offers pretty much the same advice.
Maybe the problem is that there are few pure spiritual teachers left in the world. So few, in fact, that Anthony Bourdain seems like one.
Now that’s just plain wrong…..isn’t it?
See the video: Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations
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