What your are looking for is never quite far

When you go further in A cook's tour, new dimensions of Bourdain's experience appear to the reader. The first conclusion to draw is that food is a dangerous leisure (can we even call it leisure again? I have my doubts.) The cook starts the chapter relating his trip to Can tho, Vietnam, as follows : « I just had the closest near-death experience I've ever had. And I'm about to have another one. Then another. » (p. 129).

Stuck in a car crazily driven by a Vietnamese (or a car driven by a crazy Vietnamese, you can choose) Bourdain and his TV acolytes escape narrowly death several times, experiencing the so-wanted local way of living. The secret ? Speed and confidence. Above all, don't look into your rear-view mirror. Cherry on the cake, they also avoid to kill several families, by bunch on 5 on a motorbike along the roadsides. What more could you ask for ? The name of the chapter, “highway of death”, is barely exaggerated.

The lesson is clear for the reader: food is not a completely save adventure. When you commit yourself to it, you are not guaranteed to stay unharmed. While this idea can be taken for what it is, it might also be a suitable metaphor for passion. Once you put a finger into the gears of cooking, it is hard to step back, not to say impossible. Trust me, Bourdain would confirm it.

Through the pages and the roads, the Chef took the path of thinking, a process during which he learnt both alterity and companionship. Sharing with his TV followers terrible nauseas -either provoked by excess of food or disgust- in almost each new destination; sharing amazement when they discovered the magic of exoticism (Japan, Mexico, England, Vietnam); sharing fear when threatened by armed locals, dubious food or angry cooks, Bourdain lived his travel experience through the lens of the “us,” either in conviviality or misfortune.

But the food adventure is also cultural. The confrontation to alterity, through different food and customs (eating pets or cute little animals was probably the toughest pill to swallow), pushed the cook to put things into perspective, considering food in a completely new way. It is not only about aliments, cooking or sugar quantity. It is about being part of something bigger: culture. To find the perfect meal, then, appears vain. Bourdain says it himself: “the whole concept of the 'perfect meal' is ludicrous. 'Perfect,' like 'happy,' tends to sneak up on you. Once you find it -like Thomas Keller says- it's gone.” The perfect meal is not, after all, bugs in the desert, dogs in Vietnam or Japanese dishes. The perfect meal is eating with the people we love. Wherever and whatever. Bourdain just needed a bit longer -one year abroad still- to realize that.