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"As many places as there to visit in this world, there are just as many points from which to start a conversation about Anthony Bourdain and his show, No Reservations. I hope you&amp;#039;re a fan, or maybe you&amp;#039;re the type that loves to hate\u2014hey, a little nastiness is necessary to balance out the good, right?\u2014regardless, welcome. This season Bourdain and his crew head to Colombia, Laos, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the American Southwest, Egypt and Spain (and we&amp;#039;ll be talking about all of those episodes in future posts). In usual Bourdain fashion, there will be some disgusting bites, vulnerable humbling moments, sticky situations, cultural revelations and serious inebriety. (I am always blown away by how much that man can drink\u2014in Laos, Bourdain and the crew threw back innumerable glasses of the Laotian hooch called laolao. I especially liked the camera shots as the behind-the-scenes guys got more and more wasted.) My favorite visual so far was on the boat in Saudi Arabia, where they caught an extraordinary array of fish. I have never seen anything like it (granted, my fishing experience is limited); the fish were so bright and beautiful, unreal. Wow\u2014another realization that the foods we eat every day are such a small fraction of what&amp;#039;s edible on Earth. There were some genuinely moving moments in the season&amp;#039;s premiere episode in Laos. Bourdain was humbled in the face of intense suffering; politics often inserts itself into world travel, like it or not, and Laos has indeed suffered horribly. The show had a poignant, philosophical take on the impact of tourism, too, acknowledging that even the act of filming a place changes its nature. &amp;quot;We help kill what we love,&amp;quot; Bourdain says about broadcasting the pleasures of off-the-guidebook locations. It&amp;#039;s true\u2014you don&amp;#039;t want to tell people about that great little restaurant or cool beach town, since its obscurity is what makes it great\u2014everyone else comes and it&amp;#039;s totally ruined! Bourdain might be the first guy to eat a whole camel on television (sorry, that was a super gross moment in the Saudi Arabia episode) but I am definitely not the first person to write about Bourdain. I thought a good way to start would be to make my top ten list of links related to the man and the show. Click away, and add more links if you have them! The New Yorker story that elevated Bourdain&amp;#039;s writing career; this was eventually developed into Kitchen Confidential. Tony&amp;#039;s Travel Channel official-style blog. The crew&amp;#039;s blog, also on the Travel Channel site. Bourdain&amp;#039;s still controversial takedown of various Food TV personalities, on Michael Ruhlman&amp;#039;s blog. An awkward and amusing interview with Bourdain from the Amateur Gourmet.  Bourdain&amp;#039;s article on Salon about filming in Beirut and finding himself in the middle of a war zone.  Part of the Authors@google, series, this is an hour-long, somewhat fawning interview with Bourdain.  My favorite Bourdain clip: Into the Fire with Eric Ripert.  Following the recent story on the highest-paid celebrity chefs, this is an interesting analysis from the chowhound community. An excellent Jeffrey Steingarten piece from 2000 on Kitchen Confidential.  And in a rock &amp;#039;n&amp;#039; roll touch, I will turn it up to 11: No Reservations theme-song performers the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion are back after a long hiatus. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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