Oh, yea. Bourdain just acknowledged the Assshats, whilst on the cool Maremma Duderanch. What an awesome experience. 1st ring of get along lil’ dogie Hell.
Now I know where Bob Ringwood came up with the idea for the Dune Spacing Guild Navigators’ Dusters.
Down on the Delaurentiis Ranch. God, That Giada is the shit. I want to wrestle her in a swimming pool of carbonara.
It was hilarious, this awesome chef making a dinner that the guests hated.
Giada is gorgeous. Those GIGANTIC TITTIES! I mean EYES. And her mouth is enormous, I don’t think there’s anything I can think of that wouldn’t fit in there…
Okay, so as part of his disastrous meal, Bourdain made a point of noting that he was using Jamie Oliver’s recipe for spaghetti alla carbonara. Fine, I always like mean-sprited digs at fellow celebs.
But I don’t understand what exactly was so horrible. It seemed his major crime was putting meatballs in pasta. Okay, so Italians don’t usually eat meatballs with pasta. So what? Does that in itself make it a culinary crime? Does that in itself make it inedible? What, nobody ever breaks custom to create an out-of-the-ordinary dish?
Why didn’t they go into detail about what exactly was wrong with Bourdain’s meal? What exactly made it taste bad? Because all I got out of it was “Italians are rigid food snobs and Bourdain is going along with it unquestioningly.”
Oh, and “this is linguine not spaghetti.” – Do the Italians really find major differences in taste between slightly different widths of noodle?
Italians and Italian-Americans are particular about pasta, but they seldom are assholes about it. And shape does matter, particularly if the pasta dish is to be baked, if the sauce is overly thick or thin, or if it is going to be used in a soup or salad.
I get into tiffs with my wife over this one - she insists on trying to cook and serve whole wheat pastas because they are healthier for the kids and such. I hate this - those pastas are usually terribly gummy, and nothing has proven a proper substitute for semolina.
I am not a picky eater in the least, but I don’t want my pasta fucked around with.
And what is it about linguine that would make spaghetti alla carbonara uneatable? (I wish Bourdain or the Italian diners had gone into detail about this kind of thing.)
And what about the other stuff?
(Oh, and, yes, great boobs. Giada de Laurentiis? The one on the Food Network?)
It was all setup for the fantastic meal at the end.
The artsy crap had to go. Don’t tuscans eat things that the rest of us would find revolting, but Tony would walk over broken glass to try?
So it was a fake out? The first meal wasn’t inedible but they just pretended it was?
This episode ticked me off. Sure, I watch Bourdain for his post-punk personality and his caustic wit. But I also expect to learn something about food in different places, and this major set-piece for the Tuscany episode left me with more questions than anything.
See, Bourdain isn’t a food snob. His favourite foods are hot dogs and french fries (and sushi). (At least that’s what I’ve gotten from watching and reading over the years.) He likes all kinds of stuff, and, in particular, he likes stuff that’s not mass-produced or not in an over-priced fancy restaurant.
I like him much better in Asia. He seems to have more fun and find all kinds of interesting stuff. This Tuscany thing just seemed like bowing to the usual food gods.
Gee, dunno specifically. My family was from Naples and Abruzzi, and when I lived in Italy, it was in Sicily. I haven’t been to Tuscany yet.
Still, I’m sure they eat fine dishes like squid stewed in its own ink, like I used to get. Likewise those delicious sandwiches made with horse meat.
The whole thing with the Italian film-noir dude and the hating of Tony’s meal was a whoosh…(in case anybody’s not clear on that). I think it was an attempt to do something with a Tuscany episode besides show beautiful countryside, beautiful people, beautiful food, etc., like a food version of one of those soft porn romance movies.
I figured the Italian director nonsense was also a whoosh, but I have to admit, that drive up the mountain after rain and landslides would have pissed me off and been the last day I worked with that film crew.
I suppose one problem with filming a food show in Tuscany is that, quite simply, most of it has been done to death. Is there anyone who would be surprised to find great food there? Or beautiful countryside? Or gorgeous women (and men for that matter) and a smattering of colorful local old people sitting on benches outside? Been there, done that a million times.
I would still rather have seen the show played “straight” without the silly film noir subplot. Even though we have seen it all before, it is better to sit back and see it again than have some lame plot thrown in to distract from the beauty.
Hear, hear.
Even if Tony’s summing-up of the whole experience was “Tony finds that, despite his initial snarky dismissiveness, Tuscany is indeed gorgeous and the food is spectacular and he has had to swallow his pride and some crow too”, that would have been a better premise than what they did. I wanted to see a lot more of the places he visited and less of the silly trumped up pretend plot.
Yeah, this wasn’t my favorite episode – few top the one where he went to Korea and ate chicken anus.
I’d just finished reading Bill Buford’s Heat, so it was kind of cool to see Dario and put a face to the stories.
I haven’t watched the episode yet but I have noticed they have been doing more of the “set up/staged” type pieces and less of the “Tony absorbs local color” which I enjoy more .
For example, the show where he went to Cleveland and met up with Mike Ruhlman and the American Splendor guy. If you were unfamiliar with American Splendor (as am I) the whole show was a giant whoosh, and showed what I thought was very little of Cleveland. There’s gotta be more to the place than Cincinnati style chili and the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame…right??
