Ok, so it’s not a Con­cert Review, but I did go to see Anthony Bour­dain last night, and it was a fas­ci­nat­ing expe­ri­ence. It’s hard to describe how some­one could be so snarky and yet so inspi­ra­tional all at once. As the lead­ing pro­po­nent of “Food Porn” (not at all a dirty term. Trust me. Google it.) Bour­dain makes every­one who watches his show want to be trav­el­ing along with him. He did about thirty min­utes of free form talk­ing, mostly about what he thinks of other food tele­vi­sion shows, and then he opened it up to audi­ence ques­tions. As usual for some­thing like this, some of the ques­tions were stu­pid, and oth­ers were great. (Bourdain’s last meal? He gave a few answers, but the final one seemed to be at a sushi restau­rant in Japan.) He had some great thoughts about how to travel, and how to truly find the good food (“If you’re eat­ing in the Hard Rock cafe in Toyko, there’s some­thing seri­ously wrong with you!”) I think my favorite bit of trivia was about how the pro­duc­tion crew has a pool run­ning every trip to see who gets sick first, and it’s almost always the per­son who eats at the hotel buffet!

I think the most inter­est­ing thing about his show is how you can watch a episode about a place you’ve never been and never even thought about going, where the food looks a lit­tle scary, and by the end of the show you want to jump on a plane! I just watched a show on the Brit­tany region of France. Now, I’ve never felt super excited by the idea of going to France. I wouldn’t turn it down, but it’s not on my top five list of places to go. And Brit­tany is a area that’s heavy on the Seafood, which isn’t really my thing either. And I swear, by the end, I was ready to try Sar­dines in a jar mar­i­nated in olive oil! Of course, I’d prob­a­bly barf all over the floor, but still, I would’ve given it a fight­ing chance.

I do find the shows are occa­sion­ally hit or miss. The famous Roman­ian fiasco is some­what leg­endary at this point. And the one show on some­where I’ve actu­ally been (Puerto Rico) didn’t quite cap­ture it for me. In that episode, he got caught up in stuff that was a lit­tle silly for a food show (A hor­rid seg­ment about a Chu­pacabra, and some­thing about the Paso Fino Horses. Bor­ing!) The part that’s really bug­ging me is that there’s a seg­ment on the show’s web­site about his Puerto Rico show that was really great. You can watch it here, and this feels like Puerto Rico to me.

For some rea­son I’ve been get­ting more and more into Food and Wine recently. I’ve always really liked food (I am my Dad’s son after all) but now I’m start­ing to even learn about Wine. I’m very much a Gour­mand more than a gourmet, but I’m try­ing. For those of you who are iPhone peo­ple, check out an app called Cor.kz. Trust me. Any­way, recently there’s been this explo­sion in Austin of all these crazy food trail­ers. The first one I noticed was called Hey! Cup­cake, and I’ve been for­tu­nate enough to play some shows there. Yes, because it’s Austin some food trail­ers have live music. There’s also one called Flip Happy Crepes that’s got­ten a lot of notice and was fea­tured on Bobby Flay’s show on the Food Net­work. Any­way, since Hey Cup­cake hit it big (they now have four trail­ers and a store­front) there’s about a bil­lion food trail­ers all over South Austin. The park­ing lot where Hey Cup­cake on Con­gress lives now has some­thing like 5 trail­ers in it, and there’s a whole empty lot on South First street full of them. I went to a new one the other night called Gour­doughs. It’s noth­ing but huge, absurdly topped donuts. I swear I ate a Donut that, if launched from space, could wipe out human­ity just like the aster­oid that killed the dinosaurs. It was that huge. And now the national media is pick­ing up on this trend, and Bour­dain announced that he’s com­ing back in June to do a whole show on Austin’s food carts!

Upon reflect­ing on this post, I’m won­der­ing if I’m really just a frus­trated food blogger.