The Art of Savoring

A rich narrative of food and place, “A Cooks Tour” is a world of experiences one is able to tangibly hold in their hands to be read anywhere, at any given time. Constantly pushing the envelope Anthony Bourdain’s narrative is raw, meaty, transparent, insightful, and at times hard to read. His voice transcends beyond the page and the usual limitations of memoir, allowing the reader to immerse him or herself in the streets, kitchens, traditions, and lives of another people who breathe and live a culture very different from our own.

The appeal is strange—following a crude, sometimes insensitive, obscene, and often belligerently drunk guide through a string of countries as he attempts to secure and wholly describe the perfect meal with exact detail. Yet there is so much more to Tony. There is an essence, an edge. Led by passion, curiosity, and intention, Tony will cause you to feel each experience, emotion, recountal, portrayal, confession, and determination with exactitude, to no avail. To engross oneself in his narrative is to commit to the journey with him—and to do so with one’s head, palate, heart, gut, and self entirely.

It is a book that makes you think about food, culture, people, location, humility, perception, consummation, satisfaction, and the cross-stitches of life. Toni teaches us all how to savor every intrinsic part of life and the experiences that come with it. His words leap off the page and evolve into new ideas and realizations surrounding the significant questioning of how we connect as humans and derive satisfaction from our life experiences. Toni is a writer that bears it all, exposing every flaw of character and conscience, creating a transparency that allows his acquisitiveness and deeply felt compassion to fall across the page, shadowing his every remark, recollection, and contemplation.

Tony travels, as one should. Not with a map, travel book, or itinerary, but with deliberation, consciousness, and an adventurous spirit. What makes his narrative fresh and crisp is his bold and intrepid ways; his undaunted and defiant attitude towards new food and cultures. It’s contagious and nearly intoxicating to read and be a part of. Tony lives in the strife, intimacy, and mess of life, endeavoring to untangle the complexities of life and the many ways that we take pleasure in particular experiences surround food, culture, and connections to other people. He turns every experience on its head and examines it for what it is worth both in personal value as well as societal.

Tony is nostalgic. He is someone who can pause within a given moment and appreciate all that it can offer him in sensory and memory. Each chapter in the book takes us through another vein of possibility and manifestation. Linked to place, they are separate entities that come together to help us better understand the significances of high stakes in life and the austerity of daily influences in our life and how we can shape those experiences to our liking or genuine curiosity.

“A Cooks Tour” is all about the ingredients of life and how our experiences come together as a whole in forming our perception, identity, and cultured self. Our guide, Tony, with his fiery personality and wandering ways not only gives you a kick in the pants to get out and experiencing the richness of life, but also causes you to consider how your collective experiences thrown together over heat have led to a recipe of individuality, a precise finesse that is constantly transforming and evolving, depending on the ingredients we add and take away from life.