Eating your way around the world has to be the best way to get to know it.
In more than 140 shows on “No Reservations,” Anthony Bourdain has sampled a global menu of foods simple and sublime — everything from fondue Bourgignon to squirrel pie — in well over 60 countries. But there’s one place he forgot to visit, a country that was right next door to his neighborhood on the Upper East Side: Brooklyn.
And he picked it for his last show, airing Monday night on the Travel Channel.
“In Paris, all that the chefs are talking about is Brooklyn,” says Bourdain, enjoying a Pilsner at the sidewalk tables at Café Alsace on Second Avenue. “What’s happening culinarily in Brooklyn is impacting Paris. The fact that I don’t know what they’re talking about was a liability that had to be fixed. I figured it’s only right to complete the circle, go back home and explore the last unexplored territory in my own city.”
With his three-man crew, he spent a week bopping from old-timey joints like Randazzo’s in Sheepshead Bay to the trendiest restaurants, like Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare, decked out with three Michelin stars.
He had some sidekicks to share the meals, among them actor Michael Kenneth Williams, most famously known as Omar on “The Wire,” who showed him a seldom-seen part of Brooklyn: the housing project he grew up on Foster Avenue in East Flatbush.
Says Bourdain, “He knew all the moms walking by and he associated them with meals. ‘Oh, this is Mrs. Benson. She’s from Trinidad, and she used to make me this. This lady is from Martinique.’ It was a very life-affirming trip,” he says.
While talking about “No Reservations,” Bourdain is interrupted by fans who come up and thank him for entertaining them with his culinary trips around the world. One Lebanese woman and her husband, an ex-Marine, thank him for going to Beirut and showing the world her country.
Bourdain attributes his ability to blend in from place to place to his appetite.
“I’m just a guy who likes to eat. It’s an advantage,” he says. “It’s enormously helpful, particularly when you’re in countries that are hard to cover. I’m not a journalist. Not a political commentator. People treat me very differently in what’s called the assassin’s cradle of Medellin [Colombia] or Saudi Arabia. They have my show in all those places.”
Still, there are some places he’d still like to visit and he will get to them in his next series, which will premiere on CNN Sunday nights in 2013. Bourdain ended his sometimes contentious relationship with the Travel Channel earlier this year when CNN offered him the opportunity to do a similar program of personal travel essays, but with greater access to everything an international news organization has to offer: infrastructure, security and personnel.
“If we want to shoot in Libya, Iran, the West Bank, we can do that. It was problematic with Travel Channel,” he says. “We’ve been trying to do a Congo show for almost five years and haven’t been able to. Because of security concerns. They wouldn’t know who to call [at the Travel Channel]. CNN has infrastructure in the Congo. They have translators, fixers, drivers on the ground there.”
Bourdain starts filming his new show, still unnamed, at the end of November. “CNN doesn’t expect me to be anybody I’m not,” he says. “We sent over our most self-indulgent shows before our first meeting. And we asked, ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ ”
One of those was the “No Reservations” episode he filmed in Rome in which he visited all the sites Fellini made famous in “La Dolce Vita.” Like that film, it was done in black-and-white.
“It’s the show I’m most proud of,” he says. “Nobody wanted it. The network was horrified. And we worked hardest on getting that show to look at Rome in a way that hadn’t been done.”
Bourdain’s fans can expect more of the same unique approach to looking at the world. “We’ll be looking at new ways to shoot in places that everybody’s shot in. I want to do a Los Angeles show told entirely from the perspective of Koreatown,” he says.
BOURDAIN’S BROOKLYN: A GUIDE
1. PRIMORSKI
262 BRIGHTON BEACH AVENUE
“We had whole roasted pig. Go for the food, stay for the entertainment. The floor show is unbelievable. Places like Primorski and the National, they’re absolutely crazy. You don’t go there for dinner. Be prepared to drink heavily.”
2. JAY AND LLOYD’S KOSHER DELI 2718 AVENUE U
“Nowhere else in the world are you going to get chopped liver, a bagel, a bialy, pastrami the way it should be done. I had a turkey sandwich, chopped liver. I like that potato salad with whatever that mayo substitute is in it. And Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda.”
3. GLORIA’S 764 NOSTRAND AVENUE
“I ate currried goat, oxtails, rice and peas. Callaloo. Whatever Michael Kenneth Williams told me to eat, I ate. Terrific food. The real deal. And I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the Caribbean.”
4. RANDAZZO’S CLAM BAR 2017 EMMONS AVENUE
“They have meatballs the size of your head, pasta that’s been pre-cooked and rinsed. This is not how they do it in Italy. It’s one of those places that if you have any sentiment for the way things used to be, you can’t help but love it. Their clams were delicious.”
5. ROBERTA’S/ BLANCA’S 261 MOORE STREET
“It looks like a chop shop or a meth lab.It’s choking with hipsters, heavily tattooed servers. But the food is delicious. Right in the middle of Roberta’s, they have this spectacular fine-dining restaurant. They are cooking at an extraordinarily high level there. They’ve created a place worthy of the hype.”
6. BROOKLYN FARE 200 SCHERMERHORN STREET
“It has three Michelin stars, one of the best restaurants in the world. It’s a tasting menu. Fifteen or 16 small courses. A lot of seafood flown in from Japan. Of incredible rarity and deliciousness.”