I'm hungry now

I'm not in Mexico anymore. I'm back in New York, wearing my coat and scarf and gloves. My hair is all smushed down by my hat and my toes are always cold. But there are some good things about being in New York and watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations reminded me of some of them.

If you've been reading this blog for awhile (or if you just know me), you may know that I love Anthony Bourdain. He's crotchety, foul mouthed and knows a ton about food. I've read all his books (you must have heard of Kitchen Confidential at least?) and his show is one of my favorite channel surfing pleasures.

Anyways, he did an episode this week about "disappearing Manhattan," all the old time-y places like Katz's Delicatessen and Russ & Daughters. You can get the complete list of places here. It made me sad. And hungry. You can see a little preview here while I go get a snack.

The best assignment ever (thanks Rita!)

This week, at my boring paralegal job, which mostly consists of me calling people and asking them if they've ever been discriminated against and having them answer that "Spanish" is a gender, I got the best assignment EVER. Apparently, the firm is thinking about suing a restaurant (whose name I must not disclose) and they thought that it might be featured an episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. So they needed someone to watch it and write down if the restaurant's name was ever mentioned. Needless to say, I enthusiastically volunteered for the job (which, let me tell you, does not happen very often at my job). I LOVE Anthony Bourdain. I have ever since I read A Cook's Tour a few years back. Basically, the premise is that this foul mouthed 50 year old ex-chef travels all around the world looking for "the perfect meal" and complains about The Food Network, because hey, they're filming this as a tv show (and he is not happy about that). Then I read his most famous book, Kitchen Confidential, which is also great. I find it a little disturbing that I'm so amused by a foul mouthed organ eating misanthrope, but what can you do?

Below is an excerpt of his show "A Cook's Tour" because I couldn't find a clip that I liked of "No Reservations." They were all too long and I didn't think you all would suffer through a clip that was longer than a minute or so. If you watch below, he eats a fetal duck egg. Yes, an egg that has a partially formed fetal duck inside. Crazy! Fascinating! Amazing.