So hip that he doesn't need a Sinatra hat.

Over the past year I have become addicted to Anthony Bourdain’s show on the Travel Channel. In case you are not familiar with it, Bourdain is a chef from New York of French heritage who travels the world and the USA. He is the ultimate hipster chef, so hip and so cool he doesn’t need to wear the narrow brimmed Sinatra hat lesser hipsters wear all the time to let you know they are hip. He was the long time head chef at New York’s Les Halles, about as authentic a French Bistro as exists this side of the Atlantic.

Bourdain is always quirky, often cranky, more so since he quit smoking. He has many sudden violent prejudices that surface at the oddest times. Right now his bete noirs are Gwenith Paltrow, a lovely actress who says she morally cannot eat anything with four legs and Rachel Ray who Bourdain savages for not being a real chef -- something that the perky charming one time cheerleader from up state New York takes pains to point out on almost every interview. Like many pretty actresses Paltrow can be stupied when babbling without a script. Her vapid views on the barbarous unhip reality of the USA are a favorite spiel of hers. Bourdain had a long feud with Emeril Lagasse, but he has made peace with the restauranteur. A good thing since Emeril is one of the few really famous Portuguese Americans, right behind march king John Philip Souza and ahead of Teresa Heinz Kerry.

On most of his travel adventures Bourdain appears jet lagged and when not mildly hung over. What is fascinating is his admiration and praise for truly exalted haut cuisine of almost every major school while also loving and recommending authentic highly ethnic and local street food and late night and early morning items that are usually eat with your hands standing up or sitting on a stool with a cold beer in the other paw. Bourdain is worshipful at the French Laundry in the Napa Valley and the great temples of high skill creative gastronomy -- French places with a lot of Michelin stars and great very serious Basque and Spanish restaurants that shoot for the stars.

Yet he also loves straight forward authentic local places that know what they are and make no apologies for it. These include unexpected establishments like San Francisco’s House of Prime Rib which continues to serve traditional American birthday and aniversary dishes from the the 1940’s with no apologies. He liked it because it is what it is and what is always was. Huge slabs of blood rare prime rib are served with creamed spinach, yorkshire pudding, au jus, creamed horse radish and a reliable cabernet and classic gin martinis. The same goes for really wierd joints in Chicago, the venerable Katz’s deli in New York, the Polonia Cafe in Detroit, big spartan rural Texas steakhouses and family run Mexican cafes in small southwestern towns.

OK, what doesn’t Bourdain like. First of all, he hates all chain and mega corporation restaurants and fast food outlets. He particularly find Chili’s odious because they seem to be debasing honest American, Tex Mex and Mexican dishes into cute not too spicy or salty platters for suburbanites. I am sure he hates plenty of other chains, but that is given to the point he doesn’t even have to sneer at Denny’s or Home Town Buffet among many many others.

He champions the off the wall eccentric even weird local joints when they are serious about what they cook and serve. Clam shacks in New England, Chicago hot dog stands, gumbo cafes and oyster houses in Louisiana, the plain diners where locals eat in Hawaii, and a grubby looking working class hamburger joint in San Francisco that serves a real American burger on sliced sour down bread. He also likes diners in the South that serve up the traditional regional dishes breakfast lunch and dinner, dishes with names like Hoppin’ John, Country Captain, Burnswick Stew and ham bisquits. Same for BBQ stands that serve up the regional styles -- pulled pork in the Carolinas, ribs in Memphis and St Louis and slow cooked dry rubbed brisket that never is touched with any BBQ sauce in Texas.

Bourdain also enjoys the lesser cuts of meat and innards that were the food of the poor for so long that they learned to make them wonderful. This would include beef tripe soups, ox tail braises, tongue sandwiches or tacos, kidneys fried in bacon, brains scrambled quickly, head cheese and Philadelphia scrapple, pigs feet in a dozen different ways and even more exotic items.

In another ways, while he very open and tolerant to almost every cuisine round the world, Bourdain’s slamming Gwenith Paltrow is actually a social and political not a gastronomic tantrum. Bourdain has few or no reservations about eating vegan and lacto vegetarian cooking, so long as it is authentic and local. He has often praised what Hindu and Buddhist cooks have set before him from street stalls or in homes or formal restaurants. What fried him about Ms. Paltrow was how she could travel around Spain with Mario Batali and friends and never ever let Jamon Serrano pass her lips. I suspect he classifies her eccentric semi-vegetarianism as a willful sort of secular fundamentalism, not as a real authentic local and traditional inheritance. While I don’t know for sure, I assume Bourdain is Franco American “Jack Catholic.” He seems to think like one and have little or no patience for lesser religious and secular sects.

My favorite Bourdain episode is his hour touring the Açores, where the meals he was eating literally brought me to tears. I could smell and recall the taste of the dishes on the table that my Grandmother and her sisters cooked when I was young. Other singular and enduring episodes are his hour touring Rajistran, where some Indian friends have assured me he “Caught the spirit and feel of the place” and his visits to Texas and to Mexico.

The same for his drive across the southwest from LA to Texas and his bombing around San Francisco in a brand new Ford recreation of the Black Mustang hatch back that Steve McQueen drove in Bullett. Another wonderful hour was his tour of the surviving old time places in New York City. This was a wonderful salute to those institutions strong and authentic and full of life enough to survive over the decades. Things that he especially liked were late night street food in Mexico and from the street stalls in Singapore, in Berlin a huge and vast delicatessen that seemed to offer the whole world for lunch and a Basque restaurant that was meticulous in every detail and yet full of authentic local live.

- xxx -