A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain (2001, Hardcover)

Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour is a well-written record of his travels around the world in his search for the perfect meal. All too conscious of the state of his aging knees after a working life standing at various restaurant stoves, and flush with the unexpected boon from his first book, Kitchen Confidential, he concludes he needs a bit more wind under his wings. Bourdain defines "perfect meal" not so much as the most upscale, chi-chi, three-star dining experience, but the ideal combination of food, atmosphere, and company.

The story arc takes the reader to fishing villages in Vietnam, bars in Cambodia, and Tuareg camps in Morocco for roasted sheep's testicle. It serves up smoked fish and sauna in the frozen Russian countryside and the French Laundry in California's Napa Valley, exquisitely refined kaiseki rituals in Japan after yakitori with drunken salarymen. There is deep-fried Mars Bars in Glasgow, dining with Gordon Ramsay in London, and the still-beating heart of a cobra in Saigon. Drink, danger, and guns. All with a TV crew in tow, featuring many don't-try-this-at-home shots of the author in gastric distress or crawling into yet another storm drain at four in the morning.

You are unlikely to lay your hands on a more hectically strenuous, more entertaining book for some time. Bourdain eats and swashbuckles round the globe with American swagger and liberal use of profanity. The man can write. His timing is great. He is very funny and is under no illusions whatsoever about himself or anyone else. But most of all, he is a chef who got himself out of his kitchen and found, all over the world, people who understand that eating well is the foundation of harmonious living.