Rachel Ray and Anthony Bourdain

[Giant Communist Robot]

Everywhere Rachel Ray goes has great food and is wonderful. A one note melody. I saw one show where she was here on Oahu, and I knew the place she visited. She attacked the food and mugged for the camera, enthusiastically describing it as terrific. I know the place she went, and I am familiar with what she ate. I'd rather stay home and have Beefaroni and a bottle of beer. I'm no food snob. I knew she was lying.

Anthony Bourdain started his show with refreshing honesty. He called the iguana stew he ate in Central America the worst meal of his life. After eating some bad meat in the south of France, he went back to the hotel room and spent the evening vomiting into the toilet--dutifully recorded by his cameraman who gleefully spoke of Emmy's.

Bourdain's willingness to be truthful about what wasn't good made him different, and his viewpoint reflected the truth. Some time ago, however, he changed, and now everything he eats everywhere is wonderful. Just terrific. The best he's every had. Just like Rachel.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

It's TV, not real life. Rachel does get to some interesting places but I'm very aware that, even if a show host is completely honest, tastes do differ. Don't watch Bourdain, usually, as I don't enjoy him so much. He overdoes sarcastic, almost as much as Rachel overdoes perky.

Have you watched the Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives show? I'm familiar with some of the places they featured, and my opinion agrees with Guy Fieri's bits on El Indio (Where Random has eaten!) and the Ramona cafe, and the little Studio diner, and that greek dive in the desert, and one of the places outside of Phoenix. I'll be keeping Guy's roadfood book in the car, in the basket with the freeway atlas and the Googlemap printed pages and the other roadtrip detritus that accumulates in the back seat.

[Giant Communist Robot]

He overdoes sarcastic

So true. I wonder if its because he has to say how wonderful the food is when its awful?

Have you watched the Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives show?

I've seen it. When new good places start to get scarce will he go off the air, or turn into Rachel Ray? I wish I could visit some of the places he features.

[Shapley]

I like Anthony Bourdain's show, but I don't see it regularly enough to agree or disagree with GCR. The last show I saw he was in Africa, following a nomadic tribe. They ate some kind of meat cooked in a pile of manure, while kneeling in a meadow full of fresh manure, and he was very vocal about how unpleasant it was. Perhaps this was a re-run of an old episode, I'm not sure.

Zimmerman's Bizarre Foods is one show I can't stomach. He can eat spiders skewered on a spit and tell you how wonderful the are.

My wife likes Rachel Ray's show, but I never watch it. What I've seen of it is a sort of Oprah Lite - guests hawking their products and giving samples to the audience. Oprah gives away cars, Rachel Ray gives away bras. It wasn't to my liking. Does she do a seperate travel show, besides the studio talk show thing?

V/R
Shapley

[Giant Communist Robot]

Does she do a seperate travel show, besides the studio talk show thing?

Well, she used to do this eat on $40 dollars a day travel show. That's the one I wrote about. She's done more shows than you can shake a stick at.

[Shapley]

I didn't know that. I don't watch a lot of television.

She is cute, though.

[jamiebk]

Rachel Ray is a little too cutsey for me. Her 30 minute meals are OK and she did that travel on $40.00 gig for a while. Bourdain is arrogant and I don't like his show. It strikes me as a "front" for getting someone else to pay for his travel and fine food. I don't learn much form it and he is not someone I would care to spend time with either traveling or watching on TV.