The New Era of Travel and Cooking Shows on Satellite TV - Adventures in Eating

With so many travel shows on television lately, it's difficult to tell some of them apart at this point. It seems like every week there is another exclusive insider's look at jetting off to some faraway destination, braving an off-the-beaten-path adventurer's paradise, or checking out whatever the next Prague is going to end up being. Whether it's an increased case of wanderlust that the country is experiencing or a sense of envy at knowing that in these economic times, the high definition screen is as close as many of us can get to heading off on a far-flung vacation, there's no stopping travel shows. In fact, they seem to be on par with the makeover show craze that took America by storm a few years back.

If anything is managing to stay on the heels of the boom in travel programming, it's got to be the latest generation of food-related television. Instead of simple cooking shows with our leading ladies Martha and Paula, these new food shows try to grab an audience that would usually be turning into television to check out what's happening on NFL Sunday Ticket. It's truly incredible that eating can now compete with sporting events, but somehow crafty producers have made it happen, with a number of shows that combine the daring machismo of heading off into the Patagonian wilderness with the gross-out factor of forcing someone to eat something disgusting for little more than bragging rights.

However, there's one bright spot in the world of satellite tv where all of this eating and traveling is not just done together, but it's done right. World-famous chef Anthony Bourdain is known for a number of things, including his books on cooking and his propensity for being not just a tough-guy chef, but an excellent writer. Skinny, tanned, and unashamed of his love of hard booze and cigarettes, Bourdain cut his teeth at thankless kitchen jobs on Cape Cod in Provincetown before clawing his way to the top of the New York food world. If there's anyone worth watching dry heaving in high definition, it's certainly him.

But Bourdain's travel/food show isn't just a contest to see where the grossest food in the world is. Rather, his witty perspective that goes with him wherever he heads off to coupled with his genuine respect for local food and culture leads to an exciting sort of travel-food hybrid where you're learning just as much about the country and its traditions as you are about what you never, ever want to order when you're there. In places like Argentina, Bourdain goes outside of just Buenos Aires' best restaurants, instead taking cameras and viewers with him while he tries locro in the local shantytown, a stew that distinguishes itself by using all parts of the pig. Whether it's Argentina or Iceland, each show is worth watching from beginning to end.

So while other programmers do their best at finding new ways to spin the food and travel angles, sit right down and enjoy the glaciers of Iceland in HD picture quality, while learning that you should never choke down putrefied shark without a shot of the local schnapps on hand. If there's anyone worth trusting for food and travel tips out of all the talking heads on the screen, it's definitely Tony.

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