Anthony Bourdain dishing out more noodle diplomacy
Parts Unknown shows that the way into someone’s mind is often through their stomach
HANOI, VIETNAM— The most famous restaurant in the old quarter of this historic city is a humble noodle shop. It’s not hard to find, since virtually every taxi driver knows that former U.S. president Barack Obama had a bowl of noodles here with CNN’s Parts Unknown correspondent Anthony Bourdain.
We drive through drizzling, packed streets to Bun cha Huong Lien. It’s known for its grilled pork soup, made popular in Season 8.
That’s when the then-sitting POTUS skipped eating in a secure, air-conditioned hotel to sit on a child-sized plastic stool and have a beer in a dive with Bourdain — just like a regular, non-presidential guy.
On my first attempt to sample the noodles, the shop is closed since it is just after the Lunar New Year.
A few days later, I am back in Hanoi to find that the owners have placed the table and chairs where Obama and Bourdain sat under glass — sort of like the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, but in miniature.
On top is a basket of plastic flowers. It is idolatry that is worthy of a modern art museum installation, speaking to the power of television, nostalgia and celebrity.
It is also a commentary on the status of CNN’s Bourdain, who has become the best and unlikeliest foreign correspondent on TV.
So how did a former chef become the Christiane Amanpour of popular culture? It seems we can’t agree on much in these divided times, but we can agree on what makes a good bowl of noodles.
When Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown premiered, it was a major risk for the cable news network and there was pushback from insiders who wondered why Bourdain, a non-journalist, was being showcased.
That was 10 seasons ago. Five Emmy Awards later, Season 11 of Parts Unknown launches Sunday, with stops including Bhutan, Hong Kong, Armenia and Uruguay. And there is Canadian content this season, with a stop in Newfoundland and Labrador, where Bourdain goes cod fishing and moose hunting, dining on charred whelk and caribou tartare along the way.
The Star got an advance look at Sunday’s premiere, which takes you straight into Donald Trump country, into the coal mines of West Virginia. And it manages to do what no focus group led by Oprah Winfrey on 60 Minutes has managed to achieve: get into the minds of Trump supporters.
Or as Bourdain puts it: “Into the heart of God, guns and Trump … a place that is both heartbreakingly beautiful with everything wrong and everything hopeful about America.”
He also asks the existential question of why deeply religious people would vote for a thrice-married billionaire New Yorker who sits on a gold toilet.
In between the political commentary, of course, there is food. This includes eating bear meat and chicken slaw inside a mine, with plenty of shots of buttermilk fried rabbit and spaghetti pizza.
The docu-series is laden with music, voice-over poetry, Bourdain’s insights and the distinctive voices of the people he talks to, all shot with the most sumptuous food cinematography on TV. Baked squirrel never looked so good.
The key is that, for a food critic, Bourdain doesn’t shy away from asking the tough questions. And the answers can be more revealing over a plate of jerk pork.
As in when he asks developers in Jamaica why the beach front is increasingly less accessible to locals as the divide between rich and poor becomes ever more apparent. Or talks about American relations in Iran, or drug problems in Mexico City.
When I told friends I was visiting Vietnam after prepping for the trip by watching 18 hours of Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War, my pick for the best series on TV in 2017, perhaps it wasn’t a surprise they weren’t curious about sites such as the elaborate Cu Chi tunnel network that the Vietnamese used to defeat the Americans. The question invariably was: “Are you going to visit that noodle shop that Obama ate at?”
Certainly the owners have capitalized on Obama’s visit. There are pictures of him everywhere. And the most popular meal is now the Obama special: one bowl of noodles, a fried seafood roll and a Hanoi beer for less than $5 Canadian.
After three weeks in Southeast Asia, it remains my favourite meal. Still, before I even arrived, more than one local told me that Bun cha was overrated and there were more famous places in the historic French Quarter. I’m not sure how much better that other place is, but this was hard to beat.
Bourdain tweeted a picture of the table, saying, “Not sure how I feel about this” after he ended up turning a local family restaurant into a tourist destination.
But the host doesn’t have to go far for another taste. A Seattle restaurant is already serving an Obama special replicating the Hanoi meal.
It’s bittersweet. CNN’s Parts Unknown is one of CNN boss Jeff Zucker’s most savvy programming moves.
It has elevated street food into a kind of holy grail pilgrimage where favourite mom-and-pop eateries become tourist traps.
The formula is so successful that, for better or worse, there is a creeping Bourdain-ization of the channel. The host is now the executive producer of veteran journalist Amanpour’s CNN series Sex & Love Around The World. Maybe they’re onto something.
Because, after food, what else can be so fundamental to culture?