Anthony Bourdain's Hunger for More Inevitably Leads Him to S.F.

By Meredith Brody Tue., Mar. 17 2009 at 12:47 PM

Categories: Brody, Food News / Restaurant Gossip

media.newsobserver.com

Where do you go for entrails, chiles, and bacony goodness after you've been to Vietnam, Uzbekistan, and Colombia? Why, San Francisco, of course!

Famed tough-guy foodie Anthony Bourdain is in these parts right now, it's rumored, sampling our finest and weirdest cuisine for his Travel Channel show, No Reservations. Our Robert Lauriston, fellow offal fancier, thinks Bourdain may have timed his visit to coincide with Chris Cosentino's famed Head to Tail dinners at Incanto, this year possibly featuring venison heart tartare, goose intestines, and pork liver doughnuts, which Robert wrote about here.

(Not that we'd expect Tony to be sitting with hoi polloi, cameras rolling, but for a filmed kitchen-and-eating visit.) And Robert adds that he'd also expect him to stop by El Cachanilla as well, the taco window Cosentino recommends for its brain, tripe, and eye tacos.

Our Tamara Palmer hears from a Pirate Cat Radio DJ that he might stop by on Saturday morning to try its maple bacon latte. (Which might go well with one of Dynamo Donuts' maple-glazed bacon sinkers.)

Two years ago, during a speech at the Commonwealth Club, Tony mentioned his fondness for the House of Prime Rib and Swan Oyster Depot (as well as Incanto).

Of course, his mission will bring him to the Mission. (Why not Mission Street Food, as well as the inevitable taquerias, whether trucks and/or dives?)

I know it's too far afield, being in Albany and all, but I'd send him to my favorite Szechuan spot, China Village, for dishes where you have to scrape off the floating layer of red chiles to get at the cabbage, pork, or fish underneath.

We're willing to bet, however, that Bourdain won't be spotted anywhere near Chez Panisse, since he was recently quoted saying that "I'll tell you, Alice Waters annoys the living shit out of me. We're all in the middle of a recession, like we're all going to start buying expensive organic food and running to the green market. There's something very Khmer Rouge about Alice Waters that has become unrealistic."

But maybe a little detente will be in order (like Coi's Daniel Patterson sending Alice flowers after his famed New York Times piece implying that her Bay Area following was impeding experimention in local restaurant kitchens.) We read that Alice and Tony are scheduled to go mano-a-mano in Connecticut in May.