Bourdain keeps it real on ‘No Reservations’

Even weirder: One of the his cameramen, who was shown accidentally knocking over a large stack of plates in an episode in Indonesia, was recognized as "clumsy man" by a local family while filming a segment up in the Himalayas, Bourdain said.

With final say on the show's destinations, Bourdain finds himself drawn to places with "tragic histories. Pathos. I'm looking for kind of a dark or kooky side." He prefers Asia, an "enduring passion," and learned his lesson from taking the crew to Sweden, where "everybody's happy and everything works. Hate that."

Like him or not, Bourdain has delivered a much-needed dose of personality to the Travel Channel, as Emeril Lagasse did when he helped build the Food Network on the appeal of his kick-it-up-a-notch enthusiasm. But while Lagasse is upbeat and family friendly, Bourdain has a macho swagger and a hit-list that includes vegetarians, shorts-wearing tourists and fellow celebrity chef Rachael Ray.

He winces at comparisons between quick-and-easy cook Ray and legendary chef Julia Child.

"Julia Child was about aspirations, about becoming better, cooking better, saying `you can do this,'" he said. "I don't just feel that's the business that Rachael Ray is in. Somebody with that kind of power and influence to aim so low — it bothers me."

He hopes, he said, to never sell out, as he sees it, in the way other TV chefs have.

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"I have, to date, endorsed no products, I have no line of merchandise — not yet," he said. "You know, never say never. ... (But) I gotta wake up tomorrow, look at myself in the mirror. Life is good, do I really need to endorse cat food? No."

If there's anything he's endorsing these days, it's fatherhood: Bourdain and his Italian wife have a 4-month-old daughter whom he hopes will grow up to be "one cool kid." When she gets older, he plans to uproot the family for a while and head to Southeast Asia to write a book on the region.

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"I know there's deep inside (me) some lazy hippie who'd be perfectly happy to lay on the couch, smoke weed and watch `The Simpsons' all day," he said.

"I'm really afraid of that guy. I don't like him. I don't want him around. And my whole life is kind of constructed to avoid reverting to that guy: Stay busy. Stay focused. Try not to mess up."

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