A cook's tour - Anthony Bourdain

A cook's tour from Anthony Bourdain narrates the author's quest for culinary perfection and "magic"(p.8)
"Having the best time in the world" (p.1), he's indeed "looking for the perfect meal" (p.6)
His descriptions of the meals are full of details and taste. Bourdain isn't experiencing food of each
 country as a foreigner, he is experiencing food and life as a  real inhabitant.

I really liked the chapter " Back to the Beach",  which goes further that food. It is about family.
I therefore chose to dwell on Bourdain's trip with his brother back in France. To me, Bourdain's quest here is one of lost memories of  childhood He wants to recapture " the good memories of [their] summers in France" (P.30), " reexperience the France of [their] youth". Bourdain seemed thrilled at first : "We could do whatever we wanted. We were free to act like children again. It was the perfect meal and the perfect place, I thought, to look for the perfect meal", he writes p.31.
 However, by tasting the food, Bourdain realises that nothing is the same anymore. The perfect meal is no longer here. He finally confesses that " the shop smelled just as it had twenty-eight years ago, but something was missing".(P. 35)

 Bourdain underlines here what we've been talking all along in class last week. What makes a perfect dinner? Once again, food is not everything. It is ( a great!) part of what makes a perfect dinner, however, the atmosphere, your personnal mood, the people surrounding you are to be taken into account. One can have the exact same food as 28 years ago, which taste exactly the same as 28 years ago, one may still lack something and  therefore the meal won't be the same.

 Bourdain kept these memories from France from the perception of a child. Childhood can not be recaptured by going to the same place and eating the same food. "I began to feel damaged.Broken." writes the author.(P.36)
Time had elapsed and Bourdain acknowledges this , writting "We were grown ups now: a respected currency analyst and a best-selling author". (P.31) It took him the entire trip to finally realize what was missing in France : his father.

This is the only chapter where Bourdain talks about his childhood and memories.
Everytime I go back to Italy or even to Dallas, I have the same meals at the same places, places I really like. And everytime, it is unique. We, as human being, are constantly evolving and growing.  I realized not too long ago that nothing will ever be the same. My state of mind is different everytime. I'm no longer the same person that I was 15, 10, 5 or 1 year ago. It is impossible to recreate the exact same conditions of a meal.  Time goes by, and that is something that will always be missing compared to the last time.