It’s a Vietnam book-like so many Vietnam books-only told from the other side.” (So yes, you should read it if you haven’t yet.) Exhibit A: Encouraging them to read Bao Ninh’s stunning The Sorrow of War, describing it as “a remarkable book, mostly for its eerie parallels to similar American works. It might be easy to dismiss Bourdain’s writing as commercial and merely a tie-in with his TV shows, but he does encourage his readers to not be lazy. Nestled between accounts of eating and adventuring in places as far flung as Portugal, California and Morocco, are Bourdain’s descriptions of eating his way around pockets of Vietnam (Saigon, the Mekong Delta, Nha Trang) and Cambodia (Angkor Wat, Pailin, Battambang).
The Snow Leopard this is not, but at least it’s not pretending otherwise. Bourdain refreshingly admits to selling out by having a TV crew follow him around, noting that when he’s writing about being scared and lonely, there’s a crew in another hotel room down the hall. Already established as an author thanks to his smash hit Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain convinced an editor to next let him wander the world searching for the perfect meal.
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