Rating: 
August 6, 2007
YOU either enjoy watching people eat or you don't.
You can place me in the latter category when it comes to TV shows in which the host or hostess goes on a cook's tour of regional eateries.
Anthony Bourdain does this on his Travel Channel show "No Reservations," which tonight has him roaming around New York City.
Rachael Ray and Giada De Laurentiis do the same thing on the Food Network. On shows such as Ray's "$40 a Day," "Inside Dish" and "Tasty Travels" and "Giada's Weekend Getaways," they can be seen dining alone, seemingly gorging on massive amounts of food and providing such high praise of every dish that you would think it was their last meal.
The shows are designed to place the viewer at the table with them, but to me, they just look like two reasonably attractive young women who, for some reason, can't find anyone to dine with them.
Bourdain - author, chef and self-described crank - doesn't go on any dates on "No Reservations," but he usually has companions on hand to share his meals.
Together, they sample foods ranging from the exotic to the mundane. On tonight's show, the dishes range from testicles (I think they once belonged to goats) prepared Egyptian-style on Steinway Street in Astoria to ordinary hot dogs served at Gray's Papaya. (It looks like the outpost on Eighth Avenue.)
Other destinations include predominantly Russian Brighton Beach, a below-ground Japanese restaurant somewhere in Manhattan and the Spotted Pig at West 11th and Greenwich streets, where chef April Bloomfield roasts sheeps' heads to perfection, according to Bourdain, who doesn't hesitate to scoop out the contents of the sheep's eye sockets and shove them in his mouth.
Watching other people eat unusual foods on TV is not that unusual anymore. In fact, Bourdain is accompanied to Steinway Street by far-out foodie Andrew Zimmern, host of "Bizarre Foods" on Travel Channel.
Together, Bourdain and Zimmern ooh and aah over their Egyptian delicacies in the way some of us react to Fourth of July fireworks.
Somewhere between the chewing and the oohing, though, I lost my appetite.
"Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations"
Monday night at 10 on Travel Channel
