If you’ve seen about a half-hour of Anthony Bourdain on TV, you know this: He’s a carnivore.
From head to tail, he’ll eat it.
“I’m not a dream date for a vegetarian,” Bourdain told Anderson Cooper as the pair chatted about a past season of “Parts Unknown” over a simmering pot of Sunday gravy, a traditional tomato sauce made with necks and oxtails.
Cooper, who has an affinity for Big Macs and has said he could subsist on nutrition shakes, is not so fond of less conventional animal products.
Since “Parts Unknown” debuted in 2013, Bourdain has been hazing Cooper with food, mysterious meats in particular.
Here are some of Bourdain’s important lessons:
Organs are essential
Scotland’s got an organ-meat headliner in haggis, yet Cooper is skeptical.
“Isn’t haggis like the intestine of something?” he asks in this clip:
And what if it were? “What do you think a hot dog is?” Bourdain counters.
The dish, which even Visit Scotland acknowledges “is not a beauty queen,” is a mixture of sheep organs blended with oatmeal, onions and spices.
While traditionally cooked in a sheep’s stomach, much of today’s haggis is cooked in synthetic sausage casings.
Pig’s face is tasty, too
Pork is king in many countries, including the Philippines.
“They do a dish called sisig that you would probably hate, which is sizzling chopped-up pig face,” Bourdain tells Cooper in this clip:
Cooper sees no reason to consume a pig’s face.
But there are reasons, Bourdain explains: “The textural variety in the face, the delicate interplay between meat and tendon and cartilage and crispy skin and fat.”
And again: “Have you ever had a hot dog?”
Processed meat is a pleasure
Mind you, Bourdain’s got nothing against processed meats.
His case for Spam in the clip below: “God wants you to eat this, Anderson.”
“If you were sort of not at your best at 2 o’clock in the morning,” Korean army stew, or Budae-jjigae, is the start of a solution, Bourdain says.
It’s a mix of ground pork, hot dogs or Vienna sausages, Spam, kimchi, onions, chili paste and more.
Too much meat? Yes, it’s possible
However unlikely, it is possible to overdo it with meat. In this clip, Bourdain says Argentina’s boundless appetite for animals put him over the edge:
“I saw my first vegetable when I got back to New York. I fell to my knees weeping with joy,” he says. “I did not see a thing green for a week.”
No doubt he’s fully recovered and ready for another pound of flesh.
