ANTHONY BOURDAIN: NO RESERVATIONS

Besides the chef's hat, Anthony Bourdain wears many others: TV personality, best-selling author, public speaker, weary world traveler, gourmand, punk-rock aficionado, proud New Yorker and, most recently, doting father. He's even kicked his lifelong smoking habit.

That's right: Anthony Bourdain is no longer a chain smoker.

However, the fans that know him best can rest assured that the infamously grumpy, sharp-tongued host of No Reservations has become anything but pedestrian. As he continues to explore every corner of the globe on his Emmy Award winning Travel Channel series, Anthony Bourdain encounters the weird, wild and downright outrageous personalities and places that help define the international cultural landscape. Whether it's eating the raw eyeball off a bloody seal carcass on a kitchen floor, flying through the treetops of Vancouver on a zip-line, or hunting for lizards in the desert of Saudi Arabia, Bourdain refuses to yield to middle age or tar-stained lungs when adventure comes calling.

However, it's the foreign food that best captures our host's attention. In the world of a cook, an understanding and appreciation of how others eat is akin to discovering secret societies and cryptic subcultures. Cooks have special access. As always, the food is only the first glimpse of a wider view of how people live their lives in faraway lands and unfamiliar territories.

In the fog-shrouded highlands of Papua New Guinea, the last vestiges of a World War II cargo cult, or the jarring light show that is Las Vegas at night, "No Reservations" dives headfirst into life's colorful and rich pageant. Join Anthony Bourdain as he circumnavigates the globe on his conquest to discover the cities, villages and countries that provide life's truest surprises.