Meanwhile, you can get all of Anthony Bourdain that you care to on the web and in print. There is a rather bizarre, but still interesting, musical performance in which Bourdain performs a kind of rap/spoken word rant a la Henry Rollins about a rough but attractive female sous chef. Listen here.

As the song suggests, Bourdain is heavily into making the restaurant sub-culture accessible to mainstreamers. He’s been celebrating the kitchen life in his books for the past 10 years. This is especially the case with the volume that vaulted him from cook to cultural critic, Kitchen Confidential. A book version of No Reservations is also available. For a quicker literary fix, Bourdain occasionally posts on the No Reservations blog. This is also a good place to get the dirty behind the scenes secrets and get insight into some of the upcoming episodes.

Are there any others who really get out there and mouth off like Bourdain does? I don’t think so, which is what makes No reservations so refreshing (or, if you don’t care for the “in-your-face-ness,” so infuriating and unwatchable).

OK, so it’s not a new show. This is its 3rd season. But, in a time of trite reality offering, Bourdain is a refreshing host. He has a bit of a potty mouth and makes no secret about his preference for cigarettes or alcohol.

There’s a bit of Survivor in No Reservations. Bourdain travels to out of the way places in search of local culinary culture. There is the inevitable “gross-out” food in most places (warthog intestine, fried beetle, raw seal eyeball). However, Bourdain is more world wise than the average Survivor contestant. He is adept at conversing with local people and gives viewers some insight into the people behind the food. He is surprisingly sensitive when it comes to showing respect to local people, not even blinking when a Namibia bushman hands him a piece of warthog anus to chew on. Of course, the trademark abrasiveness is still intact when it’s just him and the camera.

By the end of each episode, you might have learned something, and you might have decided that Bourdain would make a good travel partner.

No Reservations airs new episodes Monday Nights on the Travel Channel.