The Travel Channel‘s brightest star, No Reservations, is hardly a secret among cable viewers.  Now in it’s 5th season, the show promises  more enthralling culinary excursions around the world, as well as a few forays into our own backyard.  Look for this show on Monday nights.

Anthony Bourdain is the show’s very popular host .  Not afraid to have a drink and truly relax while on the job, Bourdain is the engaged tourist that locals welcome  warmly to their kitchen tables (or around a village fire).  He continuously breaks that third wall, acknowledging the obvious ironies of a given situation or sharing the contentment that comes from eating marvelous foods in the company of compelling people in remarkable places.  The big question is how does this guy stay so thin?

Bourdain was a talented chef of the 80′s and 90′s, cooking and partying his way through some of the best kitchens of NYC; the Supper Club, One Fifth Avenue, Sullivan’s and then became executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, on Park Avenue.  Nine years ago his memoir , Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,  became a best seller.  His intimate look at life in the kitchen provided a gritty and passionate explanation  as to what makes some food special and how other food can destroys the soul.

The popularity of his book led to the publication of two more.  A Cook’s Tour and Nasty Bits.  He joined the growing ranks of television chefs with Cook’s Tour on the burgeoning Food Channel, distinguishing his show from the rest immediately.   A more refined and relaxed  (better financed) version began in 2005 on, of all things,  the Travel Channel. The focus may be the cuisine, but there’s an anthropological appreciation for the cultures encountered along the way.  Over the past five seasons, Bourdain and his small intrepid film crew have traveled the world to some of the more exotic locales you’ll find this side of National Geographic.  Morocco, Uzbekistan, Sweden, Korea, Ghana and Cleveland, Brazil and Tuscany, just to name a few.  Most notable was a scheduled trip to Beirut a few seasons back.  A day or two into filming the city became a battle ground due to military conflict.  With cameras running, documenting the stress and boredom of being trapped in a luxury hotel in a city experiencing a meltdown. After a week of laying low, Bourdain and his production crew were brought out under military escort, eventually providing a review of the mac and cheese on the aircraft carrier USS Nashville.

If No Reservations was entirely about food around the world, it would be a lost in the crowd.  Already on the Travel Channel one can find perky tourist Samantha Brown, Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods, and the recently launched, Man vs. Food, which pits Belushi-like host Adam Richman against America’s largest entrees. It’s more about endurance than anything else.

Bourdain’s show celebrates those who do the best they can when trying to put great food on the table.  He also will dine with those for whom each meal is never taken for granted.  Ingredients may be seem primative and challenging but not for the thrill of it, but rather because this is what could be afforded.  Going off the beaten path will always benefit a travel show, but this one has you dine there as well.

Next Monday night the show visits Washington DC. (a focal point for the entire world over the next week or so).  Look for a time to watch in your local time zones.