Anthony Bourdain on The Layover: "No Reservations Is All About Me. This Show Is Actually Trying to Be Useful."

Anthony Bourdain said it plainly: "No Reservations is all about me, me, me and me having fun and me satisfying my curiosity about the world. With The Layov…" — and Premier Guide Miami was in the room when it happened.

On November 7, 2011, Travel Channel held a press call with Anthony Bourdain ahead of the premiere of The Layover , his new series airing Monday, November 21st at 9 p.m. The Singapore episode was the first to air. Premier Guide Miami was among the outlets on the call.

No Reservations is all about me, me, me and me having fun and me satisfying my curiosity about the world and less about whether or not anybody of the audience will actually be able to replicate the experience. With this show, we're actually trying to be useful. We've gotten pretty good at cutting right to the heart of the matter.

The Layover vs. No Reservations — the pastrami sandwich theory

Bourdain opened by drawing the sharpest possible line between his two shows: "The most obvious question people would have is what way does this show differ from No Reservations. Other than the fact that it's a lot more fast-paced and a lot more scenes jammed in there, unlike No Reservations, it is our hope that this will be actually useful." The premise was simple: eight years of making television had given him a hard-won map of the world's best local spots. "If you're only in Rome for 24 hours I feel very strongly you should be eating cacio e pepe rather than in a bad touristy restaurant. I happen to know a couple of places in Rome that serve this most Roman of dishes really, really well." He framed the show around what he called the pastrami sandwich theory: "What do we do better in New York than any place else? I always advise people to go for a pastrami sandwich. So we're kind of looking for the Tokyo version — or the Hong Kong version or Singapore or Montreal or L.A. or San Francisco version of the pastrami sandwich. The local dive bar as well as uniquely weird and wonderful places around the world that you might not be able to stumble upon yourself." The season's cities: New York, Miami, L.A., San Francisco, Rome, Amsterdam, London, Hong Kong.

Singapore's airport — and why American airports are embarrassing

On the Singapore episode's opening at Changi Airport, Bourdain was blunt: "It's really dismaying. I'm a guy who grew up taught to believe that we have the best of everything in our country. And I certainly feel that as the wealthiest nation we're the best. Why shouldn't we have the best? So yes, it's really dismaying when you're seeing better mass transit all over the world. When you go to an airport like Changi airport in Singapore, it really makes it tough to travel through American airports. They have a swimming pool and a movie theater and actual good food run by individuals who are nice to you. It makes it all the more enraging when you're treated with callous indifference at these sort of half-assed chains that you find in so many of our airports." He extended the critique to food culture broadly: "Why can't we have food courts like they have in Singapore and in Hong Kong? I would think that this would be a transformative event in many cities' food cultures to have that kind of affordable dining environment. We have an immigrant population capable of making these foods. We could have it if we wanted it if there was a will for it." On the bright side: "There's never been a better time to eat in America and there's certainly never been a better time to cook. In spite of all the silliness and the excess and the bad food out there, there's never been a better time to be a chef."

The production — two crews, panavision lenses, and running backwards in 110-degree heat

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The logistics of making The Layover were unlike anything the team had done before: "We were using completely different cameras and lenses. After quite some time of asking, we were given use of these amazing Panavision lenses that we used for some of the first time ever on little DV cameras. For the first time, we were shooting very vérité style, very high speed, in real time, but with these really amazing lenses." The schedule required two simultaneous crews leapfrogging each other across cities: "We'd send one crew to Singapore. They'd arrive early. I would show up. We'd shoot for two highly compressed, very active, very busy days at which point I would leave Singapore, leaving that crew behind. There would be another crew waiting for me shooting B-roll in Hong Kong. I'd shoot with them, then move on to Montreal where the first crew would have been leap-frogged." The result was harder than anything he'd done: "These guys were running backwards in withering, withering 110-degree heat, 100% humidity in Singapore and Hong Kong, running backwards all day holding cameras, almost no down time, three, four, sometimes five meals a day as opposed to maybe two on No Reservations. It was a new gig for us. Plus we were learning as we went. So yes, it was much harder this time around."

On staying thin — and why he doesn't snack

Asked by a health and wellness reporter how he travels and eats as much as he does without gaining weight, Bourdain was characteristically direct: "I don't snack. I eat when I'm hungry. I'm not eating to fill some other yearning. I don't eat for a distraction. I eat like an Italian in a perfect situation — a little coffee and maybe a bit of croissant in the morning, nothing more, if I'm having a big lunch, and then a light supper. If I know I'm going to overeat tomorrow, I'm going light today. I look at my stomach as being a limited amount of real estate. And if I'm going to fill it, I'd like to fill it with good stuff rather than waste it with crap. You're never going to see me eating a Cinnabon." On exercise: "No." On whether he exercises when not filming: "No." On the crew's health bars: "They're carrying cameras. I guess they need the energy. I'd rather hold out — I'll wait for the good meal rather than settle for a crummy one now if at all possible."

What he misses about restaurant kitchens — and why he'd never open one

On whether all this travel had made him a better chef: "It hasn't. The short answer is it hasn't at all. It's taken me out of the kitchen. Perhaps the only way it's changed my cooking in a useful way is seeing how much people make with very little around the world and how delicious so many cultures could make food that you wouldn't think of as being delicious. It's made me a lot less likely to waste food. It's made me a little more careful about the respect with which I treat it." On what he misses about the kitchen: "I miss the first beer after being in the restaurant kitchen — that sense of triumph and camaraderie of having survived another busy night, the sense of certainty, the sense of closeness to the people you work with, of being part of this sort of cult. I miss that. But I had 28 years of it. I don't miss standing on my feet for 16 hours, not at my age." On whether he'd ever open a restaurant: "I would never open a restaurant. If I've learned anything in 28 years of being in the restaurant business it's that I never want to own a restaurant. That's a marriage." The Layover premiered Monday, November 21, 2011, on Travel Channel.

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