I picked this up having heard many wonderful things about the late Anthony Bourdain. But unfortunately this is a scattershot list of places he has visited, none of them in detail - not what I was hoping to find. 

I can see what they were trying to do, and it's tragic that the effort is largely posthumous, but it just kept leaving me wondering how good it could have been if Bourdain had been around until completion. I'm fairly certain choosing to consume the book via audiobook did not help the experience as the cobbled together pastiche feel was heightened by the rapid shift between voices. I could get on board with a book by others reminiscing about the travel experiences with Bourdain, I could get on board with a book that preserved and collected Bourdain's travel experiences, but this was a patchy combo of the two, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it was mostly about the food versus any other travel experiences. What truly baffled me were the parts trying to make a travelogue into a guide book, the 'arrival and getting around' sections read for the most part robotically by the person editing the finished collection, and seemingly peppered with information that will go out of date quickly. Of all the things it was trying to be, you thought bulking it out with a smidgen, but not nearly enough, basic travel data would improve the situation?! Don't they update guidebooks regularly? 🤨 
On to more individual concerns: this is the first book (ostensibly) by Bourdain that I've read. I no longer have an interest in chef confessionals, so I thought this would be the crossover between his well-loved work and my interests - I'm desperately trying not to associate his writing with this because I don't think it's a fair sample to assess. 
And on the purely subjective side of things, heads up to any fellow vegans who've never watched his shows either, evidently this is a guy happy to champion a very meat forward menu, and not sparing the details. Acknowledging the emphasis on  'use every part of the animal', it's  a less objectionable omnivorism. There was a decent sprinkling of acknowledging the uncomfortable truths and fraught histories of places he traveled, which I appreciated, but it might be the only thing positive that stays with me from this book. Will have to poke around, see if there are any Bourdain works that might be a better fit, but it seems just as likely he had a pleasant voice/speaking/writing style that never spoke enough on topics that I would wish to read further into. 🤷🏼‍♂️ We'll see.