Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown

The South is not a monolith.

There are pockets of weirdness,

awesomeness, and then there's Charleston.

Where for some time now, important things have been

happening with food.

A lot of them having to do with this guy.

What are we drinking? Beer? Harder stuff?

What's going on?

I usually go with a Budweiser and a Jagermeister.

Budweiser and Jagermeister.

Any notion of going local right out the window.

Two jagers?

Yeah, two jagers.

Cheers.

The first one's never good.

The first one is never good.

But it gets easier after the first one.

So, look, this is not my first time to Charleston, as you know.

I did do a show here before,

and I'm still taking about it.

Apparently I really up the first time I came here

because I made a number of errors.

Apparently none more egregious than going out...

Like, doing an oyster roast and drinking champagne.

I never heard of such a thing.

Well, champagne and beers is okay with the oysters.

So it must have been a...

Somebody got confused somewhere.

Anyway, I got it wrong.

This time I'm getting it right, which is why I've come to you.

You can be forgiven for underestimating Sean Brock

first time you meet him. I know I did.

I saw a scruffy-looking dude in a trucker cap who had a bottle

of good bourbon on hand.

Stitzel Weller, 199118 years old.

This is the end of great whiskey.

It didn't come in this bottle.

This is my travel bottle because it's plastic, you see,

so it don't break when you get rowdy.

It took me a little time

to discover the ferocious intellect,

the inquiring nature,

the purposeful talent to the man.

Without a doubt, one of America's most important chefs.

A guy redefining not just what Southern cooking is, was,

and can be, but American cooking as a whole.

One, two, three!

We're going to talk a lot about this over the next week

about the notions of universal awesomeness.

Is the waffle house universally awesome?

We have one choice for late-night eating

and it's the waffle house.

And they create this environment where,

no matter how blitzed you are or how normal you are,

you are welcomed and treated equally

with an experience.

Not just like eating a plate of food.

You're talking about a magical, spiritual place.

It's beyond a magical, spiritual place.

It is, indeed, marvelous.

An irony-free zone where everything is beautiful

and nothing hurts.

Where everybody, regardless of race, creed, color,

or degree of inebriation, is welcomed.

Its warm, yellow glow a beacon of hope and salvation,

inviting the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered,

all across the South to come inside.

A place of safety and nourishment.

It never closes.

It is always, always faithful.

Always there for you.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with this place

because I wanted to be a chef.

This was the only place that I'd ever been to

where I actually watched people cook.

This was action to me.

I would see these people cooking at a pace and cooking for people

who were completely out of control,

but still providing hospitality.

It was one of the things that

really helped me fall in love with cooking.

Waffle house.

Yes.

I can't believe I didn't know about this.

I am unbelievably, in spite of my world travels,

new to the wonders of the waffle house.

And unfamiliar with its ways.

The terminology, for instance, is new to me.

Now, look, I'm looking at my hashbrown

and I am already confused and enticed.

Sausage gravy.

You can't go all in. You want everything.

I need to make a choice.

There's a balance.

When you find your balance, you memorize it.

I go scattered covered smothered chunks.

Which mean, I gather, scattered on the griddle,

heaped with brown onions, cheese,

and chunks of hickory smoked ham.

That's my style.

I've been doing that since day one.

And I don't even know what that means.

You know what I know,

I don't want waffles at the waffle house.

You have to have...

Waffles?

OK, you have the pecan waffle.

What I devised as a chef,

a tasting menu experience where

you can sit down and really experience what this place does.

And you start out first thing you have, pecan waffle.

Really?

All right, gentlemen. Pecan waffle.

You just crush it. You put every...

Slather it.

I want it to be swimming in syrup

and homogenized vegetable oil.

That's good.

You don't come here expecting The French Laundry,

you come here expecting something amazing.

This is better than The French Laundry, man.

And then, second course. Patty melt, split.

Patty melt.

Come on.

That's not insanely delicious.

Oh, goddamn.

Isn't that insanely delicious?

No meal is complete without a sunny-side-up egg.

Oh, yeah.

And then a green salad with some thousand island dressing

would be amazing.

Would you rather have thin-cut pork chops or T-bone?

I would like both.

Heinz 57 is the best, man.

One of the more complex sauces.

What? -In the American repertoire.

Really?

You want to talk shit about it.

This is saucework.

Trust me, this is going to change your life.

That's wrong, man.

Come on.

Mmm.

A brilliant human being that had a recipe that was amazing

and it got a bad rap.

Like you're talking about Ronald McDonald.

He had a good idea.

No, you're wrong.

I'm sorry.

Here's where we part ways, my friend.

There's my sauce.

After a few bites of waffle,

a burger, a hunk of generic T-bone and some hashbrown,

one feels drawn right to the center of

what makes our country great.

In America, yeah, moment, start reciting Walt Whitman,

"The Star Spangled Banner,"

oh say can you see,

and I doubt I'd be the first.

Give me a break.

The umami happened.

You know what umami means in Japanese?

The literal transition?

Orgasm?

No.

Umami means, in Japanese, literally it means I will

your for a bite of that.

That burger.

Everybody needs a place.

A community.

Something larger than one's self to care about.

A place to hide when times get tough.

Where you're accepted for who you are.

Where the rhythms of a summer afternoon, the crack of a bat,

the roar of the crowd, are music.

Behold the mighty Charleston Riverdogs.

A minor league feeder team for the New York Yankees.

Meet one of the owners of the Charleston Riverdogs,

Charleston resident, Bill Murray.

Said I had too many beers to drive.

I'm going to take shotgun.

We're going to see how fast

he can go all the way around the outfield.

Today, the Riverdogs are facing the evil forces of the

dreaded Savannah Sandgnats.

That's going to score a run

and that's going to leave a mark.

Going to hold them.

Bad day for the Sandgnats.

You're hated.

We will crush you like a... Sandgnat.

A sandgnat has almost no backbone,

almost no skeletal structure.

They fold.

As difficult as it might have been to forego the joys of the

bacon-wrapped footlong corn dog known as the pig on a stick,

we knew we'd be coming here.