This is basically Bourdain's previous series, No Reservations, on CNN. He goes on familiar places and eat weird food or to weird places and eat weirder food, all the while commenting on politics.
Perhaps Parts Unknown is a little more personal and biographical to Bourdain than the previous show. We also get to see and hear more of him about him. That cuts both ways, as he sometimes comes out more of a jerk than a likable cynical.
But that's OK. The places he goes don't get the cynical angle they deserve sometimes.
Something that's even more pronounced in Parts Unknown than in No Reservations is Bourdain's tendency to ear on the streets, at people's houses or out-of-the-way places. I can tell if that's Bourdain's preference or a production decision. Even in episodes in which he goes to fancy restaurants, such as when he visited Finland, the show prefers the iconoclast, the odd-man-out.
It's that anarquist, non conformist, often cynically-bent that makes a great show that is only about food in passing. It's about the peoples of this world.
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