No Reservations Crew Blog
Hudson Valley
By Michael Ruhlman (Tony's Sidekick)
The trip began hopefully but slowly turned strange toward, and I don't know that it was entirely Bourdain's fault (as it typically is). Other forces had to be at work.
I was thrilled to be returning to the Hudson Valley to be a part of another No Reservations episode. The Hudson Valley is the place where my life changed in an extraordinary way. Also, it's a place of great natural beauty and the food grown and raised there is fantastic. The crew had already begun shooting by the time I arrived but my first stop with Bourdain was the Culinary Institute of America, which I wrote a book about and which is Bourdain's alma mater (he graduated more than thirty years ago, thirty).
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Traveling Light
By Emily Mraz, Segment Producer
No Reservations is a small crew and for the most part we attempt to travel light. Hopping on and off international flights with cases and cases of gear is an art as well as toting it in and out of hotel rooms, crew vans, up mountains, through jungles and so on. So it was no surprise that while planning the Prague shoot our cameraman's request for a jib and a remote head was met with some opposition. These are not the type of things that will fit in a suitcase and usually require additional crew to set up and operate. Prague , however, as a location, was begging for something special and Zach was so enthusiastic about his request we ran with it.
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History, with a shot of Raki
By Jared Andrukanis, Segment Producer
Just saying the name of the city evokes a certain response. Istanbul...formerly Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, a city once declared the apex of civilization. The timeline comparison to my home is sobering. New York, in the European first contact sense, has been in the history books for about 500 years (and that is rounding up). Istanbul, as a city, has been around for at least three times that (and that is rounding down).
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Panama by Tracey Gudwin
I have never walked on cocaine before. As Tony has assured me, it's going to be FUN and even though we have been stringently warned by Police and DEA officials - he's NOT THROWING HIS EXPENSIVE SHOES AWAY. But I am.
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Double Dutch
By Julie Lei, Series Producer
Walking into the Bourdain office as a newcomer, was like being faced with a well-rehearsed double dutch jump rope act and told to join in. When I first started series producing this show in January of this year, the landscape was not totally foreign. I had been an editor on A Cook's Tour many years ago, so I was familiar with the original storytelling format, and I had met Tony once before. But this time, I was entering the production at a different capacity, I was to help oversee the series which was well into its fifth season. Every show runner position is different, and my job in this instance was to retrofit myself to the rhythm of what was already in place and hope that eventually, I could make a difference.
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