Follow Friday: The Travel Channel

Photo Credit: AnthonyBourdain.net

I'm a huge fan of various food shows, be it on Food Network or the Travel Channel. I like watching cooking shows, but I far prefer the ones where people go to different places and eat the various foods there. I feel like Travel Channel does that better than Food does, as they have three really cool shows with three really cool hosts, all of whom are on Twitter.

The first is Anthony Bourdain (@NoReservations), whose show No Reservations, takes him all around the globe to places domestic and foreign to try out the different cuisines and take in the different cultures. He's not just going to the big restaurants, but he's going to holes in the wall and into people's houses. He's brash and a bit rough around the edges, but that's what his appeal is. On Twitter, some of that attitude rubs off, as in the past he's gotten into verbal spats with food critics and pretended like he was the guy who stole Guy Fieri's car a few months back.

Secondly is Andrew Zimmern (@andrewzimmern), host of Bizarre Foods. As his show title suggests, Zimmern eats the weirdest, vilest or just most unconventional foods he can find. He doesn't just eat gross stuff, although if you've seen the Minnesota or Sardinia episodes where he ate lutefisk and maggot cheese respectively, you know he does go for the most reprehensible sounding stuff out there. He's very bold, and I wouldn't go near some of the stuff he's ingested, but he comes off as affable and adventurous all at the same time. On Twitter, you can find him posting about all the foods he eats, normal or otherwise, and posting about his son. Fun fact about Zimmern: he likes Ugandan swamp rat but HATES walnuts. Strange, I know.

Lastly, there's Adam Richman (@AdamRichman), whose shows Man vs. Food and Man vs. Food Nation are among the rowdiest and most popular on the network. Richman is all about chowing down on the nation's most challenging food tasks, whether it's quantity or spiciness. He once ate a 48 oz. porterhouse steak in 20 minutes on live television. That, my friends, is precision gluttony. He's mostly active nowadays live-Tweeting MvF Nation, which is where he's given up the challenges himself (doctor's orders?) to coach regular joes like you and me to take them. As noted on here before, he coached Jerry Sags on eating a plate of super hot wings. Then again, was there any doubt that Sags could do it?