World-renowned American TV Chef Anthony Bourdain recently graced the South by Southwest (SXSW) as presenter talking about the 3 Fs of travel media-Food, Fear and Future with Roads & Kingdoms co-founder Nathan Thornburgh.
When asked about food porn, Bourdain tried to avoid the question by saying, "We push ourselves to mess with that formula. I don't know when the show morphed into what it is now. We acknowledge the elephant in the room."
He was referring to the "elephant" to untouchable and non-discussed social issues that involve traveling to some of the places he's visited such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libya, Gaza, and most famously Iran where he interviewed the Washington Post's reporter Jason Rezaian shortly before Rezaian was sentenced by the Iranian government and was recently released after 18 months in prison.
Bourdain, also a writer, TV producer and host of CNN's Part Unknown-became a partner in Roads & Kingdoms, a digital media startup based in Brooklyn and Barcelona in 2015 to help shape the digital industry since print and traditional media are already becoming obsolete.
Roads & Kingdoms is an independent journal of food, politics, travel and culture. In its second year of existence, it was voted the Gold Winner for Best Travel Journalism Site by the Society of American Travel Writers. The magazine first launched in Myanmar as a Tumblr that became a home for reports on everything from Burmese civil war to dissident MCs to the perils of rancid crab. R&K is now a full time digital magazine based in New York and Barcelona, publishing long form dispatches, interviews, and global ephemera daily.
Bourdain was quoted in saying "Everybody else has lists, people love lists, but deep storytelling. I think we travel differently now, and what we look for in reading before we travel is wildly different [than in past years]. I don't want a list of the best hotels or restaurants. I want to be set in a place where you get a real sense of what kind of place is what."
South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual set of the film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences usually happening in mid-March in Austin, Texas, United States since 1987.
At the end of his talk, Bourdain said that he enjoyed Nashville's hot chicken more than anything else.
