Raising Hope

The premiere episode of Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown offers an inside look at Myanmar. In his maiden voyage to the country formerly known as Burma, Anthony and his crew discover the fabled beauty and local cuisines of a country that had been, up until recently, off-limits to outsiders.

Tony takes Los Angeles -- but with a twist. No Hollywood sign, no Beverly Hills. Instead, he zeroes in on a three-square-mile area of the city known as Koreatown, where he finds a tight-knit community still marked by the 1992 Rodney King riots.

The public face of Colombia has changed immensely over the past ten years and is still changing for the better. Tony will explore several regions of the country from the mountains down to the Caribbean coast, including the coca leaf-growing inlands formerly controlled by drug cartels.

Bourdain travels to remote areas within the province of Quebec, where he samples local delicacies, explores ice fishing and beaver hunting and spends time with two of funniest and most brilliant chef/restauranteurs in Canada, Joe Beef's Dave McMillan and Fred Morin.

Tony explores the "Interzone," where artists like Burroughs, Bowles and the Rolling Stones sought escape from Western moral prohibitions and the possibilities of great empty spaces. Does that "anything goes" attitude still exist?

Libyan hip-hop, Italian restaurants, tribal allegiances and post-war uncertainty abound in Libya. Bourdain looks at the country through personal stories, food and the music of anti-Qaddafi rapper expats who returned to fight.

Tony and his friend, world-renowned chef Eric Ripert, explore the far reaches of indigenous Andes in search of a rare variety of wild cocoa that is said to be the best in the world. They move from hip, modern Lima back in time into pre-Colombian Peru.

Bourdain looks at the Congo as one of the more industrialized powers in Africa, now largely crumbled to nothingness and chaos.