Celebrate Bourdain Day by Watching the Cleveland Episode of No Reservations, Now Streaming on Max

Yeah, yeah, we know. The Cleveland episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, the Travel Channel predecessor to CNN’s Parts Unknown, starts off on a blasphemous note.

Death Star music rumbles as author and Cleveland-native Michael Ruhlman rolls up to a Skyline Chili in The Greens of Lyndhurst, an East Side strip mall. 

“If I’m coming into your post industrial wasteland, I get to pick the spot we eat,” says Bourdain. “And I figured we should start off with Ohio’s most recognizable gastronomic innovation. I’m afraid that’s going to be Skyline Chili, my friend.” 

I’ll agree that this should have been in a Cincinnati episode. But c’mon, anyone who knows Bourdain’s brand knows he’s simply needling Ruhlman, which was even a running joke throughout the series. 

Otherwise, Bourdain does well. He eats beef cheek pierogies at Michael Symon’s Lola Bistro; chicken paprikash, head cheese and stuffed cabbage at Sokolowski University Inn; and a polish boy at Hot Sauce Williams. In between, he shops for books with legendary graphic novelist Harvey Pekar, drinks Great Lakes Brewing Co. Dortmunder Gold and hangs with winter surfers at Edgewater Park, and tours the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame with Marky Ramone. Following trips to the Sausage Shoppe and the West Side Market, he finishes it all with family dinner at Ruhlman’s University Heights home. 

He also says this about Cleveland: 

“I love Cleveland’s eccentrically screwy, strangely American splendor. 

I like Cleveland. Always did. I find the much-maligned town beautiful. A stark reality up against a unique sense of humor and resignation, a surprisingly hopeful place for food if you only bother to look. 

The winters are cold and bleak but the majestic Art Deco and neoclassical buildings speak of an earlier time of boundless optimism in the early 20th century when it seemed anything was possible in Cleveland. 

Harsh reality has long set in, but what remains, even the empty warehouses, post-industrial detritus, fields of tires, and the last of the steel mills have a strange and melancholy splendor. A faded, particularly American glory."

For years, the only way to watch this Cleveland travelog —  episode 11 of season three — was in grainy clips on YouTube. But in May, every episode of No Reservations landed on Max — the newly rebranded streaming service from HBO, which owns Bourdain’s catalogue.

“I’m on the Keith Richards diet,” he tells Laura Taxel, “eat everything, drink a lot and smoke often.”

Today, Harvey Pekar, Hot Sauce Williams, Lola Bistro, the Sausage Shoppe and Sokolowski’s are all dead. Along with it, the version of Cleveland that Bourdain depicts in this episode. But thankfully, we have it documented in all its flaws and splendor. 

Like Pekar says, “when you’re dead, it robs life of many pleasures.”

For more on Bourdain in Cleveland, don’t miss our behind-the-scenes take of the 2007 shoot.