Where's the best Middle Eastern food? Ask Bobby Chinn

Last season on the Discovery Travel & Living show World Café, host Bobby Chinn took us across Asia, including a fateful visit to Manila where he ate balut and made lifelong friends with chef Gene Gonzalez.

This season the half-Chinese, half-Egyptian Chinn explores the other side of his heritage in World Café: Middle East, where he takes us on a culinary tour through five countries and seven cities, from Istanbul, Damascus and Aleppo to Jordan, the West Bank, Cairo and Alexandria.

Watch Bobby, who speaks Arabic, eat street food, cook with the locals and get them to share family recipes, and visit markets and historic sites, which he calls “an express lane into a culture.”

Chinn took a short break from his hectic schedule to do a phone interview with the media and provide a sneak peek at what’s to come on World Café: Middle East:

Have there been any changes on the show since last season?

There were a couple of things. The show is the same format, except now it’s one hour long vs. 30 minutes. There was more travel involved in season 3. We started filming in Istanbul, which was appropriate to understand that the Ottoman Empire ruled the land for so long that a lot of the cuisines are very much the same. Like in the Philippines, the Spanish cuisine is very strong. The same kind of happened in the East.

What was it like settling down in that part of the world to film? What was the hardest adjustment for you?

Whenever we film these shows sometimes we film 15 to 18 hours a day. For this season I have a place in Cairo where I can stay with my family and travel from there. I think the hardest thing for me was probably going to Israel. I was kind of hurt by the idea that people lived in refugee camps for 50 years. It was hard traveling to those places that we can consider military zones.

What country surprised you the most in terms of Middle Eastern cuisine? Where would you recommend world travelers head for special meals?

I think it was Syria. I thought that the food there was exceptional. A lot of times many people say Lebanon has the best food and I believe that they probably do because they were all part of one country way back. So there becomes a national pride towards your country’s cuisine. In Syria, the food was just fantastic and they have friendly, friendly people.

What’s your favorite eating city in the world?

When it comes to really great food for US$35, I say San Francisco. You can eat Indonesian, French, Japanese… all is there.

Whom do you consider your culinary hero?

There are so many great moments in this last series when I cooked with a Christian family. The woman was really, really warm. When you see people who are so giving — they don’t really have much but she was so giving — it was really touching to see.

If you could invite anyone, alive or dead, to dinner, who would it be and why?

I’d say Jesus or Mohammed, Judah and Moses so I could show them what they left behind.

What’s the best thing you’ve ever put into your mouth, and the nastiest?

My thumb (laughs).

Nastiest? Probably the silkworm. I just can never get rid of the taste.

Do you have any plans of expanding your Restaurant Bobby Chinn in Hanoi, Vietnam, to other places, like here in the Philippines?

I’d like to do so. Yes, probably also in the Philippines.

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World Café: Middle East airs every Monday at 10 p.m. on TLC, with encores on Tuesdays at 4 p.m. and Saturdays at 2 p.m.