Published by Bloomsbury, 274 pp, £16.99 in UK.

I can't wait till the end of the review, I'll tell you now; this is a wonderful book. Okay, I'm prejudiced, it reads as though it was written to appeal specifically to me, but if you have any interest in food at all it'll enthral you, and even if you have no such interest, it's still a riveting read. The idea is simple enough, Anthony Bourdain, New York chef and writer, goes off around the world in search of the perfect meal. It's a search that takes him to Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. But this is no sissy, big girl's blouse Epicurean ramble - this is get your hands dirty stuff.

Bourdain wastes no time telling you about his own prejudices, likes and dislikes. He's passionate - amongst other things - about food, coffee, cigarettes, getting drunk and getting stoned. His prose bristles with bon-mots, neologisms and phrases that frankly I wished I'd written myself. When he recalls the culinary epiphanies in his life - his first oyster, his first wild strawberry and his first few beads of caviar, he adds his 'first taste of champagne on a woman's lips'. But, as I said, there's nothing prissy about this quest. It's not the hunt for the best meal in a three-starred Michelin restaurant that drives him, he's looking for a meal that might be simple or complex, but that gives him a life-enhancing moment.

Beginning in Portugal, where he meets the pig that's been fattened in his honour and gets to look it in the eye, he takes you on his no-holds-barred journey with him. He's honest: he argues that if he eats and prepares pork, he should know how it got onto the plate. That's why he details the pig's death so carefully; the grappling, the squealing and screaming, the sticking and finally the death throes. If you can't get past this moment - complete with the pig-fisting - stop before chapter two begins. It's hard to give you a flavour of the variety that comes next; back to the France of his youth for the perfect oyster, to Ho Chi Min City (named after a cook) for soft-boiled duck embryos, to the Basque country for a pub crawl with tapas, to Russia for meals washed down with so much vodka that he becomes insensible, to the Sahara for sand-roasted lamb with its testicles the prized delicacy, the best sushi that Tokyo can offer in the form of deadly puffer fish and letting AK-47s rip in Kampuchea. All this gets you, somewhat breathless, to no more than the half-way mark.

But what makes this book so enjoyable is not just the foodie bits - which serve as a conceit to hold the narrative together - it's the asides, the thoughtful moments, the time taken to study the Sahelian skies with a big spliff for company. It's finding his ease eventually in the company of Viet Cong vets, his sensitivity with his hosts in Fez, his willingness to embrace with an open heart what every culture has to offer, even the Asian obsession with foods whose sole purpose is to enhance an erection. 'Make you strong.'

He doesn't find his perfect meal, but then as he says 'the concept is ludicrous'. But the concept makes a fine book. You can't help but learn from it. I left it with a thought; passion for food and passion for life in all its forms seem inexorably entwined, and secondly I felt a deep-seated urge to persuade a publisher to let me do the same thing - it seems like such fun.