Barack Obama is already going down in history books as the coolest president, and now to add to his list of accomplishments, he's eaten with chef and legendary foodie Anthony Bourdain in Vietnam. 

Anthony Bourdain's television travelogue "Parts Unknown" goes to Iran to discover how people live behind the geopolitical smoke screen and to small-town Massachusetts to chronicle the heroin scourge. But even if the fourth season of his Emmy Award-winning CNN show fosters cultural diplomacy or raises drug awareness, this outspoken New York chef insists he is on no kind of socially minded mission. 

Anthony Bourdain pays a neighborly visit to the United States' "brother from another mother," the politically complex nation of Mexico, and finds an equally complex type of food. "I think most American’s view of Mexican food is like beans, fried tortilla, melted cheese and some chicken," Bourdain says.

Denmark was named the world's happiest country in the 2013 World Happiness Report, and Noma, the 45-seat restaurant in the capital city of Copenhagen, was crowned number one on the annual "World's 50 Best Restaurants" list in 2010, 2011 and 2012. But, the Danish people will be hesitant to tell you of such achievements given their Law of Jante, a Scandinavian mentality that essentially promotes the principle that one person is no better than anyone else.

CNN food and travel host Anthony Bourdain's excellent hour-long special on Israel-Palestine, in he which he explores both sides of the green line, begins with a line that could not ring truer for me. "It's easily the most contentious piece of real estate in the world. And there's no hope – none – of ever talking about it without pissing somebody, if not everybody, off," he says of Israel-Palestine and particularly Jerusalem.