Anthony Bourdain's new series "The Layover," which is the product of a drunken night with the "No Reservations" crew, premieres Monday. The show promises to take us from "dive bars to five stars" in major European, American and Asian cities.
When it came to picking locations for the show, which documents just 24-48 hours in each city, Bourdain and company wanted to highlight major hubs where travelers are most likely to have a layover. Think New York, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Rome, Amsterdam, London and Hong Kong.
Where "No Reservations" was more about satisfying Bourdain's curiosity about the world, he says the new series is meant to help travelers by honing in on "particularly local, unique places that we've come to know and like... over the course of many years making television -- all of them in locations where a traveler might reasonably expected to find themselves, hopefully, at some point."
"I'm not really interested in the best of the most iconic places in locations," Bourdain adds. "I'm trying to do a useful, if dysfunctional version of that kind of show in our own sort of darkly dysfunctional way."
In this clip from the premier episode, shot in Singapore, Bourdain samples the favorite local dish, chicken rice. As Bourdain points out, it's the one dish that no trip to the country would be complete without.
"The Layover" begins Monday at 9 p.m. Eastern on the Travel Channel.