The Travel Channel's No Reservations, a foodie show that’s usually as high on laughs as it is on flavor, took on a more solemn tone Monday night with an episode devoted to New Orleans. The last No Reservations show to get serious actually earned Anthony Bourdain an Emmy nomination, though that was a special situation. I'm talking about, of course, last season's "Bourdain in Beirut," what started out as one of Bourdain's typical travel documentaries but turned intense when he and his four-person crew, enjoying cocktails at an open-air nightclub to tape a segment for a show on Lebanon, realized that bombs were dropping. It took Bourdain nearly a week to get out of the war-torn city; the cameras captured each terror-filled day until our boy made it safely onto a US Navy ship that was outward bound.

“Bourdain in Beirut,” didn't end up being about food at all; it was about survival. Likewise, Monday night's episode on New Orleans was about survival -- the survival of the restaurant industry two years after Katrina.

Bourdain opened the episode (which he filmed in September) by walking through a desolate stretch of a destroyed neighborhood with Times-Picayune columnist and New Orleans resident, Chris Rose, to Domilise’s Po-Boys, an authentic New Orleans dive located near the river. Rose and Bourdain cracked open beers, talked about the spray-painted hieroglyphics and comments that still brand houses around the city (as in 1 Dead in Attic, the name of Rose’s published book of newspaper columns post-Katrina). They ordered the “off-the-menu special,” a shrimp po-boy covered in Swiss cheese and slathered in roast beef gravy. Though Bourdain lamented the absence of tomatoes in his po-boy; this would prove to be the only snarky comment from him for the rest of the episode, which made things feel a bit "off" as this whole show is really about his attitude.

Next Bourdain and a restaurant critic friend visited Antoine’s, one of the country’s oldest restaurants and a New Orleans institution complete with third generation waiters in suits, historical Mardi Gras memorabilia decorating the walls and held in antique cases, and the original recipe for Oysters Rockefeller. Bourdain dined on jumbo lump crabmeat covered in butter and oysters a la foche (on toast with foie gras), and wondered aloud how this massive restaurant, with endless private rooms that were empty, would survive. We never did get an answer to that question.

Bourdain visited Café Reconcile in a segment that felt awkwardly like a puff piece and time filler; this teaching restaurant turns teenagers who are at risk into budding chefs of southern cuisine, churning out collard greens, cornbread and fried chicken. Though as a teaching restaurant that has been in operation since 2000, well before the storm, I’m not sure what this had to do with restaurant life post-Katrina.

A segment with a struggling fisherman showed us his house in a gated neighborhood where he was the only one to return; though, sweetly enough, he continues to mow the lawns of his abandoned neighbor’s yards. Bourdain and the fisherman took a boat out on the bayou and came back with a number of oysters, which was a good sign; though Bourdain’s voice-over let us know that there used to be 5,000 fisherman before the storm and now there are 500, and he wonders if that number won’t dwindle down too.

A trip to celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse’s restaurant didn’t prove to be as racy as the promos led us to think it would be. Bourdain said gleefully, “When I first came down here I was making a living talking shit about you!” (Apparently, you can say “shit” on Travel Channel!) Though Emeril didn’t seem the least bit upset, and instead wanted to focus on telling the cameras that his focus once the storm hit was to find and help his 400 employees. He then treated Bourdain to a creole tasting plate – which included seafood and andouille gumbo, root beer braised pork belly, and barbecued shrimp – though there was little talk of the food. Emeril went back to discussing his need to re-open post-Katrina; saying the cliché kinds of things that Emeril always says: "It's easy to leave; it's harder to stay and rebuild." Please tell us something we don't know.

There were more outings in the episode, one to Vic’s Kangaroo Café where restaurant workers and waitstaff get loaded on Jagermeister (ewww!!!) after closing and one to Cochon, James Beard award-winning chef Donald Link’s new pork-obsessed restaurant that opened after Katrina. It was amazing to learn of Link's devotion to New Orleans; he snuck his way back into the city just days after Katrina, found a gas mask, and proceeded to clean out his restaurant's refrigerators full of rotting meat (this was after days in the 100+ degree heat).

Though I was looking forward to it, I have to say I was disappointed with this week's episode. I’m not sure I care about the “restaurant industry” as much as I care about how New Orleans food has helped people to recover from the storm. We learned that Domilise’s Po-Boy opened up the day after the storm hit and a line of people formed around the corner. Why? What did eating a po-boy mean to those people? How was the restaurant able to be up and running so fast; what did the owners have to go through? What other places opened up quickly? Why did Emeril want to stay and rebuild his restaurants? I know that no Travel Channel documentary about New Orleans can compare to Spike Lee's When the Levee Broke, but I wanted more.

With good timing, the episode aired on the eve of Fat Tuesday. Though this episode was no fun-filled lead-in to this year’s Mardi Gras celebrations, by any means. As my husband put it while we were watching the show, “I’ve had a lot more fun in New Orleans than Bourdain looks like he’s having.” Understandably so, Bourdain was not on his usual quest for the perfect meal or to get boozed up. But I feel like I learned less this time cause Bourdain was being so good at behaving and not delving too deep.