Anthony Bourdain, coming to the Fox Theatre July 11, loves the Clermont Lounge

Bourdain, 59, is coming back to town July 11 to do a live stage show called "Close to the Bone" at the Fox Theatre but he isn't sure if Brown, who lives in Marietta, will hang out with him again. (Buy tickets here.)

"I didn't actually know that the people performing at the Clermont actually took off all their clothing," Brown told Mara Davis of Atlanta Eats last year. "It was a rabbit hole that I didn't need to go down. That bastard did that to me on purpose!"

Bourdain said despite his very busy schedule shooting CNN's Emmy-winning travelogue show "Parts Unknown," he is doing 10 live shows across the country in July including Atlanta. "People have been asking relentlessly," he said. "I knuckled under. I'm already on the road most of the year. My time is my family. I agreed to do 10 shows."

He said the show will be very very simple. "It's me talking. There's no video component. No props. No band. No giant blender. That's it. I'm working on 90 minutes of new material and a Q&A.."

Bourdain said he will tell stories, along the lines of stand up: "Long ago, I found if people aren't laughing every few minutes, it feels like five hours!"

And if you have read his books, you know he's not exactly G-rated when he's not on TV. "This is going to be pretty filthy  - even by my standards," he warned. "Do not bring the kids."

He recently concluded his fifth season of his CNN "Parts Unknown" show, which has been one of the network's most successful programs and included visits to Budapest, Beirut and the shores of New Jersey.

"We only go to places I want to go," Bourdain said. "I'm always looking for some kind of personal angle or to look through somebody's particular perspective. I like to go to places people overlook or haven't really covered. That's why I did Koreatown in Los Angeles and pretended nobody was there who wasn't Korean. I'm always looking to have fun and challenge myself and my crew."

Plus, he said, "we don't have to put eating in every scene anymore. We can do whole shows with no food. This is about looking for good stories."

One experimental episode came on earlier this season where he aired a South Korea episode in reverse chronological order. "I become progressively more sober as the show went on," he said. "It was trippy!"

The Jersey shore probably qualified as his least exotic locale this past season but was definitely a case of personal connection. "I'm a Jersey boy," Bourdain said. "The challenge there was go to this reviled state that everyone makes fun of all the time but I genuinely love."

He also tries to give each "Parts Unknown" a special look, which can be tough with U.S. cities. "We shot Miami in a symmetrical classic way to look like Rome with the same respect and grandeur."

As for his boss Jeff Zucker, Bourdain is all praise: "He's been incredibly supportive. Everything he ever said he'd do for me and the show he's done. I've had nothing but great conversations with everyone at CNN. We've handed them some very difficult material. When there has been any questions about airing something, they've always come down on our side, backed up 100 percent."

For instance, during the second season, he went to Tokyo and explored the dark side of Japanese society including images of bondage, hyper-sexualized school girls and homoeroticism. "Any other network would have just freaked out," he said. "It was really tough and unlike anything CNN has ever put on the air. They could have made a good argument against airing it but they bravely bit the bullet and put it on. It ended up being a wildly successful show with very little push back. I'm stunned. I think audiences are a lot smarter and more sophisticated than we give them credit for."

CONCERT PREVIEW

Anthony Bourdain

8 p.m., Saturday, July 11

$70.60-$123.30 after fees

Fox Theatre

660 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta

www.foxtheatre.org