Anthony Bourdain’s adventurous-cuisine-seeking television shows have taken him to far-flung places: He dined on a massive antelope in South Africa, feasted on sour-cherry rice in Iran and traced his family tree while chewing local beef in Paraguay.

His latest cultural culinary expedition takes him to the wilds of a mysterious and dangerous place: the Garden State.

“I’m here to feed my soul, the cultural wellspring that is New Jersey,” Bourdain, 58, says in the newest episode of his hit CNN show, “Parts Unknown,” airing Sunday night.

“Cultural wellspring” may be a bit of a stretch for a state best known for sky-high property taxes and trashy reality shows, but Bourdain clearly has real affection for the place.

Born in NYC, Bourdain was raised in Leonia, NJ, a Bergen County suburb about 3 miles west of Washington Heights. It was from his home there that he first discovered a love of food — not from the “boring” local restaurants that offered fare like a “burnt veal cutlet,” according to his younger brother Chris, who accompanies him to some Jersey haunts in the episode, but from his mother’s Julia Child cookbooks and trips to restaurants in NYC.

“I remember we were trying Japanese food and Indian food long before anybody had ever thought of such things,” Chris Bourdain, 56, tells The Post. “It’s just what our parents were. They appreciated those kinds of things.”

What the TV star-chef appreciates about his home state is what he found during the family vacations when he was a kid — summer station-wagon trips to the Jersey Shore, mostly to Barnegat Light, a small town on Long Beach Island, according to Chris, who lives in Westchester and works for a Scandinavian brokerage firm.

“New Jersey, in case you didn’t know: It has got beaches. Beautiful beaches,” Anthony says on “Parts Unknown.” “And they’re not all crawling with roid-raging trolls with reality shows.”

But before he hits the beach on Sunday’s show, Anthony starts with a place tied to his early childhood, Hiram’s Roadstand, a hot dog and burger spot in Fort Lee. That’s where his father, who worked in the music industry, and mother, a copy editor at the New York Times, took him “as soon as I could chew food.”

“Sometimes you just need that old-time flavor,” he says as he’s settling at the counter. The place has kept some of the same charms — like toothpicks served with the fries — that he remembers since first visiting in 1958.

“I’ve convinced my daughter that these are the finest hot dogs in the land,” he says. “There’s not a lot of people in this world courageous enough to not change.”

Bourdain was working as a chef in 2000 when he found fame with his book “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly,” which detailed the seedy, drug-booze-and-sex-fueled escapades he experienced in the cooking world.

The new episode of his show is part biographical love letter to New Jersey; part anthropological study of the greasy diners and classic Italian joints that dot the boardwalks; part plea for help.

He takes a break from gorging on clam strips at Kubel’s restaurant in Barnegat Light and meaty hoagies at Frank’s Deli & Restaurant in Asbury Park to talk about the rapid decay of Atlantic City and stark poverty in Camden.

But he also highlights one of Jersey’s best comeback stories: Asbury Park, which fell from its heyday as a shore resort town into crime and depression, but has surged back over the past 10 years. Today, the spot boasts a revitalized downtown and boardwalk, music scene and a must-see pinball museum, where Anthony plays the silver balls with John Lyon, frontman for Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes.

“Fourteen years ago, last time I came, it was a shell of itself: dying, the beaches empty, a sad and forlorn place,” Bourdain says. “Unlike Atlantic City, though, Asbury Park fought to fix itself, to become again the kind of place that anybody would want to live.”

But the star of the show, as always, is the food. And Bourdain uses this episode to make a bold proclamation sure to needle folks from Philly.

During a visit to Donkey’s Place, a divey Styrofoam-plates-and-draft-beer joint in Camden, where he chows down on its famous twist on the cheesesteak, served on a poppy-seed roll spilling over with sliced beef and grilled onions, Bourdain says: “Jersey cheesesteaks: I’m not saying they’re better than Philadelphia,” he pauses. “Yeah, I am actually. So there.”