In the tight squeeze of a kitchen at Les Halles, where Anthony Bourdain slung pans while writing Kitchen Confidential, a film crew is focusing in on Anderson Cooper’s face as he takes his first bite of tripe, the stomach lining of a cow. Bourdain stands by, amused. Cooper sniffs—“A little horsey”—takes the tiniest bite, shakes his head, and gives his review: “It’s not for me.”

CNN’s silver foxes (Cooper, Bourdain) are crowded in the back of the kitchen, which is still finishing up a few French onion soups for straggling late lunchers. It’s been a marathon shoot, as Bourdain teaches Cooper five semi-exotic dishes for a new segment on Anderson Cooper 360 to promote the new season of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. They made escargot, blood sausage, pig’s feet, tripe, and veal kidneys in mustard sauce. Fans of 360 know the punch line: Cooper is one of the pickiest eaters of the species Grown-Up. He recently had waffles for the first time on the show, asking, “What’s the point? It’s just a pancake with holes in it.”

After the filming, Bourdain takes a few selfies with the chefs, who always welcome him back like the prodigal son, and we ask Cooper what it was in his childhood that made him so food-phobic—we know his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, who told us about her daily peanut butter and jelly sandwiches last year, also has a penchant for the comfort of simple meals.

“I was raised in a Wasp household, so the only food we had was Carr’s water biscuits and aquavit,” he quipped—a line he’s clearly had to repeat often. Now he eats the same thing for months at a time; right now it’s oatmeal with fruit and cinnamon (“that’s my big adventure”), a salad for lunch, and salmon sushi for dinner.

Food for Cooper is just fuel, and we ask if he’s ever considered trying Soylent—the shake that has all of the vitamins and minerals needed to stay alive, popular among computer-glued coders in Silicon Valley. “I’m obsessed with the idea of Soylent!” he said. “I have not actually tried it. If I could, to me, it’s the ideal solution.”

“It’s absolutely everything I’m against”—that’s Bourdain chiming in, who can’t let this stand—“it’s evil in a bottle, or a bag, or whatever it comes in. It’s just anti-human, it’s anti-everything, and it’s filled with heavy metals, apparently! It’s just wrong.”