Anthony Bourdain, Roy Choi talk heroin, ramen at 'Street Food' launch

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) - Traveler and professional eater Anthony Bourdain came to L.A. Tuesday to preview the fourth season of "Parts Unknown" and introduce CNN Digital's new show "Street Food with Roy Choi," on which he appears.

Choi's Pot restaurant at the Line Hotel hosted a Korean feast for journalists who queried Bourdain and Choi about their favorite spots to film and eat. "Street Food" is premiering on CNN Digital on Oct. 13, with eight five-minute long episodes to start. The first batch, which will all go online at once, are shot around Choi's home city of Los Angeles, but he said he can imagine covering street culture in New York, Detroit or Chicago in subsequent series.

Though the series has food in the title, it's not just about tacos and ramen -- Choi takes on street art, and interview musicians like Dilated Peoples and the Beastie Boys, filmmaker Jon Favreau and Youtube star Michelle Phan. (Choi, who basically started the food truck craze with his Kogi BBQ, was featured in Favreau's "Chef.")

"We look at the city from many different angles," Choi said. "It shows how vast this city is." Among his favorite food stops on the show were Mexican food in Boyle Heights and a rare peek into the kitchen of Tsujita Ramen in West L.A. Choi seems to be continually planning new restaurants, but the energetic chef-entrepreneur seems equally open to launching a TV career like Bourdain's.

Bourdain talked about the upcoming season of his Emmy-winning "Parts Unknown," in which he visits such diverse locations as Iran and Massachusetts, where he got his start cooking on Cape Cod. He said it took years to be able to film in Iran. "I think it's an Iran that other people will be surprised to see." There's a "very jarring, confusing difference" between the Iran people see on the news and the life on the street, Bourdain says.

The season kicks off Sunday with a trip to Shanghai, where Bourdain indulged his love for Wong Kar-wai movies by filming in a similar style.

Another episode takes Bourdain back to Massachusetts, home of delicious lobsters and a dangerous rural drug problem. "It's the heroin episode," he says bluntly.

When asked how he chooses where to film, Bourdain said he sits around drinking beer with his friends and crew until they decide on a spot and then considers, "What's the most f---ed-up way we can tell the story?" Other episodes this season will journey to Africa, Vietnam and the Bronx.