With the definition of a job being an activity that someone pays you to do, I am afraid that there is always a gotcha in there somewhere. Well, if it is all fun, why doesn't the person who pays you do it himself?
For a time, I followed Anthony Bourdain's TV episodes. Being somewhat of a foodie (but I am not yet ready to pay for Thomas Keller's expensive dinner like the OP has done) in addition to loving travel, I got interested in his adventures despite his often vulgar language (it is already tamed down on TV - he appears a lot worse in real life). You would think that Bourdain's was a good job to travel to interesting places, and to eat "interesting" food at somebody else's expenses.
I read a couple of his books, and yes, he loves what he is doing now a lot more than being a chef, but it is not without drawbacks. He lamented of several times being told by his insisting producer that he had to eat some gross local food for shock effects. Thanks, but no thanks. Though nobody will ever pay me to be a traveler like Bourdain or Zimmern, I'd rather pay my own way and travel more modestly in order to be allowed to choose my own food.
I like my part-time work now. It allows me extended free time off to contemplate the meaning of life, to do house exterior staining
, and to BS here in this forum. I have nobody to supervise, no budget to manage. I was spared of most bureaucratic BS. Performance assessment is most simple; if they like what I produce, we continue. If we cannot come to a mutual agreement, I walk. It works well for my clients, and it works well for me too. And I can "afford" to have this job because of the money saved by a life-long LBYM philosophy.
Now, only if I can have a bit more control over my time-off periods. There are always fractious infighting at any Megacorp, and they have to settle between themselves on what and how to do things. Hence, I have to wait and be on call. A smaller client I have for 1099 jobs is affected even more by the economy, and they have little control over their work load.
So, I get to go to interesting places, meet "interesting" people
, doing things that are easy for me, and get paid reasonably well. It is not a dream job, but I am not complaining.