Talking travel with Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern

by Jerry Guo on

I’m here with Andrew Zimmern, the wildly popular host of Travel Channel’s hit series, Bizarre Foods. He’s a personality that needs no introduction–at least around the Gadling water cooler. You could even say he’s our Paris Hilton.

His show–which is about what it sounds like–has just finished its second season, with episodes spanning the globe from Iceland and Bolivia to St. Petersberg and Delhi (check out our episode guides here). Beyond the tube, he’s a celebrated food writer, dining critic, radio talk-show host, and chef. For more Andrew, check out his blog.

In this exclusive interview, Andrew dishes on everything from director Ang Lee’s stinky tofu fetish to his NYC School of Hot Dog Consumption Theory.

Before Bizarre Foods, how much jet-setting around the world did you get to do?

Plenty! I was lucky enough to come from a family that always traveled and placed a premium on pursuing singular experiences, eschewing resorts in favor of spending weeks skiing in Europe, driving ourselves around and eating in local restaurants and in homes with people we met along the way. I am a paler version of my Dad, the original “food freak” in the family, who introduced me to the concept of a tasting menu at Paul Bocuse in 1974. I am eternally grateful.
When you’re not taping a show, would you be eating any of these bizarre foods? Which ones are now part of your palate? (I’ve heard you gush about those sparrows several times.)

Of course I would, assuming it was available and fresh. Also important are the intangibles like setting and ambience. It’s hard to duplicate tuna collars (10 pounders!) grilled over coconut husks, served with sautéed banana flowers, tossed with braised whelks and a crispy wild pig. All this is available here in the U.S., but it’s not the same as pulling up a chair to a table that’s groaning with the stuff at Kinabuch’s in Palawan in the Philippines.

What happens is that being courageous and willing, and 5,000 miles from home, makes you open your eyes to the foods available in your own back yard. I have been way more enthusiastic about beaver, moose, raccoon, possum, squirrel and other local treats because of what I eat when I am away from home. My son and I have caught lots of grasshoppers in our back yard, but we still have not eaten any of those.

You’ve mentioned that you stop at stinky tofu. Is that really bad? I think I have a jar sitting around somewhere, it’s like the Chinese version of Nutella right?

Way worse…Here’s the deal: I ate stinky tofu every day for a snack in Taipei, it was awesome; two days in the briny sludge, then grilled, split and stuffed with pickled cabbage and brushed with sweet peanut sauce. It was amazing. Then on day six, I ate 14-day-old stinky tofu at Dai’s House of Unique Stink…it was horrific. After 14 days in putrid vegetable matter, the tofu is as close to rotting flesh as anything I have ever seen or tasted. I got one bite down, but could not get another one past my tongue. There’s a lot of confusion out there since many people have only seen the two-day stuff and wondered what the big deal was. Director Ang Lee has Dai’s send him stinky tofu all over the world when he is on location. He’s a better man than I am.

What other foods do you stop at, and say, “no way, I’m not getting paid enough for this?”

The only foods I have ever refused to date were raw rotten chicken intestines in a Chang Mai jungle market that were not washed, and running tap water in a Delhi street stall that was being used to moisten some chat that they were selling for snack food. In both cases I knew that consuming either one meant a guaranteed trip to the hospital or a night spent puking my guts out.

How were the rooster testicles? What other (not sure how to put this delicately) gonads have you eaten? Care to describe them or have those memories been sufficiently suppressed?

I have eaten the following testicular treats, often times accompanied by the penis as well: snake, yak, cow, goat, rooster, duck, goose, donkey, water buffalo, frog, deer, elk and probably about a dozen others. The balls are great, especially on smaller animals and when eaten extremely fresh. Rooster balls are one of my faves, they are not too gamey, very creamy and when steamed, then quickly pan crisped and served with hot chiles and lime, they are addictive in the extreme. Wolfgang Puck made me Hunan style rooster balls a few weeks ago in L.A. Apparently they were on the opening menu 25 years ago at Chinois but didn’t go over real well. Maybe now they will make a comeback.

I think the more that we eat alternative foods and continue to eat “snout to tail”, the better off we are as a people. The pressure that alternative food-eating takes off of the mainstream food delivery system is an unheralded health and wellness benefit that we would be well-advised to take better advantage of. Tomatoes, spinach and factory farm pork from commodity producers that are commonly available in American supermarkets can make you very sick. Rooster balls are quite delightful!

Eat bugs, see bugs, be like a bug at the newest museum in New Orleans

by Jamie Rhein on

Two summers ago my son was wild about cicadas. They were everywhere, and each time he found one of their shells he put it in an empty bottle. His exuberance was the type only four-year-olds can generate

There’s a museum in New Orleans with his name on it. Not literally, the museum is called Audubon Insectarium, but it’s the kind he would LOVE. This museum is the first new tourist attraction to open since Katrina changed the landscape of much of the city and is part of Audubon Nature Institute. I found out about it through this article in the Columbus Dispatch.

The landscape inside the Audubon Insectarium is bugs, bugs and more bugs–35,000 live ones and 15,000 mounted ones–or thereabouts. As people go from exhibit to exhibit, they learn about bugs from prehistoric times through today.

Built in the historic U.S. Custom House, the museum offers entertainment and creativity in how it displays its subject matter. For example, you can get an idea of what a bug’s world looks like through reconstructed tunnels that puts you in the bug’s perspective. Outside the bathrooms, you can see dung beetles roll waste into balls. In case you’re wondering-it’s not the waste from the bathroom. There’s also a chance to test your mettle against a cricket’s power. Can you pedal as fast as a cricket can hop?

Another exhibit is devoted to showing what insects people eat around the world and how they are cooked. That sounds like an exhibit Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods would swoon over. If you want to try an insect yourself, you can try some edible bug snacks. I’ve had chocolate covered grasshoppers before. The closest thing I can think of is Nestle Crunch bars.

Also, there is a section about pest control management and a live butterfly exhibit among other offerings.

Lest you think getting rid of all insects but the pretty kind, one of the main points the museum makes is that if it weren’t for bugs, nothing else would live. Remember the lyrics to the song, “There was an Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly?” It’s kind of like that.

There’s Breakfast with the Bugs on July 12. Notice it’s with the bugs, not eating bugs.

Could you eat what Andrew Zimmern eats?

by Grant Martin on

One of our favorite shows here on Gadling is “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern,” and although we tease Zimmern once in a while, we love watching the show.

I think that part of the reason that many people watch the show is just to see what crazy food Zimmern is going to push down his throat each episode. Whether this is grasshopper pizza, pigs ears or chicken uterus, everyone wants to see Zimmern eat something disgusting and secretly wants him to retch. It’s kind of like on Fear Factor when they’re forced to eat cockroaches and worms. It’s so so bad. But you just can’t tear yourself away.

If you were in Andrew Zimmern’s place though, could you handle being in a tough foreign country eating seriously questionable food? I know I couldn’t. I have a hard enough time with scallops let alone braided intestines.

On one of my favorite new websites, GraphJam, submitter Ryan sums it up pretty well in this Venn Diagram: Places I would not go + Things I would not eat = “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern.”

Which isn’t to say I’m going to stop watching the show. I’ll just be watching it from my sofa with a bowl of Easy Mac.

“Bizarre Foods” on the Travel Channel: Asia potpourri

by Jamie Rhein on

Location: Tokyo and Kobe Japan; Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand; and Penang, Malaysia. (This episode was a repeat of a previous season. I missed this one the first time, so I was happy to catch it.)

Episode Rating: 4 Sheep Testicles (out of 4) using Aaron’s system that certainly works well for this episode–if you trade sheep for pig.

Summary: After watching this episode, it might seem like there is nothing but bizarre food in Asia. I can attest that the eating is among the finest. I’ve been to all three countries and promise there’s food to suit most people’s palate. Being an adventurous eater helps. What Andrew Zimmern honed in on is foods that are thought to give power. Feeling a bit blah? There’s nothing like some frog meat.

In Japan, frog sashimi is a real health pick me up. Sashimi is usually raw seafood–unless it’s frog. Chase it down with some lizard sake and you’re good to go. The lizard was leaning out of the glass like a garnish one might see at a Halloween party. Even more macabre, but maybe that’s just me, is eating the frog’s beating heart. Zimmern proclaimed it “not bad…not a lot of flavor.” To eat a beating heart, I’d need a bit more than “not bad.” See the YouTube video for the full effect.

Suppon, a soft-shelled turtle has been eaten in Japan for 450 years. In Japan, turtle is mega power food. It gives men extra get up and go, if you know what I mean. For women, it’s supposed to do wonders for the skin. The soup version looked tasty, if one ignored the detail of Zimmern gnawing on the turtle leg. Watching the turtle bleed beforehand, though, was a big ick. Zimmern downed some turtle blood mixed with rice wine before he dug into the soup. I’d like my rice wine plain, thank you.

Another bizarre dish Zimmern tackled was fugu, poisonous blowfish. I’d pass on it. First of all, 100 people a year die from eating fugu when it’s not prepared correctly. Secondly, even when it’s prepared correctly, there’s enough poison in it to make your mouth numb. See Matthew’s post that gives more specifics.

The detail about Kobe beef was interesting–those are some happy cows, and I got a kick out of the yakitori contest when Zimmern and a Japanese pal had dueling moments of eating chicken part skewers. Evidently, not all chicken parts are tasty. “I’d rather be tied naked to an ant hill than eat the rest of this,” Zimmern declared.

Once Zimmern left Japan for Thailand, it was market browsing past ant larvae, grubs, beetles, grilled frog on a stick and a host of other taste treats. I have eaten bird’s nest soup, however, and thought it not bad–for swallow nests. Zimmern went shopping and pointed out that swallows’ nests cost up to $1,000 for a package of 12 of the finest.

Outside Chiang Mai, Zimmern ate street food which were hits and misses. One miss was some sort of red sausage that was a mix of pork and organ meats. A real gag with that one. He also downed spirulina, a drink made from live algae that’s supposedly one of the healthiest foods. It’s gotta be good for you. It’s green. Plus, he said it smelled like the bottom of an aquarium. You can get it in pill form if you want.

Although visiting a hill tribe in Thailand is a wonderful experience, the bat eating is something I’d do without. Those fruit bats, when stir fried, look like fruit bats stir fried–perfect for that Halloween party with the lizard sake chaser.

When Zimmern hit Penang, an island of Malaysia, I had flashbacks to some awesome meals. Sambal, the sauce made from shrimp paste is good–I wouldn’t eat buckets of it, but it’s good. Zimmern ate the fiery version and in between fanning his hands in front of his face, asked, “Is their steam coming out of my ears?” Penang is also a wonderful place to spend time. One thing I appreciated about this segment was the inclusion of Indian food. Indian food in Malaysia (and Singapore) is superb. I ate Indian food in Georgetown myself.

The food that Zimmern spit out was durian, the smelliest fruit on earth. It’s so smelly it’s not allowed on public transportation in Malaysia or Singapore.

Although this episode was a repeat, it was a good one for a trip around high points of places I’ve been. Next week, Zimmern’s back with a new episode. Stay tuned for India.

For Gadling recaps of this season:

“Bizarre Foods” on the Travel Channel: Season 2, China

by Jamie Rhein on

Location: Mostly Guangzhou, China, a city at the mouth of the Pearl River, about 100 miles northwest of Hong Kong. Until the 1980s, this city was called Canton and is the home of Cantonese style food. Because of its location, it’s the largest trading post, thus has a vast assortment of things to eat and enormous markets for picking up ingredients. Andrew Zimmern pointed out that it also has the most restaurants per capita in all of China.

Episode Rating: 3 sheep testicles (out of 4) using Aaron’s system from his post on the Minnesota episode.

Summary: Although the China episode wasn’t the travel spree of the Bolivia one, I began to pine for real deal Chinese food and fantasized about moving to Guangzhou. Except for the worms, the starfish, the chicken feet and the jelly fish, nothing Zimmern ate seemed all that bizarre–or unusual. The focus of the episode wasn’t so much on bizarre foods, but on the culinary arts of Cantonese cooking and the philosophy around it. Perhaps, the normalcy is because I’ve wandered in such markets and know that squid-on-a-stick, as gangley as it looks, is delicious. It’s my husband’s and daughter’s favorite street food.

Zimmern did explain that there is a saying about Cantonese food that goes something like this: “Anything that walks, swims, crawls, or flies with its back to heaven is edible.” The key to great taste is with freshness. Fresh ingredients makes the best food.

I first got hunger pangs during Zimmern’s eat-fest at Guangzhou Restaurant where dim sum is wheeled from table to table on carts. You pick what you want to eat as it passes by. As Zimmern explained, dim sum originated in Guangzhou at the time of the Silk Road’s heyday when travelers needed snacks to take with them on their journeys. At this meal, Zimmern sucked and gnawed away on fried chicken feet–which he loved. He turned up his nose at the stir fried milk with shrimp dish and proclaimed the braised and steamed abalone as melt in your mouth delicious. The duck feet stuffed with ground shrimp was also terrific.

The next stop was Jin Ling Lou Restaurant where the offerings wandered into the unusual. Turtle meat soup, pigeon, arachnids and suckling pig. Maybe not the suckling pig, except it was whole, and Zimmern commented on the earwax and hair.

During a walk through Qingping Market, Zimmern talked about the Chi, of foods. Rabbit meat has a cooling energy flow while chicken’s energy is hot. A balanced meal includes both. Next stop was the 5-star restaurant Summer Palace at the Shangri-La Hotel where executive chef Jacky Chan, cooked up jelly fish salad, frogs legs, hairy crab and braised pork. Zimmern mentioned the number of ingredients in many Chinese dishes. One sauce has 30 plus items.

More arduous than making sauces is noodle making. At the Jiu Mao Jiu Noodle Restaurant, Zimmern gave noodle making a try. Experts can make one noodles 50 to 60 meters long. If I were in Guangzhou, I’d head here. The noodle dishes sounded yummy. Truly. Nothing strange about them.

Zimmern’s foray outside Guangzhou included a stop in Qinxin, a mountain town that specializes in fungus. Two dishes I’d love to try are the river fish with fungus and the morel mushrooms stuffed with pork and then breaded and fried. The last stop was a family farm where all the food was grown and caught by the family members. Again, all 12 dishes looked and sounded so good, that I was salivating by the end of the episode.

One theme that showed up over and over again was the generosity that Chinese people show through their food. I can vouch that if a person in China or Taiwan takes you out for a meal, you’ll be in for a visual and tasty treat where dish after dish appears. No one expects you to eat chicken feet if you don’t want to.

To find out more about the food on the episode and the principles of Chinese food, check out Zimmern’s blog.