On screen, "Bizarre Foods" might just be about exotic dishes, but behind the scenes? It ended
Andrew Zimmern's marriage, gave him a rare disease, and led to a food TV rivalry. Keep
watching for even more strange details.
Andrew Zimmern went down a long and bumpy path in becoming a TV food celebrity, before
his successful show, Bizarre Foods, hit the airwaves. He found early success as a chef
in New York City, his hometown, but substance abuse issues led him to relocate to Minneapolis
in an effort to restart his life. He became a dishwasher at Minneapolis restaurant Un
Deux Trois and quickly worked his way up to executive chef, earning national credits for
his cooking. In an interview with Larry King, Zimmern said of his past history of addiction:
"I think that's what compels me to, I mean, I sleep five hours a night, I own three or
four businesses, I devoted a tremendous amount of time to service."
His success in the kitchen led to several jobs in local media in the Twin Cities, as
well as an on-camera cooking gig on several HGTV shows. Zimmern remembers that he was
paid a meager $50 per episode for his early work.
Although his segments on forgotten HGTV shows like TIPical Mary Ellen may not have paid
well, they gave him a foothold in the cable TV world. Zimmern took advantage of an opportunity
to shoot a pilot for a food travel documentary series, and the rest is history.
Andrew Zimmern and his now-ex-wife Rishia Haas seemed like a perfectly matched pair.
She shares his interest in food and has even written recipes for the New York Times. But
as anyone who travels a lot for work can tell you, the distance takes a toll on even the
strongest relationships. The production schedule for Zimmern's show, combined with his side
hustles of running a restaurant group, writing books, and starting a production company left
little time for his wife and son. The chef considers himself to blame for the couple's
2018 split.
Although Andrew and Rishia are no longer together, they separated amicably and they still co-parent
their son. Two years after getting divorced, Zimmern praised his ex on Instagram, calling
her "the bravest mom I know". It seems like he's fulfilling the promise he made to the
New York Times:
"To be the best dad and the best ex I can be."
According to Forbes, Zimmern travels 260 days a year shooting Bizarre Foods. That hectic
pace requires some strategizing, so Zimmern keeps bags ready so he can head out the front
door to far-flung locales at a moment's notice. He often encounters varied climates over the
course of a few days, so one bag gets packed with a variety of clothes, from warm winter
gear to short-sleeve shirts to formalwear. Another bag totes all of his shoes so he can
easily change from hiking boots to loafers, depending on the needs of a particular shoot.
And Zimmern prefers to stay plugged into technology no matter where he is. The road is his home
and his office, so he brings all the necessary technology to check email, make calls, and
watch TV on the go. The amount of preparation Zimmern puts into his travel routine would
put a boy scout to shame!
Bizarre Foods focuses on Andrew Zimmern's reactions to wonderful culinary creations,
but the people who keep the show running behind the scenes don't always get to taste. Sometimes
the crew gets lucky, other times they have to rely on limited snacks they can find in
the remote areas where they film the show.
"I wait whole lifetimes to come into rooms like this, to meet people like you, to eat
food like this."
Zimmern told an interviewer about a particularly grim trip to the backcountry in Mississippi
and Louisiana, where his crew lived off of knockoff McMuffins and gas station peanut
butter sandwiches.
Fortunately for the long-suffering Bizarre Foods production team, their famous boss took
pity on them after they endured weeks of watching him feast while they ate Wonder Bread. When
the crew arrived in New Orleans, Zimmern bought the whole team a luxurious dinner at a nice
restaurant in the city.
The directors and editors of Bizarre Foods do a good job of making the segments seem
real and unstaged but it requires a lot of careful planning, according to Mediaite. It's
difficult to capture the authentic vibe of a place when Andrew Zimmern constantly gets
mobbed by fans. The producers have to strategize to get people to act naturally when there's
an eight-person camera crew around. Mediaite reported that producers ended up paying for
the dinner of the group sitting behind Zimmern at a Korean barbecue restaurant so they would
stay for the whole time cameras were rolling.
The Korean barbecue segment got edited down to around five minutes of TV time, but it
took over two hours to shoot. Crew needs to shoot multiple takes of simple actions like
walking into a restaurant to make sure every camera angle is up to par. With all of the
stopping and starting that shooting a TV show requires, it's remarkable how well Zimmern
projects spontaneity and informality in his on-screen persona.
You might expect delicacies like cow urine, fermented shark, and dung beetles to wreak
havoc on Andrew Zimmern's stomach, but his worst-ever food illness came from something
more pedestrian. He told a Reddit AMA that eating tainted cumin in Morocco in 2005 gave
him a rare virus that still affects his health to this day. Although the initial effects
of the virus have long since passed, it caused him to have bouts of a condition called burning
mouth syndrome about once a year.
Burning mouth syndrome can cause a scalding feeling on the inside of the mouth, excessive
thirst, and numbness. It can also make you lose your sense of taste, which is tough for
a professional TV food taster. According to the Mayo Clinic, you can mitigate the symptoms
by staying away from spicy and sour foods. But that's not really an option for Zimmern.
Despite the discomfort, he takes his diagnosis in stride, calling it "a casualty of war."
As the hosts of two shows with similar premises on the same network, it was natural for Andrew
Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain to feel competitive with each other. Zimmern told Mashed in an
exclusive interview that the rivalry never turned malicious. The two hosts helped each
other out and pushed each other to become better. Zimmern remembers late nights swapping
tips with Bourdain for getting access to difficult filming locations in Cuba and Syria.
Zimmern said that he and Bourdain shared much more than just a love of food and travel.
The two men both had children around the same time and went through struggles in their marriages.
They were able to laugh together and share stories through it all. Naturally, Zimmern
misses his late friend and wishes Bourdain was still able to provide commentary about
world events. He expects the No Reservations star's influence to expand over the next several
years as the people who grew up watching his show start to gain power in the food world.
Sometimes the dishes on Bizarre Foods seem more appropriate for a scientific lab than
for a travel docuseries. But Andrew Zimmern rarely gets intimidated by anything he's supposed
to put in his mouth. His biggest fear on the show came in the episode Bizarre Foods: Cajun
Country where he cooks with Alzina Toups. A grandmother in her 80s, chef Toups doesn't
look intimidating on the outside, but she's a towering figure in the world of Cajun food.
The Southern Foodways Alliance praises her restaurant Alzina's, where she serves her
famous dishes like crabmeat lasagna and fig tart to one lucky party per night.
According to Zimmern, she can also be a harsh critic in the kitchen, so he was quaking in
his boots when she asked him to cook frog legs for her. Toups enjoyed his frog legs
but she did reprimand him for wasting meat when he helped her clean shrimp. He admired
her reverence for the ingredients she works with and was happy to emerge from her kitchen
relatively unscathed.
Andrew Zimmern is a charismatic guy and he usually has no problem getting the people
he interacts with to warm up to him. But sometimes his friendly nature does more harm than good.
Zimmern admitted in a Reddit AMA that:
"The problem is, when I get really happy, I forget what I'm doing or where I am and
I happen to be a big hugger."
And that causes awkwardness when he's interacting with devout Muslim women. The Embassy of the
United Arab Emirates warns American travelers that observant Muslim women often prefer not
to touch men who aren't their husbands or relatives, even to shake hands. Zimmern mentions
that forgetting this rule got him into hot water in Fez, Morocco. Fortunately for him,
he's usually able to play off this faux pas without serious consequences, but he's definitely
made some people uncomfortable with his unsolicited hugs.
Although Andrew Zimmern is welcomed with open arms in the countries he visits, he sometimes
encounters unfriendly people. A Reddit user asked Zimmern if he ever experiences hostility
abroad because of his Jewish-American background. Zimmern said that he gets in more trouble
for being American than being Jewish, but he doesn't let the hate diminish his pride
for his home country. Zimmern claims:
"It happens all the time. I wear my patriotism on my sleeve."
When he's overseas, Zimmern admits that he uses his own behavior to counteract negative
stereotypes about Americans.
"How is that? It's awesome. Really, you? Wow. Ok you're going for, May I have seconds?"
Zimmern views the act of visiting other places and sharing food as a way to encourage greater
understanding between different civilizations. He told the Travel Channel that:
"Food is the simplest way for me to learn about another culture. Share a meal with folks
and it will change your life as you see what real people are thinking and feeling."
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