- [Andrew] How is that gizmo?
- [Kids] Good!
- Can I ask you a question?
- Sure.
- Have you tried the cinni-mini sundae
with the fresh-made cinnamon rolls
and the Tahitian vanilla soft-serve?
- If it's good, we'll try. - Oh, my god.
- (laughs)
- He's breaking in.
Guys, he's break, you gotta catch him breaking in.
The mayor of this town is now
putting his foot down, demanding sundaes.
He literally knows everyone here.
(rock music)
Andrew Zimmern has eaten his way across the globe.
But today I've joined him in his native habitat,
the Minnesota State Fair, a world of corn dogs
and cotton candy sandwiches.
So why here?
It starts with Andrew, age 14, donning an apron
and slowly working his way
into some of New York's best restaurants.
In 1992, after a hard year of alcohol and drug addiction,
he moved to Minnesota,
the place he's decided to call home since.
- [Woman] Do you have time for a picture with a fan?
- We're actually shooting television right now.
- Oh, geez.
- [Mark] I do understand what happened
in New York to some extent,
and you land here, and you fall in love with it,
and the place saves you,
but why did you choose here?
Why did you end up here? - I didn't.
I was actually shanghaied,
in the 19th, 18th century naval sense of the word.
I walked into my umpteenth intervention
to begin what was gonna be my umpteenth attempt to be sober,
except this time instead of fighting it
I just said, "what time's my plane?"
- You are, my understanding is,
as one person put it in your orbit,
the unofficial mayor of, like, maybe Minnesota,
but, like, definitely this festival.
- I came here summer of 1992
for the first time to the state fair.
I was blown away by the history,
was lifted up by the people, the connection, the community.
The next thing you know, it's 27 years later.
I'm still sober, I still live here,
and I really think that this community,
the people here, are what saved me.
I was so damaged.
A lot of people, when they get sober,
need to be rehabilitated.
You hear that word all the time.
I needed to be habilitated.
I did not know how to live.
- How does that roll into, you get clean,
then you end up opening your own restaurant,
right, like, shortly thereafter.
How did community play into that?
- Massively.
So I'm in treatment for five weeks.
Then they suggest I live
in a halfway house for five, six months.
I go do that, and when it was time to leave the house,
I got a job as a dishwasher at a French restaurant.
One day one of the cooks didn't show up,
and everyone was in a panic.
And I said, "I can put out that station."
So I ended up putting out that station that day
for the lunch service at a 125-seat French bistro.
The owner of the restaurant, his office,
he could look down the line from where his office was.
And he gave me one of these through the door.
And he sat me down in his office, and he said,
"can you explain to me why my dishwasher
"just made food that looks better
"than the food my chef makes?"
- Right. - I said, "well,
"I have a confession to make.
"I'm a food professional, and I'm from New York.
"And I'm doing the sober thing here in Minneapolis."
And he literally, right away he said,
"well, how quickly can you replace my chef?"
Because I tapped into this underground railroad
of really seriously good cooks and chefs
who were coming through Minnesota,
which is one of the world's hotbeds of recovery,
I started to, like, sort of pick and choose.
And we put together an incredible team of people.
We'd have meetings in the back of the restaurant.
- [Mark] It's like a chef Avengers by people--
- Yes! - By chefs who were, like,
recovering here, rebooting-- - Yes, and you know,
we're just trying so hard to make up for lost time
and to make, you know, amends to ourselves through this
and to make up for all the days you're late,
all the days you showed up hungover,
all the days you stole mise en place from someone else,
all the days you stole from the restaurant.
We were just firing on all cylinders,
and it became one of the best restaurants in Minneapolis.
- Look, I'm a Midwestern media guy, right?
I worked for east coast companies for a decade,
and it worked out for me,
and no one understands how it works.
- Yep. - Did you think about
moving back to New York at that time?
Like, if I want to do this, I should be writing
for The New York Times. - Every day.
- I should be-- - Life worked for me here.
I was really happy for the first time in my life,
the first four, five, six, seven years I was sober here,
I mean, really, truly happy. - Yeah.
- So when I was eight, nine, ten years sober
and gonna swing it over into other stuff,
I was like, I can do it here.
I can do it here.
"Straight outta cookies." - Yes.
- Cookie? - No, thank you.
- You gotta live your brand, kid!
- We were on your program a couple years ago.
You were eating mini donuts here.
- Were you? - Yeah.
- Wanna cookie? - How are you doing?
- I'm good; how are you?
Have a cookie.
- I wanna shake your hand quick.
- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
It's awesome to see you. - Have a cookie.
- Thank you; I appreciate it. - Yeah, they're all good.
No, take the double. - (laughs)
- The double, that's good luck.
- This feels like the world's biggest small-town thing.
I'm from the Midwest, but this is, like,
Midwest by Midwest standards.
How do you feel like your work has changed
over hundreds of episodes? - Dramatically.
- Because I mean, like-- - Dramatically.
- [Mark] Just you have, like, you know,
Bizarre Foods is still, like, that brand,
that moniker, but, like-- - Different show, though.
- [Mark] For me, watching the show,
it's a vastly different show than I remember.
- So I had a great idea, pitched it to Travel Channel.
Travel Channel said, "we love that.
"It's a great show; that's eight episodes on PBS."
It was very intellectual.
It was very high-brow.
It was really a deep dive into culture
through food, very smart.
A brilliant man, Pat Younge,
who was running Travel Channel at the time,
he said, "I run an entertainment network.
"Give me 75% entertainment, 25% intelligence
"instead of the reverse."
And it was the Faustian bargain.
He said, "yes, anyone who signs up
"to make money in television
"gives away a piece of their integrity.
"It's just the way it is."
- Yeah. - We both have,
when we sign on to do this stuff.
However, he said, "you'll be able to preach that message,
"that 25% of the show, to people in 140 countries
"instead of just folks on, you know, WNET."
And I was like, okay.
The first year I had no control over the show.
It was definitely "fat guy,
"goes around the world, eats bugs."
- In my mind's eye, that's what I remember the first season
of Bizarre Foods as-- - Oh, yeah.
- As I mean, frankly, without sounding critical,
a little bit of exoticism involved with it, right,
like, in sort of the older-school NatGeo way.
- [Andrew] There was a lot of cultural insensitivity.
There were a lot of missed opportunities.
There was a lot of playing somebody else's
serious cultural totems dear to them for laughs.
I had to change it if I wanted
to have a longer career doing that.
And lo and behold, that's what happened.
I mean, we've, you know, I think year three
I got executive producer credit.
You know, at that point all of it became
where do I want to go, what do I want to do,
what do I want to say,
I mean, obviously within boundaries
of delivering the product to the network.
- Yeah. - TV is a team sport.
I'm not shooting and-- - Right.
- You know, being the show at the same time.
If I could figure out a way to do that, I would.
(playful music)
- [Woman] Get a picture with you?
- We're in the middle of shooting something.
- Oh, I'm so sorry. - No problem.
You know, it's not just about the foods
and the carnival games and all the rest of that.
It's about the animals and, you know,
the unions have a booth.
The political parties have booths.
Everyone who, the whole state--
- You are making a very strong case that this is about more
than a gallon of cookies in your hand.
- I'm trying to.
With all the news of the last two years,
I think what's really fun about the fair
is that it reminds you that,
A, we can put aside those differences,
'cause half the people here are blue,
half the people are red, right?
You know, to come here and be reminded,
you know something, our country's made of people,
and the people here are pretty darn good,
and I think we can withstand even this crap,
is, you know, is pretty slick.
- All right, the cynical part of me is about to say,
"yeah, but half of 'em are really racist."
- [Andrew] I'm opening a restaurant
in the suburbs of Minneapolis in a mall.
And I'm doing it on purpose.
- Because obviously you want to--
- 'Cause I'm trying-- - Reach rural America.
- 'Cause I'm trying to prove a point, I guess.
I mean, it's a very expensive point to prove,
if I don't make it. - Yeah.
- But I was at Madam Hao's in New York.
I was at Mister Jiu's in San Francisco,
great, like, personal Chinese restaurants.
Danny Bowien's Mission Chinese.
I mean, I could keep going on and on--
- Yeah.
- [Andrew] About these very personal takes
on Chinese cuisine, and I love it.
And I sat there, and I started to think
about some of my friends back in Minnesota.
And I'm like, they just, they wouldn't get it.
They wouldn't get it.
And I said, well, why, what is it?
What do I want them, do I, and I realized
I want them to get it.
So what I have to do is
I have to introduce them to hot chili oil
and introduce them to a hand-cut noodle
and introduce them to a real roast duck.
- It feels like it's your take on education
about food and sort of entertainment,
combining that, but putting it into a restaurant,
but doing it in a non, I guess,
a less branded, more authentic way.
- I think so. - With branding around it.
- But at the same-- - With a restaurant.
- But at the same time, I'm gonna pursue
the big marketing idea to try to put
200 of them around-- - Right, exactly.
- Because I have a lot of ambition.
From a business model standpoint,
I think we can do it. - Yeah.
- And so that's the challenge of the modern-day entrepreneur
with a soul, you know? - Yeah.
- I mean, I actually, I have a soul.
I wanna make the world a better place.
We don't do a business deal in my office
if we don't think it leaves the world a better place.
So how do you justify putting 200 restaurants
across middle America?
Well, number one, I think I'm saving the souls
of all the people from having to dine
at these horseshit restaurants
masquerading as Chinese food that are in the Midwest.
- Yeah. - That's number one.
- Yeah, okay, so my question is
so how does the white guy make
a Chinese restaurant in Minneapolis
that doesn't feel, that isn't just good and approachable,
but doesn't feel like it's othering the culture?
- I've been going to China every year
for the last 20-some-odd years.
I was doing it before I was doing TV.
And I'm obsessed with Chinese food and culture.
I have been since I was a little kid.
And I'm now trying to use my platform to show people
what beautiful, big flavors are from that culture
and kind of move it all forward just one little degree.
'Cause I'm not worried about people in New York or LA
being exposed to Chinese food and culture.
I'm worried about people in Indianapolis
being exposed to Chinese culture.
I mean, maybe I took it on
because other people haven't been able to do it, you know?
I mean, was PF Chang's not a ripoff
because Cecelia Chiang's kid owned it?
Because despite how he looks on the outside,
he's a rich American kid on the inside, right?
You're neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
- [Mark] I don't know where to go with it.
I don't know where to go with it.
- It's a, I mean-- - It's a complicated one.
- It's a fascinating, complicated--
- I don't know if I'm willing to agree
to that line of thinking altogether.
I think it's where it is; it's hard.
I think you-- - Well, it's tough, because--
- I think you in particular,
not that my opinion totally matters on it,
but from the outside, it does feel like
you've paid your dues with a career of journalism
and sort of reporting in a way, right?
- Mm-hmm. - And maybe it is a gradient.
Maybe it's neither wrong nor right.
Rick Bayless, his books taught me
to cook Mexican food, right?
Like, Julia Childs' books taught, you know,
a generation before me to cook French food.
At the same time, it's like,
Bayless has grown really large.
He's opened a whole lot of restaurants.
Should other people have opportunities
to be opening those restaurants, perhaps, instead,
get some of that investment instead?
- Well, who gets-- - Maybe, it's tough.
- At the end of the day it's about our motives, number one.
And I'll leave you with one last thought on this.
Is it true, does it need to be said,
and if it's true and needs to be said,
is it up to me to say it?
Those are the three questions I ask myself,
I try to, before I do anything,
open my mouth, build something, make something.
You know, it's true that this market
needs that kind of thing.
And it's true that I want to do it.
And does it need to happen?
You know, I think it does.
I think it does.
Someone else is gonna do it,
and someone else is gonna be the next PF Chang,
and I don't want 'em to blow it.
And then is it up to me to do it?
I don't know, I certainly think I'm in the conversation.
You know, and just because I'm not Chinese,
I leave that to the rest of the world to judge.
But if I can get people to open their mind one degree,
just spread those blinders one degree
about something new to eat from another culture,
I think we, the rising tide floats all boats.
Plus, we have a T-shirt that says "get lucky"
in Chinese on the back. - Oh, done then.
- Oh, okay. - The entire time,
why didn't you just lead with that?
(dramatic music)