Life as a traveling chef isn't as easy as it appears.
Obsessive fans, divorce, and a rare virus are just some of the things that Andrew Zimmern
experienced while hosting "Bizarre Foods."
But he did learn the secret to happiness along the way.
As odd as it may sound, what catapulted Andrew Zimmern to fame was his audacity to eat elk
testicles.
A 10-minute clip of him snacking on elk and ostrich meat was filmed by Minnesota-based
television production company Tremendous Entertainment and sent to Travel Channel as a pitch for
"Bizarre Foods."
The clip was well-received and led to some pilot episodes for "Bizarre Foods Asia."
Three years later, Zimmern found himself traveling around the world eating … well, bizarre
food.
In the years following the launch of "Bizarre Foods," Zimmern's fame billowed to an extent
that he started getting calls to appear on shows with Jay Leno, Anthony Bourdain, and
Carson Daly.
His series even had its own spinoffs: "Bizarre World," "Bizarre Foods America," and "Bizarre
Foods: Delicious Destinations."
Zimmern, who had dived in and out of the restaurant industry without prolonged success, became
a celebrity for eating adventurously on screen.
But with fame comes a lack of privacy: he told Minnpost in a 2013 interview,
"I've been followed in hospitals with a camera phone through an oncology ward.
People have trampled my wife and kid to get to me."
Andrew Zimmern has been to more countries than most people can identify in an atlas.
Though he caught the travel bug from his dad, it was "Bizarre Foods" that gave the bug its
wings.
Now, the chef has a suitcase packed and ready to go at all times.
He told Forbes in 2019,
"The dirty laundry will come out of a bag when I return home and go back in right away
once it's washed and dried.
I just travel so much, it's really the only way to do it."
Anyone who feels the need to take a vacation to spring back from vacation might wonder
why he does it.
Zimmern says,
"The power of travel can be transformative."
He sure wouldn't have found himself tasting Samoan coral worms or lethal Japanese fish
if he was still running a restaurant in Minneapolis.
A lot of learning can be gained through boundary-pushing moments, and that is exactly what Zimmern
seeks in his travels and shares with his audience.
With fame comes responsibility, and Andrew Zimmern soon realized his words weren't merely
sentence fillers.
Instead, they had the power to unite or divide his audience.
For example, when he said that Filipino food was going to be the next big thing in 2012,
he was met with disapproval.
According to Thrillist, numerous people said that calling it a trend disregarded the centuries-old
history of the country's cuisine.
Then, in a 2018 interview with Fast Company, he offended many people by belittling Chinese
restaurants in the Midwest, per Eater.
In his conversation with Fast Company, he mentioned learning important lessons ever
since he expanded the circle of people he dined with.
Zimmern acknowledged that in its initial days, the series did portray a lot of cultural insensitivity.
"I had to change it if I wanted to have a longer career doing that."
The show has even been accused of "exoticizing poverty."
Per the book "The Political Language of Food," "Bizarre Foods" engages in "poverty tourism."
After becoming the executive producer of the show in its third year, Zimmern adjusted his
storytelling and barred himself from using phrases such as "ethnic food" and "hole in
the wall," which he had come to realize were derogatory and, quote, “steeped in white
privilege"
How do you eat shrimp?
According to Zimmern, your answer to that question could explain a lot in terms of how
much you care about food waste.
Here's an eye-opener for those whose idea of a feast is endless headless shrimp from
Red Lobster: The heads contain all the flavor.
But as a culture, Americans eat for speed and convenience, as Zimmern explained in a
conversation with Travel Channel.
In 2001, Joe Klaus, the director of marketing for Empress International, a large seafood
company, told The New Yorker that only 5% of the 950 million pounds of shrimp sold in
the U.S. have their heads still on.
This isn't the case in Europe, Asia, or South America.
Zimmern reached the same conclusion, noting that in Japan,
“They arrange them on a plate and serve the heads as a second course to call out their
importance."
"It's a very very elegant version of a dish I've tasted many times."
"Ah, yes."
"That's good."
For those who wake up dreaming about french toast with maple syrup or sugary cereal, Zimmern's
words in a Lifehacker interview might sting a bit:
"The American breakfast is toxic for people."
He views Japanese breakfasts as the ideal healthy and delicious combination:
"You have some pickles, and a little bit of rice, and a little bowl of broth of some kind,
and a little piece of leftover broiled fish."
It took just over a year of travel around the world for the celebrity to realize there
is something wrong with the way America eats.
On his website, Zimmern writes,
"We are heading down a dangerous path.
30 percent of our kids are obese.
One in every six people in our country is food insecure."
He went on to call the food system in America "damaged."
How can we help?
Zimmern suggests eating more vegetarian food, replacing imported salmon with small fish
available seasonally, and opting for wild game protein sources.
Zimmern sure can eat a bug in a blink, but he never wanted to be known just for that.
“The first year I had no control over the show.
It was definitely, fat guy goes around the world eats bugs.”
His goal was to educate people about different cultures, and if he has to eat braised pig
foot ice cream, so be it.
He said in an interview with Blue Zones,
"Food is the perfect microscope with which to view a culture.
I can learn more sitting around the table in Spain than visiting a museum."
After 13 seasons of "Bizarre Foods," he decided to turn his attention to the throbbing question:
"What's Eating America?"
The five-episode docuseries started off by exploring the role of immigrants in keeping
America's food system stable.
Zimmern, who was named UN's Goodwill Ambassador in 2021, told NBC News,
"If you take those workers out of our food system, it literally stops.
Immigrants, migrants, documented, and undocumented people touch every plate of food in America,
at every single stage."
In other episodes, Zimmern talks to reformed felons stripped of their voting rights and
tries to understand the future of farming directly from scientists.
Why is he exploring these perspectives on a series about food?
He stated in a press release, "There is no more important time than right
now to be telling stories about civics, politics and culture through food."
Though Andrew Zimmern learned lessons about family and togetherness from the tribes he's
met throughout the years, it didn't help sustain his own family.
His travels took a toll on his personal life, leading to a divorce in 2018 from Rishia Haas
— his wife of 18 years.
He told The New York Times,
"I wasn't there for my wife, and I wasn't there for my son."
The couple tied the knot in 2002 before he became a celebrity; in fact, he had just quit
the restaurant business and gotten into food media assuming the change would allow him
to have a good work-life balance.
He shared with the New York Times,
"My wife gave me a thousand chances to make it right."
However, he confessed that he was too carried away by all the publicity.
Letting bygones be bygones, now Zimmern has a new goal:
"I want to be the best dad and the best ex I can be."
Even after their split, Zimmern is still friends with his ex-wife.
On Mother's Day 2020, he told his million followers on Instagram that Rishia is "the
bravest mom" he knows.
"Bizarre Foods" often placed Zimmern in high-risk situations.
In an episode shot in Iceland, he had to sail on a rubber boat through raging waters to
see how the locals hunted puffins.
The risk of being attacked by a pod of monstrous killer whales added to the fear of drowning
in freezing waters.
He writes in "The Bizarre Truth: Culinary Misadventures around the Globe,”
"The immediacy of the situation was oddly thrilling, and I am not a ballsy guy by any
stretch of the imagination."
"This is exciting."
He also recounts his days in Lwanika, a village in Africa, where he slept in a small tent
while being vigilant of the elephants and lions that were known to roam the area.
He wrote,
"I spent most of those nights lying sleepless in my tent, too terrified to venture outside
to piss for fear of being devoured by something."
Though Zimmern says he's "not a thrill junkie" or someone trying to make a Fear Factor-like
show, diving into the waters in Australia despite being warned about sharks and eels
can appear otherwise.
Thrills aside, he did it because that's how the locals collected shellfish, crustaceans,
and mollusks, and he wanted to experience it for himself.
For someone whose life looks like one long vacation, Zimmern has been through some bleak
times.
He started drinking alcohol while still in school to deal with his mother's health issues.
Though the Vassar graduate was a brilliant chef, his addiction put his career on pause,
worsening to a point that he had to steal to survive.
According to the New York Times, Zimmern shared his experiences with prison inmates as part
of their sobriety program, telling them,
"I was the vagrant pushing the shopping cart that people crossed the street to avoid."
He has been sober since 1992 but has kept the past fresh in his memory.
He shared in an interview with The A.V.
Club,
"It’s my greatest asset.
For me, it’s saying ‘I remember’ and cling to every single day, and if it can be
helpful to someone else, I’m anxious to share it."
Ever since "Bizarre Foods," people have been interested in knowing about his battle.
He shared,
"There's not a public event that I do that somebody doesn't come up to me and say, 'Thank
you so much, I'm two years clean, and you were my hero and then I found out you were
sober, and I realized I can do it too,'"
When Andrew Zimmern did an episode in Morocco in 2005, he brought back not just memories
of the grand cuisine of the North African nation, but also a virus.
He told ABC News in 2014,
"I picked up a virus about 10 years ago in, uh, central Morocco from tainted cumin."
How serious is it?
Zimmern answered in a Reddit AMA:
"Occasionally once a year I have a flare-up of a rare disease called burning mouth syndrome.
I pass it off as a simple casualty of war."
This syndrome, as per WebMD, can affect any part of the mouth or throat, causing difficulties
in swallowing and a tingly numbing sensation.
The fact that Zimmern continued traveling and tasting bizarre foods even after the incident
is a testament to his adventurousness and his appetite.
But the virus did change the way he travels.
Zimmern tells HuffPost that his must-carry item since 2005 is a steroidal rinse for his
mouth, which helps with the flare-ups.
Andrew Zimmern had to travel to countless countries to discover the secret to happiness.
Though born to a wealthy family in New York's Upper East Side, he grew up fighting depression
and anxiety.
In his book "The Bizarre Truth: Culinary Misadventures around the Globe," he recalls how mistaken
he was to think that his quality of life was better than those living in tribal Africa.
He writes,
"How superior and smug I felt.
What a little snot I was — well, actually, I was just inexperienced and untraveled."
And so he began traveling.
Over the years, he realized that people are at their best when they're traveling.
"Bizarre Foods" took Zimmern to unheard places, where he carried with him questions about
life and existence.
It took almost four decades, but as per his book, he finally got his answer from a shaman
in Botswana:
"The bizarre truth is that the secret to happiness is simply the ability to love and respect
other people."
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