ANDREW ZIMMERN: The theme of tonight's episode is people
that have fired me or wouldn't hire me.
I was such a drug addled mess.
This was generically what happened.
I either was able to ingratiate myself right away
because I had a lot of good talent and I could keep up
when we were in the shit, which was the biggest mistake,
because I always ended up just drinking and drugging myself
out of the job.
I did a year at Raquel with Thomas, and that was great.
But he and a couple other guys found in the liquor room drunk
from the night before, passed out on the floor.
When he saw me for the first time like 10 years ago--
I was helping a friend-- he literally walked across the
room, gave me a hug, and whispered in my ear, I thought
you were dead.
And then I moved to Minnesota.
I got well, and things got dramatically better for me.
My whole face is numb.
Wow, wow, wow.
This smell back here at this part of the
sheep out in the desert--
fantastic.
These little curved pieces here are the intestines.
And then this is the stomach lining.
I'm Andrew Zimmern.
I'm the host, co-creator, and co-executive producer of
"Bizarre Foods" on the Travel Channel.
What fascinates me about the world is food is the ultimate
lens through which to view another people.
When we go into a city, we can explore that city's history
through the food.
When we go tribal, we are able to, through the food, discover
how they think and how they feel.
When you share food with other people, you end up talking
about the things you have in common.
There's no way to escape it.
Even if you haven't spoken a word to me in three day
because I'm suspiciously weird and white, if I'm eating their
mom's food, they will look at me, and at some point, they
are obligated to say, what do you think?
It's a little salty.
It's a little fishy and putrid, but it
is very, very tasty.
So I sit there and I go, you know it is.
It's like, someone comes into my home, and my wife makes her
tater tot hot dish, I look at them at them and I'm like,
uh-huh, you know what I'm saying?
It's just the way it is.
I came to New York for the script to network upfronts.
I come into town, I want to have fun for a couple hours
and go see some friends and hang out in a couple
restaurants and eat a couple of good things.
Met a bunch of friends at Osteria Morini.
And I come here all the time when I'm in New York, because
I just think it's great rustic Italian food.
Marisa, this is Niki, Niki, Marisa.
Marisa was one of the interns at our production company for
the most painful three months--
brutal.
My friend Niki, who's also my publicist, my friend Jordan,
who just moved here from Minnesota, and his girlfriend
Taya, also from Minnesota.
JORDAN HUSNEY: You know she's not my girlfriend.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: You're not his girlfriend?
TAYA MUELLER: His girlfriend will kill me.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: Does life get any better?
We're just eating a snack, have a drink,
and then off to Forgiones.
This is a grazing night.
Couple little snacks always ends up dragging on for at
least 45 minutes longer than anyone else's version of
eating a couple little snacks, number one because I'm a
serial over-orderer.
We'll do prosciutto, spec, copa, lardo, fegatini.
The [INAUDIBLE] peas, and the lamb prudo.
I'm looking for the filled--
-The [INAUDIBLE] with the [INAUDIBLE].
ANDREW ZIMMERN: Oh, yeah.
We'll do two orders of those because we'll need two.
Michael White, who owns the place is a friend of mine.
The chef who started this restaurant for Michael is a
guy named Bill Dorrler, who's a fantastic chef.
Asi has been here originally when they opened, and now he
runs the place.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: That just looks beautiful.
The brilliant part of it to me was that they were able to
say, well, what would happen if we let it go twice as long
in the aging room as is normallly thought appropriate?
Now, I should tell you, but I doubt very much whether any of
you have ever eaten beef this old.
120 days is a third of a year.
If beef is aged 24, 36 days, it's a miracle.
If you get it aged 45 days, it starts to get really finessed
and antique.
If you go 120 days, the flavor of the meat is so different.
Even great steakhouses won't go this old.
I laughed when the waiter said the beef
flavor is very focused.
I'm like, you mean dank and almost cheese-like, funky,
almost tastes like the forest floor in a damp
sort of fetted way.
It creates a flavor that is like no other.
It just melts in your mouth, tender.
It was just crazy good.
That's ridiculously good, just beautiful funk to it--
really beautiful.
What's this?
-Lamb brain and veal sweet breads.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: People go, oh, brains and sweet breads.
But if you didn't tell someone what that was,
they'd scarf it down.
NIKI TURKINGTON: It's got an interesting texture.
It's marshmallowy.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: If you saw one of my New York episodes, we
have pictures of the 80-year-old women
making these pastas.
When you taste these, the quality quotient is insane.
Michael White made a name for himself cooking pasta.
There are many people who feel he's the best pasta cook of
his generation.
I've not eaten pasta cooked by anyone in America in the last
20 years that's better than his.
Think about making all of those tortellini, those little
two-sided ravioli, the espelette.
It just blew my mind.
The precision with these things, you just
won't have its equal.
NIKI TURKINGTON: That is like, oh, my god.
I'm leaving you guys.
I'm going to stay here with my new favorite thing, the pasta.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: This is the worst part of my life, which
is sitting there doing this and getting frantic emails
from producers of my show trying to figure out how to
make something work that right now isn't working.
We were able to get out of Morini with our appetites
somewhat intact and make our way over to Marc Forgione's
restaurant.
NIKI TURKINGTON: What would you have described
yourself in the '70s?
ANDREW ZIMMERN: I will tell you about the '70s, Niki, you
weren't born yet.
It was a very exciting time for some of us.
Pot got you really high, and it wasn't expensive.
It was very simple.
Life was so easy.
Is Mark still here?
MARC FORGIONE: Yes, yes.
[INAUDIBLE].
ANDREW ZIMMERN: Marc Forgione, iron chef, a lot of people
think that guys who cook on TV are TV chefs.
Not so this guy.
And the thing that I like most about hanging out with him was
I always remind him that his dad fired me after half a day
at an American Place.
30 years ago, an American Place was a landmark in the
history of the food scene in America.
I was a mess.
I deserved to be fired one hour after I went in the door.
It was a miracle I lasted half a shift there.
MARC FORGIONE: I didn't even know my dad was a real chef.
I just thought he was a guy who went to work every day and
had a restaurant.
And I didn't think anything of it.
American Place is one of those restaurants that really
changed the way Americans eat.
My old man, people like Alice Waters, Jonathan Waxman, all
these guys are really visionaries.
When you're a teenager, you find a summer job
to make some money.
I didn't know it at the time, but my job to make some money
over the summer was working in one of the best restaurants in
the country.
And by the time I was 18 or 19 years old, I know it sounds
crazy, I knew how to make a consomme.
But I didn't know that other people didn't
know how to do that.
It was just, you don't how to make dinner, dude.
Like, I'll make dinner.
The food here in American through and through.
America, to me, especially being from New York, it's a
melting pot.
I like to have fun with what we're doing.
You can go anywhere and just have dinner.
I'm loving this.
I told you we were going to mess with your
senses a little bit.
First, everybody take the ceramic spoon.
This is called a Szechuan button.
So place it in your mouth and roll it
around with your tongue.
Don't swallow it.
It's like an herb.
You want to wake it up in your mouth.
And your mouth is going to start to tingle a little bit.
You're going to then follow it with the sashimi spoon with
avocado mousse.
You're going to breathe in a wasabi and mint cloud.
NIKI TURKINGTON: Wow.
MARC FORGIONE: Then you eat the rest of the tartar, which
is a [INAUDIBLE] with a little avocado and
fresh wasabi sauce.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: Full on sensory overload.
Here's what's so fricking brilliant about it.
You've got to be so spot on perfect in terms of technique,
flavor, and how you pull that off, because otherwise, people
are laughing at you.
MARC FORGIONE: The cloud thing we've been doing for about
six, seven months now.
And when you see a whole visual of it, it's not
something you see every day in a restaurant.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: For me, this is why I eat out.
If I want to take a simple piece of fish and throw it on
the grill and put it over some green vegetable with a little
bit of sauce that I made in the pan, that's
not why I eat out.
That's how I cook at home.
I eat at a restaurant like this because I'm curious about
what a chef can do within the boundaries of the realm of
ingredients and techniques that you're constrained with.
MARC FORGIONE: I also told you I was going to mess with your
emotions and your sense of childhood and all that stuff.
This is a fully-loaded baked potato.
This is what I need you to think about while you're
eating the next course.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: All of that sparks a thought and a feeling
and creates a relationship with the food.
I think that's the purview of what great
restaurants should be.
MARC FORGIONE: So these are the ravioli filled with creme
fraiche, a little parsley, chives, red pepper flakes, a
little bit of lemon zest, a touch of truffle oil, and some
raw shallots.
Now, this is a stock that we actually
make with baked potatoes.
There you have what we like to call baked potato.
I think emotionally everybody has an idea or an attachment
or a flavor profile when you think of a fully
loaded baked potato.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: Smell that.
What does it smell like?
It's a fully loaded baked potato.
MARC FORGIONE: When you buy into that creme fraiche
ravioli with the fried potato and the bacon and the scallion
and the butter, all that stuff, all of a sudden, you're
looking at a baked potato.
You're eating something that tastes like a baked potato.
I'm sure it made you short circuit a little bit.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: And it's a very simple idea.
I just think it's brilliant.
When it's done right, it's brilliant.
MARC FORGIONE: Anything else I can get you, you let me know.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: Wrong car.
Fantastic--
people working out.
The nice thing about New York City is that
restaurants are open late.
The nicer thing about New York City is that chefs are
actually in their restaurants.
Jonathan and I have known each other for a long time.
Jonathan Waxman belongs in that generation of chefs who
helped define what American cuisine is today.
He was at the forefront of bringing in California farm
modernism into New York City when he opened up Jams.
And what's incredible is that Jonathan Waxman has been
inspirational and relevant to two
generations of American chefs.
NIKI TURKINGTON: It's a beautiful kitchen you have
here, Jonathan.
JONATHAN WAXMAN: No, it's a dump.
NIKI TURKINGTON: I heard that you're the chicken king.
He thought it was funny that he was going to make chicken
from chicken king.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: I had decided that I wanted to make Jonathan
the chicken wings.
You might as well bring coals to Newcastle.
Famously, a man who's built a career almost about roasting
the perfect chicken.
I wanted to cook you this dish because, in the great
tradition of [INAUDIBLE]
Chinese chicken dishes, this is my favorite.
It's a 1,000-year-old Chinese grandmother recipe that I
learned from a Chinese chef in New York who taught classes at
the Y in the late '70s, early '80s.
When you eat this, you'll taste it and go, oh,
my god I know this.
This is Chairman Mao's red sauce.
And it's really easy.
But then when I went to China for the first time and I had
someone make it, I insisted on learning it from them.
And then I had those fabulous chilis from
my friend Yu's farm.
And I was like, well, this is going to be fantastic.
There are people right now that are talking about doing
Chinese restaurants and doing some of
those classical dishes.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: It's very true.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: I don't think there's anything more fun than
sitting around and shooting the shit with guys who really
know what they're talking about and telling stories and
engaging in the exchange of ideas.
By the way, while we're waiting for this, would you
please tell the story of your dad and those dishes?
JONATHAN WAXMAN: My dad, who was an intrepid diner, he
moved from the Bronx to California because he knew the
weather was better and the food was
better, which is true.
But the best thing was going to this restaurant called Sun
Hun Yung, which is on Washington Street in downtown
Chinatown in San Francisco.
And he refused to sit on the ground floor with all the
geisha and all non-Chinese.
The third floor was only Chinese, only family, only
banquet-style.
And one of the dishes, I remember when I was a little
kid, they brought me this thing and it
was parchment chicken.
And it must have been chicken thighs soaked in a marinade of
soy, ginger, whatever wrapped inside parchment paper and
then deep fried in the parchment paper.
And you eat it, and the oozing sauce and the paper.
And you lick the paper.
And oh, my god, it's the greatest thing in the world.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: I'm trying some of this sauce.
I'm going in here.
JONATHAN WAXMAN: Go nuts.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: That's the stuff.
But that is Chinese grandmother food.
JONATHAN WAXMAN: And my father just passed away.
And god bless him.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: Sorry to hear that.
JONATHAN WAXMAN: Thank you.
He was his passion to eat that well.
Cooking what you do reminds me a little of my dad, honestly,
because my dad had this sort of penchant for really spicy
things that have lots of acid, onions, garlic, ginger,
Chinese spices.
It's kind of cool.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
ANDREW ZIMMERN: You're welcome.
That's really, really sweet.
JONATHAN WAXMAN: He once cooked a--
ANDREW ZIMMERN: That's the great thing about food,
though, because I had people who reminded me of my
grandmother while they were [INAUDIBLE].
It is the greatest thing in the world about what we do is
that you can make a memory like that come back.
My first stir fry, we had a wok in our house in 1966.
When my mother finally saw one in a store that she could get
one, because she made this thing that was chow mein that
I called chicken a la gush.
I still make it.
It's my mother's old chow mein recipe with a
lot of celery and--