Andrew Zimmern and Dan are going to be working together on some events for the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, but before they do, he joined the show to discuss how he found a career in food AND television, some of his favorite Bizarre Foods experiences, and, naturally, how he ended up with several nutsacks in his home as a proverbial trophy of the animal balls he has eaten. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Chris, when I say the name Andrew Zimmern, what happens to you? Do you just immediately, Jessica, you're a foodie. Like, do you guys immediately just go crazy with your taste buds now are activated?
I mean, I grew up on his show. It is one of my favorite shows of all time. I am the biggest Andrew Zimmern stan.
Dream job. Okay, dream job. I imagine all these people say these things, so I'm happy to have him in with us today. I'm doing an event with him for the Food and Wine Festival in Miami. Not for him, but... around him, these festivities. I'm honored to be a part of them because Miami actually throws a really great party this time of year. Tickets are now on sale at SoBeWFF.org.
It's going to be February 20th through the 23rd. But Jessica, what do you want to ask if this is a person you're dying to talk to? And thank you, Andrew, for being on with us. What you want to ask?
Well, if he's cooking for you at this festival, make sure that it doesn't have gluten, dairy, carbs, bread, sugar.
Besides that, you're good to go. It's very limiting, my diet.
Andrew, we just talked. We met a few years ago in New York. My first question, are you still buddies with Cousin Stiz?
I am still buddies with Cousin Stiz. We're social media buddies, but we slide into each other's DMs frequently. One of these days, I will be in a city where he is performing and take my kids and we'll go. Should be a good time. He's a great dude.
This guy is so cool, Dan.
Do you have indeed a dream job? Does he have this right?
It's interesting. You know, I sort of fell into a television career. You know, I was a chef and a restaurateur and... You know, I had never thought of myself as a storyteller, but in fact, that's what I was doing with my food. That's what I was doing whenever I was, you know, on the stump in the food world, flying my trade, you know, at events like the one in South Beach that you're talking about.
And then I in the early days of food television, this is 28 years ago, started to get my mind my name out there and started to do some little appearances. And then it led to national appearances that led to national regular appearances on other people's shows and then ultimately to my own work. And obviously, Bizarre Foods is a legacy show on for 12 years. We made hundreds of episodes at one
a gazillion awards. And I guess probably as famously as all of that, Monday nights on Travel Channel for years was Star Foods with me and No Reservations with my friend Tony Bourdain, back to back for many, many, many years. And I think for a lot of folks, young and old, that was a pivotal moment in the history of
food television where it wasn't a talking head standing behind a cutting board making you teaching how to grill a steak or make a pasta. It was actually innovative explorers out in the world bringing cultures that you may not be exposed to and new ideas and new ways of thinking about not just food, but about all totems of culture right into your living room.
And that's what I've continued to do with my 14, 15 shows since then with all of my nonprofit work, with all of the other things I do with my production company, Intuitive Content, is we try to keep people curious and bring ideas out into the forefront of American culture that may be buried or come from somewhere else that people may not want to hear about.
Do you have a favorite episode that you've shot of Bizarre Foods?
yeah uh botswa not even close i went in there i am a very cynical overly educated uh east coast old man and uh if you had told me that a human being could eat piles of hot charcoal four feet away from me, dig himself into the sand, disjoint his shoulders and hips to do that, and then astrally project himself miles and miles away.
And have another shaman go into my head and learn things about me that there is no way he could have known about. No way. All that stuff happened in front of me. And then I went and sat outside the shaman's hut because I didn't want anyone to talk to him because I had to ask him when he came out how he knew what he knew about my life. And he actually went into my head and.
We had a shared experience and we captured it on tape. And I'm just hysterically crying. I'm clearly in another place with him. It was one of the most staggering experiences of my life. But that's where I learned how to be.
a little greener how excited are you right now jessica because uh this person is an icon this person the way that he cares about food and talks about food and brings food to people uh makes him some he makes him a shaman like he speaks and there there's a community of of food network lovers who will grab every dollop that this man speaks and turn it into the sweetest of sugar
I bet he has some crazy memorabilia in his house, too. We're trying to figure out what is the flag behind you? It's like red and white stripe with.
Oh, that is that is a Minnesota flag that was carried by a regiment to Round Top in at Gettysburg. See what I mean? I collect a lot of unusual memorabilia, and I actually think really well amongst a lot of clutter. So you see a lot of things behind me. This is actually my office. That's one of Paul McCartney's guitars over my other shoulder. But I happen to have a...
over on this little thing here i have the nut sacks of six or seven different animals uh that i've taken in the wild and whose balls i've eaten and most people gravitate towards that first and foremost i have that in my house too well as does everyone i just have more of them which animals There's a well, the largest belongs to the 25th largest wild bison ever taken.
I shot it in New Mexico about eight years ago. It's about this big. And it goes down to, I mean, relatively small, but, you know, Kudu, you know, which is an African bison. antelope and a lot of different animals in between. I have a wildebeest nutsack over there that is about the size of a softball. And they're tanned. I actually tan them myself in a rustic way. You just put salt into them.
And the most awkward thing in the world is once you start collecting them, When you're out with tribal peoples or you have an opportunity to harvest an animal and eat it with a tribe, and I say, can I have the nutsack? And they look at me like I'm crazy. And I tell them I'm going to make a purse out of it. And then sometimes they fill it with salt and they tan it for me.
And one tribal people, I was there for a week. They actually put a little leather around it, like a little drawstring pouch, so I could actually use it. I just don't like to take it out in public because people ask all kinds of crazy questions. What's that nut sack doing in your hand Zimmern? Well, can we see show us your nut sacks?
Would you like to see one? I would love it Yeah, I got it.
We got to get top five nut sacks.
There's nothing you can't put salt on. Let's see He's walking back.
He had the opportunity to prank us This is an African antelope called a kudu More hair than I thought.
I was gonna say the same thing very nice coat of hair.
Yeah, this is a moose
For the audio audience, he's showing us testicles.
It's the size. By the way, this is almost the size. It's nutsack is the size of my head.
The moose sack looks like the size of like a bag you bring into a stadium. Like if it were clear, that's right. Bring that in. Stadium.
That's exactly right. I will tell you, I will tell you that one of the funniest episodes of Bizarre Foods that we ever shot, we went, we were in Beijing and we went to a restaurant where all they serve are dishes made with the twigs and berries of various animals around the world. And I was with a guide and, you know, because I don't speak Chinese and no one in that place spoke English.
And, you know, my Mandarin is terrible. wonky and uh we just ordered the tasting menu and they start and i my lips to god's ears is true they start with the smallest twig and berry set of a snake and it goes all the way up to an ox for your final course. Then it goes back down, because dessert is a sweet one made with azimuth and frog testicles, which are very, very small.
And it tastes sort of like a rice dessert, or a tapioca pudding sort of thing. But I will say, That as crazy as that all sounds and as much as even I'm giggling on the inside, when people say, well, we want to eat all parts of the animal and we want full utilization so we're not wasting. It is that it is those experiences from.
20 years ago 15 years ago that is the reason why i'm the global ambassador uh for food and specifically food waste for the united nations world food program because i've seen what full utilization looks like and i understand I think what's tolerable in different cultures around the world.
So it informs a lot of my even a lot of my nonprofit work and other things that I've won a lot of attention for. And in some cases, you know, some hardware.
Not only do I believe that to be the best television that will be made by anyone today producing television, I believe it rivals anything ever made by television and could have only been made better if you had indeed taken Billy Gill's suggestion of pranking us when you say, do you want to see the testicles? You go over, you bend over, and then they're your testicles. You had a chance.
You had a chance to sucker our entire show there. You still do. It's still available to you if you want to get that as the punctuation of this segment.
You want to know something? You want to know something from a creative standpoint? And I'm not doing any log rolling here. When my publicity people called and said, do you want to go on and talk to you? I was like, are you kidding me? Because they had never asked me who I listened to and have listened to for years and years. You've been in my home for decades. 15 years, I think.
So, so that joke is more than one location. So my, my, my point is a complete stranger that I don't have any respect for yet, except for the natural respect that I bring that new relationship. I might, I might drop trow, but I have too much respect for you, believe it or not.
Okay. Well, thank you for that because it would have, I mean, Billy, tell me if he had done that, if, if, if, If he had done that and dismounted the segment with suckering our entire show, no one would have been made happier by that than you.
Well, I mean, okay. Define happy. I'll tell you one thing, though. I don't think Emmy would have been out of the question.
I agree. You are an award-winning content maker. I don't know what you're doing with intuitive content. I'd like to ask you. I will say again for the people, this is a really good event every year. South Florida doesn't really throw... that many great events, but this one is consistently great, and it's the 24th annual South Beach Wine and Food Festival presented by Capital One.
It is February 20th through the 23rd, and tickets are now on sale. So be WFF.org. I should tell the people that all the proceeds from the festival go to the Chaplain School of Hospitality and Tourism at FIU, and that that has had more than $40 million raised for it, because this is one of the biggest ones you do every year, right? And it's got to be one of your favorites.
Well, I think I think it's the biggest in the country, and it is one of my favorites. And, you know, I was there in year one. I've been a part of this forever. The people who created this festival are close friends of mine. The recipients are close friends of mine. The Chaplin family I've gotten to know. FIU I've gotten to know and spoken there many times.
But what's really amazing is we started giving money into the scholarship fund. And we get volunteers from the school to come help us at these big events. I mean, I'm I'm cooking a fancy pants dinner Thursday night at Lamar in in Miami. I'm doing some stuff at Foodie Con on Saturday. I am co-hosting. I hope you're co-hosted the closing event on the beach. I think every year that they've had one.
And I'm doing a demo on Sunday in the Grand Tasting Tent. And we have FIU students helping us all the time because those are our volunteers. They help make the festival go and the students get a chance to work with the great chefs in the world that fly for this event. What's nuts is to be in a restaurant
In Orlando or Palm Beach, you know, and I'm there with my friends or my family and the chef comes out and, you know, the food's fantastic. And, you know, I told chef, nice to meet you. And he says, it's just an honor to meet you again. And I'm just and I said, oh, forgive me for not remembering.
And he turns on his phone and shows me a picture of him as a student at FIU, volunteering in my booth or at my demo. And it happens to me at least twice a year. And the reason I bring that up is that the restaurant industry has really taken it in the shorts over the last eight, nine years, with the downturn in the economy, then COVID, and we could just keep going on and on and on.
So supporting scholarships for people that want to keep the culinary culture alive in America, which is about 11 percent of GDP. Sorry, it's about six independent restaurants alone or about six and a half percent of GDP. That's just independent restaurants. Just independent restaurants employ 11 million people.
Independent restaurants, which is where most really good culinarians go to ply their trade, that's the heartbeat of America. It's where we celebrate our birthdays and anniversaries and go on first dates and last dates and, you know, everything in between. So vitally important work. So, you know, we... Talk about eat, drink and educate. And we get a chance to do all of that.
It's it's it's really, really fun. And for anyone who's been even around Miami when it's going on, you can just feel the energy of 70, 80,000 people who are just there for this incredible event that is now citywide. Hundreds of private dinners and restaurants everywhere. the big events on the beach, lots of satellite events in different neighborhoods all over the city. So it's really exciting.
What did he mean by that, the taking it in the shorts? What does that mean?
I can't stop talking about testicles. He shit himself?
What happened?
I keep going back to the well until the well runs dry, Dan. That's the whole point. No, the restaurant industry has suffered immensely from... No, I understood that part. It was the taking it in the shorts part that I didn't understand. I like that. Keep going back to the same group of metaphors. Sacks.
It always comes back to the testicle. So let's dismount with this. We were talking about this yesterday. The bronze, silver, and gold medalist of best nuts. Actual nuts. Not testicles, or those are actual nuts, I guess. But between all of, not legumes, but from all of the nut categories, the top three nuts. Or what? Start with the bronze medalist. Bronze, I'm going to go with Pistachio.
That was my choice as well, and excellent. Give him his music. You've got to give him his music. Because I came up with this list, and I felt like I was aggressive with my crew. They didn't want to argue it. Number two. Silver medal, I'm going to give to Pecans.
And number one? Number one has to be what are called in the rest of the world groundnuts, but we call them here in America peanuts because of their versatility, popularity, and I think texturally what happens to them at different temperatures makes them really popular with culinarians. We can do a lot with peanuts.
Boo that nut! pistachio was a good one deez nuts you had it deez nuts it was right there for you thank you Andrew pause up you guys are the best hey howdy listener why don't you sit down here next to me
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