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Food Critic, TV Host Relishes A Taste For The Exotic

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By JEFF HOUCK, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 16, 2008

LONGBOAT KEY - Andrew Zimmern just might be the King of All Food Media.

In addition to his eating-around-the-world Travel Channel series "Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern," he is an associate editor, food critic and restaurant columnist for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. He blogs at his site Chow and Again. He's also the food features reporter for Fox 9 News in Minneapolis-St. Paul as well as a featured contributor on HGTV's "Rebecca's Garden" and "TIPical Mary Ellen."

He also hosts a weekly radio talk show, "Andrew Zimmern's Food Court," and along the way, he satisfies a taste for the exotic, whether it's eating muktuk blubber in Alaska or camel in New York City.

So it should come as no surprise that Zimmern is as high-energy in person as he is on television. Warm, engaging and funny, the former chef appeared in October at the Stone Crab Festival in Longboat Key and talked a little about how to discover the exotic foods wherever travels may take you.

You just got back from China. Is there any kind of culinary decompression you go through when you come back home?

No, it's a familial decompression. We're all people, too. It's easier to adjust my taste buds and my work life. It's tough when I walk in the door and I'm the dad who's been away for two weeks. Those are the struggles. The food thing is easy.

That being said, after being away for two weeks in the jungles of Thailand, I crave pizza and a hamburger. There's that to deal with, too.

How do you keep your show from digressing into "Jackass" with food and stunt eating? How do you maintain that line?

'Cause it's not my schtick. It's an easy answer; if I was just some guy off the street who was brave enough to put a worm down his throat, then that's all the show would be about and it wouldn't have resonated with people the way it has. I've spent my life in food, and I've spent my life developing a love of traveling, as opposed to being a tourist, so when I go someplace, what I want to do is experience the culture through the food. All they have to do is turn the camera around and follow me.

I'm also a TV person, a journalist and a chef, so I don't want to spend an hour in a market eating weird things. I want to go to a market. I want to go to a high-end restaurant. I want to spend time with a family and cook with them in their home.

You talked about the difference between traveling and tourism. When you go to a new place and you want to learn about the food and personality of each place, what are some of the things you look for?

The reason we spend time with a family, the reason we go to a market, the reason we go to a high-end restaurant and the reason we spend one experience eating street food as opposed to dining on restaurant food is that those are the four things I do as a civilian. Those are the things I've always done and why I know so much about the countries prior to me coming into this TV life of mine with the show.

You go to Barcelona; you want to go to the most typical, working-class tapas bars, the places that have been open 100 years. You also want to go to the Boquería Market. It's been there for 1,200 years. I get the feeling they know what they're doing. The best way to see what the cuisine of northwestern Spain is all about is by going to the biggest open-air market in the country. So that knocks off two of them right away.

You then want to go to some high-end restaurants. You want to see chefs who are at the tip of the spear, the forefront of their creative genius, and the folks doing the most with food in that region.

Also as a traveler, you have to find places that show up on several lists.

You can go to EatSpain.com and get all the touristy recommendations from the restaurants who paid the $200 to be part of that Web site. They're not necessarily the ones doing the best food, but if you see them on another Web site, such as the International Herald Tribune's site, or on Eater

.com or ChowHound.com as having been reviewed favorably, or on AndrewZimmern.com, and you see the same names pop up, you start to think, maybe I ought to go eat there. Especially if you have a small amount of time on the ground.

I saw the show where you had eaten camel in New York City. I thought, "Well, if there's camel in New York City, there's got to be something exotic in Tampa-St. Petersburg." So, we went out and ate all these great things - tripe stew, you name it. It was amazing to me the reaction of readers, in terms of, "I've always driven past that place but I never stopped in." Essentially, your job is to stop in at the places you wouldn't think of as culinary destinations.

I'm bored with a pan-seared chicken breast with root vegetable mash underneath it. That's great, and I make it at home for the family - it's fast and easy - but I don't go out to eat for that. I want to taste something that's been cooked, not assembled. So much of cooking today is designed to take 10 minutes in a saute pan. That's not cooking.

Something like menudo, or tripe stew, from Central and Latin America and Mexico, that requires cooking. That requires thought process and a leap of faith from the diner who's not used to it. I find those sorts of things very exciting.

Keyword: Stew, to hear

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Reporter Jeff Houck can be reached at jhouck@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7324. Conversations podcast.

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