Are you going to eat those fried toenails?
He will.
He is a food critic, editor, chef, blogger, Emmy Award-winner, and world traveler. He will eat anything, this Andrew Zimmern – and it’s why he’s on The Travel Channel doing just that. It’s like a wreck, you don’t want to see it but you can’t stop watching.
You can find him on TV, the web, radio, or just book a flight to Morocco and look for a pot of rancid goat eyeballs and there he will be, sweating under his little Howie Mandel-ishly bald pate, gobbling the most heinous delicacies ever swallowed by humans. I am being kind. Would you eat a pancreas? Raw? Grilled maybe? Have it your way.
Warning: Don’t be eating when you watch his show. Don’t be thinking of eating. Don’t think about this show after you eat. Okay, just don’t eat. Andrew’s attempts at gastronomical suicide will break you of the general habit of putting things in your mouth.
Head cheese? He’ll go farther than that and let it go bad before eating it.
The guy has cajones – and he has eaten more than his share from every mammal that has ever scratched theirs.
I’ve seen this jovial fellow eat mystery meat after it sat in a hot van for two days in Africa. I saw him one-up Anthony Bourdain as they went traveling together. That’s not easy to do.
By the way, on a side note, if you want to read a book that is hard to put down or forget, get Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. You’ll never eat seafood in a restaurant on Monday again. Promise.
So what is it about these food shows where the host eats everything from “brains to balls” (their term, not mine)? I remember seeing Gary Busey
eating road kill on some show a while back. It was tame compared to what people eat in some parts of the world.
Andrew is eating the head of some small mammal on TV right now as I type this. Why are the cheeks of an animal so tasty? Who eats meat that flies won’t touch? This show makes Mike Rowe and Dirty Jobs look like an appetizer for Hell’s main course. And I guarantee you the main course will be more disgusting than anything you’ve ever seen your dog do. Anything.
I can’t even write about some of the so-called food I have seen Mr. Zimmern eat. Scary doesn’t do his menu justice. Exotic is one thing. Salmonella is two things. E-coli is several things all lined up at your anatomical exits. Montezuma’s revenge kills more people than any disease in the world. This show shows us how.
My wife asked, “Do you think he’s constantly on antibiotics?”
My son said, “If we invited that guy to the house for dinner, he’d arm-wrestle the garbage disposal for that thing in the fridge with mold growing on it.”
Uh, yes he would.
Andrew ate a camel in Queens (I have been to Queens hundreds of times, never saw one camel, yet he finds one to eat). He eats worms like I eat Pop Tarts. He ate Alaskan stinkheads (I don’t even want to know). He ate morcillas (pig intestines stuffed with blood, rice and spices). He had an Ecuadorian witch doctor rub him with a guinea pig, eggs, and whip him with branches before blowing fire on him that caused a rash. Sounds like a freelance job I did in Georgia once.
He does have his limits, however. The network won’t let him eat dogs, cats, or monkeys. He says it’s because of American cultural issues with eating those animals. But dude, you ate a camel in Queens!