After traveling the world looking for the bizarre, Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern comes home and shines the spotlight on good old America for his second season.
He’s one of those fun interviews where you ask him one question and he’ll go on for about 15 minutes.
“You know, I’ve spent a lifetime on the road sort of telling stories and every time I would sit in interviews I would always talk about the opportunities here in America for telling some of those same kind of stories.
And it always fascinated me in ethnic enclaves around this country especially how waves of immigration would keep food honest. And, you know, just because something is honest and authentic doesn’t necessarily make it good but it surely gives you the best opportunity for it to be good, especially if you’re a food and culture junkie like myself.
So as I was examining sort of what makes our show tick, one of the things that I always put up on the bulletin board when I’m trying to teach people about the culture of our program is the idea that we make the unfamiliar familiar.
And at the same time we found that there was an insane level of curiosity about domestic locations. Whenever we would do them they would rate extraordinarily well. There was a fascination that Americans have with seeing pictures and stories about themselves. It dates back to (Alexus Detofield)’s time. I mean, we are - in America we are obsessed with ourselves. So I decided to merge all those things together and do a domestic season of Bizarre Foods.
The network thought it was a good idea, everyone got really excited about it. And I think what makes it even more charming is that, you know, when I’m in tribal Africa and I’m, you know, eating grilled, you know, wild giant porcupine people are fascinated with it but there’s a little bit of a disconnect I imagine because to them it’s good watching but it’s not possible to be doing.
Here in this country when I go down to New Orleans, for example, and take people on a tour of the largest Vietnamese community in the world outside of Vietnam — yes it’s in New Orleans — and all you hear is Vietnamese spoken and in the backyard gardens you could swear you’re in Central Vietnam.”
"One of the burning questions on my mind was, how does one just look at the guts of a pig and go, ‘you know, I think I want to saute that up!’
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