Andrew Zimmern is an American chef, world traveler, philanthropist, and television personality. He is best known for his long-running Travel Channel series of Bizarre Foods shows. A four-time James Beard Foundation Award winning chef, he has gone on to create his own television shows, companies, and books. Andrew has dedicated his life to exploring and promoting cultural acceptance through food.
As a boy, he attended James Beard’s legendary Christmas and Sunday open houses, and credits Beard’s hospitality for his early interest in the world of food. At just the age of 14, Andrew began professional culinary training. Over the years, Andrew worked at several fine dining restaurants in New York
After moving to Minneapolis, Zimmern gained many accolades during his six-year tenure as executive chef of Café Un Deux Trois in the city’s Foshay Tower where he began as a dishwasher, working his way up to executive chef. His specially curated menus received high ratings from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly, and Minneapolis. St. Paul Magazine, as well as national publications.
Beyond his cooking and travels, Andrew also dedicates his time to philanthropy, involving himself in dozens of non-profit organizations. He has been named a Global Ambassador for The Nature Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit working to create a world where people and nature can thrive. He recently partnered with producer David Kelley releasing a documentary series called Hope In The Water where the relationship between humans, water, and aquaculture is explored.
We met with Andrew Zimmern on Chefs Making Waves, a culinary festival on the sea, and talked about his favorite pizzas in Minnesota, the possible TikTok ban, and working with David E Kelley on their documentary series, Hope In The Water.
What’s the perfect day in Minneapolis?
A delicious Gavin Kaysen pastry or Marcoux pastry from either of their bakeries with some nice milky, strong tea in the morning. A walk with the dogs. For lunch, a couple of hamburgers at Lion’s Tap in Eden Prairie. A late afternoon, early evening snack over at the Hmong Market, over by the state capitol and their food court. Then dinner, something that I’m cooking in my fireplace and then settling on the couch with the dogs and the kids and everyone just kind of piled in, watching something good on TV. There has to be a lot of snow out, like it’s snowing all day.
You need a lot of fresh snow. A heavy-duty sauna then roll in the fresh snow, back in the sauna, roll in the fresh snow. Then sleep like a baby. I wake up at three in the morning and I eat some cold, leftover Chinese food from Shuang Chang that’s usually in my refrigerator.
So randomly, the best pizza I’ve ever had is in Menominee, Wisconsin.
Really? Tavern style, little squares, in a bar?
We have some excellent, excellent pizza in the Twin Cities. We have a light, overly hydrated dough as the platform for Detroit style pizza from a company called Wrecktangle. They do a really glorious job. I happen to like Punch Pizza a lot as well.
There’s a Neapolitan AVPN pizza that’s just fantastic and that’s our pizza go-to. Daniel Del Prado has a couple restaurants that serve pizza that’s awesome. Of course, we’re blessed, we have Ann Kim, one of the best pizza makers. She has a little Italian place with great meatballs and pizza called Pizzeria Lola. When my son is home and he wants pizza, we go to Pizzeria Lola. It’s extraordinary. They do a tomato only pie that I just love there. I get it with anchovies and extra oregano.
Well, drive out to Menominee on one of those cold days.
Can’t do it. Here’s the thing about Wisconsin. I have a problem with all of that sort of provel style cheese. There’s too much cheese. I have issues with it.
I’ve watched you for many years on Bizarre Foods. Have you found any hidden gems you would tell people to visit?
Well, I mean, which city, which country? The crazy thing is that I do so much traveling and eating. People are always like, ‘Where should we go eat? We’re going to France.’ I’m like, ‘Well, France is a big country with a lot of great foods. You’re going to have to be more specific. Do you want French food there?’ It reminds me of a trip I took once to Senegal, and I was in Dakar.
There was a brief period where the Senegalese were colonized by the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese left fried spring rolls there. There are still some little places where you can get them. They’re like little half biters, like babies. They are so delicious in Banh Trang rice paper. I was eating them at this place and people were like, ‘Why are you going to go to Dakar for Vietnamese?’ I said, ‘I’m not going to Dakar for Vietnamese food. I’m eating.’
I mean, believe me, I’m in all the places. I think I may be the only person who looks like me, who’s ever gone to some of the seaside villages and eaten fish in Dakar and gotten on a fishing boat in Senegal. My street cred on where I choose to travel is pretty deep. But when someone says to me, ‘Oh yeah, these are the best spring rolls ever.’ I ate them and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is the spring roll of my dreams.’ So anyway, you can find all kinds of little hidden gems sort of all over the place.
I love your Travel Channel guides to cities.
Thank you. I hope people are going to my website. It doesn’t have a paywall. We have a great newsletter on Substack called Spilled Milk. I’m doing all my travel guides there. We post at least 1 or 2 times a week, usually with my Friday “Ask me anything.”
We do some pretty in-depth travel guides, great places. Most people ask me where to eat. Nobody asks me, ‘Where do I take my kids to play?” even though I’m a dad.
Do you still enjoy cooking?
Love it. As a matter of fact, we’ll make cooking videos all day long at my office. Five, six, seven in a row. I’m cooking from seven in the morning till six at night, dish after dish after dish after dish. Then I will come home and cook dinner. The reason that I do it is that when I’m doing it at home, that’s how I get rid of my day. You know, that’s my yoga. Literally.
Any future chefs in your house?
My son goes back and forth. Some years he’s more into it than others, but we’ll see. It’s up to him.
I joined TikTok this year. You have a TikTok, right?
I’m on TikTok. I have like 600,000 subscribers or something. The hashtag Andrew Zimmern has like 4 million posts. So, I’m like, ‘but I’m Andrew Zimmern. Follow me.’ People go around the world and eat gross things in places that I’ve been and imitate me. Then they hashtag Andrew Zimmern and it gets all this interaction. But when I’m actually out in the world doing it and there’s a video of me, no such luck, it’s pretty funny.
Are you worried about a TikTok ban? Do you care if they banned TikTok tomorrow and said you can’t use it anymore?
I have some civic opinions about it. Why are people more afraid of what TikTok is doing with your information than they are with what Meta, Apple, Google and Microsoft are doing with your information? Now, I’m not being accusatory about the other, it’s just, all of them collect information. I’m not sure people realize how much data is being collected about us every single day. I’m not paranoid. I’m not angry, but it’s the way it is. I think it would stagger people.
I don’t know enough about it. I’ve just not seen evidence that has been presented to me about a national security threat. I’m more concerned about a lot of other things in the world than I am about TikTok. Maybe I’m naive.
So you play guitar?
Badly.
When did you pick that up?
Third grade. I played bass in first, second and third grade because you had to play an instrument at school. I liked it because it was so big and you got to hold it up. Then I took guitar lessons from Mrs. Gilbert at the 92nd Street Y. The school arranged for students to go to classes. I mean, how weird is this? This is like 55 years ago. I remember Jill Rosenwald and I were friends. We would walk over and go to guitar lessons with Mrs. Gilbert and you learn sailing songs and the occasional contemporary radio acoustic song.
One of the dumbest things I’ve ever done in my life was I stopped playing guitar. I picked it back up again about 15 years ago because I love music. I was somewhere and somebody said, ‘You know, this is a cool guitar. In another year it will become vintage.’ I forget whether they become vintage at 20 or 25 years, and they said it’ll just double in value. I just bought it. It had a great story attached to it.
It was a 70’s Telecaster. This local musician had given it to a place that was feeding him, a restaurant in Nashville in the late 70’s. It became all discolored on one side because it was over where the ovens were. So it looks like it’s two toned, but it’s really because that was the side that slowly got heat treated for like 15 years. Then the owner of this restaurant found it up in this cubby above the oven and took it to a guitar dealer and they said, ‘Oh, it’s a pretty cool Tele with a great story.’ I walked in to browse, they saw me and said, ‘Check this guitar out.’ I loved it. It has a really great tone, so I bought it.
Now I have like nine guitars, which you should really only have if you’re good, and I’m not. But I’ve had a chance to play with some amazing bands. I just played with a Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia cover band at the Giving Kitchen fundraiser in Atlanta. I did a rousing version of “Sugaree” on a beautiful acoustic that they had for me. I’ve had an amazing chance to play with great guitar players who’ve said, ‘Oh, you play guitar, just come on up.’ They whisper the chord change in my ear and I just play rhythm guitar and mess around.
What was the most memorable time you got to play?
I got to play two encores with Cheap Trick in front of 30,000 people. I now get it when the musicians say there’s nothing like the rush of playing live music. We did “Surrender” and “I Want You to Want Me” and those were both from the album that came out in ‘74. I remember that was the fall where I started smoking weed, and I remember being at my best friend’s house, and we would each stand in front of the speaker. He had these big speakers in his room, and played air guitar. I knew every note, every word to every song on that album.
Then I’m standing side stage because a friend of a friend said they’ll get me backstage. Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen are looking to the side and I’m like, ‘Who are they looking at?’ I’m turning behind my back, looking around. Then some roadie comes out and says, ‘Robin and Rick are like huge Bizarre Foods fans. Are you Andrew Zimmern?’ I’m like, they know who I am. Rick comes running off stage in between songs and is like, ‘You play guitar, don’t you?’ I’m like, ‘Yes, Mr. Nielsen’ and he shouts at a roadie, ‘Get him one of my good guitars!’
Rick has a famous, famous guitar collection. They opened up this cabinet and I’m looking at some serious hardware. He handed me one of his early flying V’s. A New York Times reporter, Kim Severson, happened to be doing a story on me at the time and was following me around. So, she was there and I ran out on stage and it was the cover of the C section in New York Times. There was a photo of me playing guitar with Rick Nielsen at the end, and I look like I really know what I’m doing. Pinch me. It was one of the greatest thrills of my life.
I’ve seen you cook with Duran Duran, Luke Combs, Alice Cooper. Who’s your dream cooking collaboration, if you could pick?
Immediately what pops up into my head are some of the bands that I really love. I’d love to do something live with Jack and Jorma from Hot Tuna. I’d love to do something with David Byrne and the Talking Heads, even though they don’t play. But David does, and I would love to do something with him. I’d love to do something with David Gilmore. I mean, it’s all the bands of my youth. You want to cook and do stuff with them and then maybe they’ll ask me to sit around and play a song with them. There’s so many amazing artists right now. You mentioned a bunch that I’ve had the opportunity to cook with at BottleRock.
It’s such an incredible thing to be cooking with these people. It was really cool. Here’s the funny thing about Duran Duran, up until about the day beforehand, they weren’t sure they were going to do it. Finally, I heard one of the reasons they didn’t want to was because chefs are always making cocktails in front of 10,000 people, and the Duran Duran guys are very publicly sober.
So we were in the little tent getting microphones on, and we just met and I could tell they were a little nervous. I didn’t know why at the time. I said, ‘Is everything alright? I have a super fun idea for you that’s going to kind of blow your mind.’ They’re like, ‘Look, just don’t make a really strong big drink and hand it to us because we’ve been sober a long time.’
I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing. I have 32 years.’ They just looked at me with their jaws on the ground. They’re like ‘You’re sober 32 years?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah. There’s no alcohol up there. I’m not into it.’ They’re like,’I have 17 years.’ So they were just instantly like my best friends. We went out there and had the best time.
I had all these palm trees on stage and I made a heart of palm salad. I had a machete and I whacked down the dwarf palms and made a heart of palm salad with them. That was fun. The band was great. They told me afterwards to come watch the show side stage. They put on a great show. Those guys were fantastic.
Do you have a perfect Passover meal?
Yes. It’s called The Seder. Seder in Hebrew means ‘order.’ I’ve occasionally changed some dishes for Thanksgiving, but Seder in my house has never changed. It is the same food every single year. Some of it I only cook once a year. I will say to all the families out there that also celebrate Seder, get on my website, because I think my Seder recipes are without a doubt the best. You have to have chopped chicken liver and haroset and the matzo ball soup and all the things I do. A bitter green salad with the citrus vinaigrette. I do brisket and poached salmon.
To me, it’s the meal with certain foods served in a certain order a certain way. I put schmaltz on the table for if you want to put it on top of the chicken liver to make it schmaltz-ier, even though mine has a lot of schmaltz in it. I love that meal so much. It’s the only time of year that I serve all those things together. I haven’t made matzo ball soup since last Passover. It’s late this year, and I will be doing my matzo ball soup and the same stuff that’s on my website. I love that meal.
Tell me about Hope In The Water.
Hope In The Water is a documentary series that premiered on PBS in June. David Kelley and I produced it. My production company, Intuitive Content, made it. It’s narrated and hosted by José Andrés, Martha Stewart, Shailene Woodley, and Baratunde Thurston.
I think it’s the best look to date at how we can protect our oceans and produce out of them at the same time. We can’t turn off the ocean spigot. 2 billion people around the world use water as their primary source of protein. A billion people around the world work on the ocean.
It is unrealistic. I mean, it’s impossible. We can’t just stop. However, we can manage our relationship and change our relationship with water. We present in first person accounts 20, 30 stories across the three, four hours that solution makers told in their own words around the world who are doing incredible things with waterborne solutions.
I got to make this with David E. Kelley, who’s the greatest storyteller of my generation and a legend in the TV business. He has like 800 Emmys. I’m just so thrilled that we have this opportunity.
Is this a personal project for you?
You know, the way it started was David really believes in aquaculture, and he owns an aquaculture company that raises trout, the best one in the world. It’s called Reverence, in Idaho.
He’s incredible. I was in a meeting with him, listening to him give notes on a segment, and it was like a masterclass in storytelling, listening to him talk about sustaining the velocity of the action. Whether it’s unscripted or scripted, the velocity of the action needs to keep moving forward at the pace in which we want it to move forward, sufficient to sustain the interest of the audience.
Well, I appreciate what you do on TV. And Anthony Bourdain, he’s the reason I travel; him and my grandmother. I’ve been all over the world, 80 countries because of watching you guys.
We miss him all the time.