The Restaurant Guys

Andrew Zimmern on The Restaurant Guys LIVE! Pt 1 of 2

• The Restaurant Guys • Episode 117

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This is part 1 of a 2 part episode

The Conversation

The Restaurant Guys are thrilled to sit down with Andrew Zimmern to talk about food television, globe-trotting and some surprisingly delicious foods. Hear the tale about the BEST family feud Andrew, or anyone, has ever experienced!

The Inside Track

The Guys have had Andrew on their podcast several times years ago. They all agree that humans are designed to care for each other and break all kinds of bread together.

 “With food, you can be very indiscriminate. One night I'm going out for sushi, and the next night I'm cooking at home, and then I'm gonna go over to this person's house and they're gonna make me something.

There is a level of sharing with that intimacy that crosses more boundaries than if Gael [Greene] was here, I would say, than sex does. So there's an argument that it is the most universal of intimate acts,” Andrew Zimmern on The Restaurant Guys Podcast 2025

Bio

Andrew Zimmern is an Emmy-winning and four-time James Beard Award-winning TV personality, chef, writer and passionate global citizen. As the creator, executive producer and host of the Bizarre Foods franchise, Andrew Zimmern’s Driven by Food, MSNBC’s What’s Eating America, the Emmy-nominated Family Dinner, Outdoor Channel’s Wild Game Kitchen and Field to Fire, and the Emmy-winning The Zimmern List, he has devoted his life to exploring and promoting cultural acceptance, tolerance and understanding through food.

Info

Andrew’s site

https://andrewzimmern.com/


Andrew’s 2008 appearance on The Restaurant Guys Podcast

https://www.restaurantguyspodcast.com/episode-98-andrew-zimmern


Andrew’s new book (out in October 2025)

The Blue Food Cookbook: Delicious Seafood Recipes for a Sustainable Future (A Comprehensive Guide, from Bu

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Mark Sharpe:

Good evening and welcome to the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. A portion of the proceeds from your ticket purchase today will benefit the Promise Culinary School at Elijah's Promise right here in New Brunswick. For those of you that don't know the Promise, culinary School is a state certified vocational school and job training program servicing individuals from various social, economic and professional backgrounds with a passion for the culinary arts. You can find out more about them@elijahpromise.org. The New Brunswick Performing Arts Center doesn't just host great events like this lecture series. Make sure to check out our full lineup@nbpac.org. Now. Without further ado, please welcome everyone's favorite podcast hosts Mock Pascal and Francis Shot.

Mark:

Hello everybody and welcome. You are here with the restaurant guys. I'm Mark Pascal. This is Francis Shot. Together, we own stage left in Catherine Lombardi restaurants right over there. We're here to bring you the inside track on food, wine, and

Francis:

the finer things in life. Hello everybody. It's so nice to have you here. Uh, this is our fourth in a live series here and, um, it's so, so great that you all showed up. That's really nice. We're, we're used to sitting in a room with Jennifer Mark's wife and our producer and, and recording a podcast that is heard by thousands, but we're always alone in the room, so it's nice to hear if you actually get our jokes or not. That's really sweet. Our next live show, we're gonna do a show in July in New Orleans. What's the date again, Mike? July 22nd. July 22nd. So if you're gonna be in the big Easy around then we'd love to see you there live and in the works. We have a show in Belfast, in Ireland coming up. So, uh. So, yeah, time for a trip. Ooh, we got oohs and s we real fast.

Speaker 11:

I We'll set you up

Francis:

with a restaurant recommendation. It's super fun. You're driving on the wrong side of the road. It's super, yeah, but this is super fun and, it's a whole new thing for us. Um, but it's really an extension of something we started a long time ago. If you're a lot of people who came to see Andrew, who are not from New Brunswick, and some folks who have flown in from as far away as Chicago and a bunch of other places to see us. So if it's your first time in New Brunswick, welcome. This is the best little city in the Northeast, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and this is the New Brunswick Performing Arts Center. There's lots of cool stuff here, you know, world. And we old and we started, we started the restaurant. We're not old. We started the Restaurant guys podcast, the, the week that podcasts began to exist. And we did it for eight years back then. And what's amazing is in the 20 years we've been doing it, we've had some really great people on, we've had them on multiple times. We took a 10 year break and now we're back. What's really nice is to revisit some of the folks that have visited us over, the history of the show. so I think I should introduce today's guest. Uh, he doesn't really need an introduction, but because the show will get better when he comes on stage way, it's definitely gonna happen way better. Um, so he's a four times James Beard Award winner, A man's journey to the edges of the earth and the heart of our food culture through Bizarre Foods. He introduced us to the richness and diversity of global cuisine, often one crunchy insect at a time. Um, Andrew is more than just a television personality. He's an award-winning chef, a writer, a teacher. He helps us see community culture and the environment through the powerful lens of food. We're big fans. He was an early restaurant guy's guest first appearing on our show 18 years ago in June of 2007. This is his fourth appearance with the restaurant guys, and the first one that we actually have him live in New Brunswick. The show.

Mark:

Andrew's really good at the bro hug. You guys saw that?

Andrew:

Yeah. I am really good at that. By the way, when we did, uh, sound check earlier, there were not four big bottles of water here. So clearly things are about to get really hot.

Francis:

It's,

Andrew:

it's important to stay hydrated.

Mark:

So Andrew's Andrew, we do Andrew's introduction and we're writing his introduction. We're like, what comes next? Like, first of his name, mother of Dragons, breaker of chains. I mean, how many, how many titles do you have

Andrew:

Mr. Game of

Mark:

Thrones?

Andrew:

I got a lot. Uh, Wednesday night. Uh, a documentary that, I produced my production company, made it, which means I have my name on it, but I essentially have nothing to do with it at all. Um, well, I I actually shouldn't say that. That's a little too self-deprecating. It was, it's, uh, about the blue foods movement and it's about how we protect, uh, our oceans and produce outta them at the same time. Mm-hmm. 2 billion people, it's their main source of protein. A billion people work on the water, so you can't just turn the. Ocean off. Right? Right. I mean, a, a big FU to the guys that made that, documentary Cspi that was on Netflix, which got it all wrong and was not factually based. And we had a hundred scientists and agencies all over the world vetting this thing for PBS. It was a multi, part series. I know people are recording this. If you know anyone who made cspi tell them personally from me to go screw themselves, um, really harmful, harmful, information they put out there, or lack thereof. Uh, but I was nominated for an Emmy again and I lost, and, uh, the next day, Thursday I was having to talk to somebody who didn't know how to tell somebody that they didn't get the per, you know, it was something very small, you know, like I didn't get the milk that I wanted, the supermarket, and I was like. If you, you, you know, you don't get it. If you knew real pain of sitting there and not hearing your name called and smiling and clapping for the next person. So many times get well. I was not the one who clapped because I'm the one who's honest enough to admit being nominated is great, but there are no being, getting to a certain point in your career means you are so driven. You have for, there's children that I have, I have. Maid whose names I don't know. I have to show ID to them when I come home from a trip. I'm your father.

Mark:

I'm your dad. I, I really thought you were gonna say, there are children who have been in my way and I just shouted them out of the way. That's Well, that too, that's what I was thinking.

Andrew:

So you have the most driven, competitive people in the world, in an industry that is literally dying, where every week you see another 20% of people being lost and everyone's like, you know, it's just nice to be nominated. I don't need to win. It's like, what? I don't need to win.

Francis:

Like, alright. Alright. I have to, I have crocodile tears a little bit here because you've won everything and I just, we know that you, you hosted the James Beard Awards this year and Mark and I were conjecturing that I'm four for 15 at the beards. I'm one for

Andrew:

six. At the Emmy's. You won four beard awards. That's amazing. That's, I'm lucky. I'm, I'm, I'm the luckiest guy in the whole, I literally should be dead. I mean, literally should be dead. Um. I'm a longtime, sober guy and been, you know, I mean, I literally, this, the last 33 and a half years have been a gift from God. And that's, you know, why I try to do things for other people. But I'm very, very, uh, blessed that career wise, I have had achievements that other people, and by the way, every time you're nominated for something, yeah. It, I don't believe it's all I care about is being nominated. I want to win. However, the other people all are nominated for a very good reason. So I freely acknowledge that part of it.

Francis:

Yeah.

Andrew:

Well, where are you going with this question?

Francis:

I, I was that today? I don't know where I'm going with it. No, I, I was saying that I, mark and I were conjecturing that they made you the host'cause they ran out of Beard Awards to give you,'cause you'd won'em already. Yeah. That was,

Andrew:

uh, the, uh, you know what's really kind of funny? Um, I. I think that they try to mix it up like a Target Christmas commercial. And they needed, like, who do we get in the, in the 65-year-old white guy category? It's like Alton Brown has retired. The other three or four, Jonathan Waxman will say no. Like, who could we ask? And someone goes, ask Zimmer. And he says yes to everything.

Francis:

Well, can can we go, can we start with when you came on our show years ago, low, those many, 2007 was the first trip. Long time ago. Yes. But none of this had sort of started yet. You were just getting on tv. Uh, it had sort, yes. Yeah,

Andrew:

it had, it had, it had started in a weird, I made a very, very conscious decision, uh, in 1999, uh, to get out of day-to-day restaurant operations. And,

Mark:

uh, I, I made that decision in 1999 as well. But, and you're still in it, but you guys see me on the floor every night. I, so by the way, you can make that decision. It doesn't mean it by the way, you can manifest it. Same,

Andrew:

same here, because I, I, I also told you very that two things can be true at the same time I got out of them. But this is my 50th year of being in restaurants, continuously taking paycheck from a restaurant two weeks to 50th anniversary. So it's a very, very strange yin yang thing. But I got out of daily restaurant ops and I took a job as an intern, you know, the 30 5-year-old intern or whatever, at, um, a radio station or TV station in a glossy monthly magazine mm-hmm. In Minnesota to try to teach myself, give myself the syllabus, you know, my own sort of education and how to do media because I had some natural ability. But there is a lot of technical stuff you gotta learn how to do if you wanna sort of rise to the top. And I'm a very competitive, sort of driven person by the time. I did the show with you, uh, bizarre Foods premiered in 2007, but I had been, uh, you know, a guest on people's show. Then I, then I was a regular Yeah. On some, uh, group shows, what, whatever they call those. There's a word for that. you know, so and so is gonna do this, so, and Andrew Zimmer's gonna have a recipe, you know, it's a, with these like, so, uh, I did that and one of them was for an HGTV show on which, uh, I was, uh, the house chef. So I would give tips, uh, cooking tips on a show called Typical Mary Ellen, TIP dash ICAL. That's not that witty. No, it wasn't. It wasn't. It was a, it's a good try. Mary Ellen. Terrible show. Terrible show Helmed by, by the dumbest human beings of all time. I, I had, and I mean that with love. I had, I love stupid people too. I was new to television, this is how moronic they were. I was new to television and I remember the producers and the hosts and everything celebrating one day. And I said, oh, what happened? It's like they ordered another, like 63 shows or something, so we're gonna be taping for the next like four or five months. And they're like, you know, isn't that great? And I just thought to myself, do you not see, they're just taking care of every option at a certain cost in the contract. Mm-hmm. The show's doing a big number. They're trying to get you to do 200 shows in that contract term at this price, because God forbid you get outside that contract term and your agents or managers or you yourself pay the$10 to find out what the ratings are. And you're like, oh, we're rating really well, no, and I, and at one point I said to someone backstage, she said, why are you laughing? I was like laughing to myself. I said. They're doing well. They're just gonna like cut the cord. They'll, they'll run reruns

Francis:

right? All

Andrew:

the time. If you have 250 episodes of something, you can run it once a week and you're not gonna repeat a show for five years. Yep. You know, and sure enough, the next year they were gone. But I was the, I was the food guy and I just started pitching my own sort of TV stuff in 2005. Uh, did a couple pilots in end of 2005. They aired both of them in 2006. One was about sports, one was about food. Well, they're both about food. Just one was sports and one with, uh, you know, called the Bizarre Foods of Asia. And the sports one was called World's Best Ballpark Foods, where I went around stadiums around the world eating and I was praying, please God, let me do the ballpark show really well because I love sports. Did that have good ratings? The ballpark show it. It was Travel Channel in, I think the highest rate show on Travel Channel at the time was something called World's Best Bathroom. Oh, seriously. I mean, so you guys remember that, that Andrew, that was the actual show. I, I

Francis:

just wanna say

Andrew:

you've come a long way, baby. Thank you. So, so we, the Bizarre Foods Edge out the other one by like a 10th of a ratings point. So they bought Bizarre Foods. Well, they bought eight episodes. You go out and make it eight episodes and then they air them and you hope that something good happens and you get more.

Francis:

One question about starting Bizarre Foods. Yeah. And we had you on shortly after Bizarre Foods started. Correct.'cause I remember when we, no one else

Andrew:

would happen several more times after

Francis:

that. No, you were the darling, but we got you early. We could you early. No one else would happen. So, but here's the thing. When we're watching the show, we're like, he's eating what? And what the hell were you thinking? Where did that come from?

Andrew:

It was very, it was, it was actually very strategic. If, if you go back, uh, year, season one, eight episodes and like three episodes into season two, I ain't. More animal feces, dead things, uh, accidental animal. If you eat rotten potatoes in the mountains of chili, the farmers just scoop them up with the rabbit shit that's in there and they throw it all into the soup pot. And I'm just sitting there going, oh

Francis:

my gosh. You know, like, but a certain, as certain earthy quality to it. I, yeah, I think that's how I

Andrew:

described it. Um, tannic. Yeah, tannic and grassy. Tannic. Yeah. And, and you know, so you, you, you eat all these, these and a lot of bugs and a lot of rotten things. Yeah. And my idea was,'cause I sold the network, and I've said this quite a bit, I may have even said it back then. I, I sold them a Trojan horse, which was, they wanted me to be fat white guy goes around world eats bugs, and that that was gonna be grabby and stick. There

Mark:

are, there are fatter white guys. I wanted, I'm just letting, I'm just letting you know. Let's,

Andrew:

I, I wanted to do. Um, a show about teaching the world patience, tolerance, and understanding on a planet that I felt was getting increasingly divisive and was not understanding that all cultures are equal.

Mark:

By the way, that was 2007. That was not last week. That was

Andrew:

and valid. So, um, and they, and, and they said, your show is a PBS thing. It'll last three episodes and your, your loved ones will applaud and then you're done. Give us more entertainment. So I came up with this hook and I had studied TV very, very seriously, and I, I knew that the network and the production company had all the leverage. When you start, you know, they're like, Zimmern, stand over there. And you don't, you just say yes. The minute the show does well, I. It's, it becomes, what we say in the industry is talent driven uhhuh. It becomes a talent driven, not the boss. We're still waiting

Mark:

to get to that point. And then

Andrew:

then network executives say, what, what 25 countries do you want to go to next year? Right. You know, what do you want to do? Right. I wasn't asked, uh, uh, anything, you know, the first go round, I mean, you're right. You did what

Francis:

they said.

Andrew:

Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, you were really, it is your, and by the way, I would've, I would've done it wearing a, a, a chain vest if they wanted me to because it's your first big break, your own show. It's Bizarre Foods

Speaker 11:

with Andrew Zimmer,

Andrew:

and later on it was Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmer, right? Yeah. Yeah. So you, you, you hope that it transitions and then you get to bring something to it. So the idea was the hook is, let's do it, but now let's explore the culture more so by season three or four, I think the last. 250 shows I probably ate five bugs. The first 12 shows I ate 200 bugs.

Francis:

You know, species, species of bugs. Right? Yeah. Well, so I, I remember thinking at the end of the first show, and I'm like, and when we, then we met you and we thought it was terrific, and we, I we didn't quite figure out that what you're doing is you're really making a show about cultures through the lens of food and through unfamiliar foods. Mm-hmm. Which is very freaking interesting. Yeah. My initial thought was, he's gonna run outta gross things. Right. What are you gonna do next year? What's he gonna eat next time? When I

Andrew:

pitched the network, this is a true story. I've not shared this a lot. The, uh, I went in and I pitched them on my dream show. Uh, arguably the worst title in the history of traveling food shows. Are you ready for it? Yes. The wandering spoon

Francis:

That sounds like someone who wanders around and wants to hug you in

Andrew:

bed. That's bad. That's bad.

Francis:

Yeah.

Andrew:

And, uh, it, it was just this. You know, I mean this rosy educational thing, but they liked me as talent. And the other shows had performed, the pilots had performed, uh, well, or sorry, I hadn't done the pilots yet. The, the clips that I had sent them that I had made on my own dime head test, like the people never were like, I like this guy. He's raw. He needs to learn how to do tv, but we like him and we think audiences will like him. Uh, is that true? Which it, thank you.

Mark:

That's not too good. No, you, you couldn't have said it, but I, I, I could say that. Yeah. Uh, by the way, I will say they kind of went woo. It was weak. It was weak. Yeah.

Andrew:

Um, so, you know, we, we we're trying to, they said to me literally in the room when I pitched the wandering spoon. That's great. That's not our show. We're in. People watch TV because it's entertainment. That's education. And Pat Young, the head of the travel channel said, you've just told me something that's 80% education, 20% entertainment. Gimme something that's 75% entertainment and I will let you put the 25% of education in. Love it, love it. He, he says, but you'll be on TV for the rest of your life and you're, you will get a chance to preach all the message that you want. It's just that we got a lead with entertainment. He said, come back tomorrow morning. This is four o'clock. I'm in the discovery building in Bethesda, Maryland, and, uh, I'm nervous as hell. I pitched this thing and he says, but I'll give you 15 minutes tomorrow to fix this. And I went home that night, and I like college except I was sober. Uh, but, you know, uh, I did the all-nighter and just figured out there was no chat. GPTI actually like legal pads and, you know, I'm just paper. And, and I finally figured out the, I walked back in the next day and I said, we're not going to do a. Chicken breasts in this show, we're gonna tell stories from the edges of culture about foods. No one eats. And he turned to me and he said, so that's like 12 things. And I literally, they had this huge map. I mean the, the boardroom at the discovery building was like the size of this theater. And he hits a button and a map of the world comes down, one of those flat ones. And I get a laser pointer. Someone rolls down the conference table to me and he says, tell me how many shows you can do. and luckily, and, and this is I think true of, of not just myself, but people who are really good, you know, uh, Tony, Alton, A lot of people who do the same kind of things that I do. we live our brands. We are who we are before we did that TV show, right? We are. This is me. I only got one gear. Right. You know, Tony was, Tony out is out. He really is that he's not like study, he's not a character. Mm-hmm. He's playing. which is what makes going out to dinner with him so much fun. Uh, but I just sat there and I went well, and I just went around and by the time I'm done with, you know, snails screwing in France and snail caviar and someone goes, is that a thing? And like we put it in the Paris episode, season one. I'm saying, of course it's a thing. And, uh, the greatest promo I ever did, walking into a room, 3 million pairs of helix snails, all making love at the same time. And, and I open the door cameraman on the inside, he pans over and pans back. And I'm like. Shh.

Speaker 11:

They're making love.

Francis:

Best promo

Andrew:

I ever did. What music

Francis:

was playing at the time? Was there like a romantic John kick a bow bounce? I mean, that's what I thought. What a assumed naive.

Andrew:

What A naive question's. What I assumed.

Mark:

That's what I assumed. So seriously, when Francis and I started at the radio station, they, we were talking about doing a five day a week show. An hour a day. And they're like, you know, is there enough material? And Francis and I looked at each other and we're like, I'm, you know, I'm not sure. Let's get out a yellow pad, which is exactly what we did. And we said, let's write down a few show ideas. And in like an hour we had a hundred shows. Oh yeah, yeah. And we were like, okay, we can, we can definitely do this. There's, there's

Andrew:

not, it occurred to me at one point that there's not a culture in the world really, except ours and one or two others that, uh, but mostly ours, where they don't eat every part of every animal. Mm-hmm. Or someone does. And the more you go back in history, and then I started to say, what if I started to live with some of the. You know, 108 protected tribes around the world. Um, and I, what if I, what if I visited, you know, indigenous peoples, from lap lands in Finland to, uh, the men Wata Sioux in Minnesota where I live. And then I was like, all of a sudden this whole like, landscape opened up and I was just like, oh my gosh. this could go on forever.

Francis:

Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, you, you approach it a different culture that has different food than you do, right? So if you think, if you come from a, a culture where it's vegetarian or even a medium culture that doesn't have cheese as a part of its culture, and then you try to explain to them, well, so you take this animal, no, it's not human. And then you take its milk. Yeah, that's right. It's milk that it means there's a baby and then you let it go bad. And then you stick it for a long time and then you eat it. That's really, but not until the mold goes

Mark:

out, gets on. Yeah. Until the mold goes out. You don't eat it until the mold goes,

Francis:

and so the

Andrew:

mold is blue. And that's really revolting. Did you see my, uh, no. My episode in Uganda with the Chaga? No, no. So we're sitting there and we left this in the show. My cameraman started rolling this Chaga Tribesman comes into my tent because I'm eating Triscuits and uh, uh, cracker Barrel, extra sharp.

Francis:

And, um, hold on. Who's, whose impression of Andrew has just dropped a couple of points. Yeah. The, the magic's gone. The bloom is off the road. Well, you have to have

Andrew:

stuff that

Francis:

will

Andrew:

stay Yeah, of course. In your bag. I was only kidding. I said, no, no, no. It is a great question. so he comes in and I offered him the bag of crackers and, you know, the box of crackers, and he digs and he grabs a couple Triscuits. And I had my knife and I cut off, you know, and I stab the square triangles or square rectangles and I, you know, square pieces, whatever. And I, I hold them up and he like, literally like, like I was. Putting a torch of open flame in front of him. And he looked at me and he said, what is it with you Americans? You take perfectly good milk and let it rot.

Francis:

Yeah. Yeah. But that, but I mean, I think that's one of the things that I, I really came to realize looking at your show. I was like, well that's'cause it's unfamiliar to us. Right. Credit

Mark:

reference means everything and, uh, correct.

Francis:

You know,

Andrew:

in Argentina they don't eat peanut butter. They think it's horrifically gross. They laugh, laugh at us for eating peanut butter. So we ran a little thing to try to do for a promo that worked beautifully where someone, we had the, the production department, DHL back from, from home, of Jar of Skippy and we had me on the street in Argentina was, it was actually a big square where everyone comes at night to eat sausage sandwiches and you know, make out with their loved one. And, uh, watch the stars and, uh, walk around And there was some kid came by and I knelt down and I was like, would you like some peanut butter? And some big dude comes over, kicks me over, A woman is screaming at me in a language I don't speak. And they're like, and essentially the, our fixer said, um, you can't just go up to kids and offer something. It would be like going into a park in America with a bottle of, of booze, right. To a little kid. Like they don't eat peanut butter. And I'm sitting there trying to get a kid, you know,'cause I think it's cute and funny. So you learn. Okay, I thought you were gonna

Mark:

go white van candy. No. You gotta think

Francis:

I was, you gotta think these things through though. I was in your head for that whole thing until you talked about the guy kicking you. And I thought, well, if that were my kid and I didn't know, you'd probably kidding. I hundred percent like crazy guy. As a parent, I'm like, I get you dude. So. Talk to us about, you said it's, you know, Kevin SRA said this about wine. Kevin's really is a famous wine educator and he was probably one of the most successful basic wine educators in the world. And he's a mentor of mine, he said, Francis, if you wanna teach wine classes, do you wanna teach people to become a master of wine? Or do you wanna teach consumers how to really love and enjoy wine? And that's wine entertainment, like your food entertainment. That's right. But you put the, but the Trojan horse is the message in it. So what was the Trojan horse that, that came out through? Let's talk about the, the bizarre foods, What was the universal truth you were bringing? Being out from it?

Andrew:

That everybody wants the same things for their families and the people that we love. Mm-hmm. That as human beings, we have the same desires.

Speaker 11:

Mm-hmm.

Andrew:

And that some of us have gotten a little off path, and it's why I asked 14 different holy people. Uh, in the history of the show and another eight or nine away from cameras.'cause I've been fortunate enough to have lunch, in Germany with the Dalai Lama. And, uh, I met a Pope and, uh, you know, other people like that who I think have a little bit on the ball, uh, spiritually. Mm-hmm. And I've asked all of them why are we here? what do you tell people is our point of being on planet Earth? And every single one of them said the same thing. Well, they all laughed at me like I was a moron. Which is true because if you have certainty, the, the pope said to me, I asked him, I used the word faith. He said, I don't have faith, I have certainty. And I was just like, whoa, heavy. I mean, I was just like, oh, that's why you're a pope.

Francis:

Like can you, that's why you're the Pope. Um, I just, I just want point out that he is infallible, so he's better than the rest of us. That infallible. If you're God on earth, if you're Catholic's knows That's right. He has certainty. I mean, he has certainty,

Andrew:

But everyone said the same thing. we're put on this earth to love one another. Mm-hmm. Period. Mm-hmm. Right. So along with that comes supporting your community and being a good human being and doing right by others. And all of the 10 Commandments stuff and, and things I needed to learn. Everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten. All that stuff is what we're, what we're here for. So when I am in, a tribal part of the world, or I am, with gang members in pps, hostile. In Johannesburg, a place the army doesn't even go into in that country. that they basically just put a wall around the neighborhood and said, we're not even gonna go in there. We're just gonna let everyone else sort of, they let them govern themselves, right? I mean, the favela that I went into in, in, in Rio had 400,000 people all under the watchful eye of a benevolent, uh, narco terrorist who made his money selling drugs internationally and weapons internationally. but he supplied that small city, 400,000 people, okay? 400,000 people live there with electricity and water and all the rest of, so these are poor people who come from all over Brazil. They're very loyal to this man. He's running a small city, arguably better than a lot of mayors do. I hate to say it right? I mean, so once you get in there, our mayor, you start, mayor doesn't break here. You start showing people. That what you think of Oh, as a narco terrace has to be a terrible human being. Well, in his day job, yeah. he's very dangerous. And number three on interpols, uh, terrorists. But at night he's just a card, when you tell stories at the extremes Yeah. You let people make their own decisions and come back to the middle So you have to introduce a cast of characters over 300 episodes. That, in its totality, shows you that human beings are human beings, but we all kind of want the same things for our families and our loved ones.

Mark:

Well, and one of those things that we want. and I think that's been the, center of your career, right? Is we wanna sit around a table together. Yes. We want to share a meal together. That's such an important part of who we are and how we express that care for our family and each other. And that's why do we

Andrew:

not do it more often then? We've, we've lost the family meal.

Mark:

Well, the culturally we have, there's, there's not enough of it. listen, almost everybody here shares meals in my restaurant. Yep. It's, it's what makes me

Andrew:

happy. Well, we're just, I just mean culturally we're time poor. I mean, I agree with you 100%. We need it. We need more of it. It's why when Magnolia Network came to me and said, we want an Andrew Zimmer show, what do you wanna do? And I right away said it's called family dinner. every episode of Bizarre Foods, every single one, 300 some odd, every episode of Driven By Food, every episode of Zimmer List, I mean, probably nine series had a family meal in it. trust me, this is the thing that everyone can relate to, but I'm gonna show we we need this. And it wound up coming out during COVI and was on for three seasons. I have really bad luck. I'm pretty good at identifying what I think people are going to wanna watch. And then at some point, the television network that I'm on decides like a radio station that goes from classical to country Western. Yeah. You know, a travel channel called me up one day and said. Uh, we want you to hear it first.'cause at that time, Tony had left and was on CNN, right? I have the number one show travel Channel called me and said, well, I was in the field doing something. And, they said, we're, we're changing to a ghost in paranormal show starting, uh, network starting tomorrow. And I said, well, how does that work? It's like, you're done. We're right. You're fired, you know? And I said, lemme call you back in a couple minutes. And I called my agent, he said, ghost a week. And, and I said, what, what do I say to this Vice President of programming? And he said, well. They gotta pay you for that. You got two more years in your contract, so you just say thank you and come home. So I called them back and I said thank you. And I, and I went home. That's great. But Travel Channel became, well, it's not great'cause I wanna keep making bizarre films even. Hold on. You

Francis:

got paid even though they ghosted you. Oh

Andrew:

well they, they ghosted me. They also had a, they they also had a vowel movement. They lost their vowels. It became turvy. Sorry I won that round, Andrew. You did? I won that round. Won that round One zero. Boom. Alright. Uh, so, and then at, at Magnolia they said, okay, we decided we're not gonna do food shows anymore. that's the business that I chose to be, but that's why I did family dinner because I want people. To see the power of gathering around a table. And I've become a little more patient with everyone's story because we all are time poor and we're all trying to get kids to practice, and we all have jobs that are late we're not living on a farm 150 years ago. Right. Well, but I would like people to emphasize a time, to share a meal and actually communicate with one another because societally, culturally, interpersonally, we are quantifiably better off when we do that on a regular basis.

Francis:

A hundred percent. You know, and Mark and I, probably the smarter business move for us would've been to open a restaurant, run it for five years, sell that restaurant, or take on partners and open a bunch of restaurants and sell them all. We'd be retired by now. Yes. Um, but we really like having two restaurants in this town where we had been for years before. And, we have regular customers that come in all the time. Right. And we don't have TVs. Right. And people turn off and share a meal. I remember we interviewed Gail Green years ago, and she said she was very smart. You remember Gail Green? She was the first female restaurant critic in New York for New York Magazine. It was tremendous. founded City Meals On Meals on Wheel, founded City, meals on Wheels, had sex with Elvis. She did. It's in a book. She, I hate to tell you she had

Andrew:

sex with everybody. Everybody, yeah, I know. I know. But most people aren't as notable as Elvis. But I, I did not have sex with her. However, I, one of my business partners had a lot of sex with her. Excellent. And, and told me that it was, uh, despite their age gap, uh, or maybe because of it, I said. Well, how was it, you know, because she famously had an enormous appetite. Yes. Uh, and she told us this on the show. Oh, yeah. No,

Francis:

she's very open. One of our top downloaded shows, very open about it.

Andrew:

And uh, and he literally said to me, blew my mind. And I was like, I was like, Gail Green. And I would see her, they're not supposed to your mind though. Events at events and stuff. And I would just be like, you go ladies, you go girl. And I just, right

Francis:

on. All right. So everything with Gail Green is sexual. We, so after our show, we kind of fell in love and she took us out, mark and I out platonically. Um, we went out reviewing with her a couple times and it was fantastic. That's where we found the strawberry pasta when we were reviewing with the green. But she related everything back to sex. And she said, listen, food is, first of all, the first act of kindness and generosity. You are showed as a human being is somebody feeds you Right. Number one. I'm like, wow, that's cool. And at birth. At birth, right. And next to sex. It's the most intimate thing you can do is to cook food. To serve food with someone. I'm like, how does that work? She's like, you put it in your body. It's the only thing you put in your body. You take into your body something that somebody made for you. What a level of trust that is. What, how intimate that is. And I just think that's so cool. And I see that in your show. Do you think you, it's also about the sharing

Mark:

it a table. Thank It's also, yeah, it's also being together, sharing food with, with people we know. I like the sexy part he's talking

Francis:

about. I can bring it back. I can bring it back. So the table is like a, a food orgy. That's right. Where we're all, and everyone

Andrew:

gets to enjoy their own thing. Do you, do you think one of the most famous reviews that she's ever written, Uhhuh, uh, concerned, uh, someone you had, on as As a guest in this series, on this stage, Rocco's? That is correct. Oh, yeah. At Union Pacific. Yeah. That's good. Um, and I was, I was I, I'd eaten at Union Pacific. That's one of the best meals of my life. I mean, when, when Rocco was cooking there, I, it was just stunning that the, the level of talent and stuff that he had. And he's, he's happily married and with children now, but I gotta text him when I'm done here and ask him if he ever stripped Gail.

Francis:

Oh. And, uh, if you all sign up, uh, and subscribe to Restaurant Guys podcast, we'll tell you what the answer is. And if we don't know, we'll make it up. Um, uh, yeah, so I, I think that, the whole, bringing people together over meals is pretty amazing. And that's the, that's the Trojan horse of your show. It is

Andrew:

the most important thing, that we do, that we can share with anyone. Mm-hmm. Um, some people. You know, practice monogamy. Right? Right. Uh, and, and generally if you're in a relationship with someone, you learn after a while that it's much better when you are focused on one person. There's a level of trust and intimacy, and you build something that's important and lasting, and then you have a foundation for a family and a lot of other things. And I, as, as someone who's tried it 8 million different ways, through 400 marriages and 800 relationships, and growing up in you're busy man in the sixties and seventies. I'm old. Yeah. Uh, and, and all this, like, it is so much better to find someone who accepts you for being 100% yourself with whom you can share everything. Right. So that's, that's really, that's really, really cool. Um, food, you can be very indiscriminate. I mean, you can, you know, your one night I'm going to, you know, I'm going out for sushi, and the next night I'm cooking at home, and then I'm gonna go over to this person's house and they're gonna make me something. There is a. Level of sharing with that intimacy that crosses more boundaries than if Gail was here, I would say, than sex does. Yeah. So there's an argument that, it is the most, universal of intimate acts

Francis:

that we share. So can we talk about,'cause we have spent a little time, like the one question we're not gonna ask you, at least not un adored, is, I'm sure that everyone's like, what's the most unusual food you had? But there are some things you've talked about in your past that I, I'm hoping you'll relate.'cause I don't know that everyone knows you quite as well as we do, but you had a, you had a close encounter with, with, uh, human foreskin as in, as I recall. well, I held it in my hand and I was ready to eat it.