Andrew Zimmern: Award-Winning Chef, World Traveler, and TV Host

Foreign.

I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is remarkable people. This episode's remarkable guest is the one and only Andrew Zimmern. I adored his TV series called Bizarre Foods Like Remarkable People. The title explains it all. Andrew went around the world eating bizarre foods and learning about different cultures. It was a program that my family watched, and whenever I traveled, I tried to watch an episode of Bizarre Foods to give me ideas for where to eat. Not that I would eat what Andrew eats. For example, I would not eat rotten shark in Iceland because I prefer ammonia on my window, not my plate. Bizarre foods lasted 15 years, and there are over 100 episodes. Andrew also won four James Beard awards and starred in many other culinary and cooking shows, and he wrote four books. His latest TV series is called what's Eating America? And it is a window into Andrew's soul because he uses food to investigate, understand, and explain some of the most divisive issues facing America. This episode is not all unicorns and pixie dust about eating great food. Many people don't know this, but early in his career, Andrew struggled with drug addiction. We go into this in great detail in our interview. By listening to this podcast, you will learn some very important practical tips, such as how to get a job, why you really don't want to eat tainted cumin, and how to pick a good restaurant. The only thing about Andrew that disappoints me is that he hates Spam. That is blasphemous for someone from Hawaii like me. I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is remarkable people. And now, here's Andrew Zimmern.

I'm a complete and total mess. I'm in New York. I'm an active addict and alcoholic. Horrible, low bottom story. Wind up homeless for nine, 10 months. I try to kill myself. It doesn't work. I reach out to a friend in what I believe was something inspired by something bigger than me. My whole life, I acted in a way completely contrary to what I did that one morning where I picked up the phone and asked a friend for help. I can't remember in the first 29 years of my life actually performing an act that I would say matched the humility of that moment to call someone and say, I don't know what I'm doing. I want to live. I'm a complete and total mess. I need help. Whatever it is, I'm willing to do it. I need help. I'm broken. I'm done.

Was the arc of that that you had success early? Did you fall off the cliff?

Oh, yeah. I mean, you can Sustain it. If you're a really good addict and alcohol, you can sustain it for a while and be manageable, right? And you. If you're a talented person, your talent is there in whatever it is that you do. Think of great musicians who died young from addiction and alcoholism. Janis Joplin was great. It gets to a point where it's not manageable anymore. And the minute that I called my friend, I started to dial it back, right? I started. I was like, oh, my gosh, what have I done? I've opened up a Pandora's box here. And lend me some money. Let me. I'm going to figure this out. Get me a job. Asking, hustling, shifting, and back on that trickster triangle again. The humility was instantaneously gone, but it was too late, because my friends knew where I was. They sort of had a hold on me. Within 48 hours, there was an intervention. I wind up in Minnesota. I start my sobriety waking up that first morning in Center City, and it took me about five years to get to the point. And I'm talking about active in recovery, really working on changing myself, behaving in a different way, like showing up for work, being accountable, not lying, not cheating, not stealing, trying to make a difference, positive difference in the world. Instead of taking from everything, let's think about giving to stuff. Mentored by an incredible recovering community there, very active in the 12 steps, and got a job and started my career again and was a chef and a partner in a restaurant. And I got to a point in my recovery that I was, I mean, so blessed to be at where I realized my insides were not matching my outsides in the sense that I wasn't gonna be happy or fulfilled and continuing to do what I was going to do in that restaurant. And on one hand, it sounds like ego to say, well, I wanted a bigger platform. But what it really came down to was I was telling stories through food on the plate in my restaurant. I was telling those stories, sometimes literally, to my staff, right? Here's where this dish comes from. Here's why it's important. I was telling stories to our guests on the plate. Figurative sense, but also going down to the dining room, practicing the art of hospitality, engaging with them, talking to them about what was driving my passion. And I realized that I needed to tell stories to more people if I really wanted to be happy. This is 1998. I'm six years sober. I'm realizing that I'm frustrated with the reach of my life that I sort of undershot in a Sense the arc of my ability, that I was capable of more. And I just thought back that here I was again, that little kid getting the second grade report card that said, Andrew's really a smart young man if he ever lives up to his potential and applies himself. And had I stuck with the restaurant thing at that point, I'm sure I would have been successful. I'm the type of person that likes to grow businesses. I would have grown that company. But I realized that what I wanted to do was get another education. And so what I decided to do was put the goal up on the wall, which was television, because that was the biggest audience at the time, Internet being what it was back then. And I decided, okay, let's try to go for tv. And then I, you know, mapped out. I'm a really big fan of making maps from my life and writing things down, putting things on paper and visualizing them. And I realized, well, I'd never really done that before. I'd done a couple, like, little guest things. As a chef, you show up on a local news program and it's like it's Easter. Andrew Zimmerman's here to show you how to make leftover ham hash with these. I'd done that kind of thing, but I hadn't really done television. And I'd written before in college when you got to write papers. And I realized that I needed to create my own sort of syllabus for this. There was no school that was going to teach me. And I realized that the thing that I had done best in my life, which was learn how to cook, I learned I didn't do in a school. Kind of like if you want to be. You want to play in an orchestra or teach music, whatever, go to music school. If you want to be a rock star, play in a band and just start and go. Start touring and playing every. Get in the van with your friends and play every gig you can. When I came up in the food business, that's what I did. I went to cooking school for a day and they were showing how to cut a chicken, by the way, in the French way, okay? In the white European way. And I say that because the Chinese cut their chickens differently than they do in Colombia and South America. And I had already traveled and worked in restaurants. And so I knew that there was a whole world of food out there that these people were forgetting. And so I traveled. I went to Hong Kong and worked in a hotel restaurant that was really world class. I went to Paris and worked in a three star Michelin restaurant. I Went to Venice and worked for four months in restaurants there. And I spent a year on the road because I kept getting kicked out of college. So it was an easy thing to find the time to do this. And I remember back to those days when I was sitting there sober at age 36 in Minnesota, that I had created my own education. Then I was going to do the same thing. I had enough savings to live for a couple months. And so I went to a local magazine, a local TV station, local radio station, and said, hey, I'm the 36 year old intern. I'll do whatever it is that you want me to, but I want to learn this business. And they all said yes, which was shocking to me. Proving once again that if you don't ask, you don't get, you know. And my, my sponsor, my spiritual guru, a man who I owe almost everything to, gave me one piece of advice. He said, just, just make yourself indispensable. And I thought that was a really fascinating thing. Like, he knew I would work hard, he knew that I was smart, he knew I'd pay attention. He wasn't worried about me showing up on time or bristling if someone asked me to stay late or do more. He just said, make yourself indispensable, right? If you're, if you're just like the other players on the team problem, right? But sometimes it's better to be the only than to be the best. So I just made myself indispensable in those places. And within 120 days, all three offered me a kind of a piece of a sort of a job. They didn't really have a place for me. And so the local TV station said, yeah, we'll pay a little bit of money and you can do three packages a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Friday, we'd like it to be a live food demo. Monday, Wednesday you can do tape food stories and make packages. So I finally was in a position to have a camera person as a teammate and learn how to edit and write and make t. I was finally making tv. They were little three minute stories for a morning show in Minnesota. But if you expand on that and get good at it, that then can become really serious television, however you choose to define it. It's a great, great best job that I had, except for my other job that was doing radio on the weekends, because radio taught me consistency and storytelling and engagement and listening. And someone's tuning in at, I think my first radio gig was ten to noon. So someone tunes in at 10:15. You better be the same personality when they tune back in at 11:45, right. And eventually I did drive time radio for a year and expanded on that. And I started writing for a magazine, our local glossy magazine, Minneapolis St. Paul magazine. And I got a great editor who, like my grade school English teacher, really worked on having me read, write and think critically in a different way and taught me so much about storytelling. Not quite in as short a format as Twitter, but I was doing like four or five columns a month for that magazine. So one would be a food review, one would be a 500 word sort of essay on the back page of the food section. Another one would just be 200 word blurb. And those I found the most fun, right, to write a 200 word blurb about an old restaurant or a heritage food situation in, in Minnesota and, and sell it to the audience, right? Have them want to go as much as I wanted them to go. And so I created the syllabus for myself. And then I literally, at the same moment that I had those three jobs, I just went out trying to push TV ideas to anybody who would listen. And it was at a, at a time when all the doors weren't shutting automatically. I mean, you could actually, people would. Except your. Everyone wants to make tv, right?

This is Travel Channel.

I actually approached Food Network, a whole bunch of places. Travel Channel was one of the later networks that I went to. I tried to sell shows wherever I could. I think one of the first things I tried to sell was a half hour show about local Minnesota food to Twin Cities Public Television. Our local group there worked with them for a lot of people wanted to work with me. I was lucky. I had some ability in, in terms of storytelling. I was engaging, people liked me on camera. And so other people in the production space, in the network space were willing to take a ride around me. Just nothing clicked. It's not easy. And finally I got in front of the folks at Travel Channel an amazing man, Pat Young, who was the head of Travel Channel at the time. And I did not know this, but he was trying to put together a, a team of immersive explorers. And he had Sam Brown and he had Tony Bourdain. And he was looking for someone else who could own their own night, right? So you want to have at least one show on each night on your schedule that other shows can fall in around and that can be a tune in reason for, for the audience. And I nervous as heck. I explained to him my idea for Bizarre Foods, which was not called Bizarre Foods at the time. And he, he said to me, that show that you're describing is a PBS show. It's 75% smarts and 25% entertainment. We're an entertainment network. He says you can sell that show about exploring culture through food and stories from the fringe and really lessons about patients, tolerance and understanding and equality. He said, that's a great show. As I described it to him, he said, that's pbs. Your peers are going to applaud. You'll get eight episodes. It's great. And every year you're going to be struggling to find sponsors, right? He says, but I'll make you a deal. He says, you come back here tomorrow, you turn this idea around and go 25% intelligence and 75% entertainment. He says that show will go into 170 countries on our network and be a huge hit. He said, we can figure that out together and more people are going to hear the messages that you want to hear. And I went home back to the hotel that night, and I thought to myself, well, this is a Faustian bargain. I'm selling my soul. And I woke up in the morning and I realized it wasn't a Faustian bargain. It was a golden ticket that I could accomplish everything that I wanted. The people who wanted to hear my message were going to hear my message that I was going to have a large enough megaphone. We shot a small piece of tape and then a bigger piece of tape and then a pilot, and then the series started. And in that first year, Tony had just finished doing Cook's tour on Travel Channel. They had bought that from Food Network, where he had started Cook's tour and was transitioning that into no reservations. And he, he had had a season on air while I was shooting my first season. And they had us do crossover episode, crossover episode and do some TV promos together and stuff like that. And I remember this day on Brooklyn, side of the Brooklyn Bridge. We were in this little park shooting some of these network promos. And I told him about this integrity. And I'm like, geez, I made this huge mistake. I made this Faustian deal. I don't know what was going on. And he said, the moment you sign a contract with any TV network, you've already lost your integrity. He said, you're accepting a check and someone else is going to tell you what to do and where to do it. He said, the key is holding on to what parts of your integrity that you can right and be authentic and get your message, the message you want to get out there. And I realized that what I Had actually sort of done. Was sold the network a little bit of a trojan horse. And that at that point, I could make it a little more of a trojan horse in the sense that television is a talent focused thing. Seinfeld wouldn't be Seinfeld without that cast. Friends wouldn't be Friends without that cast. Johnny Carson. The tonight show wouldn't be. It's a talent driven thing. And I realized that if I did the best job that I could when this show aired, if it was good, eventually the. The leverage would shift over to me and I would be able to put more of what I wanted in the show, in the show. So the first season, it was all big eye movements and slapping my head like the three stooges and eating the craziest crap we could find. Right? I mean, that was the driver. What's the craziest crap we could find? Fascinatingly, it was a complete accident and a scene that had no food in it that made the show as popular as it was and last for as long as it did. We shot a show in that first season before any episodes aired in Ecuador. And we were in Odavalo, largest outdoor market in South America, up in the highlands. I think I'd bought like a sheep or something at the auction for, like $5. And we were going to go eviscerate it, and I was going to eat its organs with some grandma. Typical sort of bizarre foods, wonderful story. And we had a couple hours to kill because everyone was taking a break at the animal part of the market. And at this point, it's me, a producer and a photographer who was doing sound. There's just three of us in our crew today. My crew, when I shoot shows is 15, 18 people. There's three of us and, you know, driving the rental car, right? And we're walking around, and I saw this sign that looked like it had some trippy wizard on it. And it. It said brujero or brujer. And it was. And I recognized that from seeing brujera in a market in another little town. And someone who told me, though, that that was a witch, a woman who read cards and sold you potions. And I said, oh, this is. Is this a witch doctor? And someone spoke English said, no, he's a shaman, but he performs exorcisms. I said, oh, my God, we got to go talk to this guy. So I grabbed my producer and her husband, who was the shooter, and we went into this place and we said, can we take pictures of you while you're performing an exorcism on me. And he said yes. And this is that scene in Bizarre Foods where the guy spat up on me, lit me on fire, beat me with bushes until my whole body burst out into welts and got inflamed. He killed two guinea pigs by swinging them by their legs and beating me with them and then laid them at my feet. That part didn't make the cut because the network animal abuse and the whole idea was to put all these living organ, all these living things, fire, the plants, the animals, kill them on my body to suck out all the evil spirits. Then he would take all those things that he beat me with. By the way, he's getting drunker and drunken while he's doing this, drinking this homemade booze and then lighting it on fire and spitting it on me. It was, I mean, and I, by the way, I'm standing there naked and he then burns it all and dumps the ashes in the river and his work is done. I'm exorcised. When that episode aired, it was, I think it was like the eighth or ninth episode we shot, but it aired as episode number three. And a booker at the Jay Leno show at the Tonight show saw it and showed it to Jay. And two nights later I was on the Tonight show with my first visit with Jay. And at that point this show on a mid sized cable network that had just started got the kind of lift that you just hope and pray you get. And then the rest has just been trying to hang on to the surfboard in waves that are much bigger than I've ever handled and learning as I go and trying to be, as best I can a decent human being along the way.

Well, I would say the power has shifted towards you, Don.

I don't know, it's. I mean, it's tough out there, guy. I mean it's all Shakespearean. I mean, everything has its cycles and its sagas and I feel like I'm in yet another one of the Richards or one of the Shakespeare history plays and it. Just because we've got another one to go. But I'm not planning on stopping anytime soon. And I'm at a great transition point in my life having left travel. Well, Travel Channel left me a year ago. Travel Channel became Tervel. T, R, V, L. They had a vowel movement and it was. They went from being a rock and roll station to a classical music station. They went from being food and travel to ghost and paranormal. And I don't do ghost or paranormal shows. So they were like, hey, sorry, we've Made this change and I was like, okay, great, no problem. And so I spent a year on the bench and then started making television for a couple other networks that all premiere in 2020.

Is one of them Amazon Prime?

No, I wish.

What's that? Jeremy Clarkson? The automobile show?

Oh, God, yeah. It's fantastic. Amazon is a fantastic, fantastic company right now. Their business model is shows like the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Jack Ryan, super premium TV and movies, and they are crushing it. They have a different model than Netflix and Hulu and all that other kind of stuff. One of the TV things that I have a sort of like, crept. Hasn't been announced yet, and it won't be until January, but it's crept out on Twitter because we've shot the first season of it. And so all I can say is that it's on MSNBC and it premieres in the first quarter of 2020, and it's a huge change and shift for me, which I'm really excited about. And the other one is on a lifestyle network that hasn't been announced yet, but will be announced at the end of January. So, yeah, it's really cool. I've gotten an opportunity to tell stories that other people have ignored in terms of being able to do it through food, right? So I think you can tell any story through food. And because it's something that we participate in every day, we swim in it, right? Food culture is. Is culture. And so I'm just. I'm just super, super grateful that I get to do that, that I. You know what it is? I'm super grateful that for a reason that no one can explain, because otherwise programmers would all be geniuses and they'd never make mistakes, audiences allow me to come into their house and entertain them. That's an incredible privilege. I mean, what a blessing that people actually want to follow my crazy adventures when there's lots of other people that are smarter, funnier, better looking, more hair, whatever it is. But those shows don't make it. And no one can explain why. I mean, taste is such an ephemeral thing, but somehow I have found acceptance from an audience, and that's just. That's the greatest gift of all. So I have that platform. So, Ben, what do you do with that?

I think from the outside, as a fan, I think it's just your bare naked enthusiasm. And, you know, the episodes that I love, you eat something, you say, oh, my God, I can the salt and the fat is rolling off my tongue, and it's so hot, I'm sweating and I'VE never had a guinea pig like this. Whatever you're saying, I love that nobody else does it that way.

The tribal, the, the food description, I've been told I describe food pretty well.

That's like saying LeBron James.

Okay, you flatter me. My favorite shows that I've done have been those tribal shows we've gotten a chance to spend time with. Oh gosh, 24, 25 First Peoples of the Americas. About 16 different protected tribal peoples, first peoples around the world in some cases. It took us two years just to get into shoot with the Gentoisie and Botswana, petitioning the government, talking to them, call after call after call, sending them tape. Because so many of those first peoples are either protected by conservancy organizations within those countries, mostly because they've been abused before. In other words, photographers have come in and then just done some sort of magazine spread and been abusive or spent time there and actually took things from the tribe or put them in positions that they shouldn't have been put in. But those shows were for me, the greatest travel adventures of it. Taking nothing away from spending a week in a room at the Georges Cinq in Paris and eating my way across that city, which is a pretty good week, not gonna lie to you. I like those weeks. Being in a rainforest and living in a tiny little tent or lean to and participating in activities that nobody who looks like me has ever gotten to participate in. And one of my big talks in the lecture circuit is about the skill set that we've lost in our modern times. So folks like you and I, people who are listening to this podcast, we have a really high skill set. We can do a lot of things. But you spend a week I'm talking about with a real tribe. I'm talking about real first peoples folks who are living in the exact same lifestyle that their ancestors lived as represented on cave paintings. And you realize how dwarf was the most emasculating feeling in the whole world because there's 14 year old boys there that they're architects, veterinarians, doctors, pharmacists, soldiers, hunters, warriors. I mean they can do. You have to do everything. You have to do everything. And it's a survival thing. And they're taught day after day after day from infancy how to survive and live in their world. And that skill set is massive. And just to be able to live that with them is amazing.

With all your travels, do you think.

People are more different or more the same?

Oh, way more the same. Infinitely, infinitely similar. One of the things that we never Put a circle around it or announced it, or put a chiron or lower third underneath it, or put a big arrow saying, pay attention. Here's the family meal. But people who've watched my content, because I do it in every show, I don't think I've made an episode of tv. Actually, having said that, I'm sure there's one or two that I haven't. We always document a family meal. Always. Always. Even in. Even in Zimmernlist, one of the last shows that I made for Travel Channel, we'd always make sure that one of the meals in the restaurants was with a family or a group. Because I knew that Bizarre Foods airs still in 170 countries around the world in reruns. I knew other people in other countries. There's people in Japan watching a Norwegian family, Laplanders from the northernmost part of that country eat reindeer, right? And people in Norway were sitting down at night in front of their TV and watching me in Okinawa with a bunch of 90 year old grandmothers cooking a traditional Japanese dinner from that part of the country. And I wanted the world to see how similar we were because we have the same hopes and dreams for ourselves and our kids. We ask ourselves the same questions about our relationship to the universe. In fact, here in the west, we actually have complicated matters tremendously. It was not lost on me, the opportunity that I had, the handful of times that I felt I was with somebody who was in a position in their lives to have dedicated themselves to connecting to something bigger in the universe in a very special way. Whether shamans, witch doctors, religious men of certainty, not just belief or faith, but certainty, right? And the five or six people that I met over the course of the 13 years of making those shows for Travel Channel, I made sure to ask them what the same question man has been asking. What's my relationship to the universe? What am I doing here on this rock, hurtling through space? Why am I here on Earth? And as corny as it is, I wanted to hear from these people that I really, really thought. I mean, one of them was a shaman in the Jeunesi, who anthropologists at research universities around the world believe are one of the only three people who can astrally project himself into other places. So, I mean, we're talking about people who did things that we document are superhuman by any definition. And I remember asking Bam, one of the shamans in the Gentuasi tribe in the Aha Hills of Botswana after this trance dance, you know, what are we doing here? And he literally laughed at me. It's the one thing they all have in common. Whenever you ask this question of a truly, truly holy person, they laugh at you. Because it is a stupid question. Because I get the same response from the shaman in Botswana, the fisherman, the Sakalava tribal fisherman, who was the most beautiful human being I've ever met in my life in Madagascar, to the witch doctor in the Amazon with the trippy, hippy, dippy potion that got everybody messed up for three days. Every person who I spoke said the same thing to me. We're here on Earth to love each other and make our best. Are where we live a better place. That's what we're here for, to love each other. And we forget that and complicate that here in the craziest of ways. And so at its simplest, not only do I think we have an incredible commonality with people all around the world, I think the rootsier you get, the more you discover, which is why I tell people to go to the last stop of the subway, right? We will discover the things that will help us simplify and pare down our lives. We make it so, so complex.

I want to ask you some short questions.

Yes. Okay.

So the politest people in the world.

Wow. Most polite people in the world. Those that have the least.

Well, that's profound.

The minute you asked me, I thought to myself, oh, what country? Or what city? But whether it's the last group of catchy families. Maya. That are in the mountains of Belize, who had two pigs and four chickens and killed a pig and two chickens to feed us their traditional meal, even though they should have waited six months for the holidays. They gave us half of their possessions. We went into Jeppy's hostel, which is arguably the most dangerous. Four square blocks on planet Earth in Johannesburg. Army doesn't even go in there. There were people who came up to. They'd never seen a white person in their neighborhood because I mean, really, really, really dangerous, dangerous place. But there are Zulu grandfathers and great grandfathers and grandmothers and great grand grandmothers there trying to teach their tribal culture to the young kids amidst horrific gang violence. People who in other areas of the world that were so impoverished up in the Alto in La Paz in Bolivia, everywhere we went, where the people have the least. They're the most generous, the kindest. And it's not because they think that we're going to give them some. We're not paying people, right? We're documenting lifestyle. That's what the show is about. We're the kindest, most generous People. That Sakalava fisherman that I told you about, we spent a day and a half with him and at the end of a day and a half, he apologized because he sold all his fish that went and caught with him. But he had saved a couple heads to make a simple broth. His wife dug in the ground outside one of their little thatched plant huts and there was a little jar with this pale brown, almost tan looking powder. And she got all these cracked, dirty little cups and set them up and boiled water from the little stream behind their house and started to stir this stuff in there. And I realized it was like 10 year old instant coffee. That's what she was giving. It was her only possession that she could share with us to entertain. Like she'd been waiting a decade, right, for someone to come where she could perform an act. By the way, setting out little teacups and saucers and 10 year old Sanka is not a Sakalava tradition. That's learned behavior that she thought was something that would impress us. Those kind of things don't happen in other places. And when you're the recipient of that kind of respect and dignity given freely by someone from whom agencies of equity have stripped away or tried to deny them respect and dignity, it is a very powerful, transformational experience for someone to be a part of that.

I have to ask you this because when I'm watching with my family, there's so many times we've asked each other, which is how often and how severe do you get sick? Because some of the shit, oh my.

Gosh, this is the, this is the funniest thing. And nobody believes me but my family. It's the honest truth. The answer is almost never. I don't believe I can count on one hand. There's a couple reasons why. Okay, number one, regardless of what I'm eating, my kid watched me eat a pig blood and gut stew with poached iguana eggs floating in it in a scene in Nicaragua and looked at me and said, dad, that night you had to be on the toilet all evening. I mean, there's no way you weren't. And I said, dude, that pig was killed three hours before. Everything was super fresh in it. It may not look pleasant to, you know, a young boy who grew up in Minnesota and lives in the house that you live in and eats the food you eat, but everything in there was super fresh and someone's grandmother made it. And it's ancient food tradition there. It's good someone's grandmother made it. So that's Number one, no matter what it looks like, it's fresh. Someone's grandmother made it. There's so many reasons that make it really, really tasty. The other thing is that, for the most part, the world, especially the world on the fringe where we're reporting from, understands how to treat those products right. It's Western culture that puts a thousand pounds of chicken every five minutes through a conveyor belt, Henry Ford style. And we put things that make you sick into meat and chicken. You know, things like E. Coli and stuff like that. So we've done more to taint our food system than anybody else. So the. The. I've spent more nights. I love mussels. They're my favorite. One of my favorite foods. If I. If I had to just pick one animal protein, it might be mussels. That's much. I love them. And I would say once a year, I'm up all night in the bathroom because I get a couple bad muscles in a place that I eat them in. And it's here in America. I've gotten sick more in America in restaurants on my own as a civilian than I have doing 13,8 million episodes of Bizarre Foods.

I'm astounded. Okay, next question. How does someone who's not a foodie not. How do you tell if a restaurant is good?

Oh, easy, easy. I call it the American Museum of Natural History Hot Dog Stand test. Okay, so you come down the steps of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, okay? And in front of you, Tay Rose on the big horse right outside it, if you come out of the Central park west exit entrance, and if you stand on the top step, there's three or four hot dog vendors within about 200 yards. Like, every 50 yards, there's a different hot dog vendor. There's four of them where you get a hot dog. Two of them are doing no business at all. And the guys kind of look sad and the carts kind of look dingy. And your gut just tells you, no, they're ruled out. One guy doing a decent amount of business, people standing around eating hot dogs, and every minute or so, someone else comes up with it. The fourth cart, wnyc, is cranking opera, and on this old AM FM radio with an aluminum foil antenna, that the hot dog vendor is Jerry Rigdavitt, and he's singing along with it. And there's kind of like a little line built up and people are standing around. If you wait long enough, you notice that people get back online and get another hot dog. And he's asking people if they want onion, sauerkraut and mustard, just like all the other hot dog stands in New York. But up on the top rack, he's got two or three little jars with homemade spicy pickles and stuff that his wife makes. You can see him kind of dipping in there for certain customers that know enough to ask. And he's singing and he's smiling, and the people standing around that cart are laughing and having a good time. Which hot dog cart do you need at? Okay, okay. So, all right. So that's how. That's how my father raised me. Okay. It's like hunting. Get quiet and just wait and watch and see what happens. So when I go up with friends, first time I ever went to Toronto, which has five Chinatowns, by the way. And I love Chinese food, eat it all over the world. My. My favorite. And I'm in one of the five Chinatowns with six or seven of my buddies as a civilian, and I've not been to any of the restaurants on that block. And we're hungry. I mean, we've been out all day. We've skipped lunch. Everyone's like, we gotta eat. So I just told everybody, stand here. And I went in and out of three or four restaurants, and we ended up eating at the one where the customers were laughing and smiling and having a good time. The food smelled and looked good. The people working there looked like they were having a good time. And there was an energy in the room that was projecting happiness and hospitality. It's really super simple. You just have to kind of quiet your mind and just soak in that vibe. If you walk into a restaurant and those things are not present, it doesn't mean the food's going to be necessarily bad, but the chances are it's not going to be as good as if you were in a place where those things were present. And so regardless of whether I'm eating a hot dog on the street or a fancy meal, it's why the temples of gastronomy that I like to eat in are the ones where people are actually allowed to laugh. Like, there's a lot of places where white tablecloth, a lot of fancy silverware, a lot of glasses, expensive menu, 20 courses, famous chef. That puts some people off. I love it. I love both high and low cuisine. I like symphony, I like pop music, I love it all. But I have to eat in a restaurant that's fun. And thank God the food world is sort of democratized, so there's even the great restaurants in the world that are, like, fun and exciting. So it's. It's the type of thing that if people aren't having fun, the people who work there, people who are dining there, and if. If you don't get that feeling like that hot dog guy singing Verdi and sharing his wife's little spicy eggplant pickles, don't go there.

But would Nobu and French Laundry and Chez Panee pass all that passive test?

To a certain degree. To a certain degree. Well, Nobu's restaurants are all noisy. And you mentioned Nobu is. I've been lucky enough over the course of my career to consider him a good, close friend. And I've gotten to spend time with him in Japan and here in America. And when I'm traveling, if I'm flying through London from Africa, and I've just spent like 10 days eating raw green bananas and goat meat and river fish. Believe me, a meal at Nobu on your 16 hour layover in London for your flying home is pretty darn good. And I'm amazed at how he's able to replicate his system. His restaurants are such high quality, even though, in a sense. And he hates this word. It's a chain. I mean, it's. The menu is the same. And he's. You know what he's got now? Two, three hotels. The Ryokan in Malibu. He's got 24 cities. He's got restaurants, and they're absolutely fantastic. But there's great music playing, people are laughing, People are having a good time. Right. Thomas Keller's restaurants. Yes. There is a different playlist there. There is more seriousness there. But his restaurants understand hospitality. They're there to make you happy. And there was a sea change even with those chefs at that level where they realized that it was no longer hush tones while food was being served. And that shift happened over the last 10 years. And my last meals in the tack room, his new place down at Hudson Yards, absolutely fantastic. And certainly the most fun concept he has in terms of energy and stuff like that. At the French Laundry, you generate your own energy to a certain degree. Everyone is so excited to be there because you've arrived. It's like the lake going on pilgrimage, and you've arrived at Our lady of Lourdes and you have a private moment in the crypt. I mean, it's. You're like, oh, my God, I'm gonna eat oysters and pearls. Maybe for the first time. One of his classic dishes. So, yeah, for the most part. And obviously I dine in fancy tablecloth restaurants the least of any sort of genre that I Eat in. But I'll only dine in the places that are fun.

Okay, your last meal.

Easy. 12 cherry stones. Not littlenecks, they're too small. 12 cherry stone clams that I hopefully that I've taken out of the waters of Long Island Sound myself earlier in the day and purged them and shuck them as the sun is setting. And I've spent all day riding waves on Indian Wells beach or Georgica Beach, Long Island. I body surface. I tried board surfing a whole bunch and I'm the worst board surfer in the world.

We can fix that.

But I am a badass big wave body surfer. I even have fins. Oh, I'll go out into 17, 18 foot surf and body surf. I have a set, I have a set of Australian hand and foot fins planers for my hands so that you can actually stay on big waves and really hard cut. Because that's the issue. Especially in barrel breaks with big waves.

Waves.

Oh my God. And yeah, it's my big thing. Hawaii, Costa Rica. I, I, I seek out beach vacations during big wave times in beaches that are surfers beaches. And then I go out there and everyone's like yells at me because I'm a bodies, but I've got fins and I don't get in people's way.

I have friends who can take you to Mavericks.

Oh, I love, love. Dude, that isn't, that's a badass break. I've got surfer friends who are, I mean that is a badass. I, I follow more surf websites and surf accounts on my Instagram than even I do food accounts because there's something tranquil about watching surfing videos. I'm kind of obsessed with it. I've gotten my kid obsessed with it too.

One of the other people I interviewed, I actually interviewed two surfers. One is Sean Thompson.

Sure, no Sean. And the other is, I know of him.

Yeah, Chris Burnish. Chris Burdish is the guy who paddled across the Atlantic.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So anytime, yeah, there I'm, I'm in awe of some of those people. And now, you know, with, with technology mean what it is, you can watch live from Mavericks or Nazar in Portugal or wherever the big break is. There's people with cameras loading up on Instagram and that's pretty, that's pretty thrilling. Okay, last meal. Anyway. Yeah, the clam. I'm on the beach and then I have my, I make my grandmother's roast chicken and I don't care if I eat it hot or cold, but it's my grandmother's roast chicken. And then I have a pint of espresso ice cream from Prince Puckler's in Eugene, Oregon, and. Yeah, that's it. That would make me very, very happy.

Good to know. I'll put that on my bucket list. And where would you be living?

Where would I be living? A beach. Give me a beach with. I grew up in New York City, and I was lucky. My father had gone out to Long island in the late forties, in the early fifties, got his first place out there. And so before it, before the South Fork of Long island became really a blight in my opinion. Culturally, it's still one of the most beautiful places on planet Earth. It's just become the playground of the rich and famous. And I think something dies when that happens. But in the 60s and 70s, when I was growing up there, we went out every weekend in the wintertime. I spent from Memorial Day to Labor Day. I mean, whenever school wasn't in session, we were out there. And I spent my life on that beach out there. First Main beach in East Hampton, then Georgia beach. And then my father built a house a little further out in Amaganset and on Indian Wood Wells Beach. I tell my son all the time and, and I did it when he was little, so now it's wrote to him. I tell him when dad happiest. He says, swimming with me in the ocean, I'm like, that's exactly right. So there's my happiest place where I would want to be if I had to pick anything, anytime, anywhere, is in the ocean with my son. That's where I'm happiest.

If somebody asked me the same question, I would say surfing with my four children.

There you go.

It's the same thing.

It's the same thing. First of all, the energy of being in nature with your kids is incredible. I get the same feeling when I'm skiing with him on a mountain or how old is he doing whatever. He's going to be 15 in February. An amazing young man, and I just adore him. And he's the. He's the light of my. The happiest, greatest joy of my whole life is being a dad. It's my favorite title.

I relate.

It has taught me, if you want to know, if you want to learn patience, tolerance and understanding, if you want to grow as a human being, become a parent.

In one of your the Hawaii version episode, you expressed a utter disdain for Spam.

Yes. What's.

I love Spam.

Horrible. Here's, here's, here's the thing. I'll tell you two things about Hawaii. Okay? We'll talk about spam first. You have seen enough of my shows. People should know that we've been corresponding by email for years. And finally, we're able to make this happen and meet and do this podcast. And we've had a mutual admiration society for a long time, and I had a feeling this question would come up. So I eat Taylor pork roll, right? Which is a New Jersey minced ham. I mean, it's got more fat and salt and other crap in it, but it's not put in a can and made shelf stable. It's not loaded with chemicals the way spam is. Now, look, I have my guilty pleasure foods, so I'm not trying to yuck on someone else's yuck, right? However, what I tell people is I would rather have those same ingredients, which are feet and snouts and ears and tails all ground up. I'd rather have that in Filipino sisig. I'd rather have that in a Latino confine stew. I would rather braise that, pull out all the bones and tendons and pack it into a terrine like a Tete Devaux. I would rather eat those parts in a different way than stuffed in a can and cooked in it and made shelf stable. That's the part that freaks me out. So it's really the commercial preparation side. It's not the ingredients or the flavor, right?

You're killing me.

Second thing, Hawaii. I shot, like, seven shows there over the course of my TV career to date, and it endlessly fascinates me. Here's a group of islands discovered by Polynesians who I believe had the ability to literally sail around the world. I mean, they're. Both boats were flexible, right? They were joined by rope. They were meant to move with the water. They weren't stiff. They didn't break apart in storms. They were the fastest boats because they still are among the fastest in the world, which means that a thousand years ago, for sure, they were the fastest in the world. Taking nothing away from the Vikings. All right? These Polynesians were. Were brave. Their spiritual system taught them to be brave. They. They were not in fear of things the way medieval Europeans were, where everything was about angering God and staying in your place. So these adventuring Polynesians make it to Hawaii, create a culture there that the farming, the aquaculture, the lifestyle, the empire that they built was. When you study the history and the people was. Was so impressive. And then Captain Cook sails into a harbor, right? They love him up. He loves them up. He Sails in during a time of one of the deities that means good things. So they think he's a good sign. Cook sails back out of the harbor. His boat breaks, and three weeks later, he sails back in to the harbor after kind of fixing it, but not really only this time, he sails in during a time of one of the gods that did not mean such great luck. And he dies in the surf, on the beach, clubbed to death. And Hawaiian culture changes forever because it's touched by outsiders and it becomes this, this, that in a sense, the, the ultimate colonizers story. Dole, pineapples and sugar companies and Hawaiian culture literally beaten down into the ground.

In World War II. They bring Spam.

Yeah. And over the last 20 years, I called it in my last show that I did there, we titled it the Hawaiian Renaissance because there are young people there. I'm talking about 24 year olds who have grown up in houses where great grandpas and uncles and aunties have said to them, you can't forget our language and our dance and our music and how we fish and how we build things and what we do. And now not only has that culture risen up from not the ashes, but through the mud, but now there is a tourist trade built around people going and experiencing that because people want to. So to me, the stories that you can tell in Hawaii about culture through food are the ones that are the best example of the things that we need to be studying. I mean, the island is now, because of their problems with produce and energy and stuff like that, is going back to being self sustaining in a way that we can really learn from them in a very, very, very profound way. So, yeah, I'm all about that, except the Spam. But I will make you a homemade version of Spam and fry it up and put it on a sandwich. It'll make your coast, your toes curl.

Okay. You know, I'm coming out to speak for your friend.

Yes, you are.

And when I do that.

Oh, you're coming. We're, we're. We're eating.

I'll come to your. Well, that for sure. But I'll also come to your company and talk about evangelism and do whatever you want.

I would, I would love that. I would love that. We, we have 30 some odd employees, more depending on how many shows we have in production at a time. But the. You're coming to speak at Studio E in Minneapolis as part of their Explorer series, I think. And the three people who own that company are three of my four board members. One of them is also, all three have been friends of mine for, well, two of them for 25 years, one for just the five years that he's been there. One of them is my lawyer and partner and owns. Is my partner and owns part of my businesses. So they're my closest and best friends. And the Twin Cities is going to be really excited to host you. But I'm really glad because I told Tom, I said, look, I said, make sure this whole travel arrangements and all the rest of that. I said, we'll go to one of my restaurants, we'll eat there, but we got to come to my kitchen lab and studio for lunch so that I can actually cook you lunch. I'll make you my homemade version of Spam, my head cheese, fried head cheese, and I put mustard on one side of the white bread and grape jelly on the other. I learned how to do that in Asheville, North Carolina, and it is delicious. Yeah, you're gonna. You're gonna love it.

I don't want lutefish.

No, lutefish should never be eaten. Lutefisk is a food that should be laid down and avoided. It's. It is. And this comes from the Scandinavians who originated it and wonder why Scandinavians who moved to Minnesota still eat it in church basements. They hide it. It's. It's awful. It's fish jello. It's putrid fish jello. And it's like, I've tasted it a bunch of times. Everyone says, oh, you just gotta eat it with enough butter on it. I'm like, there's not enough butter in the world to make that good.

What was the episode where you ate rotting sharks?

That was in the Iceland episode. It's called hakarl. It's a very specific kind of shark. It's a Greenlandic ice shark. Now, all sharks and all skates are uremic. They're very special animals. They urinate through their skin. So all of that ureic acid, that pee taste, is in their flesh. So when they rot, when you just hang them to rot in a weird way, well, if you eat it during the first two weeks, you'll die because there's so much poison in it. But eventually, the good bacteria eats the bad bacteria, and all that's left is the worst kind of fish stink you've ever smelled in your life. And you can. And when you taste it, it's amplified. It's turned up to 11. And curing it and aging it just out in the wind and the weather of an Icelandic summer is an art. So in the spring, they bury these things. Then in the summer, when the sun is out the longest and the weather gets up to 50 degrees, maybe a little warmer in the sun, they hang these chubs of rotted shark meat. And. Yeah, and it's. It's horrible. I. By the time I left, and I've subsequently gone back to Iceland a lot, I now like it because if you. It's. Do you ever have a really crappy pork chop at someone's house? Like, it's really tough and overcooked, and then you eat a pork chop three weeks later at someone else's house or at a restaurant, you're just like, oh, my God, I love pork chops. They're really. This one melts in my mouth. Why can't they all do that? That's the type of pork and the technique of the person who cooked it. So you can make a good pork chop or a bad pork chop. I learned that with, you know, any bizarre foods, whether it's bugs or rotted sharks. If you try it enough places around the world, you find someone who's like. Like, oh, my God. What do you. How do you do this? It's so good. So we found farmers who took a carl and they were like, yeah. I don't know why they let you eat that raw. I mean, or just plain. No one really eats it plain. Slice it thin and pile it high on buttered brown bread so that as you chew it, it breaks up. And the ammoniated dumpster juice taste has a chance to really work its way around your mouth. And it's actually quite enjoyable. And I found that with a lot of foods, there were. There were places that I've gone that I can't believe. They boil the big coconut grubs because the best way to have them is soaked in sour orange juice, wild oranges, and grilled until they're crispy. They taste like chicken skin. I mean, so there's a good way and a bad way to cook everything. It's the lesson in life.

So the most important thing I learned today is you can eat anything. You don't get sick all the time.

I don't. I don't.

I would have never, ever predicted that.

I don't. I did. Contrary. This is very strange, though. Episode one, show one, not the pilot, Episode one. Season one, we shot in Morocco, in Marrakech, and at the Jemaa el Fana. The very first night there, I fell in love with the mechwee, this whole roasted lamb that's cooked, buried in the ground. They pull it up and the lady will point at different parts and you nod your head. And so you get a little bit of cheek, a little bit of shoulder, a little bit of loin, a little bit of leg, a little of foot, a little bit of tail, whatever it is, a little bit of belly meat. And they put it on a piece of paper and she scoops this cumin, salt and chili mixture, three spices. She makes a little pile on your paper plate. And depending on how much weight they give you, they kind of judge that that's how much they'll charge you. And you dip it into this stuff. And six months later, I contracted this horrible virus that is. It's called burning mouth syndrome. It's awful. And there's only two ways you can contract it, one of which is by eating tainted cumin in Morocco. And I got that virus and I had breakouts of it. The first five or six years that I had it, it would just pop out of nowhere. So I had to carry this magic mouthwash with me. The pain was unbearable. It was just awful. And now it's completely in remission. I still have it. I test positive for it. So if it ever pops out again, I haven't. It hasn't been six, seven years was the last time it emerged. So I haven't escaped completely unscathed. But I think the other reason that I can eat all those foods is I'm the right man for the job. I think if I had a sensitive constitution, even after season one and its success, I would have pulled the rip cord and bailed out and parachuted to safety. I mean, who would want to keep doing that if it was physically uncomfortable? Right. So I'm going to will my stomach to the Smithsonian. And yeah, I.

How about the Mayo Clinic?

Sure. They're local. Yeah. Here's the thing. I appreciate a nice grilled piece of chicken. I love it. I eat chicken two or three times. I love it. But the excitement of having this library of foods and flavors inside my head, that. That may not exist in another human beings. I'm not sure who's traveled as many places, lived with as many tribes, tasted as many weird potions, animals, crazy things that it's not possible anymore to eat. Two of the foods that I ate in Samoa, they literally don't exist. In some of my first people shows, I ate foods that are culinary unicorns. No one else is ever going to get to try that again. I ate 3000 year old bog butter that was discovered in Ireland by people. They essentially took the stuff out of a Museum to let me taste it. Who else gets to do that? I mean, I just think the library in my head. And so once you get that library, you gotta keep adding to it. It's like collecting baseball car. Right. So wherever I go, I'm still seeking out that kind of stuff.

Oh my God. Someday I'll go on a trip with you.

Anytime you want, my friend. Anytime that you want. We'll go to Hawaii again. Oh, I'd love my kid. Literally. That is the easiest invite in the whole world. Yo. Love it there. Are you kidding me? I get to be in the ocean with my son. It's the best thing in the whole world.

I'm going this Christmas.

Hawaii is. Is such a magical, magical place. And when you get to know the communities of people out in a lot of the small towns, some of the fishing. We've shot three shows. We shot seven in total, but three in this one particular little fishing village. At least all or part of it. Simply because of the group of people that are still doing. They have. They have a foot in two cultures. The modern 21st century American culture and the. The ancient world. Right. Hawaii, the Big Guy. Yeah. And it's.

It.

I'm just fascinated. Fascinated by Hawaiian culture because it's right. I mean Darwin's theory of islands, like things stay on islands, things don't go on. I mean it is. As a. As a culture geek, as a cultural anthropologist, it's amazing. I try not to get too, like, intellectual about it. Just enjoy myself when I'm there. But even stopping at a little place for huli. Huli chicken on the side of the road or something is kuala more is a lesson. Is a lesson in culture. Oh my gosh. I just. Now I'm talking about it. I'm just like, you know, let's go, let's go this Christmas. I love it. I love it. I'm going to be shoveling snow in Minneapolis. We are doing. My son and I were doing a staycation this Christmas. He wants to spend the time at home and it's gonna be a lot of fun. So I'm excited. See, here's the thing. I'm always traveling for work. Yeah, right. So even the new series that I've made, while they haven't been in travel, like Bizarre Foods, there's still a lot of travel. And so it's super. My idea of a good time being at home.

Me too.

Too.

I am. But I want you well.

Sure. Because you have to keep an eye on your daughter.

Well, I once played in the Minnesota Ice Hockey pond tournament on Lake Nicolas. Oh, my God.

We go and watch it. It's the, the winter carnival with the pond hockey, the ice. They cut holes in the ice, jump in. There's ice fishing. There's. I, I, I adore it. Minnesota and the Twin Cities are where I live. I just think it's one of the most overlooked places for people to come. And in wintertime, we approach it the way the Scandinavians do, which is you don't shy away from winter. You jump into it with arms wide open. Look, I play disc golf. I'm a disc golf enthusiast. We play in the wintertime with Mylar ribbons on our discs in case they go into a snowbank. We go wolf watching. We do snowmobiling, we snowshoe, we. Anything you do, you drive your car on the ice, turn hard to the left at 70 miles an hour, and bang, that emergency brake and you literally spin doing circles, hundreds of them, down a giant open expanse of ice. It's the greatest thing if you gotta, you gotta jump into winter there. Jump into it.

I was born and raised in Hawaii.

Look. Isn't it interesting that people who live in cold weather love going to where it's warm, but people who were born and raised in warm weather, that's not. The reverse is not the same. So I'm with you on that.

So now you have the most important career advice you'll ever hear. Make yourself indispensable. Indispensable people get jobs, keep jobs, and dent the universe. And if I see you at a rundown, lonely hot dog stand in New York, I will be very disappointed. I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is remarkable people. My thanks to Jeff C. And Peg Fitzpatrick, who are indispensable to me. Mahalo also to Tom Weiss and Sean hall for making this interview. This is remarkable people.