The Bizarre Truth (37 page)
Authors: Andrew Zimmern
Our departure coincided with Cuba’s May Day celebration. I arose from my bed at Hotel Nacional to the sounds of the holiday masses assembling in the streets. People flooded the city, with literally a million Cubans gathering at the José Martí Memorial in Plaza de la Revolución. Another million-plus were marching through the streets. I joined them briefly at nine in the morning, marching for a couple of miles, taking pictures and absorbing the scene. Right before I needed to leave for the airport, who should come sauntering by but Teofilo Stevenson, Cuba’s Babe Ruth and Muhammad Ali, all rolled into one. A three-time gold medal-winning Olympic boxer, Stevenson is a living legend—and not just in Cuba, but all over the world. This amazing cultural icon was surrounded by a couple of quasi-assistants and friends who I am
guessing spend their time looking after him. It’s thought that had Stevenson not been Cuban, he would have dominated the heavyweight boxing world for years, and of course would be living in Vegas in a huge house with a nineteen-year-old girlfriend. I was absolutely starstuck by this man, a superstar whose every televised Olympic bout I was glued to growing up in New York City. I walked up, shook his hand, and wished him a happy May Day. I’m such a complete sports geek, I turn into a little child in front of all those sports heroes. Teofilo Stevenson is the one guy I wanted to meet in Cuba—besides Fidel, of course.
¡Viva Cuba!
o what is the Bizarre Truth? It’s lots of things, I think. It’s the ugly mass of humanity of metro Manila that masks the incredible hospitality and kindness of the Filipino people. It’s the fierce nationalistic pride of Catalonia. I landed in Barcelona once and a cabbie asked me how I was enjoying myself. I told him I loved Spain, and he replied, “Dees eeez not Spain, eeez Barthelona!” It’s the desolate beauty of Alaska that is best seen being pulled behind a team of world-class sled dogs. It’s standing in line at Kuznechny Market in St. Petersburg with a history teacher who is crying because he can remember as he stares at hundreds of cold cuts behind the deli counter that just a few years before he waited for two days for a portion of canned Danish ham. It’s the impact that precolonial cuisine has on Mexican food, even today. It’s the disappearing rain forest, the destroyed fishing grounds, the first peoples of the world who are driven from their homes by governments who don’t realize the catastrophic nature of their decision making. This truth is real, and it’s not going to end.
The Bizarre Truth is also the generosity that the least fortunate people in the world (by ethnocentric Western standards) have afforded me in their homes on a moment’s notice. I am often asked how I can stomach some of the food I am offered, as if it is somehow “less than” because it’s not a luxury cut of beef in a fancy restaurant. That question pisses me off. I am always grateful for a meal, any meal, and often I am served sitting next to someone’s
mom who cooked it. How can you not smile and say thank you? I was once invited to lunch at the home of Donaldo, one of my native guides in the Amazon jungle, and he was so proud of his two-room home on stilts on the banks of the Pilchi River. We sat in the cooking room, on the floor, eating fried coconut grubs served on leaves, along with small steamed tubers from his garden. He ate one grub, giving me two on my leaf, and also giving two to each of his three kids who were there that day; the oldest one was six. Nine grubs and a few root vegetables were all they were going to get to eat that day. How do you explain kindness and generosity like that? How can you be anything other than grateful and humbled by that experience?
The Bizarre Truth is that there are good people and bad people everywhere, and let’s face it, simplicity is often overlooked as the most important contributing factor to happiness. I have spent a lot of time sharing food and experiencing culture, and along the way I realized that my own curiosity is fulfilled by a life devoted to continued learning and becoming more open to the idea that there are many different ways of living a complete and useful life—not just mine. In fact, the lives we lead ourselves might be the least important way, regardless of who you are or where you live, because it’s the one you are most familiar with and the one you use as a crutch most of the time.
At the end of the day, my curiosity is the driving force in making my life complete, and the Bizarre Truth is that a simple meal with friends, regardless of where I am, connects me to others and in turn to their purpose, dreams, and desires. Those connections and binding tissues are the most important elements of what I think is the fabric of a useful life.
When I was a little kid in New York, I would look at public-television documentaries about tribal Africa and think to myself how better off I was, how sophisticated our big-city culture seemed to be. How superior and smug I felt. What a little snot I was—well, actually, I was just inexperienced and untraveled. So forty years
later I am in Botswana, and I realize I have finally changed my core way of thinking and feeling when Xaxe leans over and quietly tells me in the simplest terms what the Bizarre Truth really is—that despite all the messages to the contrary, despite the obsessions we all have with ourselves and our own problems and our own egos … in the end, the Bizarre Truth is that the secret to happiness is simply the ability to “love and respect other people.” Thanks, my friend.
The list of people who helped me get this book off the ground and into your hands is voluminous in the extreme. Naming them all is no easy task, and any omissions (of which I am sure there are many) should be apologized for at the outset.
When you win a Webby for excellence in online media you are allowed five words of thanks. This is not a Webby and brevity is not my strong suit.
Most important, I would like to thank my parents, Robert and Caren Zimmern, and my stepdad, Andre Laporte, who have always been there for me in every way imaginable, even when I did my best to make that job an impossible one. My in-laws Bill and Joenie Haas and their families, without whose support my career would have fizzled long ago. There are also many families who, for a variety of reasons, adopted me as their own many years ago and must be deservedly credited with making me the eater, traveler, and experience junkie that I am today. The Wakabayashis, the Vales, the Macks, the Salks, the Salkes, the Saltzmans, and the Jaffes all need to take a big bow. My friends from East Hampton and Amagansett, my college cronies, my coworkers at all the restaurants over the years, and many teachers and mentors should be on that list as well.
My extended family in Minnesota deserves special mention. I was lifted out of a horrific hellhole in NYC on January 28, 1992, and woke up days later in Center City, Minnesota, at Hazelden, and for the next six months was under their continuum of care. Over the last seventeen-plus years my life has gotten better and sweeter, one day at a time, and I owe it all to Jim L, Bob B, Aaron M,
Mike and Norm A, John C, Craig L, dozens of young men who shared themselves with me, and millions of others around the world with whom I share a very unique and beautiful relationship. Anyone looking to make a difference in someone’s life can contribute to the Rishia and Andrew Zimmern Scholarship Fund at The Retreat in Wayzata, MN (
www.theretreat.org
). The Retreat provides low-cost recovery services to those seeking help with their alcoholism and chemical dependency.
Professionally, Elio Guatalini and Anne Isaak gave me a chance to do things at a young age that I will never be able to adequately thank them for. Steve Hanson taught me the value of hard work and allowed me to succeed well beyond my capabilities. Steven Kalt and Ken Frydman helped me grow a business and then saved my life by asking me to leave it. Michael Morse, Lee Lynch, and Terry Saario gave me places to show up each day for work that I looked forward to every day, a rarity in any business. Thomas Keller and Anne Rosenzweig taught me there is actually a best way to do everything. Rebecca Kolls, Greg Mack, the Fox 9 News team, the gang at FM 107—especially Dan Seeman, Christopher Gabriel, Doug Westerman, Mary Ellen Pinkham, and many others—all helped me do the best job I was capable of doing at various times in my life, and I am thankful to have worked with them all.
Carrie Paetow, Leah Bolfing, and Kate Kunkel worked tirelessly in my office before all the hoopla, often for no gold or glory, and without whom I would have been lost. Molly Mogren deserves special mention for both her role on my current team in creating
andrewzimmern.com
and for her collaboration with me on this book, the best parts of which are due to her tenacious dedication, and the mistakes are all mine. Dusti Kugler is my right hand, right foot, and right side of my brain; she is simply the best there is. John Levy, Tom Wiese, Stephanie Unterberger, Natalie Burns, and John Larson handle all my affairs, and doing what they tell me to do is something I have always benefited from. I should remember that
more often. Larson and Wiese deserve a special place in Valhalla; they are Norse Warriors of the highest order.
The Tremendous Entertainment team is the best there is, and Colleen Steward believed in me at a time that no one else did and continues to make my television life a dream job. My field producers and videographers, with whom I spend more time each year than I do with my wife and son, inspire me more than I ever let them know. I am in awe of Pat Younge and all the folks at Travel Channel Media (past and present) who handed me a thoroughbred horse and let me ride. I am indebted to them for all they do for me day after day, and a special thank-you to David Gerber for steering the ship that was
Bizarre Foods
and is
Bizarre World
. Ditto to Marjorie Hall, James Ashurst, Kwin Mosby, Karen Hansen, Eliza Booth, and Sarah Rooney.
Thanks to the BEET team at
MSN.com
, Reveille, Toyota, and EyeBoogie for creating the Web-based series
Appetite for Life
and letting me do my thing online for such a huge audience.
Connie Mayer taught me to write. Adam Platt taught me how to be a writer, and a huge nod goes to Deb Hopp, Gary Johnson, Brian Anderson, Jayne Haugen Olson, and all the folks at
Minneapolis-St. Paul
magazine and
Delta Sky
magazine for letting me grow that side of my career.
Charlie Conrad, Jenna Ciongoli, and the team at Random House went through hell to see this book through; their patience, tolerance, and understanding were limitless, and without their persistence and faith there would be no book. Charlie especially, and every first-time author should be so lucky.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife Rishia and my son Noah, to whom
The Bizarre Truth
is dedicated. Without them none of this—not the book, the shows, the magazine columns, none of it—is worth doing. They are my world, and they are always there for me despite the fact that they have to share me with so many, so often. …
Minneapolis, MN ˜ June 2009
Andrew Zimmern is a food writer, dining critic, chef, and co-creator, host, and coproducer of the Travel Channel series
Bizarre Foods
and
Bizarre Worlds with Andrew Zimmern
. Zimmern is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of
www.andrewzimmern.com
, writes monthly for
Delta Sky
magazine and
Minneapolis-St. Paul
magazine, and lives in Minneapolis with his wife and son.
Copyright © 2009 by Andrew Zimmern
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BROADWAY BOOKS
and the Broadway Books colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
All photographs courtesy of The Travel Channel, L.L.C.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zimmern, Andrew.
The bizarre truth : how I walked out the door mouth first … and came back shaking my head / Andrew Zimmern.
p. cm.
1. Food—Cross-cultural studies. 2. Food habits—Cross-cultural studies. I. Title.
GT2850.Z56 2009
394.1′2—dc22
2009027566
eISBN: 978-0-307-58922-4
v3.0
