Culinary Journeys and Social Impact: An In-depth Interview with Chef Andrew Zimmern

AZ: Oh my gosh, take a look at any episode and pick a story. Probably the most unexpected one was in Botswana. When a tribal people that I was living with were going to set some snap snares for birds, they wove a rope using their feet. The whole tribe sat shoulder to shoulder using their toes like a loom in their fingers, making string, a dozen pieces, for us to create snap snares. We set them, and then we returned to retrieve them a day later. Wanting to be helpful, I pulled my knife out. The way to fit in with any other group of people is to be helpful to show your usefulness. So, I took my knife out to cut the snares, and I mean, the four or five tribal members I was with just recoiled in horror. It was a very embarrassing moment. They don't cut rope or string. I have one ball of string in my house, and it sits in a drawer. We use it once a year to tie the Christmas tree to the top of the station wagon and drive from the Tree lot to the house. But these people keep reusing this string until it turns to dust and can no longer be used. They were so appalled. I had done an excellent job impressing them for a week and a half. Up to that point, I was so proud of my behavior, but in just an instant I erased it all because I wanted to cut the rope. That has become a metaphor in my life. I can mark my life in many ways, but one of the ways I mark it is before and after that incident, which changed my way of thinking about everything. 

Chef Andrew Zimmern:. For me, I don't think there's one thing that you can point to and say yes, that is when it happened. I think people who pick one incident are forgetting that it's actually the sum of experiences that led up to that moment. I describe it more like Jenga: that one piece is taken away, and all the others begin to topple, and you must find a new way of thinking about everything. For me, it was a combination of things. I think about growing up on Long Island in New York in the '60s and seeing the transformation from one way of life to another. As a young boy, I watched Bayman pull long boats from the dunes at five in the morning with my mother and head out to sea to pull nets for fish. By 1970, that way of life was gone and erased. And I remember being with my father in Europe as a young man, 10 to 11 years old, in the early 70s, and eating in certain restaurants and certain styles of food; my father explaining to me that this way of life was going to be eradicated because of rules and regulations and modernization of life. In both cases, I'm not arguing for a return to the horse and buggy days. But we must recognize when we have hinge events or disappearing cultural totems that we need to mark, understand, and learn from them before they're entirely erased. It was those types of experiences as a young man that ignited that passion, and I loved food. I always thought that food was the way into so many issues. I didn't know at the time that food explained not just hunger and waste but homelessness and mental health issues, national security and international security, economic development and climate crisis, immigration reform and health care and criminal justice. It all can be seen through the lens of food. 

AZ: My philosophy of food and cooking has evolved over the years. Obviously, I'm much more of a globalist because of my travel and exposure to so many culinary traditions. And I stopped valuing one way of cooking over another. Food is food as food, whether it's a three star Michelin restaurant in Paris, a jungle market in the Philippines, a dusty side street in the back alley of an overcrowded city in southern Africa, or eating in a home in South America. 

AZ: Yes, I am. I navigate the intersection of food and politics through my work, and I use my work to illustrate the problems in our civic and political lives. I think chefs are uniquely placed to do so because if you are a chef and are halfway awake, you sit at the intersection of healthcare and criminal justice of gender equality and pay equality of immigration, hunger waste… So many pillars of our social justice system that need fixing walk through our restaurant every single day. It's pretty extraordinary. And I believe that we need more chefs doing more to affect more change. 

AZ: Well, the most surprising discovery was that I was a much better journalist than I thought I was. I felt I was ill-prepared to do that show. And it turned out I'm a very good journalist. And I'd like to do more in that area. Within the series itself, before climate crisis, I knew we had species of animals, varietals of fruits and vegetables that were simply gone. I wasn't aware of how close the problem was to my home until I visited Apalachicola, Florida and saw that there were no more oysters in what used to be the most productive oyster bed in the world, all due to the climate crisis. Even closer to home, in Minnesota, there are no more perch in Lake Superior. The warming water has caused the little baby perch to not be able to exist anymore, and they are either eaten by predators or are competing with other fish for food. Because of the fish being born on a lunar cycle, which is not affected by the climate crisis, there are simply no more perch left. This is shocking because the perch was a part of the Friday night fish fries in the Midwest for hundreds of years. It is sad to see an entire cultural way of life disappear because of the disappearance of the perch from the US side of the Great Lake." 

AZ:  I think the most important aspect is simply doing it. We don't do it anymore. We are not just so many people who can't afford to do it. They are they're financially impoverished, and so many more are time poor. There simply is no Oh, are they believed to be no time to congregate,

I think the gathering is a family. And learning from one another, discussing what's going on in the world, exploring our days together talking about what's personal with us. If we're not doing with our family, then we become trapped. We, we become silos to ourselves, you throw in social media, you throw and look how everyone's just attached to their phone. We become individuals, we don't, and we cease to become family units. And that is extremely dangerous for our way of life, but it's even more dangerous for our mental health. And I think that mental health issues, people point to phones and social media and COVID, and all these other things as the reason for the spikes in mental health, illnesses, poverty and homelessness. But I would argue, anecdotally, that it's because we're not connecting with other people. And the best place to do that is in the place where you live under your own roof. Gathering with whatever family you define for yourselves, it could be biological or nonbiological, is extremely important. Some of the healthiest human beings, in many ways, that I've seen are, were the were the men and women of the firehouses, and who, in whose buildings, I've had meals, because they, they live and work together, but they sit down to eat several meals a day together, and exchange. They have social time, they exchange ideas, and they feel connected, and they export that back into their biological families, those that have them. I think time poverty and the destruction of the family system is a malignant curse. 

AZ: As the head of intuitive content, what are some of the biggest challenges you face in creating engaging and meaningful food related television content? Well, to be honest with you, I think it's a pretty technical dry reason. And it's it's the fact there are a lot of people trying to do it. I believe that intuitive content does it. As well, if not better than almost anyone out there. I think we've assembled some of the most incredible talent that I've ever come across in creating great content. And yet, at the same time, circumstance COVID, for example, the multiple strikes in Hollywood that also helped to fuel a buyers recession, the, you know, a network feeling that they'd rather go with something sports related than something that's, you know, in a silo that we've created, is, you know, those those things are the things that stand in our way, which is just the normal give and take of competition, you have to accept it. I think I should also point out that intuitive content, food related television is, while we do it, and we do that, in my opinion, better than anyone I know I'm very proud of our work. Is, is actually the one of the smaller silos of what we do. We've grown over the last 10 years. That being said, our biggest project that we've done to date is a multi our natural history doc series that appears on PBS premieres June 19. It's called Hope in the water. And while it does touch food it is its its themes are essentially how do we protect our oceans while at the same time producing out of them? And I'm very proud of that. And thanks for letting me have this time with you.

AZ: That it survives! We have a climate crisis that is existential for our food system, and I see a future 30 years from now where restaurants are simply enclaves for the rich and famous and everyday folks are priced out of even the humblest of eateries because dining out has become an unsustainable system.  

AZ: The solutions to the problem above. Embracing sustainable systems and investments in carbon sequestration, aquaculture, and other innovations can assist companies that lean into solutions-minded restaurants, co-op restaurants, narrowly focused restaurants with small footprints and limited hours, niche client focus on restaurants and catering, all of that is very cool to me.

AZ: I am on the boards or represent in some major capacity the UNWFP, The EWG, the Nature Conservancy, The Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project, Services for the Underserved, Wholesome Wave, World Central Kitchen, the Coalition for Sustainable Aquaculture and The Giving Kitchen. I spend most of my time working in the nonprofit space.

At the UNWFP, I am thrilled about our pilot programs in Zambian schools that allow students to grow and eat their own food. The curriculum grows around it, and the country can be transformed through these programs, bringing massive stability to the whole region. On the flip side with the EWG, we just got a bill passed in California that will make it illegal to add cancerous chemicals to kids' candy and treats. Because CA is the world’s 6th biggest economy, the companies will be changing all products brought into or made in the USA, that’s a massive win. And with the CSA, we are piloting legislation to enforce rules and regs around off shore fish farming to make investment and production more attainable. David E Kelly and I are executive producing Hope in the Water, a docuseries premiering June 19th on PBS that provides solutions for how we can work to produce and simultaneously protect our oceans at the same time. That’s just to name a few.

AZ: Well, doing more to help people is all I want to do. Sounds cheesy, but it makes me happy and is more of a legacy than awards or money, that’s for sure. I think my relationship with my son is my proudest achievement. And I guess selfishly, I want to tell more stories in a whole range of media to positively affect outcomes for people and entertain. I don’t see those as being mutually exclusive.