Customer Reviews

Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern: Collection Three

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods is really fun to watch,because he is so funny. His shows are educational, even if they can be rather disgusting at times.

Mr. Zimmern does something that no one else does, that I know of. He actually describes the food that he is eating. He tells viewers the taste, texture, and sometimes the smell of the food. He will even compare the more unusual foods to something more familiar to audiences in the United States.

Here is a listing of the shows in this collection:
Goa, India
Hawaii
Samoa
Paris, France
Sicily, Italy
Los Angeles, California
Maine

The only disappointing thing about this set is that the DVDs do not have any subtitles.

Andrew Zimmern has a great outlook on life and is a brave man. He eats some nasty things, savors every bite, and describes the taste as if it were gourmet food. We watched this entire DVD in 2 days because it was just flat out fascinating.

I received my DVD in record timing but I was a little put off by the segments missing in collection Three. I was looking forward to seeing Andrew in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Japan. Also missing is the Halloween special and the Holiday special. I can only give this DVD one star.

This show is my favorite food-cooking-related show. Simply, because it is the only show that draws attention to how weird local food can get in some countries. The TV show is the best I've seen in attracting your attention to this particular topic.

Collection 3 was fine, but didn't have the same magic and "charm" of that of collection 2 or collection 1. It was less bizarre than the previous collections.

I can't wait to see how "Bizarre" collection 4 will be! :)

i read the reviews about andrew. i thought that it needed a response from me. he is a unique host. sitting in the cozy of our house and chewing the traditional meals is not a brave thing. but going there, facing the challenging situations , both physical and mental , eating these unknown foods is a brave thing. In that situations they react like what we/ human beings does in that situations. he is unique host of his kind. he is just reacting like anybody else like Anthony Bourdaine or Adam Richman. they are all masters in what they are doing and they are very unique in thier reactions. and i understood that this not a telecast from the cozy media room but from real places and real situations, so their reactions may not that classic or very aristocratic.i think, they are not doing it for their own glory but glory to the food that they are eating.

Love the show- especially on DVD as you aren't subjected to the commercials like on Travel Channel. Very interesting and gives you a different look at different countries and their cultures. Andrew is very easy to listen to and I could watch for hours! Interesting what other people around the world find appetizing compared to what we eat in the United States.

Lets face it, Andrew Zimmern managed to get the majority of his initial viewers because he was riding on the coattails of No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. However, he manages to keep his show because, despite our better judgment, we love watching this guy stuff some really weird and nasty looking food into his gullet. Sometimes I really wish the sound guy would fix his mic though, the man chews like a cow and hearing his masticating noises really doesn't do much for me.

Season three of Bizarre Foods includes far, far away destinations such as Uganda, Ethiopia, India and Samoa. He also returns to some familiar haunts like Japan as well as a few US-based shows in Los Angeles and Maine. Season three also included a few "roundtable" type episodes, such as the one on Halloween and Sexy Foods. There was also a pretty dismissible recap episode as the season finale.

I'm not sure if it's a combination of being desensitized to these type of "bizarre" food shows, or if maybe Andrew is mellowing out in his definition of weird foods, but much of what he eats in this season, I wouldn't really define as radical. There are the usual suspects of offal, various reproductive organs, eggs, bugs, etc, but nothing that really jumps out as different from his previous seasons of the show. In fact, in the Paris and Japan episodes, you could probably make the argument that the food wasn't as much "Weird" as it was "Expensive". I suppose you can only watch a guy eat bugs and balls so many times before you just accept it as normal though.

Zimmern as a host doesn't really do much for me - I find him to be arrogant and in some cases, downright rude to his hosts (if you watch the faces of a lot of the native people around him, you can practically hear them mentally laughing, gritting their teeth, or sighing in frustration at the guy). I enjoy watching the foods he eats rather than watching him present them. The insight into the culture and the vibrancy of the areas that he visits is what keep me watching the show. It seems as if maybe the Travel Channel is thinking along the same lines, as Zimmern's new show is labeled "Bizarre World," not Food.

While this review may sound pretty negative, if you like Zimmern as a host, honestly this is a great show. The locations he visits are really unique and probably not areas that most people would think of as vacation spots. Getting to watch Zimmern get immersed into the culture as well as some really awesome camera work (this show has really gorgeous film work) is what makes this show stand out for me. Bourdain's show is still the winner in my book, but I will still tune in to watch Bizarre Foods/World when I see it on. Hopefully the Travel Channel will start offering DVDs on some sort of high def media, as these types of travel shows really benefit from the added sharpness.