The Bizarre Truth: How I Walked Out the Door Mouth First . . . and Came Back Shaking My Head [Hardcover]

Andrew Zimmern (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2009

Andrew Zimmern, the host of The Travel Channel’s hit series Bizarre Foods, has an extraordinarily well-earned reputation for traveling far and wide to seek out and sample anything and everything that’s consumed as food globally, from cow vein stew in Bolivia and giant flying ants in Uganda to raw camel kidneys in Ethiopia, putrefied shark in blood pudding in Iceland and Wolfgang Puck's Hunan style rooster balls in Los Angeles. For Zimmern, local cuisine — bizarre, gross or downright stomach turning as it may be to us -- is not simply what’s served at mealtime. It is a primary avenue to discovering what is most authentic — the bizarre truth — about cultures everywhere. Having eaten his way around the world over the course of four seasons of Bizarre Foods, Zimmern has now launched Bizarre Worlds, a new series on the Travel Channel, and this, his first book, a chronicle of his journeys as he not only tastes the “taboo treats” of the world, but delves deep into the cultures and lifestyles of far-flung locales and seeks the most prized of the modern traveler’s goals: The Authentic Experience. Written in the smart, often hilarious voice he uses to narrate his TV shows, Zimmern uses his adventures in “culinary anthropology” to illustrate such themes as:  why visiting local markets can reveal more about destinations than museums; the importance of going to “the last stop on the subway” — the most remote area of a place where its essence is most often revealed; the need to seek out and catalog “the last bottle of coca-cola in the desert,” i.e. disappearing foods and cultures; the profound differences between dining and eating; and the pleasures of snout to tail, local, fresh and organic food. Zimmern takes readers into the back of a souk in Morocco where locals are eating a whole roasted lamb; along with a conch fisherman in Tobago, who may be the last of his kind; to Mississippi, where he dines on raccoon and possum. There, he writes, "People said, 'That's roadkill!' ‘No it's not,’ I said. ‘It's a cultural story.’”

Whether it’s a session with an Incan witch doctor in Ecuador who blows fire on him, spits on him, thrashes him with poisonous branches and beats him with a live guinea pig or drinking blood in Uganda and cow urine tonic in India or eating roasted bats on an uninhabited island in Samoa, Zimmern cheerfully celebrates the undiscovered destinations and weird wonders still remaining in our increasingly globalized world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Host of his own Travel Channel show, chef and food writer Zimmern has made a career of unusual travel destinations and even more unusual food. In this memoir of his exotic experiences, Zimmern shares his favorite experiences as well as his broad-mined approach to the world. From illegal lobsters in Cuba to roasted bats in Samoa to a simple bowl of noodles in Guangzhou, China, Zimmern lets his gusto be his guide, resulting in a passionate but messy read. While he helpfully avoids overloading readers with shock after shock (knowingly referring to himself as "a guy who eats bugs"), he's seemingly uncertain whether to organize his stories by theme or location, leading to repetition nonetheless. Popular ecological themes-sustainable food production, neutral carbon footprints, local ingredients-wend throughout, but the tantalizing focus is Zimmern's unrelentingly positive methods of travel and immersion, emphasizing keystone values like graciousness, open-mindedness and leaving assumptions behind while stirring readers' appetite for adventure.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Andrew Zimmern is a food writer, dining critic, chef, and co-creator, host, and co-producer of 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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; First edition (September 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767931297
• ISBN-13: 978-0767931298
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #306,397 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Bizarrely condescending, April 7, 2010

By 

Chad Witherspoon - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bizarre Truth: How I Walked Out the Door Mouth First . . . and Came Back Shaking My Head (Hardcover)

As a big fan of Andrew Zimmern's Travel Channel programs Bizarre Foods and Bizarre Worlds I was very much looking forward to reading this book. Sadly, I was quite disappointed with the book. Zimmern is best in a television format. On the printed page he is off-putting and his style of writing alienated me from the first page. There are five main reasons I did not care for the book.

First, the book's title hints at a behind the scenes look at the making of his Travel Channel shows. Instead, what the book provides is largely a repeat of his TV programs with very little additional insights regarding the "bizarre truths" that went into making the shows. I sort of got the sense Zimmern sat in an editing room watching episodes of Bizarre Foods and Bizarre Worlds and then simply wrote down his reactions to what was on the screen. Rather than the actual subtitle for the book, an appropriate subtitle would be "I've seen the TV show, so why do I need to bother with the book?"

Second, on his television programs Zimmern presents himself as a sort of "aw, shucks" guy who lacks pretenses. By contrast, in the book he comes across as exceedingly condescending and patronizing towards average tourists who lack the resources he has to travel off the beaten path. Zimmern describes himself as a "traveler" (not a "tourist") and at multiple junctures in the book he openly registers his disdain for average tourists whom he seems to think never travel beyond the confines of all-inclusive resorts. At one point in the book he actually cautions himself against sounding smug, and it would have been nice if he had heeded his own words throughout the rest of the volume. I'm not sure if Zimmern actually feels the way that is conveyed in the book or if he somehow thought his target audience holds typical "tourists" in contempt, but the end result is a tone that is grating in its arrogance.

Third, and in a related sense, Zimmern over-generalizes about how less-sophisticated tourists approach their travels. Zimmern's point of comparison with his own travels are "ugly American" tourists, all of whom he seems to think haven't eaten anything more adventurous than a South of the Border Burrito Grande at Taco Bell. There is very little acknowledgment of the diversity of travel experiences of those with whom Zimmern compares himself.

Fourth, Zimmern is at once politically naive and politically closed-minded. For example, while he does recognize the hardships imposed by the authoritarian government of Cuba, he nonetheless reduces the political situation in that country to facile homilies about the injustices heaped on Cuba by the U.S. trade embargo. He seems to be unaware of the fact that other countries can and do trade with Cuba and that the economic under-development of Cuba stems from more than just the bad old Uncle Sam. The irony is that throughout the rest of the book he indicates his preference that international trade not sully the pristine backwaters he likes to reserve as his own personal underdeveloped theme parks (Cuba included) while everyone else never leaves the premises of the downtown Sheraton. Zimmern's throw-away observations about global warming also come across as less sophisticated than that which could have been formulated by a typical college sophomore.

Finally, Zimmern is remarkably inconsistent in light of his pronouncements about the superiority of his own style of traveling versus that of less sophisticated rubes. For example, he derides the tapas trend saying that tapas have no place in cuisine outside of Spain, yet he later says that there are hundreds of variations on the traditional pizza and they are all great as long as someone likes them.

Overall the book was such a disappointment that I left it behind at a hotel lending library. Zimmern congratulates himself about his worldly travels, but as an author he leaves much to be desired.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended, especially to fans of the television show, October 13, 2009

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bizarre Truth: How I Walked Out the Door Mouth First . . . and Came Back Shaking My Head (Hardcover)

Written by the host of the Travel Channel's popular series "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern", The Bizarre Truth: How I Walked Out the Door Mouth First... and Came Back Shaking My Head is an enjoyable travelogue of Zimmern's many cultural and culinary adventures filming the show. From the plight of vanishing foods and cultures subsumed by mainstream globalization, to a session with an Incan witch doctor in Ecuador who blows fire on him, to dining on roasted bats on a Samoan Island, to eating raccoon and opossum in Mississippi, The Bizarre Truth is a chronicle of adventure, strange and wonderful palate delights (or distresses), and above all, an open-minded appreciation of the myriad ways mankind has adapted his diet and his way of life to his environment. Highly recommended, especially to fans of the television show.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Review of The Bizarre Truth, November 14, 2009

By 

Lydia "The Lost Entwife" (Illinois) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Bizarre Truth: How I Walked Out the Door Mouth First . . . and Came Back Shaking My Head (Hardcover)

Fun book! I've watched Andrew Zimmern in Bizarre Foods before and most of the time was really grossed out by what he was eating. Thank goodness he wrote this book! I really came to appreciate how he approaches travel, and appreciate the reasoning behind why people eat all those truly unique and strange foods.

I think my favorite stories were in Iceland - and that's what started out the book. I never thought I'd be wanting to visit Iceland, but he definitely stirred the interest!

He really connected with people and I admire and respect his way of thinking when it comes to eating some of the strange offerings given to him. Some of those folks are so poor, they are offering up a larger portion of food than their own, and who are we to turn that down when it's offered so freely.

Kudos on an interesting book - great way to see travel and now I'm inspired to go traveling and exploring.. mouth first.