Andrew Zimmern - The Bizarre Truth

Bizarre Truth? I can give you several, but one that comes to me in my dreams at night is the idea of writing or talking, which I do for a living, about a subject that I strongly believe is one that has to be experienced up close and personally in order to be completely felt or understood. Not the most ringing endorsement for a great read or a good night spent in front of the telly. And lets face it, empirical, experiential, immersive travel always trumps reading about it. But we all cant be everywhere at once, can we? And what about music? Or sports? I guess I dont need to play in a World Series to appreciate baseball. Do you need to handle a guitar with the virtuosity of Frank Zappa or Prince to enjoy listening to music? No, you dont. And it is a fairly selfish conceit to try to keep all this goodness for myself. So I am committed to tell the tales and hopefully accomplish several goals in the act of doing so.

Educate, entertain, inspire.

There are lots of lessons to be learned by getting out and experiencing our planet. I think we live in a world where we are all motivated by self. We live in a world that has lost touch with its ancestry because we have grown more in every sense of the word in the last generation than in practically all the other ones combined. Gratification is instant or worthless, culture is disposable, literature and the arts are seemingly at the bottom of an all-time low when it comes to popularity. But this doesnt depress me. Frankly, I think we are simply at a pivotal swing point in our global evolution, and when tradition, culture, and ways of thinking are in flux they seem scary when analyzed under a microscope. But step back and take a view from up high, peek at the big picture, and you can see that what is happening is simply the ebb and flow of civilization. Things seemed awfully bad at the fall of the Roman Empire, didnt they? Well, I am not in the business of predicting a new Dark Ages, but I do know this for sure. I want everyone to take a deep breath, head out the door and see the world, spend time with people, not stand in line at a museum. Because in sharing ourselves with others we can learn a different way of looking at who we are and how we think and act, and maybe we can change in ways that would not be possible otherwise.

I was sitting at lunch one day in Sicily, and the thirteen-year-old son of the fisherman in whose home I was sitting and eating got up from the table. Potty break, I figured. Nope, he was headed off to work. On his own boat. Thats the way it still works in the teeny town of Marzamemi on the southern coast of Sicily, near Pachino, far from the madding crowd. The town grew around its fishing industry, with the tonneria being the guiding force in the culture of the town. Tuna canneries in Sicily are a thing of the past; the industry is dead and the two remaining (out of nearly fifty a generation ago) operations are doing what they can to survive. Tuna are scarce. Men wanting to spend their lives on the water are even scarcer. But if you spent a day with this family you could learn more about Sicilian history and the human capacities for passion, dedication, pride, and good old-fashioned earnestness than you could in any other way I can think of. You can see how differently people live (in my country you can get arrested for child-labor-law violation), and yet how similar we all are under the surface circumstances of our lives. You can learn to appreciate life and be grateful. I want my son to know these stories, meet these people, see the world as it really is in African villages, European capitals, and Asian markets, because the way you learn how to live your life is by sharing it with others. You dont get anything out of life by living it based on self.

So education is important, but who wants to be beat over the head by the pay attention stick? Not me. So I want to entertain. This is not intended to be revelatory in the classic sense. This is not a textbook, nor did I intend to write a serious tome. I am not half the writer or thinker you would need to be to accomplish that, but I do have experiences. And thats all it takes, quite frankly, which is why I believe so strongly in seeing the world for ones self. One of the most respected anthropologists in America, the chair of the department at a major university, once referred to me in casual conversation as a colleague and I corrected him, saying I was anything but. He rebuked me immediately, insisting that I had shared more real time, on the ground, with indigenous tribes than most tenured professors he knew. That was a wake-up call. I quickly realized that I viewed myself one way, and that others might see me as something else, and I could take advantage of that, becoming an agent of change to a certain degree, perhaps an awareness raiser for the global cultures I come in contact with. Education comes in many forms; I am always looking for an easier way than doing homework, but I am good at showing up for class. That means going places and seeing whats out there. I consider this book a way to engage a part of ourselves that remains fascinated by the human condition around the world. And I wanted it to make you think, and laugh and be hungry when you were done reading it. I am all about the food.

Which brings me to my thematic material. I am indeed primarily focused on experiencing food and sharing culture. Why? Because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that everyone loves a good meal. And that food is the easiest way to bridge gaps, build friendships, and become family all in one day. I consistently prove it again and again as I make my way through country after country, eating my way around the world. I also believe you can taste a culture and its people in their food. I swear to you I have tasted struggle and love, war and death, in a good bowl of stew. I wanted people to taste it also, and you cant do that eating at an Italian restaurant in Beijing. Thats not to say that you cant find good veal Milanese in China, its just I think you should be eating that dish in Milan if you want to really understand a cuisine and the folks who eat it. So I wanted to give readers a sense of how I do that, not just what I find when I do. So I give tips, like eating at the last stop on the subway, or investigating dying breeds, or perusing unique and arcane ingredients, or doing some hero worship at the altar of some great chef. Trust me; youll learn a lot following some of these rules of the road. Most important, I also like to check out spiritual systems, and as a matter of course I regularly check out rituals wherever I can.