Bizarre Foods
Cooking show meets travel show. The gimmick works. Balding fat chef goes on a quest to eat the weirdest, strangest, most bizarre foods in the world. He’ll try anything twice, and then give his “review” of it. Humans somewhere will consume anything that moves, or is grown, so there is plenty of material. Strict vegetarians may want to avoid watching. Not only is any animal, insect, fish, invertebrate eaten, every part of it is gobbled down, as well.
The host, Andrew Zimmern, is plain spoken and enthusiastic. Sort of the opposite of a food snob. While there’s adequate background on each exotic host country and culture, the main emphasis is on Zimmern simply understanding and trying out bizarre foods. I’ve given my kids the DVDs in order to encourage them to eat outside the box. I think we owe it to ourselves to explore the world’s cuisine and outer boundaries of food. You don’t have to like it, just try it. Better than several books on the subject, this series will make you rethink your food limits. It’s comparative foodology 101. All weird foods have a good story behind them, as revealed in these upbeat documentaries.
There is a competing cooking/travel show hosted by another globetrotting chef, Anthony Bourdain, but this series, No Reservations, is more about the chef himself than the food. I found Bourdain smug, self-centered, prissy, and uninteresting, but your mileage may vary. Some like his snarky style. For a fun journey to somewhere different stick with Bizarre Foods.
— KK
Bizarre Foods
Andrew Zimmern
2007, 338 min.
$2 per episode, Amazon Instant Video
Read more about the film at Wikipedia
Rent from Netflix
Available from Amazon