Since I just posted a review of Fuschia Dunlop's new book on eating in China, it seems apropos to include this posting on Andrew Zimmern's show on Vietnam. Zimmern has a show on the Travel Chanel on bizarre food experiences and travels. My sister Tasha pointed me to a segment that was taped in and around Hanoi. You can watch parts of the Vietnam segment on YouTube. A recap of the show is below:
- Snake village and snake food being cooked
- Hanoi street food, pho and civet coffee (the coffee beans that go through the intestinal track of the civet)
- Hanoi cha ca la vong restaurant and Highway 4 restaurant of 'exotic' things like roasted sparrow (my mom ate them when she was young)
- Hanoi old quarter and home cooking (snails, silkworms, eel) - check out the luxe kitchen!
- High-tech fish sauce making with concrete vats, sterile but interesting
- Ha Long Bay
He makes it seem wacky and weird and goes out of his way to say that snake is a delicacy, but is fish sauce bizarre? Bill Daley at the Chicago Tribune just recently wrote a short piece encouraging readers to find cool uses for fish sauce. How bizarre is that? Not really. There's lots of regular food that Vietnamese people eat and I wish that a little more time was devoted to that. But then, the show wouldn't be called bizarre, right?
I'm sure if an Asian person were to do a show on bizarre western foods, that may include Roquefort cheese and risotto, which would be described as bad, undercooked chao (jook).
We love watching both Andrew Zimmern and Tony Bourdain on the Travel Channel. They're so much more interesting than Food TV's bland "stars". Plus, I'm glad they get to expose the rest of the world to these (largely unseen by the Western world) culinary destinations.
Even if it is from an outsider's perspective, I don't think they are trying to offend anyone. They are at least trying to foster better awareness of the different kinds of food not normally seen in America, and that I think is a Good Thing.
Posted by: Annie | July 17, 2008 at 01:40 AM
I have the same feelings, Andrea, about the "bizarre" foods of the Philippines shown on Western tv. There is so much more to Filipino food than the embryonic duck eggs that are always showcased on such shows. I too wish that there was more time devoted to our "normal" foods.
And Annie, I agree with you too. I watch Zimmern and Bourdain regularly, and I know they aren't meaning to offend anyone. It is good that they can create awareness of other cuisines, but there is so much more to these other cuisines that it would be better to sensationalize other dishes rather than just the "bizarre" ones.
Posted by: Marvin | July 17, 2008 at 10:22 AM
I liked the show, but for someone pretty well-versed in viet cuisine, not much of it seemed very bizarre. And in general, I wish he would take more time learning to pronounce things. The way he said 'Pho' was ridiculous and not even close. And in Spanish speaking countries he always says 'mucho gracias' instead of 'muchas gracias'. How hard is it to learn to say thanks properly in Spanish?
I love Bourdain too (and more) but he rarely even tries to describe the food. He just says "that's good" "that's great" all the time. I like how Zimmern at least tries to describe the flavors and textures clearly.
Anyway, I'm being picky. Two good shows, for sure.
And, Andrea, I once made risotto for my vietnamese in-laws. They at least pretended to like it, but described it as chao cua Y (Italian chao!)
Posted by: Jason | July 17, 2008 at 10:28 AM
Interesting: "undercooked chao", "Italian chao."
Italians love a certain "toothiness" to rice and pasta. Although asian rice and pasta dishes are not overcooked, there is a certain resistance to the bite in Italian pasta and rice dishes which I love.
On the other hand, Asian noodles are so much more slurpable!
Ciao!
Posted by: Al | July 17, 2008 at 11:22 AM
Well, fish sauce is not bizarre, but it can be a bizarre experience and overwhelming if you go where it's made, so maybe that's what he meant, perhaps? I personally don't like Andrew Zimmern's show because it's too self-congratulatory (look at me! I'm eating something bizarre!). I prefer Anthony Bourdain because he contextualizes his experiences better. And he does eat "bizarre" things--such as his latest foray into Laotian cuisine with ant egg omelets!
Posted by: Preyanka | July 17, 2008 at 04:11 PM
I had a love-hate kind of reaction to the Zimmern's segment on Vietnam. When you go over there, in Hanoi, tourists are hit with snake wine. I had some at a wine event years ago and it tastes like medicinal moonshine. Zimmern is sincere, I believe, but at one point he says that Vietnamese people shop daily for food because they many don't have refrigerators. Then he goes to a family kitchen that is outfitted like a western kitchen (note the microwave on the counter) for some 'exotic' fare. I imagine that the family prepared those particular dishes because his show is suppose to showcase "bizarre" food.
In that regard, Vietnamese people play right into the exoticization of the cuisine. I don't blame them. They need the exposure and money.
On the subject of Asian responses to risotto, a couple of years ago Fuschia Dunlop wrote a piece for Gourmet magazine about how she took a group of master chefs from Sichuan to the French Laundry. They tasted the risotto and deemed it awful, undercooked chao (jook). They didn't like much of the other menu items either and went back to where they were staying and made fried rice.
Posted by: Andrea Nguyen | July 17, 2008 at 05:32 PM
Andrew Zimmern is a pet peeve of mine.
I think there is a huge difference between Andrew Zimmern and Anthony Bourdain. Please consider what I say, and see if the difference makes sense.
Andrew Zimmern does a show devoted to Creepy Food Porn. He goes around finding "exotic" foods that he knows will creep out a mainstream American audience, then has you watch him as he eats them. He does nothing whatsoever to put that food in a cultural context, a geographical context, a historical context, an environmental or ecological context... Nothing.
Zimmern deliberately eschews any effort at demonstrating that there is a logic, a sense, a practicality, a purpose, or a damn good reason why Those People Over There eat those things. He keeps The Others cast as scary, illogical, insane, weird, freaky, incomprehensible People Who Are Just Insane and Crazy.
Andrew Zimmern turns viewers into the kind of people who watch freaky sex shows in Tijuana. Get thrilled and appalled and grossed out all at the same time.
Bourdain never does that. Even when Bourdain is sitting on the floor eating raw seal with an Inuit family, he's not trying to freak anyone out. He spends more time setting up that scene, letting viewers know how and why he is about to join a family in eating raw seal. Bourdain is perfectly happy to put other people's food in a context that viewers can grasp. Bourdain shows respect for his hosts, the people he is traveling among, their customs in the context of their history, culture, place, etc. And he still won't shy away from saying horrible things about raw, fermented, decomposed shark flesh. But he doesn't "exoticize" other people. He regards them as just other people.
Huge difference.
Posted by: Simon Bao | July 17, 2008 at 06:17 PM
Andrea, if you promise to be the Gracious Host, I'll be the Ungracious Sidekick and we can do a Travel Network special on American foods. Not just Roquefort Cheese and undercooked Risotto... A close up examination of canned corned beef hash, spaghetti-o's, Hamburger Helper - The Tuna Edition, Caviar, and some very overly ripe Brie that's been dusted with brown sugar, baked with candied pecans, and served with apples.
Actually, I don't mind the corned beef hash, and love caviar and over-ripened Brie...
In something I just posted elsewhere, I described Chao as a kind of very soupy over-cooked Risotto. When well made, the two are made in ways that can be quite similar.
Posted by: Simon Bao | July 17, 2008 at 06:40 PM
Simon,
Even though I watch Zimmern's show and find it interesting, I totally agree. That's why I so much prefer Bourdain, his overt respect for the people he is with. When Zimmern tried and couldn't handle Durian, he said something like "I can't even handle that, and I've had some really weird food". I couldn't help think: hey, it's certainly not weird to the farmer you're talking to, have a little respect!
Zimmern's a bit of a cultural fish out of water and very western-centric. Bourdain I admire and would love to overindulge in food and drink with him.
Posted by: Jason Dezember | July 19, 2008 at 10:33 AM
Jason, I don't know how often any of Bourdain's past "No Reservations" travels may be re-broadcast, but one episode where he was in Vietnam was kind of classic "Bourdain." I think it was "The Island of Mr. Sang."
He was not there to eat Weird Food, he was there to eat and drink what was offered and interesting to him. The episode may have started out in Hanoi with Bourdain eating some Cha Ca, I'm not sure. But at one point and his guide were in what appeared to be the highlands, at a kind of "Roadhouse." Lots of bottles and glass casks of Cobra Wine, and a meat dish that Bourdain's guide told him was "Squeezel." Viewers never do find out what highland wildlife went into that dish, it seems to have been a quilled creature, a kind of porcupine I suspect. Bourdain found a quill or two in his food and one in his mouth. His guide struggled with the name of the animal and finally settled on Squeezel. I wondered if the guide was lost in English, somewhere between Squirrel and Weasel. Bourdain was later feted and entertained by some local apparatchiks who hoped to leverage his visit into a promotion for some newly opened resort on some island.
Bourdain never thought any of it was weird or bizarre. Unfamiliar and often entertaining, sure. In the end, he gave decent respect to everything including the Squeezel.
Posted by: Simon Bao | July 20, 2008 at 07:09 AM
Simon and Jason... I second your comments on both TV hosts. Zimmern needs to expand his vocabulary beyond: Chewy, Salty, Game-y, Fishy, Crunchy. He also needs to stop saying, "I've eaten some weird food throughout my life..."
Posted by: Tuty | July 20, 2008 at 09:31 AM
Hear hear Simon!
I totally agree re Zimmerman (Andrea, you probably could have predicted my response to this post). I hate, hate, hate that show! He may not mean to offend but in my opinion he does, by reducing the cuisine of every place he visits to the 'weird' and 'bizarre'. Not only that, half the time he doesn't get his facts right. It's bad enough that his visit to Manila consists entirely of balut, mole crickets, and other 'weirdities', even when he includes a visit to the province of Pampanga which is the PHI's gourmet province, reknowned for its fantastic sweets (among other things). He then proceeds to stroll around Pampanga's capital San Fernando and say 'Gee, I thought the town of Pampanga would be so much bigger.' I mean, this might be the purvey of the producer, but how hard is it to do a bit of research (or even to know where the heck you're filming) before shooting? Guide book anyone? He comes across as an unknowledgeable idiot, a parody of the annoying American tourist. Sorry, I just can't think of a single redeeming quality for that show.
I love Bourdain just bec. he's a loveable jerk (and knows he is). But I can't give him a 100% pass on this either. His visit to KL revolves around eating penis soup. Is this the iconic KL dish? Andrea - did you see penis soup just EVERYWHERE you went in KL? He goes to Bangkok and eats crispy bugs and an ant egg omelet (the latter at a Lao restaurant, while his 'expert local guide' who's a white guy who's lived in Thailand for years, describes Lao as 'the northern region of Thailand' and says it's 'something like the Thai Mississipi Delta '. I wonder if Laos knows that Thailand has annexed their country?) To give Tony credit, he observed that paadek (something like Vietnamese mam) really wasn't all that wacky, basically a stronger version of fish sauce, and compared a Westerner's reaction to it to how an Asian might react to roquefort cheese.
Frankly I don't think exoticization (is that a word? does service to Southeast Asian (or ANY) cuisine. It just plays to the wrongful ideas that some Westerners have about cuisines of 'the other', that it's all weird and wacky and, yes, just a little bit 'savage'. It's pandering. Yes, some Thais eat bugs. And some Vietnamese eat dog. But some don't. Contextualize these things, please. And don't make it the entire focus of your TV show.
That's my rant and I'm sticking to it.
I'm with Simon - you and he should do a 'Bizarre Foods'-type show on American foods and post it on your blog. It would be fantastic!
Posted by: Robyn | July 20, 2008 at 07:13 PM
Robyn, this past Saturday evening my fiance had a kind of "Bizarre Vietnamese Foods" experience, kind of heavy with the Fear Factor element. But my American-born, white American fiance handles such things with grace and wisdom, and that's why we're getting hitched.
We'd visited a friend in hospital, then drove down into the city and the VNese 'hood to visit a while with friends and update everyone on our friend's progress and prognosis. On stepping into the house where everyone was assembled, waiting for us, we found a table set with some foods that are mostly disagreeable from a non-Viet perspective.
There was some lovely Chao Ga made earlier in the day, by the eldest resident female in the house. But then, on their own, the men had turned the chicken carcass into some Goi Ga. Examining the platter, my fiance inquired, "But what did they do with the meat?" Even to my eyes, the Goi Ga was a plate of chopped cabbage, chewy/gummy chicken skin, lumps of semi-rendered chicken fat, surprisingly large masses of connective tissues, bones that seemed more at home in a T-Rex than a chicken... and only here and there some few shreds of dense chewy chicken. Of course, it was a veteran egg-laying hen that had been turned into Chao and Goi Ga. A tough old bird. Not a lot of meat, but a whole lot of structure.
Accompanying this was a platter covered in what my fiance thought might be some kind of fruits. Perhaps kumquats. Of course, they were not. The men of the house had inquired at the market for some Hot Vit Lon, but none was available. The merchant suggested instead a vast quantity of unlaid eggs harvested from the insides of butchered hens. They're not bad, they're really just like a hard-boiled egg yolk really, with a kind of stem attached, and inside a membrane that offers a bit of resistance. But most certainly not Kumquats.
But what really did it were the white styrofoam containers that were continually brought to table to replenish the platter of lovingly braised pig entrails. I didn't poke around among them, but I recognized heart and ear, intestines, kidney, something that was probably a gland. Something which I'd like to think was sliced cross-sections of trachea or bronchea but I'm afraid might have been cross-sections of something else. All of it braised to that same uniform deep brown color which is, in fact, the *precise* shade of brown that one never wants to see in food, and ever wants to eat.
Washed down with one's choice of beer on the rocks or some 2006 Nouveau Beaujolais. Not quite still "nouveau" but close enough.
But we can still safely get married, because my fiance doesn't think that people's food is any kind of reflection on people themselves. And my fiance speaks of food with sentences like "*I* can't eat that," or "*I* think I'll pass." Never with sentences like "*YOUR* foods are weird" or "YOU eat some bizarre @#$%!"
After all, the way we respond to any food is always a reflection of ourselves, never a reflection on those who are cooking and eating it. :-)
FYI, the unlaid chicken eggs, dipped in a little salt and chili pepper powder... pair very well with a 2006 Nouveau Beaujolais. The pork trachea, not so much. Lord I hope that was trachea...
Posted by: Simon Bao | July 22, 2008 at 08:26 PM
Hee hee. Simon, I just did a post that touched on a soup featuring those unlaid eggs. I love yolks so I think they're pretty cool.
Yep, your fiancee sounds like a keeper, all right!
Posted by: Robyn | July 22, 2008 at 09:41 PM
Simon, you'd suggested earlier that we have a discussion on restorative foods and I think that if you're going to the hospital -- where people often leave with either fewer or more parts than they came in with -- a good strategy is to eat a few parts while you're still in the hospital to ensure that you've got it all together.
As for the yolks -- well they're full of nutrients and are bound to boost something.
I don't watch as much TV as I should to keep up with things. But it would be fun to do a show with you, Simon. I'd be gracious and politically correct. You can be acerbic. Think the Food Network will pick that up?
Someday, we should have a discussion on why the Food Network doesn't have a show hosted by an Asian person? Are we too bizarre to be on air?
Posted by: Andrea Nguyen | July 22, 2008 at 10:31 PM
Andrea, Food Network may feel that as long as they've got Sandra Lee in a kimono doing Indochine Brunches, they've got us covered. :-) Given what does go on that network, I'm content to let them leave us all alone. LOL
A lot of chefs and cooks and foodies do turn to PBS instead to host their programs. (Actually, most of the time that's American Public Television, APT.) Sometimes that's a program host who couldn't possibly get on the air anywhere else, but that also includes some hosts who like being left alone to do what they want to do. Ming Tsai, Lidia Bastianich, Steve Raichlen, Pepin, the whole crew from ATK. The New Scandinavians. :-)
PBS/APT might be the place for us to look and hope... :-)
Posted by: Simon Bao | July 27, 2008 at 09:11 AM
I've never been a fan of Zimmerman and have debated tirelessly on my opinions regarding the differences between Zimmerman and Bourdain.
I just actually stopped for a bit and read all the comments and it looks like Simon said everything I would have. Well said Simon! Bravo!
Bourdain shows genuine interest and respect to people, culture and their food traditions first. Then the content will automatically be interesting.
Zimmerman looks for shocking content first, regardless of how it reflects the culture.
It's all relative and it's unfortunate that some people view others food traditions as bizarre and freakish, rather than just "different". I bring in grilled radicchio to work for lunch and my staff stare at is in awe and curiosity. A platter of blue cheese, pears, warm olives and a glass of Syrah would have them pulling out their cameras!
Posted by: White On Rice Couple | July 27, 2008 at 03:54 PM
Yr right about the cheese. Some of my Viet colleagues have trouble with big steaks.
I guess other 'weird' foods would be dog meat black pudding, cat meat (illegal in cities but available), blood jelly, mam tom with bun (the sonic death shrimp sauce), the fertilised duck egg (good fried in butter), the unlaid eggs, and rice wine with goat fetuses in it.
But yr right, it's still noodles and normal fare most of the way
Posted by: helen | July 28, 2008 at 01:41 PM
Wow, some of these foods sound pretty wild. Blood jelly ? I can barely stand regular jello.
Posted by: Bathroom and Kitchen Guide. | September 16, 2008 at 06:05 PM
The blood jelly is actually pretty good. (I've eaten it several times at parties thrown by my (vietnamese) fiance's friends. The men always seem amazed that I like it- and can keep up with them when they chase it with Remy and Heineken.
Evin
Posted by: Evin Morris | December 05, 2008 at 10:47 PM
Evin, you're a good fiance. Proving that you can eat and enjoy and drink as well as the men -- BRAVO! They probably need the Remy and Heineken as chasers.
Posted by: Andrea Nguyen | December 11, 2008 at 11:39 AM
hi this is hema
me and my husband james we both love travel chanel.especially andrew zimmerman's bizarre food,we really love that.also antony bordain's show only bad thing abou his program his language, therefore we cant show it to our children.They want to see that with us but we wont let them watch his program because when he uses "f" words, there is a "beep" u can hear that time my kids r asking what he said, if he can reduce that,this kind of show will really help kids to know about other cultures.andrew's show is really fantastic.If you come to our home u can see travel chanel on television always.
Posted by: hema | January 25, 2009 at 10:30 AM
For our reading class we have to make a food for the theme of our book. My theme is adventure. So what food can I make for adventure thats not to hard and expensive?
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