I’m Andrew Zimmern, and this is my last meal. [Heavy metal intro music] Every person has exactly two things in common. We all gotta eat and we’re all gonna die. Today’s guest is a chef, author, activist, TV host, and frankly, there are too many nouns to do him justice. He’s won four James Beard Award and been broadcast across hundreds of different countries. Please welcome the host of orrori da gustare, Andrew Zimmern, welcome to the show. Thanks. Of course. You know, that’s the favorite translation of bizarre foods of all time, and, and it means the horrors of eating. I only recognize the Italian nomenclature for bizarre foods because it is so beautiful. The show was originally gonna be called The Wandering Spoon. Oh. Which was my idea. And thank God that, uh, it, it wasn’t taken, but there was a, uh, an executive at Discovery at the time that owned. What is now this, you know, family of lifestyle networks that have sort of been together and gone to six or seven ownership groups over the 20 years that I’ve been making television for them, uh, who had the foresight to say, let’s call it bizarre foods. It works great in TV guide. It lets people know what it is. I was all hung up on the word bizarre. The secondary definition of bizarre is unique and interesting. And I thought, okay, there we go. I’m happy. And so it allowed me to use that as a talking point everywhere I went early on, talk shows, magazine interviews, things like that as the show kind of exploded into the American zeitgeist. Incredible. We certainly have a unique and interesting meal ahead of us today. I, I’m looking forward to it, although I’m not sure that we’re eating anything too bizarre. Not too bizarre. Bizarre is all a relative term. That’s right. And I think they have specific bizarre meanings in our own lives, which is one of the beautiful things about food. It’s so personal. Mm-hmm. Had you thought deeply, have you thought about your last meal before? I get asked that question a lot. Mm-hmm. My traditional one was a big pile of cherry stone clams that I could shuck myself as the sun is going down, I’m sitting on the beach, my grandmother’s roast chicken. Mm-hmm. And a court. Not a pint, a quart of really good espresso ice cream. I, I think this one is a little more revealing about who I am as a human being and talks about. I, I think the, the, the meal talks to me about different phases of my life in a way that, um, I’m really exciting to see how it rolls out for me. I love that. But at the same time, I do really wish I was on a beach with you right now, shucking cherry stone. Oh, me too. And so this time next year, you wanna run it back? A hundred percent because I’ll just, I’m a very good clam shucker. That was my first job. Age 14. All my friends got jobs, uh, at the local landscaping company. And I wanted to be at the beach and at the tennis club and hanging out with girls. And, you know, I, I, you know, then I go to work at night in a restaurant and there was something about the gorgeous tinkle of a gin and tonic. Mm-hmm. And a tray of, you know, oysters and, and poached shrimp or a lobster roll. Heading across the dining room in this little seafood shack restaurant called The Quiet Clam. I got swept up right away. I fell in love right away. Yeah. I said, this is, this is what I need to do with the rest of my life, and I’ve never stopped. And what a way to spend your 50th restaurant anniversary then with me a man. That’s exactly right. Happy anniversary. Happy anniversary, babe. Yes. You ready to eat? Yes. Let’s do it. Andrew, for the first course of your final meal on this earth, we have the Mo Marin. These are mussels that have been steam with a little bit of white wine. Garlic shallot, and just that natural clam liquor. A little bit of baguette on the side. Then we have the gazpacho. This is actually based off of your recipe. Uh, fresh tomatoes grated, just a little bit of sherry vinegar and balsamic vinegar in there to round it out, some croutons on top. And then we have Yang Yang Cajun. This is raw, marinated, spicy Korean crab. How’s the gazpacho? I’m, I’m fascinated by these three are my favorite foods. Mm-hmm. Right? Each one very important to me. Why did I reach for my mother’s first? I’m curious, is there like a sort of Freudian connotation there is that at the end of your life you’re clinging for the love and comfort of your mother? Well, he would say, Freud would say so, um, he would say a lot of other things about you and your mother’s relationship as well. But my mother had a horrible accent. Well, I love my mother. Mm-hmm. Immensely incredible human being, great woman. I lived with her primarily after my parents divorced when I was six, but she had a tragic accident the summer that, uh, I turned 13. Hmm. And, um, she was never the same. She was in a, uh, a, a, a coma, uh, for several year, uh, for several months, and then in, uh, mental homes having, uh, parts of her brain sort of rejiggered. Um, and she was never the same for the rest of her life. Yeah. You know, that’s the great thing about food. Is that we get a chance to revisit memories. And, um, so I went for that right away to see if my mom was here in the room. And my mom’s definitely here in the room. This is my dad’s dish. This was my father’s barometer dish. It became my barometer dish. Mm-hmm. Um, and beautifully cooked too. Um, my, my dad loved muscles, as did I when I was little. Growing up in Long Island during the summers, we would walk down to the jetty. He’d hold me by my ankle. He was really big. He was in the Navy. Mm-hmm. Uh, in World War ii, he would lower me down between these massive rocks to pull up these ropes of fresh muscles. Yeah. And then he would show me how to clean them. I was basically then the scullery, uh, kid. And I would eat pounds and pounds and pounds of mussel with him. We’d steam them, uh, with little sea water. You talking about your father kind of lowering you down mm-hmm. To grab the muscles. I had this weird flashback to an episode of Bizarre Foods where you’re hunting for swallows nests. Yes. And they’re, you know, in the boat kind of reaching up. Yes. It’s this funny picture of like, you know. You side by side digging for the muscles and then being on a boat with somebody reaching up for the swallows nest. One of the big things about Bizarre Foods for me was this realization that I grasped very early on that everybody around the world roughly wants the same thing out of food. They want comfort, they want connection, and they want something that’s tasty. And also fun. If they want the same thing outta food, they generally want the same thing out of life. Mm-hmm. Ergo, everybody in the world is deserving of dignity and respect. Mm-hmm. And I’m like 14 years old watching you. That’s the premise of the show. Well, was that intentional? Yes. Was that like from the outset or just a happy sort of side effect? No, that was, that was the intention of the show. That’s why I made the show. Um, I wanted to create a show that. I preached, uh, patience, tolerance, and understanding for other people. I saw a world that was, uh, pathetically and dangerously starting to divide itself. Mm-hmm. And, and compare itself by things that we didn’t have in common rather than by the things that we did. There’s nothing worse than sitting across from a network executive and saying, what are you gonna, what do you got for us today? And you say it’s a show about practicing patience, tolerance, and understanding with other people, and that is a big no-no. Yep. Uh, pat Young, genius, uh, legend in the television business, still works in, in England, uh, was running Travel Channel at the time, and he said, if you come back here, I pitched the show that way. And he said, we’re never buying that. And, and I said, why? He said, that’s 10, 10 episodes on PBS. He said, maybe five. He said, but if you can give me a show that instead of being 80% education and 20% entertainment is 80% entertainment and 20% education, I think I can keep you on TV for more than 10 years. And he wound up being right. We did a show, a dinner scene in Lapland. Mm-hmm. The grandmothers are speaking a dialect of their language that, that no one could understand. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Except that you knew what they were saying. Sit up straight. These strange men will be gone soon. I told you I’ll give you an extra piece of candy if you just behave for 45 minutes. They just need to get this shot. You and your straighten up. I mean, you just knew what they were. They, all parents say the same things to their kids in those situations. So, you know, one of those deals where, um, had I, I’d done what I wanted to do. It would’ve been a miserable failure. When I made it a group activity and listened to other folks, it became a magical, magical experience. Are, are you a, uh, fermented crab person? I am. So I have had this dish. So this is Yung y Keong, and then there’s Kaj kj, which is just the soy marinated crab. Yes. Correct. That I’m more familiar with from a great spot called Soban. Legendary in LA. Mm-hmm. Tell you what this, sometimes I eat this dish and I go. I wish that crab was cooked. I’m kind of like an otter. I eat the soft shell. I don’t put it on my chest like an otter. Andrew, I think you’re a bear, not an otter. Interesting. Thank you. I’ll take that as a compliment. Um, I post a lot of pictures with some of my friends. And the, the, the real bear community comes out in droves, in support when Jose Andres is shaving your chest. That’s, that was the one, Andrew. That’s bait. That was the one. Um, I am the son of two gay men. Mm-hmm. So I should have known better. You mentioned PBS earlier and you worked for a chef called Last Send Around. Yes. At, uh, LAR Trot. Mm-hmm. He actually had an episode of the show, great Chefs of Europe. Yes, that I know was a big inspiration to you. What do you think that show got right, that you tried to capture? Episode two that we filmed was Spain, but Spain aired first. People said, well, why are you going to a, you know, gastronomic temple? This is bizarre food. You’re supposed to be out eating bugs in the jungle. And, uh, sitting down with tribal peoples, I said, well, we do that, but in some countries we’re going to a temple of gastronomy because some of the dishes that a was creating. A dessert with five elements that he worked on with his brother who’s a pastry chef Albert. All made from pine cones from the tree outside the kitchen. What he wanted to do was create a zero kilometer food, a real zero kilometer food for a dessert. That’s as bizarre as anything you could possibly imagine. Some of the things that we had there, I mean, literally baby rabbit, I mean three, four day old rabbit, right? Just tiny little legs and saddle. I was so adamant on these story pillars. We always had a good restaurant. Right, because I grew up on great chefs watching that show, I, I was fascinated by what they were doing, but I wanted to show people as many aspects of the culture as I could. So I, I think shows like great chefs that, you know, I saw early on in my career, I was working while I was, I was still in college. Mm-hmm. Right. But I, I kept getting kicked out and I would work for six months go overseas. I mean, actually when I went overseas and worked in Paris at Lar Astrada was during my first time, uh, being asked to take a semester off from, uh, Vassar College where I ended up graduating. Ma um, thank you. You did it. But I learned a respect and a style of cuisine there that gave me a, uh, an an addiction for the relentless pursuit of perfection. And I loved working for great chefs. I, I just think there’s, there’s something magical about that, and I would define a great chef as anyone from a three star Michelin chef to, uh, Mary who owns Mary’s Laa in Singapore, who only makes one thing laa. That’s it. But does it so well. That you just can’t find a, you can’t find a fault with a bite of it. It’s perfect. And you wait online for two hours to get a bowl, scarf it down, and then you walk to the back, get online again, and get another bowl. Yeah. Do you think we’re losing that level of perfection, not just in cooking, but I think a hundred percent and everything. Why is that? Mm-hmm. Everyone wants to be successful immediately. The idea of, oh, no, no, no. You have to wait for that. That comes later on in life. Some people are very lucky. They’re young, they’re talented. They’re good looking. They come up with a great idea about sitting down with people like me and eating last meals and just incredibly successful right out of bed. No, I’m, I’m just kidding. Even then, though, I had 10 years of food media built up that most people don’t see. Correct. Exactly. But the idea is, is that people have to understand that wanting what you want. And wanting it now is the definition of what, you know, modern day psychiatry calls the King baby syndrome. Right. Um, and I think we’re falling prey to that now. I sound like every 63-year-old coming around every 20 years, sort of decrying what’s happening. Get off his lawn kids. At the same time, incredible things are happening. Mm-hmm. I see everything through the lens of food. That’s how I’ve led my life. I am a permanently curious adventurist and explorer who travels the world mouth open with a magnifying glass, looking at food. Right, like Inspector Gadget meets pac man mouth and magnifying nose and hand kind of. Yeah. I like that. I’m gonna go with that. You’re gonna, you’re gonna blurb my next book, someone’s Oh, perfect. Someone’s gonna make the fan art too. It’s, oh, I love that. It’s gonna be erotic with you and Jose, but you’ll see. I love it. The, uh, I’m gonna be erotic with anyone. It might as well be with a future, uh, Nobel Peace Prize winner. Um, the degree to which we ignore our neighbors is the degree to which our own culture disappears and becomes less powerful, and we have less things to hand down to the next generation. Andrew, for the second course of your final meal, we have the pastrami on rye from Katz’s Deli. This is authentic. This is vacuum-sealed shipped out here. We have the half sour pickles and the full sour pickles. And then of course we have the bagel from Russ and daughters with lox and the schmear. The little Jewish kid inside of me is jumping up and down and doing, uh, cartwheels. If you are what you eat, I’m 86% pastrami, 14%, uh, Gaspa Nova. Interestingly, uh, five generations of Zimmermans have eaten at Casses and at Russ and daughters and, and. Special food to me. This is, you know, the, the food of my people. Yeah. You know, um, for me, this is, these are my two favorite foods. It, it screams of, of, of. My grandparents and great grandparents. It is the joy on my father’s face when he took me there for the first time. I’m sure my son doesn’t even remember the first time I took him to New York. Uh, and, uh, we ate at Katz’s and at Russ and daughters because I obsessively, because I’m a freak, had to say that no matter what, if I got hit by a car the next day, we had that fifth generation of Zimmers, right? Who, who ate at those places. And you know, this is. This is my culture in between two slices of bread, heaven. Oh, so good. I needed Dr. Brown’s with it though. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? As a West Coast Jew, but with Ashkenazi roots, I thought that a majority of Jewish food was just like Go Sabzi and Fein, June and Kabob. Mm-hmm. And then my grandma would show me what Ashkenazi Jewish food is, and I was like. Why are the only vegetables, potatoes, and cabbages, granny? And she’s like, that’s all we had in Lithuania. I was like, well, fair enough. But I’ve learned to love it. I was in Syria before Asad started bombing on people, the Jordanian Secret Service people that were my bodyguards, who knew I was Jewish, and they took me to see the oldest temple in Damascus. I just started crying. Yeah. Am I an observant Jew? No. Did I grow up in an observant household? No. What makes me cry when I’m standing in front of a synagogue in Damascus? What does make you cry? That connection to people. The same thing that makes me excited whenever I’m going into my grandmother’s salt cellar. That was her grandmother’s salt cellar that sits on my counter that I season food with. Because I know in the 1840s and fifties, a woman in our family, ’cause the men didn’t cook, reached in there to get salt and season their food with it. It’s participation. When people talk about food bringing us together, I think it can divide us as much as it brings together. Food is not, it’s, it’s amoral, right? Mm-hmm. It’s something that exists and is very important, but it can almost be used as a tool. I’m curious as many like good memories around food that you have. Do you have any bad memories around food? Because it sounds like your childhood in New York, it was filled with all these incredible things. Brunches at James Beard’s house. Yeah. Studio 54 opening. Yeah. But then also, I know you went through like a lot of mental anguish. What was the role in food in your life during that? I mean, just to fill in the blanks for people being born in 61, when Studio 54 opened 48, 49 years ago. Mm-hmm. Um, that’s where we went three, four times a week. You would just go out there, we’re going, you know, you were, yeah. You go just the same way. You would go to CBGBs and listen to the Ramones before they were anyone with 12 other people drinking beer and burping in the room. Um, there were some fabulous things. To be said for growing up as and very blessed to be a child of, of privilege, uh, in New York. My dad, uh, was an executive, a high, highly placed person in the advertising world, uh, and was very successful. And so, you know, I had a, a worry-free life in so many different ways. Then I, then my alcoholism and my drug addiction started raging out of control. And so that anguish that was associated with it. I took meals at the Salvation Army. Yeah. I stole to feed myself. I always stole to get high. Yeah, right. Sure. But there were times where, you know, some of that money, it’s like, okay, I stole, I got, uh, I, I had $20 in cash in the purse. I sold a couple credit cards for, you know, another $20. Now I have 40, $40. I’m gonna spend $30, uh, buying dime bags of street heroin in Alphabet City, and I’m going to take that last $10 and buy some food. So at some point I can eat. And usually you would, you’d go into the bodega and you’d get things like buy one, get $1 boxes of Endeman’s donuts, and six packs of Carlene Black labeled the cheapest beer. That, that were–. Somehow you still ate very Jewishly though, with the Endemens, right? Well, it’s what was available. It was what was available and you know, like, you know, if you had a couple dollars left over a, a half pound of Boar’s Head baloney, like, I mean, you literally had to choose and figure out what could last you the longest. You, you were gonna spend the next couple of days hold up somewhere. Yeah, right. I sobered up January 92, so Thanksgiving, November, 1991. Uh, I had my second Thanksgiving in a Salvation Army, and when you have grown up as a child of privilege and gone to, and I’m, this is not a poor me, poor me thing, it’s just to put it in perspective for people when you were used to having everything and you watch your life go from here through Subbasement, after, I mean down to the, I mean to the earth, through all of Dante’s circles of hell, and you realize that you’ve squandered every advantage that life has given you, and you are now in a place where you’re keeping an eye on your duffle bag because people are stealing people’s dirty clothes. But it was that probably more than anything else. If I had to pick one time, it would be Thanksgiving, 1991, sitting there staring at that either metal or plastic tray with the compartments in it for the different foods that made me think. Okay, there’s winners and losers in life. I should just kill myself. And I wound up, you know, trying to kill myself in January of 1992. Um, so you can add suicide survivor to my resume. Um, that’s one of the too many nouns to justify it. That’s exactly right. But, but. Do you know something? In, in, in the, in the world that I swim in, there’s a promise that says, no matter how far you’ve fallen in life, if you’re still able to get up every day and be of service to other people, the greatest strength that you will have is your own story. Sometimes in life doing service can feel easier than asking to be the recipient of service. Hmm. How did the phrase, ‘I don’t know what to do, can you help me?’ save your life? You’ve done your homework. Um, I talked a bunch of things. I stole from one of my godparents, got a fist full of barbiturates, six bottles of pop of vodka and plastic bottles went into the San Pedro Hotel. Doesn’t exist anymore. I swallowed all the barbiturates and started chugging vodka. And uh, I woke up two days later and I wasn’t dead and I should have been. And I called my friend Clark and I asked for help and I had never done that before. I knew everything, you couldn’t teach me anything. You couldn’t teach me anything. You couldn’t teach me anything. You couldn’t teach me anything. I knew everything. What a horrible way to go through life. I was such an asshole until for the first time, I said, I, I don’t know what I’m gonna do next. I need help. Can you help me? Help me? That changed my life. Two days later, I was on, three days later I was on a plane, going to Center City, Minnesota. I’ve lived there ever since. That was the night of January 28th, 1992. I’ve been sober since then. I fell in with a really, um great bunch of guys that believed in, you know, strong cup of coffee, sobriety and service work and, um, and then years later, years, mind you, years, I’m not kidding, I went back to that sentence and picked it back up again. And, uh, my friend Joe always says, you know, once he learned how to say it, he said it every day. And that’s my story too. I mean, six, seven years into sobriety, I started saying it all the time and everything just took off like a shot from them, my family life, my TV life, like everything just sort of changed. The minute I stopped saying, yeah, I know everything, and started saying, I know, not tell me how do you do this? You know? It was a huge awakening. Andrew for course number three of your final meal. We have the Cuban style roast chicken. This is marinated for two days in that Mojo de Aho, and then brushed with a little bit of it. On the live charcoal grill. Then we have a Cuban style Chinese fried rice, little bit of chashu pork in there, some dark soy and sesame, and the fried maduros, the right plantains. Then of course, this is a dish I’m unfamiliar with Now this is a gnocchi with an asparagus carrot, pistachio pesto. Yeah. Uh, with, uh, some fresh basil and olive oil on top. Please enjoy. Before I went homeless or even when I was homeless and had some money. The cheapest meal that you could eat. And I, I was good at dining and dashing, but when you’re homeless and you’re not shower, I didn’t shower for like 13 months. Mm-hmm. You look, you’re, you’re in rags. You’re your, your skin is almost black and greasy. You’re not gonna get let into a restaurant. Yeah. Right. But you can, if you have the money. Get this plate to go from the restaurants on the upper West side and, and in, in some of the outer boroughs and in the Bronx that serve what are called com Creoles, which were, you know, Chinese and Creole food and, and they didn’t mean like New Orleans Creole food, they meant. Cuban and island food. Mm-hmm. You know, Dominican and, and they were these hybridized restaurants today they would be called mashups or they would have some fancy name to them, and I’ve always wanted to open one. Mm-hmm. Again, because I, I think there’s only one left in New York and this kind of chicken was the city version of Pollo o carbon. Mm-hmm. That it, they just wouldn’t allow live fire. There. I’ve always wanted to open a pollo o carbon place, a real one. Mm-hmm. The way that they have them down in, you know, the Dominican and, you know, even, uh, Venezuela, Columbia, all those places that do colo, uh, pollo o carbon. So, so, so well. I think El Pollo Loco does a good job. Listen, it’s an authentic Mexican restaurant. It’s founded in Mexico, open on Alvarado Street. Mm-hmm. I, I could eat El Pollo Loco for every meal, but spicy grilled chicken to me is like. You can go anywhere from– Nothing better. From Mozambique to Jamaica. That’s right. The American south and like God, is it the best food in the world. Probably make chicken. I think if you polled my family members mm-hmm. And said, what’s one thing, not a dish, but a thing dad makes too much of? They would say chicken the same way, make himself, but I can eat this. Mm-hmm. Every night of the week. Same. Especially the thigh. If there’s one meat that I gave for the rest of my life, It would just be a chicken thigh, hold chicken thigh bone and skin on. Lemme go to town. And this was on the menu at Cafe, uh, Un de Deis when I took it over, um, in fall of 93. Is this the Chef Simmer original? This was just kind of out its air. No. The chef when I showed up, had this on the menu and, and it was a really bad version. This chef was a super nice guy. I mean, he hired me as the dishwasher. I should be so grateful, uh, to him. And he, if it wasn’t for him, I never would’ve had my big Break. I mean, maybe I would’ve made it for myself at some other time. I’d like to think I would’ve the following month somewhere else. But the lead line cook, who was on the, you know, we had some sous chefs and expediting, the chef was on the line on the saute station and this guy was on the grill station. Very busy station. He was, he was ill and called in sick and I went down and I said to the chef, Hey, I can cook that guy’s station. And he’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go back to washing dishes. I said, no, seriously. And with every 15 minutes it became readily apparent. No one was getting, we were gonna do 250, 275 covers in an hour and a half, right in this big restaurant. And uh, finally I just kind of not put my foot down, but I just said, look, you have no one trust. I wouldn’t tell you I could do it if I couldn’t do it. And they said, fine. After lunch, the owner whose office was up the little steps by my dish washing station actually in the kitchen. Opened his office door and did one of these. And I walked inside and he said, can you please explain to me why my dishwasher just put out a better lunch than my chef does? Not only from the plates you put out, but then you started expediting while you were doing it. And I was just like, well, I’ve worked in restaurants my whole life. It’s like what I do. And uh, he said, you want to be the chef here? And I said, I can’t. I’m not, I can’t. I, I live in a halfway house. I have to be home. I can’t leave till late. I have to be home by five. And one thing led to another, and I wound up the day that, uh, I left the halfway house. I took over the kitchen there and I put a, uh, posters in every halfway house and every treatment center in the city of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Trying to assemble like a, a sober kinda second chance kitchen. Where drug addicts and drunks, they’re in, they’re greatly, incredibly talented Culinarians. And we just had a great crew that just kicked ass and there was that sort of like sober hurrah sort of team thing. This reminds me of those days. This is, this is where things started to change. Yeah. It’s so incredible how similar and parallel lives you and Anthony Bourdain seemed to live. I mean from being raised by like bon vivant relatively well to new parents in New York. Yes. Uh, both went to Vassar. Yes. Both grew up traveling when you were young, Jewish heritage, but not, not observing. Yes. Ended up you have such like diametrically opposite personalities, or at least as it came across. On screen. Oh, we did. Why do you think that was given such similar experiences? Because people are different. Sure. We imprinted differently. Um, do you think it’s as simple as that or do you think it’s Oh, yeah. No, no. I do think it’s simple as that. I think to, I think it’s, it’s silly to pursue it really any further. I mean, maybe some days someone what, you know, pat Young again, he had just bought Tony’s show. It was airing on Food Network and tanking. Right. Yeah. And Food Network didn’t want it. Meanwhile, he hires me, sends me out, we’re making bizarre foods while we’re making bizarre foods. They start airing season one of no reservations. They have a hit. They realize, okay, let’s put Zimmer’s show on before Bourdain’s show. Mm-hmm. You know, after two or three years of our shows being back to back on Travel channel, I remember the night. Pat Young called me and said, we just pulled a bigger number last night than Monday Night football. Now, albeit it was a shitty game, you know, it was like 40 to nothing. Uh, but for travel channel to have a night like that. Where you, you had two shows back to back that, that people look forward to tuning into and have two very different personalities traveling the world mouth first. Um, sadly, the Great Disappointment. Second greatest disappointment of my professional career was that, um, I got a call one day and was told, uh, drop your, you know, pencils down, come home, and they were turning travel channel into a ghost and Paranormal Station, and they were rebranding it as trvl, TRVL. Mm-hmm. They had a V movement. Thank you. And, uh, so I never got to know that my last show was gonna be my last show, which for people who were into, it’s very selfish. But when you’ve been doing it for that long and you feel like you’ve helped to build a network and you really did work, I mean, we were told we are all building a network. All ideas welcome. It was really folksy. Um, you took a lot of ownership. When Anthony Bourdain passed away, you wrote a really touching letter on your blog about him, and you said something that always stuck with me, which is, uh, not everyone, but at least someone in your life has to truly know you and truly know you. And Bourdain didn’t have that. And I know you grew up with a lot of like shame and secrecy sort of carrying in your family lineage in a lot of way. Mm-hmm. What has your relationship been with allowing others to truly know you, and why is that important? Tony’s two closest friends are two of my closest friends. Mm-hmm. Eric and Jose, would they say the same thing that I did, that no one knew him completely? I’m not sure. I say it because I’m a suicide survivor. Yeah. And I was, I, I know I had very close friends, people who would tell you I can complete his sentences. I know how he thinks. Not quite. Yeah, not quite, because full disclosure. Is much different than knowing someone intimately and well, how many people kill themselves or commit a crime or do something horrific and their spouse of 25 years is like, I had no idea. Their friends, the people at work, I had no idea. And the reason that I, that it still hurts is because it takes me back to my own pain. Of that, and I don’t want that for anyone. It’s why when I started working, uh, with Giving Kitchen a non Atlanta-based nonprofit that’s now national, uh, I started working on their, their, their suicide prevention stuff and their, which, for which they won the James Beard Humanitarian of the Year Award, a very big deal. We helped food service workers in crisis. You just go to giving kitchen.org and. You know, if you’re a food service worker of any kind and you need help, uh, you, we even have a stability network. So if your, if, if your problem is something that you know. We don’t deal with all the time. We have other people who we can refer you to and help give you the help and help pay for it. Uh, I, I started working with them on those issues. ’cause I never want, I don’t want anyone else to have to feel that pain. Sadly, too many people do. That day was really crazy. I was working in Philadelphia, you know, my phone blew up. I mean, I’ve written a, a ton about, a lot has been said about it, but my director said, we’re not gonna work today. And I said, no way. I am. You know, what am I gonna do? Sit in my hotel room and cry? Right. Yeah. And I actually, I mean, what made me pack them, I don’t know. I, at one point I made fun of Tony’s Desert boots, his, his Clark Desert boots. He was very fond of them at that point, and he wound up giving me a similar pair and, uh, I had never worn them and I wore them that day and did my thing. And then that night I was, you know, on CNN sort of back to back to back on two or three shows that night talking, uh, about. My friend and, uh, his impact on television and sort of putting in perspective and, uh, tremendous loss for everyone. Andrew, for your final course of the final meal on earth, we have the angel food cake with macerated berries, a little bit of whipped shay cream, nice soft peaks. And then of course we have the entire tartin tan honey, crisp apples, puff pastry, the works. Can you imagine when they first invented this and they tasted it and were just like, holy moly, Bob, I think we’re onto something. This right here is my favorite dessert and the one that I would say I make perfectly. Do you have a problem where you have said so many different things are your favorite over the years? That people will call you on it when you say one thing is your favorite because that’s my problem. I was about to say Tottan is also my favorite dessert. ’cause it’s certainly up there. But I know other people will say, well, you said that about creme caramel and you know, you said that about cream horns. Yeah. I just had my security people take them away. Sorry, I was wondering who they were at the, the door. No, you know, I mean, look, it’s, you know, it’s when people say, what’s the grossest thing you’ve ever eaten? Sure. I get asked that question in every interview at some point. Mm-hmm. And, uh, it changes all the time because it’s, what I think of is, uh, different. Yeah, exactly. Scratched out that question. The key to tartintan by the way, is to go in at the side is not to go from the point. Okay. But to go in from the side and get the crispy edge, but you get all of that cinnamon and caramel and. Ah, interesting. I go from the outside in. Um, you would, you would eat this in my house. Hmm. That’s our next date after Shucking Clams. Mm-hmm. On the beach. Oh, you like me enough? We have a second date. I, I’m already Love that tic man. And bring me up. The Minnesota. I love that. I love that. I like you too, Josh. I can’t stand the heat in Burbank, man. I’m melting out here. Let’s, let’s keep it going. Well, you can come and do a show with me in the Twin Cities and let me reciprocate. And crush you with more food than a human being should be allowed to eat. I would allow that. I have you heard the term tasting menu hate? Yes. Yeah. That is a very common term that is very tough to explain to people outside of the food business. Mm-hmm. There was one, you know, my son again was too young. He was probably three or four. We went to a hamburger place in Minnesota and the chef sent out a roasted pig head with a knife in it. And I was, so I, and I said to the guy, said, you know, something. Read the table. We just came for a hamburger. I’m with my son. We have to go to a movie, so get the meat off the head so I can take it to go and eat it in the theater. Put it in a Ziploc bag. Yeah, we’re going to see inside out. Sorry, I interrupted you. You were gonna say something. I’m curious how your relationship, the death has evolved over the years, especially somebody who was at death store got a second, third lease on life. And now it seems like you’re, you live so large in such a beautiful way. The one thing that no one can buy is time. Mm. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of how I’m going to die. I would prefer it to be in my sleep. I, I don’t want it to be some sort of horrible, painful thing. Um, I want to suck every bit of fatty marrow from the bone of life. Before I go, I want to be with the people that I want to be with, and, uh, I would like to see all the people that I worry about get to a place in their lives. Where I’m no longer worrying about them. My father told me at one point that he could die peacefully. I said, why are you saying that to me? You’ve got year, he wound up living for another 12, 14 years, but he said, because I finally am not worried about you anymore. Mm-hmm. And I realized that’s kind of what being a parent is probably all about. But probably more importantly, would, being a human being is all about I wanna, I wanna make sure my people are okay and then my work here is done. What do you think happens after you die? I don’t believe that there’s a gray bearded man like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Terry Gilliam cartoon style parts, cardboard clouds, and leans down and speaks to Sir Lancelot. Right? The great Jose Andres in the sky. That’s exactly right. But I do believe that we are not a rock spinning aimlessly going nowhere. Nor do I believe that this incredible creation that is humankind is just meant to evaporate. Maybe it’s self-soothing. I don’t know. Sure. Uh, maybe we just go to a dark void and I it’s over. But I do believe that there is something, this, this thing that we call our soul, maybe that. Is what is transported. Maybe it’s something else that we don’t even know about or aware of. I do not believe in reincarnation, and the reason that I don’t is that everyone who does believe in reincarnation tells you. You know, I was Julius Caesar, then I was George Washington. Nobody is like, I was the 13th century peasant. I died when I was 19. It was awful. I got bubonic plague. It was, I was in the mud, in the cold alone. No one ever says that. Yeah, they were always like famous people. Statistically too many Caesars and Cleopatras out there. Many Caesars and Cleopatras. You ready to jump in the lightning round? Uh, yes. Who’s the one person dead or alive you’d want to share your actual last meal with? Uh, my son. What’s the one thing you ate on bizarre foods that you wish you could taste for the first time again? Tiny little baby fried birds. What song do you want to be played at your funeral? Oh my god, that’s easy ’cause I have it all scripted out. Uh, Genesis, uh, the, uh, the Yor McCalin, uh, version from the album Qua. God damn. That’s awesome. Who’s your dream eulogize? The last job my kid would ever want to do is eulogize me because he, you know, crowds and that whole thing is just not his scene. Um, but he is. He said to me even today, he said, nobody knows you better than me. And he’s right. So if he would do it, I would hope that he would. Why is your opinion on, in and Out so unbelievably wrong? Uh, because it is so spot on, right. It is. The fries are tasteless, the burgers the most overrated on planet Earth, and all you have to do is taste a Culver’s burger and realize the value of not freezing beef and slicing tomatoes in house. The man raises good points. What’s your, there’s certain food opinions I have where I literally look at the camera and go, anyone who wants to debate me on this, come on and let’s do it. ’cause I, I, I don’t, I know how much crap I’m gonna take from everybody who’s ever eaten it in and out burger my, uh, Georgia and Kate, if you’re watching this and I know you are. They’ve dragged me to in and outs and they won’t sit with me. ’cause they said, if you don’t like it, I can’t be near you. ’cause like to them it is, it is their mono from heaven. But yeah, I just. I have strong opinions about it, but I, I, I like other fast food chains. Uh, finally, are you happy? Yes. You seem very happy. I am small age. I know moments of happiness, and I’m also smart enough to realize that we’re never happy all the time. Sad things happen. People have crappy days. Life is hard. Life is not fair. But I do know this, my mood, I can be in the worst mood ever think that, that my life is imploding upon itself. How am I gonna make it for another 10 minutes? And I walk in the door to my house and I just forget what I was upset about and vice versa. I’ve been ecstatic and floating on air, and in three seconds I hear a piece of news and I immediately project five steps down the road. I’m, I’m a big negative future fantasize. So I have to like check down my thoughts. Yeah. Right. And no, the world’s okay, I’m still here. I’m gonna get up tomorrow. Sun’s gonna rise. I got another chance at this thing. But yeah, you know, I’m good. And if after having the, the grace and the luck and the gifts that I’ve had, if I wasn’t okay to happy, you know, the upper range. Mm-hmm. Um. What a, what a selfish person. You know, living life based on expectations only gets you a life filled with resentment and lack of gratitude. Yeah. Um, and I just prefer to live, uh, in a better spot on the monopoly board. Well, I am glad that your spot on on the Monopoly board is next to me today. Andrew, I cannot thank you enough for being here. If you wanna deliver your last words to that camera right there. My last words. Your last words. This is it. You get one shot. I get one shot. Lose yourself at this. Um, actually we can take as many takes as you want for being dead honest. No, no, no. Like metaphorically. You get one shot, metaphorically. I, I, I get, and then on your actual, when you actually die, you’re gonna get another shot. Yeah. The, uh, hopefully you’ll, no, my, my, my last, my last words to, you know, is just, you know, um. I guess I would want people to do, I would tell whoever was in the room with me to put other people in front of yourself, and you’ll get more than you ever could possibly imagine. Honestly man, truly. Thank you so much. You can find him on Taste Mades Grilling Week. That’s what you’re up to right now? Yeah, well, I mean it’s, you know, my newest TV show. We got a big cookbook coming out in October. Grill Week is massive. Uh, premieres of my show, Pat Martin Show, Jess Pry show. Dale Taday show, uh, every night. Multiple premieres of Wild Game Kitchen, plus a lot of really cool interstitials. We shot a lot of extra talent. I’m hosting Grill Week. This year, it’s an incredible, it’s our fourth year doing grill, week on Taste Made. It sort of our, our version of Shark Week. It’s a big, massive, uh, you know, all across the platform activation, uh, get test taste made plus on the app, no commercials. Um, but yeah, wild Game Kitchen is, is fantastic. It’s, it’s the, it’s my dream show. You know, I get to cook what I want, when I want over open fire, how I want in my backyard. I will absolutely be tuning in and, and like truly. Thank you. You’ve been such a massive inspiration for everything that I’ve done in, in my career from such a, a young age. So truly, man, thank you for sitting, sitting down with me today. Well, that’s, that makes me feel very old. Thank you. Thank you. I must be, statistically, I must be closer to death than I imagined. The golden tee of mythicality giveaway is happening this week. Only Grab your tee now at mythical.com for your chance to unbox a fortune.