The 3 Foods Andrew Zimmern Can't Stand
As anyone who has ever watched an episode of the Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods" series knows, host Andrew Zimmern is one truly adventurous gourmand. The Emmy Award-winning television personality and chef has traveled the globe, sampling local cuisine and traditional delicacies, including plenty of dishes considered far outside the purview of most Western palates.
According to Zimmern himself, some of his most bizarre meals have included fermented shark (known as hakarl) in Iceland, giant sea squirt in Chile, giraffe beetles in Madagascar, and — wait for it — fried tarantulas in Cambodia. As an experienced hunter and outdoorsman, the chef has also been known to eat meat straight off the bones of his catch, and dress and prepare game right out in the field without batting an eye. Let's just say his diet is not for the faint of heart — or stomach.
While he's hardly squeamish when it comes to trying the world's most unusual bites, there are a handful of eats that even this fearless foodie would turn down — and they're probably not what you would expect. In a Twitter post from 2017, Zimmern revealed that he doesn't eat walnuts, raw cookie dough, and hot oatmeal. "Won't eat 'em, can't stand 'em," he added in an interview with People.
Why Andrew Zimmern doesn't eat these common foods
Who would have guessed that the man with an iron stomach would be turned off by these considerably common snacks? Walnuts are known for their earthy, woody flavor, but Zimmern claimed in another tweet that the nuts taste like soap to him. And while consuming raw cookie dough does technically pose a health risk, most of us have have probably indulged in a sneaky bite before baking a batch. However, in an article he wrote for Time, the chef explained that he avoids eating it — not due to food safety concerns but simply because he doesn't like the texture.
As for the hot oatmeal? Zimmern has compared it to jailhouse gruel, calling it "a horrific, awful thing to do to such a glorious thing as an oat" (per MarketWatch). He prefers his oatmeal in cookie form.
Zimmern may have a try-anything-once philosophy towards gastronomy, but that doesn't mean he'll necessarily try anything twice. In addition to those three everyday foods, the traveling gourmand has pointed to a few other edibles he'd rather not face again. Among them are: durian, an infamously smelly fruit from Asia; surströmming, Sweden's pungent fermented fish-in-a-can; and 14-day-old stinky tofu from Taiwan. Well, everyone has their limits!