I can tell everything about a restaurant through their mussels. You have to work so hard to keep them perfect.
— Andrew Zimmern
After attending The Dalton School and then Vassar College, I began cooking in New York City restaurants helmed by Anne Rosenzweig, Joachim Splichal and Thomas Keller.
When I go into a steakhouse and order a steak, I'll order the cut of my choice, and I'll order it black and blue. And I'll ask them to bring it with my first course, and I'll just let it sit there.
When I was 13, I came back from summer camp - summer of '74 - and my mother had had an accident during surgery and was in an oxygen tent in a coma. It was so traumatic. My parents had been divorced for six or seven years at that point, and it was sort of the seminal event of my life.
I lost an apartment. l became homeless for 11 months and squatted in a building on Sullivan Street in lower Manhattan.
I consider a perfect hot dog on the street to be as valid a food experience as dinner at Blue Hill at Stone Barns.
I don't like being at food festivals and have someone from some weird cable access show that's all about lifestyle get in my face with a microphone and wants to know which party I'm going to later... That just is pointless kind of stuff to me.
I'd rather be a good guest in someone's home than tell them I don't like their food or make fun of them.
In a world that is defined by what separates us, sharing a meal with someone from a different country, showing what we have in common with the people, it's very powerful and important.
I think we have cultural bias and practice some ethnocentrism when it comes to ethnic food in America.
Like many other chef-entrepreneurs, I am convinced that fast food does not mean bad food.
The people who are afraid of talking to press are people who have something to hide.
Everyone seems to ask me the same 10 questions, and high on the list is, 'What pans should I be cooking with and why?'
I find that most home cooks don't get vinegars. They're misunderstood, mostly due to the factory-made red wine vinegar that everyone commonly cooks with... that, and the giant gallon of white distilled vinegar that we all use, mostly to clean and disinfect things!
The summer after college, I got a job as a chef at Conscience Point Inn in Southampton. I spent the summer on the water and cemented my expertise with seafood. I've always gravitated toward places that do seafood.
I was born and raised in New York. My family has been in New York City since the Civil War. I have a ton of N.Y.C. in my DNA, from both sides of my family. I had a wonderful childhood in the city.
Don't ripen picked tomatoes in the sun. Put underripe tomatoes and stone fruits in a paper bag in cool, dark place, and magic happens. And never, ever store them in the fridge: they turn mushy and flavorless.
Everything happens in the kitchen. Life happens in the kitchen.
As a teenager, I spent my days at the beach and nights cooking in Long Island restaurants.
The big mistake people make is eating their grilled beef hot. I prefer room temperature or cool. When the meat rests and starts to get cool, all of that fat goes back into the muscles and becomes much more tender.
I'm no saint, and I don't want to come across like one, but there is not a day that goes by that I'm not doing something for someone else with a very large chunk of my time.
Any decision that I make, anything that I do, every single consideration of my day goes through the prism of what my former experience has been.
As I famously said before, I don't like to waste meals. I'm no one's food snob.
The corner of the 'food media' that I think is troublesome to me is the shows on TV that don't really have a point or don't have a lesson to be learned. If you don't have a point, or if there's not some part of it that is meaningful and can change someone's life, in my old age, I'm just not into it.
Way back in the day, I used to cook for Thomas Keller at Rakel in New York City. Keller is a down to earth, kind, supportive person. I wish people could see that.
I grew up in a time when we didn't have the Internet, and we didn't have smartphones and things like that.
In tribal Botswana, I received some woven necklaces and a handmade bow with three poison arrows. It's framed and hanging on the wall in my living room and is, without a doubt, one of my favorite possessions.
The biggest thing that I learned is when you're building something - especially a project that requires partners - you have to make sure that there is a lot of overlapping desire and a lot of overlapping alignment with the people that you're doing work with.
I think a lot of chefs are afraid of media outlets, and especially web outlets, because they're afraid there's some 'Borat' situation going on.
I use vinegars to deglaze saute pans for sublime sauces.
I log 250 days a year on the road. I need pants that are versatile, easy to clean, and dry in my hotel room if necessary.
Even as a kid, I ventured out to ethnic restaurants all the time.
I rest my proteins in their liquid when I am done with the heat braise.
Don't pile your tomatoes in a container that doesn't breathe. I like my baskets or grass mesh plates, and I layer them single deep, stem end down to prevent bruises and premature rotting.
In 2012, I launched Andrew Zimmern's Canteen. Inspired by visits to street stalls and markets around the world, Andrew Zimmern's Canteen reflects the intersection of food and travel.
Thanks to my parents, who had me traveling around the world mouth-first, I knew from a young age I wanted a career in food.
My life gets better every year.
You can tell the history of people on a plate.
Having been in the restaurant business, our job in the restaurant business is to be responsible for our customers' happiness. It's the nature of the hospitality business. You need to take care of people. You take care of customers above all others. Customers are your lifeblood.
I will tell you flat out that I continually find Yelp and products like it to be increasingly worthless to me as a consumer.
The restaurant industry in New York in the '80s was a good place to hide out if you had issues.
In everything I do, I want people to get the message of acceptance, to learn not to practice contempt without investigation. I have an obligation to do it.
We will, as Americans, inhale another culture on a fork before we try their music or their art or even, God forbid, hang out with the actual people.
I love the Mexican chapulines. These little crickets are beautifully roasted with salt and lime.
I like to talk to media.
Copper is a superb cooking metal, conducting heat so evenly it has unparalleled control, especially at low temperatures.
Good vinegars come in all shapes, sizes, strengths, and viscosities and are probably my most often used seasoning agent in the kitchen after the other major acids we use in solid form: sugar and salt.
In the frequently-asked-question category, the question I get asked almost as much as 'What's the worst thing you've ever eaten?' is 'What's the best pair of pants to travel in, work in, trek in, and use on the road for the most activities possible?'
My parents divorced when I was six but stayed close.
A five-pound boneless rolled-and-tied breast of veal, like any other piece of meat fit for braising, can come in many shapes and sizes. So recipe times aren't uniformly applicable. A long and thin tied roast will cook more quickly than its stouter, football-shaped cousin.
