Andrew Zimmern Talks 'Bizarre Foods,' 'Top Chef Masters' & Loving Fried Whole Baby Birds

'Bizarre Foods' is back for a fourth season (Mon., April 26, 10PM ET on Travel Channel), and host Andrew Zimmern is still just as animated when talking about the new crop of destinations he's visiting as he was in the beginning. "I have the greatest job in the whole world ... I love it!"

If you haven't seen the show, you may not realize just how strange his enthusiasm is -- this is a man who eats jellied eels, chicken uterus, scorpions, cow's blood and raw goat testicles. It's obviously a niche job and, yes, an acquired taste.

I caught up with the passport-wielding foodie to find out where he'll be taking us this season (and what he'll be eating there), his favorite foodie TV shows and his simple request for his last meal.

How did you end up doing 'Bizarre Foods'?
I sort of always wanted to be the food guy on Travel Channel. I didn't want to be one of 40 people on a cooking network, all doing sort of the same thing. I love travelling. I've always felt that the most important part of food is experiencing it in its terroir, the place it exists. That doesn't mean that French onion soup isn't good at a bistro in New York ... in fact that might be the best French onion soup on the planet. But to really understand French onion soup, I think it's also important to experience it at four in the morning with a bunch of stevedores at Rungis Market, 20 miles outside of Paris, where they're still carrying on the tradition of what onion soup was created for: a transportable, fortifying meal in a bowl for the working class.

Where will you be taking us this season?
We go to Buenos Aires and explore the meat culture of one of the world's great towns, and you get to watch me tango dance away the night with a stunning young starlet. The opening show of the season is in Isaan, in northeastern Thailand, where I encounter foods unlike anything I've ever seen before. Just one crazier than the next. We explore Bangkok and Tokyo, two of my favorite cities on the planet; I'm sort of an Asian food junkie, so I got to satisfy that jones in a big way. I got to take a piece of the world -- Baja, Mexico -- and explore it from tip to top, and show people why one of the most overlooked parts of Mexico should be hailed as almost groundbreaking for its worship of seafood and the incredible stuff that's found there. We have a killer season.

Do you have a favorite episode of the new season?
My favorite show might be the Mongolia show. In Mongolia, they live off the grid in a way that very few other places can accurately reflect in the same light. It's insane. I lived with a nomadic family for a week, and did what they did and slept in a room heated only by a small stove fueled with animal poop that you had to collect every morning. Yeah ... it was pretty fun.

What's your favorite food that you thought for sure you'd never like?
In the pilot, in Bangkok, I ate little tiny fried sparrows one night. They were just delicious. We ended up putting them in the show in the Philippines and in Hanoi, Vietnam show and then once again in the Isaan, Thailand show -- everywhere I go, I always look for them. Deep fried whole baby birds ... they're fantastic.

What's your #1 tip for food-weary travelers?
I never understood why people would take the trip of a lifetime, to China for example, and they're in Beijing, and they want to eat at the Hard Rock. It just doesn't make sense to me. I think what people fail to remember is if you tried five new things -- all of which you thought were too weird for you -- three of them you'd adore, one of them you'd be on the fence about and one you wouldn't like. So that means only 20 percent of the stuff you think you won't like actually turns out that way.

What's your recommended destination for foodies who think they've seen and eaten it all?
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia -- I would challenge anybody to go there and eat for a week and come back and tell me they had the same old, same old. But that's such an extreme. If you live in the United States, go for a weekend in New York and go out to Queens, to the new Chinatown, or Archer Avenue in the Bronx where you're hard-pressed to hear English spoken -- it's all Italian still. There are neighborhoods in New York cooking authentic food, because they're cooking for immigrant populations that keep arriving from those countries.

If you could choose, what would your last meal be?
I want to be at the baseball game with my son on my lap, eating a hot dog and drinking a root beer float.



Do you have a favorite food show on TV that isn't yours?
I like watching really talented people work. That means I'm not a fan of shows where any Tom, Dick or Harry is on there cooking. I like shows like 'Iron Chef America' or 'Top Chef.' Or 'Top Chef Masters' -- I'm in an upcoming episode, which is very exciting. I got to go on and participate as one of the theme celebrities on there; I'm not a contestant. It's very fun ... it's a whole episode sort of ... well, it's geared around what you can only imagine would be why they would have me on. [Laughs]