Why Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods Was Canceled

In the very first episode of "Bizarre Foods", which aired nearly two decades ago, Andrew Zimmern ate buffalo brain stew in New Delhi and water snakes in Cambodia. Over the next 12 seasons, he had his viewers hooked as he dug into giraffe beetles, tarantulas, giant sea squirts, coral worms, and sausages made from horse rib and rectum. The show was abruptly cancelled in 2018, weeks after Zimmern made highly disparaging and culturally insensitive comments about the state of Chinese restaurants in the Midwest, calling them "horses**t." 

Zimmern always had strong opinions, and rarely held back — expressing an intense loathing for Yelp to his refusal to eat canned Spam. This time though, his views were way off the mark. In November 2018, Zimmern was interviewed by Mark Wilson for Fast Company. The James Beard award winning chef covered a range of topics, from his battles against addiction to his love for Minnesota. 

At one point, Zimmern revealed he was  opening a new Chinese restaurant – Lucky Cricket — in the suburbs of Minneapolis. He rattled off the names of top Chinese restaurants in the big cities, and expressed regret that his friends in the Midwest didn't have access to that quality of Chinese food. "I think I'm saving the souls of all the people from having to dine at these horses**t restaurants masquerading as Chinese food that are in the Midwest," Zimmern said, sparking a huge backlash, and while he did apologize several times on multiple forums over the next couple of weeks, as things turned out, the damage was done.

The interview aired in November 2018 triggering widespread anger, not least from the Asian community which ran the restaurants he had just dismissed. "Dear @andrewzimmern , I want to personally thank you for saving me, the son of Chinese refugees, from the "horses**t" Chinese restaurants my family built in the Twin Cities," an X user posted. A daughter of two Los Angeles restaurateurs made a similar point: "Can someone tell @andrewzimmern that those 'horses**t' restaurants he's talking about are run by immigrant families trying to give their kids a better life?"

The history of Chinese-American food is closely linked to Asian immigrants, with the cuisine evolving over a couple of centuries to cater to American palettes. In fact, there's a long list of Chinese American dishes that aren't commonly eaten in China. Zimmern put out a 700-word apology on Facebook. "Let me start by saying most importantly how awful I feel and how sorry I am for my recent remarks. I am completely responsible for what I said and I want to apologize to anyone who was offended or hurt by those sound bites," he wrote.

The Travel Channel took "Bizarre Foods" off its primetime slot the following month, and stopped filming on both "Bizarre Foods" and "The Zimmern List". While the channel insisted the call had been taken before the controversial interview, as they moved away from food towards programming around the supernatural, overwhelming opinion was Zimmern's show had been taken off the air for his comments. As it turned out though, the shuttering of "Bizarre Foods" wasn't the only price he paid. Zimmern's restaurant chain Lucky Cricket, which he hoped would grow to 200 outlets, shut shop in 2019.