Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre World of Food

by Andrew Zimmern

  Growing up in New York City, we rarely ate food at its freshest. You don’t find shrimp in the Hudson River. There was lobster once, but 125 years ago they were overfished out of the tidal estuaries around the island of Manhattan.

  Freaky Fact: Lobsters can regenerate legs, claws, and antennae. In fact, they can amputate their own claws and legs as a defensive tactic to escape predators.

  Every summer, my dad would drive me out to Montauk, on Long Island. We’d sit at the dock, watching fishing boats unload crates of fresh seafood right out of the Atlantic. Like paparazzi hot on some young starlet’s trail, we would hound those crates to the clam bars on Montauk’s docks just to eat the freshest catch.

  There was one big tourist restaurant, called Gosman’s, on the waterfront at Montauk. They had pretty fresh stuff, but their lobsters were held in aerated, ocean-water tanks to keep them alive. Standard ops then and now for larger commercial seafood restaurants. Minute by minute, day by day, the meat would break down. The lobsters became less flavorful, less briny, less saline, less intense the longer they sat in the tanks. Time is the enemy of food, even when the food is still alive.

  Scream Queen: Word on the street says lobsters scream when placed in boiling hot water. However, that’s not exactly the case. The Lobster Institute, based in Maine, states that a lobster’s nervous system is very simple. In fact, a lobster doesn’t even have a brain. A lobster would require a more complex nervous system in order to perceive pain. It also has no vocal cords. So what is that high-pitched squeal coming from the stove? Most likely, it’s steam escaping from underneath the lobster’s shell.

  THE FRESHEST LOBSTER YOU WILL FIND

  Now in his eighties, my father is still as tenacious a traveler as anyone. About five years ago, he moved to Portland, Maine. If you hold a map of Maine under a magnifying glass, you’ll see that the coastline looks like a thousand little fingers pointing into the Atlantic Ocean. In some areas, these peninsulas are protected from the brunt of the Atlantic storms by islands, and this creates quiet waters perfect for fishing and lobstering. I don’t care how many times you’ve dined at fancy seafood restaurants in Chicago or New York: Until you’ve had lobster fresh from the cold waters of Maine, you really haven’t had live lobster.

  The very first time I visited Dad in Portland, he insisted we drive up to the Five Islands Lobster Company for what he felt was the best lobster roll in the state. Five Islands is one of those rare food finds, if you can find it at all. You drive about forty-five minutes north of Portland on I-295, make a right, and head east on US-1. You begin to head east down county road 127, onto the paved road, turn left onto a dirt road, and you’ll drive right up to the eighty-year-old, barnlike wooden structures, where you can park and get some fresh air. Just look for the signs saying “Five Islands Lobster Company”—you can’t miss it. The family still goes out every day and lobsters. That’s their main business. You can sit and watch their boats coming in with crates and crates of lobsters, some headed off to the world’s finest restaurants and fish shops. However, the family keeps the best stuff for themselves. Steamer clams, haddock, hake, clams on the half shell, local shrimp, oysters, or their famous lobster: It’s all fresh and delicious, and they’re cooking it on the spot.

  The thing that sets Five Islands apart from the rest of the clam shacks I love is not just that the lobster marches straight from the traps to the kitchen. This family takes their product so seriously that they don’t want a giant food-service truck unloading on their dock. They could doctor up a decent tartar sauce from a jar, but they don’t. They make their own from scratch, and the quality of their lobster rolls and hand-dusted fried clams is well beyond that of their competitors. The Five Islands lobster roll is a singular experience. You don’t even notice the mayonnaise coating the meat, even as you put the overstuffed toasted hot-dog bun into your gaping maw. I am usually good for two, plus a little side order of clams.

  WHICH KIND IS BETTER?

  Now, there are two schools of thought when it comes to lobster rolls in Maine. The first kind of lobster roll, which you’ll find at Five Islands, contains a lobster salad coated with a gossamer-thin gloss of mayonnaise, plus salt and pepper. The other kind, which they do best at Red’s in Wiscasset, is simply a warm lobster plucked from its shell and put into a toasted bun and drizzled with melted butter. Mainers will argue at length about which version is the authentic Maine lobster roll, but frankly the point is moot. They both rock.

  Just like Maine with its lobster rolls, every country, state, or city has its own hidden gems if you know where to look. It’s the same in the Philippines. It’s mind-boggling to realize that, in a country with close to 100 million inhabitants, few locals have ever traveled to the southern island state of Palawan. With its sky-blue water, fresh produce, and incredible seafood, Palawan seems like heaven on earth—yet this picturesque locale is without a doubt the island less traveled. Simply put, people don’t know it exists. Sitting to the north and east of Palawan’s Puerto Princesa, Boracay is the siren of the Philippine Islands, luring in tourists with its famous diving, snorkeling, and beautiful beaches.

  Gross Lobster Facts

  These crustaceans may be an expensive delicacy, but that doesn’t mean they’re free of weird (and sometimes nasty) factoids.

  ~Lobster blood is clear, but it turns an opaque white when cooked. Best part? Though it doesn’t have much flavor, you can eat it!

  ~Ever seen the mushy green stuff in a lobster’s body cavity? It’s known as the tomalley, and it fulfills the functions of both the liver and the pancreas. Many people consider tomalley to be a delicacy, while others avoid it altogether. I think it’s delicious.

  ~Lobsters need to shed their shells, or molt, as they grow. They increase in size by about 20 percent at every molt. A lobster averages four or five molts per year until it has reached full size. After molting, lobsters often devour their own recently vacated shells!

  Boracay may have great underwater activities, but you’re not going to find a lot in the way of honest and authentic culture there, especially when compared to the rest of Palawan. For me, going to the last stop on the subway means actually going where the locals go, eating what the locals eat, and doing it in a place that still maintains its sense of local relevance. In a world that is becoming flatter every day, where globalization has killed so much indigenous food culture, these end-of-the-line locales are the last unspoiled destinations for travelers craving a unique experience.

  Puerto Princesa houses a few decent restaurants, and I did eat some superb meals at Kinabuchs. But craving a one-of-a-kind experience, I headed with the crew into the most remote section of the mangrove forests on the outskirts of the city and found the Badjao Seafront Restaurant. Mangroves are like nature’s version of the medieval walled city. These weedlike trees grow very quickly, and the growth becomes almost impenetrable within a few years. They densely populate Southeast Asia’s coastal wetlands, inhibiting businesses there from doing much besides aquaculture. The mangrove forests are a haven for many species and provide unique coastal protection from environmental disasters of both the natural and man-made varieties.

  THE BEAUTIFUL BADJAO

  Ask any tricycle driver (lingo for a bicycle or motorbike with a sidecar), or indeed any local, and he or she will happily point you in the right direction. The Badjao Seafront Restaurant owners cut a half-mile-long wooden walkway into the jungle from the mainland side, and the walkway leads to a long, narrow teak deck. You realize about halfway down that you are walking along a wooden pathway set on stilts, and beneath you are the swampy waters off the Sulu Sea. At the end of this walkway, sitting like a glowing fireplace on a cold winter’s day, is a gorgeous teak and mahogany restaurant, built on top of a floating raft, poking out into the bay.

  Our local tourism department contacts and I sit down at Badjao and soak up the 270-degree view of the bay, dotted with small sampans, little fishing and shrimping boats, gliding along one of the pristine inner bays of the Sulu S
ea, framed by a horizon of mountains. The menu reads like a greatest-hits list of the best of Philippines seafood cuisine. I was blown away when I saw fresh whelks sautéed in coconut milk with shredded banana flowers making its way to another table, and I almost fainted with happiness when I peeked at the menu and saw it priced at three dollars a pop.

  I took on the task of paring lunch down to seven or eight dishes. Luckily, everyone was into sharing. Our server offered up a mango-and-banana shake to tide us over. This was no ordinary shake. The Badjao Seafront Restaurant plucks the juiciest mangoes straight off the trees, adds bananas from the huge four-and-a-half-foot-tall bunch leaning on the bar, purees the fruit with a bit of ice and a splash of water, and sticks a straw in the result. I should tell you that the number-one agricultural force in Palawan are the banana farms—which produce bananas of such sweet and primal excellence that you won’t tire of them showing up at every meal. Roadside stands sell banana-Q, a local treat made by rolling fresh, ripe bananas on sticks in a bowl of crushed brown sugar and deep-frying them. It’s like a candy apple mated with bananas Foster, just absent the snooty waiter and the rolling tableside cart.

  As we awaited the arrival of our food, I wandered around the side of the restaurant, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fishermen navigating their miniature flat-bottom boats. I looked on as they fished about a mile out from the restaurant, collecting shrimp and snapper from their little clusters of nets. It was a physical endeavor—pushing and pulling themselves around the bay, tossing nets, reeling them in, then poling or paddling back over to the restaurant, where they would disappear from view. I walked to the edge of the deck, only to discover that they were hoisting baskets of fresh fish, shrimp, and crabs directly from the bay to the kitchen window, where the contents would be dispatched and, within minutes, arrive at our table.

  OUR MENU

  I’d pinned myself down to the grilled shrimp, the monstrously large sautéed crayfish, and snails with the coconut milk and banana flower—a dish that I had always wanted to try but hadn’t had the opportunity. The flower is the sturdy purple cone-shaped flower that grows from the bottom of the master cluster of bananas. The banana flower is available anywhere bananas grow, and every time I have seen it, since tasting it for the first time in Palawan, I have asked if it’s used in the local food. From Puerto Rico to Nicaragua, Okinawa to Samoa: it’s an emphatic no. Filipinos, on the other hand, are addicted to cooking with it. The flower is sliced paper thin on a mandoline or, if the chef has excellent knife skills, cut by hand into little shreds; then it is sautéed with coconut milk. The flowers pair perfectly with something saline and gamy, like snails.

  We dined on teeny grilled fish, served with Philippine soy sauce and a squeeze of kalamansi—a gumball-size citrus fruit that’s a cross between a lime and a tangerine. Kalamansi is to Palawan what salt and pepper is to America: readily available and dispensed on everything. The grill was fired by fresh coconut husks, which impart a superb light smokiness to the food. The grilled shrimp and mackerel actually melt in your mouth. Seafood lumpia were rolled and fried to order, the whelks with banana flower had a strong injection of lime before they left the kitchen, and no one at the table could resist inhaling the food as it came in waves on groaning platters from the kitchen. With all the commotion over the ceaseless flow of dish after amazing dish (not to mention the fact that I was overeating to begin with), I’d completely forgotten about the final item, which had yet to emerge from the kitchen. I’d seen tuna collar on the menu and thought, Gee, what a nice little treat. I’ll have some tuna collar.

  Even casual fans of Japanese food are used to the minuscule hamachi (young yellowtail tuna) collars sold in just about every Japanese restaurant. Roughly the size of a small envelope and about an inch thick, those collars are lightly salted to dry out some of the moisture, then broiled and served with grated daikon radish, a squirt of lemon juice, and soy sauce. The collar bone is laden with fatty, rich bits of flesh, and it’s worth every minute of the canoodling it takes to extract the tasty morsels. That’s half the fun, like a treasure hunt, and it’s addictive, so I was looking forward to trying Badjao’s version despite my straining waistline.

  THE FINAL “ILLEGAL” DISH

  We’d finished up most of lunch when I realized, Hmm … no tuna collar. Assuming they’d simply forgotten, I asked our server where my tuna collar was and I was calmly informed that it was still cooking.

  As I’m discussing the situation with our server, out comes the tuna collar, spilling over the edges of a twenty-four-inch-long platter. Here is Badjao’s version of this culinary gem: a seven- or eight-pound Flintstone-size roast of bone and meat from a gigantic yellowfin or bluefin tuna. This fish had to weigh several hundred pounds when it landed in the boat. Brushed with sweet rice wine and soy sauce, served with fresh chilies and those little kalamansi, this collar was quite the indulgent dish.

  Foodies obsess about illegal foods like ortolans of Western Europe—about devouring whole roasted teensy birdies drowned in Armagnac while covering one’s head with a napkin to assuage the guilt. People wax poetic about attending foie gras orgies in New York’s underground restaurants. Sure, you can have all that stuff, but the rarest of rare food experiences is the opportunity to eat something unique, in the main because the ingredients aren’t available in any other spot in the world. An open source of giant fish, where chefs have inexpensive access to pristine precious ingredients, exists in very few places in the world. Consider this: at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Market, just the collar alone would cost thousands of dollars, and here I was, for the equivalent of a few dollars, chomping away at this giant, charred, fatty piece of tuna goodness. I didn’t have to force myself to eat the whole thing; I had a little help from my traveling mates.

  Going to the last stop on the subway in the Philippines afforded me the opportunity to dine in an environment where I wasn’t competing with too many people, finding ingredients in their own terroir, so to speak (with a neutral carbon footprint, no less!), and without paying through the nose. Eat the same dish halfway around the world from there and not only will it be expensive and somewhat ginned up, but the flavor will be compromised, the experience diluted to the point that it is almost not worth having. If something is worth eating, it’s worth eating well.

  “Lungfish” is the common name for a primitive, freshwater, air-breathing fish that resides exclusively in tropical areas of Australia, Africa, and South America. Only six species of lungfish survive today, but fossil records tell us that lungfish were much more widespread and in more plentifully differentiated species in the distant past. Scientists agree that lungfish are closely related to the ancestors of the earliest vertebrates that adapted to live on land, which is very important, because lungfish are extremely unusual animals.

  The three families of lungfish are Lepidosirenidae (South American lungfish), Protopteridae (African lungfish), and Ceratodidae (Australian lungfish).

  THE FISHY FACTS

  The name itself refers to the specialized lung that serves as the creature’s main organ for breathing. This lung allows the fish to gulp air as an adaptation to low-oxygen water environments, such as swamps or bodies of water that frequently dry up.

  Most fish use their gills to pull the oxygen out of the water. Lungfish also have gills, but theirs are relatively small compared to those of their fellow denizens of the deep. Young African lungfish have true external gills, which degenerate with age. The single lung on most species of lungfish is more like a modified swim bladder, the air-filled organ that almost all fish use to help them float at a particular depth, saving energy while swimming around the ocean, but in lungfish the modified swim bladder can also absorb oxygen. Freaky!

  When kicking back and chilling out, lungfish excrete carbon dioxide through their gills or skin, just like most other fish, but most other fish get oxygen only through their gills. The special lung of the lungfish also removes carbon dioxide waste when the lungfish is very active, an anomaly in the underwater worl
d. African lungfish actually rise to the surface to breathe and can “drown” without access to air.

  Lungfish have elongated bodies with a double set of fleshy limbs that resemble cylindrical fins. Their oddly shaped, fanlike teeth, which act like an under-the-counter trash compactor, are ideally suited to their diet of fish, insects, mollusks, worms, crustaceans, and plants. These fish are very territorial and extremely aggressive. They build nests where the male protects the eggs laid by the female until they hatch.

  The African lungfish can grow to over six feet long.

  African lungfish estivate, meaning they can become dormant, hibernating during dry periods or droughts for a few months if need be. If necessary, they can sleep for years at a time—that’s years … plural! They burrow into the mud and secrete a covering of mucus around themselves. The mucus hardens into a cocoon, but a small, closable breathing hole is left in the mummylike covering. The fish reduce their metabolism to a bare whisper and simply shut down. The protective cocoon softens when it gets wet—say, at the end of the dry season—and the fish can reemerge and live in the water again.

  Lungfish, like their cousin the coelacanth, are commonly thought of as living fossils—a reference to the fact that these animals have essentially remained physically unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.

  Lungfish are predators and will eat nearly anything. Their diet consists mainly of fish, crayfish, and crabs. They’re fearless and will attack almost anything that moves, including human hands.

  Oh yeah, and one more thing: when lungfish are in that cocoon and they get hungry, they consume their own body tissues … and once they come out of it, they grow back to their original size.