{"id":7919,"date":"2015-10-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/2015\/10\/21\/bizarre-foods-with-andrew-zimmern-celebrates-200-episodes\/"},"modified":"2016-01-20T01:48:25","modified_gmt":"2016-01-20T06:48:25","slug":"bizarre-foods-with-andrew-zimmern-celebrates-200-episodes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvreal\/bizarre-foods-with-andrew-zimmern-celebrates-200-episodes\/","title":{"rendered":"Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern Celebrates 200 Episodes"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the heels of Travel Channel’s <\/em>Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern reaching its 200th episode, Colleen Needles Steward of Tremendous! Entertainment, which produces the series, talks to <\/em>TV Real Weekly about the title’s popularity and evolution.<\/em><\/p>\n

He\u2019s gulped down everything from skewered guinea pig and fermented shark to mayonnaise milkshakes, and yet the titular host of Travel Channel\u2019s Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern<\/em> still has room for more\u2014his series celebrated its 200th episode last night, with additional chapters in the works.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we first started the show, the big question was whether we\u2019d have enough strange foods to go for two seasons, and here we are doing the 200th episode,\u201d says Colleen Needles Steward, the president and CEO of production company Tremendous! Entertainment and creator\/executive producer of the show, which is sold internationally by Scripps Networks Interactive. \u201cAfter more than a decade working on this series, we\u2019ve realized there\u2019s no end to the interesting foods out there, and better yet, the stories behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"***Image***\"<\/p>\n

The show\u2019s milestone episode featured renowned chef and TV personality Zimmern traveling to Philadelphia to do what he does best: chowing down on meals that would weaken the knees of the lily-livered (and yes, liver was on the menu). Among the host\u2019s stops in the City of Brotherly Love was an Italian restaurant slinging scrapple, a Pennsylvania staple made of mashed pig organs, followed by a fishing adventure that culminated in a feast of fried fish egg sacs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus on Philadelphia is that it\u2019s a blue-collar town and these are some of the traditions that have been around for a long time, sort of the city\u2019s working-class food,\u201d Steward says.<\/p>\n

In fact, the producer adds that the episode encapsulates what has made Travel Channel\u2019s longest running show still in premieres such a hit with audiences. Zimmern \u201ctruly treasures the traditions of the people that he meets,\u201d she says. \u201cHe gravitates toward people who work the land or are doing a job that has been passed down from generation to generation\u2026and I think that\u2019s what he sees as the show\u2019s ultimate goal, to preserve and expose these traditions to as many people as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steward notes that the show has come a long way since debuting in 2006. \u201cOur shows in the early years were less focused on a theme and a story line; we would just explore different foods in different regions of a city or a country,\u201d she says. \u201cThen as we became more experienced and certainly more sophisticated, we started realizing that there were more focused story lines in many places. So we started telling our stories through a different lens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steward says that one of the show\u2019s highlights has been a Vietnam-set episode that aired last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur episode was really about exploring the Vietnamese culture through the eyes of young people who were raised abroad and were returning to Vietnam for the first time,\u201d she says. \u201cThat was something very fascinating for Andrew, to follow along with some of the young people who were going back to Vietnam to start businesses, and to really explore their culture through their fresh eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

And though offbeat cuisine remains front and center, Steward says that shifting the narrative more toward the human angle is what\u2019s helped the show amass its international fan base.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re diving a little deeper into cultural stories and why the foods were developed and why they still persist through the years,\u201d Steward explains. \u201cAt the end of the day, if you\u2019re just traveling around sampling strange food, that can get old. It\u2019s the stories of the people and their traditions that make the episodes richer and keep them fresh for viewers.\u201d<\/p>\n

With more episodes due out\u00a0as part of the current season (and production on a new run set to start next year), Steward says audiences should look forward to more exotic locales, interesting personalities and of course, the sight of a gung-ho Zimmern feasting on oddball cuisine\u2026with one exception.<\/p>\n

\u201cWalnuts are the one thing he won\u2019t eat,\u201d Steward says. \u201cIt just does something to his mouth. He\u2019s eaten everything else on the planet, but that to him is the ultimate inedible food.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the heels of Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern reaching its 200th episode, Colleen Needles Steward of Tremendous! Entertainment, which produces the series, talks to TV Real Weekly about the title’s popularity and evolution. He\u2019s gulped down everything from skewered guinea pig and fermented shark to mayonnaise milkshakes, and yet the titular host …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[109,108],"class_list":["post-7919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-profiles","tag-andrew-zimmern","tag-travel-channel","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nBizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern Celebrates 200 Episodes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern Celebrates 200 Episodes. 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