that have fired me or wouldn't hire me.

I was such a drug addled mess.

This was generically what happened.

I either was able to ingratiate myself right away

because I had a lot of good talent and I could keep up

when we were in the shit, which was the biggest mistake,

because I always ended up just drinking and drugging myself

out of the job.

I did a year at Raquel with Thomas, and that was great.

But he and a couple other guys found in the liquor room drunk

from the night before, passed out on the floor.

When he saw me for the first time like 10 years ago--

I was helping a friend-- he literally walked across the

room, gave me a hug, and whispered in my ear, I thought

you were dead.

And then I moved to Minnesota.

I got well, and things got dramatically better for me.

My whole face is numb.

Wow, wow, wow.

This smell back here at this part of the

sheep out in the desert--

fantastic.

These little curved pieces here are the intestines.

And then this is the stomach lining.

I'm Andrew Zimmern.

I'm the host, co-creator, and co-executive producer of

"Bizarre Foods" on the Travel Channel.

What fascinates me about the world is food is the ultimate

lens through which to view another people.

When we go into a city, we can explore that city's history

through the food.

When we go tribal, we are able to, through the food, discover

how they think and how they feel.

When you share food with other people, you end up talking

about the things you have in common.

There's no way to escape it.

Even if you haven't spoken a word to me in three day

because I'm suspiciously weird and white, if I'm eating their

mom's food, they will look at me, and at some point, they

are obligated to say, what do you think?

It's a little salty.

It's a little fishy and putrid, but it

is very, very tasty.

So I sit there and I go, you know it is.

It's like, someone comes into my home, and my wife makes her

tater tot hot dish, I look at them at them and I'm like,

uh-huh, you know what I'm saying?

It's just the way it is.

I came to New York for the script to network upfronts.

I come into town, I want to have fun for a couple hours

and go see some friends and hang out in a couple

restaurants and eat a couple of good things.

Met a bunch of friends at Osteria Morini.

And I come here all the time when I'm in New York, because

I just think it's great rustic Italian food.

Marisa, this is Niki, Niki, Marisa.

Marisa was one of the interns at our production company for

the most painful three months--

brutal.

My friend Niki, who's also my publicist, my friend Jordan,

who just moved here from Minnesota, and his girlfriend

Taya, also from Minnesota.

JORDAN HUSNEY: You know she's not my girlfriend.

ANDREW ZIMMERN: You're not his girlfriend?

TAYA MUELLER: His girlfriend will kill me.

ANDREW ZIMMERN: Does life get any better?

We're just eating a snack, have a drink,

and then off to Forgiones.

This is a grazing night.

Couple little snacks always ends up dragging on for at

least 45 minutes longer than anyone else's version of

eating a couple little snacks, number one because I'm a

serial over-orderer.

We'll do prosciutto, spec, copa, lardo, fegatini.

The [INAUDIBLE] peas, and the lamb prudo.

I'm looking for the filled--

-The [INAUDIBLE] with the [INAUDIBLE].

ANDREW ZIMMERN: Oh, yeah.

We'll do two orders of those because we'll need two.

Michael White, who owns the place is a friend of mine.

The chef who started this restaurant for Michael is a

guy named Bill Dorrler, who's a fantastic chef.

Asi has been here originally when they opened, and now he

runs the place.

ANDREW ZIMMERN: That just looks beautiful.

The brilliant part of it to me was that they were able to

say, well, what would happen if we let it go twice as long

in the aging room as is normallly thought appropriate?

Now, I should tell you, but I doubt very much whether any of

you have ever eaten beef this old.

120 days is a third of a year.

If beef is aged 24, 36 days, it's a miracle.

If you get it aged 45 days, it starts to get really finessed

and antique.

If you go 120 days, the flavor of the meat is so different.

Even great steakhouses won't go this old.

I laughed when the waiter said the beef

flavor is very focused.

I'm like, you mean dank and almost cheese-like, funky,

almost tastes like the forest floor in a damp

sort of fetted way.

It creates a flavor that is like no other.

It just melts in your mouth, tender.

It was just crazy good.

That's ridiculously good, just beautiful funk to it--

really beautiful.

What's this?

-Lamb brain and veal sweet breads.

ANDREW ZIMMERN: People go, oh, brains and sweet breads.

But if you didn't tell someone what that was,

they'd scarf it down.

NIKI TURKINGTON: It's got an interesting texture.

It's marshmallowy.

ANDREW ZIMMERN: If you saw one of my New York episodes, we

have pictures of the 80-year-old women

making these pastas.

When you taste these, the quality quotient is insane.

Michael White made a name for himself cooking pasta.

There are many people who feel he's the best pasta cook of

his generation.

I've not eaten pasta cooked by anyone in America in the last

20 years that's better than his.

Think about making all of those tortellini, those little

two-sided ravioli, the espelette.

It just blew my mind.

The precision with these things, you just

won't have its equal.

NIKI TURKINGTON: That is like, oh, my god.

I'm leaving you guys.

I'm going to stay here with my new favorite thing, the pasta.

ANDREW ZIMMERN: This is the worst part of my life, which

is sitting there doing this and getting frantic emails

from producers of my show trying to figure out how to

make something work that right now isn't working.

We were able to get out of Morini with our appetites

somewhat intact and make our way over to Marc Forgione's

restaurant.

NIKI TURKINGTON: What would you have described

yourself in the '70s?

ANDREW ZIMMERN: I will tell you about the '70s, Niki, you

weren't born yet.

It was a very exciting time for some of us.

Pot got you really high, and it wasn't expensive.

It was very simple.

Life was so easy.

Is Mark still here?

MARC FORGIONE: Yes, yes.

[INAUDIBLE].

ANDREW ZIMMERN: Marc Forgione, iron chef, a lot of people

think that guys who cook on TV are TV chefs.

Not so this guy.

And the thing that I like most about hanging out with him was

I always remind him that his dad fired me after half a day

at an American Place.

30 years ago, an American Place was a landmark in the

history of the food scene in America.

I was a mess.

I deserved to be fired one hour after I went in the door.

It was a miracle I lasted half a shift there.

MARC FORGIONE: I didn't even know my dad was a real chef.

I just thought he was a guy who went to work every day and

had a restaurant.

And I didn't think anything of it.

American Place is one of those restaurants that really

changed the way Americans eat.

My old man, people like Alice Waters, Jonathan Waxman, all

these guys are really visionaries.

When you're a teenager, you find a summer job

to make some money.

I didn't know it at the time, but my job to make some money

over the summer was working in one of the best restaurants in

the country.

And by the time I was 18 or 19 years old, I know it sounds

crazy, I knew how to make a consomme.

But I didn't know that other people didn't

know how to do that.

It was just, you don't how to make dinner, dude.

Like, I'll make dinner.

The food here in American through and through.

America, to me, especially being from New York, it's a

melting pot.

I like to have fun with what we're doing.

You can go anywhere and just have dinner.

I'm loving this.

I told you we were going to mess with your

senses a little bit.

First, everybody take the ceramic spoon.

This is called a Szechuan button.

So place it in your mouth and roll it

around with your tongue.

Don't swallow it.

It's like an herb.

You want to wake it up in your mouth.

And your mouth is going to start to tingle a little bit.

You're going to then follow it with the sashimi spoon with

avocado mousse.

You're going to breathe in a wasabi and mint cloud.

NIKI TURKINGTON: Wow.

MARC FORGIONE: Then you eat the rest of the tartar, which

is a [INAUDIBLE] with a little avocado and

fresh wasabi sauce.

ANDREW ZIMMERN: Full on sensory overload.

Here's what's so fricking brilliant about it.

You've got to be so spot on perfect in terms of technique,

flavor, and how you pull that off, because otherwise, people

are laughing at you.

MARC FORGIONE: The cloud thing we've been doing for about

six, seven months now.

And when you see a whole visual of it, it's not

something you see every day in a restaurant.

ANDREW ZIMMERN: For me, this is why I eat out.

If I want to take a simple piece of fish and throw it on

the grill and put it over some green vegetable with a little

bit of sauce that I made in the pan, that's

not why I eat out.

That's how I cook at home.

I eat at a restaurant like this because I'm curious about

what a chef can do within the boundaries of the realm of

ingredients and techniques that you're constrained with.

MARC FORGIONE: I also told you I was going to mess with your

emotions and your sense of childhood and all that stuff.

This is a fully-loaded baked potato.

This is what I need you to think about while you're

eating the next course.

ANDREW ZIMMERN: All of that sparks a thought and a feeling

and creates a relationship with the food.

I think that's the purview of what great

restaurants should be.

MARC FORGIONE: So these are the ravioli filled with creme

fraiche, a little parsley, chives, red pepper flakes, a

little bit of lemon zest, a touch of truffle oil, and some

raw shallots.

Now, this is a stock that we actually

make with baked potatoes.

There you have what we like to call baked potato.

I think emotionally everybody has an idea or an attachment

or a flavor profile when you think of a fully

loaded baked potato.

ANDREW ZIMMERN: Smell that.

What does it smell like?

It's a fully loaded baked potato.

MARC FORGIONE: When you buy into that creme fraiche

ravioli with the fried potato and the bacon and the scallion

and the butter, all that stuff, all of a sudden, you're

looking at a baked potato.