Andrew Zimmern Just Revealed The Latest Weird Thing He's Eaten

Things that Andrew Zimmern has eaten, according to his personal website: coral worms in Samoa, tarantulas in Cambodia, giraffe beetles in Madagascar, and fermented shark in Iceland. Don't be fooled by the tame mushroom dishes or comforting Midwestern fried fish dinners the chef shows on Twitter or YouTube. The bar is high.

And it's not only weird or otherwise unusual international foods that Zimmern delights in exploring. What's up with the mountains of garish yellow cheese and Oyster crackers heaped on top of a Cincinnati chili? You might ask. So did Zimmern, during a recent episode of Bizarre Foods (via City Beat). "Jaeatyet?" is the mantra that the Travel Channel personality lives by. He'll even sell you a shirt to prove it (via Twitter). In fact, quite possibly the only thing that Zimmern won't eat is "Walnuts," he told Travel Channel, "Everything else is still on the table." 

The chef's latest food-related adventure, however, wasn't undertaken in the name of entertainment ... at least not televised entertainment. Instead, the latest weird thing that Zimmern ate was a performance piece of sorts for his son. 

"This summer with my kid [Noah], we found some little crustaceans and I just popped those in my mouth just to amuse him," Andrew Zimmern recently told the podcast, Back From Broken, "He still finds that interesting." Uh ... yeah. Of course, Zimmern's story raises far more questions than it does answers. For example, exactly what "little crustaceans" are we talking about, here? Are we talking barnacles or brine shrimp? Or does Zimmern mean he chewed down on small crabs? Or maybe even woodlice?

For the purposes of this story, it's worth noting that Noah Zimmern is no picky eater himself. It's unlikely, therefore, that he'd be impressed by much. In 2013, Andrew Zimmern told Today that he'd made sure his son wasn't a finicky eater by throwing him "right in the deep end of the pool." The deep end, in this case, meant that before he was two, Noah was "eating guinea pig in Ecuador and beef cheek tacos pulled right off a steer head in Mexico and crazy things out of the water, clams, and oysters on the half shell."