'Filipino food is the Next Big Thing' - Andrew Zimmern

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InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5

"I predict, two years from now, Filipino food will be what we will have been talking about for six months," said Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern in an interview with TODAY.com. "I think that's going to be the next big thing."

The story titled "Andrew Zimmern: Filipino food is the 'next big thing'" came out Tuesday on the Bites on TODAY blog, which is, according to the website, part of the MSNBC Digital Network.

The blog lets its readers in on "exciting eats and interesting trends," allowing its audience to "get up close and personal with fab food personalities."

Zimmern is one such personality, being a multi-awarded chef, TV host, food writer, and teacher, according to the Bizarre Foods website.

"I want to go on record—this is not something that’s hot now somewhere and will get hot everywhere else," Zimmern went on to say. "It’s just starting. I think it’s going to take another year and a half to get up to critical mass, but everybody loves Chinese food, Thai food, Japanese food, and it’s all been exploited.

"The Filipinos combined the best of all of that with Spanish technique. The Spanish were a colonial power there for 500 years, and they left behind adobo and cooking in vinegar—techniques that, applied to those tropical Asian ingredients, are miraculous.

"San Diego is now a big enough ethnic population of Filipinos that chefs are going there and seeing stuff. I think it’ll creep up into Los Angeles and from there go around the rest of the country."

The Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern has him going around the world, searching for adventure plate after plate.

According to the show's website, it has taken him to, among others, a restaurant in Namibia for a serving of "rancid fat drippings and roasted cow tongue;" an eatery in Syria for a dish of "sheep feet and intestines;" and a Malobi Village in Suriname for a cooking lesson in "grilled bombi lizard."

Zimmern went to the Philippines in the show's first season, where he tried Soup No. 5 in Angono, dinuguan in Pampanga, and snails cooked in gata in Puerto Princesa. Zimmern has his own website, andrewzimmern.com. InterAksyon.com

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