Chef and TV host Andrew Zimmern shares his favorite things in honor of Tastemade’s ‘Grill Week’ show. Items include a chore coat, Chinese vinegar, Cantabrian anchovies, suede slippers, and more.
I had one at work for a while and I loved it. I then went, like, Moses in the desert, out for 15 years doing a lot of other different bespoke coffee preparations, finally winding up on a really complex pour-over system.
About five months ago, I was sitting there measuring coffee, weighing it, and heating up water in my special kettle, and I was just like, “Fuck this. I mean, what am I doing?” The zen of coffee-making had worn off. And then I went, “I should just get the MoccaMaster,” because it was the best one that I tried. So I ordered one, and everyone in my house just went bonkers, like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe how good this is.” And it’s true. Using extremely simple technology, mostly having to do with the spray nozzle where the hot water comes out to go over the grounds, it basically sprays it on the sides and lets it drip down so all the coffee stays in the bottom. So not only do you get a cleaner, better-tasting cup of coffee, but you can use less grounds per pot. It’s just beautiful.I have several chore coats from the French company that has been making them for 200 years, and I think it will take the rest of my life to wear them in to where the Imogene and Willie ones kind of start out. These are a slightly lighter canvas. They’re unconstructed, and they feel like your favorite cardigan when you put them on, but they’re much cooler than a cardigan. I love it. I have deep pockets for putting all my crap in as I’m walking around. And when I’m on the road, I don’t feel bad walking into a Michelin-starred restaurant with pants and loafers and a shirt if I have my chore coat on. It’s also super casual for running errands in the fall. I have the original one that is about ten years old that has paint and other crap on it that I use for actual chores, and then I have a blue one and a black one that I just wear around all the time.I’m a pretzelholic. I love pretzels. I get them from all over. And a friend of mine about eight or nine years ago said, “Have you tried Uncle Jerry’s?” I’ve been ordering them by the bucketload ever since. As far as I know, Uncle Jerry’s was the first Pennsylvania brand to make a true Pennsylvania-style pretzel. Theirs is Pennsylvania Dutch style in that they’re not soft. They’re baked all the way through till crisp, but they have options for whether you want regular or well-done, salt or light salt. I like the extra dark because they have a much richer, toastier flavor. And I find their light salt is the perfect amount of salt for them.Gustiamo has no fluff, all substance. They probably carry, I don’t know, a hundred SKUs? Everything they sell, I buy. I buy their grilled artisanal artichokes packed in olive oil. I buy all their tomato products. I buy their roasted peppers when they have them. They have two different types of pasta they sell, but those are the two best pasta companies, in my opinion, that are in Italy. Why do I need to go anywhere else? They buy a certain amount of hand-dried-over-open-fire chickpeas that you only get from them in season, and I jump all over it because those chickpeas are better than other chickpeas. I get all of my Nettuno fish products from them. Now, I have been on the Amalfi Coast and in the Nettuno company factory. By the way, when I say factory, it is one giant room about the size of my living room with five women all older than 70, all in widow’s black, in this tiny little town on the ocean, peeling anchovies by hand. Nettuno is just second to none when it comes to product, especially their colatura, which I can’t live without. Colatura is less fishy than fish sauce, but it’s the Italian version, and it has more in common with garum historically. I just adore colatura. It is a little drizzle in sauces and soups and everything, and nobody knows it’s there. It’s a chef’s cliché, but it is an instant boost of umami and a salty counterpoint to any other flavors.This is really indispensable for me. No one that I’m aware of is bringing in the products that the Japanese Pantry brings in. Now, that doesn’t mean that there’s not some obscure Japanese store in L.A., New York, or Seattle that I’m not aware of that you can go to physically buy those brands, but I don’t know anyone online. These folks go to Japan three, four times a year, seasonally, meet with producers, and there is something about using white miso that’s only made in the fall by a certain producer on a certain island that they’ve contracted with and there’s only 500 pounds of it to be had. I get two or three pounds every fall, and it is … I mean, it’s toe-curling. Three or four different togarashis that are all made and blended by hand. Just breathtaking products. But man, oh, man, their soy sauces, their light soy sauces, their white soy sauces, their vinegars, all those things are a monthly delivery to my house. Whether it’s in a soup or you’re dipping into it or you’re using it in a stir-fry dish or just drizzling it over noodles, quality is everything. And these naturally brewed soy sauces they have are just second to none. I make shabu-shabu a lot in the wintertime and have people come to my house. I put various dipping sauces on the table, but I also have to put the bottle of soy sauce on there. And people are like, “Oh, is that a good soy sauce?” And I just put a few drops on a spoon, and I’m like, “You tell me.” And they look at me, what is this stuff? And I’m like, that’s three-year-old aged handmade Japanese soy sauce from an artisan maker in Northern Honshu. And they’re like, “Get the fuck out of town.” I mean, it’s crazy. It’s so good. Why would I use anything else?Same thing, but in the Sichuan China world. They have the best peppers, the best peppercorns, the best Chinese soy sauces, the best Chinese vinegars. And by the way, I have probably three or four Japanese vinegars and three or four Chinese vinegars from Japanese Pantry and Mala Market, respectively, in my drawer in my house right now. And they are all different. They have a maker there in Sichuan Province called Zhongba that has, I think, a one-year-old and a three-year-old soy sauce that for Chinese cooking is just stunning. And obviously the chiles and all that stuff, but their Sichuan pepper oil is an ingredient that I can’t cook without. A little drizzle of that makes anything spicy and numbing. They sell all the chiles, everything I need. They have a douban paste, a chile-bean paste that’s spicy that they sell. That’s the bedrock of Sichuan cuisine that I couldn’t even begin to cook without it. But that Baoning ten-year-old vinegar, which is $25 for 24 ounces on their site — I use that in recipes that other people are using $100 bottles of sherry wine vinegar. It’s that sophisticated. I think people really overlook Japanese and Chinese vinegars in particular, to their detriment. They’re not as expensive as the European ones, and they have as much depth of flavor and nuance. Mala Market is just like Gustiamo and just like Japanese Pantry, that the owners are always going there, always finding new things, always populating their newsletters with a lot of wisdom. People ask me sometimes, “Oh, how do you know so much about this or that subject?” It’s like, I’m teachable. This stuff nowadays, if you sign up for newsletters with the right people and open your ears and read shit, you’ll learn a lot.La Tienda is the opposite of those other three food websites in that they’re very large. They sell Spanish stuff, but they also sell a lot of South American products and things like that. It’s a wonderful, wonderful website. I get a lot of really great product from them, like hams, butifarra sausage, anchovy-stuffed olives, and all the rest of that. But I’m an anchovy nut. And the best anchovies of the world come from the Cantabrian Sea. The best anchovies that are commercially available to people like you and me — without going to a dock somewhere in Morocco or Italy or somewhere else where someone is processing anchovies — are from the Cantabrian Sea, packed by hand, one by one, and sealed in olive oil and available online at La Tienda. They’re just the best.. I roast peppers in my fire in the wintertime, and I peel them and shape them a certain way in these little rolls, and I put an anchovy across the top of each one. A little bit of minced parsley and drizzle them with olive oil and a little black pepper. That’s it. It’s the thing that my friends sort of count on the most being at my house whenever they come for dinner. And they always ask me, “Oh my God, what did you do? What is so good about this?” I’m like, “It’s the anchovies.” They’re just the best. They’re not fishy or salty. They’re just heavenly. I don’t use them when I’m making Caesar salad. I mean, you’re sort of wasting the really good stuff. But whenever I’m eating anchovies as is, I use the Nassari brand from the Cantabrian Sea that I get at La Tienda.I’m part of the Jewish diaspora that’s here in Minnesota, and there is no delicatessen; it doesn’t exist. We know for sure that five generations of my family ate at Russ & Daughters, but we also know that my family had a personal relationship with Joel Russ’s family, and the family that runs the stores today are close friends of mine. I’ve talked about this with Niki Russ Federman, the co-owner, before: The sixth generation, which would’ve been my grandmother’s grandfather, lived a block and a half away from Joel Russ’s first store. They were old and would have not been regular shoppers, but we know they would’ve stopped in there once a year with their nickel to spend on some little candy or some nuts or a fancy loaf of bread for Hanukkah or Seder. So we figure that it’s six generations. I have a standing order of whitefish salad, chopped liver, bagels, bialys, cream cheeses, pickle blocks, and some herring. But their Gaspe salmon is my favorite. It’s delicately salted, delicately smoked. I think it has the best salmon flavor. It’s got the best fat-to-lean ratio, and it’s my favorite of their salmon products. Muncan is one of those incredible meat shops that 99 percent of New Yorkers don’t know is right under their noses. When I was there last, I was told they make over 400 SKUs in-house. They’re very famous for their Tarska bacon. You can even see the divots where they bought the whole pork bellies themselves, pulled the bones out by hand before they rubbed it, seasoned it, and smoked it. Everything I’ve ever eaten there has just curled my toes. And they have everything. It’s not Italian, so it’s not prosciutto, and it’s not French, so it’s not Jambon sec, but they have their dry-cured Baltic hams. They have the salamis, the sausages, everything. If anyone is in the city, you can order a whole roasted suckling pig there for football time and go pick it up in the morning of game day and heat it up in your oven. It is incredible. They have sauerkrauts and pickles. They have their smokehouse just a few blocks away. It’s revelatory. In New York, everyone loves to find the new place, the new this, the new that. I get this question a lot, like, “What’s New York City’s biggest hidden gem?” I usually give people, like, ten ideas. Muncan is always on the list.I Asked Dozens of Tasteful People About Their Favorite Sandalsis designed to surface useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. 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