In February, world-renowned television personality and adventurous foodie Andrew Zimmern spent a day filming in Long Beach’s Cambodia Town for his Travel Channel show Bizarre Foods America. And on July 1, footage of Zimmern eating everything from fried frog to chicken balut will be part of the show’s season premiere episode, titled “Hidden L.A.”
With rapper, film-festival organizer and unofficial Cambodia Town mayor Prach Ly as his tour guide, Zimmern was taken to restaurants like Long Beach Post‘s Best Cambodian Food winner Phnom Penh Noodles and Sophy’s on Pacific Coast Highway, all the while getting schooled by Ly on food from his motherland and the history of how nearly 50,000 Cambodians landed in the city during the brutal Khmer Rouge regime of the late 1970s.
The day ended at a backyard potluck party where Cambodian community members and Ly’s friends brought homemade seafood, noodle soups, obscure animal parts (think beef intestine and penis) and the not-on-restaurant-menus specialty balut, a fertilized duck embryo (made with chicken for filming purposes) eaten straight from the eggshell with some sauce and salt.
According to the Travel Channel website, the premiere “Hidden L.A.” episode explores how “some of the best foods in Los Angeles are hiding in neighborhoods where outsiders rarely go.” In addition to Cambodia Town, the episode features Mexican food in Watts and Cantonese cuisine in the San Gabriel Valley.
Bizarre Foods American premieres Monday, July 1 at 9PM on Travel Channel. For more information about the episode, visit travelchannel.com
Read more:
- Best Cambodian Restaurant: Phnom Penh Noodle
- 40 Under 40 Winner: praCh Ly
- Cambodia Town Film Festival Tickets Go On Sale
Photos from Bizarre Foods’ backyard potluck by Sarah Bennett
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