Early and Personal Life
Zimmern was born and raised in New York City, to a Jewish family. He began his formal culinary training at the age of 14. He attended the Dalton School and graduated from Vassar College. Contributing to many of New York’s finest restaurants as either executive chef or general manager, he has also lectured on restaurant management and design at The New School for Social Research.
Owing to severe drug and alcohol addiction, Zimmern was homeless for about one year. During this period, he survived by stealing purses from cafes and selling the contents. In 1992 Zimmern moved to Minnesota, where he checked into the Hazelden Treatment Center for drug and alcohol addiction treatment, where he now volunteers. He later gained wide acclaim during his four and a half year tenure as executive chef of Café Un Deux Trois in Minneapolis's Foshay Tower. His menus received the highest ratings from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly, and Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, as well as national publications. Zimmern left the daily restaurant operations in 1997.
Zimmern resides in Edina, Minnesota, with his wife and their son, Noah.
Read more about this topic: Andrew Zimmern
Famous quotes containing the words early, personal and/or life:
“Probably more than youngsters at any age, early adolescents expect the adults they care about to demonstrate the virtues they want demonstrated. They also tend to expect adults they admire to be absolutely perfect. When adults disappoint them, they can be critical and intolerant.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, I, ch.4 (1985)
“I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds. I would rather chance my personal vision of truth striking home here and there in the chaos of publication that exists than attempt to filter it through a few sets of official, honorably public-spirited scruples.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)