'Bizarre Foods' pays a Philly visit

Andrew Zimmern and a camera crew have been in Philadelphia since the weekend, shooting episodes for the next season of the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods, launching this summer.

I have to hand it to Zimmern. Unlike most TV shows, he is not revisiting the same, tired list of locations in his quest for stories to tell.

"About 99 percent of this job is research - it's what we do," Zimmern said during a break in shooting at Rieker's Meats, the age-old German butcher shop in the city's Fox Chase section.

"We're looking for the last bottle of water in the desert."

In Rieker's case, it's perhaps the last sausages.

Although Marcus Rieker is 40 and ably runs the family business with his mother, Ursula, since the 2012 passing of her husband, Walter, the clientele at Rieker's is aging.

"He has to do something to keep it going," said Zimmern, whose family emigrated from Germany in the mid-19th century and settled in New York. He recalled shopping in Manhattan's Yorkville as a kid for such delicacies as calves liverwurst, blutwurst, and true Munich bratwurst, seasoned simply with parsley and chives.

Zimmern and crew also visited Zitner's to watch the making of Butter Krak eggs; Le Mandigue restaurant in Southwest Philadelphia for a taste of the immigrant communities of sub-Saharan Africa; the Italian Market with chef Peter McAndrews of Paesano's; Abe Fisher and Zahav with chefs Michael Solomonov and Yehuda Sichel; and an outing to Lambertville for a look at shad fishing.