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ZIMMERN: This is one of the reasons that you eat head.
I've never tasted that before.
That boggles the mind.
This is a city of surprises.
This almost feels like human skin.
Crunchy, sweet, wet.
And then the sweet, beady flavor comes on like a freight train.
And if I do the right kind of jiggle...
...all of those eye muscles are right there.
It's Cleveland, with foods I've never tasted,
discoveries I've never imagined,
and a spirit I admire.
I want you to really feel it.
Come on, baby. [ Laughs ]
ZIMMERN: I'm Andrew Zimmern.
This stuff is good to eat, right?
You better believe it, it is.
And this is "Bizarre Foods: America."
[ Laughs ]
There you go.
-- Captions by VITAC --
Closed Captions provided by Scripps Networks, LLC.
A generation ago,
Cleveland was actually mocked as "the mistake on the lake."
Now it's been dubbed "the comeback city."
Founded on the spot where the Cuyahoga River meets Lake Erie,
Cleveland grew to become an industrial powerhouse,
and then declined into a rust belt poster child.
Thankfully, Cleveland is rocking and rolling again.
Business is more diversified, the infrastructure is stronger,
there's a vibrant food and entertainment scene.
Locals haven't forgotten about the dark years,
and in honoring their roots,
they've defined their cultural pride.
Cleveland is a city of sausage eaters.
Immigrants arriving in the early 1900s
to work in its factories
brought cheap, good food from their homeland.
Today, sausage endures here
in some classic forms and newer variations.
Thank you. [ Chuckling ] Oh.
WOMAN: Hot dog with the works.
Look at that.
And the Katz Club Classic.
The Katz Club Classic.
ZIMMERN: Michael Ruhlman is a best-selling cookbook author,
food writer, and a Cleveland native.
He suggested lunch at the Katz Club Diner,
where the signature entree is a deep-fried hot dog.
So, that's not a gimmick?
That's actually Cleveland food, you know.
It's how I grew up.
It's birthright.
Yeah.
Yeah, deep-fried hot dog, fries, the works.
I'm very impressed that they make these hot dogs here.
Nice smoke, nice seasoning, good emotion.
It's absolutely gorgeous.
And really clean-tasting, too.
For someone looking to make
a tasting tour of Cleveland-style sausage,
Michael's a good resource.
Is there a lot of sausage stuff going on here in town?
It's an Eastern European, Germanic town.
Mm-hmm.
And so, yeah, it's a big sausage town.
You have to have a Polish Boy.
Where's a good place to get one?
Seti's. Downtown food truck.
Here you go. Have a good day.
Seti's operates out of a trailer semi-permanently plonked down
in a restaurant-supply-store parking lot
on the edge of Industrial Valley...
I'll do one Polish Boy.
...reputedly serving the best version
of Cleveland's iconic sandwich --
kielbasa sausage slow grilled,
then fried and topped with coleslaw, french fries,
and barbecue sauce.
Got to love a sandwich that comes with six napkins.
[ Chuckling ] Oh.
Mmm.
Mmm.
You hate to dissect something like this
from a food standpoint,
'cause if you break it all apart and deconstruct it,
kind of misses the whole point
of just shoving this thing into your face and enjoying it.
That coleslaw and barbecue sauce
just sets off the sausage beautifully.
I did not think that I would enjoy this as much as I am.
The taste of Eastern Europe
is only part of Cleveland's sausage story.
Some food arrived with the African-American migration
that began when factory jobs opened up in the northern cities
at the outset of World War I.
Many settled here in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood.
Most of those jobs are gone now.
The neighborhood fell on very hard times.
Ray's Sausage is still going.
It's been in the Cash family for 60 years.
Ray Jr. is the founder's son.
This is the building in the '50s?
Right.
That's where they first started off in this building here.
Uh-huh.
They had butcher shops on each corner
and a pharmacy across the street.
Wow.
There was a cleaners.
And now you guys are here,
but a lot of those other businesses are long gone.
Well, look around. They're all gone.
Yeah.
Ray Jr. and his sister, Renee, are still working.
Renee's daughter, Leslie, is running things now.
When I think of the neighborhood butcher
grinding pig ears and snoots,
a beautiful young woman like yourself --
twinkly, bright, and funny does not immediately come to mind.
I didn't even go to school for meat.
[ Laughs ]
You learned it all here.
I learned it all here.
Was here when I was little, sweeping the floors,
and now I'm here running the business.
Yeah.
Ray's is best known for making *** --
a potted meat made from ground pig snouts, ears, and tongues.
Ray's processes 1,200 pounds of pork every day.
The meats are brined before they go into the cooker.
That's a secret family recipe.
I can smell it, and I can tell you, it sure smells delicious.
Yes.
After cooking six hours,
they take the unusual step of draining the liquid.
This is fascinating.
Okay.
Because I've been to a lot of small-town operations like this
that are making ***,
but they don't drain it,
which sometimes gives it too much of a fatty, swiney flavor.
Yes. Yes.
I already know what makes your *** so delicious.
It's the love that we put into it.
Well, it is the --
It's the love.
It's the extra steps.
[ Laughs ]
Love equals extra steps.
Yes.
The cooked meat is ground,
hand mixed with red peppers and spices
that are yet another family secret...
...seasoned with apple-cider vinegar,
poured into five-pound loaf pans,
and then put in the cooler to set.
Young cooks should do an externship here.
They'd learn how to make this the right way.
Look at that.
Tongues. Different parts of the tongue.
Mm-hmm.
Ears.
Snoot.
*** is always made using
cheap, intensely-flavorful cuts that were often discarded.
If you believe Leslie's mom,
there are also some side benefits.
WOMAN: Aphrodisiac.
It's an aphrodisiac?
Gonna make you wiggle and jiggle.
Whoo, baby.
If I could be any less comfortable now,
it'd be impossible.
[ Laughter ]
But thank you for that.
I want you to really feel it.
Come on, baby. [ Laughs ]
I have the greatest job in the whole world.
You just keep talking about food that way to me in my ear.
[ Laughs ]
I know you like it.
You know I do.
You're turning red.
Look at you.
Just unbelievable.
It's good.
It's intensely porky, but it's not swiney.
There's a big difference.
I mean, ear and snout and tongue has a real flavor
that other cuts of pork, quite frankly, don't have.
*** is a snack meat from another era
with an aging fan base.
One way Ray's stays in business
is by adapting traditional product lines
to a widening array of tastes.
That's why they started making beef ***
using beef cheeks instead of pork
to accommodate a growing Muslim community.
God, that's gorgeous.
LESLIE: Now, we're the only ones who make it.
I've never seen it anywhere else.
First time, first place, first taste.
You never forget your first beef ***.
Never.
Glad it was with you.
So, that's why you shop where it pays, bring home the raise.
Mmm.
[ Laughs ]
It reminds me of really good potted-beef dishes.
Beef fats on a taurine board, smeared on a piece of toast.
That's really good.
And there's a lot of meat in there.
A lot. Best part.
Nice, juicy, sweet meat.
Make you want to smack somebody.
Whoo! But don't do me, baby.
[ Laughter ]
We just gonna taste.
[ Chuckles ]
Andrew. [ Chuckles ]
It's usually easier for me to maintain my composure
when a 500-pound Eastern European butcher
is the one who's standing next to me.
I love my job.
[ Laughter ]
ZIMMERN: This may be the best comeback story in the comeback city,
and nobody's happier about it than this crowd.
All right, it's official -- I'm hungry.
What should I have for dinner?
The fish.
All right.
And later, an approach to food
I can only describe... as pig-headed.
There's the eye right there.
ZIMMERN: To most people,
a box of perch might just look like any old crate of fish.
It's actually a sign that Lake Erie
and Cleveland's Cuyahoga River are back in business.
It's so cool to see how integral the river has been
to the development of the city.
I mean, the river is the city.
It brought people to the city.
It brought everyone here, and it's what's bringing them back.
ZIMMERN: Jim and John are brothers
and lifelong Clevelanders who run Catanese Classic Seafood.
Operating out of a hundred-year-old building
on the banks of the Cuyahoga,
they've seen the river at its worst.
In the 1950s and '60s,
it was notorious for catching on fire because it was so polluted.
After decades of hard work,
the river and lake are safe,
and fishing is an industry again.
It's wonderful.
The river's come back so much that the quotas have
actually been increased because it's been such a great catch.
There are so many fish coming into Catanese market
that it takes three shifts a day to process them,
especially this fish.
Yellow perch are a Great Lakes favorite.
Easy to catch, available in all seasons, and good to eat.
What's not to like?
How much perch are you guys going through
at the height of the season?
JIM: Anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 pounds a week.
This is the fantasy of every Friday-night fish-fry-aholic.
It's fantastic.
The Catanese brothers sell their fish
to casinos and restaurants throughout the region.
And if you really want to taste perch at its very best...
...go find yourself a Friday-night fish fry.
Yes, dear.
The best I've ever found
is right here at the American Slovak Club in Lorain, Ohio.
All right, you guys can come through,
but I can only seat 49 of you.
[ Laughs ]
I mean, talk about American food history. This is it.
Come on in, seriously.
Friday nights are a vibrant sign of life in Lorain.
This is an aging industrial town
about 30 miles west of Cleveland.
In much of the rust belt, times are tough and jobs are scarce.
But there's still plenty of town spirit.
This is the best fish ever.
I actually have my in-laws from Georgia.
They came all the way here specifically for this fish.
The Friday-night fish fry has its roots
in the American immigrant history of the midwest,
when Eastern European Catholics
observed meatless Fridays during lent.
What makes this fry really special
is who's cooking in the kitchen.
I'll be right there, guys.
Carry out!
This squadron of ladies
makes everything except the ketchup from scratch,
sending plates of fried perch, buttered noodles,
and stuffed cabbages out to the hungry masses.
I got it.
The woman in charge is Mary Ellen Kovacs.
ZIMMERN: You guys are busy.
KOVACS: Yes, we are.
Every Friday.
How many covers will you do?
We will do 400 pounds.
400 pounds of fish.
On a Friday.
Yeah, it's phenomenal.
Unbelievable.
These ladies started a heck of a thing.
1957. [ Chuckles ]
And it hasn't stopped.
[ Bell dings ]
See that?
What's up, ladies?
This is our coleslaw girls.
Hello.
It's a labor of love, and they look forward to it all week.
Although, some of them put in 12-hour shifts.
Ann Zuffa has been breading perch
longer than many of her patrons have been alive.
How long have you been doing this at the hall here?
Since they laid the cornerstone in 1957.
[ Laughs ]
And I enjoy every minute of it.
Why is it so important to you to keep doing this on Fridays?
It keeps me young.
[ Laughs ]
There you go.
It would keep you young, too,
if you were breading 450 pounds of perch filets each Friday.
Three years ago, the Slovak Club got this breading machine
so that Ann and Mary didn't have to bend, dip, and stoop all day.
Now all Ann has to do is put a hand-floured filet
seasoned with secret ingredients on the conveyor belt,
where it's plunged into an egg bath,
dragged through bread crumbs,
and delivered to Mary,
who decides if it meets Slovak Club's standards.
All right, it's official -- I'm hungry.
What should I have for dinner?
The fish.
All right.
Anyone who's living in a Great Lake state
knows there's an intense fish-fry rivalry.
Good? Better than Superior fish?
[ Laughter ]
You know, I go to Friday-night fish fries
all over Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa.
This is the best-quality fish,
the best-tasting food across the board that I've ever found.
Well, thank you so much.
Sure do appreciate it.
This is light and delicate
and delicious and perfectly...
Love.
No, it's a lot of love. I'm being dead serious.
You can taste that in food.
A lot of love.
Mmm.
May I have a stuffed-cabbage dinner?
ZIMMERN: Besides fish,
the cabbage stuffed with ground chuck
is one of the most popular items on the menu.
The reason I'm doing the cabbage --
everyone has whispered in my ear, "Try the stuffed cabbage."
Okay.
And I happen to love stuffed cabbage.
It's one of my favorite things in the whole world.
I like making it. I like eating it, also.
Kidding me? It's unbelievable.
This is extremely light.
The ratio of rice to meat is just right.
It's not over packed, it's not too dense.
It's perfectly seasoned.
It's just got that right amount of vinegar in it.
This is a stunner.
Thank you very much.
Stuffed cabbage is a pretty common sight in these parts.
Every good cook adds a special touch.
Just don't ask what it is.
You're not gonna tell me, are you?
It's a secret.
Secret.
Really not vinegar.
No? What do you have in there for your acid?
You know what it is?
It's the sauerkraut and the sauerkraut juice.
I can tell you that.
Aha!
That's why I kept thinking up vinegar, and I was like,
"It's so unusual, but it's not."
It's sauerkraut juice.
Sauerkraut juice.
Yeah.
Mmm.
Sometimes, secret ingredients can make things messy.
Oh.
But in a community like Lorain,
you can count on help from one of your neighbors.
WOMAN: Aww, Helen.
[ Laughs ]
This is why this is the greatest place to eat dinner
on Friday night anywhere in the world.
If you dribble on yourself, it's taken care of.
[ Laughs ]
SAWYER: Never say no to bone marrow.
ZIMMERN: Bone-marrow soup and pork liver stuffed in cow intestine
are among the treasures at Cleveland's oldest market.
Hey.
That's where you'll meet my friend
who's launched an empire cooking pig's heads.
ZIMMERN: This has some wonderful
sort of fun appeal when it comes to eating.
You want to start to pull it apart.
Yeah.
ZIMMERN: Just west of the Cuyahoga River
in one of Cleveland's oldest neighborhoods
is the West Side Market...
...home to over 100 stalls selling produce,
prepared foods, and specialty meats
to over 1 million visitors a year.
There are vendors here whose families
have been selling at the market for generations,
representing a cross section of the city's cultures.
MAN: Never to early for bratwurst, either.
[ Chuckles ]
Well, that is true.
ZIMMERN: Frank's Bratwurst makes a brat
using a secret family recipe brought over from Germany
three generations ago.
That's a really insanely-good bratwurst.
Oh, thank you.
A few stalls away from the Germans are the Hungarians.
Dohar Meat has been selling homemade foods here since 1957.
ZIMMERN: Is this the Hurka?
MAN: That's the Hurka.
This is the way we eat it traditionally.
Hurka is a holiday treat
of pork liver, rice, onions, and spices cased in cow intestine.
Do you do it with the casing or without?
With the casing.
See, the casing is crisped up.
It just gives a different mouthfeel to the whole thing.
Beautiful.
That casing, when it snaps under your teeth,
that's part of the experience.
Mm-hmm.
The liver flavor in there is really fantastic.
You know what you're doing, my friend.
You got the gift.
Thank you.
On a Saturday, when 10,000 people attend the market,
it's hard to see halfway down the aisle.
But it's impossible not to notice Czuchraj Meats
with its multiple images
of everyone's favorite bald-headed Clevelander.
There's Michael Symon talking about beef jerky.
There's Michael Symon talking about beef jerky.
And there's Michael Symon talking about beef jerky.
I'm suspicious of bald people.
So...
MAN: It's made out of beef brisket
with no additives or preservatives.
Right. Spiced.
Spiced.
Sauce.
Yes.
Smoke.
Smoked.
Yeah.
This is fantastic.
It's actually like eating a boneless piece of beef brisket
cold out of my fridge after it's been cooked properly.
As Michael Symon says,
it's like eating a steak -- piece of steak.
Who's this Michael Symon guy
and why can't I get away from him in this town?
It's obnoxious.
Don't be jealous.
For some Clevelanders, this market defines their city.
Hey.
Chef Jonathon Sawyer
walked these halls in awe as a kid.
Sawyer's Noodlecat just opened here in April of 2012.
Considered one of the nation's best young chefs,
Sawyer's noodle stand mashes up
the best of Japanese and American cuisines.
His daily menu is shaped by what he finds shopping the market.
I think it's the thing of aspirations, of dreams.
You know, you grow up in this city, and you know,
there's things that are iconically Cleveland,
and this is one of them.
Right.
And it really is this microcosm of Cleveland.
And it's got that Cleveland broad-shoulders attitude,
you know what I mean?
What do you mean?
You know, it's us against the world,
and that's one of the things I find endearing about being in this market.
You can really taste that Cleveland attitude
at this food stall.
Narrin is a Cambodian turned Clevelander
who's been running this spice-and-sauce stand
for over 17 years.
Her specialty is her version of Cleveland brown.
She calls in tailgate mustard --
a blend of jalapeño, Chinese mustard, and horse radish.
It's kind of spicy.
It's Asian meets Cleveland at a Browns' game.
Do you want to know something? That's really good.
And my customers say this is the best for the tailgate party.
You're a big tailgater yourself, aren't you?
Sure.
Yeah.
What football team do you follow?
You couldn't name one, could you?
No.
I do it for my daughter ice skate.
Oh. Okay, yeah.
You're a good mom.
I try.
These your guys?
ZIMMERN: One of Chef Sawyer's favorite places to shop
for ingredients is Foster's Meats.
Brian Foster has worked at the West Side Market
since he was 14.
He eventually bought the first stand he ever worked in
and is now selling locally-raised lamb,
goat, and beef,
including the cuts Jonathon Sawyer
loves to work with most.
Oh, lamb hearts.
Oh, perfect.
Love it.
Perfect.
What else have you got?
You have some marrow bones.
Marrow bones?
Lamb or --
Lamb.
Ah, lamb marrow.
We got beef marrow, too. Let me get some of those.
Any kidneys, too?
I was thinking about chanterelles and kidneys.
Two kidneys.
Oh, beautiful.
ZIMMERN: At Noodlecat, Jonathon's ramen
will take on the flavor of the West Side Market.
Those chanterelles are gorgeous.
But that butter is perfect with it.
SAWYER: So, we'll do some kidneys with that,
a little bit of ramen, some kombu.
Keep it simple.
Period.
Would it be over the top to put some bone marrow inside of there?
No. You can never --
Never say no to bone marrow.
A little Shiro Miso, chicken broth.
All right, let's put two pieces of seaweed in here.
Love that.
Let's do a little bit of caramelized onion.
Think that'll complement the sweetness.
Yep.
And I think we're dancing and we're slurping.
It's fantastic.
Wonderful.
You know, sometimes you tell somebody that
a flavor is really strong and they don't believe you.
Yeah.
Those roasted mushrooms in that brown butter is just sick.
It's really, really good.
I mean, it's beautiful, too,
because it's a kilometre zero bowl, you know?
We got the chanterelles there,
we got the kidneys there, and now we're eating them.
Jonathon is working to change this town's culinary landscape.
When we get to his flagship restaurant,
he's helping locals find the perfect bite...
behind a pig's eye.
To me, this is one of the reasons that you eat head.
And later, sampling beef that's been in a bag for 45 days?
You just cut that bag open and released the kraken.
[ Chuckles ]
ZIMMERN: The Cleveland Heights neighborhood
on the eastern edge of Cleveland looks like
a page out of Norman Rockwell's middle America.
But Norman probably
wouldn't include a laboratory in the basement...
Whoo.
[ Laughs ]
...or chickens in the backyard.
After years spent working
in the best restaurants in New York City,
Jonathon came back to his hometown to raise a family
and raise Cleveland's food profile.
That downstairs lab is one of the way he's doing it.
What got you started on the vinegar thing?
SAWYER: In my mind, I'm like,
"Why can't I buy a great bottle of vinegar from America?"
And then I was like, "Forget about it.
I'm gonna make my own vinegar."
So, we just basically poured everything into barrels
and into carboys,
and we just let it sit and we do nothing.
While Jonathon does nothing,
the bacteria he added is working hard
transforming his beer and wine into vinegar --
sometimes, very expensive wine.
This is a 2005 St. Joseph.
We still sell this bottle in the restaurant, $135 a bottle.
Rule of thumb -- the better the wine, the better the vinegar.
This one right here, I'm gonna go ahead and say --
one of the best vinegars in the world.
It's a stunner, right? I mean, it's...
With that same do-it-yourself confidence...
[ Grunts ]
...Jonathon is building an empire
by creating food experiences that are uniquely Cleveland
at Noodlecat in the West Side Market,
See-Saw Pretzel Shoppe in the Quicken Loans Arena,
Sawyer's Street Frites in the Cleveland Browns stadium.
[ Calls order ]
Take those plate settings and bring them up here.
We're gonna do clam dip, radish, pretty fast.
Here we go.
At his sit-down restaurant, Greenhouse Tavern,
the experimentation is off the wall --
an edible tallow candle that melts into a dip for bread...
zampone -- a traditional Italian Christmas dish...
A porcine farce stuffed into a duck neck
with the head still attached...
and a beef-tendon ravioli which melts,
revealing the organ meat inside
when the consommé is poured over it.
Jonathon's playing with his food, but the game is serious.
What inspires you these days?
I want to figure out what's coming into season,
what's going out of season, and what's against the trends.
Sawyer desperately wants his passion
to become his customers' next culinary love affair.
All animals have a head.
ZIMMERN: Mm-hmm.
And heads are delicious.
Yeah, absolutely.
And we said, "You know what?
I think that people would love to eat the head as is."
In many cultures, duck heads, goose heads,
rabbit heads are snack food...
Yeah.
...all over many parts of the world.
So why not here in Cleveland?
Right.
It's a process he calls CCR --
cure, cook, and re-cook.
First, remove ears, tongue, brains, and eyes.
You want to pour on some more for me?
The cure is salt, pepper, sugar, and chili,
adding flavor and tenderizing tough head tissues.
All right.
So, now we also have a little bit of fish sauce, soy...
Mm-hmm.
...and a little bit of honey.
Just flavors, I think, lend themselves very well
to sort of this barbecue kind of thing
that we're gonna end up with. Okay?
He jet nets the head.
The netting keeps the meat on the bones and scores the skin,
which helps the flavors sink in.
The heads are then put in the cooler
and turned occasionally to make sure they cure evenly.
Here's what it looks like three days later.
The cured head is bathed with whole ginger,
honey, sliced lemons, cola, wine,
and some of Jonathon's homemade vinegar.
It's brazed at low temperature for up to nine hours
and re-cooked to crisp the skin.
This mahogany can be confused as burnt,
but as anybody who understands barbecue knows, this is love.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's what we call that bark.
Yes.
It smells of that country ham of your dreams.
Not the cured one -- the baked one.
Right.
Now we're gonna add a couple of limes.
We'll take some crudités-style veg.
A little bit of vinegar.
Okay.
Nice little pile of these.
And then two beautifully buttered brioche buns
toasted to perfection on the side.
This has some wonderful
sort of fun appeal when it comes to eating.
You want to start to pull it apart.
Yeah.
Oh, that's beautiful.
Gorgeous cheek meat.
This is heaven. Heaven.
[ Chuckling ] Oh.
Oh.
[ Whistles ] Gorgeous.
Now, I know that this did not spend
any time at all over live fire,
but the only way to describe this properly
is to call it barbecue.
Oh, God.
This is just too much fun.
People who eat big animal heads know that besides the cheek,
there's an even tastier prize -- the oyster buried in the skull.
There's the eye socket.
It's the muscle cluster behind the eye inside the mandible
that can only be reached
by eating through the layers of the face.
You can actually start to move the bones,
and if I do the right kind of jiggle,
all of those eye muscles are right there.
Truly the prize that's worth finding.
[ Sighs ] Unbelievable.
I mean...
underneath is some of the best-tasting meat on the animal.
Oh, yeah.
The pig head sells out almost every night,
and Jonathon isn't trying to shock anyone.
There is no doubt that it's a head when it comes to the table.
So, what we like to say to our customers
to help them be more comfortable with the idea
of coming face-to-face with their supper, is we say,
"If you like barbecue, you love pig's head.
You just don't know it yet."
It's extraordinary.
There's a pair of firsts waiting for me here in Cleveland.
First time eating meat wet aged for a month and a half...
Now, that has a much different
funky, moldy, aggressive flavor than that does.
...and people making common vegetables
that look like they're growing on another planet.
The taste is incredible.
I'm so excited I can't even talk.
ZIMMERN: There's a meat lab here in Wooster, Ohio...
...where a likeable mad scientist is working
to get people excited about eating more beef.
Guys like you and I, we've been playing with our meat
for a lot longer than most of them have.
Yeah. Longer than I'd like to admit.
Meet Dr. Phil Bass.
He works for Certified Angus Beef,
a marketing consortium
working to promote the Angus-beef industry.
Dr. Phil does his part by educating meat packers,
wholesalers, and retailers
about ways to promote their product
by exploring ways to age beef.
[ Sniffs ]
ZIMMERN: That aroma of controlled spoilage
is very, very appealing to me.
[ Chuckles ]
Dry aging changes the flavor and texture of beef
by letting it hang for weeks,
growing more tender and flavorful
as it dries and decomposes.
It's a very expensive process
because it takes a minimum of two to three weeks,
and the beef loses a lot of its weight as it's losing moisture.
Dr. Phil is an advocate for the less-expensive option.
Most beef in the United States and across the world, really,
is going into a vacuum-packaged bag, and that's wet aging.
Wet aging usually occurs for only a couple of days --
convenient for storage and shipping.
So, what about wet aging meat for 40 days and beyond?
The idea is to get more character and flavor depth
without the expensive loss in weight.
[ Chuckles ]
Studies have shown that you get the same tenderness, yeah.
All right.
Yeah.
[ Chuckles ]
I don't think so.
Okay.
No, I'm not a scientist.
This is just one person's objective opinion.
Yeah.
For me, I like the softness and the mouthfeel
that comes from dry-aging beef.
Sure.
This is dry-aged beef.
Here's the month old and here's the two-month old,
and this definitely has that mozzarella sort of...
[ Chuckles ]
[ Sniffs ]
...just starting to get funky, bovine gorgeousness.
Yeah.
Yeah, it smells like a good pair of feet, right?
No, absolutely.
Yeah, exactly.
Absolutely.
What about the wet-aged stuff?
Yeah.
Because I want to settle our mouthfeel
and texture debate, as well.
Yeah.
Slightly different flavor that's gonna come out of those
just because of the different biology
that's happening in the wet-aged.
This one has about 45, 50 days wet age on it.
I don't think I've ever had long-term wet-aged beef.
No?
I don't think so.
Not that I've known, so I'm very interested.
You want to try it?
[ Sniffs ]
So, can meet that ages for a few weeks in a bag
taste as good or better as what ages in the open air?
Now, that has a much different
funky, moldy, aggressive flavor
than that does in the way that you would anticipate
something that's moist funk...
Yeah.
...versus dry funk.
[ Laughs ] Dry funk.
Well, dry funk isn't as aggressive.
Right.
Because it had the chance to dissipate in the air.
That's right.
You just cut that bag open and released the kraken.
[ Laughs ]
But you can really get that intense,
almost sour flavor profile that comes out of that,
and that's what we notice mostly with wet-aged beef.
More pronounced?
Much more pronounced with wet age, and the longer you age it,
the more that sour flavor's gonna come out.
Now, this is the same "meat"?
Yeah.
Same level of quality.
Right.
Just a different way of enjoying it.
It's metallic in a very good way.
It's got that good beefy, irony flavor
that, actually, the dry aging does not really have.
Right. Right.
We've lost a lot of the moisture that's in there, and of course,
that's going to be the iron-containing compound
that's in the meat.
Really?
Yeah.
Oh, did you see?
[ Clicks tongue ]
I mean, come on.
'Cause I'm hung up on the better and worse,
and I'm realizing as we're talking about it,
I'm probably the one that's wrong.
You're not wrong. It's just your opinion.
You're way too polite.
[ Laughs ]
Besides building a bigger market for aged beef,
Phil is working to promote under-utilized cuts of beef
to increase consumption and use more parts of the animal.
So, now this is a quarter of a cow?
That's correct.
This is the forequarter -- the front.
Some studies were conducted
to look at individual muscles throughout the carcass.
Right.
And so, what we're doing is trying to educate a lot of folks
about all the other really great muscles
that are in some of these lesser-known cuts.
Today, Dr. Phil is going to make me a steak
I've never eaten before.
It's located deep in the inner shoulder --
the chuck of the steer.
It's hard to get at,
so this meat usually ends up in hamburger.
There's the whole chuck roll.
The inner shoulder.
Gorgeous.
All right, so where is this -- where's the USS Ventralis?
[ Chuckles ]
It's this muscle, actually,
right here where the blade bone sat.
Oh, gotcha.
And so, you're basically just removing layer by layer.
It's so tough.
But if you know what you're looking for...
...the treasure buried in here is worth the work.
That's the serratus ventralis right there.
You can see all the marbling that's in there.
Isn't that a beautiful piece?
This is called a Denver steak.
That is gorgeous.
And it does look like a petite New Yorker somewhat.
A little bit, doesn't it?
But it's got a ton of marbling, and the flavor in this,
you'll never experience another muscle like that.
And the darkness of it.
I mean, it show you just a lot of blood work going in there, and...
You want to try one of those?
I do.
The Denver steak is starting to appear
on a few restaurant menus.
Phil's dream is to make it as common as T-bone or rib eye.
Are you kidding me?
That boggles the mind.
It has the tenderness of a twice-cooked short rib.
Not quite pot roasty in terms of the way it breaks apart,
but just texture and that insane beefiness --
Mm-hmm.
...that only the long-term roasting cuts have.
That's right.
I mean, this is the greatest takeaway in meat
that I've had in a long time.
Good to hear. [ Chuckles ] It's pretty good.
Unbelievable.
I'm going home tonight,
I am e-mailing my butcher friends,
and I'm gonna get a couple of whole ones of these,
'cause this is the Andrew Zimmern of steak.
[ Chuckles ]
Explosive.
That's beautiful. Beautiful.
Come on.
These are beautiful, too.
Common vegetables raised to look and taste
like nothing I've seen before.
I don't know if you noticed, the leaves aren't open.
It still thinks its underground.
Unbelievable.
ZIMMERN: There's a garden near the shores of Lake Erie
where they grow vegetables you've never seen before.
Familiar names -- beets, beans, corn --
in weird space-alien shapes.
We grow about 700 different products.
Farmer Lee Jones
is the mastermind behind The Chef's Garden.
Its 300 acres near Huron, Ohio.
Lee and his team are customizing vegetables and herbs,
bringing back lost varieties from the past
and importing strange, new ones from around the world.
And this is originally coming from England.
Green part of it is gonna taste exactly like oyster,
even like the texture, it is gonna resemble like oyster.
This?
Absolutely.
Like an oyster?
Absolutely.
I'm going for a combo.
I'm going for an oyster-plant taco.
Oyster?
Not even a little bit. A lot of a bit.
Pass the mignonette sauce. That's really amazing.
Isn't nature wonderful?
It's unbelievable.
That's oyster leaf.
This is called samphire, salicornia,
sea asparagus, or diver's grass,
cultivated to provide a vivid taste of the ocean.
It snaps like a tiny, thin, little chute.
Mm-hmm.
But it explodes in your mouth with fresh seawater.
Mm-hmm.
This, to me, is -- I mean, it's already a self-seasoned vegetable.
Lee Jones started out growing crops like any other farmer.
The amazing stuff he's doing now began as a desperate Hail Mary.
Late '70s, early '80s.
Mm-hmm.
Interest rates hit 21%.
Sure.
And we had a pretty devastating hail storm.
Mm-hmm.
And it wiped out the crops.
Mm-hmm.
And we lost the farm.
Squash blossoms were Lee's way back.
A Cleveland chef hired him to grow them for her,
and one thing led to another.
She inspired us to start to look at ingredients
and products that we never considered before.
And, Andrew, we were desperate
for a way to be able to survive in agriculture.
Right.
And then, it was different sizes of lettuces
and heirloom varieties of tomatoes.
Chef's Garden experiments with up to 300 varieties of plants.
Some of the most amazing experiments are happening here,
out of sight.
INESON: This is the dark house.
[ Laughs ] Come on!
Michael Ineson is Farmer Lee's marketing director.
Here, in the dark house, they're exploring what happens
if you grow plants without light.
We try not to modify the seeds.
We try to modify how we grow the seed.
These are peas.
The pea tendril -- If you notice, the leaves aren't open.
It still thinks it's underground.
It's starting to push through the soil,
so the leaves are still closed up.
It's unbelievable.
Obviously, if a chef wants a pea-tendril flavor,
but he wants to show something different on the plate,
this yellow gives him the same flavor but a different look.
Usually, a pea tendril is not as explosively juicy.
Mm-hmm.
It's also texture --
[ Stammering ]
Bleh!
[ Laughs ]
The texture of the plant itself is changed.
I'm so excited, I can't even talk.
[ Laughs ]
I'm serious!
Without light...
Mm-hmm.
...you actually have
an entirely different texture and water content in here.
Exactly.
It's miraculous!
And these are seven-day-old beets.
That's crazy. The luminescence in there --
Mm-hmm.
If you taste it, you'd think it sprouted.
Then, this sweet, beet-y flavor comes on like a freight train.
Now, this is one of my favorites down here.
Yeah.
These are popcorn shoots.
Uh-huh.
Same seed that grows sweet corn?
Same seed that grows sweet corn.
Wow.
Look at the corn.
The corny sweetness on this is just extraordinary.
It's holding onto that sweetness for some reason.
If I pull this out --
Uh-oh.
[ Chuckles ]
Guys, I think we might have a light that's not gonna stay on.
If this other light goes kaput, we're just --
Gentlemen's agreement, everyone keeps their hands to themselves.
[ Chuckling ] Absolutely. I agree to that.
Today, Chef's Garden ships about 600 varieties
of herbs, vegetables, and edible flowers
to over 1,500 restaurants in 24 countries.
JONES: The chefs are from different parts of the world,
and they ask for specific ingredients.
We're fueled by this and are researching
old agricultural books or seed books...
Mm-hmm.
...looking for some unique variety
that we can present back to them.
Right.
So, it's really about chef and farmer working together.
That's a partnership worth experiencing firsthand.
For lunch, I want to make
a seared baby-squash-and-blossom frico
with crisp cheese, yellow beans, hyssop, and herbs.
For the sauce, I'm grilling
one side of a large German striped tomato
and using the hot tomato juice and olive oil
for the final seasoning.
Before it gets cold.
JONES: So, this is where it all started --
right here with the squash bloom.
That's amazing.
You get the sweetness of the squash,
but then, you get the acidity of the tomato.
It kind of all comes together.
That's Ohio's finest right there.
Oh, that is pretty good.
It's really good.
You know, you ain't half bad.
Thank you, amigo.
Thank you.
Thank you.
[ Both laugh ]
There's a lot of beautiful things in and around Cleveland --
an iconic lake and river brought back to life,
approaches to food that are vibrantly new
and almost as old as the city itself.
But do I even have to say it?
It's the people who really make this a beautiful place to be.
Cleveland's not really a comeback city.
The spirit that defines the place never really left.
So, just remember, next time you're in Cleveland,
if it looks good, eat it.