Chef Andrew Zimmern, wearing a blue chore jacket, stands in front of his kitchen island.
Ask the chef Andrew Zimmern when he arrived in the Twin Cities, and he’ll respond with unsparing detail: “The night of Jan. 28, 1992. I had tried to kill myself four or five days earlier, and I was at the end of my rope, a horrible user of people and taker of things and an active addict and alcoholic.”
Chef Andrew Zimmern, wearing a blue chore jacket, stands in front of his kitchen island.
By then, he had no home, so he’d found room at a flophouse in New York where he woke up days after “eating a fistful of barbiturates” and drinking a bottle of vodka, he said. He managed to call a friend and try something new: “Ask for help.”
Chef Andrew Zimmern, wearing a blue chore jacket, stands in front of his kitchen island.
Help arrived in the form of a ticket to Minneapolis and a spot at the treatment center now known as the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. Mr. Zimmern, 64, has remained in the Twin Cities ever since. “The recovering community here and the food community here loved me up at a time when I wasn’t able to love myself,” he said. “Without those people, I wouldn’t have anything.”