It has to be said up front: Andrew Zimmern is not a natural-born writer. His new book, "The Bizarre Truth," reads like a first draft -- the writing is unpolished, the words are carelessly chosen (he uses the phrase "in the extreme" three times in four paragraphs), the spelling is problematic ("donuts" rather than "doughnuts"), the analogies fall apart, the sentences ramble.

That said, you don't pick up a book like this for the prose. You pick it up for the adventure, the exotic locales and the great joyous nature of the writer, who seems to wander the world almost as a child, eyes wide open (and mouth, too, he would say), amazed and astounded at all the wonders out there and at his own great good luck at being able to see them. (And eat them.)

You know Zimmern -- he's the cheerful, bald foodie who once worked at Cafe Un Deux Trois in Minneapolis, starting out as a busboy and ending up as chef. Or maybe you know him from Twin Cities radio, TV and magazines, where he recommends restaurants, recipes and meals. Now he's on the Travel Channel, hosting "Bizarre Foods" and the new "Bizarre World," traveling around, eating scorpions and puffins and nutrias and snakes. And bugs. (He's known as "the bug guy" even though, he protests, "I haven't eaten that many bugs.")

"The Bizarre Truth" is a collection of pieces about some of the adventures he's encountered in his pursuit of food. He's Land-Rovered across Uganda in search of lung fish -- and then stood knee-deep in muddy water trying to catch the fish with his bare hands (while avoiding their sharp teeth). He's jumped into 40 feet of ocean with a "ferocious current," to harvest octopus. He's kayaked off the coast of Iceland, laying nets to catch those adorable puffins.

Not everything he does is death-defying. He writes of eating fresh shellfish on a Mexican beach, and tapas-crawling through the restaurants of Madrid, and supping on stew in Morocco, "chock-full of lamb innards and brains." OK, maybe that last one qualifies as death-defying.

Zimmern loves learning to prepare food the way locals do ("My feeling is that diving into another culture face-first gives me the most bang for my buck"), and he is downright gleeful when comparing how much a dish might cost in Paris or New York to how much it costs in some Third World country. ("Another man grilled small local lake fish rubbed with turmeric and served it with fresh tomato salad and lime. This may have been the most elegant dish that I ate in the city, and it cost no more than a dime.")

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The Bizarre Truth by Andrew Zimmern

His political observations aren't deep -- in Marrakesh, for instance, he felt like "a character out of a bad Kipling poem, the tension and resentment toward white Europeans and Americans palpable at every turn." Then again, he's not a politician, or a diplomat, or, for that matter, a writer. He's a foodie, just here for the food, and the fun. And so are we.

Laurie Hertzel, the Star Tribune books editor, is at 612-673-7302.