Celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern is no food snob. After all, the host of Bizarre Foods and Wild Game Kitchen has a recipe on his website for rabbit tacos, and he has famously eaten everything from tarantulas and mealworms to giraffe beetles (the latter “taste just like shrimp,” he once said). So it’s no surprise, perhaps, that the well-traveled chef has no qualms about stopping for pizza at a gas station.
Specifically, Casey’s, which has for years billed itself as the fifth largest pizza chain in the U.S.
“Casey’s entire menu is better than those other pizza chains,” Zimmern told Southern Living recently. “It’s actually made by hand.”
Zimmern has emerged as Casey’s most prominent celebrity advocate, noting in a recent press release, “Gas station pizza is my guilty pleasure—been saying it for about 20 years—and Casey’s is simply the best.”
Casey’s BBQ brisket pizza, featuring Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce, is one of Zimmern’s favorites. “I mean it’s dirty good,” he told Southern Living. “It’s sweet, it’s not too spicy. Anyone that doesn’t like that sauce, I’m suspicious of. And that’s what they use on their BBQ pizza….I don’t want to get too into the weeds here, but when I see freshly cut red onions going on top of pizza, it tells me that they care. They’re not using frozen, packaged red onions. Which, by the way, a lot of other places do.”
Zimmern also relishes gas-station fried chicken in the Deep South, breakfast burritos in the Southwest, and cracklings and boudin in Louisiana.
“So let’s look at some of the mass-marketed stuff as well and give them their flowers,” Zimmern added. “I think Casey’s deserves their flowers.”
