AEP Ohio employee and her father appear on ‘Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern’

On April 1, AEP Ohio employee Janet Rehberg and her father, Thuan Phan, were featured in a segment of the Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern.”

According to Rehberg, who is a consumer programs coordinator for AEP Ohio, the producers of the show were doing a series about various locations in the United States and had heard about her dad’s innovative fishing technique and the large Vietnamese population in northwest Arkansas. The producers first approached Rehberg and her family last August.

AEP Ohio’s Janet Rehberg (left) and her father, Thuan Phan (right), take advantage of a photo opportunity with Bizarre Foods’ Andrew Zimmern.

 Rehberg said her cousin — who works for the northwest Arkansas tourism board — had provided the show’s producers with a list of great places to visit in the area. It was her cousin’s description of his uncle’s unique fishing techniques and wonderful home cooking that caught the producers’ attention.

Rehberg said Phan created a device that allows him to cast bait farther than he can throw it by hand. “He calls his device ‘the boat,’ which is basically a waterproofed wheelbarrow with the wheels removed and equipped with motors and batteries — all resembling a tiny boat,” Rehberg said. “The boat carries a fishing line with bait out to the middle of the water, and he triggers the release of the line from the boat once it’s over a good spot. His fishing skills will be on dramatic display with Mr. Zimmern during the first part of the segment.”

Rehberg also is briefly featured in the episode, helping her father prepare and cook a variety of traditional and new Vietnamese cuisine for Zimmern to sample — including fresh caught fish. Rehberg said the Travel Channel was interested in exploring the history and culture of northwest Arkansas where Fort Chaffee served as a relocation camp for Vietnamese refugees in 1975 during the fall of South Vietnam. Today, a large Vietnamese population lives in northwest Arkansas, and their culture and food can be found throughout the area. The segment was filmed Oct. 3, 2012. The episode is titled “Bizarre Foods – The Ozarks.”