A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Are Michelin Stars Overrated? ft. Lily Cousins

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

Today, we're joined by fellow Mythical Kitcheneer Lily Cousins to discuss the Michelin guide. Leave us a voicemail at (833) DOG-POD1 Best Friends Back Alright! and Dispatches From Myrtle Beach are finalists in the Inaugural Signal Awards! Vote now! Best Friends Back, Alright! – "Best Conversation Starter" https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2022/shows/general/best-conversation-starter Dispatches from Myrtle Beach – "Weird" https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2022/shows/general/weird  Voting ends December 22nd at 11:29pm EST To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Who should we trust more? The Michelin Guide, Yelp, or a white panel van with free candy painted on the side? What the heck is wrong with you? Just a man who loves free candy. This is A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what?

That makes no sense. A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. A Hot Dog is a Sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show we break down the world's biggest food debates. I'm your host, Josh Scherr. And I'm your host, Nicole Anaiti.

And today we are discussing the Michelin Guide. Nicole, specifically, is the Michelin Guide overrated? Josh, may you please introduce our guest first? Who was getting there? I was waiting for a second. Wow. He's sitting here. I'm just sitting here waiting.

Waiting and just introduce the girl. You two are going to gang up on me all day. That's fine. Today we are joined by former Michelin-starred sous chef? No, entremet? It's like a little bit of a story. I was just a cook. Michelin-starred cook, Lily Cousins, fellow mythical kitchenier.

You have experience cooking in a Michelin-starred cook Lily Cousins, fellow mythical kitchenier. You have experience cooking in a Michelin-starred restaurant. Yes, I do. The restaurant is called Cato. It had one Michelin-starred. One Michelin-starred. They're striving for two this year. So, hopefully get two. Good luck. I'm really excited to hear your perspective on this because I'm sure Nicole and I have our own

perspectives on it. So, the Michelin guide, for people that don't know, Michelin, the tire company, is the same company that puts out the guide. And some people don't know that. Which is so funny to me. That big white tire guy? Well, it makes a ton of sense because literally back in the day, they were trying to promote their tires and somebody had the genius idea of like, if everybody's driving cars, a new fangled invention, where are they driving them to? Let's tell them to drive to restaurants, get out there, wear out the tires, use more tires driving to far off regions in france you know so it's called the

michelin motorists guide and they had the restaurants of the star system but then fast forward about 100 years and suddenly it is the end all be all of rating restaurants gordon ramsay brags about having more michelin stars than anyone or is it jean-georges von gerichten jean-georges has a few we might anyways yeah make it look at who has the most

Michelin stars Jean-Georges Robuchon we got we got it is Joël Robuchon I knew it was

Joël Robuchon je suis talent je ne suis pas Gordon he's young he's hot no Joël Robuchon is dead man

I was like yes he has passed away but we do love us some Joël Robuchon made. That's not a picture. Oh, dead man. I was like, he's really dead. Yes, he has passed away. Yeah, RIP. But we do love us some Joel Robuchon. Made some great potatoes. That said, do y'all think the Michelin star system is overrated? Lily, go first. Oh, that's a loaded question.

It is. I feel like it might slightly be overrated, but I think it needs to exist. Interesting. Like for me personally, when I was in culinary school, it was really important for me to work at a Michelin star restaurant because I wanted to learn how to cut the chives properly, how to fillet the fish with like a couple swipes. And I knew I was going to learn it at a Michelin star restaurant. So, yeah, I think it gives like cooks and chefs some sort of benchmark to aim for if you're in the fine dining world or if you want to like experiment with cooking. But yeah, there's people who have, you know, like lost their lives over trying to get stars. And there's I think maybe the criteria and has to change. But yeah. Yeah, because like you said, it is specifically for the fine dining world.

I think they have started to relax their sort of standards a little bit. Yes. Because what people don't realize, Michelin Guide obviously started in France. It was rating all the restaurants

in Paris. They have since moved internationally, right? And they rate the big cities. Chicago has a Michelin Guide. New York has a Michelin Guide. LA has one. We have,

but we also went like 10, 15 years. I think it was about 10 years without having a Michelin Guide in LA because Michelin was like, the restaurants that you have in LA does not serve, you know, the type of food that we-

The criteria. The criteria because it's very stuffy, fine dining. Like Lily said, every single chive is cut to a certain degree. You know,

there's the movie Burnt produced by Gordon Ramsay. I've never seen it the whole way through. It's bad. It's so bad. And the whole conceit is that Bradley Cooper is this like angry white guy chef and he's chasing his third Michelin star, even though that's not how Michelin stars work. You don't just like earn two and then you keep them

and then you earn your third. But he's chasing his third star. And so he like opens up this crazy fine dining restaurant in London, blah, blah, blah. And they're talking about the Michelin inspectors who are all full-time employees apparently. And they are all former industry professionals. And they're anonymous. They book under fake names or nobody knows their names. And they're like meant to dress very normally.

And in the movie they're like, yeah, very normally. Okay. And in the movie, they're like, yeah, they will drop a fork on the ground to see if you notice it within 30 seconds. Lily, you're not in your head. That's real? No, that is real. We kind of know what the timing is when they're going to start coming in.

Sure. But never, we wouldn't know who they were. But yeah, we were told to like go in the bathrooms like every 30 minutes and go check if like any if there's like literally like a spoon yeah like or something weird on the floor like they'll set it there and plant it someone wrote in the bathroom here I sit brokenhearted came to poop but only farted and you have to like scrub that away oh yeah I mean true story I totally did that wow that's ridiculous I don't know know. I mean, overrated.

I think I agree with Lily that it is overrated, but it needs to exist because the food world, especially in the back of the house, is so intense, and it's exhausting, and it can really weigh on you, but having something to, like, reach for and having a star to

potentially catch is exciting for some chefs and it gives them purpose and it gives them value because, you know, feeding people every day probably doesn't mean much to them. Oh, cooking for the normies is so lame. I mean, I love cooking for the normies. I don't care. But like certain people, it gives them something to achieve and it's a visual thing. And when you see it, you know what it is.

People know what it is yeah people know what it is so it's like it affirms your whole entire career trajectory for certain people right and i understand that but have i been to michelin star restaurant maybe once or twice but has my meal been mind-blowing and has my whole entire life changed because of those meals no well that's just me because maybe that kind of dining isn't for me. In like small increments it is. Yeah. I'm a fancy girl, but like. Yeah, I feel like from a diner perspective, you have to take it with a grain of salt. Like I'm not looking at these lists saying, I'm not going to go to this restaurant if it doesn't have a Michelin star. But I think it is cool to like see from a chef perspective and even from a cook perspective, you, I mean, it does set like some sort of, they're all like competing against each other kind of.

Sure, yeah. And I think the food is getting cooler and cooler. Like if you look at the stuff that Noma's doing, it's crazy. Fermenting reindeer penises. The cereal. The shawarma stuff. Milking ants. That's cool.

Without a doubt, like that kind of innovation, I feel like, I can't, no, this is the wrong way to say this, because it can only happen in those kinds of incubator kitchens. But that's not true. People are innovating in their kitchens at home all the time. But there, it's just such a cluster F. Yeah. It's a cluster F of just so many minds and creative vices, and people just want to try new things that have never happened before. So things like Noma create that kind of environment. But you don't think Noma could exist

without the Michelin star system. You think that the Michelin star system is what drove them, not just Rene Redzepi and the entire team's sort of drive, their altruistic drive to push the envelope of food and serve people things they've never had before. But you think the Michelin star system is what drove them there. Maybe not specifically Noma, but restaurants like Noma, yeah.

Yeah, they have that. It almost reminds me a little bit of the Olympics in a way. Sure. So for a sport, right, I'm going to bring everything back to track and field, baby. Let me talk about what I want to talk about. Go for it. No, but you train super hard in track and field specifically for the Olympics, which is only one. One happens every four years.

There's competitions, Diamond League meets, world championships that nobody outside of the sport cares about. Right. But there's that one thing that people know. You are an Olympic medalist. That means something. If you have a Michelin star, that means something. People don't care about your Zagat guide rating. Yelp obviously is a big tool that people use, but they don't care. The San Pellegrino World's Best 100 list is something that's getting up

there. But Michelin is like your Olympic medal that gives you the calling card. And it also, I'm arguing as a devil's advocate right now, because obviously y'all knew this before I sat down. I think the Michelin guide is outdated, racist classes. It needs to be burned to the ground. Okay. So you still stand by that? I still stand by that. I still stand by that because I think we do need to just create a different structure, right? It prioritizes French cooking for sure. Japan now, Tokyo has a ton of Michelin starred restaurants, but you see the data. It heavily prioritizes French cooking, which you know i've talked about this yeah ad nauseum i don't love that um it also is just straight up corrupt they just take money that's how we got

the michelin guide back in la and i believe in the bay area is the california board of tourism paid them to come in because michelin can move money around that's okay i mean it's just a bit it's a business but realize that it's not a business. It's a business, baby. But realize that it's not like an altruistic, you know, grading system to try and push the culinary envelope. No, it's a business, baby. They're trying to sell tires.

They're trying to sell guides. They're trying to get tourist money. But does that make it overrated? I think it does because I don't think it reflects the best that food culture has to offer because it neglects so many cuisines and techniques and styles of food. And if people aren't, who's to say that symmetrical chives are actually improving the dining experience of a person, you know what I mean? And so they're doing more things. They're

trying to adapt, but I don't think it's good enough. I think it is a dead relic that I think needs to be put to the ground. I wrote about this when I was a magazine writer. I just wrote a whole thing about we should just stop mentioning the Michelin Guide. And here I am hosting a damn podcast about it. But if we wanted to go away and create a better system, something that's more democratic, that opens up meals at different price points, right? Like should somebody not be able to participate in what is considered the best food if they don't have $700 to drop? Maybe too, don't they? Don't they have like a guy that is a star?

I'm looking at it. Okay. There's other and different categories. They call it the Michelin Bib Gourmand. That's right. Which, yeah. So they do like recognize more traditional restaurants, you know, like, what's that one spot?

Monte Alban. They make the, wait, is Monte Alban on there? It's on there. It's on there. It's on the Michelin guy. Okay, maybe I love Michelin because I love getting messed up off mezcal at this restaurant

Nicole's talking about. I'm going through like seven pages and you have Inaka next to Badmash. And for people in LA that don't know. But these aren't stars.

These aren't stars. Well, Inaka has stars because it's a Kisiki. It's a delicious Kisiki restaurant. And Badmash is like a, how would you explain it? Punk rock Kisiki restaurant. And Badmash is like a, how would you explain it? Punk rock Indian fusion.

Making butter chicken sandwiches. It doesn't have a star, but it's next to it. And that's pretty damn cool. Yeah, but it's not a star though. When people talk about, we don't talk about are you on the Michelin Guide? We talk about do you have a Michelin star, right? It's like the same of like going to the Olympic trials versus winning an Olympiclympic medal i mean but they're taking the extra steps to do the stuff yeah like they have their fermentation stations and they're warming their plates in the oven and like so i don't know but i think there is like when you get up to the three michelin star level all of the

like noma single thread alinea like french laundry they have like a ton of people and back well front and back of house where it's just like if you don't have that head count and you don't have those resources like you're not going to get there and that was like with kato they knew that they weren't going to get another star at their old location because it was so – the kitchen is tiny. And they needed space to do R&D and things like that. So it's also like kind of a money thing as well. Sure, yeah.

Like if you don't have the money to invest or, you know, the right resources. That is the one argument that people have posed to me that has swayed me in the past to where now I'm a little bit on the fence, a little bit, you know, less of a firebrand about it is that Michelin stars get more money into the food industry, an industry that is primarily struggling, which is good, which is good. But I'm curious, from Lily's perspective, you've worked both in non Michelin star kitchens and a Michelin star kitchen. Is there, would you say not every Michelin star kitchen is the same, of course, but is there like a distinct difference in the way that business was conducted? Like were things just run tighter at Kato than other restaurants? It was definitely tighter at Kato.

I mean, we were doing some questionable things at some of the other restaurants. Welcome to restaurants, baby. I was just eating like French fries over the trash. But yeah, it's I mean, he maybe it is like john yow he's the the head chef there and the owner and he's just like i for me personally like i had like a really good experience there and i can say for some other like michelin star restaurants you're not gonna get the best experience but things were definitely tightly run but he was also very much like wanted to invest in his employees and make them better and better. Yeah.

But there's like some Michelin star restaurants where you're picking herbs for a year before you move up. So I had a buddy that worked at Providence, which is a two Michelin star restaurant. I once went there for a media dinner where the chef went out himself and like caught just a random bounty of seafood and then made like an 11-course meal. We were there for like six hours. I think I drank 14 half pours of wine. Sounds amazing. Which was really fun. But I remember some of the food.

There was like Santa Barbara spot prawn with grilled roe, and some of it was good and interesting. But a lot of it did sort of rely on traditional, what we'd call like prestige ingredients. So it'd be like caviar. And I'd be like, mm, good. But like, does it taste different? Could I recognize the difference between that and a caviar

that was a third of the price? I don't think I could have. Things like that. Still really cool experience. But I had a buddy that worked there and his job was to pick flowers for one single dish for about a year. I had a friend.

This dude, man. Yeah, I had a friend that worked at Malise and he was shelling fava beans for months. And he's like, I never saw fava bean again. I'm like, I wouldn't either. It's exhausting. If I ever watch a cooking competition show and a person on there,

I was going to say a guy, but then I didn't want to gender it, but it's always a guy, who's like, I staged at Noma for two weeks. And everyone's like, ooh, Noma. And it's like, and like, they always suck because it's like, ooh, Noma. And it's like, and like they always suck because it's like one, if you would move to Copenhagen

for two weeks of free labor for yourself where you're really just going to be like smelling pine cones and then like putting them in a cryovac. Like you're not actually,

you're not actually like, I'll come, I'll butcher the reindeer penises myself, baby. Give me a buck knife and let me go to town. Imagine a Mythical Kitchen Noma collaboration. And we do Dorito crusted fermented reindeer penis. Woo!

Sign me up. Making the world a worse place. I have a question. Do y'all know what the stars mean? Because I don't. Not necessarily. Is there a clear definition? Let me see. Okay, this is what the interweb says. The star system was first introduced in 1926 with a single star

denoting a very good restaurant. The second and third stars were added in 1933 with two stars meaning excellent cooking that is worth a detour and three stars exceptional cuisine that is worth a special journey. Wait, I did not know that the original definitions were based on how far you should drive. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. It's like one stars local, two stars domestic, and then three stars international. Is that a thing you knew before this?

That's what I've always interpreted as. Maybe I'm wrong. I never knew. I just assumed it was more arbitrary. I mean, it certainly still is kind of arbitrary. Tires make sense. It makes so much sense. That's epic.

I'm trying to think, like, what are the best meals you have ever had? Like, at a Michelin-starred restaurant or none? Like, are there meals have ever had? Like, at a Michelin-starred restaurant or none? Like, are there meals that stick out in your mind at a Michelin-starred restaurant? Because I imagine we've all been to at least a couple, right? Yeah. Are there any that, like, really stick out? Like, the most memorable things you've eaten in your life? There was this sea urchin donut Kato was doing where they had this donut with brown butter emulsion, sea urchin, and some like, I don't know, some

like cured something on the top of it. Batarga or something? I don't remember. Some sort of like obscure roast sack from a weird fish that nobody's heard of. But it was really good. Yeah. Yeah. I have my one that I'll always remember.

So when I was in culinary school, I got like this really cool opportunity to go and potentially stash at a Joel Robuchon restaurant in Vegas. And I went with my dad because there was also a fashion show there. And my dad, it was like, it was a fashion show. It was like a fashion show, like a show for clothing, not a walking show. Like a convention kind of thing? A convention, yeah. And I got to meet the head chef there and he served me and my father dinner and it was delicious. We, my father has an allergy to pepper.

So I made that very apparent. I said, my dad has a pepper allergy, so don't kill him. And at that time I was like 20 years old and I was just still like a cheeky kid. So I didn't know what the frick I was doing. They like gave me champagne and I'm like, ooh, this is luxe. This is fancy. This is incredible. I had my first taste of foie ever there.

I had a delicious beef cheek. I had some crab king stuff. I just remember the whole meal was beautiful. There was a salted sable cookie that blew my mind. And then afterwards, my dad says, all right, I'm going to go to Nathan's Hot Dogs and just got a hot dog. Yes, yes, yes.

So my Michelin experience, I'm going to go to Nathan's Hot Dogs and just got a hot dog. Yes, yes, yes. So my Michelin experience, I was like, I was very intrigued by the whole thing. I didn't know that it was a potential passion of mine. And it ended up not being one, to be quite honest. Fine dining, I love and respect. But very, very rarely will I invest in that kind of experience at this point in my life. I just don't know if spending $225 on a tasting menu is what I want to do. I want to buy a house, you know?

I spend like $125 on Postmates for dinner. That's true. Do you? Because I want to share an app. I want to get like there's a Cuckoo Sabzi or like a Kashki Badam June. We don't Postmates to our house. And then I want the Shirazi too. We pick up. And then we have to get two entrees. And it like 125 so at this point i'm like what is money

sure but i've become the ultimate we have food in the house uh partner um and i am like annoying about it yeah i'm just like we have a quarter pound of ground turkey and a can of beans what are you talking about she's like i'm allergic to beans she's like i want to be wine and dine i have actually found myself much as a dirt bag that i am i have found myself craving the type of food that you would get in a michelin-starred restaurant really i i know i feel is this this is really new for you nicole perked up why because i miss going to a restaurant and there being words that i don't know techniques that i don't know a mystery to the dish where it comes out and I go, I do not know what this is going to taste like, but I am excited.

Lily made a pasta the other day. This is why I can't shut up about her pasta. Oh, my gosh. She did? What was in it? I lost. I beat her in the pasta cook-off, but your pasta was significantly more interesting. off but your pasta was significantly more interesting uh she took like uh mussels and made like a mussel stock with the shells okay then reduced the mussel stock down to the point

where it was like super cloudy and dark okay and then like uh like mounted butter into it i think added a little bit of citrus and then like folded in like a cubed brown butter roasted squash and in like a popper deli with the mussels but it was the thing that it was a it was a flavor that i've never had yeah you're questioning the butternut squash. I was, but like, to be clear, my pasta tasted better than yours. No, hold on, hold on, hold on. No, mine tasted better

because I plowed it with spice, acid, salt, and fat. Like you can make anything taste good. Taco Bell tastes good. They figured out the formula of balancing the things that the human body craves. But'm gonna start sounding like bradley cooper from burnt here which is like the food should be so good that you hate it you never want to eat it again you want to die right there oh having food that is interesting that you've never had before i've never had mussels in the flavor profile that lily cooked them in there wasn't it yeah i had five michelin stars

it was like it was like earthy and bacterial and it was a technique that i'd never seen before that Lily cooked them in. That's cool. They pounded. Yeah, I had five Michelin stars. That's impressive. It was like earthy and bacterial and it was a technique that I'd never seen before, reducing it to basically make like a muscle demi. That's cool stuff. That's what I'm here for. It's like not all art

has to be completely pleasant to look at, right? You know what I mean? I agree with that statement. Yes. But most foods should be yummy. Yeah, my favorite painter would just splatter lamb's blood against a canvas and be like, oh, this is art.

Who's your favorite painter? He's really problematic. Don't look up what he did. Is it the guy who pissed in a jar? No. With the cross in it? I like that guy too, though. I feel like you like that guy.

It's a guy named Erman Nitsch. Herman Nitsch. He was part of the Viennese Actionists. Real problematic. Did a lot of stuff. That's okay. You can still respect it. I painted with lamb's blood.

What do you expect? But the point is, I feel like every restaurant, even ones that are on the cusp of fine dining, not quite Michelin, right? But in just an expensive restaurant, where you're going to go drop $100 for a casual dinner, I feel like food now has tended so towards like, we're going to make you a chicken sandwich. We're going to make you a burger. We have a cheeky play on a lasagna that subs out one ingredient.

You know what I mean? And I like that food that food but at some point it all sort of tastes the same right we have one international take on a hot chicken dish yeah oh such one peppercorn hot chicken don't talk about the chef that i'm sub-tweeting because i love her food but but i mean like or like we put uh it it reminds me of like the wasabi mashed potato days it's just like i want something i've never had before that sounds you know that was like a big like 90s like oh a japanese ingredient in a french dish that like hurt my chest yeah to think about wasabi mush yeah no thanks i still don't know though if michelin is the guide to push people forward but i don't have a better solution would you rather have it burned down or you think the criteria should just change?

I feel like that's tough. That's a tough, like philosophical question, right? Like, is the institution so ingrained in what it is, right? Because it's a majority of diners in a Michelin star. I went to a Michelin star restaurant recently, Melisse, one of the OG Michelin star restaurants opened up in the late 90s, I think. Chef Josiah Citrin,

really awesome stuff. One of the best bites of food I've ever had was there when I went maybe six, seven years ago, balling on a budget that I did not have, but I think I just got

a book advance that I would spend immediately after on student loans. But I went there, drank half a bottle of Cuervo before I went, had a great time.

Well, because alcohol there is too expensive. So you had to pregamegame oh don't worry everything tastes good my husband travels with the floss but still it was it was a uh beef tartare with like an aged this is funny it's very portlandia it was a it was a retired dairy cow so they retired the dairy cow and then killed her uh and then ate the flesh but did's not a thing in the menu did it say retired dairy cow like sirloin did they say that yeah it was like it was like hereford prime dairy cattle like five years old whatever um yeah so it's a really interesting product never had and it was a tartar and it was a smoked tomato emulsion okay incredible dish just some of the best flavors

that have ever been inside my mouth um but I went there recently after everything opened back up in the pandemic. Me and Julia went for like an anniversary dinner. The service was spectacular. Not to brag, I got recognized from the internet. And so we got a free white truffle shaving, which is like a $300 value. Wow. But also a $0 value because who cares about truffles? Did they put it in your water?

No, but you know what they did have? Yes. You know what they did have? The plate that the white truffle pasta came on had hands painted on it. And the pasta was served inside the painted hands. That's cool. And they shaved the truffle on it. We ordered a grouse dish. It was their wild game season.

And the server comes up and goes, be careful with the grouse because there may still be birdshot in there. And I was like, what are you going on? But it was like still, I don't remember what any of the food really tasted like. It was all things that I've sort of had before. I've eaten, you know, white truffles is a cool experience if you build it up in your mind. But then once you have it a couple of times, it's just like, it's $300 for a little bit of foot stank in your nose. That's weird.

You know, and most birds kind of taste the same. You know what I mean? And so, and also the average age of the diner there is probably 65 years old. Right. Which is a trip. And you're seeing that in a lot more fine dining restaurants. So it's like, whether or not. It's expensive.

They can afford it. They're the people that can afford it. Yeah. You know, and other people are spending their money on going to festivals. I do have a tip though. For like, if there's like cooks out there or people trying to get in the industry stage at like as many michelin star restaurants as possible or like whatever fine dining restaurants that you're interested in because they usually give you like a free tasting menu oh really they might not pay you but they

feed you so it's a good i mean that's like how i have eaten at some of the Michelin star restaurants. Yeah. Wow. So you game the system. Yeah. That's why I went to culinary school. Maggie wants to know what staging is. Oh, staging.

Yeah. So that is when you base. Well, I don't think you can work for free anymore, at least in the US. I love it. But it's basically like an interview, a working interview. So a cook will go into a restaurant and work a service, maybe a full service, maybe for a few hours. And the chefs and cooks are just monitoring them and seeing like how their skills are.

They're looking at knife cuts, just like how fast they work, like how clean they work. And then they decide if they want to hire them or not. Staging is a large scale system of illegal free labor that fine dining restaurants uses the backbone of their economic model. And that. But I'm into it. But it's cool. I mean, whenever you're like, OK, let's think about it this way.

When you're like young and bright and you're fresh out of school and you think you're the smartest person in the room because you're like, I know how to fillet this. I know what a brunoise is. Like you come in and then you immediately get shot down. And that is the best feeling like 10 years later. Do you know what I mean? You like the degradation. It makes you more humble.

It makes you realize that you don't know everything just because you have a degree if you went to culinary school. It doesn't mean anything because the skills you're going to learn here are like nothing else. Right. And the people you're going to meet are like no one else too. I agree. Yeah. I did work with a chef who he worked at the patina group. This is a dude that like kind of took me under his wing for a summer while he was building out his restaurant.

We did a lot of catering gigs. And like, of course, young, arrogant in college thought I knew how to cook because I had some freaking Instagram followers. And I'm cooking with him. And he was like, hey, like, here's how to do this. Can't even remember what it was. And I just went, oh, I do it this way. Which is the dumbest. Looking back on it, I'm like, I would I wanted to slap myself.

Yeah. I'm telling you, 10 years later, right? Yeah, of course. Of course. And probably it was about 10 years later. And he was just like, uh, this is my kitchen. You don't know how to cook. I don't know what to tell you, buddy. Do it that way. And I was like, yeah, that makes sense. So I think there is something to having a high standard that has been set in history for over 100 years at this point to have people strive towards i recognize that michelin is trying to modernize themselves trying to make it more democratic trying to get less racist classist all that with it i just man i'm unwilling to make a call right now on whether or not we should burn it to the

ground or try and let them modernize i don't know i'm general generally distrustful of authority so i say burn it let's say give them give them like five six years let's see what kind of stuff is going to be startup angry how y'all feel about yelp what about it i don't know what does that have to do with this what is yelp like the other way they have a star system i agree i think there needs to be a hybrid of joe schmo like sending in their yelp review and guides like michelin or San Pellegrino or whatever it is really I disagree give me the separation you give it to me yeah no no no I want the hoity-toity anonymous mofos to go and tell me what restaurant did the napkin the right way like

I want that like I want that's fancy that's. And then I want someone to tell me, you know, their hot chicken was a little bit bland from Dave's Hot Chicken. One star, no available street parking. Yeah. It's like our podcast reviews. Like, the stars, do they mean anything? The five star ones do. But like, you know what I mean? Like a one star.

All the one stars are just from people from St. Louis mad that their pizza sucks. Like I don't know what to tell you. I've never been to, stop giving us one star reviews. You have no idea how many one stars we can take. I've never had it before. I can't judge it. This ship will not sink because of St. Louis, the third best city in Missouri. That's right.

KC Moe, Jefferson City, St. Louis. You're a third city in a fourth tier state. Get out of here. All right, Nicole and Lily. We've heard what you and I have to say. Now it's time to find out what other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the voicemail-iverse. We had a better voicemail-verse. That's way better.

It's time for a segment we call Opinions Are Like Casserole. Hey, let's listen to our first voicemail. Hey, this is Iñaki Madrigal. I live in the Bay Area. I'm currently driving home from the mountains on Labor Day weekend. I just wanted to say, Nicole,

you are not alone in your man-witch delusion of me not being in the can. My roommate in college was so excited for his sloppy joe. He got the buns. He got the

man-witch can. He even can even got like onions on the side he had a beer ready to go opens the can to pour it in the stove and he may have been a little inebriated but he pours it in the stove you make a manwich in college and just starts heating it up and notice that it looks really runny and he had no other dinner plan. Noticed that there was no meat in it. And he had what me and my friends still call to this day bread sauce. The bun into the manwich

sauce like a barbarian. But it was awesome. So you're not alone. Thanks. I love when I find my mishpacha. Mishpacha means people in Hebrew. So tell your old roommate I said, hey, what's up? Yeah, Nicole's hollering at her old roommate. Also, Iñaki, are you Basque?

That's a great name. Iñaki is a very Basque name from what I know. Iñaki Madrigal. Beautiful name, beautiful name. Very cool name. Lily, familiar with manwich? I am, yes. Did you know that there was not meat in the can?

Yeah, I knew there was meat in the can. How is that the can sorry nicole but okay so there's canned chili you mean to tell me there's canned chili but manwich don't have no meat oh we have the technology nicole we have the technology i like the idea of just plain manwich soup. It's vegetarian. It's healthy. You know, you just eat that up, soften up with the bread. You don't even need the meat. Okay, you're alone with that.

All right, next up. Hey, Josh and Nicole. My name is David. I'm from Florida. And I don't know if this is a weird opinion or not, but back in the day when I was doing keto, I would love to eat a whole bag of shredded cheese. And my go-to snack was a whole jar of peanut butter and a whole jar of shredded cheese at the same time. I still enjoy it sometimes, but I thought I'd let y'all know.

Thanks. Okay. Fun fact, Lily was doing keto or keto adjacent like a few weeks ago. Yeah, I can relate. I mean, when I first did it, I did see differences. But I was like eating a ton of bacon and yeah, a lot of cheese. So I can definitely relate, no judgment. But I'm pretty sure peanut butter has carbs.

So I don't know. Some have a little bit of sugar added, but like a lot of them will have none. The most interesting thing about what our man David from Florida said is that every quantity he used was just the vessel that it was purchased in from the store. A jar of. A jar of. A bag of. I love that he starts something and he finishes it. David, that's the kind of follow through that we need in this world.

I hope your poops are better. Yeah. Not that you're not on keto. Keto poops are bad. Are they? Lily, how are your poops? No, no, no. I was a little constipated.

Yeah, it's all the bacon, all the bacon, all the cheese. That'll do it. You need fiber. Yeah, yeah. You need fiber. I did keto for a while back in the day. Psyllium husk. Psyllium husk.

Psyllium husk. Husk. Silliamus. Yeah, I do not advocate for the keto diet as a lifestyle solution to any of your problems at all. We've gotten so far in health culture that now we've just turned the wheel in the opposite direction. We're like, is a giant bag of cheese healthy? Probably. Joe Rogan. Come on, get out of here. It's weird.

What do you mean works? Your body goes into ketosis. You've shocked your body. Keto is a diet developed for epileptic children to stop their seizures. I know that. Yeah, you can treat, you know what, starving yourself, you lose weight. It's not good for you. You know, criminy, crip

craps here.'s good cheese good now that we can all agree on this is um someone from illinois that is now living in the south and i just gotta say i miss jardin air y'all need to talk about Jardin Air on the podcast because it's so good. And I need to know where to find it or how to make it. Mazzetti. Mazzetti brand. By the way, y'all have a great show. Thanks.

Okay, I have a question because Jardin Air means different things to different people. Does it? I think so. I think there's hot Jardin Air. That's the oily one with the flex in it. And then there's like Tors, which is jardiniere. You're right. You know what I mean?

So I don't know which one she's talking about. I'm guessing it's the hot jardiniere. So Mezzetta is the brand that sells a lot of those like pepperoncinis, pickled onions, olives. Yeah, I like that stuff. And they sell a mixed jardiniere, which, nicole said it's a lot more similar to torchy which is a mixed pickle right yeah you're on um but the chicago style jardiniere specifically is like mostly peppers with a bunch of other seasonings in it right yeah i understand um yeah jardiniere is just a spicy mix of pickles i imagine it's southern italian and the reason i think it's specifically southern italian is because one it's very italian american um but people say jardiniere

instead of jardiniere it's an extra syllable but people say jardin air instead of jardin era it's an extra syllable you drop the syllable because a lot of southern Italian languages that's why you get gabagool because in Sicily the c was softened to a g sound and they dropped a lot of uh ending vowels so that's where we get a lot of these sort of like the mozzarella the gabagool the calamar so so someone named Caleb would would be named galeb yes nicole they'd be named galeb okay if a rogue what like a 20 year old exchange student went to sicily they'd be maybe gala i don't know i don't know so if someone's name was kayla their name would be gale that's my mom's name gale and we love g's a Gale? Gale sounds like a Gale

if you're listening. We love you out there. No, Jardineer's great though. I love Jardineer. I have to call out the show The Bear. Have you watched The Bear? Have you watched The Bear?

Yeah, it stresses me out. I can't. But Lily, it's just like it is in a normal kitchen. Didn't you see them drinking from deli cups? Yeah.

I drink out of a water bottle. Everyone get a water bottle if you are a cook just get one it's fine there's this scene though where he's like we're at a jardiniere and he goes we'll just make it fresh for service tonight and it's like it's a pickle it's a pickle it's fermented yeah

makes no sense if one more person asks me if I've watched the bear as a food person I will rip out my eyelashes it's a great show it is awesome. Maddie rules in it. I want to watch it. Ayo, Edith Beery rules in it. Jeremy Allen White rules in it.

But I'm so sick of people saying like, Have you watched it? Have you seen it? They drink out of a deli cup. That happens, really. I'm just like, I know. Oh, yeah, they're smoking cigarettes. They're drinking from delis.

Yeah. I get it. They're yelling. I get it. It's a good show for other reasons. I did tell David that if I feel trauma, I'm not going to watch it. But I did. I felt it and I still watched it. They're yelling. I get it. It's a good show for other reasons. I did tell David that if I feel trauma, I'm not going to watch it. But I did. I felt it and I still watched it.

I'm a strong girl. Next opinion, please. Hi. So my name is Alex. Huge fan of the show. And I'm from Columbus and grew up eating Johnny Marzetti. They routinely served it at my elementary school for lunch. It was delicious.

I had never realized it was a Columbus-only thing until I moved to Minnesota, and I tried to describe it to my husband, and he said, no, that's goulash or goulash hot dish, because in Minnesota, it's called everything hot dish. Hot dish. It's weird. But yeah, Johnny Marzetti, it's delicious.

Giant chunks of tomato is key. And then I guess kind of it's a chili mac i feel like the chili spices are not the same in the johnny marzetti i grew up but that's my story so thanks guys so many listeners from ohio everyone in my family makes this wait what do they call it though um it's like chop suey you call it chop suey up in maine yeah okay so so so the the great american dish it's not the hamburger it's like chop suey. You call it chop suey up in Maine. Yeah. Oh my God. Okay. So, so, so, so the, the great American dish, it's not the hamburger. It's not fried chicken. It's not mac and cheese. It is a slop filled with ground meat, canned tomatoes, macaroni noodles, and then whatever

else you got. Yeah. Some places call it chop suey. Some places call it like chili Mac's a little bit different. Some places call it Johnny Marzetti. Goulash is another name that they call it. Yep. Where it's just a bunch of crap and nobody knows how the names became what they are that's it you grew up in chop suey country yeah it's good slop

but isn't chop suey like uh chinese yeah it's a real chinese dish that then turned into like a very bastardized american chinese dish of just like vegetables and things thrown together so i think maybe like white Americans, the type that would eat, you know, canned tomatoes and ground beef and macaroni saw the chop suey to them was just like, oh, a bunch of mishmash thrown together. So they called it, you know, American chop suey.

To be alive is to be perpetually fascinated. That's something I believe. Even if it's something as stupid as what different regions in America call their macaroni slop. It's interesting though. It is a hundred percent. And the reasons that all these happen, right? Calling something chop suey versus goulash. Goulash is a Hungarian real dish that exists, right? And somehow that got equated with chop suey, got equated with a random Italian man named Johnny marzetti

those are all the same things food is beautiful it's diverse the regions that we live tell a story that rules that does rule what what's a regional thing that you grew up with that other people just like wouldn't know that if you use like a term i mean chop suey is a good example are there other ones from maine you mentioned steamers the other day. Oh, yeah. Steamers are. What's a steamer? It's not from Cleveland. There are these clams, and they're big, or they can get big, but they are buried. Maybe all clams are, but they're buried under the sand, and you see them poking out. They're like pee out water, and then you dig down, and then you find your clam, and then

you steam them, which is why they're called steamers. Okay. And you just dip them in, you know, butter. A sauce. Yeah. That sounds really good. That's really good. I don't have one.

Spicy tuna crispy rice? No, I know. I'm trying to think of like, well, to me, there's like the Southern California canon of sushi that's really interesting. Like a dynamite roll. Yeah. We all know what a dynamite roll is whereas i don't know if people in other areas would i'm trying to think of like taqueria menu stuff too like um california california burrito like mulitas are like real things that exist something of something

that just came about vampiro vampiros mean different things in different uh regions as well there's a lot of that stuff in mexico which is why i love mexican food so much i'm trying to think of like distinctly Southern California stuff. I don't know if we have like a novelty name for anything like that. Like if you see a gringo burrito, that's like a relatively unique thing. I don't know what a gringo burrito is. It probably just has potatoes in it. From what I've noticed that most taquerias have gringo burrito on, or they'll use that to describe a California burrito,

which is carne asada, French fries, all the fixings. But I don't know. I'm going to mull that over. Adding guacamole to your burger is like the California. We do love avocados here. Howard's Bacon and Avocado Burger, baby. Lily, you ever been there? No, I haven't. It's a big sign on Venice Boulevard. You can't miss it. It's like a theater

marquee. It's in a strip mall. Theater marquee. Howard's world famous bacon and avocado burgers. It is the most average, delightful Theater Marquee. Howard's World Famous Bacon and Avocado Burgers. It is the most average, delightful burger you ever had in your life. Not a single person outside of that square mile knows about it. World Famous is tough. I don't think you go to Mumbai. How many stars does it have?

How many stars does it have? Michelin stars. It's got my approval, baby. I love it. Parks down the street from my favorite taco truck, my favorite bar with $5 Manhattan's. On that note, thank you for listening to Hot Dog is a Sandwich.

If you want to hear more from us here in the Mythical Kitchen, we got new episodes for you every Wednesday. If you want to be featured on Opinions or like Casseroles, leave us a voicemail,

give us a ring and leave a quick message. Will I ever not laugh when I'm saying this? Oh, Lily, you got to call the hotline to hear what it sounds like. Give us a ring

and leave a quick message at 833-DOG-POD-1. For more Mythical Kitchen, check us out on YouTube. We launch new videos every week. See y'all next time. And thank you to our guest, Lily Cousins. Thank you, Lily. Plug yourself.

Yeah, where can they find you? They can find me in the Mythical Kitchen. I'm doing dishes sometimes. And yeah, these are my bosses. Yeah, we like pay you like a fair wage. Like we're working on like getting more money. You get half a bowl of slop if you don't answer right. Yeah, I only get slop.

I get paid in slop.