A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Is Pizza An Open-Faced Sandwich? ft. Dennis Lee

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

Today, we're joined by Dennis Lee, former pizza maker based in Chicago, staff writer at The Takeout, and writer of the hilarious Substack, 'Food Is Stupid' to discuss: Is Pizza An Open-Faced Sandwich? 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! Close your eyes and imagine this. You got bread, tomatoes, thinly sliced meats, and cheese. Now open your eyes. Was it a sandwich or a pizza?

Trick question, the doctor was the boy's mother. 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. A hot dog is a sandwich. What?

Do you guys get it? Are you proud of yourself? Do you guys get it? The doctor is the boy's mother. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it. No one's gonna get it. Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show where we break down the world's biggest food debates.

I'm your host, Josh Scher. And I'm your host, Nicole Inaidi. And today we are very happy to be joined by Dennis Lee. Dennis is the world's best food writer and former pizza maker based in Chicago. He's a staff writer at The Takeout and has written for the AV Club, Serious Eats, and Thrillist. He's a former pizzaiolo, I already said that, and writes the hilarious sub stack, Food is Stupid. Dennis, welcome. Hi, how's it going?

So you agree. I agree you're the world's best food writer. Yeah, I agree, but that's only because I'm the one who made that up. Sort of like Michael Jackson in The King of Pop. You know, I was just like... Did he make that up? Making your own stuff? No, that was from the British royal family.

He got literally knighted as the King of Pop, and they put a little crown on him. Wow. So did I just make that up? I just made this fact up. So, well, I am the greatest food writer in all of history. That's all. That's that's all. That's how that's how I'll put it. I may or may not have stated that myself.

And I don't think anybody else in the world has ever said that. But I can keep saying it. I'll say that right now. Me too. Me too. You're the best food writer ever. Honestly, we're like kindred spirits because I was reading your stuff back when you wrote a blog called The Pizzle. Yeah.

Which for anybody who doesn't know that that is the edible term for an animal, phallus. Phallus, we can say. It's a family show, kids. But no, you did a bunch of really interesting stuff with food, and I mean this very genuinely. I remember you made frozen yogurt out of Pepto-Bismol. Yeah, that was gross.

And then you topped it with a fiber crumble and a kaopectate whipped cream. Wow. You did a charcuterie board out of dog food that you called a barkcuterie board. Wow. I can't tell if you're genuinely saying wow or if you're like ugh. No, I'm so impressed. Dennis, have you seen what we do for our jobs?

Oh yeah, we watch like every day. It's like the same thing. But you also have a deep expertise in pizza. Can you tell me how you ended up on your pizza making journey? So I got fired from a really good job. I think they had just hired a lot of extra people. That's what I like to think was I got fired and I needed to find something to do.

And I had been living off unemployment for way too long. And so my friend Derek, who is the owner of Polly G's in Logan Square here in Chicago, he was just like, I'm opening this restaurant. Do you want to come make pizza? And around then I was in my mid 30s. And I was just like, all right, me starting a line cook job now, this is ridiculous. This is not not a good way for me to live. But then I finally decided, okay, I'll cook for a little bit. You know, I got to tide myself over for a while. And then I ended up staying for five years. So that was just, I learned, I learned how to make pizza the hard way. Not, not like from a young, young dude who just like, you know, gets put in

the kitchen. I just like, was just like, oh, I need something to do. All right, I'll make pizza. And then I stuck around for like way longer than I thought I was going to. It was, it was your second act it was your how Stella got her groove back that's amazing though I think that's awesome I think it's cool I mean when you say it's my second act does that mean I'm gonna die tomorrow I mean how many acts are you gonna die

if so this podcast is gonna get way more numbers yeah we'll do like an in memoriam yeah you know we'll dedicate we'll do a slideshow we'll donate it to a charity that we said you loved even though we didn't know if you did we're like dennis loved pita i here's 400 to pita because that sounds like pizza uh anyway speaking of pizza let's get down to brass tacks this is what we were here to discuss today dennis you are a smart philosophical

man me and nicole are obviously smart philosophical men. And the reason why I used it like non-gendered. Anyways, we're going to discuss, this is a question that we have gotten a lot. People tweeted us, people send it to our Instagram DMs. They'll comment on my wiki feet. They say, is pizza an open-faced sandwich? What say you? an open-faced sandwich what say you i'm gonna say no because i i had thought about this see guys the way podcasts work is you get asked this question before you go on the podcast yes but we should i need to surprise them with another question yeah just make something up is rice pudding risotto oh that's a really good question i think that is a risotto yeah i technically yeah well good news we solved that one all right back to pizza well then i'll do that one too because you already asked me but um so i think with pizza being a sandwich i don't think it's a sandwich because when you do an

open face sandwich you've got a piece of bread and then you're filling and that's that's what you have in it if you have more more filling and more bread on top that's, that's what you have in it. If you have more, more filling and more bread on top, that's, then it's a complete sandwich and not an open face sandwich. But a calzone, a calzone is a sandwich then. No, calzone is a dumpling. Ah, okay. Okay. Sorry. Back to pizza, back to pizza. So trying to gotcha journalism him. If you put two pizzas on top of each other, you don't call them a sandwich.

I mean, maybe it's like an open face quesadilla, right? Two pizzas on top of each other. Well, hold on. I mean, would that not be a sandwich? What would you classify two pizzas on top of each other? I know Nicole's going to say mulita. No, I wasn't. Because that's true. I was going to say sandwich. But do you think it is a sandwich? Two pizzas on top of each other? Two pizzas on top of each other is a sandwich. sandwich two pizzas on top of each other two pizzas on top of each other is a sandwich one slice of pizza is not an open face sandwich why come i don't know okay so like let's just say you're you're at a so you are at a jewish deli okay and you have you know how they bring out like the locks on two bagels yeah and then you close it i don't close it you close it i close it i close yes yes dennis do you sandwich your bagels?

Say you get bagels and lox with a little bit of schmear on it. Do you close it or do you eat it open face? I, you know what? So if I'm sitting down to eat it at a restaurant, I'll eat it open face because that's how it comes to you, right? But if I get it to go, they always put it in a sandwich, don't they? Yeah, but then I re-split it. You re-split it?

Yeah, I re-split it. If they serve it to me in a sandwich, I re-split it you re-split it yeah i re-split it if they serve it to me in a sandwich i re-split it and i kind of finger the ingredients to where i want them to go because the onions and the tomatoes will be maggie do you do the same yeah what is wrong with you i re-split it i refuse to eat it closed it should not have that amount of bread chew on both sides bagels are an open-faced sandwich i i realize we're recording this on a podcast but i want everybody to know I'm about to walk out like... Do it.

You won't. I'll just leave. Who does that? Keep the camera rolling so we know that you're spiting us. I'm sorry. No. Two pizzas on top of each other, that's a sandwich. But that's like saying if I remove the top layer of a bread of like a turkey sandwich, it's an open face sandwich. It's not. It's an incomplete sandwich.

Here's the thing. We're talking about, I might agree with you. I might agree with you. I think it might depend. If it's just a cheese pizza that has been flipped on top of itself, then do you have a cheese sandwich? Is it a grilled cheese? I don't know. But back to the original question of just a plain pizza, is that an open-faced sandwich this one is tough because one when talking about whether things are or aren't sandwiches that is a whole different category than an open-faced sandwich because an open-faced sandwich by definition is not a sandwich it is not a sandwich what is it toast it's an open-faced sandwich it is its own species we use the phrase open-faced as like an intentional negator of sandwich hood right so it's like if you say

that's a forged check is it still a check i mean it still you know looks like a check but it has the opposite utility an open-faced sandwich almost has the opposite utility of a sandwich because the point of a sandwich right going back to the mythos of it is the you know the the a-hole who's trying to play cards and didn't want to get his hands dirty so he had his manservant put meat between bread earl of sandwich earl of sandwich that piece of crap i would have i would have stolen that guy's money that was his manservant you ever been to the planet hollywood they have the best sandwich i've ever been to i'll say i had some good meals at Planet Hollywood. They got this like Creole fried shrimp

with a little mustard sauce. Have you had that? I love Planet Hollywood. It's so good. Say Creole fried shrimp again because I feel like you made an accent. I heard like a shrimp. Oh, but a Creole. Creole fried shrimp. That's how you got to say it. When I go to the Bubba Gump

Shrimp Company, I just go, y'all got shrimp potatoes, shrimp salad, shrimp stew. And they're like, sir, you're eating at a Bubba Gump alone? And you're the fifth person to do this to us today. Anyway, so the point is, I'm not arguing

pizza is any sort of sandwich. I'm arguing it's an open-faced sandwich, which intentionally means that it is not a sandwich. It's toast. And I'll say, sure, pizza is an open-faced sandwich. Why not? You got bread on the bottom, right? It's a yeasted dough, just like bread, that has some amount of toppings on it, or a smorrebrod.

If we want to use the Nordic term, let's not say open-faced sandwich. Let's say smorrebrod. Now you won't confuse it with a sandwich because it is not. Pizza is smorrebrod. Any questions? I feel like I knocked that one out of the park. Just want to say. Do you eat an open-faced sandwich by holding it with your

hands or do you do it with a knife and fork? So I refuse to eat open-faced sandwiches as they are intended and I fold them into a taco. Not a taco, but you know what I mean. I fold them in on themselves like a collapsing star. Yes.

You don't like hold it and just go, how? No. How do you eat open-faced sandwiches? Well, it depends. So if I can actually hold it, then I probably will. But a lot of open-faced sandwiches have a bunch of stuff just piled on top. So I don't think they're really made for you to pick up and eat. So what I'll end up doing is probably using – I'll use a fork and knife and probably do it that way.

Especially if it's got like cheese and all sorts of stuff on top like that's just going to come off or like get stuck in my face or my terrible mustache my very small dennis your mustache is beautiful mustache is adequate yeah i mean you guys probably small but beautiful oh man it's it's uh it's special yeah it looks like you just got some dirt on your upper lip from this angle you're such a bully you have a nice mustache don't listen to him you have a beautiful man good mustache you're a handsome young man dennis i'm older than you pizza pizza is eaten with a knife and fork in the correct context neapolitan pizza neapolitan pizza you're supposed to dig out the wet center with a knife and fork they say that at 800 degrees neapolitan pizzeria people say we make too many specific la references and no, because they franchised to Miami, and I think Dwayne Wade owns one of them.

But then they pivoted to a rotisserie. Point is, you're supposed to eat, like Neapolitan pizza is too wet in the center to really pick up and eat. And so some people, they dig in with a knife and fork. It's like a traditional Italian thing. So I'm saying the method in which you eat an open-faced sandwich, which is to say by choice,

is the method in which you eat certain pizzas. So they share a similar utility as well as a similar architecture i mean i guess kind of the last open face sandwich i watched you eat no i was gonna say the last one you ate it was the it was the you watch me eat yeah all the time um it was at lancer's deli which is in burbank lancer's deli, which is in Burbank. Lancer's Deli in Burbank, California. The average age of the diner there is about, let's say, 97 to 104 years old. And they also have a fantastic cocktail bar where you can order expired Miller Lights for $3. But we went there for lunch one day, and you got the open-faced roast beef sandwich.

Oh, my God. What a monstrosity. It was a single slice of white bread doused in like a packet of brown gravy and then just wet lunch meat on top. That was the worst thing I've eaten in a long time. That sounds good. I did not love it at the time. It was good. The bread just sopped it up. It was not good.

But do you remember? You didn't eat it because you couldn't figure out how to eat it. Do you remember how I ate the rest of your sandwich? Tell me. I took the bread like a claw like you do with Thai sticky rice or like a roti, you know, with subji. And then I scooped up the gravy with the bread and shoved it in my gullet. So what does that make that sandwich then? Pizza.

Is it a pizza now? You're a monster. You're a monster. Okay, but like what really differentiates a pizza from an open-faced sandwich what are the key differences key similarities here i didn't think this far ahead but i mean there is you make dough specifically for a pizza it's just for the pizza like you there's multiple kinds of pizza here's the thing you also cook it all together you cook the yeah that's the main yeah that's right yeah you cook the dough raw and then you have the ingredients on top also raw more for the function of the pizza and then you cook the

whole thing and eat it that way so you don't do that with a sandwich like a raw sandwich you don't do that with a sandwich we've reached the impasse this is the this is the impasse this is the crucial point, right? So we've established, I agree with you on that. So you establish that pizzas are dough cooked from raw with the ingredients on top. Sandwich is a cooked dough product, which we can call bread, with stuff

on top of it. So you're arguing that any pizza that is thrown in the oven with the dough already cooked before toppings are applied is no longer a pizza, but rather an open-facedfaced sandwich if that is the one difference you agree on then you must agree that any so say um there's a spot that does detroit style pie in los angeles that cooks their dough and then adds toppings and then finishes it in the oven you're saying that they are not making a pizza but rather rather an open-paste sandwich. Or Baboli pizza crust. I was going to say Baboli.

Any home cook out there who is using Baboli pre-made crust, Dennis, they're a single mom. They don't got the time, you know, but they want to make the kids something nice and fresh. And so they buy the Baboli pizza crust. I'm going to make a pizza for my child, my beautiful screaming child, Guinevere is their name for the sake of this story.

Guinevere is screaming. She wants pizza. You want to make something from scratch. You put it on a baboli pre-cooked crust, throw it in the oven. You're saying that single mom didn't make screaming Guinevere a pizza, but rather an open-faced sandwich? You monster. I didn't say that. Now I'm like, you got me twisted around

my own brain. You didn't have to. Welcome to the podcast. So we're going to the original food. So this is just a variation on pizza then you know i know the pre-made crust so it's still pizza like but then how do you differentiate that from an open-faced sandwich if you said also i gotta call out the comment that said that i like it was a four-star review Apple podcast, which is fine. We'll take four stars.

That said, I like the podcast, but it feels like Josh is just gaslighting Nicole. He does that all the time. Aside from the podcast. That's my. No, I don't. We'll talk about it later. You're not crazy. You just don't.

We'll talk about it later. I shouldn't joke. It was where you have agency and can, you know. You have agency and can, you know. Anyways, so then if we say that a pizza can start with a precooked crust, then what separates it from an open-faced sandwich, right? That's where I get hung up on. That's where I get hung up on this debate. Because I would be fine eating my words, and I've had to before on the podcast.

And if I say that pizza is uncooked dough in the oven with the toppings, that's fine. Then I have to say that poor single mother making a baboli pizza. She's making a, she's making s'more brood. What's her name? She's making an open face sandwich. What's her name? I feel, I feel like we should. Kelly Clarkson.

Kelly Clarkson. Janice. Janice Jackson. People confuse her for Janet Jackson all the time. And she goes, no, Janice with an S. It's also spelled with an S. J-A-N-U-S. Jackson. Janice? No, it's pronounced Janice. She gets this all the time and she goes no janice with an s it's also spelled with an s j-a-n-u-s jackson janice no it's pronounced janice she gets this all the time nicole it's janice jackson not janice

she gets this all the time i don't understand we have to respect her like cc peniston you know the cc peniston you know it's's Peniston. I know who CC Peniston is. Who's CC Peniston? I believe she's saying finally. Yes. Am I correct? Yes, I believe so. Also, when you say Peniston, it's spelled like.

Yeah, it's spelled the way. That's the joke. I didn't get the joke. I thought you were just admiring her work. Okay, guys, let's stop getting these tangents are getting out of. We have to stop disrespecting single moms out here. We at a hot dog sandwich The tangents are out of whack today

Respect single mothers Reel it in boys You're the real superheroes Reel it in Not Marvel I don't care how many movies All I think all Marvel

If all Marvel movies Were made about single mothers Nicole Uh huh Imagine what society could be like I've never seen a Marvel film What? Really?

Like not one? Why would I watch Marvel films? Actually you know what Honestly you're not missing anything. Thank you. That's what I thought. I thought you like now in retrospect, all you're missing is people talking about Marvel movies.

And those conversations are actually not really that. They're not that good. I don't care for that kind of social like currency. Honestly, it doesn't add anything to my life to talk about like superheroes. I'm so sorry. I think the men have pretty bodies. They all have very handsome bodies in it chris evans such a handsome body in america captain america uh hemsworth handsome body and thor uh anthony mackie is his body's pretty nice is is he a handsome body is he is he what is he an open-faced pizza? Wait, is that? Back to the topic at hand.

All right, all right. So is there a world in which there is a pizza that is made with pre-cooked crust? We've agreed that there is. Sure, yes. Okay. Then why would that not be considered an open-faced sandwich? Is it because you're putting it in the oven to melt everything together? Because then that's an open-faced melt, right?

That's like a Kentucky hot brown. I hate saying this. Also, there right that's like a Kentucky hot brown I hate saying this also there's a sandwich called a Kentucky hot brown yeah I think that's the worst name for a sandwich ever like hot brown that's a hot name hot brown just if I walked in the office and said I just made a hot brown what would you think I made a sandwich or a dookie brownies brownies what kind of brownies pants brownies freshly Brownies? What kind of brownies? Pants brownies? Freshly molt. I don't like pants brownies.

I don't like pants brownies. That means trouble. Honestly, guys, I'm just going to tell you. It has to do with the intent. It's the intent of the person cooking at the end of the day. I always say that because it's true. It's the intention of the person and what they're making. If they're taking two baboli crusts and they're filling it with soppressata and like, you know, lettuce, tomato, whatever.

You think Janice has a budget for soppressata? Janice. Janice? Janice? She's trying her best. She's using Hormel pepperoni. Okay, Hormel pepperoni. I'm sorry.

I was thinking maybe she, you know, she wanted the best for her kids. Fair. But if she uses that and then she cuts that into a slice and she feeds it to her kids, that's a sandwich. Okay. But if she takes the bobbly crust, puts cheese on it, puts marinara in it, puts it in the toaster oven, cooks it, that's a pizza. It's not an open-faced sandwich. But if she takes the crust, the bobbly crust, she melts the cheese on it, she takes that out of the oven, she puts the meat, the lettuce and the tomato the tomato on and then she feeds it to her kid then it's an open-faced sandwich because the intent you ever had a pizza salad i was just

no hold on you're talking about salad pizza not pizza salad oh yeah yeah dennis you ever made salad pizza um we had pizzas at the restaurant that had a lot of arugula and you know post post oven toppings like cold ones and i don't know if i would call them a salad pizza but some people would say that those are salad pizzas and i'm that's a salad pizza if i ever seen a salad pizza internally that made me hurt because i was like i was just like this is a pizza this is not a salad pizza i am i didn't put a caesar salad on top of your a salad pizza i am i didn't put a caesar salad on top of your pizza that i slaved away to make at abbott's in los angeles they put a caesar salad on top of your pizza and it's a delight your salad it's like an avocado tomato salad is it kale too it's amazing every day after

santa monica college go community college i would have a slice of this for a job well done and i don't know is this a pizza still is this that's a good question or is this an open face sandwich that is a tartine so uh dennis can you see can you see exhibit a the photo of the salad pizza uh sort of i can describe it it's a mound of salad on a pizza i mean it's truly is that a pizza or an open-faced sandwich? That's just two meals stacked onto one. That's just someone who's in a hurry. I ain't got time. This is one of those foods that has the dumbest origin story.

Like every origin story out there is like the French dip. Like a police officer named Officer French walked in and said, I got a criminal on the run. Just drop my sandwich in the juice and let me go. And you're like, that makes no sense. Why would that happen? That's the same with the salad pizza. Someone came in and they're like, I don't got time to eat the run. Just drop my sandwich in the juice and let me go. And you're like, that makes no sense. Why would that happen? That's the same with the salad pizza. Someone came in and they're like, I don't got time to eat the salad. Throw it on the pizza. Fat Joe, the rapper Fat Joe

is in there. Yeah, yeah, Fat Joe founded Abbott's in Santa Monica. The point is, it is an honest to God just baked pizza, raw dough, and then you top it with a cold salad. To me, it ceases

to be pizza once you do that because you have now topped it with so many things that that becomes equally representative of the whole as the pizza base did. Now you're eating a smora brood or an open face sandwich. So whereas once it was a pizza with one fell swoop of the hand,

Nicole, one flick of the wrist, Dennis, it has become an open-faced sandwich. Thus we see how fickle the nature is. Was that supposed to be your finishing stroke? What the hell are you talking about? That was supposed to be some kind of master stroke, and then Nicole and I are just sitting here going like, what is he saying? Are you not amazed? Your soliloquy did not hit hit if that's what you're asking I was trying to go Morpheus and then I was like

is it see how deep the rabbit hole goes or something uh huh follows the white rabbit and then Rob Zombie is playing at the club

and then you ask your dad for a Rob Zombie album and he's like he worships the devil his last name is Zombie his name is Zombie no you're not you're a child

you're impressionable he seems to worship the devil no you're not gonna have this um anyways open face sandwich are you asking me you're asking me what i think yeah were any of my arguments convincing that a pizza is indeed an open face sandwich i'll talk about the the idea of intent okay go i never responded to the idea of intent um how many restaurants have you been where uh they have a flatbread on the menu and then you order that and it's a bad pizza. Countless times.

Countless times. Lots. A lot. But there's still pizza. We still call those pizza. Oh, but they didn't call them pizza. What did they call it? That's their fault.

Their intent. Hold on. Nicole said intent matters. And so if they're calling it a flatbread, their intent is to make it not a pizza for a specific reason because they're trying to charge $18 because they put some like roasted summer squash on top of there. So they didn't want that to be pizza.

But we all agree that's a freaking pizza, right? If it eats like a pizza, barks like a pizza, that's a pizza. Their intent was to call it a flatbread. And you're negating their intent. Is a pizza an open-faced quesadilla? No. See, I think that's more likely. I think that's more likely.

See, Dennis? Me and you are in the same page, this guy. What do you mean open-faced? What's an open-faced quesadilla? An open-faced quesadilla. That think that's more likely i think that's more likely see dennis me and you are the same page this guy you mean open face what's an open face quesadilla an open that's a tlayuda no it's not tell you that no it's not is them cheese melted on a tlayuda no queso oaxaca didn't like well it kind of melts it's kind of melty i guess they might melt it no it's not melted i think i think what i've learned today is that a pizza is an open-faced quesadilla. That's what I learned. Quesadilla, man, once we start getting outside the English language,

things get real tricky for us. Claro que si. Claro que si. Claro que si. Verdad. Because I learned recently via food writer Bill Esparza that not all quesadillas have cheese. I think I read that article as well.

But we're on the same Twitter feed. And so for me, if a quesadilla doesn't necessarily need to have cheese, and again, there is a whole Mexican etymology and cultural gap that I am not familiar with to understand that very intimately at all. And I know about getting intimate with quesadillas i love and so and so i i'm not willing to say that it's an open-based quesadilla where i know every single thing about uh smotherbrod as i have been confidently talking about and i couldn't even tell you what that means i went to that one weird danish town in california and ate one

that one weird danish town danis are you familiar with Solvang, California? I am not. I've been to California a few times but I'm not familiar with Solvang. You should come out and hang. There's like half a windmill and then like a couple pancake houses and like a thousand Danish people

and it's a really lovely time. You go on a bike ride? You're saying this is heaven. It is heaven. It is literally heaven on earth. Very idyllic. If there are so many subtly spiced sausages there, you would love it. All right, so if we're breaking down the argument into where we've landed here,

pizza, it seems to be important that the dough is cooked beforehand, but not necessarily the end-all be-all. Yes. So you could feasibly have a baboli, cooked crust, Janice, the single mom, trying her best. She you could feasibly have a baboli, cooked crust. Janice is a single mom trying her best. She still made a pizza even though it's pre-cooked.

And then we have the intent argument. The fact that if you put, say, sauce, cheese, maybe a topping or two or a couple and bake that and you want it to eat like a pizza. You want to send the message to somebody that this is a pizza. Then that intent is what creates the pizza hood and takes it away from being an open face sandwich absolutely but then the salad pizza do you agree that taking a mound of salad and put that on top of a pizza say say that pizza is made with pre-cooked dough do you think there's a level of toppings because that doesn't really eat like a pizza i'm eating the salad pizza with a fork and a knife though so and do you do you think that makes it more of a pizza or more of an open-faced sandwich? I don't know! I still think that's just salad on a pizza.

I don't think that it's, like, one new thing. Those are just two separate things. It's just a salad. If I dump a lasagna on top of a pizza, it's still lasagna on a pizza. Oh, my God. No, Dennis, you don't understand. It's not a pizza at all it's just a salad the

pizza is the crouton dennis the pizza is the crouton it's just a salad oh my god we've cracked the code we can finally exit the stupid simulation and finally just evaporate into the ether the pizza is the crouton nicole has anybody learned anything i have more questions i think then what are your questions let me let me guys what are your questions i what what have we learned i don't really don't really know and i made pizza for a long time so it's making me think though nicole said intent is important but I intended, if I made a pizza and intended it to be a sandwich in my mind and then threw it in the wood-fired oven telling it it was a sandwich the whole time. Whispering in its ear. And I brought it out, I'm not sure I would, I think it would still think it was a pizza when I brought it out. Does it have its own consciousness

i hope not because i just put it in a thousand degree oven yeah i know oh jesus you're a mass murderer i mean i mean there's certain archetypes with which we build things on yeah can we all agree on that you have like a what do you call them like a schema in your mind yeah pizza equals flat likely round but not always yeah Yeah. You know? Yeah. Well, that's why in Italy, right, for Neapolitan pizza, they have like exact measurements that something needs to satisfy to be able to call itself pizza. That's like a little thing. If your crust is an eighth of a whatever Italian for inch is centimeter, if it's like an eighth of a centimeter too thick or too thin, then you're not legally allowed to call it pizza, right? They have the DOP protection on it. And so that's the thing.

And I kind of love that because now you don't get these hucksters out there selling you $18 flatbreads trying to call it pizza when I think that's just a damn open-faced sandwich. Oh, I know. I know what we just determined. We determined a racket. So what we can do is we can sell certifications on our own identification of pizza and just tell everybody their pizza isn't pizza until they pay us to tell them it's pizza.

Oh, that's smart. Wow. It's like crime, but organized. Yeah. Yeah. That's never been thought of before. Well, no. Now we thought of it.

We just invented it. We'll call ourselves the mafia. I think that's a good name. That's good. It's an acronym. Yeah. It just invented it. We'll call ourselves the Mafia. I think that's a good name. That's good. It's an acronym. Yeah. It's an acronym. For what?

American Pizza Association of America. Mafia. I don't know how acronyms work. I can't read. We're close. We're on to something. We're getting there. We're getting somewhere.

All right, Nicole and Dennis, 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 Twitterverse. It's time for the segment we call... Opinions are like casseroles! All right, Dennis, first up, you mentioned before the podcast started rolling that you wanted to talk about b-holes. Can you elaborate on your b-hole stance? I am pro b-hole. We all have. We are too.

Yeah, we all have b-holes. It's important to talk about them constantly. I agree. And that's something I talk about on Twitter a lot, which I'm afraid I'm going to get in trouble for sometime. And also on Instagram. So what I'll do is I will I'll take beautiful pictures of food, all the nice things I've eaten and then caption it with. And then I shoved it up my b-hole. So I'll have these like beautiful, beautiful pictures of like pizza or burgers or whatever.

And then talk about how I'm just going to shove these things up my butt. Yeah. And I think what you're really hitting on there is this sort of philosophical notion of circulationism, where the idea... No, hold on. Hold on. Here's the thing. Everything you eat, you're going to poop out. And that's hilarious. And that's why I love Dennis's sub stack, food is stupid, because food is truly stupid. Of course it's hilarious. And that's why I love Dennis's sub stack. Food is stupid because food is truly stupid. Of course it's stupid. It's wild that we put so much emphasis. Nicole, our whole lives, all of our whole lives have been like devoted to the things we put in our mouth.

And anything we've put in our mouth has come out of our butt. And that's hilarious. Hopefully. If you don't think that's funny, it's like parents growing up were like, farts aren't funny. Depending on the parent you had. They're so funny. It's like your b-hole makes a little trumpet sound. Farts are so funny. It's like parents growing up were like, farts aren't funny, depending on the parent. Yeah. It's like, it's like your b-hole makes a little trumpet sound. That's the funniest thing in the world. You know,

what's awesome about that is you can talk and, and make a trumpet sound at the same time. That's, it's cool that you can do that. That's the only thing you can, those are the only sounds you can simultaneously do. You can have a conversation and then trumpet and then just like play music like a really skilled beatboxer yeah you know you can layer sounds on top yeah but

there's a professional there's a professional farter right back in the day yeah yeah yeah uh he entertained the french aristocracy by farting out tunes yeah he could fart songs he could fart songs anyways we should get to the segment we should get to the segment um first up we got at nema underscore har tuna salad is a sauce dennis what say you no there there's solid stuff in it there's it's like if it was a sauce it would be that's like one chewy sauce that's like just a sauce i like a good i like a good chew to my sauce. Yeah, tuna salad is not a sauce. I can't even deal with that. Okay, so Nicole knows exactly where I'm going to go with this because I bring it up a lot.

I'm going to go up to the northern region of Italy, just west of Slovenia, even go down a little bit to Bologna. And you see the dish vitello tonnato. even go down a little bit to like, you know, bologna. And you see the dish vitello tonnato. Vitello tonnato is a sliced veal tongue or veal breast served with a tonnato sauce, a tuna sauce. And it is like one step from tuna salad.

The first time I had it, it's literally just tuna solids blended into a sauce. So it's got a good chew to it, but it's still runny. So I think like you take tuna salad as it is. You take the wettest tuna salad you've ever seen, which is probably coming from Subway. Because it doesn't get – when you don't touch tuna salad, the water pools at the edges. Yes, correct. Tuna salad at Subway ain't getting touched, especially after the weird controversy about whether or not it's tuna. I love it.

Which it's definitely tuna. It's tuna. It's tuna for sure. It's, they don't, there's no cheaper fish. They don't benefit from adding anything but tuna to it. Yeah, I don't know what else, what other fish they would use. Like, something that hasn't been identified yet? Like, we just found this geothermal vent.

Chum. Chum. Chum. Just hot chum. Chum salad. Tuna salad sauce? Uh, it's a condiment. Next salad sauce? It's a condiment. Next!

Fair. It's a good dip. You put some Keebler club crackers in tuna salad, that's a good time. I love tuna salad. It's good. I just feel guilty. Yeah, it's a lot of mayo to consume, but like, whatever. Because the dolphins?

That too. Mercury. Aren't you like not supposed to eat a lot of mercury? Oh. I was saying for the mayo intake. Oh, no cool we'll have a reasons we'll have a reasons okay wally boulard says redville should be consumed by mixing it with an with oj mimosa style what say you dennis that's actually probably pretty good have you guys ever had beer with OJ before that's yeah weirdly good it's called a radler that's like any juice with some beer right a little bit um but I think if you mix is it a Boilermaker I think there's a there's an actual oh we could

no uh we called it Brass Monkey that's what we called it what's the one with lemonade that's a Shandy. I like Shandy. Boilermaker is just a shot and a beer. Oh, I like those. I like those too. Those are the best. That's good.

You go into a show and it's just like, give me a couple of Boilermakers and just hit it and quit it. Then I know there's an orange juice and beer combination. I tried it once and I thought it was going to be really, really putrid, but it's actually really refreshing. And the thing is, it's because you can't taste the beer part. It's just like watery, bubbly orange juice. It's called a beer mosa. Oh, Oh no. I've made beer griot before. Beer griot is a recipe that I had in, in the cookbook, uh, which is a delight. But yeah, I think that

would be a good mix. Orange juice and Red Bull, I would imagine. And there's that Mountain Dew, uh, product, the Kickstarter stuff. And it's mixed with juice it's like energy drink with juice i think right or like at least yeah it is mountain dew with juice which is it sounds like a net sum of zero but well they tried they tried to sell that to kids as like hey kids here's a healthy energy drink for the morning here's a healthy way to consume your dew so So they started putting trace amounts of OJ in it. Trace amounts of OJ. So Taco Bell, they had a product called Mountain Dew AM. That was just a dew for breakfast and it was the same thing.

And then Kickstart put the caffeine in it. I'll tell you what's better than that. And this is something I've done in desperate times, which is a little bit of iced coffee, which is to say old coffee from the pot that's just been sitting out all day and you mix that with red bull you put it on ice and it'll make you grind your teeth how does that taste that just sounds like it tastes like coffee so um you get the you know you have like acidic coffee and you're like that's bad because it's acidic coffee yeah imagine all the citric acid from a

red bull and that guarana taste going into a coffee and then a little bit of the fizz bubbles kind of get trapped in your nose hairs and it just smells like you're, I don't know, trapped in an extreme sports Starbucks commercial. You're just clutching your stomach. Your stomach just has a hole in it. But if you're trying to reach a deadline,

that'll make you go because you're going to have to go to the bathroom pretty soon. I don't consume energy drinks. I can't. I can't do that. You don't do any energy drinks? Just coffee or tea. I got to start riding

the lightning, Nicole. Yeah, really. All right. At Silas Eggleton, cold shredded cheese and chunky salsa wrapped in a tortilla is a taste bud guilty pleasure.

I'm down with that. That sounds awesome. That sounds like I'm so down. Like now that I work from home as opposed to being in a restaurant, that sounds like lunch. That sounds like just something I can just go to the other room for and grab real quick if I don't feel like making lunch. So I got four minutes, grab the tortilla, no time to microwave it. I don't need, I'm not, I'm never even in a rush. That just sounds like

something I would do. I don't feel like doing anything else. Take my time on the folds. Yeah. Just, just, I'll, I'll savor every bite of it. I'll just, I'll just eat real slow. You know, I'll use my lunch break very well. I just won't use it to make the food. I'll just put cold cheese and cold salsa on a tortilla. I like this. Whoever this this person is is my best friend now you gotta hang out with silas eggleton hi silas silas meet my friend dennis uh i had to learn to love cold shredded cheese i love cold shred i never loved it before but now i've gotten the appreciation to which like a sauce gets trapped in between the shreds and it kind of like absorbs in that like a wood pulp. Yeah.

Okay. So I like cold shredded cheese. You're talking cold shredded cheese from the bag, like the package pre-shredded stuff. Oh yeah. Yeah. That you got to get used to that like chalky flavor on the outside. If you shred your own cheese,

like, cause I would eat it all the time in the pizzeria. It makes a huge difference. You're just, it's just like, it's so rich. You just feel like, you feel like you're spoiling yourself when you're eating the stuff that doesn't have the powder on it. You're just, it's just like, it's so rich. You just feel like, you feel like you're spoiling yourself when you're eating the stuff that

doesn't have the powder on it. You're like, oh, cheese can have this texture. This is awesome. You know? That's honestly one of the biggest, like, I'm all for so many time-saving tips in the kitchen, but like, and pre-shredded bag cheese has, you know, you can throw it in a quesadilla, whatever, it's gonna be fine. Sure.

But like, grating your cheese fresh makes a huge tangible difference. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. It's way easier to take it right out of the bag. But wait, can you make a pizza in your mouth then while you're chewing? You just pour. We're talking mouth. We're talking mouth.

Oh, my God. I make mouth nachos all the time. Mouth nachos are great. So you can just pour cheese in your mouth, pour cold sauce in your mouth, and like raw dough. Why does that, it doesn't have to be raw, bubbly, a pita or something. Bubbly. Why did I say it had to be raw dough? I don't know.

That's mouth pizza. Okay, another winning thing today. All right, here we go, here we go. We got at Krose104 underscore 12, Mike and Ike's are very underrated candy. Nope. Tell people what Mike and Ike's taste like, because everybody might. Nope. Tell people what Mike and Ike's taste like because everybody might not know. Everyone being me. Nicole, you've never had a Mike?

What does it taste like? Or an Ike? What does it taste like? Dennis, describe Mike and Ike's. They're like chewy little capsules. They're shaped like the Tylenol pills. And they're chewy. They kind of have that carnauba wax outside so they're

like shiny yeah okay and then you chew them they're sort of like i don't want to say gumdrops but they have that no it's a jelly bean it's a bad jelly it's a gel it's like a an elongated jelly bean that you can swallow and pretend is your medicine yeah i think i've had one before yeah they're okay they're like not the best no they're kind of boring i'm not a big fan of them just because like you know you could get jelly Bellies and have weird, like more fun flavors. These are just sort of the standard. Buttered? But wait, best jelly bean flavor.

Best Jelly Belly flavor. What do you got? I have a bag and I've just been eating them. I like the pear flavor, surprisingly. That one's really good. The coconut pear is good. I was going to say pear and coconut and then buttered popcorn buttered popcorn that's where i'm at okay only buttered popcorn when you're when you know it's coming

if you if you're the kind of person that puts all the jelly bellies in your mouth at the same time and then you get that that buttered popcorn taste in the middle you get it on the finish it screws you up it screws you up big time because you're like i'm eating i'm eating jelly beans i'm not eating butter now i like to start tutti frutti and then wash it down with buttered popcorn. See, tutti frutti. I can't deal with tutti frutti. There's something about it that grosses me out. The cinnamon one's good.

It's like a nice palate cleanser. Let's get a bag of jelly. Let's treat ourselves. Get a bag of jelly bellies. You know what we should do one day? We should just sit in front of the camera and do a live stream of us just eating jelly beans and guessing the flavors. Yeah. I think that's monetized anything you want to do but we would we would have to like separate them on the table since i'm in chicago so just like we would have to like show each other

on the camera which which ones are which and if they're slightly off i'll be like this is supposed to be cinnamon and then i get like some red apple or something. Brandy Lou Who 99 says, bananas versatility is severely underrated. I agree. I think you can have them in savory applications. I just don't really think about it. We had been talking about smårebrod. Is that how you say it in Sweden? Smårebrod.

Smårebrod. But I think. I don't know. I think in Sweden they put bananas on their pizza. Yeah, they sure do. Did I just, I might've just made that up. Did I make that up? No, that's, that's the thing, dude.

They'll do, we, so there's like this sweet, it's a Swedish Persian pizza ria. Why did I split those into two? Anyways, point is, also they make something called pizza salad, not to be confused with salad pizza, which is just a cabbage slaw that goes with pizza. Anyways, they'll do a shrimp, curry and banana pizza, which is apparently somewhat popular. But I believe bananas and curry powder are a common combination to go on pizza in Sweden. Yeah. So, I mean, I think I would imagine that'd be really good.

Like just. Yeah. You know, so just having. Whoa. Banana taco. Oh, I'm into that. Yeah. That's that's my like go-to like at home meals you take a flour tortilla and you wrap it around a banana and you spread peanut butter on it

and then you just get a mess free peanut butter banana with a little tortilla wrap that sounds good uh but there's a dish that i've always wanted to try and i don't know how i've never done it but it's this like 1970s retro cookbook dish you know i'm talking about the ham not the banana ham banana and holidays right ham banana and holidays that sounds like such a good combination to me why would it not be good i don't know it's like bacon wrapped dates but ham wrapped bananas with a little buttery is it heated up yeah well you gotta bake it oh you bake it yeah you don? Yeah, you don't need it cold. You need it baked. Maybe it could work.

I love banana ketchup. I do too. And I love banana. And I like plantains and savory applications. Like, why can't you do that with bananas? Yeah, I agree. Banana is the fruit of opportunity. All right, we should finish with one more.

One more, one more, one more, one more, one more. Okay, here's good. Here's good. Here's good. At Dustin McGarrygary dipping sandwiches slash burgers is better than putting condiments directly on the sandwich slash burger this is a tough one i think it depends on the condiment i think it depends on the sandwich and it does depend on the sandwich too if you've got a triangle shaped sandwich definitely dipping is is pretty good

you know like a grilled cheese or something you want to cut it into triangles and go sharp point in for something like a burger i think a thick cheese sauce works to dip a burger in but ketchup and stuff ketchup goes right on the burger so i don't know i've only dipped a burger and ketchup when the burger sucks ass but when you need when you need improvement emergency improvement that wasn't included on the burger sucks ass when you need when you need improvement emergency improvement that wasn't included on the burger um but i don't i don't think it works for everything if it were if if you had like a watery sauce i don't think it would work that well i don't know this is so does that mean you eat the burger or sandwich dry and then dip? So I was going to say, ¿Por qué no los dos? Wow.

So I came in this morning, Dennis, bragging to my co-worker saying, hey, last night I made the wettest turkey burger I've ever made. You weren't here for that. I wasn't here. And they're like, what do you mean? I made a turkey burger last night

and then I wrapped it in foil and let it sit while I do the dishes so it can steam together. And I put roasted tomatoes and I sauteed like spinach and garlic it was kind of a struggle meal a little bit and then put that in the bread and I opened it and it was just sopping wet and what I did is I mixed some ranch with hot sauce and I took the wettest burger you've ever seen and I dunked every bite into ranch dressing and I had finally known peace I I mean, if it was good, on paper, it sounds terrible.

I was shirtless, covered in sweat and blood. This is actually true. Why were you peeing? I left work late last night, and I went to the gym, and I was ripping deadlifts. My hands tore. You can kind of see it right there.

And I like to eat immediately after I lift, and so I'm just shirtless covered in sweat and blood, my cat screaming, and I'm just eating a sopping wet turkey burger, dipping it in ranch. And that is my default state of being. I like to just pour

it on from the bottle on my sandwich. I rip open the condom and I just squirt it on or just like use a spoon and I just put it on. How much blood are you covered in?

You don't want to know. You don't want to know. On top of the bread? On that note, on that note, thank you for listening to A 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, you can hit us up on Twitter at MythicalChef

or nhandizada with the hashtag OpinionCasserole. And for more Mythical Kitchen, check us out on YouTube where we launch new videos every week. And of course, if you want to share pictures of your dishes, hit us up on Instagram at MythicalKitchen. Dennis, man, thank you so much for joining us today. I really enjoyed seeing your face

move around animatronically for the first time. Me too. We've been talking on Twitter for like eight years. This is the first time that I actually know you exist and aren't a bot from Russia trying to sway me into a weird political view that I don't yet have. But thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, of course. Dennis, you got anything to plug? You want to like use this time for free advertising?

We like followers. They're nice. Okay. Well, my Instagram handle is DickholeDennis. D-I-C-K-H-O-L-E-D-A-N-N-I-S. His father's name is Richard. It's an homage. Yeah, Richard Hole.

Richard Hole. My Twitter handle is FartSandwich. And my newsletter you can see at foodisstupid.com. And I work for The Takeout, so you can see my stuff every day at The Takeout. You have a full-time employer. I know. I'm always afraid I'm going to get in trouble, but I've made it all year. All right, Dennis.

You're awesome, man. I had a great time. Thanks, Dennis.