A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich - Ranking The Best Fast Food Value Items ft. Emily Fleming

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

Today, Josh is joined by Emily Fleming to rank the value menu items from McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Jack In The Box. (When did McDonald’s get so expensive??)  Check out the full episode of Last Meals: youtube.com/watch?v=uEQ6z0rbn30 Leave us a voicemail at (833) DOG-POD1 Check out the video version of this podcast: youtube.com/@ahotdogisasandwich 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 is mythical. Dollar menu. I haven't heard that name in years. Listen, I'm just looking for something I can eat for a dollar. A dollar! I got some old fry scraps at the bottom of the fry later. I can dredge them up for you. I'll give it to you for a book. You look like you're on hard times. I see pain behind those eyes, walking around. the city with a dollar in your pocket begging for food. Who is this character?

This is a hot dog is a sandwich. Cetchup 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? That was amazing.

Welcome to our podcast. A hot dog is a sandwich. The show, we take out of the world's biggest food debates. I'm simply a hard-boiled noir fry cook. I want to see you do more of that. I want to see you do more characters. I know you're going to be improvising soon. I am.

For anybody, don't know when this podcast is airing. Do you have a ticket? Is it sold out? Dude, tickets sold out in like 20 minutes. No. I didn't have a ticket for my wife. So for those of you who do not know, we did a wonderful episode of Last Meals

with Vic McAilis, who is on drop- And Vic hosts very important people, which I still believe is the single funniest show on television. I agree. And then somebody commented, oh, we're just calling YouTube shows television now. And then somebody else said, you know that Dropout isn't even on YouTube. It's just its own app that's next to all the other TV apps. But I still consider that to be television.

It is television. It is television. All of this is television. So Dropout is television. And very important people is the funniest show on television right now. And I told Vic that it is one of my biggest fears doing improv on stage. And I never done it. I don't do improv. I just do it with you.

I know, but it feels natural this way, right? Well, only with you. Like, I don't feel that way. That's very sweet. That means a lot. No problem, but it's true. I don't do improv. Like, I took a class or two.

Yeah. But I always stand up was more natural to me because I don't have to pay attention to anyone but myself. And I struggle with, like, listening. Sure, yeah. Sounds like you're not cut out for improv. Yeah, but when I'm with you on like Meals of History and stuff, it's just you let me just do whatever. I mean, that makes me feel more confident for where this is heading is. You're going to be great.

Vic said, would you do a show with me? And I said, of course. And we shook on it. And then afterwards we were chatting. I was like, hey, if you just do everything, book it. I don't want to be involved in the process, but I'll show up with a good attitude. And I'm going to read the book about how to be funny and improv. There's a book.

Yes, there is. Del close. I'm reading it. Apparently, Delclose, not a great guy, but whatever. Yeah. Oh, also. Anyways, the Elysian Theater. Vic just like booked it.

where I'm improvving with Lisa Gilroy, Angela Jaritana, Oscar Montoya, and Demi from, he's been on a bunch of dropout stuff. It's going to be a killer. I'm so scared. I'm not scared. It's going to be so fun, and I know that with that level of support, if I just go up there and frankly just have a positive attitude, it's going to go great. But also, people know that this is your first time. Yeah.

So watching you figure it out is part of the joy of watching that show. It's going to be great. I'm just tremendously excited for it. But anyways, I didn't even know when tickets were going on sale. Well, Vic may have let me know, but I don't know. You didn't need to promote it at all. Well, yeah, but I wish I would have bought like 20 tickets for my friends, because I had friends be like, yo, I bought plane tickets.

I can just buy tickets at the door, right? And I was like, uh-huh. So we've got to figure that out. Dynasty typewriter, right? No, the Elysian. Oh, the Elysian's cool. The Elysian. I've never been, and that's happening.

Cool. What are we doing today? We're talking about food. Yeah. Again. No, what we are doing today is we are trying to determine the best fast fast food. food value meal that is left in the world because this is a dwindling art right here. Yeah.

This used to be when we was growing up, the dollar menu was plentiful. Yeah, that was like... They had a less than a dollar menu. Yeah. That's how they hooked us. That's how they hooked us. But now they're hooking us with a bunch of different chicken sandwiches. Sure.

And they really are. And that all has to do with drought. Mostly drought. What do you mean? Yeah. Drought has been dwindling cattle herds. This is, info is a couple of years old at this point. But it's the conditions that created the Popeye's chicken sandwich race.

I believe this to be very true. The price of beef is just skyrocketed because of general kind of climate change and you can rush a chicken. You can slaughter a chicken after like six weeks. You can't really do that with a cow. Yeah. And also cows require a lot more resources per calorie and grain or protein, whatever. Yeah.

So chicken's just so much cheaper than cow right now. And so they've been doing everything possible to get us to not eat their hamburgers. That makes so much the same. like sense. I can't believe I didn't know about that. So what is a value menu? Is it dollar or what is it? No, now a value menu is sort of whatever they're calling a value menu. So this is a thing. A lot of people are writing think pieces about it on where the idea of the value menu is going because obviously inflation. Some people just say it's straight up corporate greed and not inflation. I don't really know nothing about that. It could be a bunch of causations. I'm sure it is. But things are a lot more

expensive right now than ever. And so having a $1 menu or a $2 menu doesn't make a ton of sense. And what fast food restaurants have been really interested in doing is getting you to sign up for their damn app. So so many of these weird deals now are like app-based things where you log in. But we went to try and find the last true value menus that are left. And so we got stuff from Jack in the Box, Taco Bell, and McDonald's right here. Okay. And so all of these are under $3.00. You know, to be the cutoff, but dude, McDonald's is, how of McDonald's price has risen so far?

I don't know. And also, a hamburger used to be 79 cents. Y'all ain't got no playplaces anymore. No, man, no one can get stuck with hypodermic needles in the ball pits anymore. Yeah, I want to roll around in doo-do balls. My sister did poop in a Burger King playplace and my mom just left. Dude, a hamburger, a hamburger from McDonald's without cheese is $2.99? This is Southern California prices, so maybe it's cheaper elsewhere.

But this hamburger with a shard of ketchup and mustard. Look how sad that little patty is. A tenth of a pound patty. I do think their buns have gotten better. They seem a little bit butterier and bouncier. They might have gotten buttery and bouncier. As science continues to rage on against the admonitions of God, we've gotten bouncyier buns. They can't even call it bread.

They can't even call America. Oh, you're talking about the... I'm like, shut up. Emily's talking about a court case in Ireland. Subway. Where they had to label Subway's bread as cake. Because of the amount of sugar in it, which I think more has to do with Irish tariffs than it really does with the definition of what a cake is. Maybe.

This is great, though. Damn. For $3? Yeah, that's too much. But... You'd be 79 cents. What, when? Oh, a kid.

When you were a kid. Oh, yeah. But that's like... A double cheeseburger was a dollar. Really? When I was to get a double cheeseburger was a dollar, and then they took one slice of cheese out, and they called it a McDouble.

But my parents, it was kind of treated as a fancy thing, McDonald's. Oh, that's interesting. And it was 79-6 this whole damn time. Bullshit. I'm pissed. There's kind of like two different kinds of poor people. There's a lot. There's infinite kinds of poor people.

In my mind, with my view of the world, is there's people who are like, we can eat cheap meat, rice, beans, potatoes, big staples, right? Then there's a kind of poor people that I am

and I grew up that was like, we're getting dollar menu calories. Yeah. Because my dad wouldn't have known how to cook rice from scratch, right? Yeah, dad's, you know. Mm-mm.

I found out that my dad does know how to cook but he was giving me shells and cheese and baby carrots when I was a kid. He was like, I came home and he was making a rue. He goes, I'm making a rue. And I'm like, you know what a rue is? Like, I don't even know really what it is.

And I forget why he was making it. I was like, dang, I know. But I was like, my dad's making it. I'm on, what happened here? We could have been having stuff with rue? Well, yeah, my dad, like, so he eventually we like, he was a substitute teacher. He was like kind of homeless. He had a career in aviation management, worked at airports and stuff.

He was never like, but, you know, he worked at airports and he, like, wore a suit and a shirt. Had a good career, and we, like, owned a house in Kansas City in the late 80s, early 90s. In Missouri? Yeah, Missouri. Casey Mo. You know, my whole family is Missouri people. Are they? Yes.

Missouri and Arkansas. No, they were, my parents went to Missou. I'm a nugget. Thank you. They met at, yeah, Missou. And, yeah, Columbia and St. Louis and Hannibal. Hannibal. Yeah.

Interesting. Where Mark Twain was from. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I know that name. Yep. Mark Twain Cave, you should definitely go check it out. But anyways, my dad came out to California to be with me and my brother, aged out of his career, ended up homeless, divorced, yada, yada, yada, a classic story. Aged out of his career.

He just, like, he moved out to California assuming, like, oh, I could, because there were, like, the only places he could work were airports. That was the only place in work for airlines. It was the only thing that he knew. And he thought he could get another job, but there were cheaper, younger people to hire. Exactly. and people who were more adept to like whatever new systems they were using. Oh, yeah. And so he ended up just like kind of homeless and floating around, always working at like $9.9.9.

Sense, I don't know why I'm giving my dad's whole employment history, but this is leaving somewhere. I mean, I'm always related to a value menu. Oh, it really does. But there was a point, you know, he always really grinded. He became a substitute teacher because he had a college degree. They became a substitute teacher, but it's not enough to make ends meet, especially with kids. So he would like work at gas stations, 9-9-cent stores. The best job he got was as a limo driver.

He put it on his cheap suit from Coles that he probably got because my brother worked at Coles, probably got 50% off. Nice. Cheap suit from Coles and he would just drive for hours of the night and people would tip him $100. And that meant so much to us as a family and not much to these people taking a limo. Stretch limo or just like a black car? No, it was a stretch limo. Bizarre. This woman, I think, that had a limo company, won the lottery.

And decided to buy a limo company that probably drained all of the lottery money. That's so funny. But anyways, he would be driving for hours in the night, and he would just give my brother and I, like, a $10 bill and be like, go get dinner. We would go to McDonald's, and we would get scrounge up change for tax, and we would get, like, two McChicons and three McDibles each, which is probably thousands of calories.

And that would just be dinner, just eating five sandwiches. You're growing boys. You can eat whatever. I just, yeah, we did. But those are the value menu meant to me. Yeah, I will say that they, the value menu is going up, But those toys at McDonald's are getting worse and worse. They're hollow.

You can, like, knock on one and hear an echo. It's like the worst toys. Give us a solid, good toy, man. The good news is the snack wrap is back. I did order this the other day. Did you really? I sure did. Well, because I like to get their chicken strips, their chicken tenders, and then I use that to make a salad.

This looks sadder than I remember. At home. I order a bunch of them, and I'll reheat them in the air friar. and then get some romaine lettuce, like, full of them and cut them up, and then just put a piece of chicken in there and eat it. This is $3. I feel like I want to start a business where people can just show up to my home. This is good, though.

It tastes fine. A little ranch dressing in there. It's bigger. It also feels bigger than all the other items. It also feels more substantive. It feels bigger than the original snack wrap. The original snack wrap was a smaller tortilla, and I don't think they put this much cheese on it.

It was little. It was a little guy. Wow. So this feels a little bit bigger. I want people to give me $3 and just show up to my house, and I can just spoon like a delicious stew or guisado inside a tortilla and you hand it to people and go, here's something better. I mean, you definitely do that.

I feel like it wouldn't be a money-making proposition. No, it would be a way to pass the time, though. Well, we could do that with the gym idea that we had. Remember the video? game gym? Yeah. Yeah, you could have a concession stand at that gym. I'm in, man. I mean, I'm telling him. Um, this, this, uh... It's good. I like it. It's simple. On the go. The snack grab, yeah, it's perfectly, and this is easily the best value menu item they have. From McDonald's for sure. Like, this versus like four chicken nuggets for three dollars? Those chicken

nuggets are a lot of batter. Mm-hmm. It's not as much chicken. I think the strips are where you go for McDonald's now. Definitely. Wild man. Learning a new language is one of those skills that actually sticks with you, and it's incredibly satisfying once you start recognizing words and understanding conversations in real time. That's why I love how easy Rosetta Stone makes it to get started, and more importantly, to keep going. Rosetta Stone has been the trusted leader in language learning for over 30 years,

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Go to Rosettastone.com slash hot dog and start learning today. Or in French, Ochoice. Should we move on a Taco Bell? Hell yeah. I'm still chewing on my chicken strip. I mean, I'm going to eat like that after we're done eating all this other stuff because I got a stave room. So Taco Bell, it used to be, what was it, 59 cents for a crunchy taco when I was a kid?

Wow. No, maybe it was $70. $79 or $89. Why do I think it was $79 for a crunchy, $89 for soft? I don't know. And then like $1.19 for a Taco Supreme. And that was like, whoa. Yeah.

Too much, man. Dial it back. I mean, do you consider, we were talking about underdogs, like, brands, like how Dr. Pepper is kind of... There's just cheese inside a tortilla. It costs $1.29. What? That's it. It's cheesy roll-up.

And this came out. It was $0.79 cents. I love it. Love a little cheese to roll up. Not valuable, though. That's a BS. We were talking a little bit about kind of weird underdog brands or whatever. Now Dr. Pepper is catching up with Pepsi.

Yeah, they are. To be the number two soda, like company or corporation. Do you consider Taco Bell to be the little engine that could that kind of like snuck up on the McDonald's and Burger Kings of the world? I really do, yeah. And Taco Bell's been killing it with, like, their branding and marketing for a long, long time. Like, well, over a decade. Like, the whole, like, fourth meal, live moss.

I think they really pioneered a lot of branding. Man, I will say the alcoholic Baja Blast gave me a headache. It's a lot of sugar. I feel like that's on you. I know. If you're getting an alcoholic Baja. I did insist on finishing the whole thing, and it was that big old, like, you know, big cup that you walk around with in Vegas. I was like, I don't want to waste a drop.

everything from Taco Bell in the value menu is like half the price of McDonald's. And also... Oh, that's good. This is heavy. Feel the heft in that. This is just a cheesy bean burrito. Yeah. It's right.

Cheesy bean and rice burrito for $1.59. Another thing that kept my dad going... That's crazy. A $1.59? My dad used to go to El Pollo Loco and get their cheesy bean and rice burritos. Well, you got to get a whole chicken. For a dollar. Yeah, man, but the cheesy bean and rice is just a dollar.

My dad used to just get those and that would just keep them. going for an entire shift. This is value. Mm-hmm. This is value. It's going to be tough to beat this. Also, bean, rice, cheese, flour, flour, flour, tortilla.

That complete vegetarian proteins right there. Every amino acid represented, I think. I don't know how science works. Yes, you do. I do a little bit, but I think beans are a complete protein. Are they not a fat? Is there not fat? But they are considered a protein, most of them.

Well, beans have protein. there's a weird thing where I eat 200 grams of protein a day My like medical doctor Who like went to medical school Is like you you should eat like 70 or 80 dude 200 crazy Yeah

Like RFK says I should eat 200 you know what I mean So it's and that's not why I'm no I've been doing this You can understand him when he talks I'm been doing this because I've been I've been involved in strength sports Since I was a 13 year old But people think they need more protein they do And that's gonna be very controversial

thing to say. I don't think that's controversial. I think everyone's kind of waking up to that, like, idea of whenever there's kind of a movement of some kind, like the paleo and all that stuff, it's, we end up finding out that just like moderation is the only way to live, and everyone hates moderation because it's boring, and it takes discipline to do moderation more than doing the extreme. I think that's also a very specifically American thought process. Yeah, we want to go all the way. We love fears and fads. Yeah, we love that, but also we love extremes. Yep.

It's kind of like, you know, if I'm going to work out, I want to do it every day. I don't, like, balance it out, really. So it's just we are. The culture of hyper-optimization and all that. Yeah, we want stimulation, even if it's suffering. Yeah, and that's where we are now. Yeah. But that said, beans, good source of protein.

It is. Also cheap, delicious. And probably good for digestion, I guess. I wonder why it's good for digestion. Is there fiber in it as well? Tons of fiber and beans. Ah. And that's the thing.

people are talking about now, fiber. They've always talked about fiber. Oh, yeah. Remember Fiber 1 bars? I do. Remember Metamusal? Metamusal? Yeah. Everyone's always been talking about all these things.

Everyone's obsessed with having a good poop. Yeah. And I'm like, how are y'all not having? I've never had an issue with pooping. When I was eating very clean and so not a lot of fat, but eating a lot of protein and creatine, I did a little bit. But now that I've just kind of, I just kind of eat normal? Really? You think that you'd have like, you'd be going.

Like, no? Fat. Stops you up. Fat can help lubricate it. Really? I know. That's probably why I have no problem. I think most of my food intake is carbs and fat.

If I could eat one food for the rest of my life, including nutritional profile, like, taken into account, it would just be bean burritos. I love just a soft flour tortilla, very seasoned bean, mashed up beans, dude. It's the best thing in the world. I don't know. I think that I'm just a bread and cheese, girl. Like, that's all I eat. It's bad. That and cotton candy grapes.

I'm on a real cotton candy grape girl. I love it. Aldi sometimes has them. They're seasonal. I know, but they're so friggin' delicious. And they last a while, too. God, who's the guy that invented cotton candy grapes?

I used to know this. Same guy did ghost peppers and stuff. No, no, he's really a grape-focused guy. Okay. Which is a place. I think he's just called International Fruit Genetics, but the grapery is their like... You gotta have that guy on your show.

I know. Dr. David Cain? David Cain, that's his name. Is he a good guy or has he done something bad? I don't know. Because if he's an okay guy, then you guys should reach out to him because I want to hear all about the process. We got to talk to the CEO of the company that makes the world's first GMO tomato that you're, like, allowed to grow in your own garden. It's just called the Purple Tomato.

And it's like a miracle product. I don't like that. You don't like the cheesy potato soft taco? Uh-uh. All right, let me give it a try. This was the thing that I loved when it went on the menu initially. I'd talk about so this right here is $1.39. A huge potato girl, I think.

A dollar 39. Yeah, I just, I would go beans over potatoes in almost any concepts. 100%. And I think that's the reason I don't love potatoes that much. Have you seen the lady who her snack is taking a potato and microwaving it and then putting a big chunk of white cheddar cheese in there? What if I told you we just launched that podcast episode today? No way.

Emily, today you can go on a hot dog. This isn't for you. This is the day we're filming. Yeah. So you can triangulate that back if you really care about when we film the podcast. Absolutely delicious. Whenever she's showing it. Okay, let's wrap up Taco Bell's value menu here.

Okay. The cheesy bean and rice burrito at $1.59. I think it's going to be hard to beat that one. That might be the single best value menu. We have $1.29. Sorry, $1.59. Who cares? The cheesy roll up is $1.29.

That's so stupid. You can pay 30 cents to just get a bunch of rice and beans inside that tortilla with the cheese. That's worth it. Spacie Potato Soft Taco. We got a bad one. But that's the problem, though. If you have a large bat of beans, I believe the beans come in a powder to Taco Bell and they mix it with water. Which, like, no reason that that shouldn't work, right?

It's literally just a mush of bean, you know? But that is going to be more uniform than somebody, like, frying a potato to order. Yeah. Maybe it sits there and yada, yada. For me personally, like beans feel like a meat, like almost. It's a protein source in a way that potatoes aren't. Yeah, potatoes don't feel like a meat substitute the way that beans do. If that makes sense.

There's a way that like a velvety bean hugs the inside of your mouth that speaks to me very deeply. That is so poetic. That's very beautiful. The other day we got El Pollo Loco, which is probably still my favorite fast food in the world. Do you consider it to be fast food? It's like it. It is by all it counts, but it doesn't feel like it because it's just fresh-gilled chicken. It feels like a very, like, fancy because you can get a whole chicken.

Yeah, but you just, you walk into a place, you order it to count, you know what I mean? It's national chain. Yeah. But anyways, we got their pinto beans, so we, I have the same order. Pinto beans. I have the order saved on my phone. It's just like a 16 piece family meal. Yeah.

And it's like $60. And I just feed the whole kitchen crew with it. I mean, but anyways, we had the Pinto beans. And I was eating them. I was like, these are good. But I was like, hey, oh, Colby, you got the immersion blender out, you know, the stick blender? Yeah. And he just stuck it in.

and just buzzed it into a silky pinto bean puree that I enjoyed. Ooh, that sounds good. I don't really think I know the difference between what pinto beans taste like. What are black eyed peas? Are those pinto beans? No, pinto beans are what's in the Taco Bell. Your standard Mexican refried bean is going to be a pinto bean. Oh, okay.

And then a black eyed pea. What's a baked bean usually made out of? Oh, God, I think maybe a navy bean or a great northern bean? Wow, beans are fascinating. But beans are one of those weird things that are like there were a lot of beans that are indigenous to the Americas. Okay. I believe pinto beans and black beans both come to the Americas, but then they're like beans and bean-like products that are indigenous to Europe and Asia.

Yeah, where's Garbanzo beans from? So those aren't beans at all. What? But you know what they call them chick peas, right? Yeah, that's true. So it's like, is it a peas? Is it a bean? Is it a pulse? Is it a legume? Yeah. I don't know. I'm not a taxonomical expert on that. You should do an episode all about beans.

I'd be really cool. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out why my wife's allergic to some and not others. She's allergic to some beans? They're allergic to beans. What happens? She just, like, throws up in poops, like, in rapid succession. Oh, no. That's too bad.

I know, but we think there's, like, one protein that's found, what is it called? Like, lectins, I think, or a thing in beans that upset people. What are you allergic to? Nothing, dude, I'm allergic to bullshit. Actually, I'm not. I kind of love bullshit. I love it, too. I love it.

I kind of make a career out of it. I'm allergic to penicillin, but they say, because when I was a kid, like a baby, I got a rash. but they say that you age out of it usually and it's good to age out a lot of allergies. It's good to find out if you're still allergic to penicillin because it's good to have access to different antibiotics because antibiotics sometimes are resistant. It's good to have options when it comes to antibiotics.

There's a stand-up who has a joke that it really spoke to me that was I don't know any men with food allergies. I just know a lot of men with severe unexplained diarrhea all the time. Yeah. I think that's probably me with the food allergies question. I know that, like, a ton of women with bowel stuff. My, my, uh, my, my, the roof of my mouth burns and blisters every time I eat bananas. Me too.

Is that an allergy? I don't know. I like bananas so much that I just power through it. That's interesting. And it feels like the skin is peeling off. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I know pineapple does that because there's an enzyme in it called, I think bromine or bromelase or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, bananas. And then I get like weird burps after eating a banana, but I was just like, I just got the banana bursts. It's like you get itchy on the inside. Yeah, so I might be, I don't know. I love bananas and I refuse to stop eating them. We got to eat this right. Jump into Jack and Box.

Jump into Jack and Box. That is the slogan. We got their sourdough grilled cheese. This is the cheesy roll-up of Jack-in-the-box. This costs $2.19. All right. It's just a damn hamburger at In-N-Out cost these days. It can't be more than like, it was like four bucks.

Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to be real with you, dog. This is a pretty old guy. Shoot, I mean, we've been sitting here for a minute, but this looks aged. Okay. sucks. And it's not because it's old. It's because it's just a grilled cheese.

How much is it? $2.19. Yeah, that's ridiculous. Sorry, Jack in the box. That's a fair amount. Well, okay, let's jump into their tacos. Two tacos for $1.49. This is still, this is like the Costco $1.50 hot dog.

Uh-huh. Is this the same one? Yeah. So each of these tacos, 70 cents. You know, they're sort of like fighting the good fight. What's in here? Beef, lettuce, and cheese, and I'm going to put some Taco Ball hot sauce on. It might be a sin.

How do we feel about it? I mean, it's pretty good. I like that it's like a hard shell, but it's kind of soft. Ooh, I like that. I haven't had a Jacklin'Obach's taco in a long time. I've never had one. Really? Yeah, it's pretty good.

Why do you, why do I feel like you get a really nice toasted corn flavor off? That's a crazy thing that I've never said about Jack the Box taco? No, I don't think so. Like eating it through the lens of a chef? it in a fancy fast food. We did. We did. Because we made a fancy one. That's right. That was a fun one.

Man. Oh, that's not bad. Oh. I like that a lot. How much is it? A $1.49 for two. That said, you have two of those tacos or a cheesy bean and rice. Look at this fucking bean burrito, dude. Yeah, it's pretty good. I just said the F word on a podcast. Oh, this is tough.

Okay, we got one more. It's a dark horse. This is Jack in the Box's crispy chicken sandwich. This is the junior chicken sandwich for 249. I love and miss the cheap chicken sandwiches. Carl's Jr., I thought, used to have the best. Carl's Jr. There's so much black pepper in their batter. Carl's Jr. is also hearties, right?

Yeah, same thing. That's where, you know, I went to college in a dry county. I talk about that sometimes in Arkansas. And so you'd have to drive 45 minutes to buy liquor. But we would go buy liquor, then go to Sonic and get ocean waters and then put a crap ton of rum in those things. and then hang out in the parking lot of the 24-hour Hardee's. And that's how we discovered micro wrestling. What's that?

Micro wrestling is, it's little people wrestling. And there was, like, we didn't, I'd never heard of it. It dates back to, like, vaudeville is pretty cool. But, yeah, they wear a luchador mask. It's pretty amazing. But, yeah, we were in the Hardee's parking lot, and there was this, like, gymnasium. that I guess people rent out to do whatever.

People were cheering, screaming, we're like, what the hell's going on here? And we went up there, and it was micro wrestling. And I guess they go through the Bible Belt a lot. It's kind of this old school thing that's existed forever in America. And it's pretty cool, actually. And people from Arkansas had Luchador masks that match their favorite wrestlers. And I was like, this is so cool.

I went and saw that in Reno, Nevada, which is kind of the Arkansas of. eight hours away from Los Angeles. You know what I mean? I wrote something for, there was like an HBO sports like comedy kind of show that was going to happen. And I submitted a packet for like writing.

And I just decided to write about weird stuff. One was NAA. Oh, hell yeah. Because that's what my school was and I was going to play volleyball for them. But there's no rules in NIA. Oh, I would love to see an NIA. doc. Oh, it's really cool because there's no rules. There's no age rules. Yeah, I know like

27-year-old like professional Ghanaian sprinters who were like, yeah, I'll take a free trip to L.A. From all over the world. Yeah, you were some like 30-year-old Slavic women, right? There was, so there was another team that had two women from South Africa who were like over, like six foot five and they were like 35 years old. Yeah. And they were killing everybody. Like they were just whoop and ass. My team, when I was like, six foot. went to go practice with the team. I didn't end up playing because they had recruited Bosnian girls.

And I had never played volleyball so good. I escaped a war-torn country. So I probably wasn't going to play. They're in Bosnia and they're like, hey, this random place in the United States of America is going to let you play the sport that you love for free and just give you money for food. I think it's amazing.

At the end of the day, we've eaten a lot of value menu items here. I'm very ready to confidently crown a winner of the single best value item. We haven't tried. We didn't go to Burger King. We left out a lot. But we found... These are exciting ones, though.

The ones... Burger King, also, a lot of places have replaced their actual value menu with, like, weird deals that are like, buy one $6 combo and get three items for $1. And it's like, I don't want to play that. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. I'm confident enough to crown the cheesy bean and rice burrito. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the Jack in the Box tacos, close, close second.

Close second. The chicken sandwich, jacking the box had a pretty good showing other than the grilled cheese, but... Yeah. That's ridiculous. It's just two pieces of bread and cheese. Y'all got to cut that out. I got a piece of cheese. Two old pieces of bread.

That when you pull them a pot, they kind of stretch like an old piece of leather. You want that for a dollar, huh? I got to want to join in with this character. It's kind of a nice character. Yeah, yeah. And I put a cigarette out of it. I have laryngitis.

Give it to the kids. And we don't know how to cure laryngitis yet. We haven't figured that one out yet. That's a fun word. All right, Emily. Hey. Hey, we're back. Well, we've heard what you and I have to say, and now it's a very specific time.

Well, it's time to find out whether or other wacky ideas are rattling out there in the universe. Sounds great. So it's time for a little segment that we call. Opinions are like casseroles. Hey, have we addressed the hat that I'm wearing? Not yet. Well, my hat says people who get diarrhea from Taco Bell are weak. Their bloodlines are weak, and history will forget them.

Because apparently that's something that I said, the cuff in an episode. And we had a lovely fan whose name we know. Who sent us that hat, who also sent me a nice bottle of rum and some skull, that skull vodka. Dan Aykroyd vodka? And I appreciate that person very, very much. Thank you so much. I do have, like, your return address of things.

I'm going to send you a thank you note. I'll give Emily something to send to you in return. This is an awesome hat. It's so cool. It also kind of looks like a contemporary fashion hat in L.A. This is what people are wearing to look cool. It does. It looks, and it's embroidered.

It's so pretty. If I'm going out on the east side, if I'm going to like waltz in Highland Park, you ever go to Waltz and Highland Park? I know. They like ironic, they're like a dive bar, pool hall, pinball, but they like ironically serve hot dogs. How do you ironically serve hot dogs? I don't know.

I think maybe they're earnestly selling hot dogs, but people are ironically buying them. It feels like a hipster thing. It's become whatever the modern, because the term hipster is kind of dead. Hipster was like millennial kind of. That was our thing. That was like a leather apron, beard oil, man bun, flannel shirt, skinny jeans. I know more than you. Kind of riding a fixed-geared bicycle, you know, talking about a single origin coffee.

Yeah, if you're wearing a band t-shirt, they'd force you to name like three songs. Yeah, whereas now it's like you wear like a Celine Dion fan cam kind of shirt. Yeah. But like camouflage pants, they're piercing their hats now. Ooh, that sounds fun. The kids are piercing their hats. Looks a little cool. They're like putting piercing the hats.

I like that. This is literally all a snapshot from this one bar that I went to where I felt so tremendous. I want to go. I love high. But I kind of tried to look as dumb as possible. Yeah. Do I have a booger hanging out of mine? No, you're good.

Okay, good. I tried to dress as dumb as possible. I wore like, uh, being like ironic, I wore my yingling, uh, like thin t-shirt material hoodie. Yield sounds cool. Because I went to the Yingling brewery once and I got it there and it's sick. I love Yingling. And I wore like a plaid, oversized jacket on it. And then a hat that just said, I heart penguins.

because I do, and I got that at a penguin exhibit in South Africa. Cool. And I looked so in like baggy cargo pants. I'm honest. This sounds cool as hell. I looked so cool. That wasn't a cool look like five years ago. Wasn't it cool?

Ten years ago when I was trying to care about what I looked like. Well, right now, everything is gray. Have you noticed that? Everything's gray. Everything's Earth. It's like, it's just turning into this very like bland kind of monochrome look right now. Bringing colors back. I really think, especially the young,

people are wearing that. And I'm like, come on. Where color is it? You're in the, like, the youngest, like, most vibrant part of your life. Where's some vibrant colors? Dude, the athlete, the athal leisure in the earth tones is really bothered me, man. It's bothering me, too. It's like, what if we took purple, the world's most beautiful color, my favorite.

And made it gray. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Well, you know, we'll forget that out. I'm not too worried about it. Yeah. Great hat.

Let's get that first opinion. Thanks to that hat. Oh, my goodness. Wow. What a. What a voice feel. Yeah, take a cold shower, huh? But...

Have you heard the voicemail? I'm having an allergic reaction to my friend's cats right now. We can't help with that, dude. I'm all stuffed up. So naturally, I go to make tea. Okay. But we are out of all the tea I like.

And I'm so desperate for tea. Can you pause it real quick? This is the most adorable voice I've ever heard. It should be a voiceover for like a cartoon. Something like Jenny Slate would do. Oh, so adorable. This has a great Jenny Slate voice. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Okay, sorry, continue. Add some blueberries and a garlic. The blueberries through the garlic press. Whoa. So, yes. I love you. I love you, too. I love you, too.

Smart. What she's doing is very smart. Blueberry through a garlic press. So I think she's trying to kind of express some more. blueberry and it's as opposed if you were just boil a blueberry in some water, you wouldn't get any of the juices, any of the good stuff. Okay. But the instinct to say, I have no tea, I bet I can make tea out of stuff in my house.

That's awesome. Yeah. Because the tea, it's like an actual plant, right, called tea. It's chamelea senensis. I didn't know that. Yeah. Well, like if you look at like green tea, black tea, white tea, like all of these things, they come from a common plant, camellia senensis, I believe.

I could be messing this out. I don't know. It was like caffeine in it, right? And that's why tea became a thing, because it's like tea and coffee, both caffeinated beverages. Yeah, I guess I thought it was a bunch of leaves. Well, it is, but it's the plant. They dry the leaves. I see.

The tea leaves. And then they do it. But you'll have people say stuff like, oh, I love fresh mint tea or herbal tea. Yeah. Which has nothing to do with the tea plant. Right. It's just other leaves and herbs that are steeped in water. You know what I mean?

So if you want a hot beverage that has some differentiating factors to it, be yank got tea, look for herbs. Look for you got fucking old basil in your fridge. You got some blueberries. Yeah, that's smart. And I like the garlic press. Boil some orange rind with a cinnamon. If you boiled orange rind in a cinnamon stick and water and drink that, that'd be a lovely time.

I thought she was going to say that she was doing blueberry and garlic tea. Because that does sound like a weird old country remedy. It does. It sounds like I've got, you know, I'm allergic to my friend's cat. I'm going to drink some garlic blueberry mess. I mean, I don't know. That sounds like it would work. Tony and our kitchen made homemade.

He made a badge of homemade medicine. He did? Yeah, it's honey with a bunch of like ginger, garlic, and turmeric suspended in it. Oh. And apparently it does stuff. Kind of like a tonic, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I ruined it because I think I double-dipped my spoon in it, and I think that contaminated it.

So that's my bad, Tony. Well, they say that, like, it's good to wake up in the morning and the first thing you have warm water with lemon in it. Probably. They say it's good for you. I don't know. The warm water thing is something I can never get down with. I understand that it's better for you. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, people are like, don't drink cold water. I'm like, don't stop it. I'm so tired of people's opinions. Not too many things. Sorry, that is the name of this segment, and I'm saying I hate the opinion. I'm a man. I'm 33 years old, and I use a three-in-one body wash shampoo conditioner. Is it the...

That's fine. Is that Dr. What's this? Just fronner. It's like Old Spice. It's giant. It's a magnum. How do you not get itchy? I'm a dove sensitive skin.

I just don't think about how my body feels. You don't? No, unless I'm lifting weights. Oh, I see. Then I'm trying to really like isolate like a, you know, rear delt and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. But otherwise, no, it's itchy. What do you mean itchy?

Well, I just get, I get sensitive, sensitive skin things. If I have like a tag on my shirt, I rip it off, you know. Oh, for sure. But, yeah. Oh, it's very smart. Yeah. Also, sorry about your friend's cat, but it's cool that you're still their friend. and you're just toughing it out.

Boy, still gets me every time. You really got a call to remember. I have an opinion that is based in fact. So is it really an opinion? The sourdough that is sold in the grocery stores is not real. Oh, yeah. Americans are being lied to every day. Boom.

If you are seeking an external form of joy, learn how to make sourdough bread. Yes, this is a message from the sourdough cult. Also, my name is Lily. I'm based in Clearwater, Florida, done eating in Clearwater area. And yes, I'm obsessed with making sourdough. It's changed my life forever.

This people are cool. So I believe what they're referring to. Sorry, so sorry. Wait, no, talk for a second. Talk to a second. All right. I don't, sourdough is not one of my favorite breads anyway, but if I'm at a deli and I'm getting like pastrami or something, you got to get it on sourdough.

But I don't even know if that's the real sourdough If you get it at canters deli or something like that But yeah, most of the time I'm a chunky white bread kind of girl I'll have a Dave's killer bread If I want to lie to myself and say I'm healthy Okay, so what she's referring to It's called the Chorleywood Process

That's what I remember, they'll call it SowerFoe So you get like... Sourfoe There's a brand of sourdough that used to sell at Costco They still do It's like a kind of round oblong loaf That's pre-sliced. Everyone's had it. I think it's got like sand, something or other. It's just like delightful. Or even I think, I don't know about budan or budine from San Francisco. But anyways, it's like very, very sour. You go to a diner, you get that sourdough toast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's quite sour. Where that sourness typically comes from, it's like acidification that is a by-process of fermentation. So I think would it be lactic acid from lactobacillus? But anyways, the point is when people are making sourdough in a pandemic, the way you make that dough sour, is you just let the starter ferment and then you add it to dough.

And so this chemical process is changing. That takes time and takes effort to figure it out. So if you're a bakery, like a commercial bakery, a factory bakery, you haven't got time for that. You ain't got time for that. So what they do is I was Googling this. Which I don't even know what the starter thing means and I don't want to know. It's just a big collection of bacteria that are just constantly.

Basically bacteria, they eat and they fart and the fart creates bubbles. That's, like, kind of actually what it is. So that's why it rises. Wouldn't that be crazy? That's a great character. Like, what is it? Marcel with the shoes on or whatever. Yeah, Marcelo Shoeh starter that is a character and it talks and stuff. Just a globular mass.

Yeah, yeah. It's got glasses. But anyways, they basically artificially acidify the bread. And then also this is saying that they use, they add water and carbon dioxide to create bubbles in the crumb that would normally be produced during the actual fermentation stage. Okay. So, yeah, you're totally right. And it's kind of a product of American English that we just call that sourdough when we make it at home sourdough. Whereas like in France, they would call it pan au lavin, which means you're naturally creating, like you're not using commercial yeast.

You're getting like actually like wild yeast basically in a French pano levin, which is really cool. So yeah, that's a really funny distinction that I don't think we've ever talked about in the show. Very cool. Chorleywood process. Chorleywood process. Invented in 1961. I want to know what this message is that you guys leave that they have to listen to. 1833, dog bod one?

Okay, yeah, I'll call you. Hey, it's Peter from the Chicago Burbs, and I just want to take a minute and say how much I love McCormick-Montreal steak seasoning. Yes. I tried it side-by-side, the salt and pepper on steak, and frankly, I prefer that. And also, if you do a cursory little bit of research, you find that the Willoughby McCormick, who found in the McCormick Spice Company, is much more on the Little Caesar's end of the Little Caesar's end of a little. Little Caesars to Ralston, food billionaire degeneracy scale. Wait, wait, wait. I highly recommend continuing to use McCormick, Montreal steak seasoning for all of your meat seasoning needs.

Brought to you by Big McCormick. Utterly, God, it's so fun. One of the funny byproducts of being online and creating content, which fosters community for, you know, five, six years is you, um, You start communicating in a language with the people in that community that other people would have no idea what you're talking about. So when you say, like, the Little Caesars to Ralston continuum or something. Highway or whatever. So Little Caesars, that founded Little Seasers, I can't remember his name right now, but he, like, famously, like, paid Rosa Parks' rent until the day she died.

Just kind of like an all-around good dude, it seems. Versus Ralston, who the Ralstonites were a, they founded, like, checks. in a lot of other, in Purina brands that's still like going today. But I think it goes by the name Raulcorp now. But Ralstonites were a weird white supremacist cult that believed that through a certain purity of diet and also sunlight. I think Ralston was an acronym. Oh, yeah. Was that like the sanitarium?

There was like a guy the... This is like three levels deeper than that. Whoa. That they believe that white people, if they ate a vegetarian diet, could achieve mind control. Like, seriously, it's insane. So when you're talking about that continuum, I hate... hate that it means something to me. And I love that. That's interesting. I know nothing about Willoughby McCormick. He's the founder of McCormick, and I'm going to do some research on it.

Who owns McCormick, or do they own themselves? I think McCormick, I don't know, there's so many large food corporations now. They might be their own. When did they start? Early 1900s, right? Looks 1889 founded in Baltimore. That's crazy. It looks like McCormick is the parent company. Very cool. Which is pretty cool. Montreal steak seasoning. I grew up eating their spicy Montreal steak seasoning. And it was like that in Tony Sachery's were like the only seasonings we had in our house.

We got some Lowrys. You don't really need much else. Oh man, people just want to powder that makes your food taste good. Yeah. I think that the steak seasoning thing, I never tried the McCormick. I think I just try whatever is the cheapest. Dude, find the Montreal steak seasoning. I do not know what association it has to do with the city of Montreal.

But it's just like chunky salt and garlic and onion. Nice. And it is divine. I'm going to go pick up, I think, is spicy Montreal. We just put it on burgers, dude. It was great. Oh, I got that. But do you think that there's going to be some kind of a gourmet movement where people

make their own steak seasoning and dry a bunch of things and put it in a little jar? I think some people do that. I think that was more a millennial hipster thing. That was like our cool thing. That feels like a millennial hipster thing. Yeah, yeah. We've done some stuff like that in the kitchen. We've made our own dried alley.

powders and they're like, this is so much work. It's too much, but I think it's a funny thing to imagine someone with a handlebar mustache doing. Yeah, and they certainly were. Yeah. Well, hey, thank you so much for stopping by. Hot Dog is a sandwich. I really enjoyed watching you watch me eat a bunch of dollar food today.

And thanks for having me. This is always fun to stop by. I love when you stop by, you know? Thanks. And if you want us to stop by, more podcast. I don't know where that was going. More podcast. Stopping.

Buy, listen. Yes? Check us out. We are on the Hot Dog is a Sandwich YouTube channel. It's his own channel now. If you haven't figured that out over on YouTube, and also wherever we get to your audio, we publish episodes on Wednesdays.

Call 1833 Dog Pod 1. If you want your voice to be featured on the show, you've got to call the number after this. I know. We'll see y'all next time. Bye. Hey, this is Emily Fleming. I was just on your show.

I'm actually sitting right next to you right now. I want you to talk about beans. And I just, I want to know. Where do garbonzo? Gabonzo? Where does Garbozo beans come from? And I love you. I'm like, hang on the goddamn phone.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry.