Doughboys - Baja Fresh with Claudia O'Doherty

Episode Date: June 2, 2016

Actor and comedian Claudia O'Doherty (Inside Amy Schumer, Love) drops by to share her knowledge of Aussie eats and review her first visit to Mexican chain Baja Fresh. The 'boys and Claudia embark on a vodka version of Drank or Stank.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When you're caught with a Bible in North Korea, they kill you. Those are the words of David Kim, a Korean immigrant and devout Christian who, here in the faithful nation of America, ascended to CEO of a mid-sized Mexican restaurant chain. In a 2011 episode of Undercover Boss, Kim proved a hit with Heartland viewers by taking a moment to pray with one of his kitchen workers, himself an immigrant from the Philippines. Kim is no longer with the company, nor are the restaurant's original founders, Jim and Linda Magalos, who took out a third mortgage on their home to open the first location in 1990.

Nor is fast food juggernaut Wendy's, which purchased the chain in 2002, only to oversee a massive contraction in its per-store business before cutting its losses in 2006. It's unclear whether the turnover and tumult is a symptom or a cause of the South of the border chain's shifting fortunes, at one point an innovator and rising star in the Mexican American sector, and now perceived as a second-rate Chipotle. But with 265 locations across 29 states, Singapore, and Dubai, the chain endures and is credited with popularizing the fish taco and familiarizing Americans with a more upscale version of Southwest Cuisine.

This week on Doughboys, Baja Fresh. Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants. We're a part of Ferrellaudio.com. If you'd like to support us, go ahead and go to Ferrellaudio.com and click support. Sounded very redundant, but this is my first time saying this, so I'm sure I'll tighten up the copy in future episodes. This is new to me. I didn't even know this was happening.

This is a new thing. Dustin and I discussed. We basically discussed ahead of time and said, there's no point in briefing Mitch about this. We both of us decided that I would be the one who handled it, and we're kind of fucking it up. Good decision, Dustin. We have an Amazon affiliate link that supports the podcast network, so it keeps this show

going, keeps all the shows going, and it doesn't cost you anything. It's the easiest way to support the show. So check that out. But right now, let me introduce you to this. Ferrell. Fuck, I fucked it up, too. Ferrellaudio.com. Ferrellaudio.com.

And then click support, which is in the upper right hand corner. But right now, let me introduce myself. I'm Nick Weiger, alongside my co-host, pre-ghost, Slimer, Mike Mitchell, the Spoon Man. Oh, fuck. That insult came via Connor Golden. Thanks, Connor. And if you've got an insult you'd like me to use at Mitch at the top of the show, go ahead and email roastspoonman at gmail.com.

Pre-ghost, Slimer? You're saying I look like a bulb? Yeah. And I think also, too, I think in the Lady Ghostbusters reboot, a Slimer is now a men's rights activist, so that fits you. Fuck off. Ugh, you're a piece of shit. Adam Wu, a.k.a. Wu Tang, posted on my Facebook wall today a picture of Hodor holding the

door and said, good job holding the door at Mike Mitchell. So as of this recording, we're recording this on a Tuesday. This past Sunday was the episode where they revealed, this is the major spoiler, if you're not going to put it up on YouTube. I didn't say anything. I just said he was holding a door. Yeah, but it's a major revelation involving the phrase, hold the door, came about on a recent Game of Thrones app.

And our guest has a confused look on her face, which is fine. I guess it's already. I'm not confused. It's holding the door because he's courteous. I just want to say, howdy-how to Spoon Nation. And here we go. Howdy-how. Howdy-how.

Very voluminous wet dream. Oh my fucking god. Look at that special. My fellow Americans, I would once again like to say that I did not have sexual relations with that woman. voluminous wet dream. Well, they offer hundreds of free products, computers, notebooks and accessories, televisions, home and portable audio and video, fashion and cosmetics, housewares and much more.

Visit them today. Voluminous wet dream. That was good. Yeah, that was great. I like the underwater music from Mario 64. It's a nice track selection. Oh, that is the underwater music from Mario 64. Yeah.

I was trying to place that. You said that earlier. I was thinking Mario Kart in my head. I didn't know what you were talking about. No, Super Mario 64. No, I get it now. I got it. I got it.

Thank you to Brady the guy. Brady Dilla, I think your name is. That was a good one. Yeah. And a little Bill Clinton infomercial. Well, it is political season. Yeah, it is. I know.

Who you voting for? Your Trump guy. Wait, you can't turn around on me. I don't know. As of this recording, I think the California primaries will, I'm trying to think of when exactly this episode will come out because recording this a little bit in advance, but I think the California primaries will have just happened.

So we'll probably have a Democratic nominee at this point. We'll probably just be finally officially Hillary at this point. Which you'll like because you'll like Hillary because you're a cock yourself. You and Hillary have a lot in common. You're saying because Hillary had a husband who committed infidelity and that makes her a cuck. That term is usually applied towards men.

Just towards men, yeah. But let's not forget that you're Nick, the cuck, Cuckmaster Riger. My mom was in town and she helped me clean out my apartment and I donated over 30 bags of clothes to Goodwill. You know what? I would say this is not a thing I'm going to poke fun at because I know that hoarding is a very difficult,

it's a thing you've dealt with, Mitch, you get over psychologically and you sent me some pictures of your apartment. It looks spick and span, so congratulations. You know what? You kind of are making it sound like I... First of all, I wasn't going to announce that I was a hoarder to the podcast listeners.

Second of all, you make it sound like I have an AMC hoarding type addiction, which I mean, it was bad. Like most comedians, I guess I have my mental ups and downs and I needed to clean some stuff out. I mean, to give people a visual of your apartment, if you would step into it in the past, it was mostly standees of Tom Brady and then pots and pans filled with human urine.

That's not too far off. No, I'm proud of you. Great job. I'm sorry for announcing a thing that you maybe had a hang-up about on the podcast, we can get it out. Yeah, this will just be one long beep. I've kept the kittens. That's the news.

You know what? We're ahead of schedule. So I only announced it last week that I had kittens. But I'm keeping the kittens. I was going to name on Ludwig in honor of Ludwig von Koopa. Oh, great. And then Armin was kind of upset at me and he wanted to name... So my mom suggested I name it Wally.

Armin Weitzman was upset that you were going to name one of your kittens after a Koopa thing? Yeah, he always wanted to do that, he said. So he was kind of upset. Okay. And my mom said that I should name one of the... One Wally. Because I'm from Walliston in Quincy.

Sure. And so I might name that one Wally and then the other one Irma is the name. Yeah. So I'm keeping these cats. You know, there's probably been plenty of jokes about how I was going to eat them whole or something at this point. But they're sticking with me as of now. Well, that's good to hear.

They make my... I'm happy, I'm happy. Yeah, you got a clean apartment with two cute kittens. I think life is on the rise. Speaking of kittens, our guest is a huge kitten fan. I didn't know that. I honestly didn't know that. Let's introduce her, an actress and comedian from trainwreck and Netflix's love,

Claudia O'Doherty. Hi, Claudia. Hello. Hi, Nick. Hi, Mitch. Thank you. What a true honor to be on your lovely podcast. Mitch told me it's a big deal.

Mitch told you it's a big deal. Yeah, he was like it's a really big deal. It's doing really well on the podcast chart and it's going to be very helpful for me, career-wise. This is... Oh, my God. And it's helping me out. Also, those are bad cat names.

Wait, what? I'm so sorry. But you actually shouldn't name cats names that are like soft sounds like that. Irma? Because cats can't hear that. Cats hear like... And like... Like, so you...

Oh, it's a noise. I got a name with noise. Well, that's why people call cats pussy because it's like sharp sounds that cats actually can recognize. But like Irma, that's practically like... That's not even a word. I thought Irma or something. How's that?

Okay. Irma. I can get it. I can get it to a place where I can... I'm not going to do this right now. I can get it to a place where Irma... I can just do it harder or something when I call her. But why don't you just call it like tits?

Hold on a second. Then who calls? Also, who calls a cat pussy? My dad. Oh, really? Yeah, he calls his cat pussy. Oh my gosh. I think in Australia it's a loaded word.

I think also too, I think in the states it used to be, that was a colloquial term for a cat initially that got turned into a vulgarity. Yeah. I mean, I wasn't even gonna... The names are still being worked out. Why don't you call your cats tits and pussy? I just like walk around your apartment yelling those words. That already happens most of the time.

My Tourette's apartment where I'm yelling that out. What was in the bag? So it was bags of clothes. It was bags of clothes. My mom helped me... My mom was great. She really helped me out. She's a great lady.

But were all the clothes the same? Like checked shirts and jeans? There were some stuff that didn't fit anymore that I had literally had since college. Right. Did you have a little bit of weight since then? Okay. So you didn't have a different look. You had the same look, but in different size.

Yeah. I mean, some stuff was just so out of style. It was old. Like what? I mean, there was just some stuff that looked like stuff from 10 years ago or like 2005. I had a gap long sleeve shirt that said gap in the middle of it. It was very much like... I think that sounds cool.

No. It was... My mom was like... She was great. She helped me out big time. My mom was a great lady. I took her to Jack Allison and Armin Weitzman out to dinner. Nick, you didn't meet my mom and that was intentional.

I was happy that you didn't see her. She bragged to Armin and Jack that I was good at math at one point, which is completely unfounded. It was a good... That's nice. My mom was a teacher at my high school, which I think I've said before on the podcast. So I've dealt with... I've seen the...

Oh yeah. She's called you nicknames at school, right? She... We won't go into my nicknames. I'm okay. Sorry. Oh my God. Wait, what happened?

What's this about? Nothing. My mom used to have nicknames for me, but we won't get into that and we'll keep moving on from there. She used to call him Pre-Ghost Slime-Up. I'll be fine with it. You know, my mom was... I said this on the podcast before.

I would skip school with my friends, Mike is in Frillbot, and those guys would try to skip and try to walk by her classroom and would try to intentionally, when we were leaving school, try to leave right next to my mom's classroom and try to get me into a role. Rascals. Yeah, so we had... When I was in high school and stuff, it was one of those teenage... Oh, my mom annoys me sort of relationships, but we love each other very much now. I remember when I was in high school, I sent this girl...

This girl, Nicole Grazioso, I'm sorry, I'm saying her name, Nicole, and she doesn't listen to the podcast, and I sent her a note that was like, we should go drink beers or whatever, and I gave it to Nicole Grazioso, and then my chemistry teacher, Miss Ferry, who fucking sucked. Sorry, Miss Ferry, even though you don't listen to this either. She took the note down to my mom, and I walked in, and my mom was reading this note that I was sending, like a high school girl. When she intercepted it, she saw you pass it.

Miss Ferry intercepted it in her classroom and took it down to my mom. She effed you. She fucked me bad. My mom read a note of me being like, we should go drink beers together. Also, what girl wants to go drink beers? Well, I mean, I was as bad with girls back then as I am now. You should have invited her for a Cosmopolitan. She would have loved that.

We were like 17, I think, at the time. Six in the city was huge. So that was a part of the challenge of being in the same school with my mom. She read this note, and I had to deal with her knowing what... You know what I mean? It was awful. Did this girl ever learn of your intentions? Yeah, oh no, she saw the note.

Oh, she did see the note. She, like, was kind of in trouble too, and she's like, I hate this pre-ghost, slimer guy anyway. And so she was upset. But my mom and I have had a long history. I know, you have very much together now. We're very much together now. We're dating. Jesus Christ.

She helped me clean out the room. It was a great week. We went to a lot of great food places, and it was nice. It was good. Yeah. Yeah, and she didn't meet you, so that's good. You'll be the weird guy at my funeral all alone. We'll just see if I outlive you.

I'm guessing not. Claudia, you are from Australia. Where specifically? I'm from Sydney, Australia. You're from Sydney, Australia. I believe in Sydney. I think that's one of two places that just America knows. You know Sydney and the Outback.

Oh, okay. Wait, that's the other... I don't think of that either. What would you think of? Sydney and... I don't know the other one. It looks so good. Sydney and...

Is there Queensland? Yeah, that's another... That's a state. Oh. But I thought you were going to say Melbourne. But I guess... Oh, yeah, Melbourne. The first other city I thought of was Perth.

Is that a city or is that a... That's a city. That's a city. I thought of Perth. We also thought of Melbourne. But I'm just thinking in terms of an American assessment of Australia, a lot of this... I feel like a lot of it was characterized in that Simpsons episode.

Are you familiar with the Simpsons episode? My entire... We were so sad about that episode in Australia. Were you really? The Simpsons was huge in Australia. Yeah. Three times a day, we had five channels. It's like all...

Anyone watched. Everyone loved it so much. So they started promo-ing that episode for months beforehand. Yeah. And they were like, the Simpsons are coming to Australia. And we didn't realize it was a cartoon. So we really thought they were coming to Australia. We were like, wow!

This is so exciting! And then it was a very mean episode. And we just thought they were just... I don't know for some reason, just be very complimentary about Australia. I mean, it's a very funny, silly episode. But we were very sad. But I spoke to Brent Forrester about it because he works on Love Now. And he used to write for the Simpsons.

And he said they used to choose the countries that were like biggest fans of the Simpsons and then just like be very rude about them. That's fun. Yeah. It's kind of like you rip the ones you love, right? Yeah. But there was like an online poll last year. Because on that Simpsons episode, somebody...

They said like an Australian character calls their currency dollar-edues. And then there was like an online poll to actually change the name of Australian dollars to dollar-edues last year. What are they called? Dollars. Oh. Sorry. They should have changed it to dollar-edues. I feel like that's fun.

That's also so funny that you guys... Because I had heard that story before. And I laughed so much because it's funny. You guys were like, Yay, they're going to be nice to Australia. That's insane. This irreverent cartoon is going to really celebrate our country. Yeah.

It was a bummer. So... I mean, I was probably like 10. Yeah. And you didn't care, right? Oh, I was... No, I was so sad when I watched it. I was so sad.

Well, shame on us, I say. Yeah. Shame on you. And shame for bringing it up, Weiger. I apologize if there are any sore memories there. But I did want to talk about a couple of... I looked at some Australian chain restaurants in advance of this. Oh, yes.

I wanted to see if there were any of these you recognized, because they sounded very... They sounded like an American's... What an American would think an Australian chain restaurant would be called. Muzzbuzz. Never heard of it. Never heard of Muzzbuzz. All right, how about Brumbies Bakery's?

No. All right. One more. Look, Dracula's Cabaret Restaurant. Okay, Dracula's Cabaret Restaurant. I have a few friends who've worked there. It's like the place that Titus works in the incredible Invincible Kimmy Schmidt. In Kimmy Schmidt.

Okay, okay. So it's one restaurant in Melbourne, which is like a cabaret theater restaurant with horrific food. So it's not a chain? No, it's like a spooky themed cabaret restaurant. Gotcha. Yeah. All right, Wikipedia has led me astray.

I did recognize, because remember we discussed in our previous episode, Hungry Jacks. Oh yes, that's our version of Burger King. Why isn't it called Burger King, do you know? Because there was already a Burger King. Someone had already invented a Burger King restaurant that was different to Hungry Jacks. So when Burger King came to Australia, they had to come up with a new name. But in Europe, Jacks means toilet. So any friends I had from like the UK thought the fact that it was called Hungry Jacks really

funny because they thought it was like Hungry Toilet. Yeah, that's kind of a misstep by them. Yeah, but no, it just was like Jack, like Jack in the cards. It was like, it still had a regal polish like Burger King. That's so funny. I never think of Jack, like the Jack as like the jester, right? Like what the fuck is a Jack? I thought he was just the guy.

He's just a guy at the castle? There's like the king, the queen, the ace who's like in charge of everything. Wait, the king is in charge of everything. I think the ace is over the king. In a card deck, yes. But he's like the hand of the throne. He's like the guy pulling the strings. You're saying like in medieval times there was an ace?

I'm saying like in the... Yeah, I didn't know that the ace was a person. I think he's making this up just like those stupid chain restaurants. No, I think in the lore of the cards, if we're trying to... If we're trying to... What the story of the deck of cards is, I think that there's King and Queen, I think there's an ace who's like a Rasputin figure. And then I think there's a Jack who's just like a guy who hangs out

and then I think there's the... That's insane. The Joker is the wild card. The Joker is the one who cracks everyone up. Yes, of course, the Joker is the wild card. You know what, you should write a... You know how there's like battleship? You should write like the deck of cards movie.

There should be, I mean there should be a cards movie. Like why not? I think there is. There is a cards movie? I'm sure someone's developing one, surely. I mean there's like the cards in Alice in Wonderland. But I mean like an actual like thing, a franchise based off of cards, I think, yeah, why wouldn't that...

That would be a pitch anyone, someone would totally buy. I think it sounds awful. I was joking. I don't think it's a good idea, but I think it's a sellable pitch. Also it's got a very yucky aesthetic. I feel like the cards in an aesthetic is horrible. So I guess it's very magic-adjacent. And it's just like...

Wastecoats don't work there. So what do you like? Do you like Burger King or Hungry Jacks better in Australia? KFC. KFC? I was not one of my choices, but that's fine. Well, there is no Burger King in Australia. It's just Hungry Jacks.

Oh, so that Burger King is gone. But that is Burger King. Oh yeah, that Burger King, I think it was like one small restaurant. And it's gone. But there's just Hungry Jacks. Hungry Jacks is like fine. But it's not that nice. But if I'm gonna eat fast food, I want KFC.

Interesting. I love KFC. You know when I went to Jamaica, KFC was... There was a KFC... God, where the hell did we stay? I don't know. But we stayed... Fuck, it's on the tip of my tongue.

But whatever, there was a KFC in the town square. And it would be mobbed. People loved KFC. There was a McDonald's too, but people loved the KFC. It seemed like the way... So I feel like maybe KFC has a good reputation outside. I feel like in the United States, the reputation is kind of so-so. I think it's still probably in terms of number of locations.

It's probably a top five chain. Oh, for sure. Fast food chain in the US. But yeah, I've heard the same thing about China. I've heard it's like huge in China. People love... They'll go to McDonald's, but it's all about KFC. It's not huge in Australia at all.

It was bigger in the 80s. And that's to be honest when I really got into it. Because my family loved McDonald's. My brother-in-law says they loved McDonald's. And I didn't because I didn't like burgers. Got you. Too much bread. The bread was too sweet.

Oh. These are some of my feelings about burgers. Is that... Wait, are those still your feelings about burgers? No, I like burgers a lot more now. I like Shake Shack and In-N-Out. Okay, all right. What's you like better?

I've only had In-N-Out once. Okay. But I've had Shake Shack more. I think I like Shake Shack more. But In-N-Out's good. In-N-Out's really good. It's good. It's worryingly cheap.

Yeah. But I guess it's fast food, so it should be cheap. They have a... But it's like... It's cost efficient. It's very cost efficient. Yeah. I warned you before you came on the show that Nick is a bit of an artist.

And one of the things that he obsesses over is In-N-Out. He loves the In-N-Out burger. In-N-Out is fantastic. It's great. It's consistent. It's very well done. And it's affordable. It's stellar.

And it's the winner of the Tournament of Chompions. We crowned it the best burger, so... But what about... You know, animal style fries. So that's like... It's like cheese on top and onions and then like a mayonnaise mix. Yeah, they're spread. Why would you want that?

It's not for everyone. But I think it's pretty good. Okay. I mean, like, you know, it's... A lot of it is just you want something with your fries other than ketchup. Or other than dry. And so I don't know. I mean, it's kind of like...

Other than dry? Yeah. Some people eat fries dry. Dry fries. Yeah, yeah. This is a weird way to say it. I'll take my fries dry. Yeah.

That's what I say when I order fries. Look, I... Plain. Yeah, plain. Plain is fine. Well, dry. Not dipped. Like you're not dipping.

You just say fries. Yeah. Yeah, just say fries. Yeah, she's right. You don't have to say dry because then it makes it sound like they're wet, usually. All right. Sometimes you're okay with the absence of a dip. Yeah.

And you just will have fries. Yeah. But I don't know... But who ever wants that? Animals. They're good. I get them sometimes. I think they're very tasty.

Being a cuck, do you like... Do you like to watch people dip their fries and ketchup and eat them? Like I get off on watching other people eat food that I can't have. Uh-huh. I don't... First of all, I don't have this fetish. This is something that you imposed upon me. So, if you're...

So, cuckolding is what you're talking about. So, the name is you're a cuck if you're into it. Yeah, Nick is a cuck, yeah. No. And what's his wife called? She's an angel. An angel. Poor Natalie.

Yeah, what are you impugning her reputation? No, no, no. She married a cuck. She doesn't have any part of this. She just married a cuck. This is fucked up. All right, so wait. So, we just had our...

So, a few episodes ago, we discussed Popeye's fried chicken on the podcast. Oh, yes. I never had that. Okay, so Popeye's is one that's competing with KFC out here. But what about like... Have you had other fried chicken in the States or have you compared KFC in the States versus KFC in Australia? Actually, I've never had KFC in the States. I have had like lots of different fried chickens here.

I went to like Roscoe's... Do you like Roscoe's? Yeah, but I prefer KFC. Oh, all right, that's funny. The thing is, I know... I just really love those 11 herbs and spices. I don't have KFC very often. I have it like maybe once every like four years.

You might be the only person who thinks of those 11 herbs and spices when they eat it. I don't think anyone... I just think it's so good. This is how I have it with... I do know I get a wedge of lemon. And I sprinkle the lemon on top and that really cuts through the greasiness of the chicken. Wait, is that a thing that people do there? Is this your own innovation?

That's my own innovation. Oh, so you're weird. But I mean, I get... You would do that for fish and chips. I like a perfect bite. It's not crazy. It's not crazy. An acid is going to help because there's so much grease.

That's true. There's a lot there. And I really like fried chicken. So I sort of order it whenever it's anywhere. Now, obviously it's like on so many menus, but it's never as nice as KFC. KFC forever till I die. Bye. You're leaving?

Yeah, I'm going to go. And I'll play with you. I can't believe a guest hasn't walked out on us yet. But you know that Colonel Sanders secretary when he invented KFC and like mixed up the first batch on his concrete patio. Her name was Claudia. Really? How the fuck do you know? I read the Wikipedia of KFC a few weeks ago because I was like interested in what I was passionate about.

Felt passionate about. That seems like a very deep Wikipedia. Thank you. We could have done, we haven't done KFC on the show. We could have done KFC. You didn't suggest it to me. I would have loved to have done it. Oh, God damn it.

We could have done KFC. Fuck. Did you ask our guest anything about her? You gave me so many options. None of them were KFC. Did you ask her input at all? I know, we know each other in the love universe more so. It's true.

We're not dating. We're on the show love together. Oh, yes. Exactly. But it would be weird if that's how you said we were dating. We know each other in the love universe. I don't think any listener would think we're dating. We're on-screen paramours.

We are. And I apologize to her anytime that we have to touch her back or hug her in any way. It must be terrible. But I will say that you're not the first person, the first girl to be paid to kiss me as a joke. There have been plenty of others before you. Oh, really? As a joke on who? I'm kidding.

I don't think that there have definitely been girls who are like, hit on my friend and like trying to like... Oh. Yeah, there's been down times but not my whole life. I remember I liked this one girl in high school and she knew that I liked her and then she like danced with me at the dance and was like... It wasn't like a slow song. It was like kind of like we were like...

What was the song? We were grinding. I don't know. You were grinding? Like, yeah. We were like doing like a funny... How old were you? I was like 16 or something.

Okay. Yeah. High on robitussin. Just a... Wait, really? Probably. I was a dumb, forked 15 or 16-year-old kid and I drank robitussin at one point. Is that what lean is?

No. No. Liger. No. It's completely different. Okay. I mean, not completely different. But it's lean.

There's some cough syrup drink that people consume, right? Yeah. And actually, wait, is it the same active ingredient? Because it was robitussin DM. Okay. It's called robertripping. I used to do... Oh my God, I can't believe I'm a bit of this.

When I was like 15 or something and you couldn't get beer as we drank robitussin and I did it like, you know, a dozen times or so. It gets you... But it gets you a little buzz? It felt like... It felt like, to me, like tripping on mushrooms. Got you, really? Like, I felt like the closest to tripping on mushrooms.

There was a... I went to this... I used to go to this awful hippie music summer camp when my parents wanted to get rid of me for a few weeks. And there was this... The two bad kids, I remember, they were the bunks next to me were these two bad kids who like wore combat boots and all black and like dead Kennedy's shirts and stuff. And their scheme once, I think I was about 12 or 13, was they took their cigarettes and

they soaked them in listerine so that when they smoke them, they'd get drunk. Which I don't think works. Ew. I don't think that works either. Yeah. I don't know where they hurt. Like, they probably read that in the anarchist cookbook or something. Wouldn't that just like make the cigarette just like explode into flames or something?

And the alcohol would just burn off, right? You would think. I mean, yeah, that's like drinking listerine doesn't... Like you have to drink a ton of it. You'll get sick. Yeah. It doesn't track. But I think they did it and were like, oh, we're drunk.

And it's also funny for me to look down on that when I drank Robotussin. My friend... You're a fucking idiot. I remember my friend John Paquette, a guy who doesn't have a weird name, I guess. We were drinking Robotussin in my basement and we went upstairs and my dad was watching the thin red line. And there's like a scene where like the guy gets shot and then you see like a butterfly or whatever.

It's like this weird trippy scene. And then John's dad pulled up out front and like John and I were just sitting there like weirded out and I led him to the door. I was like, see you later, man. And I watched him walk outside and walk to his dad's truck and he fell face first in front of the truck. So it gets you really, it gets you really, really fucked up. Jesus.

And that's what we sometimes would do when we were... When there was nothing to drink. It's pathetic, but that's what we would do. Come on, Australians start earlier over there. I know that. What's your drinking age in Australia? 18. All right.

But like kids are drinking when they're like 16 and right? Yeah. I think the first time I got drunk I was 14. There you go. And I drank, I drank rocket fuel, which is a mixture of any alcohols that are in the house. And it was my friend's house and her parents were away and her step-brother gave me rocket fuel. Rocket fuel.

Man. It was so gross. I've heard of like, I think I've even heard of rocket, like I've heard of that being called rocket fuel. I don't know if we called it that, but I've done that. It's like I was seeing teenagers to get as drunk as possible. What were you doing at 14, Weigar? But I was so ashamed the next day I like threw up.

I burnt my arm terribly. I was like leaning against a towel rack, like a heated towel rack, which is not even that hot. But I was so drunk. I leaned against it for so long that I really burnt my arm. Oh, Jesus. And then the next day I felt so ashamed because I also kissed someone for the first time. Oh, wow.

The next day I was walking home and I was like, I will never drink or kiss again. And I didn't for about two years. I think from 14 on, I didn't do much kissing. The first time I got drunk, I got made fun of at school, not because I behaved particularly drunkenly, but because at some point I said the sentence, I like this beer stuff. Oh, my fucking God. What a major dork. I wish that I could, if I had a time machine, I'd go back and get young Mitch and take

him over to California and just have him beat the shit out of him. I'd kiss young Mitch on top of his head and say, everything's going to be all right. And then I would take him over to Weigar in California and just have him beat the shit out of him. So mean. No, he deserves it. You don't know him well enough. I don't.

We just met. Yeah, he's bad. So what do you think of like, what do you think of American fast food and American food in general? Are you like, you think it's gross? Like, you know, like, I feel like we have a reputation as being kind of disgusting. I'm dazzled by the range. Yeah.

The thing is in Australia, like the big ones, McDonald's, KFC, like they're all American. The only like big Australian mine, I think is O Porto, which is like Portuguese chicken, but it's like originated at Bondi Beach. So like, well, like, you know, the Portuguese, yeah, whatever, there's a bit like really it's McDonald's. And so the like, they're just very American foods anyway to me. Gotcha. So then coming over here, it's like, oh, all these things I've heard about in TV and movies,

I'm like, oh, there's Wendy's and there's, you know, there's, I can't think of any more. Well, those are the big ones. KFC, Wendy's, McDonald's Burger King. Pizza Hut. Pizza Hut. We had Sizzler briefly, but do you have Sizzler anymore? We do. It's contracting a little bit.

There used to be more Sizzlers, but there aren't as many anymore. It's sad to hear the, oh, we had to talk about the one we went to yet. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. It's sad to hear that Baja Fresh is on the way out. Yeah. Well, it's, I don't know if it's...

From that intro, the tragic intro. I don't know if it's on the way out, but it's certainly, you know, it was bigger at one point. And I guess at this point, to talk about it, had you eaten Baja Fresh prior to this experience, Scotty? Never. So this was your first time? This is my first time.

And I would say it was Baja Fine. It was fine. I've eaten at Baja Fresh a lot. My first time I went was in college, and I will say that Baja Fresh has, I think there's a distinction I can make between, oh, I have this fond memory of something, and then I'm revisiting it later, and it doesn't hold up. Like when you watch this cartoon that you liked as a kid later, and it's just like, oh, this looks like shit, and this doesn't make any sense.

Like you watch like a DuckTales, and you're like, oh, DuckTales was awesome. And then you try to watch a DuckTales like, this is fucking incomprehensible. There's no, this plot doesn't make any sense. This looks like shit. This is stupid. And... Oh, relax. You could...

What's your vendetta against DuckTales? Forget DuckTales. I just threw a, pulled an example in a vacuum, and it could be anything. Any cartoon of your choice. But this is like, this is different. This isn't like, I'm looking back on something nostalgically and seeing it as this ideal that was unrealized, and only now I'm seeing like, oh, I'm seeing the truth, but I can't admit it to myself.

I have really seen a precipitous decline in Baja Fresh over the years. Well, it's funny because it's a young restaurant, too. It's pretty young. It's only 26 years old. Yeah, 26 years, yeah. From listening, I listened to your intro this time. And that's, I mean, that's decently young. It was pretty empty when we went there.

Yeah, well, yeah, it was. There was not many people in there. So, Nick, your first time there, you were in college, so this was like 1990? I'm not 50 years old. This is early 2000s. Oh, early 2000s. Did you take a bite and go, I like this Baja stuff? I will say this, this is, it was so, it used to be like so fresh, like Baja Fresh and like,

they like went overboard with the freshness. It was like super duper fresh. It was dead on all the food. Yeah. But one thing they would do is that they got rid of this, I remember when there was the Wendy's merger, because I remember this was one of the first, what's the word I'm looking for, casualties of the merger, was they used to give you a whole sprig of green onion wrapped with your burrito.

And it was just like, it wasn't necessarily something you would eat, it was just kind of a garnish, but it was just kind of a nice like, oh, this, this like, this is this fresh. I've got this, this, this super fresh green thing served with my burrito. And then they excised that, because it was just a little bit of flair and it probably saved them five cents per order. But it used to be like really nice and really upscale and like, I would say like clearly better than what Chipotle is today. It was like, oh, this is like really a nice place where you can get, you know, restaurant

quality food at takeout prices. Yeah. Well, because I have a question for you as far as what Mexican, and especially Mexican fast food is in Australia. Oh yeah. We've got, we've got Taco Bell that came like, I think 10 or 15 years ago. And I was like excited to try it because you've heard so much about it. And I'm also like very drawn to liquid cheese and that's hard to get in Australia because

that seems like a very American thing, but like shiny liquid cheese. Yeah. Like melted cheddar cheese or something. It's not cheddar cheese. Like the sauce you mean. Like the sauce. Yeah. Just like yellow stuff.

Like nacho cheese sauce. Yes. Okay. And I was like, ooh, but then it is actually very disgusting. And so I didn't like it. And then the, like kind of the only other Mexican food until like probably the last 10 or 15 years was like this stuff you would get in the supermarket market called Old El Paso. And that was like a taco making kit.

Oh, so you don't, and would there be a lot of Mexican restaurants this in general or now? No. But there was like, but like there are more now. And I think because tacos are so sort of fashionable now, you can get tacos in places. Yeah. But all the only tacos we knew were like hard shell tacos that you would get out of the box.

But I loved it when we could, when we had that. Yeah. That was like the closest, because I've said on this podcast before it's weird. When I was younger, like Mexican food felt like a very foreign thing to me. Like it did. Yeah. Like obviously different for you. For you being out here, there's, there's a much, you know, bigger Mexican population

and the culture and there's the food here and stuff. But in Quincy, there wasn't a lot of that. So it would be like the yellow shelled tacos and me and even that, like I was like, weird, what is this? It felt very much like a cuisine of ratios. So it was like every dish had the same ingredients, but there was like more beans in one. And then this one had like rice, had more rice, but it was like always like an avocado eating, a sorcery thing, a meaty thing, a beany thing.

That's an interesting breakdown. And then it was just like, however you dial up those five ingredients. I think that's really cause I think you kind of are hitting on something because I think that's kind of the genius of Mexican food is you're basically taking a few components and then just rearranging them in different configurations. Yes. But I love them. Yeah.

Yeah. Yes. I, my first experience with Baja Fresh was out here in like 2005, 2000, yeah, 2005 was my first year out here, 2006. And I thought it was- It wasn't 2005 or 2006. I graduated 2005. I came out to the summer semester.

We've got to know. And so it was officially 2005. That's my final answer. But you know, 2006 was my first real year, full year. I know that you were joking, but you know what? I'm going to go ahead and explain it anyway. We got time to kill baby on this podcast. That's all we do.

So Baja Fresh to me, I agree with you. I thought Baja Fresh was good. I thought it was, I mean, not to saying that I think it's terrible now, but- It does have like a bad off to taste. I have a bad taste in my- we ate our meal right before we came here, Claudia and I. And I don't like the taste that left in my mouth. No. It's like a, like a chemically, a dine.

You make those noises. To get cats to come to me and also to describe Baja Fresh. Yeah. It wasn't nice. It wasn't nice. Yeah. And I saw the quality decline too. Like I remember it was, it was better.

It was better when I was first out here. It was a place that I would like, like when I didn't know anyone in L.A. and I was just kind of on my own, I would sadly go to Baja Fresh and eat a burrito and I would really enjoy it. And now like, when you compare to Chipotle or like Paquito Mas, which is a local chain out here, it just, it gets blown away by those, but by those two. Chipotle, which is good, if you do the right thing, we've talked about it here, is it, is Chipotle in the gold plate club?

It's in the platinum plate club. It is by force. It's all the way at the highest echelon. Huh. Maybe we went too high on that. But anyways. You can revise it, sure. You love Chipotle.

Chipotle is, I mean, it is much better than Baja Fresh. You haven't been there either? No. Oh man. So what are the big chains you've been to? KFC, Wendy's, McDonald's? I've never been to Wendy's. You've never been to Wendy's?

No. Really? I've only been to McDonald's and KFC in Australia, and then over here, I've been to In-N-Out and Shake Shack. Oh wow. You don't, you don't find yourself to have, like, like, you're, you don't even find yourself in situations where you just need a quick bite to eat and just, they're like, ah, if I got to go to this fast food place, it's just never something you do?

No. Wow. No, I guess I just, I don't know, I don't like to eat, I, I love food and I love bad food, but sometimes I'm trying to think of, like, I feel like I must eat more fast food than that, but I can't think of any fast food. Is there anything here that you, like, that you ate in Australia that you can't get here? I know Vegemite is a thing, but I don't want to, ah, Vegemite, I love Vegemite.

You love Vegemite. I still love Vegemite on my toast every day. Wow. Oh wow. See, I feel like, That's also a food of ratios, because people find it disgusting, but that's because they put, like, 20% butter, 80% Vegemite, and you got to flip that ratio. You got to flip around.

And then it's just like a kiss, a kiss of Vegemite on the toast, and it's a real treat. I tried Vegemite at Camp Fatima at one point, it was not a fat camp, or maybe it was Camp Burgess, and, and there was an Australian counselor who was like, come here, and you hate when people do, you hate, she hates when people do Australian accents, but it's weird because I, I do them so well, so it doesn't make sense that you get so upset by it. And he was like, he was like, try this and I tried it and I, I have never tried it since and I remember hating it, and I wonder if I would like it now. I'll tell you the best way to have it with another Australian delicacy, which is Milo.

What's Milo? Milo is like a, it's like a tin, it's like a big green tin of brown, malt chocolate, malted powder. What? And you make, you, you put three scoops of that into a glass, and you put milk in there, and you mix it up, and it turns into chocolate milk, but they'll, they'll be like a top layer of like, crunchy, malty chocolate that you kind of eat with a spoon as you drink it. That sounds good.

And it's so good. Wait, and you put Vegemite on top of it? No, but to have that, like that sweet chocolatey drink with this salty spread on toast, actually it's best in winter to have a hot Milo, so you've got like a hot, a hot chocolate really. And then a salty toast, it's like a true wintery treat. Your home from school, it's Australia, that's what you have. Is it cold? Does Australia get very cold or no?

No, it's probably like, it's like Los Angeles. Oh, okay. It's like the exact same climate. For Sydney. Can you get Milo out of here or no? No, because also Milo is available in quite a few different countries, like in different, like, I know that they have it in the West Indies, and they have it like in the Philippines, but it's always a different, it's a different formula in each country, and it's marketed

kind of as a sports drink, because it's so high calorie, and so like, they're like, you've got to make them up. Like a shake or something? Like a, like a. No, but it's for everyone, it's for kids, really, but like it's always like an athlete on the tin, even though it's like a sugar, it's just like a sugar carbohydrate, it's like, if you needed to gain weight, if you were like malnourished, it would be a very good food.

Like a protein shake. We should probably get Milo. Milo is so good, I love it, I miss Milo. It's always funny to me when I hear something like that, that the states don't have, because why the fuck don't we, why don't we have that? We should have that, we should have Milo. I think like Nesquik is probably, have you got Nesquik? Yeah, we got Nesquik.

Like what else do you have that you can like put in, what powders do you put into milk to make chocolate milk at home? Oh boy, you got, you got your Bosco, you got your, oh god, that was such the weirdest pull. There's another one too. What's the, there's a, it starts with an O, what the fuck, it's Ovaltine, yeah, your Ovaltine. Quick, I think is the big one.

I think Bosco and Ovaltine are maybe older generation, more popular with older generations and then there's certainly your, your Hershey's syrup, Hershey's syrup was a good thing. A much more syrup based culture. Yeah, yeah. Does that gross you out or do you like syrup? No, I don't like syrup, but I'm a raging chocolate, so what do you, I mean, I'm complicated. That's a good question. What do you want?

Syrup is too sweet and it's like not chocolatey enough. I agree with you. I agree with you on that. I think. I hear the noise again. No, but I think you're, you're right though on the chocolatey front, because it's like, I feel like it's kind of like a, the maple syrup you get that's like corn syrup with like 1% maple syrup versus like real Vermont maple syrup, like there's like a huge difference

there and like the, the Aunt Jemima pancake syrup and like actual maple syrup. And I think it's the same sort of thing with, with like Hershey's syrup or any of those chocolate syrups, they're, they're not chocolatey enough. Yeah, they're like see through and they're not chocolatey enough. I think I'm a syrup guy. No. I like the syrup more. I think I do.

If you're going to give me a liquid chocolate that I'm going to put on maybe an ice cream dessert, I'll take your hot fudge or I'll say no. Thank you. Did you have ice magic here? Is that the one that it like turns into a shell? Yeah. Yeah. We had magic shell.

We called it ice magic. What the fuck is magic shell? You haven't heard of magic shell? It's so great. It's like liquid chocolate and you like, you put, you know, like you push it out of a container onto the. Oh, and it forms like a hard, yeah, a hard chocolate shell. I've seen that at ice cream shops when they're like usually when it's a, what does a soft

serve ice cream? They usually dip it in and then it forms a hard. Completely different product. That's just chocolate. But this is like a, it's like a form of chocolate that they mix with something. It's like a thin, there's like an oil or something. There's like a coconut oil or some kind of oil that means it stays liquid at room temperature. But if you put it on ice cream, it turns into a hard thing.

Hmm. Sounds like some sort of magic. I don't know. I'll heist magic. Okay. Or magic shell. Magic shell. That was one of the things like, my parents let me eat so much garbage and that was one

of the things they wouldn't buy. I think cause they just like thought it was some weird, had some weird chemical in it. I don't know what the fuck magic shell is. Definitely does. Yeah. I do want to hear from our listeners if they prefer liquid chocolate first, uh, first, uh, powdered chocolate for their, for their milk. That's a good, yeah.

What do you mean syrup versus powder? Syrup versus powder. Give me a hashtag. It's not for you guys. You don't have Milo cause Milo's cause it's so multi as well. It's very different to a Nesquik or a noble team. It sounds like with that layer, it leaves on top. That sounds pretty distinct from what we've got.

It's really good. If you like the, the powder one tweet us hashtag Milo and if you like the syrup, hashtag Otis. We're going to get to the bottom of this. All right. So, so let's dig in a little bit more on Baja Fresh. Um, so, uh, Claudia, what did you get on your visit? I got, um, I got some chicken taquitos because I think of my, because of my old El Paso pass, I'm still drawn to crunchy things.

Sure. Um, I also got, we also got some pork nachos and we also got some, uh, I got a shrimp taco as well, like soft, a soft taco and then Mitch, Mitch got a burrito, but that's not the question. I'm sorry about that. I got the, uh, oh shit, now I forget the name of the burrito cat, um, which I had it on the top of my head. Yeah. We got the, the pork nachos, the chicken taquitos and the chicken taquitos we got with black

beans. Oh yeah. And that came with guacamole and sour cream and then the nachos had pork on it, had sour cream, cheese and pinto beans and then the fish taco, I didn't try, but it was a shrimp taco. Oh, I'm sorry. Shrimp taco. It looks, it looks good.

Probably the nicest thing. I thought that it looks, it looks good, which is, it's funny because you said that. And then I got a chicken burrito and I'm going to tell you what it is in just a second, but you can go ahead, Weigher. It was a, God, what was it? Well, Claudia, talk about, uh, what did you think of the individual components in this meal? Okay.

I liked it. I went for the shrimp taco straight away because it looked the nicest and it had the most bar half fresh ingredients on it, like cabbage and the shrimp didn't look, I mean, I thought it was a high risk to get a shrimp product. Yeah. It generally is. In a fast food place, but I thought, why not? Don't care.

Um, and it was surprisingly nice. And I ate the whole thing and I didn't eat any other whole thing. Everything else I was sort of dipping into it. I was like, yeah. I only ate half the burrito too. It was kind of, uh, yeah, the chicken taquitos to me were the thing that kind of slowed everything else down. It was, and I think that's the flavor I'm still tasting in my mouth.

It, the, it felt like if there was like that grease, nasty aftertaste, I enjoyed the rice that was underneath the taquitos more cause it's just like salty filler. And, uh, you know, to keep, I don't know who invented taquitos. They feel like, uh, a concession to like, you know, people who want crunchy things. Well, they, they are that, but are they, are they, uh, are taquitos, uh, were they made in America? Cause the burrito is an American. Oh, really?

That's my understanding. Yeah. The crunchy taco as well. At least I've heard, I would assume that they are an American invention. I've seen them called the rolled taco and maybe older, more authentic places and then later maybe got the name taquitos. You can get, you can find good taquitos, but I think they're kind of fool's gold a lot of times cause you look at me like, oh, taquitos look good.

And a lot of times they're just kind of inadequate if the meat's dry or something or they don't have a good dipping sauce. I'm really, how could the meat not be dry? Yeah. To get a deep fry of, of narrow tube of corn that's, you know, dry out the interior. Well that's the thing. Like the, and when you seek out a good taquito, like if you find a place that actually has that moisture, it's able to capture moisture in the meat, and I don't know if it's just

through a matter of, of, of flash frying it or just are marinating that meat enough. But I mean, like there's a place in LA, Benitos, which has really good rolled tacos. And you know, they're places you can find it where it's okay, but a lot of times I think you're like, oh, taquitos look good. Then you have them, they're at disappointment. It's like, it's too, they're always too tight or something. It's just not right. I'm going to make a big statement.

I've never had a good taquito. Wow. I think taquitos aren't good. I truly have never had a good one. Have you been to Benitos? I've never had a good one either. Taquitos. But I always order them.

They are appealing. They, they look like they should be good. And why can I reject your invitation to go to Benitos with you? They look like they should be good, but I never, I've never had a good one. Here's what I've run into. The other thing with the taquitos, and I think they had kind of a bad reputation because so many people have them of the frozen variety. You'll get like the 30 packet Costco, it's a very cost efficient snack that will last

you a while, especially if you're a, a, a single man like I was for a time. So then to prepare it, are you deep frying it at home? No, you're getting, you're getting a, I mean, that's the ideal, but a lot of people are, don't have their own flat. Most people, I say, won't have their own deep fryer. So yeah, you're just getting them and, and taking a previously deep fried thing and reheating it in the microwave. Gross.

So yeah, it loses a lot of its, its crispiness as well. If you do a toaster oven, it's maybe a little better, but yeah, I think that's how a lot of people can have taquitos and so they have a negative, you know, they just have a negative viewpoint towards them. They're buying good taquitos, but like, like I said, they're Fool's Gold a lot of times. See them on the menu, stay away unless it's a place that's known for its taquito reputation. Um, uh, let's keep talking. I think they're just fools.

I don't think they're Fool's Gold. I, I feel like, uh, what is the gold part of about, they, they, they, they look like they might be good, but I've learned now that they... That's exactly what Fool's Gold is. It looks like it's valuable, but it's not. It's iron pyrite. You know, oh my God. It's iron pyrite.

It looks like it's going to be... Shut the fuck up. It's going to be delicious, but it's not. It's Fool's Gold. You think Fool's Gold looks delicious? No, I'm saying that taquitos do, and they disappoint. It's all, it's like the fajitas thing, like fajitas, they're, they're always better coming towards you on a sizzling platter than they are when you actually start to eat them.

They're always like, oh my, oh those taquitos, they look and smell so good, and then you start to eat them and they're never quite up to that presentation. Yeah, but here's the thing, by Fool's Gold, I'll get confused and tricked. Taquitos, I'm not going to get them. They suck. They just are bad. They'll eat one tonight. Yeah, I know.

It's true. They looked good. How about this? They ate one one hour ago. They're like... You got fooled. They're like sirens. They're like the, they're like the sirens of the sea.

No, they're like witch's fingers, like beckoning to you. There you go. There you go. Crunchy long witch's fingers. They, witch's fingers is the best. I like that. Yeah, I like witch's fingers. They're, they're, they're never that good, and I agree with the fajita comparison, and

I got to say, I, I, I read what my burrito was, it was a burrito ultimo, and it comes with grilled veggies, jack and cheddar, jack and cheddar cheese. No, there's the first problem, grilled veggies. Ugh. I, I, I, I agree with you because they stood out and they were so bad in the burrito, and I was like, I used to get this burrito and I didn't think it was that bad. Like the, they just aren't cooked well enough. Like they're crunchy.

I know, some of these veggies, peppers. Yeah. Oh, get out of here. Oh boy. Anti-pepper stance. I'm very anti-grilled pepper. I, I, you know what? I got to kind of agree with her.

Here's the thing. It's a dominant flavor and it's a flabby texture and it's ruining everything in the burrito. That's an extremely hot take for all of American cu, cuisine. Grilled peppers, I, I, I agree with you. I feel like unless they're really, they're cooked really, really well and you get them on like a sausage, like a, if, if I get a sausage with grilled peppers and onions and the peppers are really well-grilled that they're almost like, not soupy, but like, you know what I'm talking about?

Like almost liquefied. Sure. Uh, then, then I'll like them. But I, besides that, I'm not like, I need a greasy pepper, besides that, I do, I need a greasy, uh, overcooked pepper. A caramelized pepper. A caramelized pepper. That's what I was trying to say and, and so often if they're crunchy, they just are

overwhelming. That's because it needs to be cooked long at a low heat and that's when you're going to get that caramelized texture and they're not going to do that at Baja Fresh. Why don't you tell, we should tell, they need to know it because it really ruined, it kind of ruined the burrito. I think we should go back there after this podcast and tell them. I think a lot of it comes from, they've forgotten their mission statement, they've forgotten the fresh part of Baja Fresh and then probably instead of a fresh, a whole, uh, green peppers

and red peppers, they're getting there, that they're slicing in store and, and cooking right in the grill, they're probably getting, uh, frozen pre-sliced in a bag or maybe it, you know, it's just sitting in the walk-in fridge and, and it's, uh, I don't think these, I think the quality of the ingredients needs to live up to a con, a, a concept like that and I'm guessing it's just not, uh, they don't have the same, the same caliber of, of raw materials and they're probably not seasoning them and preparing them to the same degree as they once were. Yeah.

Because yeah, that used to be a really good burrito. I used to get that one in the Baja burrito. Those were the two I'd swing between. The, the Baja is, uh, the Baja, I feel like was maybe the better choice. I just, I wanted sour cream. I like sour cream at a burrito. Sure. The cheese though, you couldn't even taste the cheese in it.

It was very, it was, it was kind of heavily rice-based. It was not good. They did a bad job and I'm with you because I remember this place as being good when I first moved out here. I found better places. I found Paquito Mas. I even like Chipotle better now, but there was a time where I would never have thought that I would like Chipotle better than Baja Fresh.

I was like, this is a cool Southern California chain restaurant. Even though it is in 30 other states, but I was like, right? You said 29 states? Yeah, but I mean, it was, it did start in Southern California and they could have like been like, oh, we are like a Southern California, you know, Mexican concept and they could have kept that sort of Cali Fresh, you know, character to all their locations, but I think they've overexpanded. In Beverly Hills 90210 when Dylan McKay like goes, when he like leaves, he goes to Baja.

Is that right? I'm not sure. I'm not familiar with the show. Okay. I mean, Baja is a- That sounds right. It is right. I'll confirm it for you.

Sarah was drinking my Baja Fresh soda. Thank you. You're right. Yeah. Baja California. Right. That's where he goes. And he gets away from it all.

Or did he just go to a Baja Fresh? I haven't seen it in a long time. That was it. He said to Brenda, meet me at Baja Fresh. She couldn't, she couldn't meet him there. Did you watch it as a- Very much. As a kid?

Yeah. Do you know what I remember? It's funny just thinking back on old TV. I remember the episode where they were like one of the 90210 characters will die. Will kill themselves? Yeah. And then it was that nerd with blonde hair who was like- Who wore a cowboy hat to school.

He wore the cowboy hat to school. And then he shot himself in the head. And he accidentally, he was like twirling the gun around and shot himself. It was kind of a cop out. But I remember that being such a big deal for television that like- It shows how far it's come. This guy's come. Yeah.

People die- No, no, no. You're right. People die constantly on TV. I don't know what I was going to say. I was just like, it used to be that, okay, we'll introduce a tertiary character just to be killed. Now just main characters-

Yeah. The children are trying to top each other by killing main characters. And that's why it's such an exciting- This is the golden age of television because everyone is at risk. I think we should kill someone off on this podcast. Oh, my God. I mean, it will obviously be made inside the last one in. No, no, no.

You're safe. You're safe. You're a national treasure. The first thing I'm thinking of is probably going to do it to himself. You're thinking of yourself, right? Yeah. I've got the bean and cheese burrito with pinto beans. The bean and cheese burrito, I think, is like a very good baseline for a Mexican restaurant.

I'm not the first person to make that observation, but it's a very simple dish, and if you can do it right, I think it's a good barometer for whether a place is worth patronizing. I don't know. I mean, like- You always get a bean and cheese burrito. I'm not always a bean and cheese burrito guy, but I will try- Don't fight! But what is all of it?

It's just bean and cheese. It's just bean and cheese, and you choose pinto beans or black beans. I usually opt for pinto beans because black beans are too much liquid, and then just too much liquid in that burrito, I think, just mess it up. But the pinto beans they have at Baja Fresh these days are too liquidy. There's just too much moisture in them, and for having that just be one of the two components, the main component inside a burrito, that's dripping through that tortilla, and that tortilla is starting to fall apart.

Well, that's embarrassing for you, and for Baja Fresh. Exactly, yeah. It's a mess. It's a big, sloppy mess when the ideal burrito consumption is that you've got a fully contained thing where your hands are coming out of there pretty clean with just a wipe on the napkins. I had to go wash up in the washroom. How much cheese is in the burrito?

There's a good amount of cheese, and it was good and cheesy, and I'd say that was the best part of it. But I'm just going to ask, are you sure that some of the bean and cheese on your hands and shirt wasn't from before you came to Baja Fresh? I'm quite confident. I got myself bean and cheesy in the restaurant, not beforehand. And I was at the, incidentally, the Baja Fresh in Cerritos, California. Oh, the Otto's Park.

Yeah, right by the Otto's Square, the famous Otto's Square. And then I also got a crispy fish taco, which was, this was on my first or second Baja Fresh experience, I went to get their fish taco because it was like a novelty. It was like, oh, they got these fish tacos, you've got to try them out. And I remember being surprised that it was crispy because your assumption is that you're going to get some sort of fresh fish, but it's more of like a fish stick. That's a true Baja signature, right? Yeah, it really is.

And it's gone down in quality. I mean, I feel like you can kind of tell if that fish stick, I don't know for sure if it used to be frozen, but it seems like... Did you say the fish stick? Yeah, fish stick. Oh, okay. No, I didn't... Fuckin'.

So I had, like, you can tell that fish stick, that piece of breaded fish, it feels like it was frozen, whether it was or not, that it seemed like it was frozen, it was a little cold in the middle. The Christmas doesn't... It was cold in the middle? Yeah, it just... Jesus Christ. Yeah, it wasn't great.

And then just like the tortillas were... The corn tortillas were just... Thank you for playing along, Claudia. I think it's fair to be incensed. I can tell. I'm furious. I am flipping out. And the corn tortillas were just like dry...

This shouldn't be a dry dish, like that works counter to what the concept is. No, fish are from the sea, which is the wetest place we've got. Exactly, exactly. Thank you, Claudia. So yeah, not enough sauce, tortillas were too dry, the fish stick wasn't adequate. I don't know, it was underwhelming. I also got the spicy and medium salsa, they're one of the first places I remember having a salsa bar.

Oh, you said it's a salsa bar, that's pretty cool. The salsa bar, it was fun. That was a thing that... It was cool that Baja Fresh had the salsa bar and they have, you know, they have like their... What's it called? The salsa verde and like their... What's the darker salsa with...

I think it's not Roja, because that's red, right? It's like the black salsa with tomatoes in it, it's great. And when I first was out here and trying some of those sauces, I was like, these are great. I've never tried sauces like this before on the East Coast, I've never experienced anything like that. And they used to rotate in different seasonal ones too, which is a thing they've done away with, but there was a time when... What was the Christmas salsa?

It was... I think it was mint. Holly. Mint Holly and white beer. I do remember they had a seasonal mango salsa, which was very good. They had a mango salsa too. Maybe they're keeping that up at some locations, but they didn't have at the Cerritos one. This is the most angry I've seen you about a restaurant, maybe.

That can't be true. Yeah, I guess you've gotten it. It's because he's been let down. Yeah, and I get that. It is a let down because you and I at least have... We thought this place was great. We taste its greatness at one point. But maybe you've just become more sophisticated and know what gross food is now.

I think... With anyone else, that could be true. I do think it's possible, but like I was saying earlier, I think I can kind of sense an actual decline here. I feel like I try to be self-aware enough to be like, okay, this is me remembering something better than it actually was, versus I think this has actually gone down in quality. Right. Yes.

For you as a US outsider, which I call you all the time, on set and so on, where would you rank this as? Where do you think this is as a fast food place? Do you think this is... I can tell it's not the worst. I can tell it like there are places where it's like I wouldn't even go in. If I were in an airport and that was one of the options, maybe I would choose it. But I...

Yeah, I mean like mid to low is how I would rate it. I get that because it is an interesting thing too. I'm just saying like she's like not being from here like even thinking of where... Because a lot of people don't even know of Baja Fresh, which there's like... But it's like Taco Bell is so bad, so it's like, well, this is a lot better than that. But see, I like Taco Bell way better than Baja Fresh now. But perhaps you mean bad in terms of like it's like very trashy and low scale, you know what I mean?

Like this is... But the food is nicer, is it at Taco Bell? I've never been to Taco Bell in America. I don't know if the food is nicer. I'd say it's maybe lower quality but tastier. I would rather eat Taco Bell than eat Baja Fresh in most instances. Yeah, me too. But it's a different thing.

Like Baja Fresh is certainly aiming for authenticity much more. But yeah, you go in and it's like... I think there's also something to it. It used to be this very like... The interior design hasn't really changed. The logo has never really changed. It's kind of been consistent and it used to at one time... Is it a checkered flag as part of it?

Yeah. Why do I think of like race cars? Yeah, there is a weird black and white checkered thing. I'm not sure what that has to do with Baja but that's part of their logo. Yeah, I don't get it either. But I mean like it... There used to be... That used to be like inviting and it felt like kind of like, oh, this is...

They've got high tables and they've got like this very clean white interior and now it's like... I feel like every time I'm in one of these, it's... Everything's a little rough around the edges. Everything's a little scattered. Like they just haven't... It just feels like it's... Now it just feels old and it hasn't been updated in a while.

It's so weird. We're in agreement here because I feel like it was a place that was... I was like, oh, I can't wait till this is on the east coast or whatever. It felt like a... And there are a couple but they were not in Boston and I was like, it feels like a place that it's going to take off and my friends will know about it in a few years and it just... It didn't happen. It went the other way.

And so the problem was that they sold to Wendy's. Is that it? And then they lost integrity? That's where I... I mean like... Look, I like Wendy's but I think Wendy's was unsure what to do with the company and around their acquisition is when things started to get a little bit cheaper and they started cutting corners a little bit.

I think Wendy's... No more green onion. Yeah, I think Wendy's was trying to apply the Wendy's... That's what you would call the movie. Which I wouldn't put it past them to write. Yeah. Like... He was entertaining the idea of writing the cards movie earlier.

It would be like there will be blood or something. Yeah. But it's about blood, right? No more green onion. I mean I think that is... I think you're right. I think it is an indicator of... But I mean it doesn't...

Wendy's is delicious and I feel like they're like... When I eat their beef or chicken I'm not like... You know what I mean? Like I know it's a different thing. I would just say that... What does that noise mean? Yeah. We don't know what I'm saying.

No, I don't know what you're saying. What does that mean? Like a... Like a... Like a... I don't... It's not that good sort of thing. Generally.

When you eat a Wendy's you're like, yeah. Yeah. I think they broke... I think they violated their premise. Their premise of the restaurant is Baja Fresh which is that we've got like this fresh, pseudo-authentic... Would the movie be called No More Green Onion Violating the Premise? Yeah, that's the subtitle.

Yeah, Violating the Premise. Sorry, I interrupted you. No, it's okay. I don't know where it's going exactly anyway but I just... I feel like they were trying to... They aimed for this murky middle where they were trying to be a little bit more cost-efficient and a little bit more budget-friendly but also try to have the same... To handle their food in the same esteem and it just ended up satisfying no one.

And you know, they should have just either gone all the way and been this more upscale concept or said like, okay, we're just going to try to do this Chipotle style or we're going to try to do Sub-Chipotle. We're going to try to undercut Chipotle and do a more budget-friendly version of that, you know? They should have just picked one. I'm going to rename themselves the murky middle. I like that.

That sounds good. That's the tagline. All right, so let's get to our final verdicts on this restaurant. So Claudia, this is how this will work. We'll each give sort of our closing argument and then cap that off with your fork rating for the chain on the scale of one to five forks. Okay. So we'll start with you.

Okay, so I think it's the kind of place if you're starving you could go to and you wouldn't feel horrible afterwards, but you couldn't eat too much food because then you would feel horrible afterwards. So if you carefully order and then and don't eat everything, you'll be okay, which is not bad for a fast food restaurant and it is not expensive. So that's good. Yeah. It was cheap.

I'm going to give it two forks. Two forks. All right. Go ahead, Mitch. Yeah. I think Claudia is right. I think it is that. Oh.

Why is he crying? Why is he crying? It's so upset. I had a sneeze that went away. What I said was so poignant. It made my sneeze. My sneeze is now gone and I come back. Okay, I'm good.

I agree with you and there is that weird thing with it. But you're like, you're saying if you eat a lot of it, you'll feel sick. And I'm like, well, like that shouldn't be the thing with Baja Fresh, but you're right. Like I was eating it and I was already feeling sick today and I was like, I don't want to eat anymore of this. I'm going to be really sick. And that's like a thing like where it's like, then I'm just going to eat Taco Bell and feel sick.

You know what I mean? Why am I going to eat Baja Fresh, which has turned into this kind of bland, like a bland Chipotle, which Chipotle is kind of bland by some people's standards. So I enjoy it and I gave it five forks apparently, but like I, what has Baja Fresh become? Like you said, once you take away, it's fresh cuisine and it's inviting atmosphere. It's nothing. It's dead. And I will rate it higher because it's still not the worst, but it could be better.

And I know that people will be mad because this is one of the restaurants that people don't know, but I feel like this is, it's pretty widespread. It's pretty widespread. It's in 29 states. Yeah. But I feel like it's not going to be for very long. I feel like. Yeah.

If it keeps on this route. Unless we put our money together and we buy Baja Fresh, that would be exciting into the podcast. I would love to get out of this podcast and actually own a chain restaurant. That'd be a lot of fun. Nick Weigher wants to get out of the comedy business more than anyone on earth. Well, I think I'm kind of getting pushed out. No, I had a, this is what you mentioned, this made me think of something.

I remember in college, because like, you know, Baja Fresh was like a nice place and this guy in my dorm said that, like, hey, I heard the franchise fee to start a Baja Fresh is one million dollars. Like you need a million bucks to start a Baja Fresh. I checked in on it. In 2016, the franchise fee to start a Baja Fresh, Baja Fresh, $50,000. Wow. Wait, was it really a million dollars?

That's what I mean. Allegedly. That was the tall tale that was being spread around the Michigan campus. This dumb asshole, that was your college buddy. Maybe he was just really trying to come. He didn't want you to buy the right franchise rights because he wanted to spend more time with you. And so he's like, you don't can't do a man.

It's a million bucks. That was like fine. I'll sit down and chat to you more or maybe that was the only thing that guy could find to talk to you about. I got a Baja Fresh later. He's like, I heard that they're cost a million dollars a franchise. Then you walked off and loaded your gun and thought about doing a school massacre. I'm sure.

Jesus. Whoa, Mitch. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The Baja Fresh is in a bad state. It needs a turnaround. I don't think it will. We got the taquitos. There was some rice.

I tried a little bit of everything. Yeah. I got myself a Coca-Cola because like I said, my little tummy ache, Claudia had a water just to be... No, no, don't get a Coca-Cola for a tummy ache. What's wrong with you? It's good. The bubbles in the...

If I drink diet soda when I'm sick, I feel like I'm going to get more sick. You shouldn't drink soda. I know. I know. I know. That's the main point. Sorry. It helps me.

It's like a clear soda. My mom would... My mom was an RN and she would always have me have like a... Flat ginger ale or something. Yeah. Like a ginger ale or a sprite. It's an Australian soda. Do you have like a specific type?

No. Just like Coca-Cola? It's just all Australia. Did you have solo? No. No. Solo was like a fizzy lemon squash. It was like a bit like less sweet and a bit less bubbly.

And the idea was that like you could guzzle it quicker. Sounds like a squirt. It's less carbonated. Yeah, that sounds like squirt. Did you... Is Aussie pie's a thing? Pies. Yeah, like meat pies and stuff.

We just call them pies. Oh, yeah. Meat pies. Yeah. You hold them in your hand, you eat them at lunchtime or at a football game. Is that a common thing for like a novelty? No, that's a very common thing. I used to like at school I would order from the canteen, which is like what you have as

a cafeteria, but we didn't sit down. We would sit outside, so it's so sunny. And then we would order, and every day for lunch I would order, I would have a pink doughnut for recess and then I'd have a meat pie and a chocolate milk for lunch. Very healthy. But then there was a poisoning scare. And they had to... They recalled the brand of pie that I would get, Big Ben, because it's like a meat pie.

And that was the only pie I liked, so then I stopped having pies. But like food poisoning, a lot like a poisoner. No, there was a poisoner, like a poisoner thrashing the Big Ben pie. Oh my God. Wait, really? Was this like the Australian Jack the Ripper? Yeah. Yeah, one...

It was like an unfounded threat as well. He didn't actually do it. I don't think. It was like a hoax. And then my school stopped selling Big Ben pies, which had the flakiest pastry on top. Oh man, those sound good. They were really good. There's an Aussie pie chain out here that just opened up.

They should try out. I wonder if you'd like it. I think I've had my fill of pies. Oh, okay, all right, yeah. I'm sorry to force these pies onto you. Get out of the studio. I don't want any more pies. But no, I'm like, my dad would get pies from the bakery every day for lunch.

I mean, they're nice, but it's like a peppery, meaty, jelly, foods. It's not healthy. Gotcha. They sound good though. I like the sound of it. Yeah, they're nice. You have to put tomato sauce on them. Ketchup.

Oh, okay. Oh, weird. Now I don't really know what to think. Anyways, it sounds a lot better than Baja Fresh. I'm going to Forks as well. Claudia, you and I have the same score. Oh, cool. I thought you were going to give a higher rating.

No. I mean, when I was going in there, when I went in there, I was in my head. Because I've had Baja Fresh a bunch. I was like, this is going to be like three forks. It's not the worst. It's not the best. But I lost a full fork in the process. And it was those taquitos.

It was those taquitos. And it just, it needs to get better. It has, Nick's right, it has to climb. But Nick, I'll let you finish off and let out some steam, I guess. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. I'm not actually going to be as harsh on it as you guys. I will go, I will actually go a little higher.

I do have a lot of fond memories at Baja Fresh. I have one particularly unpleasant memory at Baja Fresh where I went in to use the men's room and it was a single person men's room and I opened the door and it was unlocked. And I opened the door and was greeted with an elderly woman sitting on the toilet who shrieked. And, oh my God, I still maintain it's her fault. The witch with the witch's fingers. It was, it was a very witch like moment she was like, shrieks, she was like, oh!

Like she was upset at me, but I was like, you shouldn't be using, like fine, it's a single use bathroom, but this is the men's room and also at least lock the door. If it's a, like, if you don't lock the door in a single use restroom, that's your fault. Wait, so you walked into the bathroom, closed the door and settled this door? I didn't know. No, I didn't get that far. I opened the door, I apologized, but in my head I was like, that's on you. But anyway.

Sometimes it's hard. I've been in this situation where like, you know what, sometimes the door is really far from the toilet. Yeah. So it's not one of the, it's like a press in or a turning thing and you can't really tell if you've closed it or not. Yeah. I'm like, I've probably closed it.

And then you're like a million miles away on the toilet and then someone comes in, it's very bad. There isn't a way to verify it. Wait, that's happened to you before? Yeah. Oh, really? Recently. Oh my God.

I think I've told the story on here my Simpsons story I have, right? I don't know if you have on the podcast. Well, when I worked at the Simpsons, should I tell this? Is this okay to tell? I'm sorry to derail you quickly. Go ahead. I worked at the Simpsons. Such a horrifying story.

I worked at the Simpsons and I was there late one night for a script run and I had to go drop the script off in the basement of the Fox slot. It was like Friday night, it was like 11 p.m. and I went down there. I had to use the restroom. I will say that. I'm sorry that it's gross. So I went into, in my mind, it's gross. I went into the restroom, I dropped the script off.

This is the basement of the Fox building where the script department is. I went in there and I sat down on the toilet and all of a sudden the lights went out and I was like, oh man, the lights when I was like a timer or like a motion sensor. California. California. And so I started waving. I started waving my hands, I don't know how to have to do this because we're on a podcast and no one can see this, but I was waving my hands in the air.

What if you were on a desert island trying to coax a plane to land and see? 100%. Yeah, to notice me. I was waving my hands trying to get the lights to turn on. Nothing was happening. So I stood up, I took a couple steps and I was waving my hands and nothing happened. And then I opened the bathroom stall door and my pants were around my ankles and I was naked from the waist down and I was waving my hands trying to have the lights go on.

And then suddenly the lights shot on and a huge crew guy walked into the bathroom and he was wearing a sweatshirt. Why didn't he pull your pants out? So he saw my shrunken genitalia sitting in the wind and he had a crew shirt that said a house on it, the show House MD. So I... Hugh Laurie. Hugh Laurie.

Hey, I believe that he was a crew guy on house and I was waving my hands and he walked in and saw it and he stopped and he turned around and he left and he walked out of the bathroom. Did you make eye contact? Yeah. No, I was like front and center. We saw each other. And were you like, hi.

Sorry. No, I just stared at him and then he left. He left the bathroom. Did you keep waving? I mean, my hands were literally in the air when he came in and then I... Did he look at your genitals? He had to have seen them. There's no way that...

I mean... Because it's so big. I hope to God he saw them. He was wearing two... He was wearing two periscopes on his eyes. Like a pirate? He was wearing two periscopes. Yeah, like a pirate.

Was he very low to the ground? Why did he need a periscope? Oh, shit. I have binoculars. You mean microscope. He was wearing a microscope. You weren't wearing a microscope. You guys got me nervous telling this story.

He was wearing a microscope over his eyes and he... Even a scientist doesn't wear a microscope. I know they don't wear fucking microscopes. It was a visual joke for God's sakes. He's like a steampunk. But anyways, he saw my genitalia and he saw me waving. Did he look horny? He didn't look horny at first, but then he looked horny and then he left and I went

and sat back down and that was it. But did you continue going to the bathroom? I mean, I had to finish up and do whatever I had to do for sure. But you were so embarrassed. I was completely embarrassed. I went and told the birthday boys immediately about it. I was very, very embarrassed about the whole thing. Were you crying?

No. Why do you think that I... Do I cry that much around you? Do I look like a guy who cries? No, that sounds like incredibly embarrassing so much that you might cry. I didn't cry. I was extremely embarrassed and I was like, I never want to see this guy again. Well, I have a surprise for you, Mitch.

The crew guy from Houses Here? He's in the next room. I never did see him again. But if anyone listening knows anyone who's ever worked on the show House and we could find this guy, get in touch with the podcast on Twitter, is that what you do? If you remember hearing about a house guy who committed suicide, might have been the crew member. He had to quit because he was too horny.

So this guy... Please contact the show. This guy saw me, well, in both of your stories, I'll break him down, he saw me and he was so disgusted by what he saw that he killed himself. And then in your story, he saw me and he was got so horny that he couldn't work ever again. I think you merged the two. I think my story's nice. Yeah, your story's much more complimentary.

I think he could have gotten so horny that he couldn't hold down a job and then drove him to suicide. And that's what he killed himself. All right, I'll take that. Too horny to live. But that was my little... That was my Simpsons story. I'm glad you told it, Mitch.

So it's quite an anecdote. Baja Fresh. Thanks, Weiger. It is. It's good. It's a ripping yarn. It's a ripping yarn. It feels like a classic Farrelly Brothers moment.

I did remember seeing the Farrelly Brothers peeking through the window and writing it down. So yeah, I mean, the dishes I got were fine. They weren't great. Again, like I said, I feel like they've gotten away from their core business model and I don't think they're ever going back to a place of success. However, this meal is fine. I don't think it's bad.

It's fine. And I think if you want like a Mexican, if you want Mexican food, it's... Go to Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. Go to Mexico, ideally, or go to, you know, a local place if you have them or a better option. But if Baja Fresh is what you have, it will get the job done.

The Cerritos of Food Court I was in, or not Food Court, the Mini Mall I was in, also had like a Wing Stop and a Panda Express and a Five Guys. And I was like, I would rather have any of these over Baja Fresh, but I guess if I was craving Mexican Baja Fresh, I'll get the job done. For that reason, three forks. Well, I will do I. Yeah. Well, you know, it's not stellar, but I think it's adequate.

And for me, that's three forks. I think two forks is fair, however, I'm not going to argue guys on that. We almost had the hand-holding club, but you had to ruin it again. That's okay. We're in the same ballpark. How about we're in the same ballpark, buds? That's fucking the dumbest shit I've ever heard on this podcast. No, our forks, they're not, they're not outside of one fork range, and either directions

are all in the same ballpark. Do we have to say this from here on out? Yeah, we're ballpark buds. Let's get a ballpark buds tattooed on our back. I'll do it. This is extreme. I'll do it too. I'll do it.

That was, yeah, go ahead. No, you go ahead. Wrap it up. I was just going to say, that was Baja Fresh. It's time for a regular segment. We've got a beverage, and we're going to decide if it's worth pouring down your throats. It's drank or stink. So what beverage do you have for us, Mitch?

So today, you may be seeing billboards for it, and the billboards, they're saying move over Jack, referring to not front of the podcast, Jack Ellison, but actual Jack Daniels. It's vodka, it's absolute oak. So vodka that tastes like whiskey? That's right. It's a vodka that has, that it's aged in oak barrel, so it has an oaky taste to it. It looks strange. Rich brown colors, but for a vodka, it's very unusual.

It was kind of expensive. It was $25, which I guess isn't maybe that expensive for a bottle of booze, but I thought like maybe a little bit more than I thought it would be. I think it's not maybe on the expensive side for something like an absolute, which is maybe a little bit more, not quite an artisan vodka. Yeah. Yeah, all right. Well, it looks like a, have you had this before, Claudia, by chance?

Never. Are you a vodka drinker? What's your spirit of choice? I drink vodka when I'm out. I used to drink called vodka pineapple. I do, yeah, I sometimes do drink vodka. Gotcha. Yeah.

Vodka and jet fuel are the two? Rocket fuel. Rocket fuel. Rocket fuel. Those are the two? No, I guess when I go out, probably I drink whiskey or red wine or a vodka, but I only drink one kind of alcohol when I go out. What's like the Australian booze of choice?

You know, forever, the Americans are like, are told about fosters and we, and which is not true, right? Yeah, people don't drink fosters, but people drink beer a lot. Okay. We, and my... But also, Australia loves wine. I'm gonna pass this over to you, Claudia. Thank you so much.

Are there, are there vineyards and so on in there? We make a lot of wine. Oh yeah, New Zealand has a lot of wine, too, right? You can buy Australian wine in supermarkets here, Jacobs Creek, et cetera. I've had Jacobs Creek. It's okay. Yeah, it's fine. Oh, this smells like shit.

Smells disgusting. I know, we did the same thing at the same time. Really does smell pretty bad. I'm interested if there's any Australian Doughboys listeners. Oh, but look as well at the jar, the jar, the bottle is actually brown, so like they're making the drink look more brown by having a brown glass. Yeah, because it's kind of like an, it looks like an unappetite, it kind of looks like whiskey actually.

It's kind of like a caramel color, a little bit like a lighter whiskey. This actually just does make me feel like I'm drinking Rocket Fuel when I'm 14. Here we go. That's disgusting. You know, it kind of tastes like, if you're ever at a party, this has happened to me before, and you accidentally grab the beer that someone put a cigarette out in, and you have a sip of it, it's just kind of got like that ashy sort of nicotine flavor. Tastes like poison.

Yeah. It's also quite sweet. Tastes like poison. Yeah. It tastes like, it tastes like Rocket Fuel. Yeah, it tastes like a bunch of alcohols mixed together. It really does. Boy.

It really tastes like a lot of different... It's actually, yeah, it actually seems like bizarre that I was talking about that earlier, because now we're drinking something that brings me right back. A hundred percent. It tastes like Rocket Fuel. It's horrible. It says, the moment we began to arrest absolute and American French and Swedish oak, it transforms. The oak brings a new depth to the smoothness of the vodka, giving it a character of vanilla

and caramel with a hint of smokiness. I mean, surely one of the ingredients is sugar. I mean, surely one of the ingredients is sugar, right? It tastes, it's so sweet. It's a little sweet, and I do get like a lot of that smokiness, but it's an unpleasant smoke. It's not like a... Yeah, it's like a fake synthetic smoke.

It's sitting on me a little bit, and I'm getting like a little bit of vanilla, and I'm starting to like it slightly more, but I still don't love it. No way. Well, you would say that because you love syrups. Yeah. Wait, we never got a hashtag for that. If you like syrup or a dusted chocolate. No, we did.

It's your dumb Milo and Otis. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that was really good. Oh, I want to get a hashtag if you're... Because I want to know if we have any Australia listeners, so if you... Oh, yeah. Hashtag Doe Boys Down Under if you're an Australian listener. We do have Australian listeners.

We've read some on the feedback before. Oh, all right. Yeah. How many people listen to this show? I don't know the exact number. Dustin? He's holding up single digits. He's just pointing at me and Mitch.

Wow. That sounds pretty good. Congratulations, guys. Oh, they can't hear... Oh, really? Here's what we do. Let's keep the mystery. Nine million listeners a minute.

It's crazy. It sounds like a real... To me, I'm just hearing numbers in a vacuum, so I don't know how to compare them to anything, but that sounds like someone who used to work in the viral video field. That sounds like a decent number. I don't know. Oh, all right. Fifth biggest show.

Fifth biggest show. Well, not in the world. It's the fifth biggest show on Feral Audio. Not bad. I'll take that. A lot of popular, great shows on Feral Audio. Wonderful shows. And I should do the commercial at the top of the episode instead of Weigher,

who fucking butchered it. I didn't know that... See, I never knew that. I thought every time Dustin spoke that people could hear him. No, I don't think he has a God mic. I think he just has something that we're hearing in our headphones. That's news to me. No, if he wants to say...

When we've had him on the podcast before, he has to walk in here physically. Oh, okay. Oh, cool. You learn something new every day. Anyways... It seems like an all fair conversation to have. That's basically... You mean what this whole podcast is?

Two men with no concept of how to entertain an audience, rambling about bullshit. Well, anyways, we could get into the Dustin thing a little bit more about whether they can hear him or not. I kind of want to, but I guess let's just judge. Drank or stink? Stank. Yeah. I'm with Claudia.

I mean, look, I would drink this entire bottle, but that's just because I would drink alcohol to numb the general pain, I feel, but I think it would be a very unpleasant experience. I'd have to mix it with something to disguise this flavor because it tastes really bad. This is a different thing. What would you even mix that with? I don't know. I think it's a thing that you're supposed to drink on with soda or on the rocks. Out of town.

I'm not going to do that. It has like a harsh vodka taste. The thing that's crazy to me is that they were like, hey, Jack Daniels. Their advertising is very much like step aside and it's like, there's no way. Why the fuck would you want this over Jack Daniels? No, there's no way. No way. It's insane.

It's crazy. I'm also with you guys. I'm a stink. It sucks. Well, I'm glad we tried it. That was Drank or Stank. Just like a restaurant value or feedback. Let's open up the feedback.

Today's email comes to us from Add Byerley. The past few times I've been to a fast food restaurant, Carl's Jr., Wendy's, Burger King, or Hungry Jack's, and ordered a burger and fries to go. I have not been given ketchup. One of those times was in a drive-thru and since I didn't check the bag before I drove away, I was left to eat dry fries. Dry fries. Oh my God, fuck you.

At Wendy's, I had to stand at the counter for a minute or so trying to flag down a worker so that I could ask for ketchup packets. Am I crazy or should they toss a couple in the bag? Don't the vast majority of people want ketchup with their fries. T.S., I was the winner of the Guess the Spoon Man's email contest. I told all of my friends to listen to the next episodes after I won in hopes that I would get a shout-out, but the contest has mysteriously never been mentioned again. Did we send them a shit?

We did. No, I did. I sent them a Darden gift card. He continues. Anyway, thanks for the Darden gift card. My wife and I enjoyed a lovely meal at Red Lobster. When you guys review it, I would suggest getting a mojito. Ours was surprisingly good. Thanks for the email, Add. What was that question, Claudia?

What is the Spoon Man's email? I don't think Mitch is going to say his email. I'll say it now. We can bleep it. Okay. Yeah, we'll bleep this. Dustin, is that okay? Is that more work for you? Not at all. He said not at all, and we could hear it. We could hear it, but the listeners could not.

Claudia, it's interesting. Oh, God. Thank God we're not real-life couple. We'd fight all the time over this stuff. What is your email? Someone guessed that? No, someone came pretty close. He came pretty close.

Well, he should have won if we didn't guess it. It was like a prices-rate structure. Whoever came closest. Closest but underneath. No one will ever guess the actual. No one can get that. That's insane. Someone could. Maybe someday.

By the way, my mom, when she was here, held up a couple of black ketchup packets and said, do you need these anymore? I said, no, she threw them away. Black because they were so old? Yeah, they were old. Well, they were premium quality. To me, that's premium quality.

So you hoard everything? I'm a bit of a hoarder. Yeah, you know what? I'm on a new track now. That's good. I remember at, congratulations on winning the contest. Sorry we never officially announced it on the podcast, but like you said, we did send you that gift card

and announced it on social media. But yeah, we probably should have announced it on the podcast or not the most organized guys in the world. But let's talk about the main question. Should they, do we think ketchup by default? Is that a thing that we should just assume at a fast food restaurant? What do you think, Claudia?

I don't think we should. No, okay. Even though I want ketchup always. I agree with you. I always want ketchup and I always have to say, give me a lot of ketchup or give me a lot of hot sauce. And I get annoyed when they don't give you enough, than when they don't give you enough.

I think, listen, they're trying to... I just think we have to take some responsibilities, patrons. Yeah, you do. You do. Because I get it. It's like those ketchup packets aren't free. I'm just trying to be reasonable. No, you're wrong.

Because even when you do get ketchup, you have to throw out tons anyway, because you never want nine packets. It's true, but I feel like, isn't that just kind of built into the cost of the ketchup? Right, are they really losing that much money on ketchup? I feel like they are on sauce, because a lot of places have very restrictive sauce policies.

Chick-fil-A is an exception, but a lot of places will be like, oh, it's an extra 10 cents for an extra ranch or whatever. That's bullshit. But ketchup, I feel like, is so cheap. It's just corn syrup and tomato paste. There's such ingredients that are available and such a surplus in American agriculture.

They have to think it's super cheap. I think if you get fries, they should toss some ketchup into the bag, because I think it goes without... I mean, some people like them dry, as you say, but for the most part, they think that most normal people like a little ketchup on their fries.

Yeah, I think ketchup by default or question by default. If they're not asking the question and not giving the ketchup, that's out of line. That's unacceptable. At least ask the question, and if you're not going to have time to ask the question, maybe you're in a rush, toss a few in there. That reminds me, actually, I mentioned the Aerobare music camp earlier.

This could be music camp I used to go to. There was a... As soon as you said that, as soon as you said your music camp, I saw it. It was like a cartoonish... cartoonish yawn. I think Dustin, there's Z's over Dustin's head in the studio.

He fell asleep immediately. No, I'm fascinated. It's not fascinating. In this episode, put all the listeners to sleep. Look, in a lifetime of jokes that haven't landed, this was one in particular that didn't land, which was I was at the...

We went into town for a music camp, and there was a McDonald's there. And she gave me a... You want ketchup? And she gave me a single packet of ketchup. And I said, can I get some more ketchup? And then she grabbed a hand full,

like a softball-sized thing of ketchup, and threw in like 12 ketchup into my bag. And I turned to my friend and said, I should have asked for another cheeseburger. Oh my fucking god. And he looked at me with just like a look of disgust. Like I just told like an anti-Semitic joke. Did you play your horn after you got here?

It would have been a saxophone, not a trombone. Oh, it was a saxophone. You're a saxophone player. Yeah. Bummo. Saxophone, bassoon, clarinet, all the woodwinds. If you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you can email us at doboyspod.

Check out our Facebook page, Do Boys, follow us on Twitter at doboyspod, and if you have a free second, rate and review us on iTunes. Claudia O'Dearty, thank you for joining us. Thank you for enduring this. No, it was so fun, and I love, honestly, talking about things. That's good.

I do, so thank you for having me. Of course, we'll have to have you back at some point and discuss more Australian things, and you know what? No one has claimed that KFC episode yet. We haven't got anyone to do KFC yet. Give me KFC. Oh boy. Well, yeah, we'll see what happens. Oh, you're not going to give me KFC?

Oh, go fuck yourself? Hey, listen, I just want to, I'm going to look at the numbers. I'll look at this episode's numbers, baby. You're a piece of shit. I like Claudia. Do you have anything you would like to plug at this time? No, really. I'm on love.

That's it. She's great. I don't think I do anything else. You do plenty of stuff. You're a very funny, talented comedian. She's great. Claudia is very great, and it's an honor working with her. I enjoy working with you much more than I enjoy

working with Nick Wager, so. Oh wow, cool, thanks. I also enjoy working with you more than I enjoy working with Mitch, and more than I enjoy myself. Oh, gosh. Gary. I'll do it for this episode of No Boys.

Until next time, for the Spoonman Mike Mitchell, I'm Nick Wager. Happy eating. See ya. Bye.