Doughboys - Denny's with Farley Elliott

Episode Date: August 7, 2015

It's time for Denny's, as food writer Farley Elliott joins to help review America's Diner.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Tomorrow's City Today. That's the motto of the City of Lakewood, a plan Southern California development that became the blueprint for suburban post-World War II communities. Lakewood's 1949 founding was naturally followed by the establishment of local businesses, including Danny's Donuts in 1953, situated on the corner of Bellflower and Del Amo. Owners Harold Butler and Richard Jezak expanded Danny's to a half dozen locations, then reconceptualized it as a diner named Danny's Coffee Shops with Jezak's Departure. Legal action from competing chain Coffee Dan's forced it to take on a new name, the one we know today. It subsequently grew to be a brand as ubiquitous as the suburbs themselves, and though it's had setbacks

over the years, including a humiliating racial discrimination lawsuit in the 1990s, it's continually reformed and evolved and now boasts 1,700 locations across the globe. So just as countless people have grown up in Lakewood, California, including this humble host, even more people have grown up eating the signature grand slam breakfast of the self-proclaimed America's Diner. This week on Doughboys, we're open 24 hours, because we're talking Danny's. Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I'm Nick Weiger, alongside Mike Mitchell, the Spoon Man. Mitch, how are you, everybody? I'm doing well. How are you doing? I did Lakewood, huh? Yeah, that's well. That's my hometown. Yeah, I think

so. You got to throw it in there, huh? It's where Danny's is based. The first Danny's was in Lakewood, California. I think it's a fair thing to throw out that I'm also from Lakewood. Interesting. Okay. A lot of middle of the road things come from that. Mitch, so we had last week we did... A Spoon Man. Spoon Man. I can still call you Mitch. I don't have to just call you Spoon Man on the podcast. Yeah, I guess you don't have to. Okay. Spoon Man. Yeah. So last week we did, we covered Chick-fil-A. It received a score that would normally slot it right into the Golden Plate Club. You put up a barricade and you said you're not welcome here because you have a history of discrimination. And you know, I know you ate

at this week's restaurant with our pal, friend of the podcast, Evan Susser. I did. And Susser emailed the both of us as well as the Doughboys Gmail account, DoughboysPodGuessatGmail.com, aka The Feedbag. And he just wanted to have some clarity on the Doughboys discrimination policy because there's a fair point. We've got Danny's this week. And Danny's has, as I mentioned in our intro, had battled this racial discrimination lawsuit, was pretty awful in the 1990s. They've since gone on to, if you look through their Wikipedia page and their corporate history, they're now renowned as an inclusive company known for their diversity. They've done a lot of internal reforms, but you know, that is a stain on their proud history. So I mean, how do we, I guess how do we handle these

social issues as contrasted with the quality of the food, the quality of the service, which is really what we're supposed to be evaluating. You know, I was trying to be a noble man, being a just man in the last episode. But you know, handling controversy sometimes brings controversy. And Evan Susser was not happy with me. He says, you know, like every corporation has some of their issues. So how do you handle that? And you know what, I'll agree with him. It is, we have to judge based solely on the food, the quality of service and our experience there. And we can take into some consideration the history. So I'm going to allow them into the Golden Play Club. Wow. Because I don't want to set a precedent, but they're in. I think that

maybe just that one week of shaming, of that public shaming, much like the dentist who killed Cecil is facing right now was worth it. And they understand that they did something wrong. Gotcha. Well, in our accelerated, you know, social media news cycle, probably a week is probably all it took. Yes, I agree. Yeah. All right. So they're in, but you know, I didn't agree with that policy and I thought it was kind of a rather harsh one. But hey, well, we're talking about a week long lesson, I guess, is what they got. Yeah. Well, we're on the subject of Cecil the line. Do you want to talk about it? I don't want to talk about Cecil the line. No, why not? I mean, we can talk. I don't know. I feel like by the time this comes out, people are going to be

like, what? It's because even though it's only one week away, I feel like Cecil the line is going to be a thing that no one is going to remember soon. Or like the narrative will have completely shifted to something beyond what we can anticipate. We're recording this the Thursday prior to recording this basically one week in advance of when this will be released. Who knows what's going to happen. That's true. So I don't know. I mean, yeah, I don't fuck. I don't know. Yeah. I think we shouldn't jump into controversial subject matter when we don't have to. Well, we have enough of that just dealing with the subject matter on this show. That's 100% true. I just want to say what's up to all the spoon heads out there, by the way.

There you go. A little taste of Soundgarden's Spoon Man. Yeah, it's my theme song now. So get used to it, Little Wags, The Burger Boy. I don't mind this song. I think the song's fine. It's kind of stupid, but it's fine. We probably can't play that because of copyright. I'm sure we can. I'm sure that was extremely illegal. Oh well. Yeah, you know, this week also we got a little flak for sticking up for Adam Sandler movies. And you know, we're not always going to say the right thing on this podcast. You could say that your two hosts are, how do you say this? Complete morons. So sometimes our opinions will be way off. But before we move on from Celso the line,

I got a question for you. Of course. If you went to Africa, this is real. And also, I rest in peace to Cecil. I think it's bad that the dentist killed him and he's a bad man or whatever. If you went to Africa and they presented you with a dish of line, would you eat it? That's a good question. And we'll get into it with our guests after we introduce them. But what is too far for you? What would you eat? What wouldn't you eat as a meat eater? I feel like I would eat anything if it's already prepared. If I'm thinking, okay, the alternative is they're going to take this and throw it in the trash. I might draw the line at like human flesh. I think I might have trouble with even that I might think about. But I feel like,

okay, this is going to be discarded. I'm just thinking of when I'd order something without, hey, bring me the salad without croutons and they bring it to me with croutons. I'm just like, fuck it, I'll just eat the croutons because I don't want to go to waste. I guess I'm applying that same philosophy towards eating a proud protected species. Okay. But yeah, I think that's probably what I do. How about yourself? Well, to just sum it all up, Nick Weiger is a cannibalistic monster that would eat Cecil the lion if you have a chance. Yeah, you know, I was thinking of that. What would be too far? And honestly, if it was a thing where they're like, we make prepare this meal for you, we want you if the you know, like the people of this region or whatever I was,

I was a guest. They said, we made this for you, we want you to try it. I probably would try almost anything. You know, besides human flesh or something, I probably would eat anything, but I eat meat and you know, you're right, if it's already prepared, I probably would eat it and you have to respect that with different cultures and so on. Sure. Yeah. Let's introduce our guest. He's a fantastic food writer, currently a senior editor for Eater LA and the author of the new book Los Angeles Street Food. We're very happy to have Farley Elliott with us. Hi Farley. Hey guys, thanks for having me, Spoon Man. Happy to be here. Thank you. Proud member of the Spoon Nation. Oh boy. I like this guy already. He addresses me by my name, unlike my co-host.

Are you a fan of Little Wags the Burger Boy? Burger Boy I like. Little Wags sounds a little demeaning. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not on board with Little Wags. We're talking about as the man, separating the man from the nickname. I don't know. I don't like either of these nicknames. I think you should keep pitching. We've talked about this before. You're very stubborn. So Farley, you're our first sort of, I'd say, guest who knows what they're talking about in the sense that you're a food writer. You're someone who works in this area. And that's no insult to our past guests. Me and Mitch, I'd put in that category of we're just sort of, we're laymen. We're just sort of casual diners who are saying, based on our brains and our normal layman's

palates we're giving our assessments. You're someone who's got a little bit more experience as a food writer. How did you get into food writing? I basically started because I was something that didn't seem possible when I was growing up. I come from a really small town. We're kind of right on the Canadian border in Northern New York, maybe about 400 families in my town. So one stop light, grew up on a farm, the whole thing. What is the name of the town? My town is called Adams Center. And then from there, there's a town called Water Town. It's gonna be 25,000 people. And that was kind of the cultural hub of everything that you had going on. So I had never had an avocado until I came to California at 20 years old. I mean, there was just a lot of stuff that I never

even thought was possible. So coming to Los Angeles, it was like, oh man, this is unbelievable. The first things I really fell into were taco trucks as a form of food that seemed so insanely cheap and delicious that I couldn't believe that every part of America didn't have it already covered. So basically in my first year, a year and a half in LA, I just started going to every taco truck that I could find. And I had a little Google map, but I would put little pins down and say, I like this, I didn't like that, or I don't know what this thing is. And I went to about 125 in my first year, just like volume, just wanting to know what was good. And from there, started branching out and learning more and it all kind of rolled downhill. But my first real like paid writing

gig was doing weekly taco reviews for a website called Sirius Eats. Yes, I remember that. And I actually, I met you right, I think right before you started doing that. And I, because I, when I first met you, I had heard that you loved food. And I was going crazy on kind of like different tacos and burrito places. This is probably God, when would you say this was like 2008 or probably 2008, 2007 years ago? Yeah. And you talked to me and you told me about this taco truck El Chado, which was right near my house. And I, and I tried that place out and it was fantastic. It was really great. And I immediately respected your opinion, you know, you know what you're talking about. So was your technique when you were scouring all of Los Angeles County trying

these different food trucks? Were you just basically like, I'm just going to try as many as I can? Or were you following leads? Or what were you doing exactly? I mean, I pretty quickly discovered that there's already a community of like people on Yelp or Chowhounders or whatever who want to already be talking about these things. So it wasn't hard to start pinpointing places that were supposedly favorites. Sure. But yeah, without having a background in culinary arts at all, without having a background in like speaking Spanish, I mean, war or understanding like the different cultural variations on that sort of food, I was dealing purely in volume. So I've probably been to, I mean, 600 Mexican restaurants, taco trucks, cart stands, something like that. I just want to know

by like doing it and experiencing it all the time. Now, do you, do you know the language, the vernacular of these restaurants? And do you know, as opposed to, you know, eight years ago, you kind of, you know your thing, you know everything now pretty much, right? I can give you a pretty good idea of like what something is or how it's made or where maybe regionally it comes from, especially if it's Mexican food. I'm by no means an expert and probably nobody is. It just is so ever changing all the time. But yeah, like in terms of the language itself, I probably speak now what I would call like taco truck Spanish. Like I can order really well. So when you go to a new taco truck, like do you have, are you just sort of like, maybe you know

what their specialty is in advance and you're going to give that a shot? Or do you have a standard of like, okay, I'm going to evaluate their carnitas taco and, you know, their poil. I mean, like, do you have like a standard sort of order you go to or a standard metric used to evaluate these places? I mean, the thing that I would always lean back on is like al pastor, that like marinated, big vertical spit that that sort of porky kind of thing is something that I'm just personally drawn towards. But the thing I think a lot of people don't realize is that most of these places, especially like really top quality places only specialize in one thing, maybe two things. So if you've got a little bit of an advanced preparation on your end, where you can know what

that thing is, like you would just know, oh, I'm going to go to tacos Leo and only order the al pastor because everything else is not the thing that they specialize in. Interesting. My wife, Natalie, she pays attention to food trucks. She's a fan of yours. And she took us to this place in Venice that was a, they were like a raw seafood was their specialty. They had like the seafood cocktails. Yeah. And we got there and like it was like all raw seafood, like that was their big thing you were getting like these, these tostadas and these, these cocktails and like plastic cups. And I noticed that they had a rating of a C like their health score reading that was like C plus like raw fit seafood for me was just such a red flag, but we got it and it was fantastic.

It was so good. Was it a truck? It was a truck. Yeah, it was a little truck with a little C in its window. And we get some, we get some shrimp cocktails out of it and it was fantastic. We ate them sitting on the curb. Yeah, it is really interesting. I wonder like how much maybe you know anything about this, the whole, the whole health code, but in LA County, we have like a letter grade health code system. So it goes from, you know, A for A for whatever, I guess, good, all the way down to, I don't know if they could give a grade lower than a C. I think once it gets lower than that, the place just gets shut down. But like, what are they, what are they even evaluating when they're doing that? So it's everything from like quality of the product that they're bringing

into cleanliness to control temperatures, what things are held at, you know, dirty dishes, towels being left out, that sort of stuff. It's a pretty malleable system, surprisingly, even though it's run through the city, restaurants are graded a little bit differently than trucks, seafood places obviously are scrutinized a little bit more. I think the overall thing to really think about with stuff like this is, and I talk about this in my book that I cover a little bit of the history is that, you know, there's really been a kind of almost specific process where the city of Los Angeles has been all about telling street food people that like their product is not good. So a lot of what people feel when they go, ah, this is probably going to make you sick,

or Roach Coaches and that sort of stuff is like a built in thing that the city of Los Angeles has been propagating for about 150 years. The truth is, it's, it's in everyone's best interest to serve you quality food that isn't going to make you sick. If you go to that truck and you're getting seafood, they want you to come back and buy more and tell your friends that they'd be out of business very quickly if word spread that they're making everybody sick, see in the window or not. Yeah, I mean that's what I was almost wondering because like, you know, we got this and it was certainly a high quality product, it was very tasty, it seemed very fresh, very well prepared and very well seasoned and I wonder how much of that is like, hey, we've just got this scarlet letter because

we happen to be a food truck and for whatever reason when the health inspector came, you know, someone wasn't wearing a hair net or something, you know, I mean, I just wonder like what exactly is the difference between, you know, maybe a more corporate or chain restaurant that can, that has an A and can afford to do everything by the code versus a more independent business that, you know, I don't know. Again, I just don't know all these, it sounds like a thing you're touching on of like some of these violations can almost be superficial or the game is almost rigged against these independent businesses. Especially on trucks too, which tend to be marginalized towards small business owners, small families as opposed to large corporations. It's very,

very easy to get doc letter grades for things that might not be a restaurant issue or might not be something that would even be possible to go wrong in a restaurant but could happen on a truck just because of the space, the commotion, the ability to have it be mobile, all that sort of stuff. My guess is they saw a wager come and they put the C in the window. That'll scare them off. Didn't work. So let's talk about your book a little bit. So what exactly do you cover in Los Angeles street food? So the first half, I guess, is the history of Los Angeles street food. So it starts kind of from the late 1800s with these Tamalieros who came up from Mexico or had been there for years selling tamales on the street and what is kind of the Pueblo de Los Angeles,

the heart of downtown right by Union Station or what is like Olvera Street now. So immediately, it took off and you had all these people really loving the idea of street food. Tourists would come in and then send letters back home that were like, and in Los Angeles, all the restaurants are outdoors. And I was like, no, there's indoor restaurants, but everyone just was eating at tamale places. So I mean, even by the turn of the century by 1900s, you had the city trying to crack down and protect white business owners against largely Hispanic vendors, Chinese vendors, things like that. 1917 was when Grand Central Market downtown opened. And that was a really specific thing done by the city to get white vendors into one specific location and say, Hey, everybody

with money, go here and spend your money. If someone comes to your door with a cart full of food, don't order from them. It's bad. It's dangerous. It's unhealthy. So it covers a lot of that stuff all through kind of the birth of the 1980s, 1990s when you had a lot of Central Americans people coming in and really changing the formats of what you see in street food today. And then even through the gourmet food truck revolutions from 2005 to today. Yeah, when did you think that that kind of the foodie boom happened in Los Angeles? Was that right around 2005, six or? Well, 2005 and in the mid 2000s, I guess you started to see a lot more coverage on food network. You know, you've got like, Emeril Lagasse was kind of the first big guy who's bamming it up on TV and

everybody wants to know what the dish is and how to make it themselves. And he's showing you how to pick the right thing at the farmer's market. 2009 is when Kogi landed really, really hit the streets. And that was when you saw gourmet street food trucks really take off by 2010. They had the Great American Street Food Race or whatever that television show. So it was like from 2009 through about 2013 was kind of the height of that. And now it's calmed down a lot. That seems about right. 2009, right around there, because I mean, I would always hunt out cool places to eat and get food. But then like so much of the, I feel like of the places that you would hear to eat were kind of higher end and things like that. And they weren't hip or whatever back in the early

2005 or six or something. When I first was out here, you kind of had a hunt. And then I feel like that for me, it was like you mommy burger was kind of like one of the big ones. And then it all kind of spread out from there. But yeah, you sort of, through no fault of your own, ended up living in a really great neighborhood for food at that time. El Chateau, the first to mommy burger was there. Yep. I kind of had, yeah, I got a little six cents for that stuff. Even though I probably ate the most meals from the 711 diagonally across from my house. El Chateau, would you say that is Mexican food probably your favorite of all foods? I mean, yeah, probably it's the thing that I crave the most, the thing that I seek out to eat, the thing that I never get sick of eating is

probably Mexican food. And it still feels to me like I have so much to learn. I've started going to Mexico a little bit to try to learn more. But I've got a ways to go. But El Chateau, I mean, it's a personal favorite of mine. It's maybe not the most authentic truck or something, but that is, I'm trying to get them for my wedding in November. I love El Chateau. Absolutely. Yeah. I really love cactus. These are places that people will know about cactus, taqueria, and then just hitting on the Roche coaches, this place, Tacos, El Petillo. I loved, this is probably even close to eight years ago or something. But you would, I would go and get a carne asada burrito and you literally just see cockroaches on like the curb nearby. It was,

it's kind of a gross block. And there's like a gross porn theater next door that I always see Weigher walking on. Kicking roaches out of the way. No, no, he brings them in with them. I'm trying to say you have like a weird roast. Yeah, no, I got it. I think everyone got it. Okay, good. Yeah, he's a weird roach. But like that never even bothered me because the food was so good there and I wasn't, you know, I was never afraid like a roach was going to fall in my burrito or something like that. It was, it's kind of crazy to, to believe that and you look in the kitchen and it's kind of super, it's pristine, you know, so. Yes, exactly. Here's one thing I wanted to ask you Farley and this is on behalf of me because we have a lot of

listeners who, you know, we certainly have some people who are here local in LA and we're all LA guys and your book is about Los Angeles. But a lot of people I imagine a lot of people listening, I know, live elsewhere in the country or across the globe. So if someone were to visit Los Angeles and I imagine this is partially covered in your book, but if someone were to take a trip to Los Angeles, what would you say? Like, I'll definitely want to make sure to eat here. And it can be a high, it can be a high class, it can be a low class, it can be a higher end, it can be a single dollar sign, a budget option. But what would you say are the eateries that you would definitely recommend? You're putting this into Yelp terms? I don't know. I was thinking of the

Zagat guy, you know, you get like one dollar sign to four dollars sign to five dollars sign. I don't know. I don't fucking know, Mitch. I was trying to convey it in a way that might make sense to people. I know it's a little rambly. You got really mad after I kind of implied that you have a weird thing for roaches. Why would, I don't even know why you went there. It's a weird digression. I'm sitting here like patiently listening to you. Man, I think Doughboy is going to end after the next episode. No, we'll be fine. That's it. We're here for the end of it. Yeah, the second half of my book is all about places to go and things to experience and what to get and when to go and all that sort of stuff. I think for a person who hasn't even had like a West Coast experience, if they may be

coming to Los Angeles and that's their first real like West Coast experience, I think in and out obviously is pretty quintessential for that. Definitely. More LA specific, I think any restaurant by Roy Choi, Koki Barbecue, one of their trucks, Chego, which is a rice bowl spot downtown. I think one of those will give you a really like multicultural look at what Los Angeles is. I think having a really great night out in Koreatown is something that is maybe a little under-recognized outside of Los Angeles, but you're talking about millions of people who, I mean, it's the highest density of restaurants anywhere in Los Angeles is in Koreatown. That would be really, really great. I'm going to break this down for you since it's already kind of like a Mitch versus Weigher podcast,

which side of town are you liking for food? West side or east side? Which is your favorite? I moved to Silver Lake because I wanted to be closer to better food. Oh, wow. Let's take that. All right. But you got to understand, I operate a little bit differently. I spend a lot of my time now in the San Diego Valley eating Chinese food and East LA eating Mexican food. So I'm just at a different place in the terms of what I do. If I was like Nick and 45 and living out by the beach, then sure. Oh, man, I love this. How would you break, so a guy who grew up in Upstate New York, and I know the area well, I went to school in Ithaca, how would you break down East Coast versus West Coast? Now you seem like your heart is in the West Coast cuisine, right?

Yeah, I mean, I didn't really discover sort of myself through food until the West Coast, and so I think that I've got a little bias in that regard. I still love going back to the East Coast and eating really hearty like old American food. Like my love of hamburgers is something that came with me from the East Coast. But to me, there's no more vibrant restaurant or eating scene than Los Angeles down to Tijuana. It's really unbelievable, especially right now. I tell you, as a SoCal boy, I'm happy to hear that. Good. So Farley, let's get into this week's restaurant. We came to you. We wanted you to be on the podcast. You're gracious enough to volunteer your time, and a place you wanted to cover is Denny's. So what is it about Denny's? Is this

like a hometown favorite for you, or how did you come to discover this restaurant? So when I was growing up in my town at Adams Center, we didn't have any sort of really restaurant to speak to a hardware store or a bank, that kind of stuff, and that was it. There was a couple of small towns nearby that had hometown restaurants, but that was it. So you had no restaurants in this town? The four corners in my town is a gas station slash grocery store, a hardware store, a bank, and a church. That's it. Dear God. So you've got to go places to eat food. It's a Spoon Man nightmare. It's a Spoon Man quad effect of things you can't eat. So in Watertown, about 15 minutes away, it was kind of the big city, there was a Denny's,

and that Denny's was one of only three places that would stay open past like 10 p.m. There was a truck stop out on the freeway that you could eat at, there was a Denny's, and then there was some real old dingy crappy diner that was like so dirty you never wanted to eat there. So I spent a ton of my formative years late nights at Denny's with all my friends. It was so busy because it was the only option. They would put a bouncer in starting at 10 o'clock at night until about three in the morning when all the bars finally like let out and people went home. Now is this like a folksy small town sort of bouncer, or is this was like a real actual guy? This was just like a beefy idiot making sure that like drunks don't throw like pints of chocolate milk at you.

So really like one or two more left turns in Mitch's life, this could have been him. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. If Mitch tore the sleeves off that shirt right now, he'd be there. I felt bad for saying that Roach thing, you fucking prick. He made me feel sad for a few minutes. Yeah, you're right. I would love to bounce out of Denny's, that would be great. Yeah. I mean, I would spend so many nights there with all of my friends that it was like there was an old lady who somehow had managed to wrangle herself as the manager of the late night shift and there would be a line out the door because it's one in the morning and everybody's leaving and they're all drunk and want to get eggs and we would pop our heads in and she'd let

us sneak the line and go sit at the bar or sit in a booth somewhere. It was like a real personalized experience. I mean, I the nearest thing for fast food that came after that when I was 16, they put a McDonald's in a town over and I was the first person at that McDonald's. I waited all night, signed the dollar, they photo the whole thing because it was just so starved for any sort of fast food or fast casual otherwise. I used to wait in line for video games like I'd wait in line for like the Nintendo Wii or the Sega Dreamcast when those were coming out. I mean like a few years ago. Wait, no, it wasn't the Wii. Gamecube, the one that predated that. Okay, no, it was an adult. Yeah, still an adult. But like in hindsight, like the idea of waiting, like that's kind of a thing

of like, ah, that was kind of nerdy, but looking back on like waiting for a McDonald's, that is like so much cooler. The idea of being the first person to be in one of those. That's like a point of personal pride. You're the first person who's ever told me that. Thank you very much. Nice to hear. I bought a Super Nintendo the first day I came out with my first community money. I tell you what, I have a Super Nintendo story. I went to Camp Aerobare, which was like this hippie music camp that I used to go to every summer and I hated it. And my parents made me go and I returned from Camp Aerobare and the day I happened to be coming back was my birthday and I had gotten home and nothing had happened for my birthday. And my parents were about to like go out for dinner

or something and my dad was like, oh, hey, Nick, I think I left something in your room. Go check it out. And I went in there and sitting on my bed was a Super Nintendo. Wow. Good surprise. Nice dad trick. I like that a lot. I went to Child World, got my Super Nintendo first day. Child World East Coast Chain. There's a store called Child World. There was a store called Child World. It was a wonderful, magical place where I got my Super Nintendo. Did it get overrun by pedophiles? What happened to Child World? It is shut. It is 100% shut down and possibly, I mean, I feel like it was a huge magnet for pedophiles. It's easy to know what's in there. Yeah, but it was a great big toy store that was like on the, like it was one of those places that

had like an upstairs and then, well, this is specific Quincy locations, but then a downstairs where they had like the bikes and stuff and you could ride the bikes around on the bottom level. Wait, what? Yeah, it had like all like the kind of the bikes and tricycles. Oh my gosh. So they had like a bike test area. Yeah, it wasn't really like a test area, but like people drove the bikes around on the basement. It was great. It was a great, great time in my life. Don't make fun of Child World too much. But yeah, it's kind of a pedophily type of place. So, so far at least, so Denny's, how long has it been since you've actually been into one of these and dined in? The last time I aided at Denny's was New Year's Day five years ago in Memphis, Tennessee,

because I did like an insane road trip over eight days from like LA, Dallas, New Orleans, did New Year's night in Memphis on Beale Street. And then Denny's was like the only place that I could get into the next morning and just like hung over, ate my way through a Denny's and drove back to LA as quick as I could. But prior to that, not since I left my hometown. So more than a decade ago. Wow. Oh, wow. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about your return experience and our return experiences. So when did you, when did you go to Denny's and what did you have? I went to Denny's yesterday, the one on Vermont here in Los Angeles. And I have to tell you guys, I was so excited to walk into a Denny's. I had like my arms out, like it was like a club, like all the, just sitting in

the booth and seeing the menu and knowing everything that I was already going to get, even though it's been so long, like knowing it was all still going to be there. It was really great. Like I go into a lot of new local, you know, kind of one-off restaurants with high-end chefs or whatever. I haven't felt like this walking into a restaurant in a couple of years. It was pretty magical. That's really great for a restaurant to make you feel that way. And I will say about Denny's, it's kind of a thing we've talked about on this podcast. You know, I don't think Denny's is the greatest, but the quality cross-country is kind of, you know what you're getting when you go in there and it has a feel and it reminds you of a thing, you know what I mean? Like,

and that's having something that you can count on like that is kind of always great, I feel like. Same with IHOP for me or other places. Yeah, I have had some consistency issues at Denny's. I wouldn't say they're like universally all the same level. I've been to some good Denny's and some bad Denny's, but I would say you definitely, the atmosphere always, it always feels comforting and similar, whether you're at one of the regular Denny's or one of the Denny's diner, which is their more like 50s throwback concept. It all kind of has that sort of very inviting nostalgic vibe. So what did you end up getting, Farley? So in true food writer fashion, I like ordered a ton of food just to kind of sample around and because I hadn't been there in so long. So I went Moons over Miami,

the classic Farley Elliott order. We did go the two-side sampler, so mozzarella sticks and chicken tenders. Noam Blywys, friend of the podcast, fellow spoonhead, Spoon Nation, dined with me. He got the skillet breakfast, which was like great, so then I didn't have to order the skillet breakfast. And then we also got their Superbird, which is like that turkey sandwich with bacon and cheese. Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, and I'm forgetting these fried pancake balls that we also got. I also, I got those as well from the Fantastic Four menu. Yes. So that was the, wait, was this the item on the, it's the Slamtastic Four menu, we should be clear, which is their Fantastic Four tie-in menu. Were these the strawberry pancake puppies? Yeah, there's a strawberry version

or regular version. We went with the regular version. Okay, so you got the regular, Mitch, you got the strawberry pancake. I got the strawberry one. I want to touch on this real quick before we get into your evaluation, Farley. So currently they're running, Denny's is running a Slamtastic Four menu promotion. And if you'd like to dig in more on this, Asterios Cocanos, a very funny man on Jordan Jesse Go, that podcast co-hosted by Jordan Morris, who was previously a guest, went through and ate every item on the Slamtastic Four menu. So check down that episode, it's very funny. But to talk through the items on it, the Thing Burger, Human Torch Skillet, Invisible Woman Slam, Fantastic Four Cheese Omelet, so Mr. Fantastic does not get his own menu option for

whatever reason. I messed up. Doom Lava Cake, Fantastic Four Fruit Smoothies, so another Fantastic Four pun. And then the last item on the Slamtastic Four menu, Strawberry Pancake Puppies. No attempt at a pun or any connection to the Marvel Universe. You don't know that, Nick, it could be a tilt to the next series. That's true. Like there could be an insane villain we haven't thought of yet. Gleiger is on a rampage today. Jesus Christ. I just feel like, like, it's not like it's half fast, it's just that they've got like 7 eighths of the way there. They just need to come up with one more pun for whatever. But Franklin Richards, Strawberry Pancake Puppies, I would have bought that because they're just connecting it to the universe somehow. You would have bought that?

I would have been like, okay, that's a little lazy, but at least it's an attempt, you know. Yeah, the no attempt stands out more starkly than a bad attempt. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That digression aside, so what did you think of the food overall? Did you have any particular thoughts? Yeah, so my memory obviously is always a little bit deceiving. I remember the moons over my hand being just like a massive sandwich, almost with like Texas toast or something like that, and it's just not at all. And also the plate presentation, so it comes with a big side of hashbrowns. It had all been sort of shoved off to one side really pathetically. And I was like, oh, this is, I'm going to eat this like a normal human. Like when I was 16,

it felt like so much food for me to be eating. Do you think the portion size has actually gone down or do you think it's just perception? Yeah, it felt like perception at the time, but I wouldn't be surprised if their portion sizes have gone down. I mean, we ate like monsters and got out of there for under $40. Yeah. So at a certain point, a decade on, those prices need to reflect like a true value in what you're getting. Yeah, I get that. I see, here's my thing. I didn't, Denny's wasn't a thing I went to a lot growing up. Like I said, IHOP was kind of more of the place I went. And then there was another place in Massachusetts, they were called Bickford's. That was kind of like an IHOP or Denny's. But

I don't have that strong of a relationship with Denny's. I've been to them and I have been to them quite a few times over the years or whatever. But I've always just seen it as a place that does decent eggs and home fries or whatever. I got the Mr. The, I'm sorry, not the Mr. The Thing burger. I kind of relate to the thing in a lot of ways. How's that? I just feel like I feel like I'm big like the thing. Weiger makes me angry. The thing gets angry a lot. Instead of genitals, you just have a smooth patch of rock. Hey, don't knock it. And yeah, I don't know. I feel like kind of a big monster sometimes. But the Thing burger, I thought was, I thought it was, was well done. It was, when you're talking about the Fantastic Four menu, they actually have like a cheddar,

it had like a cheddar roll, which kind of made it look like a little rock. Yeah, it comes in, it comes in a chair, but I actually have the description here because this is what I went with my wife Natalie and that's what she got. So it's, it's, this is their menu description, a hand-pressed beef patty topped with crispy hash browns, an egg cooked to order, cheddar cheese, two crispy bacon strips, and punch-packing Thing sauce served on a cheddar bun. Yeah, it was, it was, so the reason that I wanted to just tell you the reason I got this was one, I don't think I'd ever had anything besides breakfast at Denny's. Two, I know you love your burgers. It was a burger, and I wanted to try a burger there. And three, it combined breakfast and lunch, so not only did I

get breakfast and breakfast, I also got lunch. I think this, the one and three can kind of be put into the same category. One, I was hungry. Two, I needed to eat some food. Three, I wanted to put something in my mouth that had some flavor in it. Four, my stomach was growling. For these four distinct reasons, I ate a meal. You know what? If I'm the Thing, you're the fucking Dr. Duma. I'll take it. Clobber the shit out of you in a few minutes. One interesting thing, when I had the Moons Over My Hammy, Nome grew up kosher for a long time, and so he had never had the ham portion of the Moons Over My Hammy. He'd always gotten like a

scrambled egg sandwich, essentially. Yeah, please tell me he broke it for the Doe Boys podcast. The Doe Boys original. No, he broke it a couple years ago. Thank God, it was so boring eating with him. He was like, the ham is so strong. There's so much strong ham flavor, and he couldn't take more than a couple of bites. To me, I was like, oh, this is 90 more. Every fat kid just like, this is not enough. It's more than I remember. Do you know what? He makes a good point on one thing. I can sometimes get a little grossed out. It happens to me with turkey. I love sliced turkey, but have you ever gotten an intense turkey flavor when you're eating deli turkey? Or it just tastes kind of stronger than normal? I kind of like mine to be just kind of like, I usually think of turkey

as plain, especially deli turkey, and sometimes I'll get an intense tasting turkey. That might have more to do with the preservatives and stuff that they're putting into it, absolutely. But yeah, I feel the same way. You eat something, sometimes it just sticks with you, and it feels like it's on your breath and on your tongue. Yes. It's almost like sometimes that food that isn't gamey, see if you can get on board with this, sometimes can have a gamey taste to it. I don't know whether, like you're saying, if it's maybe old or some preservatives or what it is, but that happens to me every so often. I can eat a piece of ham and be like, man, that is overpoweringly hammy for whatever reason. As a meat lover, it kind of turns me off sometimes. I don't like it.

I will say, I had a stretch where, speaking of known being kosher, I had a stretch where it was voluntarily just not eating any pork products because I was just like, well, I had this kind of thing of like, pigs are just so mistreated in factory farms, it's so hard to tell where your pork is coming from. I was amazed by how hard it is to eat at an American diet when you're excluding pork. There's so much pork just everywhere, just like added bacon, added ham, and just so many dishes. It's just kind of omnipresent, particularly at chain restaurants. Yeah, absolutely. Pork and chicken are kind of the two largest common denominators for restaurants. They know they can put a chicken dish on the menu. They know they can put a pork dish on the menu,

and it'll really satisfy a ton of different customers in a ton of different ways. You're absolutely right. It's hard to kind of avoid that sort of thing once you start realizing, oh, this is absolutely everywhere. Yeah, because it feels like you're just taking, oh, I'm just going to take this one thing off, I'll have plenty other, and then just so many times I'd have to make substitutions or just be like, well, if you go to basically any fast food breakfast spot, every meat option pretty much is pork. You might have a steak in there occasionally, but it's very limiting. Now, especially just bacon will come with every, and on every burger or chicken sandwich, I feel like there's always trying to move some bacon in there too. It's

become almost just like a go-to topping. It's just in there. It's like ketchup now. It's close to ketchup now, for real. So, Farley, let's talk about those apps a little bit. You got the two app sampler. Tell us about those. To me, I grew up on the East Coast, like Mitch, I mean, did you grow up eating a lot of mozzarella sticks? I did eat a lot of mozzarella sticks. Was mozzarella sticks a part of your life growing up as a kid? Well, see, they existed, but I wouldn't say they were like a go-to thing. I would say they were like, you know, you go to a chain restaurant or actually, I'm not even remembering when these came about, but I do kind of always just remember them being present at like TGI Fridays and stuff, maybe for my teen years and on, but it was never

like a staple appetizer. You weren't snacking on them while you were waiting for the Wii to come out? For me, like, mozzarella sticks are like a part of my childhood. Like, every time we would order pizza at a place, they had mozzarella sticks that we could get. Like, I love mozzarella sticks, and so I hadn't had them in years going to Denny's and experiencing those. Like, they're still just as like dumb and chewy with just a little bit of crisp on the outside. It's exactly what you want. The tenders are terrible and have only gotten smaller and smaller. They're maybe the size of like a wing that's been like folded out into a flat shape now or maybe even a little bit smaller, but those mozzarella sticks are like exactly the right size and shape and consistency that I

wanted. Yeah, speaking of apps, I had the, I was pleasantly surprised by the Smothered Cheese Fries, which we ordered. These are described as wavy cut French fries covered with pepperjack queso, shredded cheddar cheese, and crumbled bacon, speaking of bacon, and it came with a little bit of ranch. Yeah, they were, you know, speaking of what you were talking about earlier, Farley, about portion size, they came to us and I was like, this is kind of a modest thing, especially for two people to share. This felt like, you know, if you get like an order of cheese fries at Wendy's, it felt like it would fill about one of those like small little burger to go shape containers. But it was pretty tasty, you know, like the bacon was obviously just added on there for extra bacon

character, but it was fine and the pepperjack cheese queso was pretty good. You know, the thing I think you talked about, about how the food always be like all being shoved to one side, I kind of got that throughout my meal and I feel like anytime I've eaten at Denny's is like, there's no real attention to detail in terms of plating. I just sort of thrown on there and this was the sort of thing like it looked ugly. It just looked like an ugly pile of goopy fries with some shredded cheese and bacon, lopped onto it. It was unevenly distributed. I think it was on the customer to sort of stir it up with their fork, but once you did that and dipped it in the sauce, it was pretty flavorful and the fries were those wavy fries they've got now are

are nice and crisp. Denny has plates like from like my grandma's house, I feel like they feel like very much like plates that I would get breakfast on in the early 80s or something and it's kind of endearing a little bit there, but they haven't updated it. But I was kind of, I was impressed with the food. Like I said, I had the appetizers, the what were they called, the strawberry pancake puppies from the slamtastic four menu. Sorry, Nick. Mine were overcooked there and they were a little oily, but they were still pretty good and they had a syrup and a frosting dipping sauce, which was fun. And everyone at the table, I was with Evan Susser and Maddie Smith and they, Maddie Smith got the human torch skillet. Evan Susser got the chicken, the Philly

chicken cheese steak. I didn't try either of their dishes, but they were both okay with what they had. The thing burger I thought was good and I was kind of surprised by the burger. It was one of those kind of like just like beef patties that you'd get at Wendy's or something, but it was kind of good. Like there would be no color in it. It won't be pink or anything like that. It's just going to be a brown burger party, but it was kind of like a good old diner burger patty. It was decent and the sandwich was surprisingly good for Denny's, a place that I think a lot of people make fun of so much. Denny's has just been a butt of jokes forever. Evan Susser pointed out that in the Santa Claus, they have a really depressing scene where they have to go eat dinner at Denny's

on Christmas Eve. And like, which is, it's really strange that Denny's agreed to do it that like their sad Christmas Eve dinner is at Denny's. And I think that kind of like- Yeah, how much were they paid for this like slanderous marketing tie-in? I don't know. But I mean, that's the truth. There is a scene there on Christmas Eve that's like- It's crazy. That's kind of depressing, but I, for a guy who doesn't eat Denny's a lot and didn't eat it a lot growing up, I was kind of surprised by the burger. It's not great, but there were so many components in it that I'm like, oh, this thing could be a disaster because you got an egg

and you have hash browns. And I guess they do both those pretty well. And then there was like burger and cheese and the thing sauce. And it was good. And I had some of those wavy cut fries with it. And it was really good. I will say that I have an oily taste in my mouth still from that meal. How long ago did you eat this meal? About five hours ago. So I don't know if that's the best testament. And also, I don't feel that great. I feel kind of sick. You know, your Santa Claus mention reminded me of a few years ago. And this is eerily similar in

terms of like the reaction from people of a few years back. Natalie, my wife and I, we went and like did like a fun run. We did a turkey trot on Thanksgiving in Long Beach. And then afterwards, we so annoying, right, Mitch? Come on. We had a good morning activity. Our niece was there. Anyway, we went after one of this fun run, we just like, oh, we're going to go to Denny's and we're going to have some breakfast because there was a Denny's nearby. We went there and we had a fine meal. And like I Instagram like a picture from like, Hey, we're here at Denny's. And so many people were like texting me and like, Hey, man, do you need a place to go on Thanksgiving? I'm bummed that like, you're at Denny's. Like, do you guys not have family around or something? Just like,

it's, I don't know why there's that assumption, this association of Denny's with kind of like this, this overbearing sadness, but I feel like it exists. It's like, this is a place where people go when they're, I don't know, they got no other options. Yeah. Well, I, maybe that just comes with the fact that it's one of those 24 hour diners that's always around, you know, like I said, you find it everywhere. It's open most of the time. So maybe that's why it's like, huh, we can go to Denny's if we have to. Yeah, I was, I was going to save this for the fork rating side, but a guy did hang himself in the bathroom while we were there. Jesus. Oh, okay. No, no, no. God, that would be terrible. Oh my God. But the thing is like,

that was the most exciting. That was the most plausible. I thought that was some of the most exciting news for our podcast, but also very depressing. Depressing, but I believed you 100% because it's Denny's. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe because so many people like visit there kind of at low moments, like you're super hung over or you're, or it's like, like 3am and you're just fucking trash drunk, you know, and maybe people just have that kind of association of this is a place you go when things aren't going so great. I don't know. Also like, I think in those low moments, you're probably not worried about like, oh, what's the best thing I could get or where's my great value coming from or anything like that.

It goes back to a little bit of what we talked about before with Denny's, which is that it can just be a signpost for people. I've always gone to a Denny's or I know that I can get decent hash browns and eggs or I know that even in my lowest moments, I know what to get at a Denny's. It's probably all tied into the part of the reason that I was so excited to walk back in after more than eight years. Like it just feels exactly comforting. Sure. Let's talk about that. Let's keep talking about your meal a little bit, Farley. So what was the name of that chicken sandwich again? Remind me? It's the Superbird? Superbird. Yeah. So it's slices of turkey, tomato, provolone cheese, and then bacon strips on top. So it used to be, I would sometimes get those

loaded fries, always get the mozzarella sticks when I was there as a kid, but definitely it was usually Moons over my hand, Moons over my hand, and if I wasn't in a breakfast mood, I would get the Superbird. So I was very, very excited. The problem now, and this is maybe my memory or maybe what they do because they needed to shave a couple of bucks. It's just like the lowest grade, like grocery store waterlogged kind of turkey that they throw on the griddle. So it immediately saps all the water out and you've just got this kind of slightly grisly, tough bite through with a little bit of burnt edges thing. It was sadly the most disappointing part of the whole experience. Oh no. Okay. I like a nice grilled turkey slice too sometimes, but yeah, but that is stupid if it

gets a little too chewy. Well, they slice, it was a bunch of individual thin little deli slices, and so there's nowhere for any of that tender juiciness to go. It just immediately dissipates. That's a bummer. Yeah. Yeah, I will say, and you know, you mentioned this earlier, Mitch, when you're talking about the thing burger is, because I usually am a breakfast guy at Denny's. I've actually, I would get the Moons over my hammy with some frequency at often times, or just be a grand slam variant that's usually my go to. But anytime I've had like a lunch or dinner entree, I feel like contrasting it with, say, Carrows, which we ate a few episodes ago, which we didn't have a pleasant experience at. If I go back to a Carrows, I'll hang myself. It's terrible.

We contrasting it with, say, a Carrows, I feel like their lunch and dinner entrees, you can find some good ones there. I feel like you can find some stuff that's pretty decent. It's not like, oh, well, hey, if you're going to Denny's, just stick with breakfast, play it safe. I feel like there's some burgers here and there, some sandwiches that are all right. And on that note, I consciously made an effort to try a dinner entree, which is something I'd never get. I ordered the Brooklyn Spaghetti and Meatballs. Oh my God, we were making garlic bread. We were making jokes about Maddie, Maddie Smith was like, you pick what you want me to eat at this place, and I'll eat it for you. And I was like, I want you to get the spaghetti and meatballs. No one would ever

get spaghetti and meatballs at Denny's. Yeah, I feel like I got a glance at a sec for a second, because she was trying to make sure whether or not it was over 65. Because no one below retirement age would ever order the spaghetti and meatballs at Denny's. But it came out and you know what, it's not bad. It's the pasta is overcooked as you would expect at a chain restaurant. The sauce is very tomato-y. I don't know, almost approaching like a pico de gallo. That's an exaggeration. It's not that far, but it's just super tomato-y, kind of like hunts out of a can. It's like the equivalent of you reviewing a glass of water. And you know, the meatballs were not bad. There's like some meat mixed into the sauce,

some ground meat. So it's kind of like a marinara, not just a pure tomato sauce. And I would say it's decent. I don't know why, I would just say it exceeded my very meager expectations for getting a pasta dish at Denny's. And I would say if you're really craving, let's just say hypothetical, you're fucked up, you find yourself at a Denny's. Spaghetti and meatballs is what you're craving for whatever reason. I wouldn't shy away from it. I think that will fulfill that craving in that moment. Because as I was eating, I was like, oh yeah, this is kind of like Boy Scout camp out spaghetti and meatballs. This is totally just right down the middle of what my expectations are. I have a question. Did they give you a shaker of Parmesan cheese?

No, I got a little like a little ranch cup filled with Parmesan cheese that I could dump on over rice. Oh, interesting. Not a little shaker. Because I just can't imagine what else they're putting Parmesan shavings on. Like how in the back of the fridge did that thing get pulled out of? My guess is they've got like a just one of those big old plastic bags of pre-shredded Parmesan that they're just dumping into a little service cup and then they give that to you on the side with your garlic bread. Garlic bread was not bad either. It's fine. You ordered what, either an old man or a young child. I'll say this going back to the breakfast thing a little bit. Noam got that skillet, which I think is always a great option. Probably the first line of defense

for anybody going to a Denny's is like, let's get the skillet. That's the thing they're kind of known for those grand slam breakfast. Same thing. The one nice thing about that is like, you know, they have to make just about everything from scratch minus the bacon. Yeah. All the produce, even if it's not high end produce, you know, they're chopping up the mushrooms and throwing spinach on there and frying an egg somewhere. So if you are just looking for a kind of low common denominator of like guaranteeing you're getting yourself some real food, go with the skillet. It's not going to be amazing. You've probably got to salt it yourself right at the table. You know, they're not doing great technical work in the kitchen, but you know what you're

getting as opposed to some stuff that probably, yeah, came out of a bag in the back of the freezer. Yeah. Here's a question on that subject because you just brought it up. And this is a thing I've been curious about. Why do you think, because I would imagine, let me reset it this way, my expectations would be the opposite where it would be like, okay, chain restaurants are trying to pack in a bunch of flavor. And so I would expect things to be like very aggressively seasoned, but I often find what you're saying is that a lot of the food I receive from chain restaurants is under seasoned. Like, why do you think that is? Well, I guess there's like two camps to it. I think the stuff that is prepackaged probably, and like just comes out of a bag and

right into like a hot plate, and that's it, is probably super seasoned because it needs to travel for a long ways. And it's got to have like that density of flavor that something coming from a factory would have. But when we're talking about like a skillet at Denny's or things that they're preparing on site, my thought is that they just need to exist for the every man. So there are people who like really salty food, people who don't want salty food, and they just go, we're not going to get these things sent back every fucking 10 minutes across the country. Let's send it out with as little seasoning as possible, and people can do whatever they want with it. But I think that that's probably true just with the stuff that they're making on site. I would say that the skillet

breakfast Maddie Smith got the human torch skillet breakfast. It looked the most appetizing of any of the meals. It looked really good. It's real food. That's why it's real food. It was kind of strange the human torch. The thing burger is a thing is a, you know, like I said, has a cheddar roll. The human torch thing had a big sausage. It didn't make any sense. The human torch is kind of the most sexual of all the Fantastic Four people, but it was really, it's strange. It doesn't make any sense. You know, if you go back to the original Stanley Jack Kirby comics, they make a point of establishing that Johnny Storm is a huge dick. It's a problem with those Fantastic Four Likers suits. That was very visible. It was the early thing, right? Only his dick grew for a while,

that was it. So let's talk about the pancake puppies. Is that what they're called? Yeah, they're sort of halfway between a bignet and a hush puppy. So they've got a little bit of like a flowery density on the inside, but a nice crust. Mine weren't overcooked and oily, thank heavens. But yeah, just simple syrup to dip them on the side. And those, you know, the best things that I love about fast casual restaurants or fast food restaurants is stuff that you can just eat without even thinking about it. Like mozzarella sticks are like that for me. And these little dipper pancake fried popper things were exactly the same way. They come, I think, six to a bowl and they were just gone before you even knew it because they're just so simple and satisfying. Yeah,

the fact that they were overcooked, I'm sorry, the fact that they were overcooked and a little oily, but we still love them just kind of shows that they're good. They were really kind of a, they were slam-tastic. But I still, I truly am getting annoyed at the fact that I have an oily taste in my mouth. It's kind of a, the long term of Denny's is kind of wearing on me a little bit. I don't feel great. I feel like I've had like a sugar rush all day and my mouth just feels like a greasy bin right now. Do you think that is compounded at all by the fact that this entire podcast you've been sipping from a mug of butterscotch? Wow. The Spoon Man wars have begun, huh? No, no, no. It's all in good fun. I would agree with you

though, like I was as excited as I was to walk into that Denny's, walking out in the like bare sunlight of Vermont. I was like, this does not feel good. Yeah. It lingers with you a little bit. I went to the one on Sunset Boulevard right by the one, the beautiful 101 freeway. And yeah, it's a similar thing to where it's like, nothing should even be here. I will say that the parking lot there is gigantically huge. And we were talking before the podcast started, Denny's is kind of weirdly like a visible chain in Los Angeles. Yeah. And I wonder, I think they must have gotten in there early because we went to the one in Santa Monica where real estate is so insane. It's just fucking insane. And Denny's has this huge parking lot that's like four times the size of the floor

plan of the restaurant. And it just like, this is, they could, if they bulldozed this and built luxury condos, you know, they would sell for a 1.2 million a piece. But instead we've just got this old like kind of shitty looking rundown Denny's with a gigantic, mostly empty parking lot that's just kind of, I guess been grandfathered in because they've had the land for so long. And in this city, for people that have never been to Los Angeles, it's so hard to have any space in, especially to park that just doesn't happen at all. And the one on Sunset, the parking lot is gigantically big. It's crazy. Yeah. I think it probably plays a little bit to their customer base too, right? You've got 65 year olds who are coming out of the woodwork to eat at Denny's at

530, giving them a valet experience or asking them to park four blocks away in the neighborhood just would kill their business. It's a great point. So I bet when they either are in a location and stay there for a long time or make sure that they have plenty of on-site parking for any new location they go into. That is like, I think, a strike in its favor, though. Or a strike, can you say strike in its favor? Sure, sure. I mean, if you're on the right team, a strike is good. If you're bowling. Or a pitcher. Yeah. So, yeah, so I think that's a plus is that usually at Denny's, you can find a place to park. And I think that's a thing that you certainly take for granted if you live outside of a metropolis, but living within one like LA, it's just really nice. Like,

oh, yeah, I don't have to pay or I don't have to find street parking and walk for a while, like you were saying. Let me quickly point out another strike in their favor. He was so mad at me for you. I don't know. Our server at the Sunset Denny's, this guy Carlos. Shout out. Shout out to Carlos was one of the best server experience I've had in the longest time. He's so nice and the first thing that a place that people like are like, oh, it's depressing or whatever. He was, so he tried to talk me out of the thing burger, but I stuck with it and I did like it. But he was really nice and gave me his opinion and he was great and on top of refills and just such a friendly and happy attitude. And we found out he made the dessert. Whoa. We got the

Dr. Doom lava cake and he went in the back and he made that Dr. Doom lava cake and it was delicious on top of all that. I should point out the tagline for the Dr. Doom lava cake, I wrote this down, is every hero has a weakness. Apparently this is Dr. Doom's nefarious plot in the lore of the Denny's Slamtastic 4 menu. He's crafted this dessert to get back at Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic. And get them to gain weight or something? I don't know. Diabetes is a terrible disease. It's a long-term killer, but it's pretty bad. I wonder if this will happen in the new Fantastic 4. It's one of those movies that's already been like, you know when a movie is about to come out and it's like, it's gonna suck. Like that movie for whatever reason has that vibe to it. Got the stink

on it. Yeah. And unfortunately, we're not able to review it for this podcast. We'll give you a future review of that movie, but it looks like it's as good as any summer movie. I don't know. Well, I did do game design in two Fantastic Four video games, Fantastic Four and Fantastic Four Rise of the Silver Surfer. Oh, really? So I have a little bit of knowledge of the universe. Okay. So you'll be a good reviewer of the subject matter? I tell you, I will go in with a little bit of knowledge already loaded. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Whatever. They keep rebooting things. This is tired. Everyone's made this observation, but they do it. Of course. But I actually kind of appreciate that Denny's does this and they did the Lord of the Rings menu. And I

kind of, it's fun. That's a fun thing. I like seeing that. It's enjoyable. Oh, cool. Some new sandwiches, whatever. Their Hobbit menu was a lot of fun, actually. They did that previously. And I was like, Oh, this is great. This is like a light. It's tangentially related to Middle Earth, but I appreciate the effort. It's the kind of thing you don't really, you really only see those Titans at fast food restaurants and to see it a fast casual sort of a dine in experience. It's, I don't know, it's fun. And I imagine it's the kind of thing that kids would respond to. Farley, did you, did you have any thoughts on the service, the atmosphere, the sort of general experience outside of the food? So to me, service is something I wanted to talk about a little bit.

Like, I think there's a really underrepresented and important element of what fast casual and chain restaurant dining is because they know that they're going to operate a lot of times in smaller areas that don't necessarily have a ton of local restaurants seen to bank on. They know that they're going to get repeat clientele. I think you do surprisingly tend to get a better overall service experience at chain restaurants. I mean, unless it's like some shitty kid who just wants to be out back like smoke and pop by the dumpsters, it's probably an okay to good experience. I remember my dad, they put a red lobster in Watertown and my dad would go to red lobster once a month. He'd wear white jeans, go with his wife,

wear it to red lobster and ask for the same server every time. When that server left, they stopped going to red lobster. And that's the level like he knows he's not getting the best like seafood that there is to offer, but he knows that he can go and get treated like a king for 799. I think that your experience at Denny's Mitch is probably much closer to what a lot of people experience as opposed to a hipster, too cool for school kind of one-off restaurant experience you might find in a more bigger city. You're making me think back on times when I've had beef with servers or there was bad service. And I'm like, oh yeah, I think a lot of them are not chain restaurants. I give you credit on that. I can't think of a time where I was at an iHop or Denny's

or anything like that where I was like, what the fuck's going on? Yeah, our server was, we had to wait a little bit, but I could tell it was just because they were understaffed. They seemed to only have two people working the floor and we went in there pretty early. We went in there at like 5.30, 6 p.m. before the dinner rush or whatever. So our service was a little sluggish, but very polite, very responsive, everything we asked for, we received. And yeah, I think that's another thing. I also think too, I think they have to hire servers who know how to manage people who might be rowdy or who might be a little inebriated because I think that's part of the job. And I imagine that those kinds of people who are able to stay and thrive in that

kind of more hostile environment, when things are a little bit calmer and more hospitable, they're good at interacting with people and maybe grateful that things aren't chaotic. Cool. Did you guys have any other thoughts on Denny's before we get to our evaluations? Do you got anything? I'm good. No, I just wanted to reiterate how great it felt to be back in Denny's. And a little bit of it is because I don't eat at chain restaurants that much. It just comes with the job. Sometimes things will crop up, but for the most part, it's one-off restaurants or things like that. There is something so beautiful about going into a place when you have an exact knowledge of what you're going to do,

what you're going to order, what your experience is going to be like. I got a chocolate milk to drink and it's like, I haven't had a chocolate milk probably since I was 17. And I was like, this tastes exactly the way that I wanted my Denny's chocolate milk to taste like. And I think there's such beauty in that. It's really, really wonderful. That's great. Yeah. I agree with that. I think that is a beautiful thing. And I think I generally like diners because of that because usually the quality is okay enough. Carrows was a different story, but I think you're right. I think Denny's kind of has that vibe to it in that feel. I'm on board. Yeah, it definitely hits the nostalgia for younger, simpler times. And I think also too, I think it just sort of talks about how

it's kind of existed at the same sort of level of quality roughly for the duration of our lives. And I think that when you can always go back to it and it's like, oh, this is the Denny's I remembered. And clearly that was your experience. So quickly, Farley was at the first McDonald's in that one town over. Were you at the first Denny's when it opened in your town? I was not at the first Denny's when it opened in 1953. Oh, you weren't there? No, I wasn't there shortly after my father's birth. Well, we've established that you're super old. Live on the West Side and love human flesh. I'm an old gentrified cannibal. Cool. Let's get into our valuations then. So Farley, let's go ahead and give your closing thoughts and a rating on a scale of one to five forks. Go ahead.

Yeah, so I walked in with super high hopes, maybe not necessarily high expectations. And ultimately, I found myself pretty pleasantly surprised. I think Denny's fulfills a very particular market for people, especially in smaller towns, who maybe don't have access to a wide array of food and want to get out and maybe have a sit down experience. Again, I think service is a really key part of that. And I know that no matter where I am, I can walk into a Denny's and get a glass of chocolate milk or get a grand slam breakfast and be satisfied and also a little bit reminiscent of the way that I used to eat before. I will say overall, again, maybe the portion sizes have gotten a little bit smaller. Maybe that's just my memory of it. It's not great food. The quality

of the food is not there. The technique behind the food is not necessarily there. Outside of those pancake popper kind of things and mozzarella sticks, there isn't anything that I would necessarily go out of my way to recommend to a friend, although I could maybe point them in a direction on the menu if they said I have to eat at a Denny's. So with all of that in mind, I'm giving them a somewhat conservative three and a half forks. Wow. Okay. Very nice. Go ahead, Mitch. So my buddy, Mike, guess would give me a lot of shit for not tearing Denny's apart, but I find it hard to tear it apart because it's so middle of the road for me. And I don't mean that even in a bad way. It just is. And I was actually pleasantly surprised by the food I ate there today. The Dr. Doom lava cake

with ice cream was good. Like I was surprised. It was actually really, really good. And they our server made it. And the thing burger was pretty tasty. My wavy cut, right? I think wavy cut fries were kind of cold, but Susser, who got the chicken philly cheesesteak, he had spicy fries or spice fries. And they were good and they were hot. So I suggest that you get those if you go in there. And then, yeah, almost everything else. I had a Diet Coke and I had the pancake balls with the two dipping sauces. And they were, they were all pretty good diner food. I can't really complain. My experience is great. It's not the best food. I won't want to go back to Wendy's. I mean, sorry, Denny's. I will always want to go back to Wendy's. I won't want, I don't want to go back

to Denny's. I'll never go out of my way to go to it. But if I'm on the road and there's a Denny's there and I need to eat some eggs and bacon, I'll definitely go. The service was great, which, which kind of adds to it. But it's middle of the road to me. I'm just going to give it a middle of the road score. It gets three forks for me. Three forks for Mitch. You know, my thesis statement about Denny's is roughly it's fast food quality food presented in the framework of a restaurant. Because I don't think the food you're going to get from a Denny's is any better than, say, what you're, what you would get from a Wendy's or a McDonald's. Fundamentally, I mean, I don't think it's that much of a different caliber of food. I think it's the same sort of level

of quality, but it's presented in this kind of homey diner atmosphere. And that's a distinct experience from getting drive through from ordering at the counter and taking your own food and busing your own tray and filling your own drink at the fountain. Like that's a distinct experience eating in a restaurant style, eating in a diner style place with table service from eating at a fast food restaurant. So I think that matters. And I think that counts for something. And I definitely think the fact that they're open 24 hours, which is a thing we've touched on a little bit. But it is certainly like an important selling point of Denny's and is part of why they have prospered so much. And a thing they've become known for and kind of, I think pioneered to some degree

is a big thing in their favor, a big strike in their favor, if you will. And, you know, the fact that like you were saying, Mitch, that you can go to a different town, you can see a Denny's, you know, it's going to be open, you know what they're going to have, and you roughly know what the quality of that food and what the quality of that service is going to be, I think are all positives. My experience eating there exceeded my expectations. My expectations were a little on the meager side had been a while since I'd eaten at a Denny's and I never remembered it as being a high caliber experience. But it was everything was better than expected. In addition to the things I mentioned, I got the mango smoothie, they were out of the Fantastic Four fruit

smoothie, which was pretty good. And Natalie substituted fries for onion rings. So I tried some of the onion rings, those onion rings were not that everything was fine. And I think that's that's what you need when you're going to eat at a Denny's. It was a Denny's delivers Denny's caliber food. And that's all it needs to do like a Denny's experience is eating at a Denny's, like you know what that is. And like it's going to deliver on sometimes you need Denny's and you know you can go to Denny's to get a Denny's like that. And I think that counts for something. And I think that's a really worthwhile thing. Are you angry? No, I'm not getting angry. I'm just Did you have a stroke? I don't know how to articulate what Denny's is other than Denny's.

Like that's that's fundamentally what the experience is. And for that reason, I'm going to give it three forks. All right. Hey, we're on the same page. We're on the same page. Also, I want to say, I can't believe I pointed out that I got a Diet Coke. Sometimes when you're reading from your little cheat sheet, you just say what's on it. So apology. Apologies to all the Spoon Nation out there. Also, one last thing, I played the crane game at Denny's. They had a little crane game. And in the machine, there was a stuffed minion. And I was going to try to get it. So I could bring it back to Lil Wags the Burger Boy. And then when I got here, you start the Spoon Wars and you throw me under the bus multiple times. So I was thinking about

you today. I almost got you a stuffed minion. And then you kind of came at me. Well, I appreciate the thought. And speaking of minions, it's time for a shake. I thought you were also going to apologize. No. Oh, fuck you then. Roach-loving piece of shit. Speaking of minions, and I'll explain why this connects in one second. We're going to taste test the food stuff and decide if it's worth putting in your mouth. It's time for another edition of Snack or Wack. Farley and Mitch, I'm going to run to the fridge and retrieve our item. We're going to taste test for this week's edition. I'll be right back. Great. Now, while he is away, what is the most, where do you draw the line at eating meat? Where would you draw the line as far as animals, exotic or otherwise? If

something was prepared for you, would you turn anything down? And like Weigher said, human flesh is included. Yeah, human flesh is on the table. I honestly think I'm probably much closer to Nick's personal philosophy than I would choose to believe. As long as I'm not watching something, well, maybe even. I have this personal idea that because I choose to eat beef and I know what comes with that, that I should be willing at some point to go and kill a cow myself. Not out of like a thrill, but just like really feel the process of that and know what it means to like eat meat. That's, I weirdly, I know some people will disagree with that, but I kind of find that honorable in a lot of ways. And I think that's, if you're eating that meat and that's where it

comes from, then maybe that's. Be willing to take that on and really know it. So in that sense, I think anything is fair game. I haven't come across something that I wouldn't eat now. I talked about that. I did a reading at a bookstore out here for my book all over the weekend. And I got a similar question. And one of the things we talked about was Cesos, which is a cow or pig brain that gets cooked up usually in a Mexican tradition, but it'll be included in tacos or anything. The only real crazy thing about Cesos is there is an outside chance of like a bovine disease that gets into a cow's brain that could manifest itself in your body and you wouldn't know it for like years. So there's like a, there's a small danger element involved with that if it's not cooked

properly. It's called, it's called prion or prion disease. Yeah, prion I think. Okay. And is that the, is that the craziest thing you've probably ever eaten, would you say? I've had like bull testicles and you know, snake and penis and all that sort of stuff. But really what you're talking about when you talk about like what are crazy things are like Americanized crazy shit. For sure. I'm a simple man, like we said. Exactly. And you can, you can go to places within 10 miles of your home and eat pig eyes if you want to, and it's all possible. So what is it about, so about the brain specifically? It's just the idea that like you're eating this thing that could potentially endanger your life down the line and you don't really know the consequences of it. Is that, that kind of what

you're trying to do? Yeah, that, that's sort of the main idea. And I don't think that has anything to do with the people who are cooking it. I'm sure that they want to serve you food and not get you sick years down the line. But there is just sort of that backend viral fear that something could crop up years later. Interesting. Crazy. Yeah. All right. So we've got our snack that we're going to taste test in front of us. So this is Minions branded Mott's apple sauce and the flavor is tropical banana. Oh my God. As you may have inferred from what Mitch mentioned earlier, I personally am a fan of the Minions. I've seen the Minions movie, enjoyed it. And you know, this, this seemed like an appropriate thing that we can tell you five things about

himself liking the Minions might be in his top five. Yeah, I'd be up there. All right. So let's dig into this. So it looks like to me like normal apple sauce, you guys can go ahead and describe what you're seeing smelling and tasting here. Yeah, it's definitely got a fruitier overall flavor. And it's I remember the Mott's apple sauce being a real pale kind of like weird golden yellow. This is is much more vibrant and much more bright. Yeah, this is this is it looks like they junk food divide the yeah, apple sauce. Even though I don't even know if that's true, it could be it could be great for you. This to me is a classic example of a food that doesn't necessarily need to be tinkered with. Apple sauce is already great.

They already throw enough sugar in the Mott's versions that like to throw some banana and just feels like I'll eat a banana separately. Thank you. Yeah. And I also too, like, you know, as far as this is clearly marketed towards kids, the Minions branding is very heavy throughout. Do you think just the Mott's are the Minions in general? Specifically this variant of the Mott's apple sauce. Although obviously I think apple sauce is in this form these little cups that we have is consumed more by kids in school lunches. I used to have it every day. Do you guys so the Minion branding is very forward on this. Do you guys all have Stuart the one I'd won on the top of your label? Is that variant at all?

No, I got Stuart. You got Stuart. Yeah, I have to assume this is Stuart. Okay, so we've all got Stuart and then on the on the side we've got Kevin Bob and Stuart as a trio. Let the record let the record show that wider can identify each minion. Well, in the Minions movie, it focuses on this primary triumvirate. So it's not a that's not particularly a crazy that I can identify them. But anyway, yeah, I think like it's, it's, you know, it says tropical banana and I'm definitely getting more sort of like a tropicaly flavor like mango. Yeah, which I've noticed is a commonality with the Minion branded foodstuffs. I had some of those Minion tic-tacs and that was very like mango heavy. Are they from some tropical island or something or no? Not really. I mean,

their origin is not exactly, you know, it's not super clear. They're kind of ambiguously have existed for all of time and it's implied that they are immortal, which is and I guess they don't they reproduce. I don't think they reproduce. They just kind of have always existed. So the lore of the Minions is a little confusing. You just have to not think about it too much, but they aren't distinctly from a tropical place, although they do like taking a dip in the in the ocean. Um, yeah, Jesus, you know more about the Minions than you know about me. I gotta say, I like the taste of this. Yeah, it's pretty good. I um, it's not offensive in any way. I mean, we're all pounding it into our bodies right now with no hesitation. But

it's for my money. I don't need someone to like refruit up my applesauce. That's fair. I I most prefer this to the regular mods applesauce. Wow. Wow. That's a bold stand. Are you a guy who chooses a lot of sugar and things? Um, yeah, I probably have some health concerns and borderline diabetes, but um, I you know what I like? I like tropical drinks. One of my favorite alcohol drinks is a Mai Tai, a big Mai Tai fan, and it doesn't have to be very sugary. Don't get me don't twist this because if a Mai Tai is like too fruity, I don't like it either. It has to have a kind of a strong booze kick. I've told I've talked to Nick about this on many occasions, but um, but I like a tropical fruity flavor. I'm a fan and I thought that you're right. It is even it's

kind of hitting me now too that there is a ton of sugar in it and like a and it stays with you kind of a little bit longer than the regular applesauce does, but it's a pretty good. It's a good taste while it's going down. What do you think, Farley? Snack or whack? You know, I go snack. It's not something I would choose to have all the time around the house, but if you are looking for a slightly different flavor of applesauce or you want to get something for the kids that's minion branded and you're worried about it tasting like shit, this is fine. Absolutely fine. I agree with you completely. I think this is this is uh, I think in general, in the general case, I'd prefer regular applesauce, but this is fun. It's a little different. Yeah. The tropical banana

flavoring isn't overwhelming. It still tastes very applesauce and the minion branding is good, clean, fun. I feel like if you're a minion fan, give these a shot. It's a real hoot to eat and look at your buddies on the side of the cup. Yeah. All your favorite friends, Terry, Barry, Larry, what are they? They all have like very generic male names. So um, there probably is a Terry, Barry, and Larry at some point. Uh, go ahead, Mitch. Uh, I vote snack. Did I not say snack or whack? Snack. Snack. Okay. Great. We'll wait to steal my thunder. No, no, I'm just, I don't realize I've been declaratively said snack or whack and that's the whole point of the exercise. So I, I, Nick, am voting snack. Go ahead, Mitch. I vote snack as well. I give it the Spoonman's

stamp of approval as well. Spoonman's stamp of approval. Sure. Is someone gonna have to build a website now that's all Spoonman's stamps of approval? If a snack on snack or whack goes above and beyond to me, I'm going to give it the Spoonman's stamp of approval. Okay. Well, do you think it's confusing that I've tossed so many things into this or? I just like, I'm just expecting you to go rogue every podcast now. You're going to introduce some new element that we didn't discuss in advance. I think the problem is I know you're going to leave and do no work and that Nick's going to be in his garage turning over a blackboard with all sorts of like equations on it, figuring out how to make these things work together. That's what makes us work

together. Yeah. He's going to loosen up and I got to straighten up. It's a great, it's a good buddy comedy. It's a classic buddy comedy. And like I said before, you appreciate when Tom Cruz is goes rogue, but when I do it, you get mad at me. What is the deal? You're not, you're no Tom Cruz. Come on. That's true, I guess. All right. Just like a restaurant, we value your feedback. Let's open up the feedback. Today's email comes to us from Brett Bendistus. Brett writes, Do you guys have old country buffet or golden corral? What about Chinese buffet? What's your position on chain buffets? Hmm. What do you think, Farley? So this was interesting for me. I thought initially about pitching you guys on hometown

buffet, which I think is a west or maybe southwest chain. I know I didn't have any back east. There's something very fun, I think, about going to a buffet, but you just have to know exactly what you're getting into, which is like the worst quality food that's also been left out for a while and everyone around you is terrible. That's maybe the exception service wise to the rule, because you're ordering and paying upfront and they just kind of slop a tray your way. No one cares whether you live or die at a hometown buffet. Yeah. I am decidedly anti-buffets, even anti, even like high end buffets. Like a Vegas buffet? Yeah. I just don't like going to them, because I don't like having to get up and refill my plate. I don't like what you're talking about,

the general lower quality of food. I'd rather have a higher quality of food and less of it. And also too, I'm kind of the buffet equivalent of a one-pump chump in that I get full so fast. That's fucking gross comparison. No. I get full so fast that I have one plate, and then I'm like, I don't even want to get up and get anything else. Maybe get one small bowl of dessert or something like that, but I never feel like... Is that ugg noise, you being full or not? No, that's the one-pump chump noise. It's me busting in my pants. No, and then I'm like a one plate guy, and I might have a little side dish of, I don't know, pudding or something like that, but I never feel like I'm getting my money's worth.

I feel like I'm the guy at the casino who's always losing and is keeping the, you know, helping build those giant luxury hotels that they have there in Vegas. I'm one of the rubes. I'm one of the suckers. That's how I feel about the buffet. So, buffets are a little too chaotic and disorganized. A little too rogue for old Nicky plan. I like buffets. I enjoy them. I'm with you though. Quality is a big issue with buffets, and I feel like you're going to get some crappy quality at some of those places, but for the most part, I like it. And I actually can see where you're coming from as far as like, you feel just kind of, I feel like a buffet is like for if you haven't eaten all day or something. As a big guy, I kind of, I like just one plate

usually too. I'll go out for seconds of course, but I don't like to, I won't like to have like, oh, I want like eggs and then I also want like crab. I'd like, that's kind of gross to me. So, I'm not a big fan of that. Yeah. So, yeah, I generally stay away from them, but if it's a good enough, I used to love Pizza Hut buffet when I was younger, and that's a very specific one. I've gone to some, I went to Dollywood and I had the buffet there and it was delicious. Wow. It was really great. It sounds like a whole episode. The Dollywood Buffet. The Dollywood Buffet was really, really great and had, it was kind of, I think that's it. If it's kind of more specific, this was kind of like Southern comfort food and if it's kind of a specific thing and it

doesn't try to do too much, you usually can get some good stuff out of it. If it spreads over like every food that's ever been created, then the quality is not going to be great. Yeah. And I will, I'll give a little addendum to what I said earlier based on your reference to the Pizza Hut Buffet. I will tolerate a Pizza Buffet because like some shakies have like a lunch buffet, Pizza Hut's oftentimes those older Pizza Hut's that are like big, big giant buildings when they used to actually serve pizza in-house. Those oftentimes have lunch buffets during the day. Those are like, well, it's just slices of pizza. And so those, those I usually find I can get my money's worth. Let's talk about these specific places. Brett has mentioned, have you guys ever had

like an old country buffet or a Golden Corral? I've actually never been to either. I mean, I've eaten at a Golden Corral. It's, it's a lot of that like sizzler kind of, you know, low grade steak sort of place where you can get a bunch of sides. It, to me, neither one is a stand out and I think for a lot of the same reasons that we're talking about. But every town probably or two towns over has some sort of a Chinese food buffet that's local to them. Everyone has a buffet experience. Maybe there's something to the idea of what if you could go to a buffet that only had eight items. So you know exactly what is possible to get. It's not an out of this world range of possibilities. And you could maybe sample one or two bites of only eight things. Farley, are you

rehearsing your Shark Tank pitch? Well, I'm here for- I was gonna say, we are here for the moment when Farley becomes a millionaire. And Nick and I keep making podcasts and hating each other till the end of time. But I think Chinese buffets maybe come a little closer to that because they aren't hewing out into, we're also going to do crazy Americanized desserts. We're also going to do a ton of seafood stuff. Like they probably only have eight to 10 items. So if you're going to go to a buffet, to me, skip a golden corral, skip something like a sizzler that you're just going to get low quality meat. You're going to get a bad version of the thing that you want. Go with something that is focused like you were saying in one particular area and offers just a little bit of dynamism.

I like that. I think that's great judgment. And I think that's great advice and what we might expect from such an esteemed food writer. I agree. And I won't really touch on anything more. I don't think I've been to either of those places. So I don't know them too well. But we will visit them, I'm sure, in this podcast at some point. Farley, thank you so much for being with us. I'm a fan of the podcast. I would definitely recommend following Farley on Twitter at Over Over Under and check out the book Los Angeles Street Food. Anything else you would like to plug, Farley? No, yeah, that's it. Like you said at the top, I'm the senior editor at Eater in Los Angeles. We do a lot of restaurant news and breaking news, chef talk, that kind of stuff.

We also get to do some kind of cool trend pieces. So if you're coming to Los Angeles or you live in Los Angeles and you want to know what's happening and where you should go, check out la.eater.com. Farley, we're going to have to have you back at some point because we only scratched the surface and we discussed crappy food for about 70 minutes while you know so much about great, really good, interesting food. So thank you so much for being here. Maybe we could have a local chews edition or maybe we just all put on some white pants and go hit up Red Lobster. Yeah, there we go. I like that a lot. Awesome. And anyone out there, if you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you can email us at doboyspodcast at gmail.com. Also,

be sure to follow us on Twitter at doboyspod to check out our Facebook fan page. And that'll pretty much do it for this episode of Do Boys. So until next time, for Mike Mitchell, I'm Nick Weigher. Happy eating. See ya. As always, Do Boys is produced by Dustin Marshall and brought to you by feralaudio.com. Home of put your hands together with Cameron Esposito, the Todd Berry podcast, and more. If you're going to shop on Amazon, go to the Do Boys show page, use our Amazon affiliate link, and we get a small kickback. Help support the show. Thanks so much for listening, everyone. I will say some of my favorite small moments in Do Boys are Mitch going, what the fuck?