Doughboys - Firehouse Subs with Mary Sohn

Episode Date: June 21, 2018

Actor and comedian Mary Sohn (AP Bio, The Boss) joins to discuss Illinois eats and to review up and coming sandwich chain Firehouse Subs. Mary, Mitch, and Wiger endure another edition of Hot or Not. Plus, Wiger places a phone call to a plugged in source in advance of Mitch’s trip to Italy.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

America's Mayor. This was the honorific bestowed upon Rudy Giuliani in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks when he was a highly visible figure in New York City's recovery. As Americans were desperate for leadership and hope after the tragedy, Giuliani became a symbol of national resolve. But over the years, as the specter of the Twin Towers falling became less omnipresent in the country's consciousness, criticism began to surface regarding Giuliani's decision-making in the run-up and aftermath of 9-11. Prior to the attacks, Giuliani overrode concerns from advisors and relocated the city's Office of Emergency Headquarters to the World Trade Center itself. As the 9-11 Commission report

noted, this was a costly mistake, given that the terrorist attacks knocked out radio communications, likely resulting in many of the 343 firefighters who perished in the towers never having received the order to evacuate. And after the attacks, Giuliani reopened Ground Zero prematurely and blocked an order by the EPA that cleanup workers wear respirators, despite a report by the U.S. Geological Survey that the air was loaded with asbestos and had a toxicity of inhaling drain cleaner. The 9-11 first responders illness that sickened and killed hundreds of emergency workers was, at minimum, exacerbated by the mayor's negligence. In July 2007, as early polling showed Giuliani as the frontrunner for the GOP presidential

nomination to succeed George W. Bush, the nation's largest firefighters union released a 13-minute attack ad titled, Rudy Giuliani, Urban Legend. The incendiary spot contrasted Giuliani's opportunistic invocation of the attacks to raise his political profile with his demonstrated failure to protect firefighters as mayor. As retired firefighter Jim Riches, himself the father of a 9-11 victim, observed in the video, quote, he s running on 9-11 and it s all a fallacy, end quote. Giuliani s presidential campaign would never get off the ground. But in 1994, the first year of Giuliani s first mayoral term, years before 9-11 forever altered his and the nation s trajectories, two firefighter brothers,

Robin and Chris Sorensen, decided to collaborate on a submarine sandwich shop in Jacksonville, Florida. Robin had previously dabbled in restaurant management as a side hustle, and as the duo financed their dream project off of relatives credit cards, they decided to theme their eatery after their shared profession. As the brothers' meat-loaded firehouse sandwiches attracted a devoted fan base, the company began franchising in earnest in 1999 and grew rapidly nationwide over the course of the odds. Today, the Sorensen brothers sub-chain is over 1,000 locations across North America and Puerto Rico, and it pays tribute to its firefighter lineage by donating a portion of its proceeds to charities benefiting America s bravest.

And also today, Rudy Giuliani s already tarnished reputation as in tatters, and the 9-11 candidate who mismanaged 9-11 has been reduced to a flailing ghoul, the inept TV lawyer for reality star president, universally reviled by the city he once led, as the myth of America s mayor, has gone up in smoke. This week on Doughboys, Firehouse Subs. Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I m Nick Weiger, alongside my co-host, Fenway Frank Calliendo, Mitchie Two Spoons, Mike Mitchell. I ve worked with Frank Calliendo, he s great. He s great. This is a compliment. Fenway Frank Calliendo.

And Fenway Frank, something you like. Sometimes these insults turn into nice little compliments that Mitch enjoys, so that s a possible feature, or maybe just failed at your job if you did that. Frank Calliendo, he did birthday boys, and he had everybody cracking up. He was very, he was very, very funny. Naturally charming man. I wonder what that s like. Hey, Derek Furr sent that in. If you have an insult you like on Mitch at the Doughboys show, roastspoon.com is the address. Yeah, don t send anything. How did Mitchie Two Spoons Nation embarrass to say it in front of our guest? Don t know her too well. And they re just going to say out loud that I promise you I m not a weirdo. And I got a little drop here, Nick. Are you ready? Yes.

Wow. That s it. Wow. I m liking it. That was a lot of fun from a recent Doughboys episode with Denny Pearson. Hear me all like singled out in echoey. To hear your voice put over piano, hitting those keys. Yeah, it is weird. It s very strange. That was from Dan Padley. Doughboys and guests. I m loving it. The podcast that is. Sorry for the dumb drop. Twitter at Padley Dan. That was good. Yeah, that was great. Very well done. And hey, you know, Mitch, I have a little something for you at the top of the show here. I know you have a vacation to Italy planned in the near future. Is that correct? That s all right. Well, I thought I d reach out in advance of your trip, so I m going to place a call to the Italian Tourism Board in Rome

just to check in. So I m going to go ahead and dial in now. Oh, interesting. Waiting for it. Hello. This is the Tourism Board of Italy. Hi, to whom am I speaking? It s me, Mario. Mario Genaro. I m the director of a guest relations for the entire country of Italy. Well, Mario, my name is Nick Weiger. I m calling from America. I m the host of a podcast. America. I love America. I love Trump. Oh, no. That s horrible. No, no, no. I only say that because so he don t how you say NUCAS. Oh, God, I ve got it. That makes sense. We don t want to get a nuke. We are scared to get a nuke. We love a Trump. I understand. I understand that that self-defense reaction. Well, I m the host of a podcast over here called Doe Boys. Doe Boys. I know where

the Doe Boys. I know it s Mario. Your show is how you say Unlistenable. Okay. That s fair. My English, sorry. My English, it s a dog shit. It s like to listen to your podcast is like to put a zucchini in your ass sideways. Oh, boy. That sounds awfully uncomfortable. But fair, very fair. Well, my co-host, I m calling because my co-host, Mike Mitchell, is a famous actor here in America. He was on the show called Love on Netflix. Love, Amore. When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie. That s Amore on Netflix. Oh, that s nice. He works. Is he there with you now? He is actually here right now. Say hi, Mitch. Hey, Mario, how are you? Mitch, it s Spoon Guy. That s right. Hey, Spoon Guy. Hey, can I ask you a question?

Sure. Yeah. What s up, Mario? When the John Dapetal hang out on a set, he just to make you laugh at the whole time, you crack joke. Is he as funny as he is in that a Gaddy Shadling of Documentary? He s so funny in that. Wow, Mario. Interesting takeaway. He s even- That was the funniest documentary I ever seen. I thought it was kind of sad in some ways, but he s even funnier. He s even funnier. Oh, I knew it. Thank you for confirming for me. Of course. So, Mario, do you know that people s, do you know that there s a famous video game or that character that says it s a me, Mario? Yes, the video game that was based after me,

a Mega Man. So, Mario, I wanted to let you know in regards to Mitch, and I know as a tourism board, you re probably used to accommodating celebrities, and Mitch here is actually going to be traveling to Italy next month, and I want to see if he could get some trips for his Italian, or some tips, rather, for his Italian vacation. Okay, you stop right there. You play a prank on me. No, he s coming. He s coming to Italy. No, no, you OK. I see you are an American comedian. You play a prank on me. You do a punk on me. That s a very funny. Mike Mitchell, the spoon guy coming to Italy, they re very funny. He s got, he can confirm it himself, Mitch. Mario, I m coming to Italy in about a month s time, right after-

This is not a joke? No joke. This is real. I m coming. I m going to be in Italy. Rome, Florence, in Venice. Oh, Mama Mia. Mama Mia, no. No. Mitch is a spoon guy coming to Italy. We don t have enough of food. No, no. It s happy. You fired up all of the pizza I m in America, the spoon guy. Mitch is coming to Italy. Oh, no. Mitch, I beg you, no. Please, do not come. We have children and old, wrinkly women to feed. Please, we re not going to have any meatballs when you re done. I beg you, show us mercy. Do not come to Italy. Do not come. Mario, I promise you, I won t eat a country s worth of food. I mean, you do have a famously big appetite, but that s a lot of food.

That seems like what you were to say to get yourself across the border and then next thing you know, it s just tumbleweeds instead of tortellinis. Hold on a second. Tortellinis are blowing across the street? No, I m saying that you will eat all the tortellinis and there will be nothing left but the tumbleweeds. Do you understand? Got it, yeah. I mean, that tortellinis. Dude, please, what are we going to do if we run out of a marinara? What are we going to put in the babies of bottles? Milk? You re feeding babies marinara sauce? What the hell? Well, sometimes vodka sauce if they stop fattening up a bit, but what are we going to do? Start giving

them milk? Some of my wife s abreast, I don t think so. Yeah, you don t specifically have to get your wife s abreast milk to feed everyone in the country. I mean, breastfeeding your own kids is appropriate, but yeah, she s not obligated to that. Well, I wanted to let you know we re running tight on time here, Mario, but I wanted to let you know. I have plenty of time. I can stay on as long as you need me to. Yeah, it seems like if you re the director of tour, what would you say? Director of guest relations for all of Italy, it would seem like you d maybe have more calls

to field. You wouldn t be able to spend all day on the phone with the two podcast hosts. Well, also, it must be a weird time in Italy there, right? Oh, I didn t do it. People don t want to come here anymore because people are being more carb conscious. Oh, got it. So that hurts the pizza, the pasta, and the bread. Right, the cannolis. Yeah, there s a lot of carbs at gelato even. There s a lot of carbs and everything. Yes, right now, I am drinking a glass of olive oil. Wow. Does not seem nutritious and seems just like empty calories.

It is. It s good for my skin and my hair. Is it even like that seems like not even pleasant to drink? It s like drinking. Well, you re thinking about the stuff you get in a trade at Joe s where you re from. This is from Italy, straight from the olives. Oh, that sounds pretty good. That sounds pretty good. Ten olives this morning into a glass. Anyways, what were you saying?

I was just going to say. I got a question. Yes, go ahead, go ahead, Mitch. I got two things before you go, Mario. One, what should I try for food there in Italy? And two, I know you re afraid of me eating stuff, but if there s any recommendations you have for food, I ll take it easy. And two, is there any sites that I should see while I m there?

Here s what you should do for a food. Eat as much food as you can on the plane and then pray for the planeer to crash. Oh, my God. You know, I m always praying for the plane to crash when I m on it. You have to understand, we don t want you to come here. That s the whole thing of this phone call. Right, right. What about any sites that you think I should see?

The Coliseum? Maybe you should. Have you ever ridden in Venice under the gondola? Oh, you know, I ve never done that, but I would love to do it. You must get in the gondola, ride it down the river, and tip it over. Please, please, spare us, spare us. If we re out of food, we re going to have to have a tapas flown in from Spain. Just to for sustenance, just to keep us alive, like after when Garfield visited here.

Well, you know, I think Mitch will be all right. He s going to have a lot of his friends from Quincy there with him, and we re going to keep him in line. Oh, a chank, then a wu-tang. Yes, that s right. Yeah, they both will be there. Oh, lombre de la Micas. Micas will be there too.

So you can say hi to all those guys. Hey, one last thing, Mario. So we recently had Munch Madness, our pizza tournament this past March, and as per our rules, Mitch, this is something we talked about. We were supposed to send a pizza from our winner, Domino's, to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. We were wondering if you could help us out with that. Well, are you asking me a question? Yeah, I was wondering, can you help us connect, you know,

with someone over the Leaning Tower of Pisa so we can get the engineers there, some Domino's pizza? Domino's pizza is the one you want to send to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. That's correct. Domino's a pizza. That's very good. Yes. How about instead of that, you take a piss on my flag?

How about you wipe your ass with the Italian flag? Maybe that would be a little less offensive to Italian country. Why don't you take a zucchini and stick it up on my asses sideways? All right, why? Just go to Mario's. Go to his sideways. That would be a left hand. I would rather eat the original Neapolitan pizza,

a little tiny shitty burnt pizza with the cheese on it. An Italian tradition. Well, we apologize for offending your sensibilities there. Thank you very much. Mario Giannaro from the Italian Board of Tourism. Thank you. Ciao, ciao. Ciao, buddy.

Ciao, Mario. Thank you. And, you know, we've got some chowing of our own to do here, Mitch. Yeah, let's introduce our guest who sat very patiently through that bullshit. She's an actress and writer. Hey, that wasn't full. I liked Mario. That was, Mario was great.

An actress and writer from AP Bio and the Boss. Mary Sohn is here. Hi, Mary. Hello. Thank you so much for making time for us. I love your guys' podcast. I'm so happy to be here. Oh, God bless you.

We're very happy to have you. We probably could have called you half an hour later. We didn't know that was going to go. It was, it was fun. It was fun. So you were telling us before we started that you're from Illinois originally. Yeah. What is the, so, you know, I think a champagne is it?

All right. First up, do you like champagne? I do. Yeah. I do. Yeah. Like all the food is exactly how I like it. Right.

I got you. Do you like the beverage champagne? Not really. I'm more of a rye type of gal. Oh, I got you. Do you like the beverage champagne? I think it's a fair guess. Some people like it.

All right, fine, fine, fine, fine. Then why don't other people don't? I'm not a big champagne fan myself either. Yeah. I don't, I've had it. I've had it. I've had some. Here's the thing.

I always feel like an asshole drinking out of a champagne flute. Oh, yeah. You're like, it just like, it feels very like, I feel like I'm being pretentious. I feel like I'm being a one percenter, you know? And I'd rather like, even if I'm going to have like a lighter rye wine. You are a one percenter. Come on.

You don't know my income. If I was going to have a lighter wine, I'd rather have like a rosé or something or like, you know, like a, a reasling maybe, you know, something that's got that doesn't quite, I don't know. I feel like the champagne is kind of its own thing. But also, so what is the food like in champagne or Illinois more generally? If I could just piggyback on that. Yes, please.

I also don't like the way people's lips have to purse to get that out. It feels like a body react like your lips are going backwards because they don't want it or something like, right? Like it's like a natural body reaction to not wanting champagne. Well, it's kind of like the champagne flute size. So I've got this, this mini Perrier here and it's kind of the same size as this. You held up the can and turned it sideways to show Mayor, you were really showing it off to Mary.

Fine. Really merchandising. Look, this may be branded content. So, but yeah, you kind of have to take a little sip like this, like this motion I'm doing, this person lip things. But like the, the size of it is almost big enough where you almost just want to put your whole mouth around it, like a bottle, you know, like, and that, that, but if you did that with a champagne flute, you'd look insane.

But it might be a better way to drink it. Yeah, there's not a great way to drink it. I wish that for people who listen to the podcast and they know a thing or two about Nick, he just did a very descriptive thing where he put his, his, his, uh, I don't know if you listen to the podcast enough. Nick can suck his own. Come on. You don't have to bring that up for someone I just met today.

I know, I know, I, it was hard for me to do too. Well, you can also do it. No, no, oh God, no, but that was very, I never get the, I never get the sense to put my mouth around the entire can of the, Perrier. Yeah. No, I didn't mean the can. I was using this to illustrate in place of a champagne flute.

I was using this as an illustrative, but even still with the champagne. Really? That's the thing you want to like. I don't know. I just feel like I like, like the, the it's a little too narrow and you have to put your legs in a weird way. It's like a Gatorade, but I don't put my mouth around the Gatorade bottle opening. You know what I mean?

I have done that before. Have you really? Yeah, but your lips go into it. I feel like it's a little awkward, which is that maybe gross. I don't know. Yeah. But, but yeah, like, I like like a normal glass or the classic champagne glass has like a wider brim.

It's more like a margarita glass. That's a little bit better if you encounter that. But so, so, but yeah, the wine aside, auto fallatio aside, what is the, you're growing up in Champaign, Illinois. What are you chowing down there? Well, my family will make the two and a half hour trip now to go back to a place called Monocles Pizza. Paper thin, paper thin pizza.

Really good. Very good French dressing. Now you're not going to find a French. No, that's like worthy to drive two and a half hours. Right. But that place, yes. Wow. Wow.

Yeah. There's also a place called Custard Cup. I've heard. Have I heard of Custard Cup? Probably Jarlings Custard Cup. I've, I've, I feel like I've heard that name before. Is this a small chain or a standalone? I think it's a standalone.

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. All right. Maybe, maybe not. Well, I know a lot of Chicago folks, so possibly I have. What's a, what's Jarlings Custard Cup all about? It's just like, you know, Custard is just far superior than ice cream.

You know, it's so much creamier. Oh boy. That's a bold statement. Oh. I'm, I'm a big ice cream fan. I like a good Custard, but I mean, that's a, that's a strong stance you're taking. Well, she can have that. Yes, you're welcome to have that opinion.

I'm just saying, like, I'm like, I, like, oh, it's, it's a, you know, it's a hot take if you will. Here's the deal with Nick. Nick eats, like a little boy eats ice cream every night now that he's an adult. I don't have it every night. I have once a week. You'd have ice cream quite a bit. I would be rough on my midsection of I was having it every night.

I had it when I was a little boy and I was a plump young man. I had a lot of, we had a lot of ice cream. We had a bowl of ice cream for dessert. I have to ask you this. I just asked my friend, like, um, what would be a reasonable size portion for like a home scoop of ice cream? Oh, that's a good question. I mean, like, cause like, if you go to an ice cream parlor,

you're usually at the one scoop. Sometimes you'll indulge and get the double. You'll rarely get the triple, but I mean, I think if you're eating at home, a lot of times you'll give yourselves just like three hearty scoops in a bowl. And you'll, you're having basically a Sunday's worth of ice cream. It's excessive. I don't know. I feel like a double scoop is, is proper.

Also too, like you, like the other thing that the other danger is you'll get that pint and you'll just eat out of the pint and you can take that whole bad boy down and one. I finished, I finished a Ben and Jerry's pint. Yeah. More than once. It's nothing. It's not, it is, that is nothing. Yeah.

And I try to buy those Haagen Daz like single tiny serving ones. Yeah. I'm talking about, and that's just a pure tease. Yeah. They don't quite scratch the edge. Need a little bit more. But wait, so you're a big custard fan. What do you look for in a custard?

Just the creamy factor. Got it. And that is not a great thing to say, but creamy factor. That's like the least bad thing that's ever been said on this show. So don't worry. We said worse things like five minutes ago. I also like, for some reason, they have a lemon flavor that tastes so good. It's like a natural lemon flavor.

Right. Lemon, you know, I don't like lemon when it crosses over into food. Like I don't like lemon chicken as much. Sure. I've said that before. You've given a version of lemon chicken specifically. Yeah, specifically.

But like lemon as far as fruity, because I never go fruity ice cream flavors as much. But lemon works a lot of the time. Like a lemon, a lemon sorbet or something like a lemon. Yes. Lemon, lemon really does well with, with ice creams. You get a, you get a good lemon meringue that can be a lot of fun. Here's a thing that I've had that is great. And this is actually, because I know we talked about which chain we were going to cover

and Cheesecake Factory was voted as a possibility. But they have a dessert at Cheesecake Factory that's not cheesecake. Their lemon tort is delicious. It's very, very good. It's like this lemon cake and it's got like this, you know, it's as indulgent as you'd think a slice of cake for the Cheesecake Factory is. But that lemon flavor works really well in it. Oh, God.

Yeah. Yeah, it's dynamite. That doesn't come with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, does it? I mean, you can make that happen. They'll, they'll accommodate you at the Cheesecake Factory. Nick makes ever, Nick would, you would make anything Alamoad if you could. You love, you love making things Alamoad. Yeah.

It's, it's the truth. I draw the line at like poutine. I'm not going to put ice cream on something savory. I'm going to put that on like a slice of meatloaf. But like, you know, like, yeah, like desserts usually are kicked up a notch with some vanilla ice cream. And by the way, I, then this is a, this is a thing I say is a creed of mine, but vanilla is a flavor.

People think of vanilla as plain, but vanilla is a flavor. Thank you. My favorite restaurant in LA is Tex. Okay. Do you ever mess with Tex? No, I've not. The French place. Oh my God.

Is it really? Oh wait, it's beautiful. Have you had your food? No, no, no. I'm just saying it's such a funny, it's like an old school, very like, like, uh, when we, we, I actually shot in there for birthday boys for the pilot, it's, it's like old school, older, like a lot older clientele that are hanging around there.

Like, and it feels like a place that like it's heyday was like a, like a while, a while ago. Yeah. There's a lot of like velvety curtains. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, but I never, I don't think I've actually ever eaten there before. Oh my God. Best Escargo in the city, but. Wow. Um, I have to say whenever I, um, end like a delicious meal that I always end with a firm scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Hell yeah. And it is perfect. That's awesome. Oh, it's dreamy. That's, that, that, hey, it can be a great end of the meal kind of palette, not cleanser, but I guess a cleanser, but it can just be kind of like, this is a nice solid flavor to end the meal on. I get it.

Yeah. I was mean to you about vanilla before, but I, I get it. Thank you. I get it. I feel like we're coming to a lot of understanding and reason. No, shut up. But I think like, here's what I like about ice cream, besides the fact that it is a delicious, uh, uh, S tier dessert is that.

It's cold. It's, I like that it's cold, but I also like that. What you were saying is that as a dessert after a meal, it's like great. Like sometimes, you know, my wife Natalie and I will go out and we will get this, it will get like a great meal. And yeah, we'll do the same thing. Just get like a single scoop of ice cream, a piece. And because it's not, if you, if you have a lot of food, it's, it's a,

it's not super substantial. It's not like something like a, like a slice of pie or a cake or a more composed. It just melts over that glob of food in your stomach. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Just put it in those cracks. Yeah, exactly. Well, cause I noticed when I don't do the vanilla ice cream, I end up walking towards

that 76 on that and getting a shitload of candy to then later eat in my bed. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, so you're a candy fan. Huge, huge candy fan. Oh boy. We got to talk candy. So what are your go-tos?

I love, um, like a sour straw or any sort of like sour patch kids, Starburst, um, Skittles. My new favorite are airhead bites. Oh wow. You're going to find that at an AMC. But they're like these rainbow bites that taste like cherry. Very good bite on it. Oh, all right. That's awesome.

I like the sound of that. Yeah. Wait, by bite, you mean they have like a little sourness to them or what do you mean? Or just like the texture of it? Great. Follow up the texture. Also, any sort of like, um, sour chewy candy thrown in the freezer for a minimum of one hour. And then you hit that.

Oh, I like that. I like that. Cause a lot of them. I have never done that. A lot of the time it's a Snickers bar you throw in the freezer, but I like that to kind of like just the texture, it just hardens up the texture a little bit. Interesting. Yeah.

Hmm. I like that. Nicky, you got to try it. Yeah. I might try hopping in the freezer before I, for an hour before I spend the night with now. Yourself? Yeah. Firm up a little.

So, uh, so wait, so it seems like you like the gummy. How are you in terms of chocolate? You ever, you like chocolate candies? I do like chocolate candy. I love a classic Snickers. Got it. I love Twix, Kit Kat. But I don't love it when they like deviate and they'll do like a green tea Kit Kat.

Not for me, not for me. Oh, wow. We've tried a lot of different versions of that on the show. Yeah. We've had some of those, those, those more exotic ones they've got overseas. And I feel like we had a few of them like Japanese Kit Kat. Some of them are okay. Some are good.

Some are good. They, but yeah, they're all, they're all little distinct. And I feel like they've also reached a point where people know it's a thing now. So they're trying, they're almost like trying to push the gimmick. I mean, that's certainly a thing that's happened with Oreos. As I say this, I've had these and we've had these on a previous episode, but the Kettle Corn Oreo is a thing they're doing two or three weeks old. So yeah, we've been sitting on top of a stack of papers in a bag on your, your table.

First of all, that is the Doughboys bag. All right. It's both of our responsibility to go through. I said I'll go through all of that stuff with you. Let's do it tonight. No fucking way. Well, then when are we going to do it? You already got over your special.

We got a three record night tonight. All right, man. You, that is my limit with you. All right. Fine. That's so much time we spent together. You want me to take it home and do it myself and bring it back? No way.

We're doing it together as friends. All right. When do you, when do you want to do it then? The next record. The next time we're going to start, we already know next week and we're going to start later. Hey, the night time is the right time, baby. You want to get midnight? Like we're having a sleepover, go through this bag, this canvas bag of

things from like the department of, of education from California. What even is this? The department of health is trying to shut us down. We've seen what's happened to Mitch over the course of three years and you need to stop the podcast. Supersize me in slow motion. Slow motion. So, uh, so what, outside of the, you know what?

Yeah, he didn't get fat enough and supersize me. That's fucking bullshit. I agree. He didn't quite gain enough weight. I think like he, for him to really make that point of the deletious effect it was having on his body, that guy got shamed out of fucking, good piece of shit, liar. Yeah, he's, he's, he's, he's gone though.

He did some bad stuff and that he, that he admitted to. I don't know if the specifics came out though. It was one of those vague things. So I don't know. No, he said it. I think he said it. He said the specifics. Him and Jared, two guys who had the bulls-eye on before, both gone.

Both, hey. I mean, I don't, you know, I'm not, not supporting Morgan Spurlock here, but I don't think you can quite equate the two. Talking about someone who. I think they're one and the same. Okay, all right. Don't mess with McDonald's motherfucker. And that is a message I can get by night.

So as a, and I also know you're, you're a McDonald's fan, as you just mentioned, the, what, have you had the new fresh beef quarter pounder? Zaddy, I want to say yes. It was truly in like a week moment where it was like, I haven't eaten in hours. I better go through this drive-thru. And I really, like back in the day when I played tennis in high school, every day, once I got my license, I would drive through the drive-thru and get a small french ride every day.

Wow. And then just the other day when I went through it, got that new quarter pounder. Hell yeah. Also a filet-o-fish because I'm a maniac and a medium fry and. That's a good order. It's a great order, but you're going to have a really bad stomach ache. That's going to be a bad night. But I think that the, the one thing about McDonald's, especially if you go to a

reliably good McDonald's because there can be some variation from chains is like, I feel like if you're going to, I mean, like I'm certainly at the age, Mitch, you and I have the same issue where we go into eating something like that. We know that we're going to suffer the consequences and it's nice when McDonald's when it's like, oh, I can count on this being enjoyable enough to be worth the tummy trouble I'm going to have later. Yes. Yeah.

100%. But you, but the, the fresh beef one, did you notice a difference between the, the previous one? Cause Mitch and I both did and we both like, actually that's what that drop was from, was from our, our bonus episode where we talked about that fresh beef quarter pounder. It felt like an improvement to me, but I'm curious about your thoughts. I'm curious about what part of that felt like an improvement. Whoa, really?

Sorry, that wasn't even a classic slam. No, no, no, I didn't take it as a slam. I'm just, no, I just, I'm curious as to what you thought was better. You just thought the meat quality tasted better. It, for me, it like had, had a juicier character to it and it had more flavor. Juiciness is a big factor in burgers. You thought, you thought cream factor, what was it? What was your exact wording for that?

The cream, the creaminess of it? Of course we have juiciness factor and all this other bullshit, but yeah, the juiciness was better. I agree with you. The juice, the ju, the meaty juiciness. Jack Allison made a good point of like, he was like, I never want like my McDonald's burger patty to ever have the chance of being pink, which I like, right? I get that complaint though.

I didn't have that either time I got it. Yeah. Mine, mine were cooked through. Yeah, there, there, there was kind of like, like I kept its classic taste to it, but there was kind of like a juicier, more authentic burger tasting thing that incorporated the McDonald's taste into it. It was weird. I like, it's kind of hard to explain why I did like it better, but I did.

Might have also been, I mean, we might have also just tricked ourselves. Like it might have been the marketing just working on us and we've been like, it's better, but it was just the same thing we remembered, but you noticed it basically being the same. Actually, now that you're saying that, I guess I was like, yeah, the juicy character of it was much like the double cheeseburger. You know, like when you see the double cheeseburger, it's like really greasy. I like that.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the double cheeseburger is great. I love the double cheeseburger. I had a stretch where I was doing double cheeseburger's plain, which sounds like an insane order, because like, like that's like a little kid order, but it was just like such a great delivery system for McDonald's, like, like beefy cheesy flavor and just that, that, that doughy, you know, sponge dough bun.

It was just like, it worked really well for that. That was just my go-to for a long time. Yeah, but that's really funny because I feel like, like, when you would eat Keto Nick and you wouldn't do like, I feel like the Wendy's burger without like just in a lettuce wrap or whatever, great. And fat burger are great, but I never think of the McDonald's burgers as one. I would want to get without a bun or something like, like, like in a lettuce wrap or something. It still, it still works, but yeah.

And it's also too, I think McDonald's, a lot of times they're, they, they can be depending on the McDonald's, they can be confused by the lettuce wrap order or if you ask for something without a bun, it can be, it can create a little, a bottleneck. But that's so weird because I, but I, yeah, of course. Yeah. But I, I, I agree. I agree with you that I like, I'm like, oh man, it is like,

with that double quarter pounder, it is like such a cheesy, beefy, good taste. Yes. And then, but then also I'm like, I wouldn't want this in a lettuce wrap. Weird. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I understand. But yeah, the Wendy's actually, the Wendy, the protein style or lettuce wrap,

you get a Wendy's actually works pretty well. And, and, and Mary, are you a, do you someone who would frequent a Wendy's as well? I love a Wendy's also because the spicy chicken sandwich and the late night hours. Hell yeah. I like that. I also love that they serve a baked potato and chili. Yes. That's what I like.

The baked potato and chili I think are under discussed, but they are both great options and they're good exit, like for a fast food restaurant, that's a very good execution of both of those. I agree. Yeah. I really like, and, and if you want to mix it up from fries, I, Wendy's fries are very solid, but if you want to mix it up and you want some, some chili or, or a baked potato, I will 100% do that.

Or even a side salad, which you can mix it up on the combo. This was just a question I had and I, and I've completely forgot about this because it was a question we got in the mail bag, but I was given a large Wendy's chili accidentally one night where I was like, this is like, they gave me two bags. Oh wow. And I was like, we are two bags. Well, whatever. Like my order probably was big enough for two bags.

Like I didn't question it for the how long drove home, opened up large chili, big, big, big chili. Yes. And I was like, man, I can't eat this out because they included all my other food. Right. I think they just gave me an exit. Someone probably didn't get there. Do you think there's a chance they saw you and we're just like, this guy's going to want a

large chili? You sick fuck. I mean, probably I would assume that if I saw me to and so I'm coming back in a half hour. Yeah. What a pain in the ass if I came back and got a chili. Sick fuck. Anyways, I brought it home, didn't I was like, I can't eat this tonight. Right.

Put it away, ate it the next day. Mike microwaved it up. Fantastic. Yeah. I like a great, a great leftover food. There were, there was, it was, it was great in such a nice little surprise that I got it. It was great. What is your normal Wendy's order?

You mentioned the spicy chicken sandwich. Is that your kind of your go-to there? I do love the classic double too. Yeah, that Dave's double is real good. Oh yeah. And I also feel like it's a rough one because Wendy's was part of my meal plan in college, you know, like your card. That's insane.

Oh, so you know I was doing damage over there. Not the best. Also, I love the idea of having a large chili just in the refrigerator. Right. I'm just using that almost like a condiment. So like this omelette could use some Southwestern flage. You know what I mean? Yeah.

You wouldn't turn a bad meal. Yeah. I feel like everyone should have a, I think everyone should have a spare Wendy's chili in their fridge. It is great. Right. Probably one of the, maybe one of the better foods you can get there if you're eating a specific way.

In terms of being healthful. Yeah. It's decently healthy, I think. It's not, you know, it's it, you get some, some fibrous content from the beans. It's loaded in. Fibrous. Content. A lot of Americans don't get enough fiber.

It's a problem. I know. But uh. Fibrous content was what I was. All right. I'm sorry. I should have said dietary fiber or something less clunky. Sorry for trying to be so highfalutin.

Fiber. Okay. I could have just said fiber. Yes, you're right. That would have been fine. I didn't need to guilt the lily. So. So do we, do we cut, I mean, like, have we kind of like a covered your favorite chains

growing up or are there more distinct Illinois chains that make you like think of home? I know you also talked about, we, you know, we, we touched on the cheesecake factory a little bit. Bubba Gump shrimp was another one that you had mentioned. I worked at that bad boy. You worked at Bubba Gump. Yeah. Whoa, wait a minute. So when was this?

This is, this is big. This is huge. Well, I have to say those were the days of the good Bubba Gump because like, I knew our line cooks were like hand making all these like hush pups and whatnot, but now it's all frozen. Oh, that sucks. It's all garbage now. Yeah.

I had no idea they had a period where everything was a little bit more fresh and, and they've, they've regressed a bit. That's, that's disappointing to hear, especially in this era where, you know, it feels like having fresh food is enough of a thing where even McDonald's felt like they had to get in on it. But so, so when you were working there, what was the, like, what was the general vibe, which location was this? It was on the world famous Navy Pier in Chicago.

Cool. Yeah. A lot of tourists. I know that beer. Yeah. Yeah. You do. Yeah.

Yeah. You know what? I took a Wendella boat. This is a very, my father and I, this is, this is true. A very nice experience. We were there for the fourth of July, probably six years or so ago now. My dad was sick at the time, but we took the Wendella boat cruise, you know,

and then we went, of course, you know it. And then we, and we went out and they took us out into the, like, it was right around when the fireworks were supposed to happen. And the Wendella guy was like, guess what? Like we're going out onto the lake to watch the fireworks. And we went out onto the lake and the pier was right there and we watched the fireworks over the Chicago sky. Gorgeous.

That's amazing. It was a very nice moment in my life. It was a very nice moment. Yeah. Yeah. A nice, a very nice city up there in Chicago. Right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Where did you go to school? I went to UIC, University of Illinois, Chicago. Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool. And we discussed this before the show, but we have a crazy,

like a weird thing where I was in Chicago for Chicago sketch fest and I, and I saw you perform. God, this was, this was a while back now. Oh man, it could have been eight years ago when you were on the Second City Touring Company. Yeah. Yeah. And Tim Robinson was also with you performing and you and Tim Robinson,

they were all funny, but you two were standout. Very funny. Oh my God. It's true. Color me bad. Yeah. Honestly, it is so scary when someone's like, I saw you and you're just like, oh my God,

please let it not be the one that I shit the bed. Please, please, please, please. But that's very nice. Yes, yeah. Big birthday boys fan myself. Oh, thank you. Wow, very cool. Look at this.

Yeah. We are coming together. Nick, we, we both think you're fine. Hey, you know what, I'll take it. That's where I want to be, right in the belly of the bell curve. Oh, one of the funniest. Shut up. That's funny that you mentioned that too,

because I feel like during the second city days is when everyone just turns into a true raccoon and is eating garbage day and morning, noon and night and like always ending the night with a full Jack's pizza and tons of candy and stuff like that. Yeah. So I just feel like anytime anyone's like, oh yeah, that time. I'm just like, oh, permanent stomach ache,

so much Boston market, three sides meal. Oh, roughs. It was, I was, I went crazy and that on, and when we were there and I've been to Chicago a few times, but we, I did like the chocolate cake shake from Portillo's. Oh, right. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah. And I did, I ate pretty much everything I could. Every, everything in sight. I ate Pequod's and Geno's and Geno's, was it Geno's East? Geno's East, huh? And just every, I try to eat at every, the only place I didn't, I didn't do like a real like, oh God, I'm going to get wrong.

A beef dip. What is it called? Oh yeah, Al's beef. Al's beef. Yeah, I didn't do Al's beef. That was the one place I, I probably the one place in Chicago, that like a famous Chicago place. I gotta do it.

And then will you do me a favor? Will you get that Italian ice at the end? Oh, for sure. Yeah, I haven't done, I haven't done that either, but I went into, I saw the White Sox versus Cubs at Wrigley. It was great. That's fun. It was great.

Anyways, back to, back to your story. You worked at the, the Bubblegum's on the, on the pier, which seems like it would be a crazy touristy location. Yeah. What was the vibe like? Oh, a true nightmare. Always family is six abreast, walking as slowly as possible. But I will say, I remember at our five minute meeting

at the Bubblegum's company, my manager was like, Hey, just so you remember, like sometimes these families, this is their big summer vacation, and that truly moved me. But then I shall do my best to anticipate your needs and get you waters before you ask. Yeah. Cause also too, if that's the end of the day, it's like mom and dad are just exhausted.

And so they're just like sitting there. It's like the one, like they're having some big sugary cocktail. It's like the one like escape from like walking around the city and the heat all day with this family. So yeah, I imagine that's like a, like an interesting clientele you get in there. That's so funny that you, that there was like this, this invigorating like Friday night,

light style speech, giving it a Bubblegum shrimp company. Just so weird to think of that. But I mean, hey, if it added its intended effect, more power to them. It did. And I am actually embarrassed about how much I actually care about service jobs like that. Right.

I worked at two restaurants and each one, I gave it my all in such a dorky ass way. But I really was like, I want to be good at this. That's amazing. I think people appreciate that. Yeah, that's great. Like if you really get like, there is like a performative quality at Bubblegum.

And I feel like if you get someone who is like, all on board and does a good job, I think I feel like you enjoy the experience more for sure. I think that is super helpful. So much, I would so much rather get that. And I would probably, I'm probably would be guilty of this. So I'm not trying to shame anyone who do it, but someone who is like so over it.

And it's like, hey, welcome to Bubblegum. And I probably would do, I probably would do something more like that. But like, you want someone who would, you want someone who would be who would, who would take it seriously. Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Let me, let me ask you, at your other two restaurant jobs, did they also have a placard on the table that you could change from run, force, run to stop, force, stop? Because I've seen that a number of restaurants. Yeah. Yeah, over there at Weber Grill. Weird, it's weird. It's weird that every restaurant just appropriated that.

Oh, it's horrifying. I still to this day have nightmares of the sound of that flipping. Oh God, yeah. God damn, that's so rough. Yeah, that just seems like, that's over, that is overboard. I wish they didn't do that. It feels like the, you know, trust your servers to pay attention to the tables.

It's like, it's kind of like a, like, because also too, I bet some like kids like probably get into like flipping it for the fun of it. Oh, and then somebody's dad violently like shakes it. Oh, that's horrible. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Not the best.

Be nice to your service workers. It's also funny to me to go to Chicago. And I think that obviously these places, they have, they have their place there, but then to go to Bubba Gumps when you're in. Oh yeah. It's strange. You should be going to all these other weird places

that I was saying, I guess like, because one night you maybe just got to go to Bubba Gumps or whatever. But I'm like, at the same time, I would be like, Oh, I guess if you're out on the pier there, that's like a cool spot to sit and kind of see some stuff. But when you're in a, when you're in a city, go to someplace unique to its character. Mitch, like how you and I, when we were in New York City,

we went to Guy Fieri's American Grill. That's right. A hundred percent. We're like, we're going to make the most of this trip to this amazing food town. In beautiful Times Square. What did you guys get? Oh boy.

You know what? It wasn't even like, I like wanted to be like, like, like, uh, what, like, like fuzzy, not sure. Like, you want to be like over the top and crazy. Like sunglasses, not sure. Like that's what I wanted. Yeah. And then it was like born, it was boring.

And now it's air lemonade. But yeah, it was, it was like, I went down. Yeah. They shut it down. Wait, let me see if I can actually probably look up what we had. There's no reason for me to do this, but now I'm curious about it. There was also a waddle guy waddle instead of a.

We had like so good. Like the, the dishes we had at Guy's American were kind of, that like Mitch was saying that they were nothing particularly special. So like here, the cocktail I got, I've got these up now, the crazy cab driver, not at all a Guy Fieri specific, kind of New York connected, Vegas fries, which are fine.

He has a big restaurant in Vegas that has these over the top fries. And this was also the crazy cab driver. Exactly. Yeah. What? Not great. That sucks.

I think it was a reference to the Sega Dreamcast game. That was crazy taxi. I know, don't correct me online. You're going to get roasted. I was thinking. Don't roast me on Twitter. Bacon and chicken, mac and cheese, which, you know, they have that at TGI Fridays.

That's nothing like, like this is, this is in mind blowing stuff. And yeah, so, so yeah, I mean that they didn't really, in the way that I think Bubba Gump does really go all out with their theme and like everything is so, like they have like a thing called like a Bubba's bucket of trash or something. Oh yeah, the boat trash.

The boat trash. Yeah. So they like everything on the menu is almost like, like unflinchingly on brand with the Forrest Gump franchise. Which is crazy because it's one movie that they, they get that many references. They get every possible reference you could pull from it. They get, they get on that menu.

Oh yeah. I do like the liberties that they'll take. So like a strawberry smoothie, what we call Jenny's favorite. Yeah. And you're like, okay. Why? I guess it's implied that during her experiment,

her period when she had a substance abuse problem, she was drinking a lot of these strawberry cocktails. Would she step down from the ledge? She wouldn't have a strawberry smoothie. After mama got done fucking the principle, she had some nice fried shrimp and it was freemo. Yeah. That's on the blue, it's on the blue rays,

the deleted scene. A fucked up movie. It is. It's very dark. Yeah. And like a lot of kids see it, but it's, it's got a lot of elements that are really, you know, about like how fucked up the American South was.

And it, but it's fine now. We know it's fine now. The South is now. South is fine. It's, it's cured. Yeah. There was at one point where they were rolling out the news, summer drinks, and one of them was called Plantation Punch.

Oh no. And it was just really hard because all these like white managers were like, oh, I don't get what's so wrong about it. Most of our staff was like, not white. And then we're all like, try the Plantation Punch. I don't know. We'll take a break. We'll be back with more Doe Boys.

Welcome back to Doe Boys. We're here with Mary Sohn. This week's chain, Firehouse Subs. I had never been here before. Mitch, had you ever been here before? I've had it once. You've had it once. Mary, have you ever been here?

Never been. Well, thank you for, for being so game to, to get into this fast growing chain that was founded by firemen. It would have, it would have been all of our first time. I shouldn't have, I wish, I just tried it recently for the first time. You don't have to apologize. You can anticipate that we're going to do it for the show. Doing a movie night with Hanford and Jeff.

Oh, that sounds like fun. They watched, I had seen it. They saw True Lies for the first time. Lot of fun. It's a great movie. Yeah, it was, it is great. Great movie. Well, the, the, the decor, so I actually went into the,

we had a Firehouse Subs here just before we recorded, but I actually went on my own last night and went to, there's a new location near where we live in Santa Monica, right next to an El Pollo loco. It's a lovely, lovely strip mall there. There's a yogurt land. It might be a Menchie's. No, I think it's a yogurt land.

And then there is an L and L Hawaiian barbecue, which unfortunately, I mean, I like L and L Hawaiian barbecue, so I'm bummed that it closed. It turned into Fat Burger, which I also like, but I would have liked that L and L being there. You know what else I'm thinking through this, this, the history of the strip mall is, as I'm talking, there used to be a Tommy's there.

And it was one of the, the only Tommy's on the west side. And now it's a Starbucks, which is just so generic. That's tough. Yeah. Same thing happened. They turned a Popeyes into a Starbucks. It was just such a downgrade, also in Santa Monica. But anyway, there's gentrification for you.

Huh? These, these work, these working class places get turned into a fruity Starbucks. Santa Monica got more gentrified. Got extra gentrified. Once I moved it, once I moved there. So, so, but, but it's like, it's, they, they, you know, we were talking about Bubba Gump before the break.

It is so much like a Bubba Gump in terms of the firefighter theme. Like they go all out. They've got like, they've got like a, a fireman's coats on the wall and fireman's hats everywhere. They're the, the, the cover, the, the, the tating, the, what I was trying to say, table coating. That's not what I'm trying to say. The top of the table.

Tating? I don't know what tating it. Tating's not a word. I was trying to say. I think you should go with tating. All right. The tating is like a, a Dalmatian print. So it's like, yeah, you look down at the tables,

they look like Dalmatians. They're like black blacks with white, or white with black spots. Synthetic. Yeah. Synthetic. All right. Good. Here at Dalmatian stand.

Right. Right. Yeah. And it's very, uh, it's, it's, it's, so it's like, it's really over the top, brick walls, but when you try to walk in, they hosed you out of the restaurant. But the, uh, the, the, the service was great there. They were super duper friendly and they were, they were very, they, like I was, you know, clear about it being my first time.

So they were very, very much to help my hand through the process. And told me it took some time to make some sandwiches, which it did. So, you know, they do have an app and you can order online and you can obviously call ahead, which may be the move because it does take a little bit of time for them to make these sandwiches to order much more so than like a, a, a quiz nose or a subway or any other chain. But the super nice service there, I got the, the sandwiches I tried. I tried the New York steamer, which I think you also got, Mitch. I did. I did.

This is a, this is a corned beef and pastrami. Oh, I would have gotten a different. I didn't realize that you got. It's good that we've both got our own takes on it. Okay. Because now we can, there's an argument. We try different things, but there's argument. Try the same thing and see what our perspectives are.

So we got the corned beef brisket and pastrami, melted provolone, deli mustard mayo and Italian dressing. Um, I like this sandwich quite a bit. It might, I tasted a few different ones. It might have been my favorite of the bunch. I mean, and, and what I'll say is the sandwiches we got today, which our good friend, uh, you song brought over for us, uh, because we were recording another episode just before this, uh, we,

those sandwiches were kind of for room temp. The ones I got at the Santa Monica one were like, I got to eat them basically within five minutes of ordering. So they were, they were more hot and toasty. Hey, you song, you fucked up. Hey, you song, you fired. The nicest man. I met him on the way in here.

Well, guess what? He's fucking fire. Go meet my friend. The shit can because that's where you're at now. You song, he, he done and, uh, another thing. You forgot my fucking brownie song. You didn't offer to drive back to north Hollywood and get his brownie. What the fuck is your problem?

You know what? What, you know what? Hey, you song. Here's an idea. Look through the fucking bag. You want to have it at the Simpsons that I came back without an order? Oh man, Mike Reese would have ran you through the ringer. Al Jean would have blown his stack.

Anyone else? You got anybody else? Matt Selman would have, would have made you stir his peanut butter some more. Yeah. Well, he did that in general. John Swartzwilder would have showed up. He would have showed up. Yeah.

He would have just been like, what's going on guys? Someone would have caught him up and then he would have gotten mad at you. I saw him just a couple of times at my time there. He's, he's one of the, the legendary guys. Right. You don't get a glimpse of, you just heard of. Yeah. We're going to have, we're going to have Selman back at some point.

Love to have Selman back. Love Selman. Joe's Crab Shack is what he, what he wants to do. Okay. Booked. He's booked. You're in Selman. So, uh, that's how we book guests now.

We tell each other on the air and then we say would make our lives a billion times easier. The only issue is he probably won't listen right and he'll never know. And also this comes out in three weeks or something. By the way, Matt Koalic wants to do McDonald's. Uh, booked. Wait a minute. No, I was sitting up to pass. Oh, it's supposed to book.

Oh yeah. It's just a book Koalic for. Oh, guess what? There's two firing stay. You're fucking fired. Koala, just like you song piece of shit. You think you can get McDonald's huh? All right.

But yeah, I thought the New York steamer was a very, like I thought it was, it was the, again, I got it warmer. The, the, the meats I thought were very high quality. I really liked the mix of the different condiments on it and the, the McDonald's was nice. You know, for, for a sandwich with no veggies, no veggies, no veggies, just bread and meat. But I thought it was a very good execution of that style. I agree with you. I, I, I liked it a lot.

It's, it's weirdly, it's hard to call the sandwich plain because it's not. Right. But it is just like kind of so straightforward. Just a meaty meat, meat, little meat, a little meat torpedo. I don't know where I was going with it. It is just a, it's, it's a big, uh, yeah. I think you get, you just get the, a big meat log. Exactly.

And you, and it's, it's great. I, I, I enjoy it. And the, the, the quality of the meat and the bread, the bread is so very specific, but the quality of the meat stands out and, and it's great. It's good. The bread is kind of almost, it's, it's more bun than bread, I want to say. Mary, you're kind of nodding there. I'm with you.

I feel like it's not super distinct. Like it's not like you go to this place for the bread. Right. Which some, which a lot of sandwiches and, and you know, like, like, like better delis, you know, like, like Bay City is over on the West side. It's just like, it's, it's, there's a restaurant here called in LA called All About the Bread because it is all about the bread. Yeah.

Um, but, uh, yeah, but here the bread is, is pretty unspectacular. And it's kind of just like a vessel for the, the insides. I don't think it's, I don't hate it though. I don't hate it. It's fine. It's just, I don't know. You're right though. And it's, it's strange.

It's strange. It's softer than you'd expect for something that's warmed up and toasted. Yeah. And here's my follow-up for something earlier. When you said that it takes a little longer than you would think. Yeah. My question is why? It doesn't feel like, you know, it's somehow different.

Right. That's a great question. No. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's adjacent to what you get. Might get it some other places that, yeah, they, they take their time making it. Um, and, uh, what, I got to feel other things to try, but let's, let's, let's hear about your guys's sandwiches real quick. Mary, let's start with you. Um, I got the hot Italian and I got it because I always love an Italian sandwich,

but I think every sandwich is elevated when you warm it up. Right. Always. And I really do like it. My one beef is, I feel like they made it all hot lettuce included. Oh boy. That's a bomber. Yeah. I wonder if that's a, you know what, I'm going to say that's a product of you song

transporting it over here. You song, what are you doing with this hot lettuce? You taking that hot salad with reference we have in the show literally? That's a joke, you jerk. Yeah. No, wait, it's not a joke. Nice try, Weiger. Hey, don't turn this around on me. Our bid is we're going after you song.

I find out. Fuck you, you song. I have a degree from Cornell. Fool. Hey, you song, uh, you forgot my brownie. How would you feel if they didn't give you your diploma on the stage at fucking Cornell jackass piece of shit? I majored in English.

Is that his real major? Yeah, I was. He's so much smarter than us. Anyways, your piece of shit and you're fired. So, uh, but yeah, so the, the hot Italian. Yeah. Um, I just feel like it was an okay Sammy. Right. Hot lettuce. This said the, the everything unspectacular beyond that.

And also, I mean, maybe this is too much, but I love it when each part of a sandwich feels like a distinct part. So like a salami is crisp as hell on the outside. And like the cheese feels really nice and melted. This all kind of feels like a, some of its parts. Oh boy. That's a bummer. That's, you know, when I got this last time, Mike Hanford got the Italian.

This, this solves a mystery for us because he was like, my Italian sandwich was hot. And he was so mad that his Italian sandwich was hot. Not normally a hot sandwich. Not normally a hot sandwich. This, this, like, I think you can get it cold and maybe that's what the issue was. We had never ordered from there before. So this seems to be what the issue was. Right.

But he was, I think he kind of did not like, see, like with, with this New York steamer, which is such a weird name. Not great. It's unpleasant. It sounds like a gross shitty thing that a frack guy said. Right. Right. Something you look up on urban dictionary, which is some putrid sex act.

Someone's imagined. Yeah. Yeah. Someone's imagined it. You're, it's in one of your tabs right now. Come on. I think that, I think, I, I, I like the fact that that this sandwich is kind of like soft and old and like, I like the fact that it kind of like has a mouth feel that way.

And I just kind of like chewing on these meats, but I do, I do, I've never had, because before I got, I got a, a steak and cheese, I think with pickles in it. And I, and I really enjoyed that too. But also in the similar way of like, there was a little bit of crunch with the pickles. Right. But for the most part, it was just like kind of like a nice soft steak and cheese sandwich that I was eating. And so maybe, maybe there's something to say about how add in lettuce and tomato and

all that to, to these sandwiches where it just doesn't work as well. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I will say that because we got, so one thing I like about this chain, and this is also something that we said in Quiznos favor, Mitch, which is that you can get a small size sandwich that's kind of like a half sandwich. It's nice that they accommodate that. So I got a couple of smalls just to try them out.

I got a small firehouse hero, which is roast beef, turkey breast, Virginia, honey, honey, ham, melted profalone. Again, just, just a very, oh, it's service fully involved, which fully involved means it has a bunch of different toppings. Mayo, deli mustard, lettuce, tomato, onion, and a kosher dill pickle. Fully involved too. Yeah. Again. Yeah.

Fully involves. It's weird. In a relationship. I think, yeah. You're committed to this sandwich. We order it. Which kind of makes sense for me. Right.

I am kind of fully involved with submarine sandwiches. I would say, I like this one. I would say, you know, not quite as good as the steamer. And I want to, I wonder if the, based on what you guys are saying, I wonder if the absence of the veggies actually helps the New York steamer. If that makes it a little better. I will say the tuna, which I got cold, which is just very, very simple. It's exactly what a tuna sandwich is.

It's what they call it an old fire department recipe to cash in on the theme. The old fire department tuna sandwich recipe. Oh, those guys love a hearty tuna. Rob, our engineer is shaking his head vigorously at that. It's an old tuna. Yeah, right. That does make it sound disgusting. So I like that tuna sandwich.

I thought it was like a very nice tuna salad. You know, you get that sometimes it's got that, that it's got like a creamy consistency, but it's not like too globby. If the word globby makes sense, then that we can kind of is evocative in some way, right? It's like, it's still had like a nice like, like meaty texture to it. And I thought the tuna was high quality. I thought that was like a very good tuna sandwich. And it was nice to have.

I would say more of these sandwiches should maybe come cold by default. Because that's literally the only sandwich that comes cold by default. And also, I think if you order this tuna hot, you're a maniac because that's insane. I mean, like what about a tuna mouth there, buddy? Well, they don't okay. Okay, fine. Touche, if you if you want to get a tuna melt. But I feel like it's like weird to heat up the tuna itself.

You know, I don't know. I guess you do that in a tuna melt. What do I know? Natalie ordered the sweet and spicy meatball, which I had a bite of. What do you think? I thought it was good. It could have used a little bit more spice. I think you have to do some things in the customization to make it actually spicy.

Because I think it's it's actually a little bit just, I think the sweet is a stronger element there than the spicy. And what makes it sweet? It's the sauce. The Captain Sorenson's Datil Pepper Hot Sauce. I don't know what Datil is. I got to look up. I had to Google something else and I got to find out what Datil is and red pepper flakes.

The hell? So yeah, it's but it's just but that said, the meatballs were a very good like they had a nice substance to them. They were high quality meatballs. I mean, I feel like the ingredients here are like good quality. Maybe that's a thing that why does it it cost maybe a little bit more? Why does it take a little bit longer to make? Maybe that's that that's it that they just have better source,

fresher ingredients and maybe that's part of it. And here's what I'll say to about at least the to go presentation. Yeah, they give it to you in these little boxes, which hopefully are highly recyclable. But but but it is kind of just like a nice little like more so than any other sub places where it's you just kind of subways thrown in like that big shitty plastic sleeve. Yes. And it's just wrapped up here.

It's like, oh, this is kind of a nice presentation. You open it up. There's your sandwich. I like it. I do like it. And I hope that it's recyclable. That's all. Yeah.

And I don't know if you got it looks recyclable. Yeah. Hey, that's authentic firefighter cardboard. It uses on that one. No, no recyclable. No recycle symbol on it. Yeah. I would wager it's it's recyclable.

It feels like that that kind of material. Did you guys notice the pickle spear that comes with your sandwich? I'm curious in your thoughts on those pickles and while you're doing that, I got one more sandwich today because I'd already eaten yesterday, but I figured something else I get something else ordered. And there was I figured I'd give you song something else to fuck up. So did you fuck it up? Yeah, but but but but I but I counted for that.

But I got the firehouse hero and I'm going to take a bite of this firehouse hero. This is roast beef smoked turkey breast, Virginia Honeyham and melted provolone servefully involved. That's not the one I just read. Is it? No, that is the one I just read. Hold on. Hold on.

This isn't the what firehouse. Oh, I got something else. Fuck. What did I get? I messed up. This is a nice meltdown we're washing. Hold on. Hold on.

We'll fix this. Ah, fuck. I get this. I get a look at my phone to see what the text. I don't remember what sandwich I got. I thought I got this one, but I got something else. Hold on. Let me look at my text messages.

Tell me what you guys thought about those pickles. I just ate my pickle. I think mine did not come with one. No, really? Is it behind it? Is it might be underneath it? Like a little surprise. And I was dead wrong here.

Yeah, it's weird that they kind of hide it in there and don't even tell you. Oh, I do like that it comes separately wrapped like this. It is nice. I think that I think the pickles decent. It's like a nice mix between like like a like a Vlasik and like a deli pickle or something. Right.

Like it's got a nice enough flavor. You know, like the like the like when you get a pickle from like a Jewish deli, sometimes it has like not enough vinegar to do it. This has just enough for me. I usually like a more vinegar. On an added Jewish deli. What the hell are those little seeds or something on it?

Oh, yeah. What is it? Or like peppercorn? There's peppercorn sometimes in the like just floating in the brine. Is that what they are? But sometimes do they put sesame seeds on? I don't know.

There's some weird shit in there. If you know what's going on with those delis, hashtag deli mystery seeds. There's going to be some fucking huge pickle fanatic who's going to yell at us. That's fine. Hey, come at me, pickle fanatic. Yeah, you're pickle freak.

Let's see what you have to say. All right. I actually got I messed it up because I thought what I'd written down was the sandwich I ordered today, but it was actually not what I texted you song. This is the that's what I got last night. This is the smokehouse beef and cheddar brisket. I'm going to take a bite of this right now.

It's been sitting at room temp for the entire time we're talking. So perhaps I'll get some sort of a one of these weird expert. You're doing you're doing a character stuff at the beginning of the show. Now you're doing some weird experiment where you've led it. You're going to eat mid mid podcast character stuff.

Are you referring to when we called the Mario? Yeah, we call Mario and the Italian commissioner of tourism director of guest services. Oh, you're right. I guess it's not a character as you struggle to come up with what he was. I had trouble remembering his actual biographical details. I think if I had this bad boy hot, I'd love it.

Again, just a just a meat and cheese one. It's it's more of a barbecue concept versus the New York steamer, which is a little bit more of like a can do a rubim. Although they actually have a rubin on the menu, but this is really good. Also sorry for talking about my mouth completely full. Hey, guys, say something to you. Hey, man, don't bogart that sandwich, man.

Pass it down now. You're speaking my language, buddy. All right, I'll pass this over to Mitch. I mean, if Rob and Mary, if you guys feel like you want to take a bite, feel free, also zero pressure. You don't have to eat this cold sandwich if you don't want to. But yeah. So this one has brisket that says it claims it has been smoked for 16 hours,

melted cheddar, mayo and sweet baby raised barbecue sauce, a very famous sauce. You can also get this. See, this is crazy because you can get this one cold. Why would you want this sandwich cold? I know we're eating it cold, but like if you have the option of having this hot, it's like it's so it's like getting a cold pastrami when a hot pastrami is available. It's like intended to be served hot.

That's good. It's pretty good, right? Do you want to try a bite of it? Yeah. Yeah. All right, Mitch is passing the sandwich on down to Mary. Feel free to bite from the different end so you don't have to go where our mouth marks are.

I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. I'm going to go right over your mouth mark. I'm going to champagne fluid it. It's like a show of dominance. And it's worked. Nick and I are cowering in the corner. We'd be doing that anyway.

Yeah, good point. Yeah, I think that's like that. I like that one quite a bit. What do you think, Mary? I'm always surprised when a sandwich place, like including places like Jimmy John's, will have really good bacon. Right.

Like that's good. Yeah, it's good. It's I think, you know, again, the high quality ingredients are a big thing in its favor. Oh, and one thing I mentioned, I forgot to mention, I got the firehouse chili last night. We're talking about one. I saw it on the menu.

I knew you were going to. I didn't order it because I knew you were going to get it. Also, you song would have clearly forgotten. Oh, yeah, I got it. I guess I got the brownie instead, which was forgotten. I brought you guys an iced tea. That's what you wanted, right? Chili.

Chili. Oh, I thought you meant the temperature. Are you an English major? Can you help me use my car keys? You sung. You shouldn't be driving. Yeah, I thought the chili was it was Natalie's favorite thing that she had in the whole order.

And I thought it was it's a very good chili. I mean, firehouse is known for their chili. And you know, that's that's like a point of pride for a lot of firefighters. And it's a very, very version of it. I was just laughing, thinking about how you son is going to kick the shit out of us. I'm going to knock on my door.

You son is going to fucking beat the fuck out of me. No screaming. This waif life, man, just pounding both of us. He has a rage inside of him that you just have to awaken. Yeah, I'm sure. And we also had a chocolate chip cookie, which was fine. I don't I honestly don't think you're missing much for from missing that brownie.

But a fine delivery does not sound like it was that good. Yeah, it was it was just like it's like a subway cookie. Like why waste the calories on this? I mean, go go, you know, go to the yogurt land next door and get an actual dessert. But but overall, I was impressed with Firehouse Subs. And so let's get to our final thoughts on this chain. And here's how this will work, Mary.

We'll each go around. We'll sort of give a closing argument to summation of our feelings on this experience and then ascribe it a rating on the order of zero five forks. You're our guest. We will begin with you. Five forks being the five forks is the best. Zero is the worst.

Gotcha. Well, and you can go halves too. Yeah. Half forks times are welcome. You know, I was really excited to try this also because on their website, it does like just go so hard on the Firehouse element. Right.

Also, I think like certain subs also give a portion of that to firefighters. They do, yeah. Which also was confusing because I was like, did I order the wrong one? I would like to support these people. Right. I felt like.

Yeah, some of the half of the profits go towards firefighters that they're half go towards starting fires. You have to guess which is the right sandwich order. Yeah. Oh, this one definitely started. It's called the Beavis Fun. Nice topic going around for it. The Beavis is smarter than me.

Yeah, we know you saw. I will say, I felt like it was nothing super special. Bread was aite again. The warm lettuce mush did also affect the score. So I'm going to say two forks. Two forks. Wow. Wow.

Harsh but fair. Go ahead, Mitch. I get it. We just reviewed Quiznos. And with Haley Jo Lozman, who's in Forrest Gump, he was. Yeah, you're right. We talked about Bubba Gump briefly on the episode. We briefly talked about Bubba Gump.

We all kind of felt like Quiznos was better than what we thought it would be. Yes. Then here, this sandwich is quality wise better than Quiznos. I think there's no doubt about it. My question with this place is, would I get sick of it quicker? Because I feel like at Quiznos, there's a lot of options. I know that the quality is not as good. Would I get sick of these subsequent, especially if a lot of them are kind of like

just like kind of like doughy meat, meat bombs or whatever. And I think there's a chance that I would. I don't, I don't have, I feel like this is going to be a good revisit at some point too, because I don't know enough about this chain. And I'm probably not going to go out of my way to learn more about this chain, which is a bad sign. That being said, I like the theme of it. I think that it's a fun, nice theme.

And like it is such a theme that other places don't have. Quiznos or Subways, even though it is kind of, it's like hokey or whatever, but hey, a lot of good jakes out there. We support our firefighters, the men and women who work for the fire department, a lot of great people. And I like that they support that. By the way, is that a slang term? I don't know a Jake.

Jake, yeah. Yes, it means a firefighter. And I, yeah, I think it's good. I think it's, yeah, hopefully it's not offensive or anything. Just coming up, who knows? We're getting tweeted at by the firefighters defense fund. We're using a slur. Kick my ass with the song.

But, yeah, I, but I, I did enjoy every sandwich I've tried from here. I kind of have enjoyed it. So I get to go higher than Quiznos, but I'm not going to get it into the Golden Play Club. It's not getting four forks. I'm going to say 3.75, which is good. Three forks, three times as many times as forks. It's a very good score.

Yeah. I think I'm high. No, well, I think we're going to be all over the map here with our scores. And I think part of that is based off of our different experiences. And one element is that I, me actually going to the restaurant and having it like a little bit more. Rub it in our face.

I'm not saying, I'm not trying to say like I'm an A student here. I'm saying that I was, there was. You've always tried to say that. I'm not trying to say that. From your bassoon days till now. Come on. You had a trophy because you were so good at with the bassoon. I don't want to dwell on my bassoon playing.

You do. The part of that chapter of my. Hey man. The chapter is closed in my life. You can't give it up, man. We all know this about you. Don't try to suck me back into that life. I've been there.

But, but no, I did. It was, here's what, here's what I'll say. It was, for me, it was very convenient because it's like right by us. It was like super duper convenient. So I was like, if I could, I might as well try it last night. And I wasn't sure what my schedule was going to be like today. So I got it last night. And I think because I had it so fresh, I like the sandwiches I had last night

were very, very good. Like if you can get this in the restaurant or a short jaunt home, like a five minute trip, you're sitting pretty because when you get these things pipe and hot or even just warm, I think that's in their ideal state. If it has to sit a little longer, like if it's part of like a big office lunch order or something, I'd go for the cold sub. Because I think like what Mary's talking about, that hot, like the temperature wilting that lettuce gradually over the course of like 30 or 40,

but it's just not going to leave you with a great experience. And I think their cold subs are, you know, I think they have good options here. I wish they had more cold subs by default, but since you can make any sub cold, you can customize to your liking. Love the New York steamer. I like the brisket sandwich, which we just tasted today. Firehouse Hero is very solid. Great tuna, fantastic chili.

High quality meatball. If you love a meatball sub, I think that's a very good version. I do. Everything, like everything about the menu was like, pretty much every sandwich I had succeeded to different degrees. And, you know, the bread is maybe a weak spot, but what's in between those slices really, really shines. And the service was fantastic.

And hey, you know my fandom of hunks, Mitch. Who's hunkier than a firefighter? There's not many people. Classic hunky profession. Classic hunk. All the beef cakes who braved those fires, hats off to you. And you loved them. No hats on when you're fighting fires.

You broke me. Mary's leaving. Mary's about to walk out in the light that my apartment on fire. Oh, yeah. And I'll find you some kick as I... I do want to ask a follow up on the chili. Like, is there anything that makes a firehouse chili unique? I'm not sure.

I mean, like, I think that's one of those things where every firehouse kind of has their own signature version of it. This one's a very simple, but just well executed chili. It's honestly, it's like pretty similar to Wendy's chili. If you just looked at them side by side to be like, oh, this is maybe this, you might think it's the same thing. But it's just like, I think everything is like, it's nice and thick and hearty and well seasoned.

Because sometimes you'll get that chain chili that's like maybe a little under seasoned. So yeah, I thought it was just a very good execution of a classic version. I got a buddy who works for the fire department and lives in Dorchester. Mike Campanelli. I'll ask him.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what Mike's having in the firehouse. Yeah. I think he does make stuff. Well, that's cool. He's an Italiano guy.

So I think he cooked. I don't think he does cook up some stuff. Oh, a lot of fun. I'll ask him. Yeah. Is he coming with you to Italy? I don't think he is. Okay.

He's got a, he's got a baby. Right. Yeah. He's got, he's got other things to worry about. I got, I had a question for you. Was Prodigy's Firestarter playing the entire time we were in there? Yeah, it was weird. They had that.

It was just a loop of that song. And then Billy Joel's, we didn't start the fire. I got, I got, I got a good, uh, Oh, I don't know what the hashtag will be, but a good online question. What are the words without looking it up? I always thought psycho, psychosomatic, out of consent.

I don't even know what to say. What are the words to Firestarter? Yeah. Psychosomatic, out of consent. You know what the part I'm talking about? Yeah. What do they say right there? Hashtag firestarter memory challenge.

And whoever gets it closest without cheating, we'll do this on the honor system. That's insane. Whoever gets this closest without cheating, we'll get a prize. No, no, stop trying to give out prizes. All right. We won't give away a prize.

We'll, we'll salute you on the Doughboy Twitter. Fine. We'll salute you on the Doughboy Twitter. Also, it, I also just said what I thought it was, which is close to it. Okay. Yeah. Or whatever.

We'll see what the responses are. But yeah, I fucking prize. I'm going higher. I'm going higher. This is, I, I really like this place. I want to go back four and a half fours. Wow. I thought it was great.

I would want, I, Barry looks aghast, but I stand by it. I had a fantastic experience last night. This, this sandwich I nibbled on today, which was pretty good too. You're an octave higher to you. I'm going to go higher. You're like, made your voice go higher.

Yes. It was as if I'd placed, pressed one of the different thumb keys in the bassoon. Oh God. God. All right. Hey, it was only fingering. I did in high school.

All right. Okay. Wait, does that make it go up an octave higher? Yeah. You can, you can, there's like 13 thumb keys. It's crazy. Yeah. It's, I mean, like, I think the,

the, the clarinet is maybe a more direct, like you press the, there's just like, basically an octave key on the clarinet where you can kick it up a notch. Did you, didn't your saliva release valve go right onto your karate? That stuff. All right. That was our review of firehouse sub.

It's time for regular segment. We're going to decide if something is a little too spicy. This is hot or not. Me mouth on fire. Me tongue on fire. Feeling hot or not. They see us tasting. They mind is racing.

Is it hot or not? All right. So this is hot or not. So Mary, Mary was cuck, she couldn't look it. I had a downward gaze. I like the accent. Hey, a little vocal, a little buster point dexter. So Mary, are you someone who likes things, a little spicy or something to be secret?

Yeah. Do you like, like, how spicy will you go? All the way. Oh, you'll go all the way. Okay. Well, we've got a couple of things here. I've said before, I can't do the spice as much anymore. It makes me sad. I love, love spicy. I'm not like a spice challenge guy.

Like I, like, you know, like I'll go like to the, like see how far I can test myself. But yeah, I definitely will order something spicy in a restaurant. I mean, I love a little, I love a little bit of heat. So we've got two things here. One is that we've got Captain Sorenson's Datto pepper hot sauce from firehouse subs. So we can go ahead and try this one.

And we're going to compare it with, Mitch, you picked out some Cheetos baked Flamin' Hot, which I know Flamin' Hots are not necessarily super spicy. I don't think either of these things are necessarily going to be super spicy. But the weird baked version of it. We could give it a snack or whack while we're at it. Let's see what the bake, how the baked version holds up

in heat intensity. And yeah, we can also say snack or whack them. I'm going to send this over your direction, Mary, first the Cheetos. And I'm also going to pour myself a little drizzle of this Captain Sorenson's hot sauce, which we don't have a delivery system for formally. But you know, you guys can-

You can use our bread from our sandwiches. Yeah, feel free to use your bread from your sandwich. I'm sorry if that dribbles a little. And I'm going to have a little of this hot sauce first. So there's definitely, I think this is the same hot sauce that's on the sweet and spicy meatball sandwich. And it's got like kind of a relishy character in here. And you know what, that's a little,

it's got a little bit more kick than I'd expect. It's definitely more sweet than spicy, but it's got a little bit of spice to it. I mean, it's, you know, it's just a little bit. I'm going to take a little nibble of this baked Cheeto as well. I got news on the baked Cheeto. They're good. The baked Cheeto is good.

I'm so surprised about the crunch on the Cheeto. The baked element would make it feel like kind of dry, but it's not. Yeah, you would expect that, but absolutely. The baked chips, they're such a different with the difference with the baked chips. And these, these, these are, these do a good job. How did we, we did like the triple hot ones

and they were only like hot, right? Like, like, like that's how we ranked them from, because we do from not, not, not to hot, hot, hot and everything in between. How, how would, how would you rank these flaming hot Cheetos just on their own, Nick, as far as heat goes? In terms of hotness, I mean, flaming hot Cheetos are not particularly hot.

They're, they're like a little bit of burn to them, but they're, they're, they're very, very subtle. I think like you got to, you got to take out a full bag and then maybe you've got a little bit of a lingering burn. But interestingly, invented by a janitor, we may have talked about this on the show before, invented by a janitor who worked at the Frito-Lay factory and just had the idea of, of taking some, you know,

of, of Mexican seasonings and putting them on a batch of unflavored Cheetos. He did it and he cold called the CEO of, of Frito-Lay, didn't realize you weren't supposed to do it and pitched his idea and they ended up making them. This guy's now a VP of Frito-Lay. It's an amazing story. It's like they're actually making it into a movie

because it's a movie story. But he's a great man. He's done more for the world than I ever will. But the, the baked Cheetos or where I was going with this is they're not particularly spicy. I think the baked version is as spicy, right? I think so. It's not, it's not more or less spicy.

It's like equally spicy, which is not very spicy. Yeah. It's like, what do you call it? Half a hot? I think it's like half a hot. I think it's half hot, half not is maybe where I'd say. Yeah. Kind of in that threshold.

I don't know. Maybe just like, yeah, just at right in the middle. Yeah. Maybe I would give it like a quarter of a hot or something. Like it's very low on the hot level. Yeah. Quarter of a hot. Quarter of a hot.

Wow. What are you, what are you thinking? I think at least a half hot. I did a sharp inhale. Yeah. I guess, I guess half hot is totally fair. Yeah. I think, I think, I think I might lean in that direction.

It's funny because this fireman, the, the, the, the captain sorenson sauce, the firehouse subsauce is like almost equally as hot or something like, like maybe a little bit more spicy than the flame and hot Cheetos. Right. Yeah. Really? I'm getting a Domino's spicy marinara.

Honestly, it's very much, it's very, very close to that. It's, it's very tomato-y. It's very sweet, which that sauce is. Yeah. It's absolutely right in that ballpark. Yeah. You, this wouldn't be out of place on a chain pizza. But it's, it's got a little bit of spice to it.

I don't know. I don't know if it's quite as spicy as the Cheetos. It's definitely spicier than I expected because I basically expected something with a spice level of barbecue sauce. I would say this is a, this is, you know what? This, here's how we'll do it. This is the, the flame and hot Cheetos is H and then half, and then C, which is half of the O and the, the sauce is just an H.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, and then the H, the, the other one is just an H, the, the, the sweet and spice, the spicy sauce. Oh, interesting. I thought that maybe they, all right, fair enough. You think it's a little spicier. Well, how would you rate it? It's hard to, it's hard to tell in my head, honestly. Uh, you know, it's, I, I almost thought that the sauce was maybe, but maybe that's lingering effects from the Cheetos.

Right. Now I can't tell them all mixed up. You know what? I'll just give them both a. That's fair. As long as you have more opportunities to make that noise. Oh, it's what everyone wants to hear. People will love hearing this, but my answer is. People, people are, some people that will have trouble distinguishing,

uh, when you're making that noise consciously and when you're just exhaling. Fuck you. Piece of shit. Mary, what do you, what do you think about that sauce, that firehouse sauce? Um, I think it's a, yeah. Yeah. I think, I think, I think, I think, I think, I think you guys are right. I mean, it's like, I don't know. I would expect like from firefighters, you know what I kind of have the feeling of,

but you know, that, that's, I'm thinking of it because we were saying Simpsons earlier, and because also Ned Flanders is wearing a fireman's hat in the episode. But when he says he's got like, like Ned, he's got his firehouse five alarm chili. And then you like, he, you know, it's like two alarms at best, right? What it was two and a half at best. Is that what, that what it ends up being? Whatever that joke is from the chili episode. When Homer's, I mean, Homer really makes him look like a fool.

Yeah. I'm sure, I'm sure a pedantic Simpsons fan won't correct me. That never happens on the internet. But the, but the, it's a, it's that sort of thing where I like, I would think something from a firehouse restaurant, like a place that was like, oh, we're firefighters. I think they'd have something truly spicy there. And so I'm a little disappointed they don't have something that's like super, duper spicy, even just as a novelty, but just to kind of pay off their, their theme a little bit.

Is that their one sauce? Um, I think that's the one that they sell, because I saw, I saw what they were selling that at the counter and they had two different sizes of the same bottle. So you're right. Cause I ate another one of those flaming hot Cheetos that lingers with you. Yeah. It's got a little bit of a, it's got a little bit of a slow burn. Yeah.

A podcast about Watergate. So, uh, I, uh, yeah, I would, I would say, I think we're, we're in the same, the same ballpark for all of those. Hey, that was all at once. We're going to snack or whack the cheat, the baked Cheetos snack. Yeah. I think those are definite snack. Yeah.

Yeah. You know how like, um, you ever had those cheez-its that are like a quarter of the fat? Oh yeah. Or whatever. Yeah. Those are superior. Just like that. Really?

Yeah. They like have much more of a crisp on it. What I like is the, the toasted cheese, the, uh, cheez-its. Oh, the ones they do extra like burned. Yeah. Yeah. Those are good. Yeah, extra burnt ones.

They have that. They do. Yeah. They do they ever. Yeah. Seek them out at your local supermarket. They are, they're delightful. Yes.

At your local supermarket. Or wherever you shop for, for dry goods. Dry goods. That was hot or not. Just like a restaurant via your feedback. Let's up to the feedback. Today's email comes to us from Rachel and Santa Cruz. Hey, hey, Natalie.

We're running low on dry goods. I'm going to run out. Do we need any wet goods too? Rachel and Santa Cruz writes, Weigher claims that Wendy's spicy crispy chicken sandwich was introduced in 1996, and this claim sent my brother and me into a tailspin as we both have very vivid memories of eating the sandwich several years before that. My memory is distinctly of me wearing my candy striper uniform in our mom's mini van

while taking my brother to the batting cages, which could only have been in the 1994 to 1995 era. Upon some deep digging, Reed scrolling slightly further down the Wikipedia page, we learned the sandwich was a promotional item leading up to its placement as a permanent menu item in 1996. The relief was immense. So to wrap this up, do you have any detailed childhood memories of eating specific fast food items and the clothing you were wearing while enjoying it? Wow, clothing you were wearing.

Thanks for the question, Rachel. Also Weigher, I think I would have tried to correct you if I had really thought about that. I think I would have thought you were wrong too. Really? The first time I had it was when I was like 14 years old. Right. It seems like I had it when I was, I think the first time I saw promotional spices chicken sandwich, I wanted it.

I don't remember its promotional era. I only remember what it was on. What is a candy striper uniform? What is that? It's a type of nurse, right? Oh, yeah. It's like a, yeah, it's, it's maybe it's a, I don't know if it's a full nurse, maybe or a nurse.

It's like a volunteer. A volunteer, okay. I stitch. Got it. Yeah. But I should know, my mom was a nurse. But the, the, it's something in the medical field. Yeah, I'm trying to, I mean, you know, what I, what I thought of was,

I think I've told this story before and I thought of wearing my orchestra out like my tuxedo and eating chili cheese fries while I was wearing this right before a concert. And like my parents, I remember them asking me like, like, hey, are you sure you want to eat chili cheese fries before like your, your concert tonight? And me just being like, like, yeah, of course I want, so what do I want to eat? Like me being like a little shit about it. And then while we were like playing like a, you know, Dvorak's New World Symphony or something, like my stomach just going like,

just like having the worst stomach pains while I was playing the clarinet on stage in my dumb little tuxedo. So yeah, that's one memory. But I'm trying to think of anything else, anything specifically fast food related. Anything come to mind with you, for you guys? Childhood specifically, I'm trying to, I'm trying to think of, oh, you know what? Well, I don't know. In high school, I remember being, getting out of a football practice

and like still wearing like my gym, I specifically remember my gym clothes and being drenched and, and, and getting a quarter pounder meal with cheese from McDonald's with my mom, which was great. Right. It was like, it was like, it just stuck with, it was like one of those meals. You know what it was too? My mom brought a Gatorade. So I chugged this big Gatorade that tasted so good because I just had a workout where I

was probably close to puking because I was so out of shape and pathetic. Right. And then I did myself that favor of, you know, working out a bunch. And then it was, I ate more calories than I burned up, but it was such a good man. It was like, that must have been a good McDonald's meal for me to just remember it. Yeah. And then I told the first communion story where I like was in my little first communion suit. And I, they, they, they brought me my aunt, the cool aunt brought McDonald's,

like brought a happy meal, which was, which was fucking great. Yeah. That's so clutch. Yeah. Yeah. But I can't remember any specific, I can't remember anything else specific. I remember like eating like pizza and stuff, like in birthday boys costumes and stuff, but, but nothing, nothing else comes to mind. But that's funny to like enjoy a meal so much that you like remember what you had on. Right.

That's, that's great. That's great. Mary, anything come to mind? Well, I am kind of bringing it full circle back to my old Bubba Gump days. Oh yeah. Afterwards, we'd always go to this bar called Streeters and close that out, which would be at like 430 a.m. But right next door was a Dunkin Donuts.

Yeah. Oh boy. Like those Chris sandwiches at 4 a.m. We're so piping hot and like all that cheese was just like melting in the Chris line. Oh, so I always remember wearing a Bubba Gump t-shirt and some really bad khaki shorts. Just reeking. Hey, if you have a question or comment about the word of chain restaurants, you can email us at dowboyspodcasts at gmail.com or leave us a voicemail.

Yeah, go for it. But I was going to say in Nick and I story, we were also reeking too. Right. Why did all of those wet crotches? There's never a time in my life when I didn't smell like shrimp. Or leave us a voicemail at 830 Godot. That's 830-4636844. And to get the Dough Boys double our weekly bonus episode,

join the Golden Plate Club at patreon.com slash Dough Boys. Thanks to Mookie Blake Locke for his help out with our Italy bit earlier. What the? And yeah, Mitch, I'm breaking the fourth. And of course, thanks to our guest, Mary Sohn. Thank you so much for being here. See you guys. Do you have anything you would like to plug at this time?

I do a podcast with two girls called Real Housewives Kiki Show. And that's it. Look that up. And hey, that'll do it for this episode of Dough Boys. Until next time for the Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell, I'm Nick Weigar. Happy eating. See ya. You song, you're fired.

You're fired. You dumb fuck. Hey guys, you want more Dough Boys? To get the Dough Boys double our weekly bonus episode, join the Golden Plate Club. Sign up at patreon.com slash Dough Boys.