Doughboys - Five Guys 2 with Andy Daly

Episode Date: February 11, 2021

Andy Daly (Review, Eastbound & Down, Bonanas for Bonanza, Andy Daly Podcast Pilot Project) joins the 'boys to talk Ithaca College and revisit Five Guys. Plus, the debut of Bananas for Ba-na-nas.Sources for this week's intro:https://web.archive.org/web/20090618192325/http://www.advocate.com/issue_story_ektid21766.asphttps://www.advocate.com/news/2004/06/08/pride-patriotism-and-queer-eyehttps://www.inc.com/magazine/20100401/jerry-murrell-five-guys-burgers-and-fries.htmlhttps://variety.com/2017/tv/news/queer-eye-for-the-straight-guy-netflix-revival-1201968887/https://www.fiveguys.com/fans/the-five-guys-storyWant more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2003, American television viewers were introduced to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a makeover reality show where heterosexual men had their lives transformed by a quintet of gay hosts, the Fab Five. Each had his own specialty, Ted focused on food, cayenne grooming, J culture, breakout Carson handled fashion, and Tom was tasked with interior design, completely remodeling guests' apartments in a visibly unfair division of labor. The show was the first mainstream hit for Bravo, leading the network to completely shift formats from high-brow fare like filmed British stage plays and inside the actor studio to

focus instead on reality TV, today with hit franchises like Top Chef, Bander Pump Rules, and Countless Real Housewives of various municipalities. But Queer Eye's impact was more significant than transforming the fate of a deep cable channel in a much more homophobic America that would go on to re-elect George W. Bush with a popular vote majority. It made stars out of openly gay men and made straight men everywhere comfortable with concepts like using conditioner and matching their shirts to their socks. But the Queer Eye cast weren't the only five-some to burst on the national scene in 2003.

That same year, the Morrell Sons, Jim, Matt, Chad, Ben, and Tyler would begin franchising the Virginia burger chain co-founded by their parents. The collective namesake of their family company, the Morrell Sons each have their own Queer Eye style specialty. As per Papa Jim Morrell, quote, Matt and Jim travel the country visiting stores, Chad oversees training, Ben selects the franchisees, and Tyler runs the bakery, end quote. The East Coast burgerie quickly attained national prominence and would become a personal favorite of fellow DC area resident president of Barack Obama.

In 2018, Netflix rebooted Queer Eye with a similar format but a new cast for a new generation of viewers. But at the Morrell's burger chain, which now has over 1,500 locations, the original Fab Five of Sons still steers a ship. This week on Doe Boys, we return to Five Guys. Welcome to Doe Boys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I'm Nick Weigar, along with my co-host, the Low Tea Rex, the Spoon Man, aka Mr. Slice, Mike Mitchell.

Okay. The Low Tea Rex, I get it. Like you have Low Tea, but like a T-Rex, the dinosaur, that was courtesy of, I picked this one with purpose, Brian P., who says he's from a shithole in upstate New York, which I know pertains to both you and our guest, and as Brian wrote, thought of this while watching the first Jurassic Park, roastspoonman at gmail.com. Wow. Hey, the first, where we all fell in love with the T-Rex was the first Jurassic Park.

Yes. That wasn't the moment you felt when he ate the lawyer? My first flame, I would say. You know, my dad was a lawyer, so I stood up and I booed. I booed the T-Rex. The cowardly lawyer getting eaten off the toilet. He's great. I'm upset by that.

He's a good character, the lawyer. He's good. Yeah. He's a good character, and that was like, because I read the book Jurassic Park was so hyped for the movie. I read the book. I read the book before I knew a movie was coming out, and then I learned a movie was coming out.

I was like, this is unbelievable. I already read this book. It was like the first time I connected an adaptation in that way. Nick, while you're talking down to me, tell me what a composite character is. I'll tell you, and everyone knows what a composite character is. We're all adults. We took English Lit. It was like me as a kid piecing it together, piecing together the concept because the lawyer

is a composite character in the movie of the lawyer and some other character who I forgot who's from the book, who's actually the cowardly guy who gets killed. I think I read the book maybe after I saw the movie. I tried to read the book after I saw the movie, and there's like, as a child, I was whatever, 11 when that came out or something around that age. When did it come out? Was it 1993? 1994?

1993. All right. So 11. And there's like just like long, in the book, there's just like long stretches of like, the gecko RNA is superior to, like it just fucking bullshit that no child, I mean, I guess you loved it, it seems like. Ate it up. Cut the dino shit.

Let's talk RNA. But I love the movie, still in my, I think in my top 10 movies, I wonder how our guests will feel about that. I know that there's some people like, I think that if you're, you were like just a child when Jurassic Park came out, there's maybe more love for it than some people have. But a movie that I remember like my dad was like, that was cool. Like, I think it was one of those movies that dads thought were cool too. I remember, yeah, that you and I were the perfect age for when it released, but I do

think people younger than us and older, I think everyone loves Jurassic Park, universally beloved. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what, I wonder what the teenage, like a teenage crowd would think about, you know. They're all watching TikToks. Back then.

In 1993. They were ahead of the curve. Yeah. They were, they were, in 1993, you were watching TikToks. You're looking at a grandfather, the clock, my friend. All right, here's a drop. I really don't, oh, how do you know to Spoon Nation or Slice Nation? I mean, I, it's still Spoon Nation.

This is embarrassing. Our guest is good today. Oh God. There's also three drops in here. Okay. Drop. Here it is. Hello.

I'm Mr. Slice. Are you tired of the noise in the test kitchen? And the inevitable heart attack to come with another mediocre fucking pizza chain. 830-463-6844. But I'm a real tightwad. Can I afford this remarkable system? Here's the deal. I'll give you the Mr. Slice experience.

I'll bring over a pan with dough in it and the sauce and the cheese. You just got to put it in the oven at 500 degrees. So remember. Call Mr. Slice. That's my name. That name again is Mr. Slice. Okay. So let me just quickly say.

We got a good guest today. Okay. And I got an issue with our producer, the Drop King. You picked for a good guest, he doesn't know what these drops are. You picked the most confusing fucking thing. I've ever heard I was confused by it. It's Mr. Plow from The Simpsons. It's the Mr. Plow commercial and they just dubbed in Mr. Slice.

Your nickname. It's pretty straightforward if you know the reference. I know. Yes. Sure. Okay. You're right. I mean, you didn't think that was a strange one.

They're all strange. They're all the same to me. All right. They're all on the same level. It was good. Oh, fuck. Wait till I read this email. Enjoy this new nickname while you can because of history's any indication Slice King will

soon be hot on your heels. Your neighbor, Mike Machetto. I don't know how to say his name. At Mike Machetto, M-O-S-C-H-E-T-T-O. How would he pronounce that, Weigur? Machetto? I don't know. Quincy Mass.

He's from Quincy. Wow. And then he gave a shorter version. Look, Mike, I liked it, but unfortunately I got to come to your house in Quincy and kick your ass. What's the... What's what? No, go for it.

No, you go for it. Mitch, let's introduce our guest. Yeah, no shit. He's an actor and comedian from Review and Eastbound and Down. His podcast are Bananas for Bananza and the Andy Daly podcast pilot project Andy Daly is here. Hi, Andy. Hello.

How are you guys? Doing great. How are my levels? What's your opinion of my levels? I think you sound great. You like my levels? They sound fantastic. Really?

Yeah. What if I turn down my own game a little bit so I'm quieter to myself? Yeah, fine. That's fine too. Yeah, you sound great. Okay, good. Fun. It's so fun.

Yeah, I don't know what I just heard there. You said, before we started recording, you said, I'm going to play a little drop and then I just... And I said, I don't know what a drop is, but I don't tell me. I'm curious to find out in the moment. And I have to tell you, I still don't know, but also, was that a functioning phone number in there? Yes.

That's the Doughboys Hotline. You can call and leave a voicemail, so yeah. Okay, good. I was suddenly terrified that you had revealed someone's phone number. No, we didn't dox anyone but ourselves. 830-463-6844. Which is used basically for a lot of people calling and telling us they're queuing on conspiracies.

Yeah. It's good to keep abreast of those. Andy, thank you so much for being here. I'll start with this because I know it's the only thing on Mitch's mind. You, like Mr. Slice, like Mike Mitchell, are an alum of Ithaca. Go bombers. You went to the same university. Go bombers.

Yes, that's right. Not really a university. Just a college. Okay. What's the distinction? A distinction is that a university contains multiple colleges. Oh, okay. Ithaca College is one college unto itself.

Interesting. Yeah. There's different schools. There's the Roy H. Park School of Communications where you were a member of that school, correct, Andy? No. Wow. Well, here's what happened.

I had terrible grades in high school and I wanted to go to a communication school. So I applied to Ithaca College and they sent me a letter saying, we have not accepted you into the communication school, which is quite competitive, but we have accepted you into the college and you can choose any one of these other majors and departments. They just sent me like a long list. So I just randomly chose English and my plan was to transfer into the park school as soon as I could, but then my grade point average, my first semester of college was 1.48. Wow.

And so that dashed those dreams and then so instead I auditioned for the theater department and I spent the rest of college as an acting major. Okay. I went in as a computer science major and I remember my first class, they wrote code on the board and they said, who understands this and everyone else raised their hand except for me. And then I was like, I don't think I want to do this. So then I transferred into the communication school because I think one of the deans just

kind of felt bad for me. Do you remember any computer science? Do you remember any computer programming? No, you know, I liked computers, you know, I liked... You're using one now. I liked Oregon Trail. That was kind of the deal of, I liked and like I think I knew how to like set up like modems more than like people in the neighborhood.

So in my mind, I was like, I could be a computer scientist and I was good at math. But you know, just completely out of my depth over there, I couldn't handle that stuff. And as someone who was also initially a math major and did computer, I mean, functionally was doing computer programming professionally for a while, you would be fine. Because if you know math and you have any sort of basic of, you know, some basics of computer art where you're fine. It looks like Mrs. Mitchell popping into the frame here. She is popping into the frame here.

Hi Ma. Hello. She's popping out now. She's gone. Now, Mitch, do you want to give us some context for what your situation is at home right now? There was a bit of a, there was a bit of a, the water heater, I believe. Yeah. Oh, like, I don't know what happened.

There was water over the basement floor. But also there was a big storm, which, which Andy knew about, had some family in there that, that for us turned out to be kind of just like a, it was a dud of a storm. Like going to see a Doughboy's live show basically, Wags. Like you're all excited ahead of time and you're really getting prepared, getting your snacks in order. Yeah. And then, and then it just turns out to be like, wow, that was, I'm going to forget

all about that by next week. Not what you're expecting. Not really fun. It turned, it turned gray. You know what? The ground looked like a, like a, like a colorless slurpee. It was very like, it was like a gray, it's gross, just a gray mess out there. And so kind of, I love snow.

So I was looking forward to, to a couple, a couple feet. I was, I was ready for a big snowstorm, but it's, we got nothing. Which speaking of snowstorm, Andy, did you like, did you, did you, did you like being in Ithaca? It's a very cold place. It's a, you're constantly dealing with the snow and the cold. Yeah. No, I, so the dorm that I was in was called New Hall at the time.

I think they changed the name a bit to Eastman Hall. It's like a V shaped by the old tennis courts, by the garden apartments. Yeah. Yeah. You can live out as far away as you can live from Dillingham, which is the theater building. So I had that, that walk all the way across campus every, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday to be at an eight AM class. Wow.

And the, the, uh, I, I have this visceral memory of literally being pelted in the face with ice. Yes. That's like. Wow. Yeah. Sadly as I get older and like forget most memories, that's like when I look back on college, it's like, I just remember being cold quite a bit.

Yeah. And there was a period of time where, um, there was somebody in my dorm who had broken both ankles or something or something weirder, like she had broken one ankle and one collar bone. So she couldn't get around on crutches. And so she was in a wheelchair temporarily and she had the same classes that I did. So I had to push a wheelchair all the way across campus for an eight AM class with ice pelting both of us in the face.

Oh my God. Yes. That, that, that sums up gnarly. The Ithaca experience in many ways. Yeah. Did you, uh, did, were you, did you live in the towers at all? I was an East Tower person for one year. Oh no.

No, I never lived in the towers. I lived in the lower quad, uh, Eastman Hall. Okay. And, uh, then that was it. Then I moved straight to New Hall and I was there the rest of the time. Oh great. Yeah. Or maybe it's Waylon Hall now.

I don't know what the hell it's called. We maybe, we maybe didn't overlap, but I'm sure we overlapped with, with food. Did you have any, did you have any eats in Ithaca that you really enjoyed? Uh, Yeah. I was thinking about that. I was wondering like, you know what my freshman year, Rogans was a big deal. I don't know if you had Rogans.

Oh yeah. We had Rogans. Yep. Okay. Rogans, uh, chicken, parm sandwich that you could get till like three o'clock in the morning. Just, I just blew my mind. And Rogans was basically a gas station, correct?

Like it was a gas station slash like food and there was food there basically, right? That's fair, but, but I mean a hell of a chicken parm sub. Uh, I love that. And then there was also a sandwich place called Irving's that I don't know if it was, I, I actually worked, I loved that so much that I worked there. I was there. Wow. Delivery guy for a while.

Yeah. Wow. I, I, uh, yeah, I delivered sandwiches all around Ithaca, which was really wild. I mean, sometimes I had to deliver them to these massive Cornell frat houses that were like, I couldn't believe they were like old silent movie star homes. My buddy, Chankton lived in, and he lived in Kai-Fi and it's like just this giant old mansion house and, uh, like just filled with a bunch of, you know, kids and it's, it's, it's crazy.

I, it, it's, it's, it's insane. Just these hundreds of year old houses that are on gourd, like on the sides of gorges and kids, students falling to the gorges all the time and it's terrible. It's, it's quite a thing to show up there as the, uh, sandwich delivery guy who's like, you know, 40 minutes later than they hope you would get there as I always was. Hey, nice house. Yeah. What took you so long?

This is going to be cold. As you were driving through snow or whatever you had to do to get there. Yeah. I had, uh, my dad's Chevy celebrity station wagon is what I was driving in those days and, and getting up, there were lots of times where it's like, I am not going to get up this hill in this snowy conditions. Yeah. That's, that's the other thing about it.

The guy's just, it, the college itself is on a hill. So like Rogan's that gas station place is like a little, like not fully down the hill, but like a little, like a little bit down the hill. And then there's the commons, which is like, which is nice. But then in the snow and the cold, it's, it's tough to traverse and go down there and, and hang out. But that's, that's where a lot of people were hanging. John Thomas was, uh, John Thomas steakhouse was one of my favorite spots and I think you

never, you never went. Nope. Not ringing a bill. It's closed now. It's closed forever as well. And then it closed because of the quarantine or was this before that? It, it, uh, it closed during quarantine. Yeah.

Oh, that's a good one. But I think that they had like thought of ending it. I don't know. It's sad regardless, but Wags for you. Yes. Vegetarian this year. Oh yeah. Um, uh, Moose Woods was the, it was like a famous vegan restaurant in there.

Oh, you loved Moose Woods, Nick. You'd love, you'd love Moose Woods. Hopefully that's, I mean, it's pretty famous. Hopefully it will survive, but. That's the thing to get at Moose Woods. Um, like, what kind of fair is there? Are we talking sandwiches? Are we talking just sort of, yeah.

The Moose Wood platter. You can't beat it. I'm only, I only ate there once and I was happy to see that they had a salmon on the menu, but it is, it is a vegetarian restaurant. You can get the, um, uh, Moose Wood cookbook. They have a very good cookbook. Yes. Yes.

Oh, wow. I, I maybe just said that it was vegan. It was a vegetarian restaurant, but I'm sure you can get plenty of vegan dishes there. Hey, maybe we'll go, maybe we'll go, uh, do, maybe we'll go do a show there. Like when I went and did, uh, the, me and a couple of birthday boys went up there and um, they were like, man, you like, you guys got like a pretty good crowd because there was like 50 people there, but they were like, you should have seen it last week though. Dave Franco and Mick Levin were here and this place was packed.

What was the venue? Where were you playing? It was, uh, the, the, in, in the park school, it was the, uh, it was, thank you. My, my, my, my mom just brought me a tuna fish sandwich. Thank you mom. Oh, that's nice. It's a light form. You're welcome.

Thank you. All right. There she goes. Uh, that was very nice. Um, very sweet. Uh, it was in the, the, the park school auditorium is, is, is where, um, is where we did, we, we spoke to like, uh, uh, 40 to 50 virginal dorks, like I was. I mean, I was just speaking, I was speaking to a sad generation of former me's.

And then, um, and then yeah, they told us that a Mick Levin and, uh, and Dave Franco were there in that, uh, a group of college women chased them to their cars. That's exciting. That was for a branded spot too. Like that was like, they were there for like a, like a T-Mobile like branded integration or something where they were visiting college campuses. Yeah. Um, the same auditorium I watched, uh, the buildings, uh, collapsed during 9-11 live

as well. Christ. Really? Yes. A very horrid, on a big screen, on a, on a, on a, on a movie theater size screen. I, uh, I saw the, uh, the buildings bought my freshman year of college in my, in a politics class. Oh man.

Very, very, very surreal. I mean, just a crazy thing to see in general, but then on a, on a movie. You gotta see that on the big screen though. Terrible. Uh, wow. Yeah. That's real weird. It was, it was, it was, it was an interesting start to, uh, to my four years at Ithaca.

Are there, are there, were there any other food spots where you, uh, uh, there's Ithaca bagels, right? There's a, there's like a lot of, uh, there, was there any other spots that you can remember? There's Sammy's pizzeria and the other pizzeria place that, and then, uh, and then there's a great wing, or Sammy's has wings, I believe. I've, I've, I've, now I'm forgetting everything. I'm doing a bad job. Can I just say like, like of the region, the thing I always think of with upstate New York

that I hear about, never been there is the garbage plate. I don't know. That's something you've ever had, Andy. Nick. That's fucking Rochester for God's sake. Okay. I'm sorry. Rochester.

Nick. Uh, yeah, no, I, I used to go to college town bagels was a very exceptional bagel place. The Nines was a great place to get pizza. Yeah. Um, there was a pizza place that I worked at that I can't remember the name of, but the pizza there was great. What was it? It was like, it was like a basement in college town.

It was a subterranean pizza place. Wow. And, uh, yeah, the, the, the glee, the Cornell Glee Club used to come in every Wednesday night and get drunk and sing Randy versions of their glee club songs. Oh, that's. Wow. Wow. Yeah.

I also worked as a dish machine operator at a restaurant called plums, which I think would have been done by the time you were there. It was on, it was just off the commons. It was on like the main drag there. Oh, your title was dish machine operator. Yes. That was the job that I applied for. Dish machine operator, which I think they probably put that in the listing to make it

sound like you're just going to press a button. But it was the hardest job imaginable. It was awful. It was, it was, it was everything bad. The thing I often say about that job is that there was one day I'm in there, I'm scraping cheese off of these ceramic French onion soup bowls and just, and I had to clean up and I, and I had to do preps. It was terrible.

I had to clean like sometimes the walk-in cooler would get like a quarter of an inch of just chicken blood on the floor and I had to clean that up. And then one day all these waiters kept coming and saying, hey, the urinal is backed up, which I don't even know how that happens. But I was standing there going, hi, I wonder whose, whose job it is to address a backed up urinal. And like a minute later, the manager comes in and hands me a plunger. Oh, God.

Oh, it's me. I'm the person that handles that. That was a bad job. Did you have deepy dough back when you were there or was, was that around yet? Because deepy dough is a thing that I got delivered straight to my, in my house, my senior year at, there was a door that went right to my room. What is it? It's like a calzone.

It was just like calzone. There was a buffer zone, a buffalo chicken calzone that was very good. And then shortstop deli was, I'm sure was around. Oh yeah. I love the shortstop. Shortstop deli was great. That's, that's like one of my, that's one of the places I'll hit up when I go to, when I go back to Ithaca.

Why, what do you get at a shortstop deli? Well, Nick, you would love it because there's like, you can get like, there's like these, there's pizza sandwiches and you can get like a, you could do kind of like a chicken on the pizza sandwich. So it's like kind of like a chicken parm or like, and then there was truck sauce. So you can put that on there. Just like big loaves of bread. Truck sauce.

Wait, have we talked about this before? No, I don't know if we have talked about it before. It was kind of like a hot mayo-y sauce, you know, like one of those kind of special sauces. But you could also get like, I think there was like singles, doubles, triples or like grand slams and grand slams were huge or something. And then like, it would just be a loaf of bread, basically. But you could get like a, you could get like a Rubin. You could get like a giant, a grand slam Rubin or whatever that was just fucking gigantic.

And they put all the sandwiches through like a, like a toaster oven. It was, the sandwiches were genuinely good. Yeah, they were good. It was good, it was a good spot. Baseball-themed deli. And I think you could also fill up your tank there, am I wrong? I think you could. Yeah, that feels, again, that feels like most kind of a running theme, it seems.

I think the college itself had a gas station that you could fill up at. Ithaca College was mostly a gas station, it was secondarily a college. Did you have a place that would deliver you milk and cookies to your dorm room? There was a business. Oh yeah. That is right up my little baby alley, where I would probably order that all the time. That sounds amazing. It did seem to me like, even at the time, and I knew nothing, like an unsustainable model,

like the price point on milk and cookies is not high enough to justify delivery, but I appreciated it for however long they were willing to lose money on it. That was, that was deep. It was the same thing that would deliver the calzones, because they would just be like five bucks. But you know, I think they would come to the campus with like, like 400 calzones or something. You know what I mean? So it would be just one trip and they would cover a lot of people.

Oh yeah, because if you're delivering to the dorms, yeah, you could just load up. That makes sense. Now, Andy, you were a teen or a tween when Jurassic Park came out. Oh, not at all. You flatter me. If it came out in 93, is that correct? It came out in 93. That sounds great.

That was the year I graduated Ithaca College. I was 22. Oh no. Oh, so you could have seen it in Ithaca itself. I am, but I don't think I did. Maybe I did. But I enjoyed it, and I remember also thinking, I remember telling my cousin, I said, this is going to be the biggest movie in the world because everybody loves dinosaurs.

And he reminds me of the years, man, you were right about that. I don't always call it on the box office. I get lots of things wrong, but I was right about that one. Is this something that he'll say to this day regarding Jurassic Park with reverence? No, I think he probably said it once in 1993, and I've hung onto it all this time. And you were right about that. Yeah, I was. Before you, I wanted to back up a little bit.

Before you get to Ithaca, I know you grew up in New Jersey. Is that correct? Yes, indeed. New Jersey, great food state. We've had guests from New Jersey, from the Garden State before, talk up what you can eat there. Do you have any favorites from growing up? Man, well, the only thing I can think of that's particularly New Jersey or East Coast anyway

is a nice hard roll. You can't get that in Los Angeles. You can't just get a sandwich on a Kaiser roll like you can on the East Coast. We had a deli called Wilkes Deli that has the best potato salad in the world. As a matter of fact, that same cousin I was just telling you about worked at Wilkes Deli, and he partly got the job to get his hands on that to figure out how they were making this potato salad. And they were, it was like a state secret.

They were like, no, we don't share that with just any employee. So he never found out. But man, you can get a sandwich on a hard roll at Wilkes. Oh, so good. That's a real New Jersey food for me. But I don't know. What else? A lot of Italian food, a lot of, I mean, you spent some time in New York, a lot of pizza

in that area. Yeah, yeah. You know, when I was living in New York, I was very health conscious, more so than I am now. And so I kind of look back on that time and think, oh, I could have been eating some really great pizza. But I would literally go to this place that had a cheese-less pizza. And I would eat a cheese-less pizza.

Which can be good if you do like the Sicilian, like a Sicilian style with just a heavy sauce. Yeah, just when I mean covered in leafs. OK, never mind. This was like salad on thin dough. That was a bad call. That was the era we've talked about before, Mitch, but like, you know, the pendulum on what is and isn't healthy keeps swinging, and at one point it was like, fat is what's terrible for you.

And so you would literally have like, I lost a bunch of weight in high school eating a low-fat diet, and I was just eating so much just starch, just like rice cakes with nothing on them, you know, which nowadays people will be like the worst thing in the world. But that's that's the same sort of thing. Like I went to CBK, I remember, as a teenager when I was trying to eat healthy and I had a cheese-less pizza for the same motivation. I was like, oh, the cheese is unhealthy. That's that's the part.

And now they're just like, yeah, just eat the cheese. Don't eat the dough at all. That's the problem. Yeah, this is pre-Adkins for sure. Yeah. Yeah, bread was very healthy, I feel like, in my in my home growing up, it was it was like a like bread, like a pasta dinner with marinara sauce and like a loaf of bread. Yes.

It was like, oh, like that was eating healthy. Yeah. Well, Marathon runners used to get together, you know, the night before a race and just pile up on the pasta. And I think that kind of trickled out to the general public as, oh, well, pasta, that's a that's fitness food. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Hulk Hogan had a restaurant themed about that. He did. Hulk Hogan's pasta mania. Yeah. Mm hmm. Pre-wrestle, it was that mostly for pre, for like pre-wrestle matches or what, like a. Yeah, you'd load up and then get into the ring and then go have sex with your buddy's

wife on camera. Oh, boy. There was a rumor he was going to win the rumblewags the other day that. I think that would have been too, but the heat's not off him yet. I don't know if the heat will ever go off him. Yeah. That clip is so incriminating because not only does he say slurs, he says, you know, I am racist, which like no one ever, no one ever is just like, even people who are like

just racist will say like, look, I'm not racist, but he's just like, I am a racist. He's like, makes that statement on it. It's so straight. It's such a odd thing to say. That's like after sex pillow talk to Hulk Hogan. Apparently. All right. It's really, it's really an odd piece of video that you just rail your friend's

wife and then while he's there and then you just go and then you just say all of your, your deepest, darkest, most hateful thoughts. It's such a weird video and it's weird that I watch it on a weekly basis. Oh, that's very strange. I will admit that I did watch it back when it was all the range and the thing that stood out to me is that in the middle of all of it, he takes a phone call from his son. Yeah.

Makes me never want to call my dad. Like what's going on? What's going on over there? That poor kid, you know, that kid saw that video come out and go, oh, I remember that phone call. That's what he was doing. There's a similar thing in the, like during one of the, uh, the Lewinsky calls like, or during one of the Lewinsky incidents, he takes a call from the

congressman and like in the testimony, it says which congressman he was on the phone with while he was, you know, yeah. And which is again, just a weird, weird layer. Hey, in the future, if I call you and you're in the middle of getting a blow jump from an intern, just go ahead and say, you know, let me know. I'll try it back another time. Send it to voicemail. It's fine.

Um, Andy, do you, do you, uh, uh, uh, I know we're in bizarre times, uh, pivoting topics, I know we're in bizarre times right now in terms of, uh, you know, uh, your line of work and Mitch's line of work, uh, acting on set, but in normal times. I'm always curious. I want to clear it up and say, I just want to say more, more so Andy's line of work, uh, you're a working actor. You're doing great. You're in a movie.

You got a movie coming out. Oh, you got a movie coming out. He's got a movie coming out. All right. Tomorrow or, uh, in, in, I believe in, in the net within, it's, it's, it might be sold to, to Amazon is the breaking deadline news. This is going to be the biggest movie of all time. Wow.

Wow. I called it. You called it once. He doesn't even know the premise yet. I don't know the premise. I just need to know you're in it and it's coming out. Wow. There's, it's aliens, but hey, people like it, like dinosaurs.

People do like aliens. People like aliens. Yes. Yeah. People can't get enough. So when you're, uh, when you're on set, Andy, uh, how do you manage all the food that's there and what are, what are your onset eating habits? Um, yes, that's a good question.

So, you know how there's always donuts. This is an interesting thing to me that actors are, are so expected to be inhumanly thin and then you're, you're just presented with donuts at all times. All day. And, um, I will often do a thing. I have a real, uh, chocolate is a big deal for me. I have a real weakness for chocolate. If there's a chocolate donut, I'll cut out about like a fifth of it.

And I'll, and I'll walk away with that little piece. And one time a craft services guy said, yeah, uh, anytime somebody does that, they always, they've, they end up finishing the donut a little bit at a time. He was kind of saying like, you might as well just take it. You'll be back. And I was like, you son of a bitch, that's true. Cause that, that is what I do. Then I go back and I'll say, well, I'll take another fifth of it.

I guess, oh, nobody's touched this yet. And who would touch it? Who else is going to want some of that doughnut? It's just there for me. There could be someone walking over saying they want three fifths of a donut or something. Oh, that's perfect for me. It's always that last fifth of a donut.

Yeah. Uh, yeah. So I'm, uh, very susceptible to chocolate, but I will try and, and you can't, you can't, like I have an apple here on my desk. Now I like a good apple guy. Sure. But the fruit available at the craft services table, where do they get it? The apples are tiny and mealy always a few days past their prime.

Yeah. Never, never great because you can find great food on set, but yeah, they're, they're always those little tiny, the little tiny apples, not, not a full apple that you can really bite into and enjoy. I agree with that. That's that there's, there can be good, there can be good fruit. But I feel like mostly it's when, you know, on, on film sets, well, you know, this one, they, when they come around with the, uh, like, it'll be like,

Oh, there's like a little snack. They'll have like a prepared snack. They'll bring around like a prepared snack. Yeah. And that's the good stuff coming around with parfaits. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

That, that, that's exciting. Yeah. But, but I'm, it, did you ever not, for me, this is the issue I think with film sets is that it's like so hard to go to the bathroom that I almost don't want to eat during the day. Like, uh, I'll eat lunch and everything like that. But like just the fact that you're wired up and then like have to go, like, you're like, can I go to the bathroom and then some producer AD or something

looks at you like that you're a pain in the ass. Maybe I shouldn't, maybe I shouldn't be asking these people if I can go to the bathroom all the time. But then you're going to go, I just, to me, I never like to eat too, too much. I'm always, I'm not, I'm always kind of just like lightly snacking on stuff throughout the day. But that's a good call. That's a good idea.

Yeah. No, I did a three day shoot once where I, I don't know why, but I was just going Diet Coke, water, Diet Coke, water. And the number of times I had to tell the first AD, I got to go to the bathroom. He definitely thought I was, I was insane. That's my main memory of that shoot. The way that guy looked at me when I said, Hey, is this a good time to go to the bathroom?

What the fuck are you doing in there? Um, I, I, I found out that this place is called the, the wing place was Napoli's wings. That's a, no, what, what, what was your freshman year? Oh, 2001 was your freshman year. So 2001 was my freshman year. Yep. Yeah.

So that's eight years later. So all kinds of turnover would have happened. Did you, is moon shadow still there? The bar moon shadow is still there. And I didn't, I didn't go to it a ton, but, but I, but I went to it a, like a little bit. I had friends who went there all the time, but it's now called club moonies. What?

It's like, it's called club moonies. Very weird. I don't approve of that. How about macobbers? Is macobbers still there? Macobbers are still there. I was, I, I, I went to macobbers quite a bit, but then it turned into kind of like, uh, kind of, it kind of turned into like, uh, like, uh, it's club cubbies now.

It was like a jock bar, a little bit when I was there. Yeah, that's not fun. Teetering on that. Well, plums was right next to macobbers, that the restaurant where I, Oh, okay. All right. There you go. Yeah.

Mm hmm. All right. Now there's like subways in the, like, uh, not subway system, but like, the sex, like subway sandwich shops. There's like, there's like actual, cause it used to be a thing where there was why, cause where there was no, uh, where there was like, kind of like no chains or anything like that. It was all like, uh, locally owned businesses.

Yeah. In the comments, no longer the case. It's, yeah, that was the, but Natalie went to, uh, UC Berkeley, university of California, Berkeley, a famous, uh, kind of hippie community, uh, but it's gotten like, and it had the same thing. It was just like a college town with no chains, but as we've really visited over the years, it's like, Oh, there's a chase bank now there. Oh, there's a McDonald's.

It's like, it's like slowly gotten more like, like fucking everywhere. It's just the same shit as everywhere. Yeah. John Ross Bowie, who also went to, you know, I graduated the same year from Ithaca. He, he's, he had a joke that he was like, Ithaca is such a hippie town that they drove Ben and Jerry's out of the commons because it was too corporate. Uh, and I worked at that Ben and Jerry's for like a couple of days. Wow.

I did. Yeah. This is big. This is big choose. Why, why just a couple of days? Oh, well, then you're going to be really excited about my post college job. Um, I, because, uh, the first time, the first shift I worked, it was a weird thing where they paid me less than minimum wage because we were getting tips,

you know, like they did that waiter thing of like, you get $2.15 an hour or something like that. Oh man. Yeah. Awful law. At the end of this shift, which was like a Thursday night shift or something, we divided up the tips and I was like, fuck this. This is no money.

Like, why, how does anybody work here? Like, yeah, I was shocked by how little money it was. And so that my next year, I, unfortunately, I just simply didn't show up for my next shift and then I was subjected to one heck of a lecture from the manager of Ben and Jerry's, but this Ben and Jerry's, uh, had a guy living upstairs who was this total like old long bearded hippie who we were told was a very close personal friend of Ben and Jerry's. Wow.

Yeah. Wait, was he stationed there above the bed and Jerry's intentionally or was this like a thing? I don't know. I mean, I guess they bought the building and he was like, Hey, I'll, I'll live up, upstairs from it and pop in every once in a while and wander around like a hippie. Oh man.

That is, uh, that's a very com, uh, Ithaca commonsy sort of sounding thing. That's a, I think I would, I would, it would be big trouble to, to live above an ice cream. Oh yeah. That's deadly. Cause I feel like especially that like a little treat or some dessert or something. I think maybe that would, is, is one of the worst places to live above. I justify it to myself all the time, just popping down there for a scoop.

And it would be, it would be deadly dangerous. And then they're cooking those waffles, the smell of the waffle, that'd be tough. Yeah. Uh, well you, you, you, you had a little tease there. You said you love our job, your, your job after college. What was that all about? I was a waiter at Bennegan's. At Bennegan's.

Wow. Dear Lord, I, I mean, I want to make it clear that we should have had you on the show a long time ago, but we're always afraid of like how bad the show is. Yeah. And how you're one of the funniest people on earth. And we are embarrassed to have you on. I'm delighted to be here. I'm thrilled to be on the show.

Although I do have to tell you that I am pretty anti-chain restaurant and anti fast food at this time of my life. Right. We got it. We got it. Yeah. But so in some ways I'm the worst person to have on this show. But, uh, but yeah, I know I have experience in the, uh, in the fast

casual space, uh, so you, so you're working at Bennegan's, uh, what was that? What was that scene like and, uh, anything, anything, anything notable stand out from your, uh, your service there? Many things. Um, so this was, uh, 93. I'm working at the Bennegan's in Englewood, New Jersey. This was post flare period. So we were wearing, uh, chinos, uh, like khakis and white button-down shirt.

And we were expected to iron. And so one of my memories is being in my parents' basement ironing my Bennegan's clothes and the smell of barbecue sauce just coming off of the clothes. Oh my God. Being heated by the iron because it wouldn't, that wouldn't wash out. Uh, and our manager wanted to make, he said at the orientation for new employees, he said, uh, it sounds like a joke, but he said, I have, my marriage is over. I barely get to see my kids.

Uh, I live in a shitty apartment. I have nothing, but this Bennegan's, and I'm going to make this the best Bennegan's in the United States. And if you are on board with that goal, welcome aboard. If not, there's the door. Wow. Wow. You know, I mean, nobody was on board with that.

It's impossible to want that. So, but, you know, well, I stayed. And yeah, we would just, you know, we had access to, um, a keg at the wait station and all these plastic kid cups. So we were mostly drunk. All the waiters were drunk most of the time. Uh, and, uh, yeah, it was weird. It was weird working there because the cooks in the kitchen had photos,

laminated photos of all the entrees, and they would, it was just like, let's just make it look like the picture. That was their directive. I also remember that they had a trademark on, uh, the dessert death by chocolate. That was just an odd, an oddity of the menu. It would say death by chocolate and then a little trademark next to it. Like, how can you do that? How can you trademark a manner of death?

Are there, are there any, are there any of our, are there benign, are there benign's left? There has to be, right? I went to a benign's. I think the last benign's in the LA area, the day it was closing. And this was back when I was working in the video game industry. So this was like 2007 or something. They, they've mostly been shut down.

Yeah. Can I make a guess that you were disappointed with your death by chocolate and that it didn't bring actual death? The thing I remember getting, they had a hamburger egg roll that I got, which was an appetizer, which is one of the more vile things I've ever eaten at any chain restaurant, including for the show. Um, and yeah, it was, it was truly, truly bad. I looked up the legendary death by chocolate.

It now has legendary, uh, as a prefix and it still has the trademark. Legendary death by trade, by chocolate trademark, benign's, uh, this is rich chocolate ice cream, almonds, marshmallows, chocolate fudge sauce, Twix cookie bars on a crumbled Oreo cookie crust and covered in a chocolate shell, pour on hot chocolate topping. A lot going on there. Wow. How can you order it?

Cause I, cause I do believe benign's is all gone. I, is there one benign's left somewhere? Uh, there must be. Yeah. There must be a handful of locations or they still just have the website up. Yeah. They still have the site up for historical reasons. There was also the, uh, the 15 minute express lunch.

Do you guys remember that? That was, uh, wow. You would order your meal and then the waiter was supposed to put a stop watch on your table, uh, and if, if it took longer than 15 minutes to get your entrees, your meal was free. Oh, that sucks for everyone. God, that sucks for everyone, including the person getting this meal that was

rushed down to avoid having to buy it. Terrible. Jesus Christ. And the guy who trained, I was shadowing a waiter and he was like, look, here's the deal. I, I don't put the stopwatch on the table unless they ask for it. That's a great cause. That's smart.

It's smart, but it's a real cheat. People would be disappointed. People are like, that took more than 15 minutes. He was like, Oh, sorry, you didn't ask for the stopwatch. I don't, hang on. It's a great move, honestly. I, I, I, and also you put the person in the position to be like, can I get the stopwatch and that's the biggest, yeah, right.

I want to shot at a free meal. Well, there are two other observations. One is that people did not feel that they had to tip at a Bennington's the way you tip at a proper restaurant, which I, I kind of get. And number two was that there was a, obviously a corporate headquarters in Houston, because every time I came in, we would hear something like this, this is coming down from Houston. We're doing the rollups in a whole different way now.

If there was always something different that came down from Houston, it was like, we're no longer putting out our own ketchup squeeze bottles. We're putting out the Heinz bottle. This is from Houston. They were constantly making tiny little tweaks to Bennington's. It's like it's mission control. Yeah. NASA and, and Bennington's, why, why, why Houston?

Why is, why, why is he, why is, why is Houston the home of all these? I'm not sure. I mean, a lot of these are, are a lot of these are located in, in, uh, you know, Florida and, and have corporate offices in Texas. I imagine just because there's ample real estate and probably low, uh, state tax, you know, that's usually the reason that anyone's headquartered anywhere. You don't need a highly skilled workforce coming out of major universities. Right.

Yeah. To work in the corporate office of Bennington. Um, but they're still, but their website's still there. And you know what I think the, uh, from, from just my, my quick glance at it, it looks like either there are some locations still lingering or they're just trying to franchise again. They're just like, we still have the brand. So if you want to open a Ben again, we'll give you the franchise.

Um, and hey, that, you know what, that brings us to this week's chain, five guys, which was around for almost 20 years before they began franchising. Wow. In 1986 by the Morels and their sons, there are five guys. In fact, the five guys are the five Morel sons who run the company in different capacities. I got to say a good, a good name. Well, I guess five guys name, it sounds like a Scorsese movie.

I, I, I, I want to, I want to see, I want to know more about the five guys. Honestly, it's a bit of a mystery. Hmm. Yeah. They, they haul, they all, from what I've read, they're kind of like the Ninja Turtles and they all have a different task within the company. Like one guy overseas franchising, one guy overseas, the kitchen, one guy overseas, you know, the, uh, uh, the branding.

Um, but, uh, so they, they've all got their own, their own little skill set they focus on, uh, their 1500 locations worldwide. Uh, Andy, we're, we're kind of limited in what chains we can cover these days because Mitch is in Quincy, I'm in LA, we're in different parts of the country. And then also there are, uh, uh, you know, the, just because of COVID, uh, different places have different limitations. Um, but, uh, we gave you a few places to choose from. You, you chose five guys.

Do you have any connection to five guys going in? Not at all. I have heard of it. I had heard of it. Well, you know, I wanted, I had a slight connection to fud ruckers and then my wife worked there in, uh, Chicago in the 80s. And so I was like, Oh, I guess I'll try that. But they, fud ruckers has closed down all of their Southern California locations.

Like recently, which we didn't, we, we found out via you. Like I, they, they'd closed the Santa Monica one within the past year. Good, good, good, good podcasting by us. We found, we found out the restaurant was closed via our guests. Maybe something we should have been on top of. Definitely. Yes. Someone's not our job, but someone, someone who works for us is their job.

I'm happy to take that on for you guys. I'll put any, just run a bunch of places by me and I will find out that they're still in existence. I could set aside an hour a week for that. Yeah. There was the fud ruckers up in, I assumed the one in Burbank was still functioning, but I guess that one closed during quarantine. It's a bummer.

Yeah. Yeah. So I have no connection whatsoever to five guys. Uh, as a matter of getting my hands on five guys was slightly complicated because of COVID. I had an odd experience where I was going to door dash it. It's on door dash, but there's a weird quirk of door dash. There's got to be a way to work around this, but if there's multiple locations,

you can only order from the one that is geographically closest to you. And in this case, that is in the Glendale gallery, a mall, and it is closed. And so there was no way to order through door dash for another place. But so it does the thing. I went through the whole order. I ordered everything I was going to get. I pressed order. I got an email from door dash.

Okay, we got that. I announced to my family that hamburgers were coming. And then I get an email saying your order is canceled because the place is closed. At which point I found the phone number for the, uh, five guys in Glendale. And I, I called them up to get an explanation. And a man answered just saying five guys. And I said, uh, door dash says you're closed. What's going on?

He's like, yeah, we're closed. And I was like, well, what's the plan? And he said, we're hoping to open February 22nd, but the way he said it, it's not going, that's not going to happen. Yeah. But then what that means is that there is a guy sitting at the five guys in the middle of the Glendale gallery, a mall, what, answering the phone. What's that like?

Maybe they're just getting enough inquiries about canceled door dash orders. We gotta have someone on this. That's so weird. Life that man must have him right now. These are strange times. He's sitting in a non-functioning fast food restaurant all day, just in case somebody calls. Now, Eddie, I don't want to, you know, this is, this is purely speculation.

And I don't want to hype this up, but yeah, it's possible you were talking to one of the five guys. I'd never even considered that was one of the five guys. How I wish I had said that, which guy are you, where, where are you in the order and birth order, which guy? I'm the phone guy. So clearly I'm fifth. I'm the, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the fifth guy.

I was unexpected. Um, I had a, I had a similar situation where, you know, the, the five guys app is a little janky and that's what I, what I used. It's, it's kind of like, sometimes you get these apps and they're really sleek and, and, and slick. And sometimes they're just like, you're just feeding me the website. And it's, it's, this is basically one of those. You can, you know, customize your burger pretty well on it.

So it's, it's useful for that reason, but in terms of actually ordering it, it's a little, it's a little bit of a, of a hassle. Um, and it's similarly sent me to a location, like I could not figure out how to toggle to a location that was, that was closer to me and not in a mall. So it sent me to the one at the Fox Hills mall, which is the closest location to me and I went to pick it up. Thankfully the Fox Hills mall, five guys, it's one of those ones that's on the peripheral of the periphery of the mall.

So you can enter from the outside. So it was, you know, not like I had to spend a bunch of time inside a mall food court or anything, but it was just a, just a little bit of an annoyance for the same reason. A Mitch, uh, you, you, you had something, a similar experience. Well, I was getting mine at the start of this big winter storm, uh, that, that I had mentioned. So I pulled up, it was the five guys in Quincy.

When I lived in Quincy, there was no five guys and, and, and, uh, it's on, I've never actually even been to the one in Quincy before it's in the, the new Quincy college building is kind of like right in Quincy center. And I took a class at Quincy college, a community college in Quincy. I took a class there one summer, some history class, but, uh, not in this building. And this is kind of got this new building and five guys at the bottom of it. It's a little tricky to get to. So I parked like right near Quincy center.

The storm was starting. I got out of my car. I was right at a red light in the wind. And when I opened my door, the wind blew my hat off and it, it raised above my head, but I caught it and then I looked over and there was a woman stopped at the red light and she was laughing at me. She saw the, uh, she saw the whole thing. She saw the, uh, like she saw me, we were like, oh my hat and grab my hat and

then put it back on. She was laughing at me. Um, that sounds funny. And, uh, and, and I used the app. I had, or I basically ordered it in my car, uh, cause, uh, right, right outside the restaurant and just wait, it was, it took eight minutes. I think smart for it to be done. I did not know there was an app.

I ended up ordering on my laptop on there on the five guys website, but delivery was not an option. So I also had a drive to Pasadena and pick it up in downtown Pasadena. Jesus Christ. We're sorry. No, it's fine. It was, it was, uh, it's the farthest I've driven in a year. God damn it.

10 minutes away, 10 minutes. I, uh, I, I offered my mom some five. I was like, do you want to get some five guys? She was not interested, Nick. Well, one of the few places just didn't have no interest in getting it. This is, this is fascinating because I had the complete inverse. Natalie almost never wants what I'm getting. She, I'll say like, I, like, I have to go this place for, for dough boys.

She's like, I don't want that. You know, like she'll usually just, just, uh, she's just not into it. Um, but five guys, she was thrilled at the prospect of five guys. She was so excited, like, like, in, like anticipating at days in advance of when I was going to get my five guys lunch. Um, and so she, it was, it was definitely a hit with her. I mean, it's, it's a place she really likes. I think it's her.

Was she waiting for the five guys episodes that she could leave you? Have you checked the scene? Finally got something out of this marriage and now I'm gone. Uh, Andy, your family where, what was their reaction to the prospect of five guys and I guess five guys as, as it came. Yeah. I said, uh, I said at about 11, I'm going to go, I'm going to do this five guys thing and it was like, okay, whatever.

And my thing was, I was just going to order enough for everybody, whether they ate it or not, you know, you know, uh, and turn off my 13 year old daughter at the time that I was leaving, she was making herself a ham and cheese quesadilla on the stove. So that was, all right. Well, there's burgers coming and you're not going to have it. Um, but yeah, when I got back, uh, but I'm delighted to say that my eight year old daughter scarfed down her five guys hamburger and that is kind

of a, that's kind of a victory. There's a lot of like, uh, oh, you're not eating. Okay. Around here, there's a lot of abstention at mealtime, but, uh, she really, she, she dug it. That was huge. She did not, they do this. I also got a hot dog.

Sometimes she likes hot dogs. I was just covering my bets. Maybe it'll be the hamburger lot. So I've got both and, uh, they do the thing with the hot dog where they split, you know? Yeah. Uh, and that she does not recognize as a hot dog. So right.

Oh, interesting. It's just like, no. Yeah. I, that's, that's bad. I love the split hot dog. What do you, what do you think, Mitch? I, I did not like, I would rather have had just a straight up hot dog. Like the, the side, the satisfying snap that I get in like a round hot dog, which

all the slow, I, I like a boiled hot dog. I don't need a snap, but like, I don't know. There was just something that, that it felt more sandwichy to me. I, I didn't, I would rather just have the straight up hot dog. Why? Cause I didn't, I didn't love it. I think they do it for like packaging purposes because it's very flat. Right.

Like it's just a flat or maybe not. I don't know. I feel like they just split down the middle. If it's ease of grilling, I'm not sure what the, what the reason is. I, I don't, when I'm making a hot dog on my own, I don't do that. But when I encounter it, I'm like, Oh, this is a nice change of pace. You know, I, I have, I guess I'm, I'm probably overall neutral on it. So the reason they do it is that it feels to the customer a little more high class.

Yeah, that's a possibility. I agree with that. That it's, this is our way of doing it. This, this, this little special split and two dog, but I don't like it. I like a hot dog. I like a round hot dog. Wags. Wow.

Uh, well, we should get into, uh, our orders for this week. Mitch, you were beginning to, to tell us about yours. Well, do you like a split? I like us, I can like, I can enjoy a split hot dog if it's split down though, but not completely split in two. Yeah. Just a little bit of a, uh, yeah. I don't know, a little bit of a laceration.

Sure. It's like kind of like split opens. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Of course. You'd like a laceration wags.

Um, I got, I got a few things. I tried some stuff that I'd never tried before from five guys, but the menu is pretty small. I mean, it's, it's limited stuff that you can get there. There's not a lot of things you can get. Uh, I got a bacon cheeseburger and I got that with bacon, mayo, ketchup, mustard, onion, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, and I made it a double bacon cheeseburger.

So. Well, and to clarify, to clarify for anyone who is unfamiliar with five guys, um, which is maybe none of our audience, but just, just to cover our bases. Uh, the, their standard burger is two patties. So like, if you get the regular burger, it's two patties. If you want one, a single patty, you get the junior burger. Or they call it the little hamburger, the little one. Yeah.

Oh, okay. So then that means that I got a triple cheeseburger or maybe just got double the bacon on it. Hmm. I added a patty. So there was a chance that that was three. It makes sense to me because I very much was like, this is, uh, I didn't know that wags or I, I did know that and I forgot about it because when I got it,

this thing was like very much like a, uh, uh, like a greasy meatball. It was like a big ball of meat and it was very greasy and the bottom bun just fell apart. It did not. It just fucking dissolved. I think you probably got two double sized patties. If I were to guess what happened there. Okay.

I could, yeah, cause that, that, that, that makes sense. I, I try to go just kind of classic. Like I said, mayo, ketchup, mustard, onion, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, uh, on the burger and I thought it was good. The beef is good. The beef is good at five guys. Yeah. So they, they got, they got good beef.

I was disappointed that the, the, the bottom of the burger fell apart and for how hungry I was, I wasn't like as satisfied with the burgers. I thought I would be, I, I, we go back and forth on five guys all the time, but I do think it is, it's better than a lot of other burgers, right? Like it's, it's, it's a, but I don't know. Is it better than McDonald's? Is it even better than a whopper? Do I want a whopper more than I want five guys?

I don't know. The, the first time we reviewed five guys back with that and, um, I was a little harsh on it and I think I do regret that. That's a thing I regret from this podcast. Cause I think, I think I was trying to be like a little bit of a, I don't know if I was trying to impress Dutton or what, but I was like, I was not, I don't think I really disliked five guys as much as I, as much as I acted like on that show, um, as, as I've had it more and more since then in the

years since then, I've been like, you know what, five guys is great. And have come fully around to like, I really like five guys. This might be a four or five fork restaurant. This experience was, yeah. New rule. Only Ithaca college alums can review five guys. Wow. So stay tuned for the next five guys with David Boreanus.

And then five guys four with CCH Pounder. Oh, CCH Pounder. Can you get Gavin McLeod? I believe he's still alive. Wow. Ricky Lake as well. We'll, we'll, uh, wow. I don't know though, Ricky Lake dropped out.

I'm not sure she qualifies. That's a good point. You got it. We, we, we need to see, we actually need to see the diploma, but Andy knows this. We'll take a break. We'll be back with more dough boys. Welcome back to dough boys. We are here with Andy Daly returning to five guys.

Uh, Andy, what was your order? What did you eat from five guys? Okay. Well, I got myself a hamburger with, uh, mayonnaise, ketchup, and grilled onions. And then my wife got the same, but with, uh, also grilled mushrooms. And then as I say, I got two little hamburgers, one of which was eaten by my eight year old, the other of which was thrown in the garbage, along with the splayed hot dog, uh, and three orders of fries.

Now I'm curious to know about your, your guys's fries experience because for me, I feel like this was not standard operating procedure. It couldn't have been cause I received my fries in, um, just three white paper cups and then they took another, I want to say 50 French fries and just threw them in the bottom of one of the bags. And so this was a, this was a, not a great fry presentation. And they, and I noticed on the, um, order form after I had the meal, that they, one of their promises is that these fries are not going to be fried until you

arrive to pick up your food. Uh, and I wish I'd known that claim before I went to get it because I would have checked on it, but I, I, I'm, I'm skeptical. And I also feel like if they did that, they needn't have bothered because by the time I got them home to eat them, they were just, they were soggy, soggy fries. Same experience with me. And, and that is always how I've gotten five guys.

It's like a little paper cup with a whole bunch of spillover in the bag. How strange. I think that's just what they do. Yeah. Why the plain paper cup? It just, it's, it's, it doesn't say to me, if they're trying to say like, Hey, this is like a, I don't know, rustic casual, we're not, I don't know. It just seemed like you ran out of something.

You ran out of the usual thing that you put fries in. Or just go full bag. Why not go full bag? Just bag them all. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know exactly why they do that. I would guess it's maybe a lot of times that these chains, it's like, this is a

thing we did once and then we kind of became known for it. So we just kept it up for forever. Or it could also be that, that, I think that little container, if we get a small order of fries, that's what it comes in. So maybe they're just using that as a baseline, like here's a small order and then we're going to dump in another, you know, cup's worth on top of it. I don't know. I don't know exactly why they do it.

I don't mind it, but I will say that the fries do not, which are fried in peanut oil, do not travel well at all. Like, like same experience, got them home, super soggy. I got the Cajun fries, which are great because they have a little bit of, you know, I actually like their Cajun fries quite a bit. They're well-seasoned, but they're just, they're just a soggy mess. It's just, they're very, very mushy. But an enormous quantity of them.

A ton of them. Yeah. I made them, I got, I got a large Cajun fry, um, because I was like, oh, maybe like my mom will eat fries and then she didn't want any of the fries. There were, there were, we had too many fries left over, but I didn't, my, my, the fries for me that were soggy were only in the cup. The back fries were not soggy. They were, they were actually still pretty crispy.

Um, and that, that spice, they got that Cajun spice has got, it's got a kick to it. Why? Cause it's a, yeah, I like it a lot. I found my burger, my, I guess it's two patties. They were not holding together as patties very well. That was a, that was a complaint of mine. It was falling apart into chunks. But the, I feel like, isn't there a conundrum?

I'm sure you address this all the time on this show. Are you judging this by the standards of fast food, or are you judging it by the standards of, you know, 21st century Western industrialized food that people can eat? Well, I mean, the whole panoply of things we can eat. Yeah. We, we tell our guests to judge it by fast food standards. And then we probably, we, we, we judge it on, uh, like just all cuisine level, but we have shitty taste.

So we have terrible pellets. So we give it a higher, when it comes to food, but, but I, but I think the way that Nick and I have always talked about this is that it's how good they are doing at what they're trying to do, I guess. Yes. Yeah. It's like you're, if you're reviewing a slasher, it's like, is that this slasher is not going to be, you know, the heights of cinema, but how good of a slasher is it?

You know, and then that's a say, the, how good of it, how good is five guys at being the very simple, simple stripped down, uh, burgers, uh, fries and shakes place it is trying to be. That's, that's at least how I'd evaluate it. But honestly, it's whatever your own criteria is. I think even by that criteria, I, I am going to be fairly harsh on five guys. Oh boy. Yeah.

Because, because I think the idea of five guys is they're, they're trying to be like a cut above your Burger Kings and your, and your McDonald's is, I believe they consider themselves a fast casual restaurant as opposed to a fast food restaurant, meaning I actually looked up the criteria. Have you ever looked up the criteria? I've looked at this before. Yeah. Fast casual.

Let's see. It's, it's, uh, average meal. This was upscale, unique or highly developed decor. No. Hold on a second. There are, there are sometimes our peanut shells on the floor. Aren't there? I did not see that, but I did see a sign at the register that said, uh, we have

peanuts. Go ahead and ask. I was like, why? They did have stacks of potatoes, bags of potatoes stacked up on the floor, but I'll also say when I walked in there, it did, it smelled weird in there. And I kind of thought to myself, you know, if I had, if I had just wandered in off the street and had not already ordered food, I think I would leave. Wow.

On the smell. Interesting. Yes. You know, I don't really, I don't, I've never been, I've never been a fan of like when there were peanuts on the floor, which I think they, they not just do that anymore. Why? Cause there used to be like, I guess it's a quarantine thing.

There used to be peanuts all over the floor. And then there was a big bag of, or a big, uh, you know, container of self-serve peanuts that you could just reach in and scoop in there. And I think they're just like, this is wildly unhygienic. We can't do this anymore. And so that's, that's probably why the peanuts are behind the counter. I don't know. I mean, it's.

I don't think I've ever liked the idea of just like peanut shells being on the floor. You know, I don't love that either. That just, yeah, I know what you're going for. And it's just not for me, but that said, I do like that their fries are in peanut oil, uh, cause I think they taste pretty good when they're hot. And I think, you know, there aren't a lot of places that would, that do that. I think places are usually a little bit more, uh, the conscious of allergens.

Don't get me wrong. If you walked into my, uh, bedroom in my apartment, uh, in Los Angeles, there would be peanut shells all over the floor. But when I go into a restaurant, I don't, I, I, that's why I go to a restaurant. I don't want them all over the floor there. And yeah, same thing with my, with my bedroom. Yes.

There will be sacks of potatoes, uh, laying around, of course there are. Well, when I, when I leave the house to go out to eat these sacks of potatoes and walking over peanut shells, that's reasonable that it is, it is strange to me to have the potatoes. So I think like the idea of that was because like, we got, and, and I do like the fact that they write on the wall, like the potatoes are from this place. They at least did that for a while.

Potatoes came in from this place. So the idea that they're like getting these potatoes from different places and that's how they're making their fries. Like the, but I believe them. You know what I mean? Like I believe that they're making their fries. I don't got to, I don't have to see the actual sacks of potatoes. Maybe it is just a storage situation.

I don't mind the sacks. I don't, I don't have anything against the sacks. I don't mind seeing the big stacks. Okay. Big sacks of stacks, the stacks of sacks. Well, in this case, you know, none of the tables and chairs were out because of COVID times. So that plus the stacks of potatoes, just, it seemed very unintentional.

It seemed like, oh, got it. Yeah. Yeah. But I understand now that is a thing. They're like, check out the bags of potatoes that your fries are made from. I mean, I think, I think they're thinking like everything here is fresh. We don't have any freezers. We're not going to have big bags of frozen, you know, pre-cut potatoes that we got

from a, you know, Cisco or whatever. We've got potatoes, real potatoes in the restaurant. We're showing you where they're sourced from and we're going to cut them. Yeah. Just, just to clear it up for the listeners, you say Cisco, you mean the singer rapper Cisco? Yeah. Of the thong song fame.

Yeah. Okay. He's, he's in potatoes now. That's who they buy their potatoes from? Oh, wow. Yeah. Real, real career shift, but a great second act. Um, I should get into my food.

So the, so here, here was the challenge of eating at five guys, uh, as a vegetarian as I'm, I'm not eating meat this year or fish. Um, they don't have any sort of veggie patty. They don't have a beyond patty. They don't have an impossible patty. What they have for a vegetarian beyond fries and shakes, which I did get, they have what they call the veggie sandwich and the veggie sandwich, which I got with cheese is as follows, grilled onions, mushrooms, green peppers with melted

American style cheese, served on a toasted golden bun with lettuce and tomatoes, plus any of your favorite 16 toppings. So it really is just, you know, the stuff that you get on a burger that's not a burger, I guess with mushrooms kind of being the substitute for the patty. Um, and, uh, on a burger bun, I added to that extra cheese, mayo, mustard, pickles, and jalapenos and hot sauce. Cause I'm something of a heat seeker. Uh, I was skeptical about this.

Is it, but I'll tell you right now, sounds terrible. It sounded bad and I was skeptical about it, but I was like, you know what? They, they do a grilled cheese at in and out. That's a similar concept. That's great. That I think is actually really, really, uh, really, really good. So I went on with an open mind. I looked at it as like, this kind of looks kind of good.

And I bit into it. It was pretty tasty. I mean, you have to like mushrooms. If you like mushrooms, this is kind of like a big mushroom burger. And, uh, and, and I, I do like mushrooms and I thought the, uh, the extra cheese worked well. I, it's, I was expecting it to be like two, like goopy or something, but it was actually pretty good.

Now, would I go here? Given my restriction, would I ever be like, I'm going to five guys on my own to get this sandwich? The answer is no, it's not, it's not to that level, but if I was with a work order and, and, or I was with like a, you know, a group and we're like, Hey, we're all going to five guys for lunch. I'd be like, okay, there's something from five guys I can eat. So I, it's, it's that level of satisfactory.

It was, it was not bad. Uh, Cajun fries I talked about were, were mushy, but well seasoned. And I got myself a shake and this, I really did some damage to my, uh, to my body with this, but it was fucking great. I got the double stuff, Oreo milkshake, which is Oreo cream and Oreo cookie. It's, it's, it's Oreo cream ice cream with Oreo cookie chunks. It was fucking delightful. Wags, I also got a milkshake and I too got the double stuff, Oreo cream and

Oreo cookie. Wow. Regular size with, and I got whipped cream on top as well. And I also very much enjoyed it. I thought it was, I thought it was good. I thought it was really good. Why did I get it down on the drive home? No, I had it myself.

I didn't get a shake. They do have good shakes. They got some good shakes. I think they do well. Um, maybe, maybe, maybe there was a sack of potato hiding it on the menu. You couldn't see the shake. No, you know what happened? You know, when I ordered on DoorDash, they did say only bottled beverages.

I can't be delivered and then I didn't recalibrate my thinking when it, when I was going to pick it up. So yeah, that's why that's what happened. I, I got it and I was like, oh, this looks melted. I thought it was melted, but it wasn't. It was just, you know, it kind of had a melted look to it because it was so, uh, so whipped up and the texture of it was great. I drank, I sipped almost the whole thing on, on the ride home on an empty stomach,

which was very, very bad. Um, it was, it was fucking great. I can't call it the bite of the, the knife, but the, the sip of my trip was probably a sip of my trip for sure. Oh, wow. I, I felt whichever of the five guys is in charge of shakes is knocking it out of the park really. He really is good for him.

There's an, uh, there's an episode of a, like I started watching this, the series alone, I was talking with, uh, with Andy and Emma early on, we were waiting before the show, before we were waiting for Mitch and the water heater issue, the water heater is truly is still flooded. I don't know what has happened. Uh, but the show alone is the survivalist show and these people are out in, you know, the season I'm watching, they're in the Arctic by themselves. They're shooting themselves and they're trying to survive off of the land.

And so they're shooting themselves. Oh, they're filming themselves, they're filming themselves trying to survive off of the land. Uh, and, uh, there's a, there's a moment where a guy gets a fish out, like he gets a fish out, he catches a fish and he's like, Oh, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a female and she has eggs and he squeezes the eggs out of the fish and then eats them raw and he gets so sick immediately. Yeah.

He gets like, it just cannot, like it just did his body completely rebels against that's basically I watching that and watching what that guy went for. That's how I felt after the double stuff milkshake. I was like, I'm in this much intestinal distress. So I came into the story and so the guy squeezes the fish eggs out and that's when Natalie caught you jacking off while you were watching it. All right. Now I don't know why he got sick now.

Normally if you get, if you're having row or whatever, that's not cooked. It's right. Is it? I think what it, I think it's, it's maybe that the, the stream is polluted. I think it's possible that the fish had some sort of parasite and there's all sorts of reasons or it could just be that his body was, yeah. There's multiple levels here of why, why is this guy doing this? And then also why are you watching it?

Why it's a great, you would love this. And then especially why were you jacking off? I mean, that was a whole other thing. That is the biggest, what, it's a good, you think this is a good show? A man is watching this show. Okay. Everyone's telling me about the show. I was like, all right, I'll give the show a, I'll give the show a chance.

I don't, I'm not tempted to watch it, even though now this is like the fourth person who's told me I must somehow it's not breaking through for me. He ate the fish eggs and then immediately threw up. He got sick so quickly. And that's the Weiger stamp of approvals to watch the show. All right, I might check it out. Yeah. I think you'd love it.

Um, but it's, I keep, I kept hearing it from everyone. I was like, all right, final, give it a chance to watch it. And then we were just instantly absorbed. Watched like four episodes in two days. It's a, it could be a autobiography about myself as well, the show. Well, we should get to our final thoughts. Wait, I didn't say my food. I didn't figure it, finish my food.

Oh, sorry. Finish your food. I got a hot dog with ketchup, relish, mustard and onion. And like Andy was saying, I mean, I just didn't, why split the dog? It just felt like less of a dog to me. And like the, in, in this way, the condom, like the, the, the, the condiments really stood out. Like, like I was like, this dog, like I'm tasting less dog and more

like, uh, ketchup and mustard soup thing that's going on with, with all the, with all the condiments on the split dog. And for the first time ever wise, I got a grilled cheese sandwich. From a five guys. And I got another veggie option. They have, yeah. I got tomato and I added bacon because on with a grilled cheese, I liked tomato and bacon on, on the, on the grilled cheese.

Oh, you can get a BLT there too, right? That's on the menu. Yeah, you can. Yeah. Um, I thought it was like, okay, the, the, the tomato was, there was a couple pieces of tomato. So it was like on too thick and it was just kind of cold. Like, like, uh, it just kind of stood out as kind of like cold in the

center of the, of the grilled cheese. If that was, if the tomato was like cooked more or was worse, hotter or something, I feel like it would have, it would have been a little bit better. Also, their bacon is very like, you can't, you can barely pick up the bacon. I feel like in, in some of this stuff, like even on the burger, the bacon cheeseburger, I don't know if they don't add a lot or the, the, of the five guy who's the fifth, one of the five guys is in charge of the bacon. It's not a, it's not a good bacon.

I don't, I don't know what the deal is. I, or like, maybe you have to get extra bacon, but, but, but, but bacon isn't their strong point. I, I, I've never had good luck with their bacon. Like Donald's bacon, it's just like it's, it's never, it just, it's, some places do a good bacon. This place does not. And then I, I got a large Coke and I got a, uh, this, this milk shake.

As I said in, like I said, the bacon cheeseburger, I'm, I'm, I'm with, I've gone back and forth on it. I thought we were too mean to five guys, but then I'm also like Andy today where I'm like, I, I don't know. I, is this even, is it good? I, it's, it's, it's, it's a baffling spot for me. I don't know. I, I, I truly don't know.

It's a baffling spot, but we're going to try to sort it out. So Andy, here's what we'll do. We'll get to our final thoughts. We'll each give a closing argument, if you will, on this chain and then end it by giving a score from zero to five forks. We will begin with you. Okay. So I think like, uh, this place started being franchised in the 2000s.

When we already had McDonald's and Wendy's Burger King, but there were plenty of places to go and I feel like they wanted to distinguish themselves by having fresher ingredients and being a cut above and a slightly thicker hamburger and just kind of make you feel like, oh, all right, I'm not going to go to McDonald's. That's garbage. This place is good. But, uh, I, if that's their goal, I feel like it is not attained. I feel like soggy french fries and a patty that doesn't hold together.

Uh, none of it felt healthy. You can tell me the ingredients are fresh, but that's not my experience of the ingredients and, uh, and I put it, I sort of was comparing it mostly to In-N-Out, which I also was disappointed by the first time I went to In-N-Out. Of course, you hear all this stuff about In-N-Out. And I was like, what, it's just, it's, what's the big deal? But, uh, I prefer In-N-Out to five guys. Wow.

So I got to give, uh, I'm, maybe I'll give it one fork. Wow. One fork. Is that really good? All of our jars dropped. I love it. It's very funny. I, uh, I mean, well, I guess if I'm comparing it on a scale of fast food,

maybe it's better than that, but I don't eat a lot of fast food guys. So stick with your one fork. All right. One fork. Yeah. There you go. Which is not to say I would do their commercials, by the way, I just want to put that out there.

I'd be more than happy to be the national spokesman for five guys. I would love a, a, a multiplicity type commercial with five of you, uh, five Andy Daley's, the great would that be a great idea already. You get that there's a brand there already. They, they, they, they feel very brandless to me, which is another issue. Oh, it's just that the peanuts and the, uh, and the potatoes, like we talked about the sacks and, and what, what, what there's, it is like, like you were saying, Andy, it is kind of this place where I'm like, what is the identity

of this place? Is it supposed to be, uh, kind of like a step above those places? And then when I was eating it, I was like, I wish I just had Wendy's. You know, like I did kind of just wish. I had Wendy's, but look, Nick, five guys, isn't going to be five forks. It's not going to make it into the five four club. I don't think, I mean, it already isn't going to make it into the golden plate club, um, which we thought maybe on a revisit it would, but not only is

because of Andy, but also because of me. I, I, this, this trip around, I'm still not sold on it. It was that beat like that, that burger that was kind of like a beef, a big grease beef ball that in the bottom bun was falling apart. The shake was fantastic. I really enjoyed the shake and, and the fries that I had that were good, that were crispy on the, that were just in the bag. Those were good too.

I, I, I enjoyed them, but the dog, I was disappointed by the dog. The grilled cheese sandwich is good, but like, I'm never going to get that grilled cheese sandwich. There's no point in me getting it ever. And then the burger was just, was just okay. And on top of that, here's the other thing is like Andy said, if this is supposed to be like a step above the, it's not worth it for the price point. It was like 50, what I got was like $52 or something and it was like three

sandwiches and a shake and a drink and 50, that's just out of control for, for the, the amount of food that was there. And I know that it's the sort of thing of like, you're eating fast food, the cow is going to be bad, but just a burger alone was like 1,200 calories or something, which is maybe my fault because I think I got a three patty burger. But the, the calories, the calorie count was, was, was way, way up there. And it's even that thing of like, Hey, a big Mac is 600 calories. And I'd prefer a big Mac than to, to, to the burger I got.

That being said, it's not the worst. It just is, it is now to me is kind of like, I think I'm going to go with like a C, it gets a 3, 3.5 forks out of five. It gets a C. Wow. Um, that's it. That was in, in, in, you know, I would rather eat at some sort of gas station stop in Ithaca, some sandwich there, some burger there.

They, it just, it's not a complaint. I couldn't fill up my tank anywhere when I went to five guys. I was like, how am I supposed to get home? Uh, it just, just, it was, I was disappointed. Wags and this big storm coming. I was excited to eat the sandwich while the big storms coming. But like the storm, it was a fucking let down. Both of them.

Boy, three is, you're disappointed, but still three and a half forks. You still have some fans. Cause I mean, like, it's not terrible. It's not like, uh, in, in like that shake was great. And the burger, if it was like, I could see the burger being good on a different day too, like that was a part of it. And some of the fries, and some of the fries were good, but not, not the outing I wanted from it.

Uh, I think you both make good points. And I think that a big part of what's going on with five guys, and I'm basing this in part on my experience getting it, you know, when I was, when I was like, okay, I'm not going to need to meet for 2021. What would I like to have? I, you know what, I would like to have a five guys cheeseburger. I went and got a five guys cheeseburger in December and it was very good. Uh, but similarly the, you know, the fries didn't travel well, obviously.

I mean, I feel like fries almost never travel well. Um, but also, can you tell us anything else you did in the month of December? I like the fact that you remember, you went and got this five guys hamburger and December and then anything else. Celebrated the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ. Um, uh, I helped, uh, I helped you load up your sleigh. I think, no, I, like, I, I went there. I went to In-N-Out Burger.

I went to, uh, you know, uh, I went to this, this, uh, the, the place that invented the taquito, um, in, uh, in, in, uh, downtown LA, um, in Alvera street. Uh, you know, I went to a bunch of different places. Was there a thought in your head, like, this may be the last time I eat these if I just stay vegetarian? Yeah. I think there was definitely, that was part of it. It was just like, I might, I might not have this again.

And, you know, so, uh, but, but that TBD on that. Uh, but I will say that, that the reason I bring that up is. Similar to this experience. I don't think they have figured things out during quarantine. I feel like this is one of those chains like Wingstop is the other one that just has not made any sort of effort at the corporate level at the national level to be like, Hey, this is how we handle our quarantine, uh, our food prep, uh, our pickup, cause it just seemed chaotic in there.

And I went to two separate locations for these two different visits and the same sort of thing. People just kind of milling about, there's no clear, like, here's where you pick up, here's where you order. And contrasting that with Panda Express, which we went to last week, which had a fantastic, uh, pickup system, uh, for, for, you know, keeping everything distanced, Nick, Nick and I actually got vaccinated when we went to Panda Express. By a technician in a panda costume.

It's, I think that, that all that, I think the quality suffers in part because of that because, in part because they just like the, they just don't have their act together, uh, given these extraordinary circumstances. And, and so I'm, I'm going to be in the hand holding club with you, Mitchell. I'm going to say this is three and a half forks. Wow. I think that's where, that's where this belongs. You know, I, even if I had had meat, I probably would have had a similar

evaluation to this place. Um, cause yeah, I think they've, they've just, things have dipped a little bit due to our, due to our, our new reality. But hey, that was our view of five guys. I don't think we were too harsh on it this time, Mitch. I think we were appropriate. Yeah. I think we were, we were honest.

Yeah. Yeah. I, they get to figure out their quarantine situation. You're right. Yeah. Maybe, maybe Dr. Fauci should be one of the, uh, five guys that would be helpful. They could get him.

Yeah. It's only three and a half of the guys are showing up in your opinion. Yeah. Yeah. Three full guys in one torso. Jesus. Hey, that was our view of five guys. It's time for a segment.

We got a segment pitched by our own associate producer, Robert Persinger, the drop king. This is in honor of our guest, bananas for bananas. Oh, Jesus. I will name something. You tell me if it's a banana varietal, if it's a type of banana, or if it is a city in Nevada where the show, Bonanza is set. So you have, you can say banana or Nevada.

Okay. Those are your options. Banana or Nevada? Nevada or Nevada. Yeah. You know, you could also say bonanza, I guess, if you want to do. You can say banana or bonanza. Well, that seems to make more sense.

Okay. Banana or bonanza. Now, so I got a question for. Yes. Our producer, the drop king. Um, associate producer, associate producer. Um, was, was your plan to just embarrass us in front of it? Between this and the drop, we're just trying to embarrass us in front of Andy

daily. Distinguished alumnus of ethical gas station and college. I think this is fun. I think this is good, clean fun. Yeah. I just, let's, let's get it over with. It also sounds really easy. All right.

Banana or bonanza. I'm just, I'm just finding out Nevada is a state actually for. All right. Here we go. Buzz in with your name and tell us your, uh, tell us your answer. First up, Cavendish. Andy. Yes.

Uh, that's gotta be a banana. Andy, you are correct. Yeah. Next up. Laughlin, Mitch. I know that's in Nevada. There was a show called Laughlin, Nevada. That's right.

There was Feeva Laughlin. All right. Paradise. Andy. Yes. I don't know, but I'm saying Nevada. It is a city in Nevada. Wow.

Left to Mitch has one. All right. Number four, praying hands. Mitch. Bananas. You are correct. This is a banana. You guys are, you guys are four for four so far.

Andy's prediction of this being easy was correct. Let's see if we can stump you with these. Panaca. Andy. Nevada. That is a city in Nevada. Wow. Next up, Manzano.

Mitch. Banana. You're right. We've yet to stump you with these. Let's get to the home stretch. Caliente. Andy. Banana.

Caliente is a city in Nevada. I'm sorry. Oh, I've been stumped. Okay. Number eight, lady finger. Mitch. Banana. Lady finger is a banana.

I mean, is that a stump one? Next up, gold finger. Mitch. Austin Powers. It's not Austin Powers. I mean, it is Austin Powers. I get, do we, do you get that one? It is Austin Powers, but that's not an option.

I think I should get a point of some sort. Yeah, clearly. I'll give you a half point. Gold finger, banana. Of course, banana. Gotta be a banana. Gold finger, also a banana. I'm going to retract your half point.

Just give you the full point. Okay. Okay. Number 10, Golden Valley. Andy. Nevada. You are right. Wow.

Thank God. All right. Two left. Oh man. I can't believe there's only two left. I wish there was a hundred more. Blugo. Blugo?

Blugo. Blugo. Andy. Banana. You were right. It's not it up. You each have five a piece. Whoever gets this one, I'm going to say this will be the tie breaker.

This will decide who, if you get it, if you buzz in and you're wrong, then you lose. If you buzz in and you're right, you win. All right. I've settled on my strategy. Wow. The final clue, Boulder City. A Mitch. It's a, it's, oh, I almost said banana.

It's a, it's a banana. It's Nevada. Mitch, you are correct. You have won bananas for bananas. My strategy was to let Mitch go and then he was going to get it wrong and I was going to get it right and I thought that would be a dramatic end. But could you ever have thought that the last one would be Boulder City? No, that's what stumped me.

A little bit of a swerve. Yeah. But I don't know about that because I knew a guy that grew up in Ladyfinger, Nevada. So I'm not sure all of these are real. Just like a restaurant, we have all your feedback. Let's open up the feedback. Why? Yeah.

I have a banana right by my side. Wow. And guess what? My friends is the prestige. I got to give it the, the, I got to give, uh, I got to come clean and give it to Andy because the answers were written on this banana. Oh boy. Okay.

Well, at least you're honest about it. Mitch, how was that tuna sandwich? Did you eat it? I took a bite of it. Um, it was, uh, and, uh, if you'd noticed during this, when I, I took out my video and then I also muted myself. It's when I took a bite of the sandwich. Um, so it was very, very good.

It was very nice of my mom, but she will get yelled at later for interrupting, uh, the show with a sandwich. That's fair. Today we have an email from Ali Borosek. Ali writes, now that the orange buffoon is out of the office and president Biden has removed his diet coke button from the oval office. Huge mistake. I have a question.

One of the best things, the, one of the only good things Trump ever did is install this diet coke button. Yeah. Why the hell not? I, I mean, I like the idea. I like the idea of a button that summons a food stuff. And that brings us to the question. If there was a button on your remote that you can press that brings one

food or drink item to you automatically for the rest of your life, what would it be? Thank you. And go team green tea ice cream with you song green tea mochi is the best. So you have a button that can bring you any sort of food stuff. That's what he wanted to shout out to me about green tea ice cream. You could have said anything you wanted to. People like, uh, some people like the green tea ice cream. All right.

It's an unnecessary ice cream flavor. I thank you, Andy. Uh, that's a great, it's, it's, it's a great, it's a great question. It doesn't get, it's a good question. Um, I, you know, I was thinking about this, uh, and I kind of want to go back to what Andy was, uh, noshing on before we began an apple. Like I just kind of think an apple button would be it's healthy. And there's never a time when I'm not like, uh, where I'm like, I don't want an apple.

Like I like apples. And you could do anything in the, you could have a steak dinner. You can do anything in your, how often am I going to summon a steak dinner? How often am I going to be sitting on my couch, uh, watching a basketball game and be like, I just want a steak dinner right now, but an apple, I could have any time. Yeah. I think the point of the button is that it's something that, that you're going to want with such frequency.

Yeah. Okay. You know, that's fair. Yeah. So for me, steak dinner, you know, I have been thinking of like, Oh, what if, what if Wally and Irma, my cats, uh, and if, if they, uh, if they walked on the, the remote and they hit the button a bunch and then I got a bunch of, uh, steak dinners that could, you know, the, and that, that, that's an issue I've thought of now.

You have a remote control situation dinners. Oh, you're talking about in this scenario with the buttons. In this scenario, um, I think that I would do, because I'm in LA walks, if I got to get a hot, fresh, uh, pizzeria Regina from the North end pizza. Oh, then I, then I would, I would want that button and I would use it maybe once a week. It would be bad, but I would, I think. Sure.

Yeah. Why not? Why not? I mean, like an apple, I guess you're right. That's some sort of thing of like, uh, like that you could eat all the time. That's a snack is good too. What if it just summoned a piece of pizza, like one slice of pizza? That's a great call.

Then to guess what, that button's getting worn out. I think that's appropriate. Given your nickname, Mr. Slice. That's right. A slice button for Mr. Slice. There you go.

Uh, Andy, anything that come to mind? I think Apple is a good call, but at my first, before you said Apple, my first thought was a small quantity of chocolate, something along the lines of that's fun, a handful of, uh, of semi-sweet chocolate chips, or perhaps some, uh, chocolate covered almonds. Bring me, bring me four chocolate covered almonds. And then if that's not enough, I just press that button again. Yeah.

That's good. Yeah. And you know what, I, I, I like the idea of it magically appearing or like, you know, like I'm thinking of it as more of a bond thing. The, the, the Trump button is, is sad in the way, Nick, when you, when you broke it down, that it's just a buzzer where a man or, you know, or some, some serving person has to bring Trump a Diet Coke. That's a, that's a bummer.

Yes. But if it is just, if it is magical, then it's just like I'm not inconveniencing anybody. I thought that the button was kind of magical in some sort of way, which I should have thought about for just a second. I also thought it was rigged into the desk in a more interesting way. I, I, do have you seen a photo of it? No, it's just a little box next to the phone with a wire running down.

It's like, it's a bummer of a buzzer. Oh man, that's ugly. Yeah. It looks like a little like a, like an old style game show button. It's, it's not cool. Yeah. It's, it's got to be under the desk with a hidden wire, like Mr. Byrne style.

It's got to be, it's got to be a better presentation. Biden got rid of the button. He could have just changed it to something that he would like instead. I feel like, right? And like a glass of buttermilk, what does Biden drink? Well, there has to have been a preexisting way of ordering something in the, in the Oval Office. Like it has to be a way of saying, could someone get me a diet coke?

Like maybe even a polite way, like maybe even a way to say, to say please. Instead of the, what I assume in the kitchen is like a, like when the, whenever he pushes the button, just a giant fucking. Yeah. I'm guessing it's a shock collar. There's a guy down there. It just gets a terrible buzz. It's Eric.

If you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you can email us at doughboyspodcast.com or leave us a voicemail at 830 Godot. That's 830-463-6844. And to get the Doughboys double our weekly bonus episode, you can join the golden or platinum plate club at patreon.com slash Doughboys. Andy Daly, I'd treat to finally have you on the show. Thank you so much for making time for us. Thank you.

I really enjoyed it. Thank you. One of the funniest, one of the funniest people on earth. One of the funniest human beings on earth. Andy, anything you would like to plug it this time? I can't think of anything to plug. Yep. A bananas for bonanza at the podcast is, uh, you know, you'll find it on Ear Wolf

where we're waiting to find out if we're going to make more. So write a letter to Ear Wolf, write a letter to Scott Hawkeman. Write a petition, the office ladies. There you go. Yes. Petition. Yeah. Which company now owns Ear Wolf?

Is it a... It was, so Stitcher and Ear Wolf were kind of the same entity and they were bought by SiriusXM. Oh, Sirius. Yeah. Yeah. So Stern, send it to Stern and company it. Send it to Stern.

There you go. There you go. Um, and hey, that'll do it for this episode of Doughboys. Until next time for the Spoon Man, aka Mr. Slice Mike Mitchell. I'm Nick Weigher. Happy eating. See ya.

Want more Doughboys? Check out the DoughScored, our Discord server. You get DoughScored access plus the Doughboys double when you join the Platinum Play Club at patreon.com slash Doughboys. That's patreon.com slash Doughboys. Sources for this week's intro are in the episode description. That was a hate gun podcast.