Doughboys - Grocery Store Month: Albertson's with Raj Desai

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

Writer and Comedian Raj Desai (The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Triumph's Election Special) returns to talk about weddings, vegetarian eats, and review grocery titan Albertsons. Plus, Mitch decides our guest's fate in another edition of Last Meal.Sources for this week's intro:https://genius.com/Red-hot-chili-peppers-californication-lyricshttps://www.curbed.com/2019/1/22/18193112/boise-real-estate-housing-downtownhttps://www.businessinsider.com/boise-idaho-fastest-growing-city-in-us-photos-growth-cost-2019-12https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/growing-idaho/downtown-boise-is-boomin-how-downtown-boise-is-handling-years-of-uninterrupted-growth/277-173e9c9c-9df3-46f2-8839-3c173a1fc496https://www.thebalancesmb.com/largest-us-based-grocery-chains-3862932https://www.albertsons.com/about-us.htmlAdvertise on Doughboys via Gumball.fm.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a headgum podcast. Dream of Californication So seeing shirtless frontman Anthony Ketus on the title track from the 2000 Red Hot Chili Peppers album, Californication. Like Randy Newman's I Love L.A., the song's actual lyrics are a blistering attack on the Golden State's vacuous celebrity culture that have been ignored by locals in favor of its celebratory chorus, making it something of an adopted state anthem. And as soaring housing prices have become unaffordable for many Californians, neighboring

western states have fallen prey to the syllabically-adjacent California Cation. Ex-pats fleeing to settle down in cities like Portland, Austin, and Las Vegas. And now this mass migration from L.A. County and the Bay Area has centered on a new destination, the state capital of America's potato capital, Boise, Idaho. Largely due to young Californians sweeping up the available housing stock, Boise has become the fastest-growing city in the nation by some metrics, as its once-rural character has evolved to include millennial urban night demands like craft breweries and yoga studios. It's a very different Boise than existed back in 1939, when a Safeway manager named

Joe lent his surname to a grocery store he founded on the corner of 16th and State Street. By the time the U.S. entered World War II, Joe owned three stores, and today, over 80 years later, the grocer he founded has 20 wholly-owned regional-specific subsidiaries across 35 states, some of which quote-unquote compete in the same markets. And so the Boise Grocer is blanket of the country and its largest state, California, with its assorted brands, just like expat Californians have engaged in California-cation with Boise, Idaho. This week on Doughboys, our month-long review of supermarket eats, friendly greengrocer

Mitch's grocery store month continues with Albertsons. Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I'm Nick Weigar, along with my co-host, Chu England quarter snack, Ham Newton, the Spoonman Mike Mitchell. Now it's just like, it's just like so, it's so jumbled, everything. It's like Fatty McFat from Fat Street, it doesn't even, I don't even know what it's parodying. I don't think there was anything that was overtly fat shaming there, it's just sort of all food

related. Ham Newton isn't fucking fat shaming. It's not, I mean, you know, it's just saying you like to eat. Chu England, quarter snack, Ham Newton, these are all just kind of in the food realm. That was courtesy of Luke from Australia, roastspoonman at gmail.com, if you have an insult you like me use the image at the top of the show. I got news for you, you heavy bitch. Are you talking to me?

Yeah, if you're roasting me, you're roasting yourself. Why is this happening? We have Luke from Australia, we have some Australian listeners, hello down under, as we like to say, but they're handling it so much better. Hold on a second, yeah, hold on a second. Is hello down under, that's a joke? Yeah, that's from both of us, hello down under. They are handling it better.

It's just like, you know, we obviously, the plague is the forefront of everyone's minds, but it's just like there's, things are, not that Australia even has like a good government. It's kind of like just like, it's similarly kind of, you know, conservative like the US, but it still has just been a better managed crisis and obviously New Zealand, it's much better, which we talked about in a previous episode. It's just fucking, it's fucking rough here, it just sucks, it's just awful and it keeps getting worse. All of Hobbiton is safe right now.

The shire has not been scoured. Why is that, yeah, it feels like maybe we're just going to be like a snow globe of, the United States is just going to be a snow globe of the virus and no one's going to visit it and we're just going to spread it until every American is gone possibly. It'll just settle down, it'll settle down for a fortnight when everything locks down and then they'll open it back up and it'll be like someone grabbing it and just shaking the shit out of it and all those virus, viral particles that go everywhere. Were you a big snow globe shaker when you were younger, Wags?

Was I a big snow globe shaker? Wow, what a question, Mitch. Um, yeah, I had fancy shaking a snow globe back in the day. Oh, I'm sorry. So much worse than hey, good day down under, mates, like you did. It was hello down under, Mitch. Look, we're both bad at our jobs. Snow globes are fun to shake and you know what, we had one that had glitter in it and

that was a real, that was a real hoot too. Alright, so it turns out you did like all this dumb shit. Yeah, I did like it. What about you? Are you a big snow globe shaker? Yeah, I'd sometimes shake too much and my mom would come in and have to settle me down. You're hurting it. I read that the, you know, the magic eight ball, which people shake, you're not supposed

to shake because it gets bubbles in it, you're supposed to like roll it. You're supposed to like spin it in your hands, which I was interested in. I don't know if it's the same principle for snow globes or not. I think snow globes are safe to shake. I would always like, I would use that and be like, will I kiss a girl or something? And I would like always have like the bad answer, like inconclusive or whatever. Signs point to no. I hate the fucking eight ball.

It's great when Bart smashes it against Milhouse's head. It's brutal. Well, I'd say anyhow to Spoon Nation. Embarrassing. It's embarrassing to do that more on when we're, when we're zooming. Right. Just because you, you know, you're just, it's just your big, your face saying it. People are just like.

You elect to do it. Yeah. Like you could not do it. You think I should just stop doing it altogether? I think people will be upset. That's the trap we've set for ourselves. That if we're not doing the things that people expect to hear on the podcast, then they get disappointed and they complain and sometimes stop listening.

Well, I just do a new thing. Sure. Do a new thing. Why not? Welcome to No Boys, baby. It's like the big bopper. So, shifting from Mr. Hankey, the South Park reference to the big bopper who died in a plane crash in the 1950s.

I just, I'm trying to switch it up, Weiger. No, I got you. Here's a little drop. You know, whatever, I'm just going to play it. I did kiss both my parents on the lips when I was little and it was like usually to say good night. Do you? We go full Brady in my house.

You're kissing your dad or you were? Well, excuse me. Okay. I'm sorry. Fran, I don't kiss his corpse if that's what you'd like to know. I'm not digging up his corpse and kissing his corpse. Boy, you had to play that card, Mitch. You knew she didn't mean that.

Oh, yeah. I'm the bad guy, Nick. Well, I'm not the bad guy. I'm the bad guy. I didn't do it. I'm a nice man. I'm the bad guy. Well, Billy Eilish, that was well done.

I mean, like today I just did pick this. I wouldn't have played this one, but I just, I picked it right before we started and I'm just like, honestly, you know, listen to what I'm just hearing myself say these things. It's just awful. I just feel awful. I just feel bad. How do you think the listeners feel? Hey, Mitch, first time dropper, medium-time listener.

Please bring Fran Gillespie back soon. She's a delightful guest from Clyde Surveillon at VDara Death Ray on Instagram. V-D-A-R-A Death Ray on Instagram. Spoonman drops at gmail.com if you want to send one in. Don't promote it. Mitch, you know, speaking of delightful guests, returning to the show. Yes. We have one today.

A writer and comedian whose credits include the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Triumph's election special, Raj Desai is back. Hi, Raj. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming back. Raj. How are you doing here?

We were talking at the top of the show about the health scape we currently inhabit, and you and I were talking before we started because you had a wedding basically scheduled for the same weekend when everything locked down in March. Yeah. It's definitely an interesting story, I would say. We got married on March 14. We had like a venue in downtown L.A., maybe about 160 people invited to 200, something like that, and we ended up canceling that and having a very small one at a small Hindu

temple instead that had about maybe 20 people there. Wow. And luckily the caterer was nice enough to let us have like a little mini reception at their restaurant. It's a lost-paired cafe. I'm going to shout out there now to change their capacity. Hey, there you go. Pretty good for the rules.

Yeah. So it's pretty crazy because like it had been the week before, there were no real talk of canceling group gatherings, you know? And it had been the week later, it would have been against the law to have that thing. Right. So it was really kind of on us to cancel it. And, you know, we just started getting like cancellations for people. I mean, Nick was scheduled, he was canceled because he got an A-Dobois engagement, actually.

But people were starting to kind of be like, hey, I don't know if I want to fly, you know? Right, right. Okay, I think we got to like just call it either responsible. Which, and my concern at the time, and maybe you guys have this with you, I was like, you guys remember Bird Flu Room? You know, it was just like, I kind of like, was this going to be like two weeks after this, why did we cancel this thing? Yes.

And, you know, it caused all these problems for us and our guests. And at least you can look back and say you definitely made the right call, right? Right, yeah. For sure. The gravity of this plague is, I mean, I will say that, so that was the same weekend. The reason it's in my mind is because that was the same weekend that Mitch, you and I were going to do a show in Arizona. Yeah.

Which we've, which we've now canceled, I think twice because of various, first it was a scheduling concern, and then it was a, then it was the fucking plague. But we had like the timing wise, and we talked about this on the show before, and you can hear it on the episode, but our, we did a live show in Salt Lake City, then a live show in Denver, and the night of our live show in Denver, which was the night or two nights before, when our scheduled live show in, I think Phoenix, which we had to cancel, was when all the shit came down, and it was like, you know, like literally before we walked on stage, Tom Hanks has COVID, then just called Coronavirus, and then, and then the NBA suspended

its season. It's just like. I heard that news on stage. You broke that to me on stage. Very strange. Just strange times, but just like, but like that's, canceling a show is one thing, but you're wedding just like, that's like, man, the really like the, and I'm not trying to make you feel worse about it, but like the worst possible weekend, it could have happened.

It's a real bummer. I think you could look at it like, at least we got it in under the wire. You know what I mean? Oh, that makes sense. Like, unfortunately, I mean, the other bad part is my parents weren't there and my friends there. They, they didn't make the trip, but my wife's parents were already here in LA, so they were there.

Hey, there you go. So, you know, bummer and a, you know, major life event filled with a lot of great aspects to it too, you know, try to try to view it that way, but you can kind of feel a little bit like, and then a lot of people had, you know, I know people that some of the family friends who had a wedding for Cancun or something like the weekend later and, you know, people had international travel. Wow. And they had to cancel that.

And so people had it worse, I guess. Right. Weigar, you, you chose to kind of have your own corona escalate wedding a few years back, right? We did. Yeah. We did what, what you, what someone might do in these current circumstances. We eloped.

Okay. We just went, it was just me and Natalie. We just, the two of us and we just went to Vegas. Now you wouldn't make the trip to Vegas now. You might just go to the courthouse. Or you might. Or you might. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, but, uh, yeah, we did, we, we had no guess. Yeah. I mean, I didn't tell anyone. That's that. I mean, there is some, I can tell you, it's one of the other things about it that was a little bit of a pain in the ass is like, I was in New York, she was in LA and we're planning it.

It's, it's a lot of stress. Yes. You missed out on, unless the Denny's to go, uh, wedding chapel is stressful. Um, but, uh, it was a lot of stress and then you almost feel like, oh, that's stress for no reason. Right. And then there's a whole another stress of like, okay, now we got to cancel it, you know, three days before it's going to happen and we got to plan a new thing.

I mean, it was small, but you saw the plan stuff and like coordinate. So it was kind of like, uh, you know, you know what the, the, the, the silver lining was that you saw what each other were like in a crisis and it was a positive experience, you know, and her and I and her parents all came together, her sister kind of got, got in the same. That's great. And my aunt and uncle who were younger than my parents came and sort of played the role of my parents.

And we all put something together. So there's, there's a silver lining, you know, right. Now Wiger, yes, if we didn't have the Doughboy's tour, would you have found another excuse to go to Roger's wedding? I would have been there. No, I would, I would, I was, I was upset that I couldn't go. I actually, I'm, I'm not a very social man. No.

Nick. It's Mitch. Don't say this. No, Nick. It's true. I'm not a very social man, but I do, I actually will go, I like, I like going to weddings. I think weddings are fun and interesting and like they're, it's just like a, I feel like it's such a, you're not a social man, but you like the look.

Weddings are not, I mean, weddings for the person getting married is great. Yes. And it can be a very beautiful thing, but do you, do you like weddings? I like the ceremony of it. I like that there's like, I like that, you know, and I'd have been to some weddings that didn't ultimately work out, but, but in general, it's just like, oh, this is like, are you, are you talking about your own? Of course.

Yeah. Way to make an announcement. Yeah. Breaking chews. There's a, no, but like, I don't know, I like, like, oh, these people like each other and this is their, this big thing's happening and that we're hearing how they much they like each other, which even if you know someone is a couple, a lot of times you don't get to experience those, like what those emotions are, you know, you just sort of like, oh,

they're together. And then you're like, oh, I see what this is all about. It's fun to see like some like weirdo, emotionless comedy people like be like, oh, they have like feelings. Like when they're, when they're giving their vows or whatever, I feel like I've seen that quite a few times. Yeah. That is in general a jarring experience to watch a weirdo comedy person have feelings.

It is an amazing occurrence. Someone whose whole identity is irony, just being earnest for once, it's it's usually crying. I gotta, I gotta say, Nick, I'm not a huge, weddings are just kind of a pain in the ass. I do like what you're saying. I love seeing, I love seeing people be happy together. That is honestly, I kind of don't like the, like the part that you're supposed to like, I don't like the reception maybe as much as I like the ceremony. I think I agree with you.

The reception can sometimes be a little bit of a drag, especially if you're at that awkward table and any table I'm at is going to be an awkward table. But you're at like, you're sometimes at like the potpourri table of just like the leftover friends who don't like, like, well, I don't really, I don't really know all these various people. I'm going to try to make small talk with them, but Nick, Nick, we had you see it in the janitor's closet. It's like cancel, yeah.

But like, and you know, I food, I feel like is sometimes hit or miss depending on the catering or whatever. I'm not a big dance floor guy. So yeah, I guess the reception overall isn't my thing, but you know what's a lot of fun is when they do the thing where you get to clink your glass and then they kiss, oh, what a hoot that is. That's pretty fun. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm just getting glasses, trying to see some action. Rosalind, I wanted to talk a little bit because you mentioned the, the where you end up having your reception. Give me the name of the restaurant one more time. Uh, Lost Parrot Cafe. What? So what did you end up having?

Well, we, you know, so Nick has met my wife. She's also, you know, an Indian descent. So we were going to try to get Indian food and we tried a few and actually you're from, well, you're from Long Beach, but Orange County has some very good Indian catering. And we thought about that, but it was kind of a pain to get it up here. So we just ended up going with the, the place, the venue kind of recommend one of the places they recommended. And it was, it has some different catering name, but the restaurant's called Lost Parrot

Cafe. It was, it was, it was very good food. It was like, uh, it had to all be vegetarian, because I'm vegetarian, but I'm not. I am pretty strict with my wife and her family. So it was like enchiladas and cauliflower. This was pretty, it was, it was very good food. A lot of, a lot of high marks for the food. We talked about on your pre, on your previous episode that like Mexican food is very vegetarian

friendly. It is. If lard is not used into cooking for various things, but other than that, yeah. I add lard to almost everything. B-Y-O-L. Hey, I got, I got, I got a good, uh, uh, a dead parrot cafe. How's that for Python fans? Hmm.

That's good. Do you think that would be a, a, a, a hit restaurant, Nick? I think you're right in the zeitgeist with your big bopper and money Python references. So, so you get, so you, uh, you get hitched, things go into lockdown. How have your dining habits changed when you're, you know, you're in this, this sort of, this, this current quarantine situation? Uh, well, I think, I think number one single guy for a long time, you know, I'm, I'm married and never really lived with someone I was, I mean, I, whatever the state of de facto

live with them, but never lived with, with anybody and so, um, I ate a lot of, uh, single guy type of, uh, dining, you know, uh, fast food and that type of thing. Um, I didn't really cook and now I, I actually started to cook, you know, three, four times a week and, uh, uh, mostly eating in occasionally we, we get out here and there. What are your kind of your, your go-to dishes as a new chef? Um, well, I, I've tried quite a few. I made, um, probably the worst pad thai ever made. I am assuming it was so bad.

I sadly had to throw, I could not even eat my own left. Wow. Um, I tried that. I got like a, that's a, that's a tough dish. I mean, like that's, I remember there's an episode of beat Bobby flay where he tries to go up against this woman who, this Thai woman who is like the best at pad thai and Bobby flay gets fucking smoked. There's no chance.

It was like this vegetarian cookbook I got and I was like, Oh, this seems easy. Like they presented it so easy and, uh, it was, it was totally terrible. And, uh, so that was one thing I made that was terrible, but I have made like a pretty good, like chickpea feta dish. That's a recipe I got. And then like a pretty good, um, pesto, vegan pesto, actually, whatever pasta you want and, um, what else am I making? Um, quesadillas, a very challenging, uh, item.

Uh, can't go wrong with a quesadilla. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's, it's, it's, it's quite a stretch because I got, I got, I got a question for you when in your single, and you're, this, I'm, I'm interested about the single man days. So he's, uh, there for the rest of my life. Um, what did you, what were your go to as a, as a vegetarian?

What were your go to fast food or, or, or take out items? I definitely liked Taco Bell and Del Taco. They both, hell yeah. Those, those were good. I'm dealing as, I mean, I was a standup. So a lot of times I was out, or I still do stand up. You know, you're out late and then you end up eating, stopping at Taco Bell and eating at like 11 PM or whatever, you know, and I think I'd have trouble

doing that now, just because the body can't handle a, a seven layer burrito. It's 11 PM. But, uh, those were staples and then like I ate a decent amount of like Trader Joe's prepared food stuff for, you know, prepared food stuff. And I mean, I would eat as boring as it is peanut butter and jelly. So you make, you make a good point about, we haven't really talked about that too much, but so often like Nick doing stuff at UCB or whatever, you'd get out at like 11 or midnight and then it would always be like Del Taco or

something for, for dinner. Yeah. Terrible. Those late night eats are, yeah, it's so bad for your body, but you just, you're just craving food and, and I like, it's like sometimes it's just like you're exerting mental and fit and even physical energy. If you're performing and then it's just like, then it feel, I mean, like food is almost like a way to like, you feel like it's like, I need a meal now or

whatever. For sure. Yeah. All that, all that fucking stuff. I, I had that. I mean, we even do in Doughboys live, I'd like get a big fucking meal after we finished our show and meet and greet and it's like 10, 30 or 11 and I'm all this shit and I body can't handle it anymore.

But I just feel like I need something. They leave a bucket of chum for us backstage. We have a chum writer. Raj, speaking of Taco Bell, this is kind of fucked up. Yes. The new, look, I think it's this new CEO. There was a new CEO of Yum Brands and he brought someone new into Taco Bell, but Taco Bell is doing this dumb thing where they're slimming down their menu

and I was already mad with the last things that they took off. And then this, this next move is, it's too far. They've, they're going too far, but one of the things they're taking away is potatoes. So like potato based, potato based items at Taco Bell, which is like Taco Bell is, is like a huge vegetarian fast food restaurant. People, people eat there all the time. I mean, people know it as, as vegetarians, you know, it's always like the place

you stop. Yeah. So such a, such a crazy, I mean, I know it's still obviously the beans you can, you can replace meat with, but. Potatoes just seems like a crazy thing to take away. It seems like it's taken away a big portion of their, of their consumers, Nick. Yeah. You know what I was looking for while I, while you were talking, I was, I was

Googling, um, like the Taco Bell menu reductions, but I can't find a story, uh, from this year, the ones that were coming, the ones that are, they're all dated in, in August of 2019. Nick, this is, it's underground. Shit is the issue. Um, do you want, do I can send you the link right now, but it's, it's, uh, it's like, uh, this is, this is the, this is kind of like the gossip going around town.

This is like a, this is like a worker who, who leaked it. Right. Yes. And I can, I can tell you off the top of my head, the quesarito is gone. Old potato products. Yeah. I think the seven, I think the seven layer burrito previously mentioned. Seven layer burrito is gone.

Yeah. Gone. It's gone. That's what they're saying. That's a rough one. Unnecessary. That's a great one. That's, that's a go-to for me.

Yeah. I love the seven layer burrito. I can't believe the quesarito is maybe their best named item of all time. Such a great name. Just for the name of love. It's so good. It's so, it's, and it's great. And like people like Taco Bell because of the Willy Wonka-nish, you know,

you want to, you want, you want all that shit. It's, it's, it is crazy. I'm, I'm looking through right now and all I am seeing stories about is, uh, the Squirrel Jam in this text chain. We're on the, a lot of talk about the Squirrel Jam. This is a local LA scandal right now. This very, very, uh, you know, this upscale, um, very popular, uh, gentrifier restaurant, Squirrel, SQRL, it had, like they basically have a, a secret

kitchen where they've been producing their signature jam. But it's, the workers there were saying that, that the jam is covered with like a layer of mold and they just like scrape two inches of mold off and then serve the jam to customers. Uh, and they would like hide customers. They would like hide employees in there when the health department came so that they would like, you know, keep that, keep that secret kitchen on lockdown. I have no idea why they went to these lengths to keep the secret kitchen

under wraps. I guess they just didn't want to clean it. It's fucking disgusting. It's fucking vile. I sent you the list, by the way. Yeah. And then they released a thing where they were just like, we will no longer serve moldy jam.

Like that was like a big, like a, like a brave declaration. I would have, I would have just gone all out, all out, all out denial. I would have been like, I think I would just have to lie on that one. Yes. They so, they so quickly were just like, look, the jams are moldy. It's going back. Do you want me to go over this list real quick, Nick? Yeah, I've got this is, this is someone who is, who works there.

This is a Taco Bell insider signed it XOXO gossip grill. You know what? A lot of the times you say shit like that and I get pissed off at you, but I really like that one. They're saying what doesn't stay is what they're saying here is all potato items, quesaritos, which I love, loaded grillers, which I love. Triple layer nachos, beefy Frito, Frito, sorry, beef, beefy Frito burrito, which I also love, spicy tostada, seven layer burrito, and then unconfirmed,

which seems crazy, nacho supreme. Wow. Sort of just hard to defend a lot of those cuts. I'm not sure what they're planning to, I don't, I'm just not, maybe the products are just too expensive for to produce. I'm not sure what they are doing. It sounds like some fucking bullshit CEO, there is a new young brand CEO and now there is a new Taco Bell CEO and it seems like we're streamlining it and

we're going to save profits. Like a, it's like this sort of thing of like where they're cutting out like a few cents, they think they're going to, it's going to show that they're going to save a bunch of money or something. Young brands holding that was in trouble of their big three and now they also have the habit added to their arsenal of brands, but I know Pizza Hut was something of a liability, but my understanding is that Taco Bell has been going strong.

Yeah. Why mess with, why mess with it? It's, it's, it's, it's your strongest brand. Yeah. Don't really get it. Uh, so Raj, you mentioned that you, you got some Trader Joe's meals. That was a go to as a, as a single guy. Uh, what, what, do you have any particular favorites?

Cause we reviewed Trader Joe's as earlier as part of a, as part of our grocery store month. Yeah. Yeah. I heard it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, I, I actually got the bean and cheese burrito. It comes in like a yellow wrapper, bean and jack cheese.

Oh wow. I bet like at least once a week or twice. Um, I ate a lot of hummus from there. I guess you could say I made meals out of pita cheese hummus. Single guy, uh, single moron, uh, but I did that. Um, what else did I get there? Uh, I would always buy nuts, not to go to a meal, but I always bought nuts. Uh, and their pizza was pretty good.

They're frozen pizza. They're pizza. I had one on, I had one on Sunday. They have a good, they have a good frozen pizza. Yeah. And then they had a, um, like to keep being in cheese, uh, to keto type things in the semi-cold, you know, like the region cold thing that were, they were pretty good. Yeah.

They're, they're refrigerated section. Yeah. Yeah. They don't last as long. I, I was, I was intrigued by those. I've never had their taquitos cause I was like, I'm not sure how these are going to cook up, but you said they, they crisp up. All right.

They crisp up. I put them in a toaster oven or the oven and then you can put them in the microwave. But, uh, and then, um, the tamales were pretty good. The, um, the semi-cold, uh, they had a vegetarian cheese tamale. And then I think that would, those are my staples and then like cereal and yogurt. Mitch, I've been going through those chicken. Like we, we, we reviewed Costco last week with our buddy, Griff and Newman. And I got a, uh, you know, everything there is in bulk and I got a, I bought some

chicken bakes from there, but it's like a pack of like 16 or something absurd. And so I've been going through chicken bakes. I've, I had my second to last chicken bake, but I've been having them like, I've just been having them like every day for like lunch, just to try to not waste them. I've, I'm almost, I think this next one, I will be sick of them, but I've had so many chicken bakes and weirdly to what, what Raj was saying about the toaster oven, the chicken bake, I mentioned this on the, on the previous episode, they say to microwave and it works okay, but it does have what seems like it should be a

crispier, more chimichanga type crust that I wonder if it would benefit from the oven or the toaster oven. Maybe I'll try that. I'll try and experiment with tomorrow's final, uh, chicken bake. Wow. Nick. Yeah. That's a double.

That's a Patreon exclusive episode. It's gonna be putting a chicken bake in an oven and watching it. Chicken bakes every, you've been having them every day. I've been having a lot. I mean, not quite every day, but I've been having them a lot. I've been just trying to get through them. I don't want to throw them away. We knew grocery store month was a bad idea going in.

Yeah. Uh, which we were right about. Yeah. I told you that. I knew it was bad, but we had to do it. Right. We got to do stuff. You know what I mean?

But yeah, I know I just track the times we're living in sort of, you know, contemporary. And you know what? I got to say this. You were so about this hot bar, Nick, and I don't even think it's been an issue. I like, like, uh, where, where have we really missed the hot bar at Whole Foods? That's it. Well, I mean, I, I would, I would separate hot bar from serving hot food and serve prepared food.

That was my whole frustration with the, your insistence on the inclusion of Trader Joe's, which ended up being fine because we're doing it. We're handling it differently, but, but also the hot foods, we still have, you can still get hot foods are basically every place you go to still. Yes, you can. But I'm just saying like the hot bar, I, for me, I, you need it. You, you need a single, you need a thing that's divided a little island. You need the island, not even a hot bar, just like hot food, like that they sell.

Like they have like a deli counter where you can buy stuff. And, and Trader Joe's does not have that. We don't need to rehash this argument, but I'm just saying like that was my opinion, but I'm saying, but Whole Foods has that and you know, you can get, you can get prepared food to go, uh, Costco has that. And certainly this week's chain, Albertson, Albertson's rather Albertson, not just Albertson, it was originally Albertson. And then they, they launched more stores, Albertson's plural, no

apostrophe there, Albertson's, uh, this week's chain also has hot food. And I think their hot food and their deli counter is pretty good. We'll get into that one second. Barrage, I, I wanted to ask about on the grocery store topic as, as someone who grew up in Texas, uh, what is your, what are your Texas specific grocery stores or the stores that make you think a home? Uh, I think number one is Kroger's. Kroger's got it.

That was the most common chain. And then they also have Randalls, which they own. Um, uh, but, uh, Kroger's was our go-to. Yeah. Albertson's owns Randalls apparently. Oh, Albertson's own Randalls now. Yeah. I don't, Kroger may have owned it in the past.

Okay. But Kro, but Albertson, it's funny because you, you had even at Albertson's, I was like, Oh yeah, there's a couple in LA. Uh, but I grew up, I mean, we, we didn't go there that often, but there was an Albertson in my hometown couple. And then Tom Thumb was another one. I don't know if that's even still around. Tom Thumb.

Tom Thumb. Yeah. I don't know. And Jewel Osco briefly, which is a Midwestern chain. Briefly at a couple stores, Food Lion was there. Um, one that I think there's no way you guys have heard of called hyper market. It was like hyper market. Yeah.

It's kind of got a fun name. It was basically Walmart, Asia, giant size food or whatever. Um, but the main one was Kroger. I mean, they, I feel like they dominate the more Texas market. Was at hyper market, was there, was there trans music playing when you went in? It would have been fitting probably, probably hot country is my guess. It's that does sound like hyper market sounds like something would be in like a Pulverhoven movie.

Yeah. I mean, the name. It was in 2030. And I was pretty young and I liked the millennium falcon. And so I was like hyper market. This is a, yeah, or whatever. You know, I liked the future space. I thought this was neat.

Uh, so I was into it, but I think it got bought by Sam's or Sam's warehouse. That's another big one. Good funny names down there. Kro, also Kroger is, as far as the big ones, Kroger has a pretty funny name. It sounds like a fraud, maybe just cause I'm thinking of Kermit. It sounds frog-ish or something. Yeah. Sounds a little bit like a frog.

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a solid like apostrophe possessive grocery store name. I mean, you know, yeah, I was going to say you could go Kroger, like Kroger, Kroger, like a, like a frog, but you could also go like Freddie Kroger, like use the grocery, the grocery Freddie Krueger. Clean up on aisle three, bitch. Not really a pun, but still kind of works.

Yeah. That 100% works. Some people did call it Kenny Rogers, like K rogers. Oh, that's good. It has no relation to the gambler. Yeah. We had stop and shop, Nick. Uh, Shaw's, we had Shaw's.

We had Star Market, Star Market, Star Market. See what makes us shine. That was a song. So, so Mitch, what you and what, what Raj are saying, I think unbeknownst to yourselves is you're speaking to the ubiquity of Albertson's, because Albertson's own Shaw's, it owns Star Market. It owns Randall's that we mentioned. Also owns, I look this up, Tom Thumb and owns Jewel Osco.

Wow. So just, just a huge umbrella of brands all owned by Albertson's, including their own Albertson's flagship stores. Not stop and shop though, right? Doesn't own stoppy. I don't think they own stop and shop and Hanifords. That was the other one that they own. So Albertson's owns, uh, they own a lot.

Albertson's and Krueger are two of the biggest grocery store chains in the US. And they're, they're both just these, these gigantic Titans that I think as, as the economy in general has consolidated, they have gotten more and more brands under their, into their holdings. Um, I mentioned as no apostrophe like Popeyes was founded by Joe Albertson and Boise in 1939, uh, among the other ones they mentioned, I also Acme Markets, uh, which you might have in the, in the Northeast, Mitch, do you have Acme out there?

We don't have Acme. The only other, I'm trying to think of other ones up there, Market Basket. There's like, uh, other brands, they own. Lucky, there used to be luckies out here, Vons, um, and, uh, Safeway and Pavilions. So they, they have a lot of holdings. Haggin, I guess some places have a Haggin. Ooh, a Haggin. We got a Wegmans now in, in, in, in Massachusetts.

Wegmans is the, as was a big New York one, though, when I went to school. People love Wegmans. People fucking love Wegmans. You ever been to Wegmans, Raj? I have in, in Brooklyn, actually, when I was, uh, living there to work for, uh, just recently, but tonight show, there was a Wegmans kind of close by. There's a giant Wegmans too. It's like really big.

Yeah. People lose their minds for Wegmans. It's just, there's a regional, uh, uh, allegiance to Wegmans that I don't understand. Well, I will say not to, uh, not to, uh, side of the Spoonman, but they do have a large hot bar that might be appealing to you. I mean, though, the one that looked like it, it was definitely quite a hot bar there. I noticed, I, to be honest, wanted to use the restroom. And then that's about it.

So I didn't really shop there, but, uh, but yeah, that was, uh, they seem to have, yeah, Wegmans seems to have a lot of like, uh, nostalgia or something. I gotta check out this hot bar. They are, they are not, they are not, they, and I think that they make like good food. They have like good, good subs and sandwiches and like, uh, the deli and everything like that is a place you're going to like. Roach brothers is the other one in Quincy. And then Camman market Roach brothers.

They are Roach brothers. I know. Like ROACH. No, it's not spelled that way, but it would be funny. But it sounds like Roach. It sounds like a cockroach. It's not the sort of thing you want to associate with food service. No, it's not.

You're right. It's bad. I think the only thing worse could be like the cumbrothers market. Okay. You beat me. You beat the horse and rat. It's, it's one of the 20 words I say on a daily basis. Um, I think I'd still rather shop at cumbrothers than going to get that

mold jam from squirrel. I feel like you'd be at cumbrothers opening day. You'd be the only guy to ride up outside. So, uh, so you've been to Wegmans. You lived in Brooklyn for a stretch. Uh, you're from Texas. You obviously spent a lot of time in LA. What are your general grocery store habits?

And do you have, I know you mentioned Trader Joe's. Was that your go-to grocery store or do you have any, any particular favorites? I think probably Trader Joe's was, was number one. Um, if you guys know, uh, I used to do a, a double, uh, kind of get it done in one trip, uh, there was a Ralph's across from a Trader Joe's at third and La Brea. That was, I lived in that area. Wow. Um, but now I live in downtown LA.

So there's a whole food's kind of close by. So that's the most, just cause it's close. That's, that's, that's, that's, uh, you, you mentioned a thing here that we kind of touched on of, yeah, when you do Trader Joe's, and this is an issue. I mean, this takes points away from it. It's a combo. You got to do, you got to combo it up with like a real supermarket. I always think, but

you can't necessarily get every single thing you need from a Trader Joe's. It's more of a specialty store. Yeah. I think there was a time when I, I don't really drink diet soda anymore, but diet soda was one that you couldn't get. I still don't think you can get soda at Trader Joe's. I don't think like we don't have a fake coat. Not regular sodas.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, that, that was the problem was I always felt like I needed a few more things and that was nice and easy, but they were right, right near each other. Uh, back when you're on the diet soda horse, what were your go-to sodas?

Diet Dr. Pepper, uh, number one. Wow. That's a great one. That's a good one. That's a big Texas drink, Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Pepper. Yeah. I just picked it up there and it, it was like, um, it was, I drink a lot of like it was amazing.

That DDT is, it's, it's really got a great, like it tastes like a diet drink, but it's just like a very satisfying flavor. I can still taste it very distinctly. I used to be a guy, I'd go through like four cans of that a day when I was on diet sodas. Oh yeah. Easy. Yeah.

And that, that Diet Coke. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, I, I just thought of it as like a harmless treat until, uh, I guess it's not quite that harmless, right. I kind of feel like the, you, you can't trick your body. Like every time there is something that's got like a, like, oh, it tastes like real fat or it tastes like, you know, real sugar, but it's some chemical.

There's always some, some medium term or longterm health effects from that. I also just feel like even when I switched from full sugar soda to diet soda, I feel like my weight remained the same for like a year. I'm not surprised by that. Yeah. Just because I don't, I think there's people that argue that full sugar is better at the one with actual cane sugar instead of, I think this corn syrup is if you're going to drink anything, drink the Coke from Mexico or whatever.

Right. Um, but, uh, but yeah, all that diet stuff. Do you guys remember, um, we just treated my memory of those, oh, Lestra, the chips that like, like, I think I ate an entire bag and like, freshman year at college, I just had the runs for like, you know, two months or something. And then they canceled those, those chips like, like a month later. Cause everyone was like, this is just a bag of diarrhea. Yeah.

That feels like the thing that like one day maybe will be the cause of your death is that one. Oh, Lestra lays or whatever. Like those, that was the side effects were so severe that it was, or I guess just like the effects of it were so severe that they had to put a warning label on the bag later. And the warning label was that like it can cause, I think the, the verbiage was anal leakage because people were getting incontinent to the point where not

they were just like having diarrhea, but just like, like liquid shit was just like falling out of their assholes. That's crazy. It's fucking disgusting. And I was a young guy, so you can eat, you know, junk food, but that thing went right through me. I was like, okay, not worth the saving the calories. I'd rather just eat a whole bag of Lays.

Yeah. Jesus Christ. It's amazing that you would think that with the, the, you know, there's so much money and like simulating flavors and food science. Like you'd think they'd have cracked some way to be like, Hey, this tastes just like full fat or full sugar, but it's not. And it's just no one's been able to figure it out. Or at least no one's, I think that one was actually pretty close to tasting

like something that was just like deep fried in an oil, but it was, but just like the side effects were so bad. I can't wait to take like, I hope they have like little pods of cool ranch dust. One day you can just take hits off of just inhale a little bit of cool ranch dust or something. So does it feels like there needs to still be some sort of, I think they're getting a little bit closer as far as like the, you know, spin drifts and stuff like that. I feel like you're, we're getting closer to like a very low calorie, good tasting

like soda, like a soda adjacent drink, but that's, that spin drift is a nice little trick because it just has like a little like it's, you know, it's mostly carbonated water, but it just has a little bit like 5% fruit juice. Yeah. And it's a nice little trick. And then it's like, you know, 10 calories, a can or whatever. And it's a nice little trick on your brain where you just taste, you're just drinking very diluted carbonated fruit juice.

But it does to, it is like the right amount of sweetness. Maybe also horrible for you. I don't fucking know. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. It's all bad. Is that the one sponsored by Ellen?

No, that's bubble, bubbly or something. Okay. Or bubbly bubbles. Um, you're, no, you can, yeah, it might be bad for us. I think we're supposed to drink like room temperature water and eat grains. It's terrible. Yeah. Yeah.

You can't have any pleasure from anything that you, you put into your body. It's just like any, anything like that is just a complete negative of facts. Long term. It is very funny when people are, when people, have you ever gotten that? Like when people are like, you know, room temperature water is better for, and I'm like, yeah, I know. Yeah. That sucks.

What do you want from me? Like I gotta have something. I remember reading, I was like, I got to the point where, and this is what I'm drinking now, I'm drinking a Pellegrino. I'm drinking carbonated water. That's like, that's the, the closest I can get to drinking a beverage that, that doesn't have calories, but is still giving me some sort of like, you know, I'm still enjoying drinking this.

And then I read like someone, or then someone was telling me like, uh, hey, you know, that's actually really bad for your teeth and you're, and you're like digestion, like having that much carbonation. I was like, wait, give, I got to have fucking something. The way I can't have nothing. Totally agree. I'm a big carbonated beverage drinker now because a water drinker, just because of I stopped soda and people will say like, Oh, I heard it like makes your stomach

expand. So you need more. I'm like, well, first of all, I don't know that you, that sounds like a theory an eight year old came up with, but it could be true. Could be true. Not denying it. Like also, like it's pretty harmless overall, right? And the continuum, it's got to be not that big.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let me have a fucking Topo Chico for God's sake. Yeah. Exactly. Give me something. When it's hot outside, like a cold, uh, sparkling water is just can really hit

the spot, you know, so pleasure is very high for no calories. I think LaCroix's aren't good though, Nick. I've said this, I think they make you more thirsty. That's the LaCroix is the one that's like, I don't know what the deal is with it, but I would rather have a Pellegrino or, or Topochico or anything like that. Something about the light, whatever the, the scent, cause it's just like a smell. Basically that, that LaCroix has a little bit, a little whiff of flavoring. Yeah.

There is something about that that kind of almost makes you more parched. I don't know what it is exactly. It's not as, it's not as, it's not as refreshing in the same way that just like a straight up carbonated water is, or a spin drift. We're turning to that guy that we're just talking about. We're telling people they can't enjoy the fucking LaCroix. I think you can enjoy them. I'm just, I become my own worst enemy, Weigart.

Well, you know, now you know how I feel. Wait, wait, oh, I'm your enemy. Yeah. Piece of shit. I'm your enemy. How boring is that? I'm your enemy. I don't know.

I mean, what a, what do you want? You're my friend, Mitch. Oh God. I believe there's a technical term for this, a friend of me. We'll be back with more Doughboys. Welcome back to Doughboys. We are here with Raj Desai as friendly green grocer, Mitch's grocery store month continues with this week's chain, Albertsons.

And, you know, I mentioned all the different chains that Albertsons owns. It is the third biggest grocery chain in America by sales volume. Albertsons are real Titan. So you mentioned there's some Albertsons around Raj, but this is not a place. This is not your regular market by any stretch of the imagination. No, I've been maybe, I mean, I've lived in LA for 14, I guess, 13 and a half years or something minus in time and elsewhere. But I think I've been maybe two or three times.

Wow. Yeah. And I, I, I associated like we're talking about giving taxes. It was there. And then now I associated with maybe the soaring of bell Patricia. She used to do it and ads for Albertsons like 12 years ago or something. Interesting. So I just associated with her.

I don't really think about it much, but I did not know Vaughn's own was, was like, as you said, so Mitch, do you remember the Patricia Heaton Albertsons campaign? I don't remember this. I don't remember it either. But I believe it exists. I'm not calling it Roger. Yeah, I believe you. I mean, I've been known to lie about Patricia Heaton's endorsements before.

So you guys call me out. No, I'm blaming you. I what if I'm like looking it up? Oh, yes, for sure. It's it's a hit. You put Patricia Heaton and then Space A first thing comes up. So first thing I'm seeing is everybody loves Raymond fanfic written by Roger. I'm more of a middle guy.

Yeah, I mean, it's a I we didn't go to Albertsons growing up. We were a Ralph's family, which is owned by Kroger or or Costco was the other the other one we'd go to, which is, you know, its own its own thing. But Albertsons, I did live in an apartment that was very close to an Albertsons, walking distance to an Albertsons. And that was my go to for years, my go to grocery store. There was a time when I remember Albertsons being a little bit more value focused than other chains.

And then it actually it absorbed fawns during the time I was living in L.A. That merger occurred and then and then Albertsons kind of just sort of, you know, stopped being anything of like a like a budget grocery retailer. But the thing they've always had and one thing that's that's been nice about their acquisition of Vons is that it means at the hot counter at Vons as at Albertsons, they now have their signature cafe fried chicken. And let me tell you, this is some of the best fried chicken in the game. I know you don't eat meat, Raj, but I but if for anyone who does,

the fried chicken at Albertsons is an incredible value and it is delicious. It's one of the items I got on my trip for this episode. I got some signature cafe fried chicken along with their their deli case macaroni salad and made that into a lunch. So I just kind of came home and like ate it hot right away. And the the the fried chicken is so good. It is so like it is so flavorful. It is moist.

It has a great crunch and crispiness to the skin. It is just like a really, really well done product that I feel like if that section, this is something we talked about at Costco, Mitch, but like if just the Costco food court was a was a hot dog and pizza and sweet treat stand, that would still like be a place worth like worth going to. And that will still be a chain that was like that was, you know, worthy in its own right. I think that's the case with the fried chicken and sandwich part of of Albertsons.

Their their fried chicken is just so great. And that's a that's a go to for me. Did you get any of that chicken, Mitch? Nick, you know, you've always raved about this chicken. And so my experience with Albertsons is I always I always thought it was just kind of like the bad grocery store. Like I was like, oh, it's kind of like the shitty one, right? Like I kind of just always thought it was a shitty one.

And then 10 years ago when I moved to where I live now, that was kind of the most the closest, most convenient one. There was actually a Gelsons, which we're not going to review, but Gelsons is kind of like the fancier upscale. It's like it's not the most upscale you can get, but it's like the version of Albertsons for for kind of fancier upper class people. Right. Not that upper class people shop there only. Wakeman's West, maybe.

Upper class is the wrong way to say it. Wealthy people. It's just wealthier. Yeah. Um, I think upper class is OK to say. OK, all right. Good, good, good. Um, and Albertsons then became my go-to. I hope we both get canceled for that. Albertsons became my go-to supermarket because it was easy to get to

and not have as big of a pain in the ass as getting to the Gelsons next store to UCB, which is the one that is kind of my closest one. And then the Ralph's is the one that's on Sunset that has like an insane parking garage, so I don't go to that Ralph's either. Though Ralph's was my first supermarket in LA with Trader Joe's. But Albertsons became my go-to thing. You've always raved about the fried chicken. I've never had it. And I continued not to have it.

No, of course I got it, Nick. From your suggestion, I tried the, uh, your rave reviews really for years. Fried chicken's not a thing I like go out of my way to have. I'm a big chubby man. I shouldn't be eating fried chicken. It's just like a thing I don't get too often, you know what I mean? I love it. It might be my favorite food and for me, it still has to be an occasional indulgence because it is so unhealthy.

It's great. And I got it at Albertsons and you're right, Nick. It's great. It's damn good. I mean, it really is really, really good. I got that. I also got chicken tenders basically. And the chicken tenders were, they were a little bit colder. Look, I'll get into more of my order later. But the chicken tenders were a little bit cold. But the batter, there's something about the, I think the batter for the fried chicken and maybe the chicken tenders,

there's some sort of batter. The key is in the batter, Nick. The batter is great. There's something going on with the batter. I love the batter, okay? Call this batter Barry Bonds because it's a Hall of Famer. Barry Bonds, you chose? He's good, right? I mean, is Barry, is Bonds in the Hall of Fame? Did he make it in before? Oh, there's some controversy because of this, because of the whole baroid thing.

Yeah. They wouldn't vote him, they wouldn't vote him in because he was using performance enhancing drugs, even though I think like everyone was for a time. Net error, yeah. Yeah. All right, fine. Ken Griffey Jr., how about that? That's a good one. He's universally, yeah. Nick is right. He is in the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2015.

So you got the tenders and you got the fried chicken? I did, yeah. And I got it last. And I could tell, I think, you know, I think there's a lot of, you get a strike when the iron's hot, Nick. You get to get this, you should get this stuff when it's hot and fresh and ready to go. And mine was still warm and pretty good, but I saw him making a new batch and I was there. He was actually, he was frying up, he was like battering and frying up a new batch. And I was like, are you going to be here for a while? He's like, just give me three minutes and I can help you.

I was like, no, are you just going to like be here? I'm going to go shopping. And I like don't want to miss any fried chicken. I had to make it clear to him that I wasn't trying to get service that. I looked like a Karen, Nick. I looked like a Karen. Oh boy. Not what you want to be. And then he was like, yeah, no, I'm going to be here. And I don't think I got that fresh batch of chicken when I came back. I think it was still kind of the older, would it be fun if like,

oops, I married a Karen or something? Could you make a movie out of this, Nick? You probably could, you probably could sell that pitch like right now. Or like, I think we may have talked about this with Garfun a little bit. A Karen movie like right now. Oh my God, we already talked about the same idea. I think we did, yeah. Even though we recorded that like a week earlier. Oh my God, just cut this shit out of the episode. I will say that I had an interaction that was not Karen adjacent, but was bizarre at the deli

counter. So I left my case, or I left my cart rather by the deli case, and I went over to look at the bakery. I grabbed something from the bakery, which I'll get to in a second. I came back to my cart and another guy had taken stewardship of my cart. He was just using my cart. And I was just like, and I was so flummoxed that I was just like, I'm sorry, did you see another cart around here? And, and he was like, oh, it's this one. I just took it. Like it was just a thing that you could do. And then he gave me my cart back and walked away. Nick, I was so confused. You got, you got cart cooked. I did.

And it seems like you were kind of, you were kind of into it. You followed him around and he shopped for you. Yeah, the gravest humiliation you can have in a grocery store. It was, it was bizarre. It was really weird. I, he didn't, I don't understand what he was doing. Either at Costco or what do we do the, what do we do the week before Costco? We had Costco, we did Trader Joe's and we did Whole Foods. Those are the chains we've covered. It might have been Whole Foods actually. I think it was Whole Foods. A person like touched my cart. Like they moved from my cart, which like during a pandemic, I'm like, just don't touch my fucking cart. Like I'll, I'll move the cart. You know what

I mean? Like just like it was one of those things where like I stopped the cart and went to like grab something. I wasn't even, it was like within 10 seconds that the person like touched my cart. Don't touch my cart. Not now. Have a modicum of patience. I feel like there's too much still just like, just like, you know, trying to wiggle through or something. Not just like wait for one second for someone to pass. You don't have to like try to sneak on by just to save yourself 15 seconds. Insane. Grocery stores are a place to, especially now it's just a place to see the insanity of human beings. Karen's gone wild. Karen's gone wild. Truly. Raj, so we're, did you get anything from the deli counter slash hot case?

I did. I did. So I went to the Albertsons in Los Feliz, which maybe I'm sure you guys probably know it's on Holter Street. Yeah. So I went there. That's, that's my Albertsons. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And I will say this, I had no interest in the fried chicken, but there was a line for it. It like on Saturday, like five PM, a mini line, not a huge line, but, but it clearly was in demand and they had made a lot of mistakes. So you guys are getting some backup here on how good people like it is. There was no hot vegetarian food as far as I could tell. So I just got two cold salads. I got a bow tie pasta salad that was quite good. And I got a broccoli and spinach salad that was quite disappointing. Oh, that's a bummer. Yeah. There's not a lot of flavor to it.

Oh, too wet. You know, it just tasted like wet vegetables, you know. Yeah. It was fantastic. But the bow tie pasta was very good. I've always liked cold pasta salads, especially in the salad. So it was good. So Albertsons, like if you go to that Gelsons and you get stuff from their case, they have like a, uh, like a kale, a Mediterranean kale salad or whatever. It might be called like Karen's salad or something like that. And it honestly might be called something like that, which is, it's really, really, really good. And the almost, I mean, at that deli case at Gelsons, almost everything's good. I think Albertsons is hit or miss. They have a, they have a Greek orzo salad, like pasta salad. And it's great. I love it. It's

like, and it wasn't there. They said that they've, since the pandemics happened, they kind of have cut some things back. So I don't know if it's gone up or it was sold out, but they're always kind of the same thing. If you ask, they're like, it's what's in the deli case there. And some things are hit and some things are miss. The fried chicken, of course, big hit for me. The chicken tenders, I thought were good. Nick, the potato wedges, I got the potato wedges. Not good. They were not tasting good. At least when I, I heated them up a little bit, but they just were not, they were not great. I've had those before because you feel like they're a natural side for the fried chicken. And yeah, they, in my experience, they can be a little mushy and not super flavorful. I'm not

sure what your take was. Funny, mine were like over, like felt overcooked and kind of old. And I gave them a little nuke to kind of, I nuked them to kind of soften them down, actually. And they just kind of taste like oily and over fried. They might have been sitting around for too long. Again, strike it when the iron's hot. The tenders, like I said, were good. I also got from the, from the cold case, I got macaroni and cheese. And I also got a meatball, a single meatball. Wow. The mac and cheese was good. Like I wish it was better, but it's also like we've had so many mac and cheeses from like Boston Market type places, not Boston Market specifically, because I think they do have good mac and cheese, but places like that and the mac and cheese is

just kind of like not good and has no flavor to it. The Albertson's one is, I wish it was thicker. I wish it was cheesier, but it's still decent. It's not bad. It's pretty good. And then the meatball though, on the other hand, was bad. So I think that is just kind of like, it tasted, maybe it was like, every time I had like good sauce mixed in with it, it was good, but like the sauce on top of it, but there wasn't a lot of sauce. And the meat tasted like maybe there was just, it was like pure, there was no like pork or something. Maybe it was like more beef or something. I don't know. But it was not, it was not great. And I feel like that is kind of just the issue with the Albertson's deli cases. You're going to hit, you're going to hit

some gold that Greek orzo is going to be gold and that bowtie pasta that, which I saw Raj that looked really good. It was good. But I think other times you're going to have some losers in there. It's just the nature of it. I've had good luck with their various potato salads and the macaroni salad, which I got this time, which was fine. I think that the thing is just don't get too fancy there. And you know, a lot of their stuff, I think if you go with something a little bit more conventional, you're going to have a little bit more success. Because yeah, they're not, they're not a place that will necessarily take risks and they'll pay off. I had the, in addition to those items from the deli case, I also got a couple of frozen items. I got these signature

select rising crust pepperoni pizza, which was a big, thick, very doughy pizza. And the pepperonis had all shifted in transit when we took it out of the packaging. Every pepperoni was on one side of the pizza. It was like, it was like a, you know, like a half and a half pizza. I had to redistribute the pep. This was a fine pizza, except it was just way too doughy, just too much dough. Just get it out of there. And just, just was just like, it was almost like it was on, it was almost like a French bread pizza, like level of dough. It was just so much and so much crust on the outside, just this gigantic like city wall of crust. It was way too much and it was heavy and it was not good. And it was not great as a, you know, I think really good pizza. This is

not my observation, but like really good fried chicken. This is a thing a lot of people have said it's still good when you have it cold the next day. So I always try to do that. And this one absolutely did not hold up having it cold the next day. You're not a dough boy after all, huh, Nick? I'm not a dough boy in this sense. I mean, there's, I think you want the right amount of dough. You don't want too much. This is some sort of hidden bullshit that I should be fired off the show. No, no, you're the right amount of dough. We have the correct, with the correct percentage of dough among the two of us, just as long as, cumulatively, we have the right amount of dough in the show. I also got the signature select Mexican style lasagna, which I

almost got just to like sort of be like, there's no way this is going to work. This is corn masa pasta later with chili sauce, ground beef, cheddar jack and bell peppers, red and green bell peppers. And I just looked at it. I was like, this is, this is ridiculous. This isn't going to work. And I cooked it up in the oven. This was pretty damn tasty, Mitch. This was like a good like enchilada, like, you know, kind of casserole, certainly not authentic at all. Like, you know, it's a Mexican style lasagna. It's as authentic as the Mexican pizza from Taco Bell. But it was pretty good. And I feel like if I got this for, if I was like a kid, and, you know, this was, but this was our family meal. This was there, the thing that my family had heated up because

they didn't want to cook that night, I would be over the moon. I was like, this is not bad. I wouldn't really, it really caught me off guard how flavorful it was. Mitch, did you get anything frozen or from the cold case? I certainly did, Wags. Well, the cold case I already went over, it was just the mac and cheese, which by yeah, by the way, the mac and cheese comes cold. So you got to, you got to, you got to nuke it, you got to microwave it a little bit. Same with the meatball. The meatball comes, comes, comes cold as far as stuff from the freezer. And I guess, yeah, the other stuff from the cold case I didn't, I didn't touch on. From the freezer, I got chocolate sundaes, Nick, those little chocolate sundaes that come with

the wooden spoon. How fun are those that we've talked about? So my checkout guys, Nick, it was, I had Eddie at the register and my bag boys name was Tommy and Eddie was calling him Tommy boy, even though he wasn't farly like at all. He was kind of a, he was kind of an in shape kid. But he kept calling him Tommy boy and then he was, he was, he was talking to me about some stuff and, and because of what I bought, he was like, are you, are you, are you, are you, you, you have some kids, you have children and I had to embarrassingly tell him that it was for a podcast. And then Tommy asked what company or what network is the podcast on and I couldn't remember her head gum. She just lied and said he had kids. Yeah, that's a good point.

And less humiliating. But then one of you was just like, yeah, right. If I say kids. Anyways, he said he had a beef with that, with the ice cream provider because they, they used to do mix and matches where you'd have strawberry and chocolate sundaes. You know, those are kind of the two flavors. Yes. But I want, I want chocolate. I didn't even see strawberry, so it wasn't even an option. They got the little wooden spoon on top. It was great, Nick. We've talked about them all month and they'll, those things, those things are a flashback to childhood. They're really well done. That's not high quality, but it just kind of hits the spot. I also got some spicy hummus, Nick, which I didn't even know existed. I wrote, I wrote a skeleton.

I wrote a skeleton. I wrote a sketch where a guy has died and he farted a skeleton out of his body. You know the sketch. Yes. Not that like a fart jokes are stupid, but it's about the guy, how the, how the guy died or whatever. And we said it was because of spicy hummus. And I never even knew that it was like a real, like spicy hummus was a real thing. And it's a real thing at, at, at the, the signature or I think it might have been organics actually. Mitch, I have news for you. It wasn't a real thing until your sketch. Albertsons owes you royalties, my friend. Wow. People, the 1300 people who watched IFC is the birthday boys ran out and grabbed spicy hummus after that. There's a huge demand. I also got some medium heat level restaurant salsa, Nick,

which I liked. It was a, it was a little bit more watery, but I kind of like a watery restaurant salsa. It tastes a little authentic. You know what I mean? It tastes authentic. It feels like there's a bunch of ingredients in there. I like it. I enjoy it. Was this a thing? Was this jarred, or was this in, was this refrigerated? Was it a little fresher? It was, it was, it was refrigerated. It was in like the plastic container. You get it. Yes. I thought it was pretty good. And then I also got some garlic hummus that I think that was the signature brand. So organics and signature, same difference, whatever. But uh, I, I wonder which one is better between the organ like, is he either one trying to be kind of more of a thing or no? Between the brands, their store

brands. Yeah. So they have the, I think it's o organics and signature select or two of their store brands. I think the o organics is obviously trying to be a little bit more, you know, this is a little bit more, just the fact that it's organic. I think it's trying to be a little bit more nutritious, but I don't know if it actually is or not, which is funny because I think the garlic hummus was maybe better. It's just like a fine alternative to like a Sabra or something. It's, it's like a, it's cheaper and tastes close enough that I think it's maybe worth doing it if, especially if you're on a budget or whatever, it's, it's worth grabbing. Nick, I got some Lucerne cream cheese. Lucerne also one of their store brands. A lot of cream cheese could be called

spreads, Nick. I don't like it. It sounds like some British bullshit. Don't you think? Oi, would you like some spread? Oi, got some spread for you, mate. Oi, put some spread on my biscuit. I'm going to eat the spread on my biscuit and then watch the new Ricky Gervais special. Yes. I'm not going to church because Ricky Gervais is my idol, mate. It's on BBC four. Hey, you know, I've heard them dough boys making light of us, us British folk, and we don't like it one bit, do we? Oi, we don't like it one bit. Me thinks, me thinks their podcast is a podcast nasty.

Oi, did you say a podcast nasty? Is that a thing we say? Like a video nasty for podcast. Video nasty. That's a thing we say. They do see. Yeah, we do. We do say video nasty. They say video nasty for like a like like like fucked up horror movies and stuff. Or like video nasties or like porn, like I think maybe more pornographic. Oh boy. I had to look it up. It's a typically low budget horror and exploitation films. Wow. Video nasties. Wow, I learned something today. Yeah. Great. I'm glad that that comedy could be a learning moment. It was. I was quite intrigued. We're true. We're true TV podcast now. This is,

yeah, this is edutainment. We're going to ruin everything you know about the UK. Yeah. Nick, I also got an organic Spurrito beans, cilantro, brown rice and cheese. Here's the deal with this one. I liked it. It's not, it wasn't bad, but it also like it felt like it was, it felt like it was promising more than it, than it even gave me. I wish the beans were kind of like, like the beans kind of felt like individually dry when you want them to be kind of more like beanie and all together. And like, I don't want to say more paste-like. That's the wrong thing to say, I guess, but maybe more paste-like. I don't know. You sometimes when, if you, if you want, you don't just want loose beans and a burrito,

you sometimes want to kind of purate a little bit. I get what you mean. If a bean like falls out of your burrito and rolls, that's a bad sign, I think. Then you want like a half and half, half puree, half chunk, yeah. 100%. And this was, and this was kind of more just like individual beans and it wasn't cheesy enough. That was the other issue with it, but it didn't, the taste of it wasn't bad. It's just that sort of thing of like, with Albertsons, it's like a lot of the stuff isn't going to blow your way, but I also don't think it's really bad. You know what I mean? Like for the price and for what it is, it's just a supermarket. It's one of the first places

honestly we went to that's like the supermarket that I'm going to go to first. It's a grocery store that I'm going to go to before I go to Trader Joe's or before I go to Costco or before I go to fucking Whole Foods. It just is. It's a regular ass grocery store. It's a regular ass grocery store. I got, I got a few more things, but we can, we can move on to some other stuff, Nick, because I think that is, I think that's all the, the coal, oh wait, that's not true. I also got myself some signature roast beef and I got myself some Lucerne sharp cheddar cheese slices and I got myself some French hoagie rolls. Nick and I made myself a signature French hoagies, by the way, and I made myself an Albertsons roast beef sandwich. I put a little, I put a little mayo on there

that wasn't from Albertsons, but still, it was fine. Like the roast beef, it's like the packaged roast beef. It's not great. You know what I mean? It's not, it's not going to be the best roast beef. The cheese was pretty good and it's compared, comparable to Sargento or any other cheese. It's, it's, it's fine. And the roll was actually not good. The roll, the roll was kind of shitty, but you know, I think their bakery kind of underwhelms. I got the, the bakery item I got was the bakery fresh maple donut, which was a real low point, real nadir of my Albertsons experience. It was just like, it was like cost a dollar and it was worse than any donut you'd get from just like a regular donut shop. It was just so not worth it. So didn't satisfy. Very, very dry. It

was made that day, but still tasted stale. Yeah, just not, just not very satisfying. I also got some signature select jalapeno kettle cooked chips. You know, I do like things spicy. I'm something of a heat seeker. The jalapeno kettle chips were delightful. I thought they were good. They're just like, they're just like that, that kettle brand chips. They're just like the one they were trying to imitate. If you give me a blind taste test, I'd be like, yeah, these absolutely are that are the fancier, more upscale one. Raj, what else did you get grocery wise? From the bakery, I got a slice of carrot cake, which was not bad. And that's, it was amazing. It was 350. It's a giant piece of cake about the size of two hands or something. I don't know. It was

pretty big. And so pretty good deal. And it wasn't bad. I got actually got the garlic hummus, the same signature garlic hummus that the Michigata was. It was also, I'd say, perfectly good, you know, comparable to your sabros or ethanol hummuses of the world, like nothing bad, not expensive. I didn't get anything frozen. They didn't have any vegetarian frozen pizzas. And I got to be honest, the frozen food they had that was vegetarian looked pretty shitty. I just passed on it. It was like a quinoa bowl or something. There's no way this is going to eat up, because it's recently decent. So I got blue corn chips, sesame seed, blue corn, organic goat chips. They were pretty good. I got, they had organic, oh, pea crisps. You're sort of a snack,

pea crisps, competitors. Those were also very crispy and pretty comparable to Calbee. What is that brand anyway? And I got cashews, pretty simple. Those, those were a little over salty, but not bad. And the worst thing I got was sparkling water. It was kind of, you know, bringing it full circle, guys. It was totally overflavored, not your spin-through style. It was clearly artificial. Oh man. It was like a berry signature select sparkling water. It was like, had aspartame in it. So it had like 30 calories. Horrible, horrible anti-taste, horrible aftertaste, horrible taste. It was just all the way through. It was just like over sweetened and bad. So did you get, was it, was it, was it one of these like in the

bottle? Yep. That's what it was. Yeah. So I, so I got one of these two and I actually liked mine. But look, I, I, everything you said is also true, but I still, I still kind of enjoyed this one. It was, so the aspartame thing is the thing that you notice right away. This, this has, this has, I think for the whole bottle has about 10 calories and it doesn't, it just doesn't feel natural in anyways. I mean, this one is a strawberry cream flavored one and on the front of it, as you can see here, it has a strawberry ice cream bar that's being bit into and you can see like kind of a vanilla center. It, it, I will say that it like, it does do a weirdly good job with the taste. It tastes kind of exactly what you would think it would taste like in a good way and it, and it worked

for me, but like we were saying of that sort of thing of I want to enjoy things like a topochico or whatever. This one feels like something if someone was like, Hey, I don't think those are good for you. I think it's understandable. I think, right. This can't be good for you. Yeah. These things are, these things are bad news. I had a raspberry blackberry. That's what I had. Oh, okay. It's just as soon as I took a sip, I was like, okay, this is artificial and bad and it is 69 cents, which A is awesome, but B, you know, a lot cheaper than your analog or whatever you have. Right. Period. Yeah, no, it's, I think, and I think that is, Nick, that is a big factor in all of this is price too for a lot of people. You know what I mean? That's why they're coming here.

Yes. And, and I got myself, I'll go quickly go through everything else I got. I got some organic white corn tortilla chips for, for the, for the hummus and the organic salsa. And then I also got myself, now my stuff from the bakery, I just want to say I kind of disagree. I got a slice of chocolate fudge cake. Here it is right here. It was damn delicious and it looks pretty good too. Well, you know, Raj had his carrot cake, which he said was great. I think, I think the, that maybe there's just a difference between the cake options and, and you know, maybe with maybe the, the, the breakfast pastries. Sure. I have had, I have had their cakes before and they were not bad. Mitch is holding up something else now. Nick, this is a half a cherry pie. They sell them in halves.

Wow. Which I had never really seen before, but which maybe is just a common thing and I, maybe I haven't. I did notice there too. And I hadn't seen it. I thought it was a good option. Yeah. I haven't seen the half, the half pie. I've seen the mini pies. The half pie is new to me. And it was good. I got to say that half cherry pie was great. It was really, really, really tasty. And those are kind of like my big winners. I got, I got myself some sliced everything bagels, which I used for the, like I said, I got the chive and onion cream cheese, which is right next to the Philadelphia cream cheese. You know, I love Philly cream cheese, Nick. Yes. But, but I went with the Lucerne and they were good. They were like, they were good kind of of those

shitty bagels that are in the bread aisle that are, that you, that you, that you aren't freezer or whatever. They're just, they, they, it was, it was tasty. I toasted up one of those this morning and then I also had a, I took a bite of a, a chewy granola bar with chocolate chips. Weirdly bad. Something that you think that they would be able to just nail. Right. Chewy granola bar with chocolate chips. Not good at all. I had some fruit twists, strawberry and banana. Those were good. That's like a, like a, a kid's lunchbox. It would basically be a dessert. And, and then I also had a sausage, a jalapeno biscuit, breakfast sandwich, which came with egg and cheese on there. And that was like fine, fine to good. And finally I had a blood, blood orange flavored,

organic Italian soda, um, which I had today when I was eating the oldest shit this morning. And that was good. That was, that was like, it was kind of like a fancier, a fancier soda, but it was, it's a, it's pretty, it's pretty damn good in the organics. Do you think it's possible the guy at the checkout, I'll ask you if you had kids, not because the items you were buying, but because you had three carts worth of food? This, this felt like maybe the, the, the one where I didn't go as crazy. Wow. There was a couple of things I bought that I didn't, I had a Mountain Dew too with my diet Mountain Dew, which I got at the checkout with my fried chicken. Uh, and also there might have been a diet Dr Pepper, but I'm not going to get into it now

because it might have to do with our upcoming devil. Um, I got some, some grapes, Nick, and I got some, um, pineapple, uh, from the kind of like the pre-packaged ones, which I get from Albichon's a lot and they're good quality. They had the green and, uh, green and purple grapes in some, uh, and some pineapple and they're good. And there was maybe one or two other things that I, that I, that I didn't go over, but that's it. Wow. Uh, well, certainly comprehensive on Mitch's behalf. We all try to have a number of things and I think it's time for us to give our final thoughts for us to rate this grocery store. Uh, so Raj, you've done the podcast before, but because it's, it's a green grocer, Mitch's grocery store month, friendly green grocer,

Mitch's grocery store month, we are not doing it out of forks. Uh, we're doing it out of 10 carts. That's right. So, and Raj, just, just so you know, we're grading on overall impressions, including name and mascot, parking, parking, produce, snacks, frozen snacks, cold snacks, slash drinks, checkout, hoity-toidiness, bagging and carts and price. Heart, hot bar is disqualified for grocery month, but we kind of still talk about it anyways. So it's in there, but those are, those are all the topics. And as Nick likes to say, don't pay attention to any of that. You can ignore what I just said. Thank you, Mitch. All right, Raj, go ahead. Your final thoughts on Albertsons and your score out of 10 carts. Uh, I will start with some of the category.

The parking is good where I was quite good, very ample and it's great. Uh, I'd say the, uh, graphic design and logo of Albertsons, I don't know what their mascot is. I have no idea, but it stayed the same. Patricia Heaton? Patricia Heaton, yeah. That's a pretty, that's a pretty damn good point. Yeah, I'm a Heaton head. So right there, a lot of love, a lot of love. Um, and, uh, I thought it was, uh, to quote, I'm sure you guys, but it was pretty much a basic grocery store, you know, the one that, the one that, you know, uh, which I went to, it is pretty like, pretty much like your staples, that kind of thing. Nothing too fancy at a hot bar like that. But I thought it was like, uh, it was a range. I think I got six, seven items.

Some were bad. Some were very good, but all of them, none of them expensive. You know, I think I would give it, can, can you give like a half, a half card or maybe a basket? Absolutely. Yeah. It's a basket. Yeah. That's exactly what it's a basket. Okay. Uh, I'll give five and a half, five carts and a basket. Wow. Yeah. Which is not bad. Yeah. Not bad at all. Five carts, one basket from Raj Nesai. All right. Go ahead. Spoon man. This is like my preferred grocery store. It's the one I go to. Wow. The most. Um, so it's that sort of thing of like, do I think it's the best one? No. But would I rather go here than like whole foods? Yeah, I would. You know what I mean? Like, I mean,

also it's, is it convenience? Yes. Obviously it's convenience, but it's just that sort of thing of like, it's got everything there. You can get frosted flakes and you can get whatever the f**k you want. You don't have to get Trader Joe's brand or whatever. You can find everything you want to find at Albertsons, right, Nick? You get toothpaste. It's like, it covers everything. Toothpaste, deodorant, cat food, everything you need. That's, that's, that's all in there. Um, I also got a Kiwi strawberry sparkling water. I remember that. I didn't try. Um, is there anything else? Oh, I got some string cheese too. I didn't try. Jesus. Um, you went for it. Nick, do we got to be thorough in these reviews or what?

Um, I'm also going to go back and sell these items outside of the Albertsons later on today. The food here, it's not going to blow a lot of people away, but Nick, it's that funny thing we've said before of like, if McDonald's only had the Big Mac, you'd still go and get the Big Mac. You know what I mean? It's true. And that fried chicken is a huge, huge selling point. Um, the original products though, they're not like, I'm not, I do buy organic stuff. Like I bought, I bought like strawberry organic popsicles and stuff like that, like fruit bars rather and things like that before. I like, I've gotten organic stuff before. I've gotten signature brand

stuff before, but it's not going to blow you away. The deli is hit or miss. There's some great stuff. And then there's some stuff that's not as good and some stuff that's maybe outright bad. And then I think that some of their bakery stuff or desserts at least seem to be really good. It's not upstate upscale, but the price point is right. The parking is right. I might go seven shopping carts, Nick, right on the down. Is that too high? I think it's what you feel. So I can't say if it's too high or too low. It seems like it's in your heart. This comes from a personal place of like, it is the one that I chose. And it really, like I could so much, I could easily go to Gelsons, right down the street. And I don't for a reason. You know what I mean? Like there's a

reason that I just go to Albertsons and look like a home sort of our home, you know, it's your home store. Right. 100%. And it's not going to blow you away. It's not fancy. It's not doing anything crazy. It's a C, Nick, but C's passing right. Sounds like someone I know, a guy named Mike Mitchell. That's a good shot. I am a C. I am America's C right here. That makes sense. It is a, I agree with the assessment is a workman like grocery store is right down the middle. I have no particular loyalty to Albertsons, you know, like I, there was a time it was my go to grocery store because of proximity. And then it stopped being my go to grocery store because I wouldn't go out of the way to go to it. And to me, that speaks to it's just sort of a

very standard straight ahead basic grocery store. I think it's, you know, I think it's fine. I think the, it has everything you could possibly need. It is, you know, it was at least initially a little bit more cost conscious. A little bit more budget friendly than some other major grocery chains, at least in my memory. But I have no reason to go above five carts for this because it is just like a very straightforward, it's grocery chain, except for the fried chicken. The fried chicken is that one little thing where I'm just like, you know what, I have such fondness for that fried chicken. I just, it's so good. And that is the one thing that like, if I'm going to Albertsons and I need a lunch or a dinner, I'm just going to get that fried chicken, especially if it's fresh.

It is delightful. It is so good. It's one thing that I know people who've worked at Albertsons, people who work there, Nick have some personal pride in their fried chicken. It's good. It's good product. You're saying that right now. When I was in line, there was a guy who worked at Albertsons who was at the deli ordering fried chicken for himself. Yeah, it's good stuff. It's, it's so, I think that in and of itself earns it an extra cart. I'm going to go right between you guys. I'm going to say this is six carts for Albertsons. Nick, I'm going to bring down my score just a little bit because I think I was being too nice because it's the place I really go to. Six point five carts. Wow. So we're all in proximity to each other. We're in the hand holding

club or we're ballpark buds for this one. Yeah. Six, six, six carts, one, uh, one basket. It, it, it, but it, it gets the job. Like that's like a good score and it's also closer to what I am to as a D that is more actually that is kind of more what I am, but, um, not a bad D. You know what I mean? It's, it's not a bad D. It does. It does. Wait, no, you're not talking about you. It's an F. That is an F. My D is an F. Um, but it, it, it does the job. It's, it's good. It's fine. Albertsons is fine. What, what else do you, what more can you ask for? And I will say that it did remind me of grocery stores when I was a kid because now, you know, especially in LA, you got your gelato bars and your blah, blah, blah. You know, it was

like kind of reminded me of the crowbars we went to a long time ago. For sure. It is, it is a very grocery store, uh, grocery store, which is, which is lighting, you know, all that stuff. So there's something kind of homey about it, I guess. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a fan and I've gotten some of their deli meats, Nick. I, like, uh, they have occasion turkey there and it's, and it's good. They do, they, they do a good job with some stuff. So honestly, like this is the one that may be, like I said, it is the one that I go to the most, but like of all the places that were reviewed, right? Like Trader Joe's, Costco Whole Foods, are you going to be going to those more than you'd be going to a, to an Albertsons, like an Albertsons type of, of grocery store?

It just depends on what your needs are. I think that if you like, to your point, if you need your best foods, mayonnaise, if you need your Doritos, if you need your Colgate, if there are, if there are specific brands that you're not going to find at a, you know, at, at like a Trader Joe's or a Whole Foods, then yeah, I think that that was, that is going to be the place you're going to have to go to. It's certainly got a little, a wider selection and more options. You can get like six kinds of Hidden Valley Ranch there, which you can't get it at a lot of other stores. And God knows I'm getting every single kind. Yeah. Ranch month is coming up. Jesus. But I think, yeah, I think it just depends on, on your needs as a consumer. I go to more, Trader

Joe's is like my main grocery store. I feel like I get by with Trader Joe's plus Costco. But yeah, you got to have an occasion at Albertsons or Ralph's or whatever your mainstream grocery of choice trip to get those, those name brand products sometimes. Hey, that was our review of Albertsons for Friendly Green Grocerer Mitch's grocery store month. It's time for a segment. And this segment is another edition of Last Meal. Raj Desai, you've been sentenced to death. That's right, Raj. The year is 2028. Wow. It's not that long. It's pretty soon. I know. I've only had eight years. Oh no. Nick Weiger has been zeroed in as patient zero himself. He started this whole, this whole pandemic. Wow. Anyone who is quote unquote friends with him

is sentenced to death. They saw your wedding list. They saw that he was invited to your wedding. Even I'm locked up, which is saying something because I really don't consider Nick a friend. Yeah. With established or frenemies. Yeah. But even frenemies are getting locked up. Wow. That's harsh. That is right. That's rough. That's harsh. Let me guess. The president is Joe Biden. Joe Biden is in his second term. Wow. He looks like the bad guy from Hannibal. The guy who gets eaten by pigs. You know who I'm talking about. Gary Oldman. He looks like Gary. He looks like Gary Oldman at the bad guy from Hannibal.

Raj, you are sentenced. The British government, they're going to guillotine you and your head is going to fall into a hot salad. Wait, the British government? Yes. They're so mad at you. About you skewering Ricky Gervaiso these years. You get one last meal, anything you want. Wow. Spanning time. If there's something that you want from a few decades ago that doesn't exist anymore, you got it. Yes. You can have anything you like your choice. Any wish can be fulfilled. This is the last meal you will have before being, I guess, decapitated and then having your head roll into a bowl of hot salad. What is your, so Raj, what would you like for your last meal?

Well, definitely not anything that's going to remind me of where my head is going to end up, so no salads. I think I want to take my mind off the salad. It is kind of loaded. This one's a little bit loaded. The top of my head, ice cream, you know, gotta have ice cream. Wow. Some kind. I'm not super, I like McDonald's, I like Ben and Jerry's, I love ice cream. So that would be probably the dessert. Any specific flavor? I'm kind of a coffee guy. I like coffee. Oh, hell yeah. He thought he coffee, coffee or chocolate chip coffee, anything like that. I've always been nuts for that since I was a kid. Coffee based with some kind of mixin' sounds like. Yeah, yeah. You know what? I'm going diet Dr.

Pepper is to drink. I mean, it's my last, who gives a shit about what it's doing to my body, right? So we'll go with that. Probably some cheese pizza. I'm like cheese pizza guy, like a plane and I'd go with that. Any particular pizza area you'd get that from? Ah, good question. You know, I kind of like Whole Foods pizza. It's a good deal, not bad. Like the one slice of that or. Do you like that square cut one they have? I guess I get the normal crust. The regular crust. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would think about that as a top, top item and then probably some food, you know, home cooked food that, you know, my mom used to make some cuisine that is sort of new to art in our background. And so yeah, some Indian food.

This is kind of starting to sound kind of nasty. We got a lot of different things going on here. I don't know actually. I think for our last meal, I think that's okay. I think you can. To go Vegas with face style. Yeah, I think that's totally fine. I mean, you're going dairy heavy with the ice cream and the cheese pizza. Yeah, yeah. What toss in any Alestra chips? No, that would be the time to eat them. I mean, you know, you're going to be dead anyway. Ain't no leakage. Ain't no leakage is going to happen anyway once you're done, right? So you might as well get it nice and nice and smooth between up like this. I don't know.

Oh, those Brits are going to be pissed off. Yeah. What else is like, it's to go to, I love burritos. I'd probably get a bean burrito in there or a half a one or something, you know, a seven layer burrito, whether it's on the menu or not, I'll take a half seven layer burrito. And probably those are similar highlights. I tend to like burritos, pizza ice cream, and then you're kind of doing what I would do. I think I would do a big hodgepodge of burritos, pizza, and cheeseburgers and ice cream and a Coca-Cola. I think I would do something along those lines. Yeah. It's a little nasty when you think about it, all these different things, video nasty, just regular. But yeah, I'm sure

you'd enjoy it once you get that, that previous flavor out of your, out of your taste buds. Wow. Well, Raj, you down all these things and you're being led to the guillotine by Ricky Gervais, but then suddenly from the sky, a little yellow hand reaches out. It's a minion or at least a small child dressed up like a minion and that's attached to another minion and that's attached to another minion and it leads up to a hover bike driven by Nick dressed up as Gru. Wow. The coffee ice cream gives you the energy to jump up. You grab one of these minion guys' heads. Ricky Gervais is shaking his fist at you. He falls, his head goes into the guillotine, and his head gets chopped off and you ride away to safety with Nick down to Nick's new home on Little

St. James Island. Yeah, I want to see this. I want to get my hands on this Gru cosplay. In Little St. James, Nick, under your control is a good island. Hey, there you go. I think we all agree it needs to be reformed, not defunded. I think the, you know what's crazy is that Ricky Gervais, after he gets decapitated, he finds out that heaven is for real. Oh, there is God. Oh, I was wrong. Wow. Wow. Quite a, I think you got a nice spread there, Raj. I think that would do you proper. And hey, that was last meal. Rest in peace, Ricky Gervais. Rest in peace, Gervais. Just like a restaurant value feedback, let's open up the feedback. Today we have an email from

Dan Padley. Dan writes, is there a difference in taste to you between kitchen tap water and bathroom tap water? Wow. I have a preference for the, toward the kitchen tap, even if I'm closer to the bathroom. Wondering if y'all feel the same. Great question, Dan. What do you guys think? Any reaction to kitchen tap water versus bathroom tap water? I mean, this is, this is a funny one. I mean, I agree that I think that kitchen tap water is better, but honestly, I probably drink bathroom tap water more interesting because it's a thing of like where I'm getting up and I, like, maybe I'll take an Advil and I'll drink from the sink or something. I drink like, I drink from the sink like a fucking animal and just put my head under and I'll drink. If I, if I, if I, if I need

a, like, if my throat is really dry and I'm like getting up out of bed or something, I'll just put my head to the side and just take a couple sips. Is that crazy? I'm surprised you can fit your, your ample melon in your basin. I got to need like a janitor's sink. I got a deep. Yeah. No, if it was me in that, if it was me in Roger's scenario for last meal, I probably wouldn't have an issue because there's no way they're getting my head in that guillotine. No, I got a deep sink, Nick. Wow. My head fits in there and, and so I'm probably usually drink, like, like just whatever. If I have a cup, I'm usually like, I'll grab something from there quick, but to be fair, I don't like either. I'm, uh, the, the, the, the, look, is this, is this

going to be too hoity-toity that I don't like to drink tap water as much? I got, I bought, I have Arrowhead. I have a water delivery service, which makes me feel like an asshole, but I have that. And, and I can taste with tap water. I usually can, in LA at least, I can taste it. Uh, like if you get yourself a cup of tap water, I can usually just, it just, you can taste, it tastes like tap water and I don't, I don't love it. Um, Raj, what do you think? Do you have a preference on kitchen tap versus bathroom tap? I think, I think, uh, it's a great question. And I think, uh, the, the, uh, I'm blanking on the name, but the, the asker of the question, Dan, Dan, you know, ask something that Dan asked something that like is in my head that I didn't

even know, which is I do prefer the tap water. I think it's because kitchen is where food comes, food and beverage comes from, bathroom is where the food and beverage go, except it's done. I, I guess is what I'm thinking essentially. And so I have, you know, drank out of a bathroom tap here and there, but I, I think I would walk from my room to the kitchen tap to get that water. I think if I wasn't in a rush, yeah. Me too. And, and I used to be a wake up every night. I'm sleeping more soundly now, but there was a time when I'd like wake up in the middle of the night, always just, and I needed a glass of water. And that was always a trip to the kitchen for me, even though the bathroom was right there. I, I don't really drink bathroom water at home at all. The situation

where I would do that would be like in a hotel where like that's the one tap, but I don't love doing that either. I do, we do have a, you know, for a time we were a sparklets family and we were getting the water, the water jug delivery, like you will an office school or the same way Mitch has the arrowhead. And I just found that that was just like, I could not justify the cost plus the customer service was pretty bad. So it was just like, you don't do it. We did it for a, for a while, didn't you? We did it for a couple of years at our old apartment. And then when we moved, we were just like, we're not going to do this anymore. And, and you know, I've drank, I've had, I've had tap water stretches. I think tap water is fine. But what we have now is the pure filter, which is

like a Britta, but it's just like a better, it's like a better Britta. It's just like a, like the jug, here's the main thing with the pure. And this is not a, this is not branded content that dough boys can't be bought, but you can fill the pure with one hand, which the Britta, it's, you have to take the whole, the whole top off and like, what the hell are you doing with your other hand? All right. But it's, it's just a little bit more convenient because you can turn the tap on with your freehand and then you can fill it up just by flipping up the lid with your thumb. It's just a little bit of a better design and the filters seem to last a little bit longer. So, you know, if you haven't been satisfied with the Britta filter, I would, I would consider the

pure picture. It's a similar concept and that's been working out well for us. But yes, to address Dan's question, I want, I have a mental block. It might be the same. It might be exactly what Roger's saying. It might just be a psychological thing, but I have a mental block with the bathroom tap. The kitchen tap is, is where it's at for me. But hey, let us know what your, what your tap preference is. Hashtag. You know what, you know what Wally likes? Yeah. He's, he's a toilet man. Wally likes the toilet. Wally always trying to drink out of the toilet. I mean, I've now, I don't let him do it obviously, but there was like times where I would leave the bathroom door open and I was like, what the fuck is Wally doing? And he'll still go in there. I'll always close the

lid now, but he'll still go in there. He tries to get in that fucking toilet, Nick. He's trying to drink from the toilet. People, you know, cats like the toilet, dogs certainly like the toilet. I've heard in some cases that a small child will drink from the toilet. Yeah. I remember my next-door neighbor and friend, Colin, he was like, you can like drink from the toilet. Like even after you like take a shit, you can take, you can, all you have to do is like flush twice and you can drink from the toilet. And then he, and then he did take a shit and then flush twice and then he did drink from it. Why did he do that? What was he trying to prove? Did you offer him money, like a dollar to do it or he just did it? Yeah, I think he just did it. Wow. That's like a thing where you can just

never run for office. It doesn't matter if you did that when you're like seven. I was gonna say, he probably was like eight or nine. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's fair, but that's rough. But anyway, since you told me that, I've practiced it to this day. Two flushes and then two flushes. Two flushes, you're good to go. Let us know your tap preference, hashtag tapped out. And if you have a question or comment about the word of chain restaurants, shoot an email. It's a Doughboys podcast at gmail.com or leave us a voicemail at 830-GOTA. That's 830-463-684. 830-463-6844. To get the Doughboys double, our weekly bonus episode, join the Golden or Platinum Plate Club at patreon.com

slash Doughboys. Nick, I gotta quickly say, for listeners, I don't believe in the two flush rule, just so you're all there. We're all on the same page. I don't believe it works. Sounds like you were verifying it with scientific proof. Your friend had a call, I think. You crossed four of your fingers while you were saying that. You know I can barely cross one. Raj Desai, thank you for coming back. Thank you for joining the show, for reviewing Albertsons. Anything you'd like to plug at this time? I would say there's my Twitter feed, ad underscore Raj Desai. You can find

all Raj related content there, not much. Nothing going on. And you know what? There's a show I wrote for, a good talk with Anthony Jeslenick. It's on the Comedy Central app. The show is, I don't believe, coming back at all, but it was a good show. I had some funny stuff. I think it was all under the radar, so if you want to watch that. Check that out. Yeah, you rule, Raj. Thanks for being there. Thanks, Raj. Yeah, you bet. My pleasure. And hey, that'll do it for this episode of Doughboys. Until next time, for the Spoonman,

Mike Mitchell. I'm Nick Weiger. Nick, for the conclusion of Grocery Store Month. We'll see you next week. Wow. See ya. On the next Doughboys Double, we're opening up the feed bag. Again! You song Lou returns to feed us your supermarket queries for Friendly Green Grocer Mitch's Grocery Store Month. Get the Doughboys Double every Tuesday only at Patreon.com slash Doughboys. Sources for this week's intro are in the episode description. That was a hate gun podcast.