Doughboys - Long John Silver's with Mary Holland

Episode Date: June 11, 2015

Doughboys set a course for fried seafood institution Long John Silver's, with actress and comedian Mary Holland.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

15 Men on the Dead Man's Chest, Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum So goes the famed passage from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, the classic tale of swashbuckling and skull-duggery. In 1969, entrepreneur Jim Patterson opened a Cape Cod-style fish and chips restaurant in Lexington, Kentucky, pilfering its name from the famed antagonist of Stevenson's pirate novel. Over the next few decades, the fortunes of Patterson's fried seafood chain went up and down like a schooner in the choppy waves of the Caribbean, first expanding to over 1,000

locations, then retreating into bankruptcy in 1998, before being rescued at sea by fast food juggernaut Yum Brands in 2002, who subsequently sold it off like a plundered barrel of rum in 2011. Yet, like its peg-leg namesake, this battle-scarred franchise still sails on. This week on Doughboys, here's the scurvy tale of Long John Silver's. Oh, my God. Go, it's the Doughboyz, Doughboyz, Doughboyz! Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants.

I'm Nick Weigher. I'm here, alongside Mike Mitchell, who is laughing at me and mocking me. For anyone who says there is no art in the 21st century, they just got to listen to that. That was beautiful, that was really, I feel like that was as good as Treasure Island is as a book, I had to guess. Certainly as good as Treasure Planet, the Disney film. Wait, is that, wait, Treasure Planet? Yeah, they made like, it was like, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, I think, was the voice of the

Treasure Planet guy, and it was like this whole thing, you don't remember this? They had like, airships, and they were surfing on them? No, I don't like that at all. It was a thing, it was a movie, it was one of the 2D animated movie they think finally sunk Disney's 2D animation department. Oh, God, that's so sad. And after Atlantis, it was another one of those big budget disasters. I remember them up at Treasure Island, but I enjoyed that one.

Okay. Anyway. How are you doing, Mitch? I'm good, I'm good. I'm hungry today. You just came from the gym, correct? I just came from the gym, trying to keep up at it, you know, keep at it. I'm hungry a lot of the time, it's all I'm thinking of, but I gotta do it, and so I'm

gonna keep doing it. Today was like, it was one of those things where I was like, maybe I just won't go to the gym, and I was like, if I do that, I think I'm gonna throw all my diet food away and then just like start eating chili tonight or something and giving up, but I did it, and I'm happy that I did it. Well, good for you, I'm glad. Yeah, yeah. I just gotta get it, you know, I'm getting there.

A month of doing it will be good, I think. Once you make it a habit, you'll just be smooth sailing, you'll just keep going on from there. As you know, as I've brought up in this podcast, maybe it's time to address it. When I was in college, I rode crew, and it was like almost like I sent myself to like military school for two years, and that was like a lot, and I never, like it didn't bring confidence. I'm just more for health. I'm just trying to get a little bit more healthy.

I've had a tough couple of years for personal reasons, which we won't sat in the podcast listeners with, but I'm ready to just kind of become a healthier guy, you know what I mean? And, but also a part of my plan is to slim down just enough to start this cycle again. Like I want to slim down enough and then be like eat Carl's Jr. and pizza and everything that I love. Just sort of rebooting your body and then just fattening up again. I always feel bad for like, you know, when like in back in the day where they're like

to a fat person, they'd like have another slice of pie or whatever, I'd be like, what's wrong with that? Like, why are you making fun of him for like enjoying such a delicious thing or something? You know what I mean? Like, it's like go eat a pizza or something. It's like, good, he should go eat a pizza. It's delicious and good. What's better about your shitty like, oh God, shouldn't have gotten into this.

No, it's all right. Let's introduce our guest. We know her from Comedy Bang Bang. She's a member of the best improv group in LA in my opinion, Wild Horses and you'll soon see her on Blunt Talk on Stars. Mary Holland is here. Hi, Mary. Hello.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm very, very excited to be here. Oh boy. I agree with that endorsement. That is a funny group of people that you have there. Oh, thank you. That's great.

Thanks a lot. That's very nice to hear. So, Mary, tell us a little bit about where you're from and when you were growing up, what were kind of the chain restaurants you would eat at? Yeah. So, I grew up in Southwestern Virginia in a little tiny town called Galax, which is two hours outside of Roanoke, Virginia, if you've ever heard of it, it's about like 45 minutes or an hour from Blacksburg, Virginia, which is where Virginia Tech is, and it's situated.

It's nestled right in the Blue Ridge Mountains on the border of North Carolina. It's a really beautiful area, just Appalachia, you know, very nice. And you really painted a picture with a geography there. Yeah, I did. You really got into it. Are you also selling land? Yes, and actually property is going at really, really great prices right now. You guys want to get in on it, we can buy some land.

Yes, but it's lovely there, but very small, as I mentioned, and there were fast food chain restaurants in Galax. There was Wendy's, there was McDonald's, Pizza Hut, there were some local faves, too, but I would say that those three were the main ones that I went to as a child, but it was always a special treat to get fast food because both my parents were doctors and worked long hours at the hospital, but my mom still made a great effort to make home cooked meals and like give us all the nutrients we needed. So eating out at a fast food restaurant was like a special thing.

And I remember in elementary school, I remember saying to myself, this is the best day of my life. I was in the cafeteria in elementary school and it was like a half day or something of school and they were serving my favorite lunch, which I think was pizza. And I knew, my parents had told me that that night we were going to eat at McDonald's and I thought to myself, it doesn't get any better than this. Just the anticipation of McDonald's was enough for you to say this is the best day of my life. Yes, it really was.

Just the possibility of McDonald's to come. Wow, that's crazy. Oh my God, yeah. Anyway, so the fast food restaurants there were precious to me because I seldom got to experience them. And so my experiences with them have really made an impact on my memory. You mentioned school lunches. Were you, because I often ate at the cafeteria, but then about half the time, I'd say probably

40% of the time I brought a bagged lunch, were you guys cafeteria kids, were you bringing a sack from home? What were you doing? We were cafeteria kids. I remember actually, I think in elementary school, we did bring our own lunches from home, but going into middle school and high school, it was hot lunch. It was hot lunch, yeah, to really bring. I was a bad, I didn't bring later on, earlier on, I would have a bagged lunch.

And then I think my parents would go back and forth between getting bored of doing it. My dad was one of those guys who was always like, I would be like, it's moldy and throw something away. And he would be like, no, it isn't. I remember just specifically biting into moldy bread on more than one occasion. Probably like 10 times overall. Like in a sandwich or a parent's had prepared. Yes, yeah.

But yeah, no. So I always then at that point, I think I was like, I'd rather just do school lunch. But that paints a bad picture of my father. Define himself. Are you an only child? No, I have an older sister. Yeah. Are you an only child?

I have an older brother. So I think with the bagged lunch thing, I have an older brother and an older sister, and it was part of our chores to like make lunch for each other. Oh, my God. So we didn't run into. How did that go? Too much. It feels like that's like opportunities for peril.

Yeah. I feel like I did it most of the time. I don't, maybe I'm just remembering incorrectly, but I took pleasure in getting a little piece of paper and finding my brother and my sister and saying, what would you like for lunch? Oh, wow. And I would make them whatever they wanted. It also sounds like you had like a heavenly childhood. I'm just thinking of like the devilish, awful, like McDonald's shoving in my face and like

fighting, like kicking my sister and stuff. And you were in like a beautiful little galax, like crouched into the mountain. And I, yeah, this, it sounds nice. It sounds really nice. Well, no, there was terror and hardship and, you know, trauma, but yeah, not with food. That's what we want to hear on Doe Boys. So you, we came to you and we asked you for some, you know, what chain restaurants you want to talk about.

And one of the ones you presented to us that we're talking about today is Long John Silver's. What is your affinity for Long John Silver's? Long John Silver's was my first experience with seafood. It, I remember the location of the restaurant in Gaelax. It was right near the movie theater, which was also an obsession of mine. I tried to go to the movies all the time. And so knowing we were going that way, knowing we were going to Long John Silver meant maybe we'd go see a movie or if we saw a movie, maybe it meant Long John Silver.

But that was my first experience, I think with seafood was, was eating there. I love the name. I thought the name was really cool as a kid. Yeah. It's like you're eating at a pirate. I wonder why more like it, like, because the piracy thing is one thing, but I also wonder why more businesses don't just steal existing properties from the public domain because it feels like everyone knows like Long John Silver's people just know what it is already.

Well, it's just like, well, because this was published before 1919 or whenever the cutoff is you can just use it without paying anybody money, you know, it feels like a thing there would be opportunities to have like, I don't know, the fucking Scarlet Pimpernel or just take some character from the classic literature and build a franchise around them. Could you name something just like the Bible, like a nice big restaurant called the Bible and people would go and eat there. I don't see why you couldn't. Yeah, you could if you wanted to.

Or Mark Twain. Yeah. You can call a restaurant Mark Twain. I like that. Mark Twain would be a good, I feel like Mark Twain would be a good mascot. Like he could be like the Colonel from the dog and fried chicken. Yeah. You'd be fun.

Cranky old man. Mark Twain. That's right. Riffer boat? Wasn't he, didn't he used to be like, I remember watching like Old Clay Mation and things and I felt like he was, didn't Mark Twain like, uh-oh, maybe I shouldn't go down this road because everyone's gonna think I'm a weirdo and this doesn't exist. But wasn't there some show where he was like, claymation and he had like a flying ship?

Yeah, yeah. Mark Twain. It was like a claymation special from probably like 1989 or something. Yeah. You might have caught this online. I don't remember what it was called. It was really weird though. It was, yeah, it was when the California raisins were big and they were like, oh, we could

use this as an opportunity to get children. When are they not big? That's true. Nick listens to the California raisins when I saw them on his carton. I think they improve upon the original versions. It's like the chipmunks that way. Yeah, that was a weird cartoon they made a little bit. I also watched too.

I watched like a weird claymation, what's the store, Rip Van Winkle that was like from the 80s. I watched it like recently for the first time. Oh yeah. I think I've seen that one. It was really bad. I was like, I watched it as like they were like, this award-winning children's thing and I watched it.

I was just like, this is terrible. It was really like slow and boring. I don't know. I didn't get it. That's why I wonder why they don't do things, like you were saying, do things like that more so often because maybe it was just that pirates were pirates, like I know, I wanted to say like Smith, what is it, Swiss family Robinson or whatever, but it's not Smith. But that was much earlier than, right, wasn't that like the 50s or maybe it was right around

the same time. Maybe the 1950s and 60s was like a huge time for piracy or something. It was, yeah. There was like kind of that swashbuckling era, but I think that was like starting in like the films of the 30s and then it kind of went on from there. Yeah. Yeah. Or just doing plays on the famous names of characters from literature like Chip Van

Crinkle and it's a chip place where they serve different kinds of chip. Well, Nick can back this up. I'm always complaining that there's not enough chip stores around specific chip stores. I think there is like, if you did a chip themed restaurant, I've seen a fry themed concept kind of like. Yes. There's a food truck that's like fries. But freshly made chips, I think that there could be something there.

Now, this kind of goes into a thing that I think is just maybe flawed about Long John Silvers in general. It's just maybe people just don't want seafood as fast food ever. You know what I mean? Yeah. What chains, you know what I mean? What is the cutoff? I think I mentioned this before, like IHOP is an international house of pancakes selling

like something on a specific food. We just Long John Silvers, fish just isn't what people want to, after a movie they're not like, let's go get a fried battered fish, but in your case that was. In my case that was what I was thinking. Yeah. But I didn't know that that wasn't, I mean as a kid you don't know that stuff, but you don't, like I never in my mind was I thinking, oh seafood's probably best fresh because it's you know, I loved that everything was battered.

I loved that it was all fried and I would say that menu is exclusively fried items except for coleslaw maybe. It really is like, because you mentioned a second ago that it was your first experience with seafood and I think for me too it was like fried fish is how I originally consumed it. It was like a, it wasn't until later in life, well you're from New England so it's probably a little different, but for me it wasn't until later until I had like a salmon filet and was like, oh that's a thing you can eat.

My mom explicitly banned fish sticks not for health reasons. We ate all sorts of unhealthy shit, but she had like a weird aversion to it because her like growing up her mom insisted on, my grandma insisted on her having, the family had fish sticks every Friday for like religious reasons because it was the, what's the Friday thing you do? You don't eat. No, you don't eat meat. You don't eat meat on Friday, but then her mom also like didn't like fresh seafood so

they only had fish sticks. She had it like every Friday of her life growing up and she just didn't want to see him ever again. Oh yeah. So for me like going to a Long John Silver which I went to a few times as a kid that was a treat of like, oh I get to have fish sticks or basically what fish sticks are which I never get to have. I see for me that yeah like you said New England it was completely different.

My mom would make a great baked hat and we had fresh seafood all the time. She would catch it herself. She would catch it herself. Yeah. She was a lot like Long John Silver in a lot of ways and so yeah we would eat like fish over my grandma's house and stuff like that and Quincy also has like, I would always get fried fish because I was a little wimpy boy who couldn't like handle real fish and I was a baby.

So I'd get fish and chips which were great and it was from like, there was this place Burke Seafood and there was a lot of other places in Quincy and also they had like fried clams and fried scallops and all that sort of stuff. But there was not a Long John Silver in sight like in, I don't even know if there was one in Massachusetts honestly, I never ever, this was my first time eating it one and I never even really seen one before. Where did you grow up Nick? I'm from Southern California.

I'm from Lakewood which is right next to Long Beach. Yeah, because I thought Long John Silver's was a primarily Southern chain but I guess it's not but it was, it started in Kentucky. It's from that area, if you look at like the regional map but they're all over the country and there was a time when there were more of them. I remember for whatever reason I have an association and maybe it's just water but I have like a memory of going there after we went to a water park. We went to like raging waters and then we went to Long John Silver's.

They definitely existed in Southern California and they definitely still exist. They're just scattered a handful of locations. So what was your, what was your, what do you like to get there? What's like your favorite order? I love their hush puppies. I could probably eat a whole meal of their hush puppies with butter. Oh my God, they're so good. I always got the same thing.

I would get one of the combos and I think, I can't remember exactly if I got the two pieces of chicken or the two pieces of fish but I would get two pieces of one of those things, fries, hush puppies, side of coleslaw and soda, I think they had Pepsi there. But and this speaks to like how clueless I was about that even being seafood. Chicken and fish, I was like, they are the same thing. Chicken and shrimp are just little chickens and like it's all, it's all chicken. It's almost an easier way to think about it honestly to get yourself, if you have any, if you're a kid and you have any holdups about that, just to think of it all as chicken because

shrimp as a kid is a weird and still as an adult, it's a weird thing to eat, I feel like or lobster or something, it's like little, they're bug like creatures that we catch from the ocean. Yeah, I never knew anything about shrimp. I just knew that they, they were little curled pieces of chicken. That's what I thought they were, I had no idea. I remember being really scared by shrimp tails, like I didn't want anything to do with them. If they, I was like, I didn't know what like, it just looked weird to me.

That's, oh yeah, okay, yeah, I, they are weird, I agree with that. The heart, the shell. Yeah, the little tail part at the end that's not edible. Yeah. I was just like, I don't want anything to do with that, like a popcorn shrimp I can handle and now of course it's fine, but I just remember that being a weird little kid thing of mine. Are you sure? We have some shrimp tails here today.

Yeah, I think all seafood is a little bit, even growing up in New England as a kid I still was like, seafood is weird, like we would buy lobsters and then people, I told people this and they were kind of like, thought it was a little fucked up. But actually now that I've heard your story about how you went to a water park and then went along John Silver's and your family was kind of weirdly trying to like dominate the sea that way or something, I don't feel as bad anymore. We'd like, we'd race lobsters, like we put lobsters on the ground and then you'd race them.

Wow. Yeah, not a lot of like people who love animals are going to be mad by hearing this, but when I was young and you would buy lobsters, you buy them alive, they're supposed to be alive when you get them and then you'd put them on the counter and they would like crawl, you know, in reality, trying to crawl for their lives to safety and then you put them in the water. I don't think I could ever do that. It's fucked up and also eating lobster, which I do like, I do like lobster, but it is the

sort of thing of like sitting at the, I remember sitting at the table with my grandparents and like just a whole family like ripping apart these things that were alive, like within the hour and then you boil them and then you're just like ripping them in two and ripping their hands open and like pulling the meat out. And my grandpa kind of had like close to what dementia he had, oxygen deficiency. So he would eat like all the nasty shit. It was, it was very, it was very much like a crazy scene. So you like, you'd race the lobsters first and then you'd eat them afterwards.

Yes. And then we, the lobster, that one we'd let live, we sent them back to the ocean. Is that true? Jesus. I bet so. Oh God. We ate all the lobsters. Even if they won, they died.

It's like, it's like in Rome, ancient Rome. Do you think there was a small bit of like his like crude crustacean brain that was like thinking if I win this, I can win my freedom like, and then, and then you just completely like, and then he's going into the mouth of the fat seven year old kid. Yeah. He's dying either way. Every time I hear more about your childhood, Mitch, you turn into more of like a caricature of a Bostonian.

Oh God. This is crazy. And like right now you're wearing like this bright red, red socks, putting in a red sock hat. I thought about that and I was like, but I'm proud of being a Bostonian guy. I have to, just like you're proud of your town and it seems like I'm proud of my weird place where we killed lobsters. I think Tom Brady is innocent.

I don't have to talk about that. You mentioned something about just like all the, you know, like you're tearing apart the lobster and stuff. And with a lot of seafood, if it's prepared, if it's more fresh, you are getting that experience like getting your whole, a whole fish with a head or whatever in the tail, like you're really getting like, oh, I'm eating a living creature. Whereas with like, with like long john silvers, the way it's presented, it's like, yeah, it's like a little yellow strip that's deep fried and you can barely even tell it's meat.

Yeah. You can't identify it at all. It's just, it's just this golden, crispy, golden, crispy color. It looks so delicious. But yeah, you can't, I think you're right. Like with seafood, the, you are so aware of what, where this thing came from because you have to eat it fresh. Otherwise you're going to get sick, but yeah, not with long, and you still can get sick from

seafood no matter what, like just any seafood can just get you sick, which is the weird thing about eating it. But when I was younger, I never was big on like a oysters or anything like that. Like shooters, you know, like my mom and sister loved those and I was never, and now I do eat them. But I never, I was so grossed out by stuff like that and even scallops and, and a few other things I was in muscles, I'm not big on those, but it's so big back East. Like a, and it's, and it's good, like it's the best place you can get seafood, the Northeast.

But muscle, just like stuff that like, I'm like, how can you even enjoy sucking it down? And now I don't enjoy the like oyster meat or whatever. I just like that there's sauce on it, you know, like that's all it's good for. So it's like tofu with soy sauce, which I ate a lot in high school. Yeah. I just wanted to drink the soy sauce, but I couldn't do that. So I had to have tofu. I was always always like, I always want to, if I have any dressing leftover, I always

like want to sip on it. My thing I would do as a, as a heavier kid is I would take, I would just get a box of croutons and some blue cheese dressing and then I would just pour the dressing like into a cup and then dip the croutons and then just eat that as a snack. What the fuck? That's so good. That's so, it's much of a fat kids thing. I've never done anything like that.

And I'm cursed in my chubby body and you're skin thin, thin, thin man now. And I, I didn't do any of that stupid stuff. I just, I loved pizza. It really was, yeah. It was taking, when I think about it, I was taking like just the unhealthful elements of a salad and then just getting rid of everything else and just, just, I'm just going to eat the croutons and the dressing and yeah, I did add pounds to my, to my little frame. So Mary, what do you, how do you, cause people like, there's tartar sauce, there's the, the,

the malt vinegar, there's even the ketchup. How do you eat your, your fried fish? Malt vinegar through and through. I, I don't like, I'll tolerate tartar sauce, but I love malt vinegar and it was a, it was the same thing that we were just talking about with wanting just to have the dressing. I would have totally just had the vinegar. Yeah. I, I love the, the taste of it.

I love sour things as a kid and I would just douse my chicken. With malt vinegar. Oh boy. I'm pretty sure it was chicken. I was on board with everything you said up until the chicken with vinegar, which is still kind of good. Yeah. Why does it, it is weird that like mentally that feels different even though it's basically

the same thing. It's the same flavor profile. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe cause flip fish is just kind of like lighter and chicken is just a little bit thicker or something. It just, it feels right with fish for whatever reason, but I'm, I'm, I'm a vinegar, I'm a vinegar guy myself.

They, they have that song fish and chips and vinegar for a reason. It makes sense. It's good. What's that song? Maybe it's a weird old New England song, which I definitely, it goes like fish and chips and vinegar, vinegar. Oh my God. Oh, what a beautiful singing voice you have.

I'm already devastated that I started singing this vinegar, fish and chips of vinegar, vinegar. Yum. I think it's like, you know that song? I know that. Bottle of pop, two bottle of pop, three bottle of pop and then like different people are singing each parts. Don't throw your trash in my back. Oh yeah.

But never fish and chips and vinegar. Oh, well that's in New England at least. That's a thing. Anyways, I think that there's a straight jacket waiting for me somewhere. We think you're crazy, but anyone from Massachusetts listening is like tearing up. When's the last time you went to, to Long John Silver's, right? Oh my gosh. Well, I was hoping to do so before we recorded this, but as we know, there's few locations

and they're pretty far away. I think probably the last time I ate there must have been before my family moved from Gaelax. They now, when I was 17, they moved from Gaelax to Franklin, Tennessee, which is just outside of Nashville and yeah, and I haven't seen a Long John Silver's in my experience of Franklin or Nashville, so I think it must have been when I was just a teenager still. Yeah, so it's been a little while, but I think you looked at the menu online and Mitch and I went recently and you were saying, I have a little bit of a memory of it from a kid,

but you would certainly know better, but the menu seems largely unchanged from my memory. Oh my gosh, yes. And I wanted to bring that up too because just perusing it online, it's so, it hasn't changed a bit and like, you know how some fast food restaurants are modified things to get more healthier options in there. I don't think Long John Silver made any changes. Not only that, but their website, it's like stumbling upon my old like GeoCities web Yes, Angel Fire.

It's like, yeah, it's like, this website seems like it was like one of the first websites ever put up online and it just hasn't changed. It still has like a little counter number of visitors. It's so, like the, you click on the menu and then it says, combos, two chicken, two fish, six shrimp, clams, a crab cake and that's it, like that's the menu, but they're all combos, like you can't get anything alone. I don't think. Yeah, it's with fries.

The portions were, were pretty big, I'd say. I got a platter. So, yeah. Well, Mitch and I went, we did a journey out from the Los Angeles metropolitan area. There aren't a lot of Long John Silvers, but we found one in Gardena, California, which was, I think, what was it for you? An hour drive was 50 minutes for me. Yeah, it turned into about an hour drive and it made me rethink the Doughboy's podcast

in every way because I don't, it was, it was so, so long in traffic and everything, but it was just also so long to just get to Long John Silver slash Kentucky Fried Chicken. That's the other thing. Oh, right. I was contemplating that because, and I looked around and they're all hybrids because at least in the Southern California immediate vicinity, Yum Brands, which owns KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut, they owned Long John Silvers for a time. They converted a lot of Long John Silvers into KFC's, KFC's slash Long John Silvers.

And then they, they flew, they fled town, but these are still standing as like these co-branded restaurants. Oh, how interesting. Yeah. I know that. So, we went to one of those. We were, and I was in, Mitch, you were, you were running late and so I was just sitting by myself in an, in an un-air conditioned KFC slash Long John Silvers that was like

an hour drive from my home for like a half hour, just being like, this is, I don't know what we're doing here, this is, I don't know why we're doing this. But then you showed up. We had a delightful meal. So, we had the, you were, talk about the combo you got. So I got the, the fish and shrimp combo, the fish and shrimp platter, I should say, which came with two pieces of fish and I think it was six pieces of shrimp. Six shrimps, yeah.

And the, the shrimp, I wanted popcorn shrimp, there was no popcorn shrimp. So they said, oh, you're just going to have to deal with various shrimp. I said, that's fine. But then the shrimp came, they were deep fried anyways. I thought that they would just be like grilled or whatever, whatever they do, boiled shrimp or something. And, but they were also deep fried. And I got to say, I loved, for a guy from New England, I, I feel like I have a pretty

good taste in fish and fried fish. The fish patties were good and the fried shrimp was actually pretty good too. It was, I was, I was, I'd have to say shocked if I, if I had to pick a word, I was, I was, I was shocked that it was that good. Yeah. There were all sorts of red flags because, you know, we ordered it and then the, the lady who was clearly used to getting only KFC orders was like, okay, Leila, it takes a little while.

So like, we, I think we waited for like 20 minutes or something. It was, it was an order amount of time for a fast food meal. I got the, and we shared, we shared a little bit. She was kind of like, Hey, weirdo, you're, you guys are like the two weirdos who have ordered long John Silver's here today. And you told her that you drove an hour. I got the, I got the two chicken combo, which was your go to, I guess they're called chicken planks.

Is that something you remember? Yes, chicken planks. Oh my God. Yes. Oh yeah. Oh, you just stroked my, my little memory part of my brain. That's amazing. Chicken planks.

Creative. Another sea. It's like, this isn't fish, but we'll associate it with piracy somehow. They're kind of like, I guess that's kind of in the shape of a plank, a pirate walk. It's like in a weird triangle shape. But that's so funny because again, as a kid, I'm like, yeah, these are planks. Like there was no, there was no like, Oh, planks, like the planks on a, you know, on a dock or whatever.

Um, it was like, these are chicken planks. They are the same thing as chicken fingers. And I can use the word planks in for fingers whenever I need to, like, Mary, I had to applaud you. You've become much more intelligent. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I really appreciate that.

Um, we had the, uh, so I get the chicken combo, the chicken planks and the thing, you know, one thing I, another thing we were dealing with it because it was a hybrid restaurant is, um, they didn't have the long John Silver's fries. They just had the potato wedges from KFC, which, which Mitch observed very quickly. We, she asked if we want a potato wedges and Mitch was like, wait, is that from KFC? And she was like, yeah, it's like Mitch called not a bull and got us money in rings. Um, I think the onion rings were pretty good. The onion rings were good, but I don't, I, they were, I think all onion rings are going

to be pretty good. These ones tasted like funions. They were, they did have like a funion quality. Have you had them before? I've never had the onion rings there, no. They were thick and hard and hot and fresh. I mean, fresh as they could be. Like they just came out of the fryer or whatever, but they were like, they tasted just like

funion rings. They were so thick and like, like you said, like you could just feel like grease going around like your lips and face. Like it was, it was all, it was too much. There really is something to like it. Do you remember that from Mary for just, just getting super greasy? Cause that's what I was kind of taken aback by. I've just like, I felt like I just had like a goatee of just like oil.

Yeah. I don't remember that on my face, but I remember like, cause they, they serve them in, in these little, um, like cardboard trays with a, uh, tissue paper or something. And then they put all the food on that tissue paper. And I remember like when I would eat, I would notice these giant splotches of dark gray, like where the grease was. But as a kid, that wasn't, that wasn't weird to me. And I didn't notice it on my face either.

I could also be just a horrendous slob. I mean, I also don't rub my food all over my face, so maybe that's the difference. You were like snorting and making pig sounds. I thought it was extreme, but you, it also sounds like you had the, like the, the, the glory days of long John Silver's. I think that what we were dealing with, there was no nice little basket. Instead the thing that there was a plate and then they put fried little pieces of like extra batter underneath.

That's like a real thing, right? Oh yeah. So, so this is good. Yeah. This is a good thing. I was reading on this a line because I was like, I didn't remember this. And when we got these, I was like, I was like, oh yeah, these weird little crumblies that are just, if you haven't eaten there, it's basically like all, basically everything that's

left over in a deep fryer is what it feels like. All these little pieces of just fried dough that aren't attached to anything. And they just give you, they're all about like the, the size of an individual piece of breakfast cereal or the size of bugs. And they just sort of scatter them underneath your, your entree and they're just sitting there and I guess you can eat them or they're a garnish or. Yeah. I, I, that's where I really went nuts with the malt vinegar.

I used to just make those babies swim in the malt vinegar and I would eat them and it was heaven. Yeah. That's one of my favorite parts about Long John Silver, I think, is that they really, they don't skimp on the badness of what they give you. They like, oh yeah. They totally give you what you. They embrace that.

They embrace it. They give you extra. Yeah. It's so nice. They just put it for just like going all in. I feel like the same way when we were talking about Taco Bell of like, you go to Taco Bell, they're not fucking around. You know, they're giving you something unhealthy that is going to make you feel bad and they're

just sort of like, just, you know, I like Carl's Jr. does the same thing. I like that. Be proud of it. I mean, if that's what you want, that's kind of what you want. You want to get. Also, I want to quickly ask you, yeah, let's hear it, man. You were a Tartar guy or are you a, I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't trying to play Koi. I just didn't.

I'm not sure you want to. Actually, I'm, I'm team Tartarsauce. I love, I love Tartarsauce. But see, I love like creamy stuff. Like I'll prefer ranch on fries or any sort of cream based thing, a blue cheese on a salad. Blue cheese and croutons, we remember. The, yeah, no, Tartarsauce was, I think, the only way I could eat fish when I, until

I was probably like 15. Okay. The, I asked actually, because I was trying to find out and there's apparently some dispute as to what those little crunchy things are called. But I saw Krispies, Crunchies, Crumbs, and also Crumbly's. Crumbly's. Yeah. Um, yeah, I don't think they had official name.

I think I called them something along the lines of Crunchies or Krispies or Crumbly's. Well, it feels like a thing that you just can't get a standalone version of anyway. Like you can't go in there and be like, give me like a tray of Crumbly's. Like, uh, I bet they would give that to you. They possibly would, but it's not enough, it can't be an official menu item, right? All right. I don't know. It comes with the, I don't know if you can order it.

Maybe there's a secret menu. It's like a bed. It's, instead of a bed of lettuce, they rest your meal on a bed of Crumbly's. That's it. Well, through all my research, they weren't an official thing and my research was basically nothing. But I do want to say that I don't think that those could be an actual real menu item. I don't think they're a real menu item, but I think they are part of the plating process

at long times. It's a secret menu. Well, it's kind of like when popcorn chicken, oh, I say popcorn weird, popcorn chicken came out. Like that felt like it was like, oh, this just feels like crumbled chicken, like you had chicken on a rack and all the pieces that fell through are the popcorn chicken. You know what I mean? It's mostly batter with maybe like a flake.

A flake of chicken. Yes, exactly. Like I felt like those were kind of what those were. They were just whatever was collected in the little fry pan. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the origin of those was. Yeah. It's definitely like, it is weird when they started making things smaller than nuggets.

It was just sort of like, I don't know. Or like chicken fries, they're just like misshapen and just like, I don't, it's a little skittish about that kind of stuff. It's like you can push it a little bit, like I feel like the fish fillets you get at Long John Silver is like, okay, I'll buy that. But then if they made it like a weird like, like a boomerang shape or something like that, you'd be kind of like, wait, what is this? This isn't fish anymore.

Yeah. I might like that, but I know what you're saying. I think that is, like it just seems unnatural and it is. It's just batter that's fried up, but they were, they were all right. They were tasty. Oh man. Yeah. Did you, Mary, do you remember they had a thing at this location?

I guess they have them at all locations, but it's a, it's a physical bell by the exit that you ring this bell for good service. It's like the captain's bell. Oh my God. I, oh, I feel like I would have gone nuts on that as a kid. I don't, they must not have had one at the, the branch that we had in Gaelax. There was one at this one and I rang it and I felt like the adult men were annoyed by it.

I rang it up. What about the adult women? Did they enjoy it? Well, they were, I say specifically, yeah, the adult women were really into it. I got quite a few numbers on the way out. Um, no, there were, there were, there were two guys specifically by the door who I think like turned and looked at me and gave me a look like you're 32. Get the fuck out of here.

That's for children. And also it didn't seem like the employee, like we were talking about how like the employees, I don't think really liked, they were like, what was that noise probably and then they went back to work. Yeah. They gave, they really gave us nothing. It's like a cold stone. You give the tip and they give you a song or something, even if it's half hearted, there's

a, there's a response, but here there was, there was just like, they were just totally cold. Yeah. Well, I also feel like maybe the experience and the, the dedication on the part of the employees to give you the full long John experience, I wonder if it's tempered or diluted by the fact that it's a shared, you know, location with KFC. I also think, like you said, like they, they were a little surprised when you ordered from the long John side of the menu.

I think in Galax, like because there was not much around, people went to these restaurants a lot. Long John Silver, I remember being almost always packed, you know, Wendy's too and McDonald's. It was like, that's where people ate. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I went to Jamaica in 2000 into, it was actually the 2000 New Year's from 1999 to 2000 and they had just put like, there was a McDonald's and they just put like a

KFC and, and like, there would be such huge crowds around them because there were new places. It would be like out the door. And I didn't really see any of that until I got out here of like fast food places having like such huge lines and maybe because there were just more of them back where I grew up or something. But like, out here, like, you know, in and out or something or places like that just have lines around the block or when Chick-fil-A opened, it was like, like, I think that was like, you couldn't even drive like on sunset near it was.

Well, I lived, I lived two blocks from the only Dunkin' Donuts in California in Santa Monica and when that opened and that opened last year, that was a zoo for about two weeks. It was just, you know, lines around the block. I think people were waiting two hours for Dunkin' Donuts. That's insane. And I think, I guess it's just all the people who, you know, used to live on the East Coast and have moved out to LA and can't have this thing they used to have as kids and now there's there's a way to fulfill that craving.

But yeah, it is weird when these chains become like, kind of sensations or sort of local hangouts. Yeah. Do you, so would you do a movie and Long John Silver's? Yeah. I, because we would be on that side of town and usually it was because we were going to the movies or something. Do you remember any specific movie followed by Long John Silver's, you know, this is maybe

the most impossible thing to recall. Mm-hmm. Oh boy. Well, there was a McDonald's right by the movie theater too. So. You know, it could have been either McDonald's or Long John Silver, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Secret of the Ooze. Okay.

I think was followed by a trip to Long John Silver's. Okay, great. That's a great night for a kid. Oh. I mean, it's arguably the best night of my life. The best day of my life was the day I knew I'd be going to McDonald's. Um, let's talk, let's talk hush puppies a little bit. You mentioned this was your favorite, favorite item.

We had the hush puppies. What did you think of the hush puppies, Mitch? So I didn't have hush puppies a lot growing up, so I don't know them that well. To me, they were just kind of weird fried bread things. I didn't even know what to taste because there wasn't too much taste to them, but then I like dipped them in stuff and I was like, these are good enough. I was really, I was really in this, there's some Southern food that reminds me of this where I'm just like, there's not too much taste to this, but people like love this,

like grits or something or hush puppies reminded me kind of that where I'm like, I just feel like I'm eating like a kind of a toasty hot bread or, but I, but I said, I thought they were tasty, you know. Yeah. But please, they're good, right? Yes, they're, they're very, they're very good, but they, they, they, they kind of baffle me a little bit. Well, I, now hush puppies are not a New England thing.

Is that correct? No, not that, no, not that I had. I mean, they, they couldn't be, and I'm being just completely oblivious to them, but. No, I feel like that's like a, like a, my family, we, every summer we went to Holden Beach in North Carolina, which was right next door to Wilmington, North Carolina. And hush puppies were at every restaurant. It was, it's like, I wonder if it is a, if that's a Southern thing or Southern seafood thing specifically.

I don't know about like Louisiana or the, in the Cajun seafood areas, but yeah, but I feel in North Carolina, in those beaches, it was, everybody had hush puppies. For me, the experience, the, the fried dough, having it with butter, it's, it strikes this lovely balance of being sweet and savory, like it feels like something, like cornbread. I think a lot of, a lot of my memories of the hush puppies are that they tasted so much like cornbread. It is like a crispier cornbread. That's kind of what I got from it.

Yeah. Yeah. I would, cause, cause we didn't, or at least they, in their limited condiment selection, they didn't have butter there. So ours we were having with, I rub mine a little tartar sauce or a little ketchup cause they were a little dry, but I imagine with butter that would improve it quite a bit. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the only way I've had them. I feel like fried dough or something is big in New England. And now I'm just like, it is just kind of similar. Like would you get, would you get like a side of hush puppies on the beach or something? It would just be like a little bag of hush puppies. Is that what it was? Yeah. Well, the, the beach we went to, there was, the restaurants were like, see like crab restaurants

and that kind of thing. And you could just order a side of hush puppies for the table. Yeah. Or they would come with the meal, but it was. So it's not like fried dough in the way of like, it's not like a dessert thing that there'll be a stand for hush puppies. No. Okay.

Okay. Not in my experience. Interesting. Yeah. It's more of an app than a dessert, right? Yeah. Or it's, you could think of it like a dinner roll or something like that. Like a side.

Okay. Like a side. Yeah. Interesting. All right. Yeah. I truly, I didn't realize how limited my knowledge was on hush puppies. But, hey, any dough boys listeners out there, let us know where there's good ones

in California. Oh yeah. I'd love to try. I'd love to find that out. Some hush puppies. That's a great, that's a great ask, Mitch. Yeah. Sorry.

I think I would be curious to find out if the Long John Silver hush puppy is cornbread. Because I think it tastes a lot like that. So I'd be curious to know if that's what that is. I imagine it's corn based, right? Yeah. It tastes like it's got corn in it. Like a, yeah. Something.

Yeah. I don't know. I honestly don't really know what they are. I just know they're little balls and they're usually pretty yummy. And also they were, because they were the least fried thing that, besides my coleslaw, they were the least fried thing, because the onion rings were too battered. Yes. And I didn't think they were that great.

I didn't think the onion rings were that great, but the hush puppies were just kind of like, they seemed like there wasn't like inches of batter on top of them, which is nice. Yeah. Yeah. And Mary, I know you have a lot of affection for the chicken planks, but in my estimation of what I had there of the three mains, I like them, but I think I prefer the fish and the shrimp. And I don't know what your assessment was, but...

That was kind of my whole thing about that place. I'll just quickly sum it up. The fish and shrimp were surprisingly good, especially for this place, this kind of crappy Long John slash KFC in the middle of California. Well, it's just chicken. The fish and shrimp are both chicken. It's true. It's true.

It's very... It's just forms of chicken. I was... The funny thing is, is that I thought the chicken was gross, and I removed a piece of the batter and it looked kind of like veiny and grossy, and I didn't really eat too much of it. And I love fried, any sort of fried chicken. And it's also good to note that it was different from KFC fried chicken strips or anything like that.

It was its own thing. Yeah. They definitely had the LJS branded chicken fingers there. But yeah, I do think if you go to one of those hybrid restaurants and you're craving chicken, honestly, I would go with the KFC chicken. Just because based on this visit, I'm just not sure what the quality level is of the Long John Silver's ones at these co-branded restaurants. And it just had so much of that batter, like the other stuff.

But the fish and the shrimp were well done, and then my sides, like the coleslaw was swimming in kind of mayo and it wasn't that great, and it was kind of gross. And the onion rings, I was so-so in those Krispies, I could grow to be a bigger fan of them, but they weren't my favorite thing. And then I ate also a really hot pepper that made me cry. Oh yeah, this was, and this isn't a feature, I think this was unique to this individual franchise, but they had these hot peppers, like these giant pickled jalapenos. And Mitch grabbed one as a pregame meal, or a pregame snack.

And yeah, you had quite the, I feel like you had quite the experience trying to down that. It was really, really, really hot. It was a pickled jalapeno, I think. And I thought that I wanted to eat it because I thought it was a part of a Long John Silver thing. I don't think it was, I think they just had it. Not at all.

No. It was some guys just jar of pickled jalapenos, and he left at them. It was also the only, like besides the coleslaw, which was covered in soupy mayo, was the only green thing. Well, they have green beans, but they are not so much green as much as a muted olive color. Like, they definitely can't come from a can. Have you had them before?

I don't think I, no, I think I always got the same thing whenever I went to Long John Silver, didn't try many of the other things, but I saw that they were on the menu, and I remember. And at KSC, too, I feel like if you get green beans, they're that same lovely, not fresh hue. Well, the jalapeno was nice. It burned my mouth very much, and it laughed as I ate it like a dog would. And that was kind of it.

I was thinking about getting the green beans, but I was happy I didn't because the coleslaw was kind of a bad experience. Yeah, I feel like it's just go all in. If you're going to LJS, just go with the fried stuff and just, that's a cheat meal or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, just get fish and shrimp and fries if you can or something like that. Get the KFC wedges now that I think about it. It would have been a nice meal with just those three.

But also, one last thing, hot sauce on fried fish. Fan or not a fan? What do you think? No, I'm not a fan of that. I tried it a little bit, and I kind of liked it. It's close to vinegar in a lot of ways, so I was kind of into it. I feel like you had to, it was the KFC branded hot sauce, so I feel like you contaminated your meal.

I did kind of feel like I cheated. That's true. Nick, I wish you hadn't brought that up. So let's go ahead and come up with our verdict on Long John Silver's. So we're going to go ahead and rate this restaurant, each sort of give our individual opinion on a scale of one to five forks, one being the lowest, five being the highest. We know how numbers work. And Mary, I'll let you go first.

So you can go ahead and give it a little summation and then give your ruling. Yeah, to me, I have nothing but fond memories of Long John Silver. I'm a big fan of not only the food that they have on their menu. I love the simplicity of it. I love that they really own up to the fact that fried foods is their thing. Love the crumblies. There's such nice nuance to how they serve their food. And it also has a lot of sentimental meaning for me.

So I'm going to go ahead and give Long John Silver four forks because my memory of it is that the taste is very good. And I just love all the little personality that they add to their dishes. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. Well, I've pretty much given all my thoughts on Long John Silver's. I will say that I tried two new sodas there that I've never tried, the Tropicana Twister

Soda and the Miranda Strawberry Soda. And they were pretty good. But besides that, a little too battered, the fish and shrimp are done well, though. So I hate to do this. I'm going to give it two and a half forks, but with a golden spoon for good fish and shrimp. What is this golden spoon? All right, I'll allow it.

I like Long John Silver's. I mean, it's a fish and chips restaurant. If you don't like fish and chips, I feel like there's no reason to go there. However, I feel like in that sense, it's kind of a one-trick pony. It doesn't have like sandwiches or salads or anything on the menu that's going to interest you beyond the fried fish and chips or fries experience that you get there. But if you stick with that and that's something you enjoy, I think you'll have a nice experience. But I got to be honest, conceding, taking a concession to reality, in a lot of the country,

the only Long John Silver franchises you're going to have access to are these KFC slash Long John Silver's. And you just can't quite get the full experience there based on this visit. And for that reason, I'm going to have to give Long John Silver's a paltry two forks. Wow. Two and a half forks and two forks. That's our lowest rating yet. But see, we didn't get the Gaelax experience of Long John Silver's.

Right, I know. And I think that that sounds like almost a five-fork experience to me. Absolutely. I would love to go. If there was an authentic Long John Silver's, I think we're talking a different ball game. But we don't have access to one. And I think that's what a lot of people in this country are going to be experiencing. It kind of breaks my heart.

And that's why I gave it the golden spoon for the great job in the fish and the shrimp cooking. Yeah. Well, that's all right. Those are our thoughts on Long John Silver's. That'll do it for our discussion of this week's restaurant. It's time for a new segment. We're going to use an app I got.

Let me try that again. Why did I say a app? A app. We're going to use an app I got to generate a new chain restaurant of our own. This is chain-storming. All right. So as I mentioned to you before we started, Barry, this is our first time trying this. This might go poorly.

We're just going to see. We're going to see if it ends up being an interesting piece of content or if this feels like an improv warm-up. We'll see. But I've got this app called Your World that I'm going to use to randomly pick a country. And we'll let you decide when I'll pick a country, randomly pick a country. You can decide if we go with this one or if we want to spin again. And then I guess we'll give it two spins, however many spins we want.

Let's fuck it. Let's say two spins. I did not think this through. This is great. I did not. I love being. I did not figure out how this was going to work at any time. I love being in the experimentation of it.

All right. We'll get a country. We'll get a country. We'll get a country. We'll pick one that we like and then we'll brainstorm what a new chain restaurant would be. And we'll see if we think it would be worth having. Okay, great.

Cool. So I'm going to start spinning a little bit of a, this is me spinning here. And Mary, when you're ready, you just tell me to stop. Stop. Malta. Stick with it. We're going to stick with Malta. Do we know anything about the cuisine of Malta?

Isn't it Mediterranean? I think it's an, yeah, I think, I want to say it's a Mediterranean island. I want to say it's one of those like micro states that's kind of in, as part of Europe. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So I guess we'll be talking about, I don't know, to me this feels like a little bit more of an upscale place.

Okay. Yeah, I could totally see that. More upscale. Definitely. But I imagine, because I think this is true of all those Mediterranean islands, there's a lot of tourism. There's a lot of cruise ships coming through, so you want something that's fast, but still maybe a nod to American cuisine.

I think everything should be about America. If we're in Malta, I'm thinking malts, I'm thinking ice cream malts, I think you should get some sort of vanilla malt, you know what I mean? I think, yeah, I think that you might as well play on that part of it. So yeah, like you just call them malts, maltas, and I think people would be on board that. I think personally, I think you should get one of these little Mediterranean islands and just use it as the fast food, as your chain restaurants where it lives. That's just it.

There's nothing else on the island. So you're saying each individual branch of this chain restaurant has to have its own island. All right. Sure. Sounds expensive, but it could be cool. I think you guys might say that's crazy, but thousands of islands in the ocean, I think we can pull it off.

I think it's that big of a deal. I got a pitch for a name. Okay. The Maltese Falcon. Wow. I don't know what the connection of Falcon is to food. I guess maybe it's a chicken restaurant or something. We've got some sort of poultry concept.

The Maltese Falcon, that's great. Well, I haven't kind of disagreed. I think it's great. I think the fact that you name it the Maltese Falcon and then you're serving chicken is fucked up. Are you supposed to give the idea that people are eating Falcons? I don't know. I don't know how it works exactly.

I will say I like the idea of Malt's and fried chicken. Or it could be something like the malt where they serve, it's like the melt out here where they serve grilled cheese. Oh, I like that a lot. I think that's great. I think that's not Mediterranean. But I think it's clearly better as a name of a restaurant. We can pick which one we like the best.

Mine would be called Maltese, just like the country's name, I guess. It would serve Malt's and fried chicken. So Maltese with an apostrophe S? With an apostrophe S. It would be equivalent to be an Italian restaurant called Italy's. Francis. I would eat Italy's. I think why not?

I would try Italy's. And each of my chains, yes, it has to have an island. But that's fun. I think we got something. I think the idea of a beachy theme that's focused on Malt's and chicken or other fried seafood. I guess we'd just come up with Long John Sovers again, just giving it a different name and added Malt's.

Well, whatever. Well, malt vinegar. Oh, there you go. There's a connection. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. Maybe that would be a fun little place, a place that serves like malt stuff with malt

vinegar. Because we were just talking about how there's not enough stuff. What else can you have with malt vinegar? Oh, there's fish and chips and things. Oh, fish and chips and vinegar. Vinegar. Vinegar. Pork, I think, right?

Oh, yes. Yes, barbecue. North Carolina barbecue is served with the vinegar sauce. There's... That's a great question. There's not too many more things, but that's what makes... Is that too weird? Do people not make...

There's no restaurants called Mayo where you get everything you want with Mayo, right? Oh, centered around the condiment? Yeah. To center something around a condiment, especially in Malta, a foreign country I don't know much about, feels like we might be setting ourselves up for failure. Everyone's going to be confused. And I think probably 60% of the clientele would think it was a made-up land that you did to market the restaurant of like, oh, yeah, Malta, the land of malts.

All right, I get it. I think, bottom line, we'd be chased out of the country. Well, that's chain-storming, guys. I think we did it. Good night's job. Good work all around. Yeah, we made some sort of restaurant. It came up with something.

That was fun. Yeah. And Mediterranean food is my favorite food, and we didn't... We didn't even touch it. We didn't include it. It's a Mediterranean aisle, and we kind of ran past the idea of using Mediterranean food. Yeah, we didn't know.

Whatever. Whatever. It's fine. Well, just like a restaurant, we value your feedback. Let's open up the feedback. Today's email comes to us from Evan Susser. Bull disclosure, Evan is a friend. Evan wrote in to our Doughboys email, hey, Doughboys, first-time e-mailer, long-time

listener here. Like many people, I enjoy a good restaurant, but I always feel a little sheepish suggesting a chain, sheepish suggesting a chain when deciding on where to eat with a friend. It feels uncool in that I'm better off suggesting a non-chain spot, even if the food, quality, and ambience are worse. Do you guys ever share my anxieties or am I crazy? Any tips on how to handle this situation would be appreciated. Thanks.

Timid in Tinseltown. Thanks for the email, Evan. What do you think, Mary? In terms of, you know, like you're taking some people are visiting in town, suggesting a chain restaurant versus suggesting a local haunt, do you feel any sort of anxiety there? Yeah, I do. I very much relate to that. I'm kind of of the mind of if they can experience it where they came from, then why would I

take them to the same chain location out here? But within and out, it's a different story, because that's a chain, but it is a local, it's like a California chain. It has to be worth it, right? It has to be worth it. I feel like Evan Susser is a little coward boy for being afraid of this anyways. And I think that's insane to be worried about that thing. But I understand, I will always want to take someone to kind of a nicer restaurant, but

I agree with you. I think local, like if my buddies were out here from back east, I wouldn't want to be like, let's get Wendy's, even though I'm sure we probably would. But you would want to take them to In-N-Out-Burg or Piquito Moss or something like that. Yeah. That's what I think. Yeah. I relate to this email because I had an experience once with my hometown of Lakewood slash Long

Beach is not too far from LA. So I had some friends who went down there and were just hanging out in Long Beach and they gave me a call. They're like, hey, Nick, what are some good local restaurants to eat at? And growing up, we only went to chain restaurants. So I had nothing. I was just like, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you.

I just was honest. I was just like, we only went to Denny's and we went to a claim jumper. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know where to go. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know how to deal with this. I feel like I guess what I'd say is learn a little bit about your neighborhood so that you have a few pocket suggestions of just different types of cuisines.

I think if you know like one, I guess it's easier with Yelp these days. You just look up what's cool in your neighborhood and have that, I guess go once in advance so you know a little bit about it. Yes, Evan, Sus, are you uncultured prick? Yeah, open your eyes and take a look around you for once. I guess there's two sides to it. One, is it a cool place where you go and try something out or if it's just like, let's just meet at Chili's or something.

And I think that's... Or if it's a late night deal where you just want a snack or something. Yeah, and I think that's okay. I think if you're like, hey, I know, listen, let's just go to Chili's. We both know it's Chili's. We know what it is. It's a chain, but let's go and then if that person's okay with it or if they're... But if it's a visiting person, Evan, you got to treat the person a little bit better.

You got to take them out to a cool spot, at least take them to pinks or in and out or something like that. Yeah. Give them a little treat. Give them a little treat. Mary's right though. I think that in local chains, there's definitely an exception there. If it's like a sort of a regional thing, I think you can...

People will be excited to go there. Agreed. I saw Newt Gingrich on Twitter said his first stop when he lands at LAX is in and out burger. That's surprising. That's funny, that's also Anthony Newt Gingrich and I've heard Anthony Bourdain say the same thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it goes up and down the line, yeah.

Everyone loves it now. True. Everyone loves it. It's better than Long John Silver. Oh boy, oh boy. This isn't the episode. Wow. Sorry, Mary.

I had to tell you before this ended. No, it's fine. I'm a guest, but it's fine. No. Mary, thank you so much for being here and coming to discuss Long John Silver. It's had a great time. Do you have anything you'd like to plug? Yes.

First of all, thank you for having me. This was such a delight to get to talk so in-depth about Long John Silver, truly. As far as what I'd like to plug, you can follow me on Twitter at mholland85 and like Nick mentioned, I'm on a team Wild Horses and we perform at UCBLA every month and we also have videos out through Funny or Dive at Nick Direct, so check those out. Awesome, cool. Well, I think that'll about do it for this episode of Dill Boys. Do you have something to add, Mitch?

Yeah, I'll leave you on. A little sign off, my mom always used to say to me, if health is your wish in g- oh, wait. Mom, god, ma, get it straight. Get your thoughts together. Oh, wait. If health is your wish, then eat more fish. That's what she always used to say to me. If health is your wish, then eat more fish.

That's like if an apple a day keeps the doctor away, another version of that. Kind of, yeah. Yeah, all right. It's a little New England spin on it. I like it. Well, out there, if you're listening and you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you can email us at doboyspodcast.gmail.com. We may tackle it on the show.

You can also hit us up on Twitter at doboyspod, no cast there. And that'll do it for this week's episode. Until next time, happy snacking. Yarr.