Doughboys - Pizza Hut with Neil Campbell

Episode Date: January 7, 2016

On the extra large first episode of 2016, the Doughboys welcome their good friend and writer/comedian Neil Campbell (Comedy Bang! Bang!, The Simpsons) to review the pizzeria chain that once employed him: Pizza Hut. Plus, a new edition of Snack or Wack.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Farrell Audio Founded in 1886 as Fairmount College, Wichita State University is one of the top schools in Kansas. And perhaps its most famous alumni are brothers Dan and Frank Carney, who in 1958 opened a pizzeria in their college town. The success of this pilot location led to more restaurants, including a branch nearby Aggieville, which became the first pizzeria to offer the innovative concept of delivery. Over the years, the franchises have evolved from massive restaurants focused on a dinin

parlor experience to smaller footprint kiosk-sized storefronts built around delivery and takeout, though many of the old school suburban fortresses still stand. And its marketing campaigns have been among the most creative in chains, employing pitchmen from capitalist poster boy Donald Trump to deposed Communist Party leader Mikhail Gorbachev in implementing ahead-of-their-time branded integrations in the film Back to the Future 2 and the NES video game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The chain is also responsible for many mad scientist pseudo-Italian concoctions, including stuffed crust pizza.

As one of the three prongs of the mighty Yum Brands trident, along with KFC and Taco Bell, both of whom often share its retail space, this pizzeria employs 160,000 people worldwide. This week on Doe Boys, Pizza Hut. Welcome to Doe Boys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I'm Nick Weiger, alongside my co-host, Mike Mitchell, the Spoon Man. How you doin', Spoon Man? I'm doing good. I'm doing really good.

Wow, we got a big one today, huh? Uh, it is. It's a big one. Yeah, it's either the biggest, I think it's the biggest pizza chain in North America, but the second biggest worldwide to Domino's. Oh, I just want to say, uh, what's up to Spoon Nation? So it's, Mitch, this is our first episode of 2016. Uh-huh.

I'm surprised there isn't a new addition to the, uh, long run of stolen catchphrases and sound garden songs that you, uh, play as a preamble to every episode. That's what little, little wigs would come up with. It's a new year, so you need a new one. That's not how I do it. No, you keep rolling with the same. Mm-hmm. And plus, I didn't think of it till now.

Um, what is your, like, what does the new year hold for the Spoon Man? What are you looking for in 2016, Mitch? It doesn't have to be a resolution explicitly. It could just be any sort of prospects. 2016, the year we're in right now. We're recording this a little in advance. Uh, 2016, you know, it's going to be a big year for me. I feel like this year is going to be the year where I really shine or I will probably die.

One of the two. Uh, so I don't know, maybe, maybe there'll be a tombstone at the end of the year for me, or maybe there'll be, uh... A tombstone pizza. You can gorge on it. Yeah. No, then I'll pass up because, uh, I've changed my diet. Yeah, you've made good, you've made responsible choices.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I would say my, I don't, I was considering a new year's resolution that I decided not to do because of the pie, like, I actually ran it by you. Mm-hmm. That was bad. I don't know. But I was going to try a new year's resolution to eat vegetarian.

Yeah. And it seemed like that would be so destructive to the podcast due to the nature of the chains that we're profiling. Like, if you stick to the vegetarian options, you're so limited and you can't really give a full evaluation, a full assessment of many of these chains. What are you going to get at KFC or something, which we'll probably review this year? Yeah, you get, you're stuck with, like, coleslaw and biscuits with no gravy. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, you want to do it because you know it's a movement that in the future people will agree with. But I think, like, I think you want to do it because you're like, someday people are going to look back on eating animals and think it's awful. Yes. And I feel like that's insane to think that way. To make your, to become vegetarian because you think that it will be looked back upon,

not in favor. And also because that will be like over a hundred years. I think you'll be long dead or you won't have to eat anymore or something. I don't know at that point. It won't matter. Yeah. I'll be, well, I'll certainly be forgotten. Yeah.

Like, I will have no legacy. So I really don't need to worry about how history will judge me. Trust me, you'll be dead. Let's introduce our guest. We're very, very excited to have him. The head writer for Comedy Bang Bang, he's also written for the Simpsons, the Emmy Awards. Our good friend Neil Campbell is here. Hi, Neil.

Hello. Thanks for being here. Thanks so much for making some time for the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. Excited to be here. So Neil, I think of you as like a famously healthy guy. You're very lean, you've always been in good shape, you're a real athlete. What is your eating regimen that keeps you so wiry?

Hmm, well, I appreciate it, the compliments about my physique. I always feel the room for improvement myself. My eating regimen is not too, I guess I just, maybe it's sensible, like there's not a lot that I, like if it's like, hey, it's Friday night, we're going out for burgers and fries or wings or something. I'm not like, no, no, no, skip that. But I think it's more during the day, I have a pretty light breakfast and maybe- You do one bowl of cream, right?

Yes. Yeah, yeah. The trick for my cat, yeah. And then maybe something kind of like a salad or something for lunch or like, again, something not much. And then dinner and not a, I don't know, not a lot of eating unhealthy, not a lot of fried stuff and all that, but you know, I could always do better. Yeah, I feel like that lunch, if you can compromise and give yourself an unsatisfactory

work lunch, if you're just going to be like, this is kind of going to be a not fun meal, this is just going to be fuel, I'm going to have like a healthy salad. That seems to help your overall health a lot because it's the place, it's like in the middle of your day, you're feeling kind of crushed emotionally, you want to like indulge a little bit, but I think you can just kind of power through it and think of that as another workplace task. Yes. I'm just going to have a salad that seems to help your overall diet.

Yeah, I think that was definitely, for me, a big thing was having, like I have an oatmeal for breakfast almost every morning, just like a bowl of oatmeal, and then if I'm not like eating a giant like sub or something with like a bunch of bread and a bag of chips and all that, if I'm just like, I just had a salad, all right, for lunch, then I feel like at dinner, I can go nuts. Neil, first of all, this is a big episode today, but then also, I don't know if you'll want to take credit for this, but Neil, Campbell, and Paul Russell kind of like a mentor to me, which I don't know if he wants to associate with this or take any credit for this, but

Neil and Paul were mentors to me in the birthday boys crew. Yeah, directed your guys' first sketch show, Hot Doggin at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. Yeah, you guys kind of first got involved at UCB by doing a show that Paul and I hosted called Not Too Shabby. That's right. Mike for sketch comedy, basically, and then Paul and I were like, these guys are great. And you specifically were like, Mitch is a star.

I remember thinking, I remember being very kind of trying to introduce you to Susan Hale and being like, wait, what's your name, Mitch, or is it Mike? I wasn't wrong. Yeah. I was just like confused as to, I just met you guys, and I was still confused as to who had which name and who was Mike and who wasn't and stuff like that. That should really be your 2016 resolution, Mitch, is just to decide what your name is because you're Michael Mitchell, but you go by Mike and you also go by Mitch.

I had a past guest, I won't name our past guest, but I had a past guest who after the show was like, hey, it was really confused because you kept calling Mike Mitch. I feel like acquaintances have no idea what to call you. It's not my fault. There's like five other mikes in the birthday boys, I think, I don't know. There's a bunch of them. Yeah. And then I remember, I think you guys had just started doing Shabby when we did like a best

of Shabby. Am I wrong about this? And we were like, hey, can you guys do it? And you guys said, yeah. And then we went, what's your team name? We've just been calling you the Ithaca guys. Oh, yeah. And you guys, I think, perhaps spurred on by that, came up with the birthday boys?

I think we were spurred on by that, and then we spent five months deciding it would be the birthday boys. Yeah, you were probably already in the midst of it, but I think that was in a way a deadline of like announcing who's on the lineup of that show. Guys from Ithaca, because I think we kept putting, right? Or is it like? I feel like we just kept calling you the Ithaca guys, or maybe five or seven ugly guys or something.

We couldn't figure out what, that was a long, way too long process. I think naming a group is terrible. You guys are both from two groups that have good names, and I owe it. I think last day of school is a good name. Yeah. That's our improv group in the upper seasons we had theater. I think a kiss from Daddy was us being like, eh, who cares about this? This was a sort of come up with a stupid name, and like later you're like, oh, that's, I

mean, later you just don't even think about it. It just sinks in. You know what? The thing I didn't anticipate with that name is that people would get from and they'd switch it to, they'd transpose it to like four. Yeah. So it was just like, it's a thing you don't foresee, but you kind of just need a name that's just like real, like birthday boys is great because you just sort of get it and

you remember it. Yeah, but there was a lot of like, is it your birthday? Like there was so much of that stuff. Yeah, sure. They're like happy birthday sort of stuff that went off for so long. I think the last day of school also, it was like the theater had just opened for improv. Our improv team, the theater just opened, and we were kind of like, the first team formed out of auditions, the first Herald team.

And it felt like, like, hey, this will represent, we kind of have this like youthful spirit and stuff. And now we're like old. It's like, we're at the last day of school. Our memories, we don't even remember any of our own personal last days of school. Our podcast, Doe Boys, like that name is going to sound pretty desperate when we're like in our 40s. If this thing still, there's also no way this is still going when we're in our 40s.

This might not make it out of 2016. People probably think it's like a World War I history podcast. Yeah, that's true. Also, too. The L is famously healthy, and by that point, will be famously wealthy. And Doe Boys will make sense because of my mind. By the way, a revelation that I'm famously healthy. Not never part of my reputation prior to right now.

Well, to be fair, Weigher thinks a lot of people are famously healthy. Like didn't you think, I can't remember his name and I ruined this joke. Who's the big fat comedian guy? Ralphie May. I was going to say you thought Ralphie May was famously healthy. Yeah, you can edit that. Yeah, Weigher thinks Ralphie May is famously healthy. Even if you'd landed that, it would have been confusing.

Why? Because I'm bad at it. No, it's more, yeah. It's also more insulting towards our guest. Oh, yeah. Based on his legacy. Well, he is healthy. Yeah, hey.

You're fat ass. If you're just joining us, or if you've been listening to the Doe Boys podcast for the first time, we usually begin with a 15 to 20 minute discussion about the indie comedy scene here in Los Angeles. I'll get over it. That's where you came from. Now let's get into food a little bit. So Neil, you used to work at Pizza Hut.

My first job was working at Pizza Hut. I got the job in May of 1996. Twister and Mission Impossible were battling it out at the box office. Ooh, we're a big Twister fan. Yeah, we're a Twister. And my friend Yvarr Moghimi and I, we were like, let's try to get summer jobs. And I think we'd just seen that this Pizza Hut that was sort of near our high school, this is in Fairfax, Virginia, near Fairfax High School, and we saw that it was hiring.

So we went in, but Yvarr was 15, and they were like, there were certain places in Virginia you could get a permit or whatever or exemption and work when you were 15, but otherwise you had to be 16 to enter the labor force. And so they were like, well, we wish we could hire you both, but we can only hire you. So I worked at Pizza Hut from May until December of 1996. I prepared pizzas, I answered the phone, took orders over the phone. And it was a carry out delivery Pizza Hut, so if anyone walked in, I would maybe take their order at the front register as well.

But most people, it was delivery or pickup, and they'd still call it in ahead of time. How often does a walk-in carry out order happen? Not frequently. Yeah. Yeah. You mean like, just in general, there wasn't a lot of business going on there? No, just like people wouldn't walk in and order a pizza and sit and wait, they'd call it in.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Because I've definitely done that before, and I always feel insane. Yeah, it's weird. Because there's like one little bench, the weirdest thing would be if anyone, because there was like maybe one little table or bench, if someone actually ate in the store. Oh, yeah. Like it's like a, it's literally like a place to sit and like, if you have like a drink

with you, like to just have a place to rest it. That was also very rare. But so I got that job, it was my first job and worked there for a while. And if I recall, I think stuffed crust pizza had come out the year before, or like within about a year before I started there. And I think right when I started working there, or just before I started working there, is when they introduced chicken as a topping. And they had these like three specialty chicken pizzas.

Oh, yeah. So you were there for some in the big time. I remember in December was when I quit was because I didn't want to have it as a job. I don't know why I cared about this, but I was just like, I just want this job to be done in this year. Gotcha. I don't want in like a year for now, because I was all right. I was like, am I going to have to do taxes?

I don't know what I'm doing. It like, and I was like, I don't want to have to do taxes on this job next year. And I was already thinking of quitting. So I just made sure I quit before the end of December. Who knows why I was worried about taxes, but that was in my mind. But it was, it was my first job. It was at Courthouse Plaza Pizza Hut. I'll give it a plug at Old Lee Highway and University Drive in Fairfax, Virginia.

And I remember there were like the delivery drivers, there was the main like franchise owner guy, general of whatever manager, then there was like also the store manager guy. And then basically it was like me and these two other teenagers who went to a different high school who like made all the pizzas and took all the phone orders. Wow. And I, and one thing I remember is the guy was really into like Metallica. I remember we would talk about music and stuff. Is this a franchise owner?

No, no, no. These are the two other teenagers. Okay. And I wish I could remember their names. I want to say the girl's name was Roxy. She's out there. Just you can get in touch with me, but I remember what I think was she was like cool. She had like, like dyed hair or something like that.

And remember I would be making a pizza sometimes and I had like never at this point, 16 years old kissed a girl. Yeah. And she would like walk by and pinch my butt sometimes. Oh man. And it wasn't really like, it wasn't like, ooh, she's into me. It was just that kind of thing. Like I remember when I was 14, I went to a Pearl Jam concert and was like, I feel cool.

Yeah. Like I'm genuinely kind of cool. And I remember like feeling like, hey, I got this kind of cool relationship with this like cool girl. She'll, you know, she'll just pinch my butt or whatever. It's like not even a big thing. Like I remember taking like all this, like getting like this esteem from it. And yeah.

And then, well, I don't know how much we want to get into, you know, I'll spill all the dirty secrets. Oh, get it. Yeah. Get that dirt out there. But I wasn't necessarily a huge fan of Pizza Hut before, I guess, I guess, it was just like whatever. I didn't really have preferences in terms of pizza.

It was just a job for you. You're just like, this place is hiring, sure. And when I worked there, I remember with the biggest thing, I kind of was like, oh, this is, the crust was always a big thing for me, which was, and then this could be totally different now. I think the pan dough, like pan pizza, which is like the thicker, kind of the deep dish style. Yeah.

There were like these women who came in in the morning. I would never even see them. Like early in the morning, like I'd be at school and they'd come in and they'd make the pan dough and then put it in the pans and then put it in a, I don't know, a fridge or something or something where like the dough would rise over the course of the day. Gotcha. And then that, and then, but it was like, you couldn't make a new pan pizza at the end of the day.

It was just like however many pans you had with pan dough in it was what you were stuck with, however many they made that morning. Oh, that's crazy. So that was like a thing where, like, okay, so that was however many, so sometimes you would just run out of pan pizza. The thin crust, they also made all this dough in the morning and that was the most fun to make. And it was all, the thin crust was all in like a big like plastic garbage can in a bag.

And so you would go and you'd actually like have to like plop it down onto the thin pan and then you'd take like a roller, like a, like on a, as if it's on a paintbrush hander, like a one-handed roller and like cut around the edge of the pan. So it gets just perfectly up. And then, you know, you put on the sauce and all that in the toppings. But I always thought then the hand toss was the grossest because those, the other two was like, oh, someone made this dough this morning and we're making it into a pizza. And the hand toss was just like, you got these packages of these freeze-dried discs and you'd

have to kind of like spray this like kind of pan type stuff, pan, like the cooking spray type stuff around the edge. Oh, pan, yeah. Pan, yeah. And then like heat them up or something and they'd expand. And those were the ones that just felt like, oh, this is like got shipped in from corporate, just all these little tiny like discs that expand into the pizza. And I always, so I always liked the, if I, you could make your own little pizza.

They had a thing that you can't actually get, which is like a personal-sized pan, not not not for a pan pizza, a personal-sized like tray or whatever for the thin crust. Gotcha. And I would make myself like a personal-sized thin crust at the end of work every day or if I was hungry, you know. So you've eaten a creation that most have never had. Yes, because I don't think you can get a personal-sized pizza delivery carry out at least in 1996 at Courthouse Plaza.

I don't think you could at all. I think personal pan was something that they just did at restaurants. Oh, okay. As I recall, but you had the equipment there. And but we, but we had the equipment for a personal thin crust. Gotcha. And I would make a personal thin crust, but that's what I liked that like working there. I was like, oh, the thin crust feels like it's actually fresh dough that someone.

I got a question for you. Is your butt still bruised from all the pinches that you got from Roxy? Here. I don't know. Take a look. Oh yeah. It's dark. It's very dark.

Yeah. Yeah. That's, yeah. That's from that. That's where that bruise is from. My sister's friends, when I was younger, used to say, Mikey or whatever and be like, how is your oil? And then they'd stick their finger like in my ass, I guess, through the pants.

How old were you? You know, like 15, maybe 15, 60. Yeah. And they'd stick their finger up there and I'd be like, yikes. You know. And were your sister's friends your parents? I mean, yeah, we're all friends. Yeah.

They'd be like, how's your oil going? And like they'd laugh and they, and I'd be like, ah, it hurts or whatever. That's the thing they do in Japan. It's called like kancho, I think. Yes. It's like you take two, you hold two, like make like a gun with your hand and you hold two of them together, both your hands together and you try to jam them up someone's butt and you say kancho.

Yes. Neil, you would know this because I wanted to get into this a little bit food-wise as well. All right. Would you describe yourself as a military brat or something of that? So I would say, you know, semi, I lived on an army base in Japan from ages 8 to 10. And prior to that, had lived in Georgia, New Jersey and Virginia. Then after Japan, moved back to Virginia and went to fifth grade through high school there.

And then when I was in college, my parents moved to an army base in Germany. But something of a globetrotter in your preteen years, it sounds like. Yes. So what was it like, like being a young kid and you know, you're in the States and then you're spending some years in Japan, what was the, I assume you're living in some sort of army base. Army base, yeah. You live in an army base there.

So what, but what was the food like as a young boy living abroad? Well, they're, so we would, my parents were pretty good about making sure we'd always get out and like get culture and get, you know, go, we visited a bunch of cities in Japan and stuff. On the army base were like little chains. And so I believe we had a Burger King and this thing called Anthony's Pizza, which was just where we got our pizza because they had Pizza Hut and stuff in Japan. And it was like pizza with like corn on it and all this, like it was a bunch of like,

I don't know that we ever ordered off base pizza, but we would go off base to go to restaurants and there was this mom and pop shop that we would go and my brother and I would always get like yaki soba, like a lot of just, you know, like greasy noodles. And it was just sort of like a soba ramen kind of place. And we also got really into like hot and cold soba with like buckwheat noodles. Eventually into like sushi and stuff like that. And we were pretty good about trying different types of stuff when we were getting off base and all of that.

But then on the base were those chains. But I remember the thing was we didn't have a McDonald's on Camp Zama, but one of the other army bases that we played soccer against, that wasn't too far, maybe half hour called Otsugi. They had a McDonald's. So that was always like the big treat was if we went and played soccer at Otsugi after it was done, then we'd get McDonald's. That's the best.

Yeah. Although, I'm sure there are McDonald's in Japan and we probably had that sometimes too. But, you know, I think there was, it was just whatever. It seems like such a big part of, because I hear about that when there's like bases in, you know, even military bases that have been constructed in Iraq or what have you do is there's just chains are, exist there, American chains, because I think that is such a part of like American cultural identity that it makes it feel like home that you have

access to these chains. Yeah. And it was literally just a tiny little food court and I feel like there was one or two other restaurants that I, Burger King and Anthony's Pizza, only two I really remember. Who worked in them, would it be like? Like the teenage kids of people stationed there, high school or some stuff, because there's a whole high school there and stuff. Interesting.

I do think though there are programs to work, because it's like, they, I'm not totally sure about this, but just in that like, like the teachers in elementary school, they couldn't have just relied on, well, I hope every Lieutenant Colonel who moves here is married to a teacher. You know, like I do think there are programs to bring non-military workers to military bases. I mean, like my dad is actually not in the military, he's a civilian, but he was at least still working for the military, but I think there must be ways that you go and work someplace like that.

But I don't know if it's like Burger King has a program for that. That might have just been the kids. We should go back, all of us, and see what it's like over there. Yeah. Interesting. Camp Zama. Camp Zama. Yeah.

Sure. We found some like Japanese porn in the woods on Camp Zama, so if that's still there, I'll take it there. Yeah, we should look at it. Was it like, no, I feel like a lot of times the characterization of Japanese porn is really disgusting stuff, like was this anything that was particularly dirty, was just some Japanese lady showing their privates. No, this was.

Jesus. Lovely. No, it was actually, one was a comic book and one was like photos. Oh, okay. So you had some hentai out there. Yeah. It was like a guy, I forget, like a guy walking in on his step son, or a guy walking in on his son, like banging his new trophy wife or something like that, as best as I could

understand, not being able to read the language. And then the porn, I forget what it was, it was just photos of a couple having sex or something. Like everything was blurred out around like genitals. Yeah, you got to pixelate the dongs and the vaginas in Japan. So anyway, that probably warped me, I was third grade, fourth grade. For our listeners, Weigar has both hands down his pants, but all the way to the knees. I saw porn way too young too, I saw porn when I was like eight and it was at a friend's

house. Life porn. What's that? It's a live sex show. No, it was, we were at my friend's house and like it was like, we were at my friend's house, my super Christian friend, and his parents like went next door to a dinner party. So leaving me and my friend and his older brother and his older brother's friend alone. And like as soon as the parents were gone, my friend and his older brother were like,

all right, let's get dad's tapes. And they like went into the room and went into the dad's bedroom and came back, the parents bedroom and came back with some VHS tapes and put them in the VCR. And I had no idea what was going on, like I didn't even know what they were getting and I didn't know what porno was, like you didn't have a concept of that. But this was just like, it was clear, like every time their parents left them alone, this is what they made a beeline for. And they put this VHS tape in and I remember watching it and it was just like scene after

scene of mostly gay porn. Like there was some straight stuff in there, but there was a lot of gay porn in there. My friends like, you know, and again, a very Christian family and this was the stuff that belonged to dad. And I just remember them being like, every time there was a gay scene, they mean like, oh man, it's another bad one, fast forward it. Oh, bad one. Dad's got all these bad ones on these tapes.

That's crazy. Yeah. The other thing I was going to say about the, you know, Pizza Hut 96 was the only two giveaways I remember were Flipper had come out and there were these like weird, I feel like they don't even do giveaways that are this extensive anymore. Was this a feature film or was this a feature film of Flipper? Was this with Jessica Alba or was she in the TV show? I feel like a young Alba was affiliated with Flipper somehow.

She might have been. I don't know. I don't think I actually ever saw it. Okay. It was just screening for us. But there were like these like rubber like things, puppets basically. Oh yeah. But you could like, if you stuck it under water, it sort of had like some kind of sack or whatever

in it that like would fill up and then you could take it out and like press like and it would like shoot water out of like Flipper's mouth. That's fun. Yeah. And there was one Flipper and there was one of like, I guess the bad guy was like a hammerhead shark or something like Flipper has a villain, I guess, in this movie. And it was so you could get the hammerhead, I think, or Flipper. That's one of the most dangerous things about sharks is that they can also shoot water at

you. Yes. And then the other thing I remember there's these little like foam baseball vats. And I remember I got the Jeff Bagwell one. Okay. So this was not Flipper related. This was like an MOB promotion. No.

Yeah. It was like all around the All-Star game or something. Killer bees at that point. Oh. And the other thing I'm trying to remember with the crust. Was it? What are you talking about? Was it the Killer Bees at that point?

Wasn't that Bagwell? Oh, maybe. I don't know. Okay. I feel like there were like four different bats. And I just remember I had the Bagwell one, but the other three weren't other base or weren't other Astros. Yeah.

If you're asking me about 90s MLB trivia, I'm pretty... Well, you gave me a look like I was insane. No, I didn't. You thought I meant real Killer Bees? Yeah. I didn't understand. I was like, I was not sure what you were referencing exactly. Um, but if you had a question about Sedale 3 or Old and Polynes, I can help you out.

Um, yeah, so the other thing I was going to say with the crust, I'm trying to remember because Stuffed Crust was new, I think what you actually had to do was take a hand-tossed crust and then layer the string cheese around the edge, around the rim, and then take some of the thin crust crust to like mold over. Oh, interesting. I think that was how we did it. I don't totally recall. I, well, just so the Killer Bees were Bagwell, Bishio, right?

Bishio and Derek Bell in Sean Berry. What team was that? Barry kind of lucked into that one. Yeah. This was for the Astros. Oh, okay. But it was 1996, 95, 96, I guess. Yeah.

This was 96, yeah. Okay. Yeah, so it was. So the era when Aladjuan was dominating the league. Oh, boy. Or actually that would have been roughly around Jordan's return, right? Jordan 96, 97. No, Jordan would have been the 95, 96.

I also, big things that summer, other big events of 96, big, big subject of conversation between me and the delivery driver guys was the quality of the film Independence Day. Oh, yeah. I thought it was silly that the president flew a jet, but otherwise we all basically liked it. And I saw him smashing pumpkins on tour that summer. Nice. I think it was like the second to last show before like they fired the drummer and the

keyboardist died of an overdose or whatever. It was right, right, right before that happened. And they were playing in DC, Melancholy, Infinite Santa's tour, and Billy Corkin was like, Hey, we just saw Independence Day. This is the perfect city to see it in, because like the White House gets flooded with it. Oh, that's funny. How'd they crowd their crowd like that? Yeah.

They send it? I went with my brother to see the Stone Temple Pilots at the Del Mar Fair in San Diego. And I think this was 2000. And it was the same time as the clinching game in the finals of the Lakers, the year they played the Indiana Pacers, whenever that was, I think that was 2000. And Scott Weiland kept giving updates on the game throughout the show and Southern Crawl California crowd ate it up. That's great.

Also, some girl flashed her boobs, but I only saw it from the side. Yeah. Did you get a boner? Yeah, I did. I shoved both my hands down my pants on the way to my knees. And I remember there was one time I was working and I was like antsy to get off and I finally got off in a rush to the Patriots Center at George Mason University and made it just a nick of time to see Rage Against the Machine.

Sweet. So, you know, it was a good summer, big, big summer for concerts, big. Was Representative Paul Ryan there? I think he might have been, you know, it was one of the few concerts I went to where I didn't get the name of everyone in his head. Sure. So, I'm not sure. There's a chance Speaker Ryan was checking on us.

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. I was in eighth grade right around then, so I was getting pubes for the first time. Taking them from your classmates. Taving them on my body. Walking around your sister's friends with your pants starting to slip down a little bit accidentally. Let's get into Pizza Hut.

All right. So, beyond your experience as an employee there. Yes, yes. Your perspective on the food. Have you eaten Pizza Hut at all recently? Yes. Mitch and I had some just the other day. Oh, you guys went together.

Okay, that's fun. We did together. We decided not to tell you because we both don't like you much. I mean, it was literally the day after thing of, can I, yeah, just say, okay, it was the day after things giving. Yeah. We're recording this now. We're recording this insanely early.

And the reason why is because Mitch is going on his yearly sabbatical back home to Quincy, where he basically disappears for six weeks so he can go get drunk with his Quincy friends. And talk to them about, they keep me sane. I asked them if I should move back or not or whether they think of Weigher and we'll see what happens this time around. This may be it for me. But yeah, you're always telling us how you're like the new whitey bulger. Kind of.

The other ones, he's gone. So, I have that swagger. Yeah. So, we, I guess this may be in keeping with my healthy lifestyle is the day after Thanksgiving and we were like, let's just eat unhealthy again right away and not be like, we'll do the Sunday and like feel like we had four days where book ended by unhealthy stuff. We were just like, so it was literally lunch the day after Thanksgiving. We ordered a bunch of pizza.

It was a ton of pizza hut. Yeah. We did definitely pigged out. When was that, prior to this, when was the last time you really had a pizza hut meal? I honestly can't remember, but it's probably like I was at an event that was, I didn't pick where we ordered pizza and someone probably got pizza hut at like a work thing or like a volunteer thing or something like that. Yeah.

But once your tenure as an employee of the Pizza Hut Corporation ended, you didn't really revisit the food all that often. You know, I probably in high school still did because I knew what I liked there. I would always like make myself, which we'll get into sausage and jalapeno pizza on the personal thin crust thing. So I kind of like developed a taste for that. I do remember when I started working there, I was like, this is great. Every day I walk into work and it smells like pizza and then after like a couple months,

I was like, why doesn't it smell like pizza anymore? Because I just gotten so used to it and it stopped being this like great novel. It's the saddest story I've ever heard. It's like a nightmarish scene in a kid's movie. It's like the dark night of the soul and the kid who like gets a million dollars and opens his own pizza parlor and then when he can't, he like, he loses all his friends and he can't smell pizza anymore. Yeah.

Thanks. You're a screenwriter. No. Yeah. So, so I, I don't really know kind of when I fell off on, on Pizza Hut exactly. Um, but well, I have some ideas, but I don't know if that might be more getting into that in a bit. Well, so for me, a part of it, what I wanted to do and then, and then once I heard that

Neil worked at a dining delivery place, it didn't bother me as much as to go to the Pizza Hut buffet because to me, the Pizza Hut buffet was an important part of my life, I feel like growing up at like Pizza Hut always seemed like a kind of like a class above other fast food or, or, or, or pizza places. It definitely felt a step above Domino's. Well, you had access to one of those big locate, those big giant locations. Yeah. I had the ones that are now all banks.

I had one of those. Uh, by the way, do we know our, do any of those exist anymore? Is that still a thing in, in areas? He is gone. I was just about to say. Or did they have, did they just at some point make like a mandate like, Hey, we're done with dining. When I looked on Wikipedia, it said that there were still like a few, there were like a number

of locations that are still like that full size pizza hut. And there was a full size pizza hut near my workplace that I had at a video game job I had like 10 years ago, I can't have been 10 years ago, I guess it might have been. But we, where we would walk to and have the buffet. So in recent years, they have still existed, but yeah, I think they're, they're getting few and far between. Yeah. I feel like I haven't seen one in forever.

Yeah. When I was in high school, we used to skip, we used to skip school and go to the Pizza Hut buffet. Sweet. And that's why I told you this is why I'm dumb, dumb and fat. It adds up. Have you something to do pizza for school? That's what, that's the result.

Well, I was laughing too much at that time. We'd skip, we'd skip, we'd leave school because like my senior year, my friends would just want to leave school like around noon or like 11. Well, then they weren't really your friends. That's a good point. No, I love them. They're still my friends. Depriving you of an education.

And they'd always try to skip and they'd always try to go out the door by my mom's classroom because my mom worked at my high school and they would try to do that to mess with me to go out the door where my mom pretty much was. Wait, was she a teacher? Yeah, she was a teacher. Yeah. What subject? English.

Hey, how about that? She was an English teacher. Yeah. And you know what? We would skip so much. There was this really friendly teacher, Mr. Donley, who was my physics teacher. And he came out to me one day and he was like, Oh, Mike, your mom. She came up to me and asked me how you were doing in my class.

I didn't know what to tell her because I haven't seen you for two weeks and it was the nicest thing. I felt really, really bad about it and I decided at that point to go and learn as much physics as I could. Did your physics teacher ever walk up to you and go, you know, what goes up must come down and then unzip your zipper in your pants? Well, it's how I passed physics. That's what happened.

Mr. Donley was a great guy. But yeah, we'd go and get pizza hut and you know, I was a North Quincy Red Raider, a football player. The worst in maybe school history and we would have our pizza, we'd have like a pasta night or whatever and we would go, we went to pizza hut a few times and we'd do like a big dinner there. And I remember one of the football players got into a fight with an old man. It was actually kind of a crazy scene.

Wow. I was, by the way, right by my, like I said, it was between Oldie Highway and University Drive. It was where this pizza hut was, but my high school was right around like not far away and we were the Rebels and we were between Oldie Highway and Lee Highway. Oh, wow. And it was, they had stopped this in the 80s, but they were like one of the schools that hung like Confederate flags at the games and stuff like that and then looking back ahead

of their time, like we're like, that's terrible. We can't do that and got rid of hanging Confederate flags and got rid of the mascot, Johnny Reb, the Confederate soldier and then like now it's like lions or something. I think they're still called the Rebels, but it's like Rebel Pride and it's a lion. I got you. So you were the Red Raiders. Yeah. You were the Rebels.

Rebels. My high school, Long Beach Polytechnic, a little better than your guys, the Jackrabbits. That's great. Pretty cool, huh? The Sean Jackson went there, right? Yeah. Well, I don't remember if the Sean Jackson went there. I honestly, there were a lot of NFL players who went to, Kenyan Rambo, I remember, was

of my generation. There are a lot of NFL players who went to Long Beach Polytechnic. I think it's one of their point of pride if it's like it's got the most NFL players. But yeah, I don't know who exactly. I don't follow the NFL anymore. So again, if you got a question about the 90s to current generation NBA, I can help you out. Well, you know, I also think after everyone just last week saw concussion.

Yeah. I don't think anyone follows the NFL anymore or after that eye-opening work. That fucking, the Patriots game where the game was obviously rigged and they lost to the Broncos. I'll freshen our minds. Yeah. You remember from a month ago. I was fucking bullshit.

I still am very mad about that. Me. North Quincy High School's worst football player. Did you ever deflate the balls? No, we never deflate the balls. You know what? We still wouldn't have, nothing would have happened if we did. We were a bad team, but it was fun.

Mitch gets so riled up about the flight gate and it's like, it's adorable. How upset he gets about it. What the fuck? No, it's not. I just like, we'll get attacks that's just like, so you know, the amount that was deflated even if it was, which has been proven not to be, it was like less than the weight of a $1 bill. That is true.

That's all, all of that is true. I'm glad that you actually listened to me. That's shocking. No, I've taken in all your points on the flight gate. I just don't care. Oh, so you were just trolling me and taking the other side of it? I actually went to the NFL Combine when I was in college and they said I would be, I would have gone pro if the ball weighed $1 less.

This is bullshit. People want to take down everyone who's great. It's fucking, just like you try to take me down. People try to take down Tom Brady. Is that why you try to take down the Lakers? You know what? I will say that Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest NBA players of all time. He's really, he's an unbelievable talent.

And you know what? If the Lakers, oh, you know what? I can't, I don't know if I can say this for sure. I was about to say if they were undefeated and they were about to have an undefeated NBA season, if I would refer them, but I'm a Celtics fan, so it's really hard. Do you think Kobe's last game, they'll like everyone will just let him for the second half, just stand at half court and try to make like an underhand backwards no look free player?

Dilly Hitzlin? I think there will actually probably in that final, that final game, which I think is at home against the Utah Jazz, I think there kind of will be all-star game defense where they'll just kind of like let him, let him, let him fly as much as he wants. Unless it's like the Jazz are fighting for the eighth spot. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. The Jazz are trying to get in the playoffs.

That would be an interesting dynamic. He'll probably be distracted by the grown 36-year-old man bawling his eyes out in the stairs. Kobe! I'm 35. Take it easy. Well, will you be 36 by the time the last game happens? No.

My birthday's in August. Whatever. You get the whole point. Functionally, functionally 36. Whatever. 36 is the age I always thought like my dad was. Oh, sure. Which is like, he would have been 36 when I was like 11 or something, but I just always

remember like 36 is how old dad. It feels like such an adult age. And then when you're actually like about to hit it, it's just like, oh right, well, another year. My dad was 40 when I popped out. Wow. I was, I think my dad was 35, yeah, my dad was 30, no. My dad was 37, my mom was, no, wait, wait, wait, my dad was 32, my mom was 30.

That's what it is. My mom's exactly 30 years older than me. Neela, how old were your parents? They were both 25. Wow. Okay. Quarter. Yeah.

Yes, the amount of sense that I get a quarter. A couple of quarters. My dad was 40 and my mom was 34, yeah, 34, yeah, 34. You ever have those friends in school with old parents? That's what I'm sure I was one of them. When I was in school, I was like, oh boy, those parents are old. Yeah. And then now I'm like, oh, that, if I ever have kids, I'll be an old parent.

Yeah, sure. It's like for sure. I'll be whatever. I'll be 93. I'll be three. I never thought, I never thought of, oh my gosh. I never thought of my dad as an old dad, but I mean, he's also passed away now. So I guess that's, that is old in some sense.

But for, you know, 50-year-old dad when you're 10, that's not too crazy. It's not like that's like an old old man or something like that. Yeah, no, that's fine. Yeah. I guess it's like the dads who have someone when they're like 60 or something is the old parents. It's always like kids' perception because I feel like my perception of age when I was like, I remember watching like Conan when I was like 12 and like he said he was like

34 or something and I was just like, Conan's so old, like it made me like him a little less, which was, it's just a weird thing, but it's just like a kid mentality. I had a thing where like, whatever, this is horrible, I guess. But I remember like Bo Derek is in, is it Tommy Boy? And so she's like marrying Brian Dennehey and I, you know, I hadn't seen like 10 or whatever when I, when, when I saw Tommy Boy, that was like my introduction to Bo Derek. And I was like, oh, she's older. And in my mind forever, it's been like, yeah, Bo Derek is like older.

And I like relented up recently and it was like, I think she's like younger than I am now in that movie. Wow. It's, it's like. Oh really? Yeah. And Tommy Boy? Yeah, I had just, but I, I like, people were like, she's in 10 and I never had seen

10, but I'd see the cover at like the video store and it's like her running with like weird braided hair or something. I was like, she's, this is like what everyone's like, Bo Derek, I had like this one box cover doesn't do it for me. And then she's the old lady in Tommy Boy that now I'm like, I guess I was, my age perception was so off back then. I watched most of 10 on, I think probably show timers, HBO was whatever Care Cable channel was just like assuming it was a movie you could like jack off to because like, I

was like 11 or so. Jesus Christ. And I was like, okay, this will have some nudity. And then it's just like some, it might have nudity, but I guess I didn't see a naked part or something, but it's just kind of like this madcap comedy that's all about, who's that fucking guy that's in it? How do you remember? The, what are, he's also Arthur.

It's like a legendary. Oh, Dudley Moore. Dudley Moore, legendary British comedian Dudley Moore is in it. And it's just like this madcap Dudley Moore thing. Did you ever wind up jacking off? I don't think I, I don't think I had the opportunity to do that with that. So you gave up and you borrowed one of your friend's dad's tapes? Yeah, Bo Derek, one of the classic beauties, if I could do it all over again, I'd go after

Bo. The opportunity you had and passed up? Uh-huh. Okay. She's beautiful. Wait, who's the one who is in the, like the BC, whatever, like a 10,000, the, oh no. The comic strip? Oh yeah.

She's on, she's on Andy Dufresne's wall at one point. I'm not gonna re, is it Bo Derek? She's in like the prehistoric. Rita Hayworth? No, not Rita Hayworth. Oh well, I'll figure it out at some point. Let's not worry about it. Andy Dufresne from Shawshank.

Shawshank, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, I don't know. It might have been Bo Derek. It might have been Bo Derek. I think the timing doesn't work out for me. Yeah, you're right. Cause that movie was the 80s, right? Damn.

I feel like it's like set in the 50s or something. She's kind of like a redhead. She's a babe. She used to be my, and she was in like a 10, well, some of our listeners will know. If you know what this is, tweet it at me so I can look at old pictures of that again and be happy. Do you have a dumb hashtag you want to throw out, Mitch? Help Spoon Man Jerk Off.

Oh boy. Is this the longest you've gone without really talking about food and mostly talking about porn and jerking off? Well, I got started. I didn't mean to take it. I played myself. I've been like other guests or more. I'm the least sexual man there is, and now I'm the one who made a joke like that.

I'm sorry to any of my family that listens to this show or to anyone in general who doesn't want to think of that. Use the hashtag, help Mitch Jerk Off. Help Spoon Man Jerk Off. I'm sorry, help Spoon Man Jerk Off. Feel free to reply with glossy photos of Tom Brady and or items off of the Wendy's value menu. All right.

Let's get into it. You think I jerk off the food? Let's get into Pizza Hut. So what was your guys' meal that you got when you were there? Okay, we ordered. I can help out if you need it. Yeah, fill me in on details. So we got boneless chicken wings.

Yeah, we got a buffalo. And it's hot. Yeah, we got the medium, I believe. Medium, okay. We got a boneless buffalo chicken wings, I think an eight piece or 12 piece fry out. These are the wings. I believe they're wing street wings. Which that did not exist when I was around, but I can't remember if we served wings or

not. I don't think we did. Yeah, that merger. Maybe we did. You'd put them on like a flat. Who cares? I don't remember. That merger happened.

I feel like maybe they start. I think Pizza Hut did have their own wings before they were merged with them. Yeah, you know what? I'm picturing like a frozen bag and I'd take them out because the pizzas you'd put on that conveyor belt oven and I think you'd put them on straight up like on a pan or something and they'd cook through the oven. That conveyor belt oven is not as good. I like an actual oven, which the Pizza Hut and Quincy did have.

What we had was almost 100% of one of those conveyor belt ovens, but yeah, we got the wings. That merger has happened since we got the wing street, eight piece boneless buffalo wings. I believe medium, I don't think we got them hot. Then we got some cheesy bread, which is their breadsticks, but with cheese melted on top of them, which was pretty tasty and that came with marinara sauce. We got blue cheese and ranch, which I call blue ranch, and then we got two pizzas. We got my old order, thin crust with sausage and jalapeno.

We got a medium of that, which I had never had a thin crust from Pizza Hut before. This was my first time having it. I didn't even know they really did it. I should have because everywhere does it. Then we did a large because it's the only size you could get. Stuffed crust. Stuffed crust, half cheese, half pepperoni. Cheese on one half pepperoni on the other half.

Pizza with hut flavored crust, which is you can choose a flavor on your crust. We got hut flavored crust. That was new to me. I didn't know that. I don't know how recent this feature is, but they have both the flavored crust, which is you can add some sort of powder to the exterior, it feels like. Then they also have the drizzle, which is basically a swirl of sauce that they will dollop on top of the pizza itself.

It's interesting they have this. It's almost like a little overwhelming the amount of customization because you can make both of those customization options on a pizza for no additional charge. Within those groupings, you've got so many choices. I think there's a dozen options for different drizzles and different crust powders. It's a little much. We tried the hut flavored crust because it felt like the most like their take on the Domino's flavored crust.

In hindsight, I wish we had just tried something even crazier like the pretzel crust because I just wanted to know. Something about it that felt like, oh, okay, you have this flavorless crust that you painted a flavor onto. Rather than flavor coming out of the combination of ingredients, you took a paint brush and painted this chemical flavor creation that just winds up tasting like the same sort of like. It tastes no different than the garlic dipping sauce at Papa John's or the buttery dominant.

They all taste like a fraction apart from each other. That's my problem with the drizzle, too, is that the drizzle is very much like kind of like a sweet syrup that you pour on top of this pizza. There's a buffalo drizzle, and I guess that probably works with some of their new specialty pizzas or whatever, which we didn't do. With a lot of that stuff, and I even said to Neil, even the stuffed crust, although I do enjoy getting stuffed crust from. This was through tears, by the way.

Even though I do like getting the stuffed crust from Pizza Hut a lot, I wish we had just ordered the cheese pan pizza because that's my favorite thing from Pizza Hut, and it was so good. I used to love going to the Pizza Hut buffets or just dining in there and having one of those nice kind of like, oh, this feels like it was in an oven, and it's a golden crust. It's really good. The stuffed crust just doesn't do the same thing for me, even though it's fun and it's fun to have a big cheese stick at the end of your slice.

I don't, growing up, I think the pan felt like more of a treat, like before I worked there when I was a kid and stuff. Getting the hand-tossed crust felt like, yeah, you're just getting the normal pizza that tastes the same anywhere. The pan was like, ooh, I'm having a big special treat, like greasy, thick pizza, but yeah, it's interesting. I was very interested when you were going through the preparation and explaining that the pan was kind of, was one of the fresher ones versus the hand-tossed, because I always

assumed the hand-tossed like, oh, that's the default. That's like the one that would be the freshest and maybe the pan is frozen, but it's interesting or the opposite. Well, the only thing is, I'm only assuming the pan was like fresher because they had to like start cooking it or letting the dough rise or whatever in the morning. So it was something that we could run out of and that they got started working on in the morning when they were also making that thin crust dough. I don't totally know the process, so it's not impossible that that started as a little

frozen clump of dough, too, that they just started like putting into their dough rising machines. Yeah, I mean, growing up, our takeout, to go takeout pizza was pizza hut, because there's a pizza hut very close by in the same complex as a jack-in-the-box. We would only get pan pizza because my dad was so fixated on value and was like, that's you get the most food with that because it's like the biggest, thickest crust. I really love that pan pizza and I was bummed that we didn't get it, but I had never tried the thin crust before and I thought it was really good.

Neil cut on to something great over there. Well, you know what's funny? I like those toppings, I guess, but as I was eating, I was like, I think it's actually called thin and crispy and it's kind of like not really crispy until you get to the actual outer crust. You can snap in half like it's a crispy bread, but the rest of it, and I'm not sure that it would be better if it was all crispy, but that's what it says it's supposed to be. It's kind of like just soft and thin in the middle and then crispy on the outside.

Domino's kind of does a better job with that, and I don't know how they do a better job with it, but I feel like every slice of a Domino's pizza is pretty crispy. I think you guys are both spot on in both in that it's a little deceptive that they call it the thin and crispy pizza, and it's very like, it's kind of a soft cracker a little bit. It kind of feels like it has the stale cracker, I'd say, texture, if not, it doesn't taste it. Yeah.

It doesn't not taste fresh, but there's a kind of like crunch to your first few bites. Exactly, yeah. It's soft until you get to near the perimeter. It's like, yeah, it's like, and I agree with you as well that Domino's execution of the thin crust, I much prefer because you get, it's just like, I feel like it's a lot crispier and, you know, they slice it differently, which I think is like, is kind of fun. You get those square slices and those little triangles at the edges. So it's just a little bit of a different presentation.

And yeah, you're definitely getting a lot of that cracker crispiness, I feel like. So if you want that thin crust of your major chains, I would go Domino's over pizza. I got the medium thin and crispy with the bell peppers and the honey sriracha drizzle and the hut favorite crust, which is like a garlic and Parmesan, which you guys got as well. Yeah, I would just say like, yeah, I agree with your thoughts completely on that thin and crust crispy. It's just kind of a, it's just kind of a let down versus your other crust options. For me, I'd like, I'd prefer something that's just got like a little bit more heft to it.

Or if I'm going to get something crispy, I wanted to actually be crispy to actually have that, that, you know, crunch to it. Yeah, like I ordered it based on my memory of like, the thin crust dough is the freshest of their doughs. Yeah. But it doesn't, in the end, it's like, well, I guess, I don't know. It's not like, I was like, ah, fresh pizza. I wonder if they've made changes over the years to make it more substantial. I bet in the last 19 years they made a change or two.

What do you think of the drizzle? I'll tell you this about the drizzle. When there's this tendency with sriracha, sriracha is so mainstream now, it's just like sriracha is just over. I saw, I was at a restaurant the last week and they had hind sriracha. That's like how mainstream sriracha is. Sriracha is just, it's done. It's no longer relevant.

It's just so, like, it's just so everywhere. But like, it sounds like it's more relevant to me. But well, well, here's the thing. Like, it's just like, it's so played out. It's just like a very mainstream thing now. It's like, it's like the safest hot sauce at this point. I feel like it's like safer than Tabasco. It's like Frank's red hot sauce.

Yeah, exactly. It's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. And, but there's this tendency to add sweetness to it, which I don't think it needs. And that's the thing with the honey sriracha drizzle is that you were just getting a lot of sweetness to it. And it's also like, it doesn't quite arrive in the way that it's presented on the, you look at the menu options and it looks like there's like this swirl of sauce

just sort of sitting on top. By the time that pizza is in your hands, that sauce is all kind of settled into it. And it's just kind of like a murky sort of brown layer on top of your pizza. Yeah, it was fine. It just didn't, didn't particularly add anything. It was a little bit of a distraction from the pizza itself. Uh, yeah, I, I've had it a few times and I just haven't, I haven't loved it. It takes, but so my thing with, with Pizza Hut is that I feel like, like, you know,

they're part of that yum brands, which I feel like it really works really well for, for KFC and Taco Bell to kind of be like, oh, you know, we have our test kitchen and we do a lot of different weird things. Sure. I feel like with Pizza Hut, it doesn't work as well. Like I like the classics at Pizza Hut personally. Like I think, I feel like the new route they're going, I'm, I, I, I feel like it's, it's just not working for them.

I feel like I would rather have them just have their classic good pan pizza. But I guess that's just not getting people. I think they probably like also go like when I was starting there, there were chicken was like the new way of chicken topping and there were three chicken specialty pizzas. And there was like one that was like Alfredo sauce instead of tomato sauce. And, you know, eventually like those kind of got condensed down to just, hey, you can have chicken as a topping. Sure.

Like I think there was a barbecue sauce one maybe also. I forget or it's sort of a, I forget, but there was definitely like three different specialty chicken pizzas. So it could be the kind of thing where they go, hey, here's a bunch of crazy options. And then in like a year, it'll be like, okay, you can get it with this one sauce or without, you know, yeah, because they experiment a lot because I remember a few years ago, they had a promotion. They had like these cheese filled.

It was like the cheese crust, but it was like the stuff crust, but it was like these like balls, like these kind of like little pockets of cheese that you could rip off of the end and then dip individually. And then the earlier this year, they had the hot dog crust, which was like, you could take off and it came with a little mustard dip and sauce, which I really wanted to do. But yeah, it wasn't available. It's off the menu now. So I think they cycle these things.

And I think as part of their marketing, actually, is they're just like, we'll come up with this new crazy product and then we'll get people talking. And whether or not that this actually takes off, it takes off. Great. If not, we're getting some more attention for our brand by having this crazy thing like KFC does with a double down like Taco Bell does with the Doritos Locos tacos. Like you're saying, Mitch, it feels like that's the young brand's model. Yeah.

But it feels like that works so much better for those other two places for me. Okay. For me, I just always thought pizza hut was kind of like, I've kind of liked, I always liked, I didn't go to it as much. I will say that much. But you know, when you're younger, there's the book clubs and they give you free pizza hut. If you read a bunch of books and they have like, it feels like they had sponsored

ships being a big factor for you. That's why I'm so smart. Cause you know, as a kid, you'd read all those books and then you go and get your free little mini pan pizza. Yeah. And, and there was just something special about that place. And I, and now in my head, I'm like, oh, Domino's has like, and it works for Domino's with some of the shit they've tried.

And they feel, I feel like they've overtaken to a pizza hut to me. I feel like that that's the better option. And you can get, you can get a version of the pizza hut type of pizza. Like it's that hand tossed pan at Domino's. Sure. That is what the, that's what pizza hut is known for. And what, what was my favorite pizza of theirs. And you can just get it at Domino's now.

And I'm, I'm not sure. I'm going to have to go back and try that pan pizza from, from pizza hut. But it seems like it's just as good as pizza huts is, you know? So yeah. Well, I did get a pan pizza in addition. So I'll tell you guys what I got. I got the triple treat box, which is a December promotion, two medium pizzas, breadsticks and a cookie.

It all comes in a big package for 1999. I'll show you guys a photo, Mitch, I texted this to you, but I'll show this to you. Neil. So it's kind of like this big. It's a big box. It's like a big present. It's a big present, present shaped box. That's kind of like, it's kind of like the size of two shoe, two adjacent

shoe boxes side by side. And it comes with the pizza stacked on top of each other. And the bottom layer is a big old cookie and some breadsticks. Pretty good deal. I'd say pretty good value for 1999. I feel like if you have a family of three or a family of four with some young kids, you could definitely feed them for this. So keep that in mind.

My medium pan pizza, which was one of my options, was a meat lovers with a ranch crust, and then the thin and crispy was the bell peppers with honey, extra ratchet drizzle and hut favorite crust, which I mentioned. I also, as my breadsticks, I got the fiery red pepper flavor sticks with marinara, which is like a spicy breadstick without cheese. And then I got the ultimate Hershey's chocolate chip cookie as my dessert. Man, we should have done that deal. We spent a lot of money by getting stuff individually.

I didn't spend a dime. You bought it all. You like, like they do have, it did seem like they had some pretty good deals. And if you can find a bundle like that, like that's pretty good. I feel like we got a lot of food for not an exorbitant amount of money. And that pan pizza is pretty good. I think that's, that's definitely if you're going to get something from Pizza Hut, get that pan pizza.

I mean, like the, the, the texture of the crust is really good. It's very doughy in a good way. It's very substantial, very filling. I found myself like I kind of tasted everything, but the one I wanted to go back for seconds for was that meat lovers pan pizza with a ranch crust. And the ranch crust was pretty good. I would just say like, I feel like all the crust flavorings are roughly adjacent. They're all just sort of like, you know, I don't know, they feel like

superfluous add-ons and I'm not sure. I don't really know why they're there. Like I'd rather they just have, they just make a decision to have one good crust exterior topping that just, they just kind of roll with like dominoes. I feel like does. And did you guys, did you guys touch on your breadsticks at all? How did you find those breadsticks? Well, so the breadsticks are actually, for me, were kind of one of the highlights

because it felt very much like what that pan pizza was. It was like, it was a square, you know, that was kind of like in the shape of a square, a rectangle rather. And remember, I'm dumb. Yeah, the rectangle shape and it was just kind of like, it was cooked and had that nice crispy layer at the top of it that reminded me of that pan pizza. And so those, those for me were, were good.

They were good. They were just kind of, you know, playing the marinara sauce that you dip into is not great at Pizza Hut. So I will, I will, I will, yeah, I was getting back to me as being a health nut, like knowing, I was like, yeah, this is fun. And this is like a splurge and whatever, this is going to be like for fun for the podcast and stuff. I was still with like the breadsticks, like, oh, I shouldn't eat like this big,

like buttery stick of bread. It's like, I, I'm, I'm, I'm guiltlessly eating the pizza and I know it's bad for me or whatever, but breadsticks was almost like to me, I think I was like, I'm going to like feel this in my gut for 24 hours or, or it just was like maybe one, one step too many and not, this is maybe just more of a personal thing, but, but like mentally, I wasn't like, yeah, but I mean pizza, it's fun to eat pizza. It was like a thing where I think I had one and then I was done with it

because I was maybe just a little, it's, it's too much of an indulgence or something for, for what you get out of it. Well, I told them, I had a great time. We watched the Iowa game and they won. And that was, that was a lot of fun. Uh, but, but, uh, I told you, I heard that I felt sick, I felt sick for like a good, pretty much for the weekend. I'll say, I don't like, like I say, I don't have a big lunch that often.

And so, uh, and then I always eat like a dinner that was like, it was like seven 30 that night and I still wasn't like really that hungry. And I was like, I guess I should eat some food. So I had like a bowl of cereal or something. Like, like, uh, I think I ate more of a pizza later on. I'm pretty sure that I had, I definitely had like the day. I also had it for lunch, um, watching some basketball and, uh, later in the day, I had like just like a very, uh, my wife Natalie and I went out and just had

very light salads because it was just like so, so full from this like immense quantity of starch and you're right. The breadsticks, and I feel like this is more a general point about pizzerias in that they offer like additional bread sides, which I imagine they offer them just because of the raw profit margin. Like it's just like, we've got this extra dough. This is something we can turn into a side that we can sell it at a hefty profit. But like breadsticks, garlic knots, throw them in a river.

Like I don't need them. I don't need any of that. Like get it out of here, get it out of here. I don't, I just like the bread, like the fiery bread stick, it was fine, but it's just, it's just, it's so much feels just like empty calories. Like I don't need that. You're 1400s away of thinking throw in the river. By the way, that cereal, a bowl of cereal I had later was a gluten-free

cereal with almond milk. Oh, good for you. Full shit. Yeah, the, oh, by the way, when I worked there, so you make the pizzas by, you know, you first you make the, you get the, the crust, then you put the sauce on. And then it's, you know, you're like going down a line, like a picture, if you're on the other side of the, the, the serving table in, in Subway, just like that. There's a tray that has its pepperoni, a tray with like beef, a tray with.

Oh my God, Jared's there. Bell peppers, yeah. And so, you know, you'd, you'd make it, and obviously like there's some spill over that comes outside the like pan or whatever, and you're pumping on the pepperoni and all this stuff. So then there's sort of like a little gutter that you use like a scraper to, to scrape the, the, whatever toppings have spilled over and put it into this little gutter, this kind of roughly around like your waist or whatever.

And so if the manager or whatever was there, it was fine, but if the guy who was like above him, the guy who's franchise, I think owned it, or was at least like the general manager of it or whatever, if that guy was there and he saw you just scraping the toppings into the gutter to like throw away, he's did this to me once. He's like, Oh, um, did your parents raise you to waste food? Wow. And now it was like so casually asked, like it wasn't even that pronounced.

It was like, uh, did your parents raise you to waste food? And I was like thrown by it. I was like, uh, uh, no, like he asked like, it was a reasonable question where it's like, you know, I know some people like that's just a big thing is wasting, like as if it's not clearly there's only one answer he's looking for. And I was like, no, he's like, okay, well, we don't do that here either. And he was like, see all, all the type of toppings that you missed, just scrape them and then put them over here in the corner of the cheese.

Oh, that's because the cheese would be the next thing you put on after the sauce. Yeah. And then someone orders a supreme. You just use that. Wow. But supreme isn't everything. And so sometimes I'd be like, okay, and I wouldn't do it if he wasn't around. But it's like, sometimes you didn't like, like pork is what's there.

And it's like, aren't there people who don't eat pork who might feel safe ordering a supreme? Yeah. Now there could be pork. Like it was, uh, that was like Tony Soprano, like berating his bar manager for like throwing out the ice and making fresh ice. Like it's like, that's such like a weird, like super capitalist mentality of like, no, no, no fraction of ascent can be wasted.

We all need to go towards the bottom. No one else there was like that. It was just like the one guy, but it was like, I was just especially got weird at like, like, I guess nothing was really like filthy or something, but it was still just like this weird, now one little corner of the big cheese tray has like a bell pepper and a pepperoni and a few little pieces of beef and some onions or whatever. And you just like, now I'll scoop out of that for this.

And, and yeah, anyway. If I, if I don't talk much for the rest of the podcast is because I'm thinking of an oceans 11 type plot to break into one of those gutters. Oh, wait, can we possibly tilt it? So everything just streams down into my mouth. I'm going to need a guy whose job is just to make sure I get there on time. Well, it's a two man operation. And did you get any buffalo wings, swagger?

I didn't get any wings. I haven't, I didn't have, didn't try the wing street wings. They didn't come in the triple treat box and it looked like such a substantial portion that I felt like adding wings on top of it would have been a little much. I'm a fan in life of wings. Yes, I love them. I don't know that I had ever had boneless wings before. Oh, really?

Yeah. Oh, I'm not sure that I had. See, I'm a defender of boneless wings, but I don't know if those were the. To me, the right type of that they. It makes me more aware of like that this is. A weird concoction that isn't from the natural world. Well, let's be clear. I feel like what are called boneless wings are basically an effective adult

rebranding of the nugget like it's like they're trying to say. Here we go. They're saying that it's not the same meat that you get from a wing with a bone removed like a seedless watermelon is to a watermelon. It's it's its own thing that's heavily processed and they call it a wing because they know an adult is more likely to order it if they call it that versus a nugget. Yeah.

It felt what it felt like was eating a big chunk of like a cheap Chinese place's orange chicken. Sure. But instead of like the glaze being an orange glaze, it was just like because any like even like the cheap supermarket buffalo sauces are they give you like, yep, that's buffalo sauce flavor. Yeah. And so it's just sort of like it's smothered in that and you just eat a

big piece of like orange chicken with buffalo sauce instead. I don't know. I was like, to me, the whole fun of having wings is going out and feeling like I got these piping hot little wings out of the oven and it's maybe it's hot and maybe it's maybe a mile, whatever. But that was those were like it's chicken and bread and buffalo sauce. So those things are like fine. I like that combo, but it's it's they were just like that.

They were just too like kind of candy-ish and sweet. Yeah. Like, yeah, it was sort of a sweeter buffalo tang to it. I so I am a defender of boneless wings and I want anyone on Twitter out there to help me prove a hashtag prove burger wrong because because his nickname is a little burger, the little wager, the burger boy. Jesus Christ. But but I I I really like boneless wings if they're done well.

This may have been the best thing I've ever had from Wing Street, which is a street I try to move on to at one point in my life. But Wing Wing's Wing Street is not my favorite. I guess we might have to review Wing Street separately at some point. I don't know if it's because it only exists within Pizza Hut. Yeah, I feel like it's just like a branding of part of their menu. I don't think it was like it doesn't feel like it's a separate chain that joined forces and that you could just walk in and have a Wing Street meal.

I feel like at one point they were. But maybe they just maybe I thought that they were but Wing Stop is a place. Oh, yeah. We reviewed Wing Stop in December. Yeah, and that was great. And I thought it was Wing Street and Wing Street has never been that great. And these were probably the best thing I've had from Wing Street, which is not saying much.

But you know, Neil's right. They did the job. They were just really like they're fun and I like all those things. But they were really sweet and not the best version of even boneless wings. Yeah, my memory of I've definitely had the Wing Street wings from Pizza Hut in the past and my memory is just so like I don't they're I mean, they're forgettable because I don't remember them. I feel like they're perfectly if you feel like you have to have wings

with pizza and you can get and your your option is Pizza Hut, you can get some wings. But I don't see any reason to pursue them. So I again, if we're talking about the comparison, the binary between the two bit, the big two, Domino's and Pizza Hut, I'd take Domino's wings any day. I just I really like I think Domino's does a pretty good wing. And, you know, I don't I didn't have any wings in this recent experience. So keep that in mind. But I've never been impressed by Pizza Hut's wings offering.

And I had the ultimate Hershey's chocolate chip cookie, which I mentioned, which came as part of the triple treat box, you know, pizza, pizza restaurant desserts like why again, cast them into the bay like I don't need. I don't need any sort of I don't need a dessert. I don't need a sweet river. The very bay that the river empties. But put your bread sides in the river, let it empty into the bay. And the dessert will be waiting for you there, because it's just there's

just no reason for it. And it's fine. It was perfectly fine. The advantage of it was clearly cooked in the hot pizza oven. So it came out like pipe and hot is kind of that pipe and hot sort of cookie thing to it. But I feel like they're all trying to do like a giant cookie or a sinister stick or something. And just there's just no need.

I guess some people really, really want sweetness with any meal. But I see I feel like anything you'd have in your cabinet or your freezer is going to be a superior dessert to this giant Hershey's cookie that you could order from Pizza Hut. So I would just say don't bother unless you really need to. I don't know that I've ever felt like after having a bunch of pizza, I'm like, I need a sweet dessert other than like probably at birthday parties growing up. You're like, oh, yeah, you're going to eat some pizza.

Then you're going to get some cake and ice cream. But it's yeah, just tell us a cake is what we're getting at Pizza Hut. I think synastics are OK. The cookie, I think they're fine. The cookie is just a little too much. You know, I love synastics when you were at the buffet because you could go and grab one of them and enjoy those. But the buffets, I was, you know, there are still some Pizza Hut buffets out

there, but there's none close to us. So I did. I actually did some research. I couldn't find any. Yeah, just while I'm thinking about it, this is a great idea. I just had it swear that, you know, it's like everyone likes birthday cake in the world of if you like sweets. Sure.

That's not one of like there's cupcake places that there have. I'm like, I'm surprised there hasn't been like a trendy like you could come in and just get a slice of birthday cake. Well, there's certainly the birthday has become a flavor. Yes. I'm partial to the golden Oreos with the the birthday the birthday varietal there. I think those are really tasty.

Those might be my favorite Oreo. But I would. The plain. Yeah. The plain golden. The plain gold ones. The plain gold ones are good. I either golden I'll take.

But I do like that birthday. But like, yeah, I guess a place that kind of made you made it feel like it was your birthday when you came in there and you had a slice of birthday cake or even just like one of those like sprinkles cupcakes type that you just walk in and you're like, oh, I have a slice of sure chocolate chocolate slice of vanilla frost all of it. Like, I guess that's what those couple places are in a more easy to eat form of where you can hold it in your hand.

You don't need a little plate and a plastic fork. But and as you know, you're at work. Everyone likes getting a slice of cake, you know, so it's it's one of those. I feel like a lot of those cupcake places have shut down too recently. Like, I feel like some of them, like, like a few of them have have gone. Oh, yeah, because the cupcake fat is like the sriracha fat. It just it got over it just overexposed too much to mainstream. And then people were just over it and they're on to the next thing.

That's what I remember. Because the cake by the slice is the next trend. Yeah, that's what I'm predicting. What's it called? There's a I remember for a hot second. What's the the frozen yogurt place that that sort of was at the forefront of the was it pinkberry? Yes, pinkberry.

I was like, pinkberry rules and then it took like one more step beyond that of like, hey, what if there's a place where you just could put on your own toppings and there's 30 flavors instead of two and they have to put the toppings on for you and then everyone got way more excited about Yogurtville or whatever. Yogurtland. Yeah, and that's kind of all it took. And now now pinkberry is basically irrelevant. Yeah.

Yeah, we'll see who knows what's next in terms of individual desserts. You know, we'll leave it to you. If you have an idea of what the next big individual dessert is out there, go ahead and tweet it at us. Use the hashtag help spoon man jerk off. I just said pictures, but you fucking asshole. My prediction, birthday cake by the slice. I like that.

Oh, yeah, I like it a lot. It's good for sad people to have got to go have a slice by themselves. I don't know what the word is. It's never told. Let's get into our final thoughts on Pizza Hut. So this is how this works, Neil. We'll go around. We'll each sort of give our summation, our closing argument, if you will,

and then give a rating from one to five forks. So, Neil, we'll start with you. OK, here's my thesis I'm working on. I feel like pizza is one of those things where like I don't know how many places and there are, but how many places do you need to rely on a chain to get pizza and is it that much more expensive to go to like support a local business? Like I, if I'm getting pizza, I almost never, ever get something that's that I get and never get Pizza Hut and never get Domino's, little Caesars, anything

that's like a big corporate change. I'm like, there's also in Los Angeles at least, like, and not even a city that's known for like, it's a great pizza city, but like any city, I feel like you can find places where it's like, oh, this is a small business, that's a small pizzeria that the person who made it cares about it and they're not relying on like some corporate mandate for how they have to make the pizza. They can make it how they think tastes best. And if you don't have that option and you have to go with a corporate chain,

then that's your lot. But I almost like, if we're hanging out and people were ordering pizza, I'll try to like veto Pizza Hut, Domino's places like that to try to get, I'm not saying it has to be like the smallest, like one franchise, you know, like the tomato pies of the world where I don't know how big or small that franchise is. Do you? Yeah, I think it's just local to LA.

Yeah. But you know, I feel like there's or like a two boots or something where it's like, I think there's more care and more sort of like, like maybe just knowing like the people who open a Pizza Hut franchise aren't people like my whole life I've dreamed of like making pizza for people. And I love and I really thought about the best pizza you can make. It's like being counters who are like, oh, this is a pretty good like problem margin.

I'll just make sure that dumb teenagers who work here are, you know, like Neil Campbell are like, just make sure they do it according to like the way the training video told them to do it. And so I don't know. It's, it's, it's one of those things where I go, why would you do a fast food pizza place unless you had no other option? Uh, it just feels like it's a more soulless and just tastes like no one gave a shit.

They just slapped a few ingredients together. Um, you know, it's like whatever they say, like pizzas, like sex or whatever, like it's better with the guys. But it's hard to like totally screw up pizza. But I just, uh, I guess my feeling is like support your local businesses or like how much more expensive is just like a slightly better. I'm not, you know, you don't even go to Moza or something where it's like, this is gourmet pizza, but I kind of feel like you're almost always going to have

an option that probably is a little fresher, a little more love put into it. And it is not really that much more expensive. And if you don't, well, then hey, you get some pizza or if you're whatever, it's your kid's birthday party. You just need 40 pizzas, whatever. Uh, yeah, I'll go, you know, go one fork. Oh my God. Oh my God.

Christ. What is the worst pizza? I'm just trying to think on the scale, the scale is pretty small anyway. There's not like, like one to five is pretty tight. Yeah. So I'm trying to think, yeah, so it's, I'm trying to think, but like, I'm not even saying A is, I'm not saying an A is Moza or something like gourmet. If I'm talking strictly a pizza place that will deliver to you, I'm not saying

do I think that there are four gradients above Pizza Hut? Yes, I do. Wow. Because it's, yeah, I would give one fork to Domino's. I would give one fork to Little Caesars. I give one fork to all of the chains. I gave Domino's five for it. As a, as a former Pizza Hut employee, this is a real Daniel Ellsberg publishing

the Pentagon papers, a real Russell Crowe and the insider. Like you're really just, just, just blowing the lid off of your performer employer. Yeah, I feel guilty about it. I don't know, Roxy, what she's thinking right now, but whatever happened to Roxy, I wish I knew if you know, tweet at me. Anyone knows what happened to Roxy? I don't even honestly, I'm not totally sure her name was Roxy.

But I think it might have been. What happened to use, what's his name? Yavar? Yavar. Yavar's great. My buddy still, yeah. Did he go to college with you? No, he went to Old Dominion and now he's a doctor in Washington, D.C.

Good for him. Yeah, he's great. He's doing well. Sounds like an idiot. Mitch, go ahead and give your, give your thoughts and dominance. Wow. I'm sorry, Pizza Hut. Jesus Christ, get it together.

Maybe you went to VCU, man, or whatever. Well, I feel like here's a, I just want, if we should get this out of like quickly, a couple of things we didn't talk about with, that I didn't talk about. We had Slice, I got Neil, a couple slices and a couple pepsis for drinks, but Neil turned it down. Oh yeah, I didn't want a soda. He didn't want a soda. We mentioned the thing where you could be in the book club to read.

Also, the, the Pizza Hut used to have a lot of great toys back in the day. Like Neil mentioned the puppets. I remember specifically going for the Casper, when the Casper movie came out and getting a bunch of Casper hand puppets. I think even after I saw the movie, it was a nice experience for me. And then to do in the math, he would have been like 19 years old. You just loved Devon Sawa. I still use those puppets.

I liked Father Guido Sarducci, who makes it. Does he have a cameo in Casper? He has a cameo in Casper, his head gets turned backwards. So, and also not to mention, we forgot to say, talk about Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut, a Kentucky fried chicken and a Pizza Hut, the song. Oh, the combo, yeah. Oh, the song, yes. The song, yeah.

We touched on that in the Taco Bell episode with Jack Allison. Yeah, and I love those little tiny Pizza Hut pizzas, the pans that you can get at the drive-thrus. Yeah, we talked about the song before, but it was worth mentioning. And also, and back to the future too, there's a big Pizza Hut moment, which didn't come true, but, you know, what can you do? So anyways, with all that aside, all the stuff we didn't talk about, because there's a lot to talk about about Pizza Hut, I loved Pizza Hut.

I always kind of, I looked up to Pizza Hut. I always thought it was kind of a nice little play. And I loved the Pizza Hut buffet. I've always felt like a step above Domino's and some of these other places. I don't feel like what they're doing now, the kind of the yum brands version of it with what they do with Taco Bell and stuff, like where they try, I like that Taco Bell does it. I think there's a lot of cool new things you want to try each month. With Pizza Hut, I feel like it's all about the classics.

And even with the cheese stuffed, I'm sorry, yeah, the cheese stuffed, what is it, the cheese crust? Stuffed crust. Stuffed crust, thank you. You're welcome. Even that is not as good to me as just a regular pan pizza. I really enjoyed that regular pan pizza. I really enjoyed my time at Pizza Hut buffets.

You could get a nice salad, a couple slices of pizza. You could try a few different things and have some breadsticks and cinna sticks. It was a great setup. It's too bad that the world has changed so much. And I can't look back on this and I can't look back on this and rate this place on what it was. And because it's not this anymore, and that does make me sad. And I am mad that ISIS exists and I will, I hope I can wipe them out myself one day. Well, then stop donating money to them.

Well, I get mixed up. But, yeah, it's just a place that it's sad to have seen it fallen. But the pan pizza there is so, so good. I still, still really enjoy the pan pizza. I will say the stuffed crust pizza did not heat up well either. And that was another thing that I wanted to bring up. When I microwaved some of that, I think the next day. Microwaving is, I would literally almost puke if I microwave pizza growing up.

That's like why I learned to use an oven was to heat up pizza. That's true. I'm just out of pure laziness. And there are, but there are places where, I mean, Domino's has pizza that heats up better in the microwave. Yeah. And I'm just, that's just me personally. Hey, maybe some people like it.

Well, it just, it just isn't what it was. And I, I hope it can go back to that, but there will never be another pizza hut buffet. I feel like a pizza hut, if you, if, if you could take advice from me, it would be to go back to your roots and try to do something like that and try, you know, try to push that, like what fud ruckers did, which we reviewed a few episodes ago, try to kind of take that fud ruckers route. But I just don't see that happening with the Yum Brands. But all that being said, I still love their, their personal pan pizza.

I got to go back in. I want to go into a pizza hut restaurant and try it. And I want to try specifically just a pan pizza again, no matter what. But right now, my rating for you is, is three forks, sadly. Three forks for the Spoon Man. And, and, and I, I loved, what's that place you like, uh, DeSano's? I like DeSano's in LA, yeah. And that's a place that like you could call and they'll deliver pizza, right?

They won't deliver it. I know. Okay, okay. But you can go and, you can, you can, you can go in and pick it up. And, and yes, that place is way, way better than. And that would be like a five forks pizza to you. Yeah, I think it would be up there. Yeah.

Okay. And it's about the same, but it's not the same convenience because they don't deliver. Yes. And I mean, I, I, I ranked Domino's five forks. I used to dislike, I used to forever would say that pizza was better than Domino's. I just, in the here and now it's not true. It's not, it's not the case. So, and some, and, and that's a weird thing too of like, sometimes I crave Domino's.

Sometimes I crave good pizza like you were talking about. I've talked about this before on the podcast where I like, I want a good pizza. I want even a tomato pie. Like I'm craving a tomato pie or I'm going to go and get DeSano's. Yeah. I would never compare if I was talking like McDonald's. I wouldn't compare it to a gourmet burger because the convenience aspect is totally different. It's like, well, I'm not going to a sit down restaurant.

You whatever, go through the whole experience. Yeah, exactly. But pizza is one of those things where you can, the convenience is pretty much taking care of it by a lot of different places. And like it's pretty equivalent, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I, I'll get into my thoughts here.

Yes. And I sympathize with what you're saying, Neil. And I think you make a valid point, but I will say that we have the benefit of living in a major metropolitan area and where there are a lot of local options. And in my hometown of Lakewood, California, which is a suburb of Long Beach, I'm not sure if I can, I certainly can't now, I can't name like a local pizzeria. Like I can't, I can't think of like a place that we had access to. It was like, you know, it was Domino's.

It was round table. It was, fuck, we had another one. It wasn't Godfathers, but like Godfathers, it was a, it was one that might have been called lighthouse pizza. It was some defunct chain and we had pizza hut. No, we did have a round table. Round table was our most frequent dining experience. They had a Cadillacs and Dinosaurs stand up arcade cabinet.

It was pretty awesome. And, and, and, you know, pizza hut is one of the pizzas I've consumed the most in my lifetime because, you know, it was my dad's go to order. It was the closest thing we could drive to because it was too cheap to get delivery. We could get a lot of of starch and a lot of caloric, caloric intake from those from that pan pizza. So I've been a lot of pizza hut. I've been a lot of Domino's, I've been a lot of round table.

I feel like if you're, as you were saying, if you're limited in access to where you live in a rural area, you live in a suburban area, you live in a neighborhood where there aren't a lot of local options or maybe the local options aren't that much better than, or aren't really worthwhile, I think that you're, you're, you might be limited to chain pizzas. And if pizza hut's the only game in town, fine, get that pan pizza stick with that. I think that's the one thing they do well. I think Spoon Man is right.

But if you have access to something else, if you have access to a Domino's, I'd go Domino's eight times out of 10. I would, I would switch it up to Pizza Hut if I felt like I needed some variety. But if I'm picking between those two, I got to give the nod to Domino's. I just think it's better all around. I just think that all of their over top to bottom, their menu is just a better execution, especially since they reconfigured everything in their recent marketing push, um, a couple of pizza hut things I wanted to add in.

I use the app to order, not as good as the Domino's app. Another strike against it. The Domino's app has the pizza tracker. You can see, you know, at what point, um, Michael is putting your pizza in the oven and at what point, uh, Stephanie is taking your pizza out for delivery. It's giving you updates on that in real time. Arts and athletics works at Pizza Hut. Yes.

My whole improv team arts and athletics. I know Michael and his stuff. But you don't get that with the Domino's, with the Pizza Hut app. You're just, it's, it's very much like you order. It was a little confusing. I had to log in like three times. It just, it just isn't as polished. And I think that just kind of speaks to the Pizza Hut experience all around.

It's just not as, it's not as fully formed as what you could get from a Domino's and certainly not what you could get from a local Pizzeria. Um, pizza, the hut from Spaceballs. I thought that was a very funny joke as a kid. Uh, it was a job of the hut thing that's pizza. I still think it's a funny joke. I rewatched that. Maybe you have a lot of food, a lot of, you know, a lot of weird ale and, uh,

Mel Brooks is just like, it's like, Hey, food's funny, right? Yeah. And also in that movie, yogurt instead of Yoda, even barf is kind of barf. Yeah, you're right. But pizza, the hut always grossed me out as a kid because it was gross looking and like I liked pizza, but I didn't want to eat pizza. He looked gross and then he also eats himself to death, which is pretty funny. Also a little bit of trivia, former director of marketing for Pizza Hut,

who oversaw the Bigfoot Pizza and the Big New Yorker is Reggie Fiza May, who is later the president of Nintendo of America. Oversawing the Wii and Wii U era. That old playing card company. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I'll just say real quick. Yeah.

Oh, you haven't given your score. Yeah, just, just, just to wrap up real quick. Yes, yes, yes. Bye. Pizza Hut is fine. I feel like you have better options almost everywhere you go, unless you have some sort of tribal loyalty based off of years of consumption and you just have to scratch that particular nostalgia itch.

I feel like you might as well go somewhere else. Two and a half forks for Pizza Hut. Go ahead, Neil. The only last thing I was going to say is, hey, go on Yelp. Try to, maybe you do have a local pizza. That's true. That's true. We live in the era of Yelp.

I have, since I was 18, I've lived in cities with multiple pizza options that were not always good, but maybe not just like totally mechanized pizza processing. And like, I lived in Iowa City, Iowa, and then in New York and Los Angeles. But, you know, there's, there's, there's options out there, I bet. Take a little look on Yelp or however you look, you know, city for local businesses. Yeah, city search. I'm a huge local business guy. And I've talked about it on the podcast a lot, like, like to, to go out and support

Villarosa and, and, and grumpy whites and, and, uh, this, the last Brigham's, which isn't a Brigham's anymore. Are you naming like Boston area street gangs? These are specifically Quincy eateries. Gotcha. And the last Brigham's across the street from the Wallace and Theodore, which is now the ice cream shop, which no one knows about, but I love supporting, I love supporting local businesses.

I think it's very important. All, all those places that I just mentioned could go under. I don't know. It makes me sad. But, uh, my, they took a hit when you left. Oh, what the fuck deal does it to one? I'm trying to get into the spirit. Uh, uh, why are you laughing too much stuff about me today?

Uh, I will say that, uh, sometimes you crave, sometimes you just crave something that's not a local chain. Like sometimes I, I crave tomato pie. Sometimes I crave DeSano's or something, which is a higher end pizza place. But sometimes I want Domino's, but the, and I want that garbagey, you know, like I want a big Mac or something. Sometimes and, but for whatever reason, I can't believe this has happened. That Domino's has overtaken pizza hut because, because I always just thought

pizza, oh yeah, it's, it's just a better quality than Domino's. And I don't even think that's true anymore. And it's, it's sad for me to think about that. But, but when I'm craving that garbage thing, it's, I want Domino's. I, I never really want pizza hut because there's just a lot of different options that Domino's that, that still work. And with pizza hut, it's just basically that pan pizza, which I am now craving because I haven't had it in forever, but that's, that's kind of it for me.

And, and, and I think all the kind of silly stuff they're doing is, isn't really helping. Uh, like I felt like the big, the big foot pizza, you got to give props to Reggie, the big foot pizza and the, the, the New Yorker or whatever that they had were kind of a better version of some of that stuff. I did love that big foot pizza. That was a childhood favorite of mine. I really, really liked that big foot, but they, they get to figure something

out because I can't believe we live in a world now where, where Domino's is, is kind of seen as better than, than pizza hut. It's just, it's really strange to me. And I know buffets are dead. I'll be your snootyest, most elite guest. I never have that craving. I never like, I want the garbage version of something I could get the good version of Neil.

That's fair. You may be, you may be receiving death threats from spoon nation. I'll stick with it. I will say, Mitch, I will say, I think you were on to something when you were referencing Fudrackers, because I think if there might be something to pizza, who knows, maybe they're more profitable than ever. But I think people are more craving, like we go to Buffalo Wild Wings and that place is just packed because it's like this communal experience.

And I wonder if they kind of went more in the direction. They swung the pendulum back towards their history and we're like, we're going to have these big, large square footage restaurants where it's a parlor, you go in, you sit with your family, you sit with your friends, you order some pizza, we'll bring you some pictures of beer. We got sports on the television. They used to have, I remember going to pizza hut and they'd have pictures of beer. They have pictures of beer.

And like maybe they're bringing that back. And that's kind of like the experience we had at that local place, DeSano's, when we went, it's, it's like, you know, maybe, maybe that's, there's something there, maybe there's something in pursuing that. Cause I think people are craving that sort of communal experience. All right. That's our, that's our thoughts on pizza hut. Get higher Reggie again, I say.

Yeah, bring Reggie back and fix that fucking app. Just copy Domino's. Yeah, that app, that app is whack. And speaking of whack, we got a food stuff and we're going to decide if it's worth putting in your mouth. It's time for a regular segment. It's snack or whack. So sorry, Neil.

It's not truffled caviar. Well, then I'll say it's whack. I agree about pizza would also be great. But if it's sports, it was opera. Is it a beer, the finest champagne? Also, I'm going to say arts and athletic. Great team name too. That was a good team name.

Oh, fuck. All right. Let's, uh, fuck you. What? For supporting your point. All right. Let's, uh, let's talk about our food stuff. So what we've got this week are Reese's spread snacksters.

These are a peanut butter and chocolate spread with Graham Dippers. Um, I'm taking a picture of this now. So this is basically like, they're kind of like little, little sweet bread sticks with a little pool of chocolate. Yeah. This is like you made these. I don't know if these are real. Well, these were purchased at the local Vons, uh, by Boi of Dali.

You guys can go ahead and dig into these. So we've kind of got like a pudding like substance in a container that's next to some long, some lengthen sticks. So like snackaroos or something. They seem like they're akin to Dunkaroos. Dunkaroos. That's very similar to Dunkaroos. Okay.

Neil, I'm going to pass these over to you. Tell us what you're experiencing, Mitch. Okay. Okay. An extremely sugary, an extremely sugary dipping chocolate sauce or whatever. I don't even know what the hell to call that. Um, and weirdly, the, the, the kind of the, the Graham has kind of like a cinnamony or weird aftertaste that makes it taste more like Reese's.

I think that's part of it. Am I wrong? I don't think that's the, the Graham thing. I think that's the sauce. The sauce is a peanut butter chocolate spread. So just as a weird, the, the, the peanut butter is that comes in like an aftertaste, I feel like. Yeah.

But that's part of the spread there. It's very, I'd say that this, this either the spread or the, you know, I'm going to take a, a, a taste of this dip and stick plain, just sort of get a taste of it because it's, it's got a lot of chalkiness to it. I mean, they remind me a lot of Dunkaroos in a lot of ways, from something I haven't eaten in over 20 years, probably, but, um, yeah, I would say as I hand this over to Neil here, um, it's, uh, it's very, it is like Dunkaroos, but it feels a little inferior.

I feel like the peanut butter character to the frosting gives it a weird texture, gives it a little granularity, which is a little unpleasant in terms of mouth feel. Yeah, I don't know. These are really weird. Also, I, when I tasted that stick individually, I didn't really have much sweetness. It was very much the kind of a neutral bread flavor, which I guess they, maybe

if it's sweet on a sweet, with a sweet dip and sauce, maybe it would just be overwhelming, but I don't know. I don't know. Why Reese's is one of the best candies. Absolutely. Top tier. Usually they're, I like fast breaks. I like take fives.

I especially like take fives. Is it, which one has the pretzels? I like the one with the pretzels. That's a, that's a take five. Yeah. The take, that take five is real good. I used to love fast breaks and then I like take fives more so, and I don't know if they still sell them, but this one, I just don't get.

I mean, who is it for? Is it's, it's, this is for kids, I guess, but then also like this is like the worst lunchtime snack for kids. Yeah. This is clear. This is clearly meant to stuff some lunch boxes, stuff, some brown bag lunches. Um, and yeah, it's really, it's, it, it seems very unhealthy. Uh, I don't know.

I don't know those things. I feel like that's like, I'm like, um, some of these Reese's co-branded products. I guess this isn't co-branded. This is just straight up Reese's. But why not just have a Reese's peanut butter cup? Yeah. Yeah. Why have, why have this over that?

Yeah. It's like, it's a bigger pain in the ass and it doesn't taste as good. I feel like it's probably made for school lunches. Like even that packaging is like the foil, tear away top seems like that's the kind of thing my parents would have thrown in my school lunch as a kid to be like the dessert treat. Mine too, but I, and I feel, and they would have done this and probably it will hold up better in a school lunch versus a Reese's peanut butter cup,

which would melt and would also feel like Halloween candy. But man, it's just so, it's so much less satisfying than an actual Reese's anything. And yeah, like they, we've had the Reese's, uh, they have a Reese's cookie, a Chips Ahoy cookie, which is also a little underwhelming. I don't know. I'm, uh, for this one, it's a definite whack from Weiger. Yeah.

I'm giving it a whack. Yeah. And I think the flavoring feels like it's like we found the, uh, like the chemical assortment that creates the flavor of chocolate and peanut butter. Like I don't feel like, I don't even feel like that's actually chocolate. I feel like if I feel like I don't know what the definition of what makes something truly chocolate versus like, Oh, cocoa is like a minuscule ingredient in a weird cornstarchy, sugary mix.

You know, like, I don't know at what point can you legally call something chocolate if that's even a legal definition. But like, uh, you know, like, what was I like old, like they had to change the name of Kool-Aid or something. Oh yeah. Like you're like, you couldn't put aid on something unless it was actually. Oh, that's funny. Real fruit or something like that.

I forget. Like you couldn't spell it a certain way, like A-D-E. I might be this, um, this is like me vaguely recalling something I learned in like 10th grade, but it could be Snow's territory. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's, uh, it's, it feels like that where I feel like, Oh, this is like the approximation of a few mixed peanut butter chocolate, but we're not

actually going to spend the money to mix peanut butter and chocolate for you. Idiots. Go ahead. It's weird because I still feel like it kinda still has like a Reese's flavor that I get so I like, I kind of like that. But overall, I mean, and also it's got a cinnamon, a kind of a cinnamony flavor for whatever reason, but maybe that's just me. No, I tasted it.

It's kind of like a honey graham cinnamon. Yeah. If, if, if, if, if, if. Teddy Grahams. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Teddy Grahams thing.

I didn't like Dunkaroos as a kid, even though like I begged my mom to buy them and I didn't really like them. Handy snacks, the cheese and crackers, I liked much better. Sure. But yeah, you know what? I didn't, I didn't, I didn't love those. I gotta go, I gotta go whack. They're not good.

Yeah. It's, it's disappointing. I mean, these, these Reese's spread snacks, or it seems like it's universal that these are more like Reese's spreads. Waxters, um, I, I would also say that, I mean, the, the, I'm a Dunkaroos defender. These are no Dunkaroos. I used to love Dunkaroos. And all that said, like, it was so nice and Natalie to buy those.

Yeah, that's like, like Natalie, thank you. You're still the Natmaster. Uh, that snack or whack, just like a restaurant. We value your feedback. Let's open up the feedback. Today's email comes to us from Will Oxford. Will writes. So smart.

Hey guys, I like the podcast. Hey guys, love the podcast. I tried to share with my fiance. Her one comment was, I can't tell if these guys are best friends or arch enemies. So my arm between my question. It is always weird going to a chain restaurant where you have a regular order, but based on the region, the restaurant is in, they may not have it. I moved to Connecticut from NC and I went to McDonald's for breakfast, put

in my order for a chicken biscuit, only to find out they don't sell those in the north. My favorite fast food breakfast is Hardee's biscuits and gravy. I would imagine they don't have that out your way. Have you encountered anything like this in your eating expecting to order something only for it not to be on the menu? Uh, what do you get any thoughts on this one? The only thing real quick, I was listening to a hockey game on serious XM the other day, and so it was playing like a Canadian broadcast and had local

Canadian advertising and they were talking about, uh, poutine at McDonald's. Whoa, that's crazy. Yeah, I know they have a McLobster up and where they have a huge, when they have a lobster surplus in the Northeast, they have a McLobster. I'd say put a call out to your, to your listeners up in Quebec. If you got it, someone's got to like review this poutine McDonald's poutine. I'd be interested in a perspective on that. Uh, I, I can't think of anything specifically.

I know that this has happened to me in the past, but now that I've been in California for 10 years, I, I, and, and also I, I, I feel like honestly, Mr. Oxford, you should, uh, you should honestly grow to like something like that because I feel like the world is becoming more and more like one place. And I kind of like regional things. And although it's sad that you can't get your chicken biscuits, a bummer, uh, you should, uh, like, uh, it should be a nice, I mean, in your, in your scenario, yes, chicken biscuits should be available everywhere because I feel like

they are available almost everywhere, but, but kind of regional things. And, and I like that McDonald's has the lobster roll up in the Northeast, even though I'm sure that they do it nationwide now. But, uh, for me, it's more like I miss like some chains of like DeAngelo's or something like that, some East Coast places, but, but, uh, I can't think of anything specifically now that, that, that one place has that, that others don't, at least not in the last 10 years for me. It's more just like Northeast specific chains or something like that, that,

that, that I miss. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm going to be particularly unhelpful here just because I'm a lifelong Southern Californian. So I've just, I've lived in the same region my whole life and I've just experienced the same chains in the same form. Uh, but when I have taken trips, I, I've always like kind of been a little startled when I see something a little bit, uh, that we can't get out here.

One that I was surprised to see was in New York city and went to a McDonald's. And for McDonald's breakfast, they had the steak, egg, and cheese bagel. And I was like, Oh, well, we don't have bagels at McDonald's out here. And we certainly don't have steak. And I was like, Oh, that's an interesting menu item. And I was a little too, I was like, I don't feel like I want to get a steak from a McDonald's. So I was a little too startled to, to order it, but that was an interesting one.

You flew home, right? Actually, right. It used to be the cheesy gordita crunch for me. Uh, Oh, is that regional? It wasn't, it wasn't regional, but just sometimes I remember some Taco Bells didn't have it. And that would, that would kind of bum me out. Taco Bell was my thought also.

Yeah. Um, uh, in high school, I used to go to Taco Bell with my friends, uh, you know, fairly regularly. Yes. Yovar included. And, um, uh, I always liked the chili cheese burrito, which is what I believe it was called. And then, um, didn't go to Taco Bell Fongtime.

And then again, I'm snooty and I'm always weighing convenience versus the, so it's like, I'm just, I'm like, I've like almost never been to a Taco Bell in Los Angeles cause I'm like, there's a hundred taco stands that are just as convenient, essentially to get, like you're in and out basically as quickly as a Taco Bell, your car though. Yeah. So you don't sit in your running car while you sit in line in the drive-through. Um, the, the difference has been in school.

So I'm, I, that's one of those things where I'm like, I'll never go to Taco Bell or Dell Taco or something. Cause I just, there's these cool, these great taco stands around. Anyway, I have been to Taco Bell sometimes when I let my, when I put down my snooty guard and, uh, and there was nothing like that on the menu anymore. But I don't know if that was regional or if it's just over the years that proved to be a less popular item and it's, they've just removed it. It was nationwide and now it isn't, but that's the only thing where I'm like,

I don't even know what to get at a Taco Bell. Yeah. Um, in the way that I used to, to have that was my go-to. I feel like that sort of thing should be celebrated though. Sure. We don't want to be in a world where you can, every corner of our country has the same thing and we all listen to the same radio station. Doesn't have the same thing.

Isn't the whole point of a chain to be like, Hey, I know I can go in here and get this one thing and not worry about. It's reliable and you can count on it. But I do, I think I see where you're going. I like the little bit of regional variants. I think that's a nice way to like mix it up a little bit. I've always liked kind of regional things with chains too, but that, I feel like chains, it's almost, and I do, I, I'm with you.

I do like to, oh cool. I can get a big Mac here. I know a big Mac is good throughout the country, but, uh, but I feel like they used to do kind of some more things with, with, with regional spots. And I, and I like that. It keeps it kind of, oh, there's some thought into it instead of everything just being the same exact thing across the nation, which I think fast food chains now are like more so like that, unless that chain isn't available

in your area. Uh, but we're losers who eat fast food all the time. And you were mentioning Del Taco and Taco Bell and we were both getting hungry. So if you've got a regional favorite out there, reach out to us, tweet at us. Let us know. Uh, you got a hashtag you want to pitch out for that one, Mitch? I know what you want me to say. No, no, no, no.

It was something, whatever you want to say. Hashtag regional fave. Hashtag, that's a good one. Regional fave. For a spoon man to jerk off. If you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you can email us at doughboyspodgas at gmail.com. Follow our Twitter at doughboyspod.

Check out our Facebook page. It's just at, or it's just doughboys rather. Neal Campbell, a super size episode to kick off the new year. Thank you so much for giving us an honor and I'm sorry it's so long. We had no clock in the room this time, which we said we'd be fine with, but now we've gone two hours. I don't think we've quite gone two hours, but we're approaching the length of a feature. Hey, it's the new year.

People want to super size. Give it, have a bit. You do doughboys. It's been a way for a little bit. It's come roaring back. Maybe your new year's resolution was to stop listening to the podcast. But if that wasn't it, and you're still with us, we hope you've enjoyed this extra indulgent episode.

Neal, do you have anything you would like to plug? Plug. Just, hey, come see Nick Weiger and I do improv. If you're in Los Angeles every Thursday at 11 at UCB Los Angeles last day of school. Hey, there you go. There's a very, very regional specific plug. Yep. Or arts and athletics.

Do you guys have a show regularly? No. Okay. All right, that'll do it for this episode of Doughboys. For Mike Mitchell, the Spood Man. Until next time, I'm Nick Weiger. Happy eating. Bye.