Doughboys - Sugarfish with Jason Mantzoukas

Episode Date: February 15, 2018

Actor and comedian Jason Mantzoukas (The Good Place, How Did This Get Made?) joins the ‘boys to discuss the difficulty of dining with a serious allergy and to review LA based upscale sushi chain Sugarfish. Plus, a flavored Diet Coke edition of Drank or Stank.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Actor Larry Thomas holds the ignoble honor of having portrayed both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Thomas, a white American of Russian and Romanian Jewish heritage, sports an ambiguously ethnic look that's landed him roles as two of the world's most reviled bogeymen, as well as an entirely different sort of villain. A one-off Seinfeld character named Yev Kassem, but best known as the Soup Nazi. The character, based off the real-life Al Yagana, the Persian-American owner-operator of famed New York City eatery Soup Kitchen International, made an indelible pop culture

imprint with his catchphrase, No Soup For You, which Thomas claims to have improvised. The character also inspired a naming convention applied to those who operate as cruel despots in what would normally be low-stakes circumstances. In Los Angeles, that moniker was given to Kazunori Nozawa, who was dubbed the Sushi Nazi. Nozawa, a Japanese immigrant who, in 1985, opened his eponymous sushi bar in the Studio City neighborhood, was known for presenting precisely prepared fish with the dishes dictated according to the chef's discretion. Much like the Soup Nazi, the Sushi Nazi's food was as lauded as his stern service was

decried, which included famously ejecting actress Charlize Theron for daring to ask for a substitution. Despite or perhaps in part due to Nozawa's reputation, Angelino's queued up for hours for the opportunity to endure his abuse and enjoy his cuisine, and the chef is widely credited with popularizing the fixed-course omakase style in the United States. In 2008, a frequent customer at Nozawa's counter named Jerry Greenberg, who'd earlier co-founded an IT consulting firm worth billions, partnered with the chef to expand his concept and simplify it for the masses, aiming to maintain the high quality of food but make the services friendly and accommodating as they establish high-end chains in its price

range. The Greenberg-Nozawa collaboration became a local hotspot, particularly frequented by the power-lunching set, and locations soon dotted the greater LA area, with patrons craving its ponzu sauce-coated fish and slightly warmed vinegared rice. In 2017, the chain expanded east, opening its first outlet in New York City as the man dubbed the Sushi Nazi laid claim to the Soup Nazi's home base. This week on Doe Boys, Sugarfish. Welcome to Doe Boys, the podcast about chain restaurants.

I'm Nick Weiger, alongside my co-host, Supreme Eater Snoke, the Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell. Supreme Eater, the Supreme Eater. That one was courtesy of Andrew Zintek, if you have an insult you'd like me to use on the top of the show. Rospoonmanagmail.com is the address. You seem to really like that. I think it was a lot of fun. Nice little Star Wars reference, a comment on that.

Do you really think it was a lot of fun? Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Instead of Supreme Eater, you're Supreme Eater. He could've gone in different directions. He could've been like Nacho's Supreme Leader Snoke. That would have been something. That could've been something. Supreme Leader Snoke, it's a little bit of an A to C.

Implying that I will have a stroke one day. I think Supreme Eater Snoke works good. Well I want to say, how to how, to Mitchie Two Spoon's nation. I introduced you as a Spoonman, but I forgot your new gimmick is Mitchie Two Spoon. I'm Mitchie Two Spoon. I'm a smoother character now. I got to update my notes. A smoother, cooler character.

And that's why my drops work right off the bat. Here we go. Ah. It's pretty good. And it's over. What's that style? Is it vapor wave? Is that what they call it? It's like kind of this, this trippy contemporary music style. It sort of felt like a vapor wave take on the Doughboys drop.

I kind of like that one, honestly. Yeah, that was pretty fun. I just shouldn't play any of them. I am embarrassed when the guest sees me do it. It's embarrassing. I was really hoping you'd be punished for your hubris by saying the drop was going to play right away, and then it played right away.

Yeah. So there you go. It wasn't embarrassed. Mitchie two spoons this move. This was from, he says, I'll continue to make drops until you play one of mine. Fuck Twitter. Instagram at Jake Saunders.

Hmm. Spoon nation forever. Jake. Jacob Saunders. Hey, how about that? Sounds like he's related to Joe Saunders possibly. Because he has the last name Saunders. That's right.

It's a fairly common last name. I don't know. They could be related. Mitch, real quick, but before we introduce our guests, we had a, you and I had a meeting yesterday. That's right. We sometimes have take meetings places. Yes.

And this was a, this was a meeting in a, and one of those, you know, it was a major media company. And so like it was this big building. And then we, we had the meeting and, and then we came downstairs to the lobby. There was a slab in the lobby. That's true. Who recognized you.

That's right. I was, I felt like, I was like, wow, how about that? I can't believe you're bringing this up. I didn't tell him to bring this up. We don't have to say who the celebrity is, but he, why not? If that's a cool. You should say it now that you brought it up.

It was Jack Black. It was Jack Black. He saw you from across the lobby, pointed at you, and then started quoting a birthday boy sketch. That is true. You're three problems in America. Three problems in America sketch. A music video, which you did, which is very funny.

And then he also was like, he said, hello to me. He said, hello to Susser, who was also at the meeting. Yes. And he said, why was Susser there anyway? I mean, that's, that is a good question. And then he said, what's wrong with your other friend? Because Weiger was being weird and standing 10 feet away. I was lingering in the back because my meter had expired

and I wanted to be able to get out there. So I didn't get a parking ticket. So I was trying to make this interaction brief. Susser and I were saying after the meeting, how if listeners of the podcast saw you that entire morning, they would be back on my side again. Because also in the meeting, we won't say where it was, but you did say, to be honest, I felt blindsided by this meeting.

Okay. There's a thing which is insane. You correct you. Okay. You caught, you explained to me, I didn't know this. I thought blindsided had a neutral connotation. You explained that it has a negative connotation. I was caught off guard and surprised because I thought

what we were discussing was dead and buried. And then it became like still came back from the grave. Still kind of insane. All right. Well, I was being candid. I'm sorry. Isn't that the appeal of this dynamic? Isn't that what people say?

They were hunched over in the meeting. You looked like you were acting like I had gone to the gym and I did the sled. You ever done the sled? The sled. Yeah. It's like that big old thing. It's like this big metal thing and you put weights on it

and you push it around. It's exhausting. All right. I was worn out. I was fatigued. My quads and glutes were burning. I was doing the sled. I was like, I don't know how Santa does this.

Oh, fuck you. Santa, do you think Santa, he trains with the sled? You must. Oh God. Gonna make it around the globe in under 12 hours, distributing presents to all the children of the world. That's enough bullshit. I was trying to say, say a story about how like I thought it was

really cool that this cool like to get your hold on Santa sled. Okay. All right. The destination of every child in the world. Right. Suggesting I'm sneaking in through chimneys for some nefarious purpose. I was trying to say something nice about you and you turned it around. Please do.

That's all I was saying. I just thought it was cool that a celebrity recognized you. It was a good day. Yeah. It was more meeting Nick. It was all fun. Everything was fun. All right.

Let's introduce our guest. Very, very excited to have him here from how did this get made in the good place? Jason Mansouk. Hi, Jason. Hooray. How are we gentlemen? We're doing great.

This is already fantastic for me. For me as a fan of the show, I'm enjoying watching the sausage get made. I mean, this is before, like before I've been introduced, I've been privy to a veritable greatest hits of Doughboy's events. Weiger spilled a Perrier on his computer. We didn't mention that yet. That happened before.

There has already been a spill. I am so glad to know that the drops are not played through the sound board or through any kind of aux cable or anything. It's just Mitch holding his phone up to his own microphone. This is the best. That was a very bad spill you had. There was a lot of, I apologize for my house smelling like fish. Oh yeah.

Yeah. There's also a distinct fishy smell in the apartment. That's true as well. I had salmon for lunch. You guys went and had a meal at the restaurant for today. Yes. I got it last night. You blew it.

You blew it. You could have eaten with us. And I'm going to explain why I really did. Weiger had the big spill. I got a coach came at just right when I was. Right as we're about to start recording. I watched a delivery happen. Very excited.

The great coach hunt is still on. This is not, this is just a, this is a great coach. An interim coach. It's an, it's not like you were, I think you, you said it perfectly that I'm looking for the, a Rick Ross style. A big relaxing couch for my, for my living room. This one will, will serve another purpose for you, but this, this couch does not serve your need for a sectional.

That's right. Yes. You got to get a sectional. You got to get a sectional. Got to, got to be on the couch. I got to, I got to lay on the couch more. I'm also curious, Weiger, why in the, like it's worth it. I think to make good face time with Jack Black and get a ticket instead of

being like a ticket creep and being like, I can't, I can't make this business connection right now. I might get a ticket. Yes. Think about it that way. That, I mean, that's probably one of, you know, that's kind of symptomatic of my general lack of career success that I shirk from.

It sounds like yesterday you prioritized the sled and not getting a parking ticket above a business meeting and me and making a legitimate business connection. Yeah. I guess so. I guess that's true. I don't know. How much time did you have left on the meter when you got out of the car? It was expired.

There was expired, but no ticket. Thankfully. Oh, thank God. Also, you could have parked for free under, in the lot. I'm not comfortable valing. I don't like valing. Wow. I don't like people touching my car on the inside.

Oh, wow. Okay. I mean, I'll do it if that's the option, but I just like, I was like, oh, there's a, there's a space on the street right here. And I just figured it was easier. But yeah, it was a one hour limit and it ended up being a liability. A disaster valet story. Harris Whittles, rest in peace.

Love the guy. Of course. Pulled up to the valet on the Franklin strip. I won't say which one it was exactly. You're not going to say near or far. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't East or the, it could have been the East one or the West one. Okay.

Okay. The valet took his car brand new. It was a, it was a, what was it a BMW or was it, what was it a Mercedes? I don't remember. I think it was a Maserati. Wasn't it? I think it was a Maserati. I think it was a brand new BMW.

You know, a fancy writer purchase, right? And the guy took it and totaled it like totaled the car. Wow. Yeah. And then Harris who is like, was a very nice guy in a situation like this specifically was like, uh, that's, it's, it's cool, man. Like he was kind of like, it's cool. Like obviously he was like, someone has to pay for the car, but he didn't want the guy

to lose his job. Of course. He felt really bad for the guy. How did the accident happen? Yeah. I think the guy just got like, like nailed by a car as he was going out. And it's one of those things where like, cause you know, my, my sense before, prior to ever dealing with insurance companies, when I heard totaled a car, I was like, oh,

it's got to basically be cubed. You can total a car. It just, the damage has to be more than the value of the car. That's all it means. So like you can get sideswiped and the car can be total. Yeah. I literally, I don't even know if like the car work, like I don't think the engine was working. I think it was like bad.

Yeah. It was, it was the car like evaporated. It shattered. It broke into tiny pieces like ice. He gave him a plastic bag with the dust of the car. Yeah. But, but, uh, and the guy still works there. Oh, okay.

Harris's credit. Well, that's still today. Whoa. Let's get that motherfucker fired. Revenge. Much delayed. So there you go. There's, there's a, there's a nightmare valet story for you.

Yeah. I mean, I, that, that for me, it's just more like, I'm like, okay, I know I have this thing under control. And it's a weird thing. I should probably get over it. But, but Jason, you're here and, and like Mitch, you are someone who is a native of Massachusetts. I, I'm not just a native of Massachusetts.

I grew up in a town like literally probably four miles from Mitch. Wait a minute. Which, what town were you in? I grew up in the hunt. Oh, okay. Great. Yeah. I grew up like two towns away from Mitch.

Yeah. Um, North Shore. Um, I also, That's right. You're, you're, you're, you're, uh, I'm, I'm a South, South side guy, not South side, but, uh, South Shore, you're North Shore. Are you South Shore? I'm South Shore.

Yeah. Um, Quincy? Yeah. Huh. Okay. Guess I'm wrong. Wow. I'm freaking out now.

Um, no. How long, how long for you to get into like downtown Boston? Not very. Um, 20 minutes. Okay. Not even. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, depending on, it really depends on traffic. Yeah. Not long at all. Um, yeah. I grew up. And so for me, I say all the things that Mitch says, I say, I say popcorn. Right.

Uh, I say, uh, hut dog. Yeah. I call my mom, mom, my mom and dad. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I saw my mom and dad over Christmas. Like I, it's all the same. Right.

I think this, which people have pointed out this helps me out a little bit because you were someone people respect and me not as much. So for you to say it's, it's helpful. And I, I don't know. I guess that is just like a weird Boston accent sort of, I think it's all, um, I think it is the remnant of how many Irish immigrants there were in Boston. I think it really is only, it's specifically that they do like the tire, tire, T tower, like they do that.

It's all, it's all those, like, you know, like, um, like my parents are, are Greek, you know, Greek, Greek immigrants. And my dad's came from Greece. My mom born in Boston to Greek parents, but like my, you know, they have, they say all those things as well because that's just like how it, you know, when they grew up, that's what was said because it was so predominantly Irish. It's a regional affectation. As we are here on Mitch's kitchen table and Ireland 2016 daily calendar.

Yeah. Mitch, I have so many questions on Mitch's dining room table is an unused day, peel away daily calendar the year 2016. I like how that drew your attention and not the crisp, uh, flat $2 bill. That's it. Now here's the thing with the $2 bill. I'll explain the $2 bill first. That came in the mail from like a company and there was a $2 bill in the, in the envelope.

What? And I don't know what you're being paid for in $2 bills. I think it's like, I think it's like a weird company. They want you to sign up for something, but I didn't know if the $2 bill was real or not. It is. So I felt weird throwing it away. I can't tell if it's currency.

Do you think, but take a hold of it. That looks like a real one to me. Does it feel weird to you or no? Well, it feels like old money used to feel. Money doesn't feel like this anymore. I don't know if they're still making $2 bills, but I know they are still valid currency. Yeah.

I think it's authentic. And I think this is one of, cause I've gotten the thing I'd gotten before. I've gotten like a nickel in the mail. It's like from the, you know, some guys who is sending you money. What is this? Is this how you guys get paid for the podcast? So you guys need to get it together. We get loose change and unmarked envelopes.

My fear for you guys honestly is that you are getting paid via the, just like mail, just people sending you money. Also that you guys eat food. People send you that is right. We have upsetting. I'm, I'm more like, there was, there was one time when I didn't want to do it. And for real, you thought it, I'll, I'll just say it. All right.

You thought it was some sort of jizz. Then you didn't want to drink it. Someone sent you a mystery jug. It was a jug. It was wrapped in brown paper and it had a question mark on it. Yup. Jizz. The good answer is jizz.

And you were just like, oh, we could drink it. It's fine. Like, and I was like, no, I don't want to drink this. I was fine with you drinking. I have faith in our listeners. That's like something that is drunk at the gathering of the jugglers. It's just like a jug in a brown bag with a question mark on it. Like that's, that's not for you guys to drink.

That is something that you drink at the gathering while teela tequila is performing. I was just looking in the mirror and I realized how well I would fit in with the white face juggler. You would be a homerun juggler. Yeah. Sadly, I would, I would be a good juggler. I'd maybe be like an in shape juggler. I feel like I'm going to be, here's what I'm going to say straight away.

I think you guys should do the podcast at the next gathering of the jugglers. If there's not a podcast stage, there better be and you guys should pioneer it. I want you guys at that event doing this podcast. I would do it. The, the, the, the Weiger challenge can be Fago. Yes. They're, they're soda. And we'll get the shit beaten out of us.

But it's fine. Hey, it's overdue guys. Make a documentary about it. Weren't people being nice to the jugglers recently? No, the FBI has listed them as a gang. But then the, the, the, the, the, they had the juggler March, which was actually kind of a nice positive event. I have no, no quarrel with the juggalos.

I mean, either. I mean, either. I mean, we're not trying to start any kind of war with the jugglers. Please. We're saying that, but, but I think Mitch and I might be out of place at that, at that event, but you know, I'm going to put the makeup on. Let's see what happens. Hey, you know what?

If you'd like to see me and Mitch perform at gathering the juggalos hashtag gathering of the juggalos. Oh, fuck you. And if not, and if you'd rather not, they go, you know, gathering of the juggalos. Yes. Better than we, better than we've ever done probably. Nick.

Also, what's a good hashtag for juggalo listeners? Oh, yeah. I bet there's a good, a good amount of juggalo listeners. I wonder. There's probably a couple. Yeah. I'm curious. Yeah.

I mean, uh, juggadose. Yeah. If you're a juggadose. If you're a hashtag, juggabros. Yeah. Yeah. Or juggagals or juggagals. Hashtag or juggagals.

They seem like nice. They're into a specific music. Right. Is it all just, is it all just insane clown posse? I love watching Mitch try and parse this. No, it's, I think they have like, it's like a festival. It's like Lollapalooza or something like that where there's multiple stages and tons of different bands perform.

Like it's like a whole thing. I think a lot of the music is horror core adjacent. And I think there might be a comedy because I think Jim Brewer said he was going. They do really like that. They have a comedy tent and that, yeah, they, they have like a, it's, it's like a festival where they've got all these different stages. You see me tour. Co. I think is doing something there.

UCB meets ICP. Finally. You know, Jason, as you were talking earlier, I brought up a map of the greater Boston area because I'm curious to the geography. Quincy. Yeah. We see down south. That's what's highlighted this way.

Search for. The Haunt. Is this kind of this little peninsula here? Yes. I grew up on basically like a weird little island. Oh wow. Okay. That's right.

Yeah. It's, I mean, it's, it's a wild scene there in the greater Boston area. Oh yeah. Especially, especially north and south shore. There's a lot of, we, I feel like, I feel like we maybe, did we play sports? I went to Swamp Scott high school. Oh yeah.

Do we play sports against you? Yeah. I think we probably did. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think we played soccer against you guys. Let me think.

I'm thinking from the bench. I was sitting on the boards I saw while I was sitting on the bench. Oh boy. I played football and I was very bad at it. Yeah. I played soccer. I was okay. Yeah.

I ran track. I was better at that. Ooh. All right. Yeah. What kind of distance you do? All sprints. Oh wow.

Oh damn. Yeah. While your fleet of foot. I was fast. That was it. I was fast for very short distances. No endurance. I joined the, because I played football, the coaches would want you to do run track,

not run track, but I did shot put. And I would walk over to the track field. I'd stop at Taco Bell on the way. And I go there and I'd sit in the stands and I'd throw the shot put every so often. Very short distances. Yep. Great. Great.

Very, very short distances. Right. Cause it's kind of like that. I think that's the thing that probably if you're, if you're a big guy in high school, they're kind of like, oh, you can be an offensive lineman or oh, you can be, you can throw the javelin and they get, there's kind of this assumption that you're big, maybe you're strong, but sometimes you're not. You're just a big guy.

I'm just a cowardly. Yeah. Right. The block rooms after the after was going home because they wouldn't let you because they wouldn't let me. I was ashamed of myself. Right. They looked like men.

I looked like a child. Sure. That's but still was giant sized. I did just a giant child. I did look like a giant child. I feel like I looked like a giant five year old or something. Just a big giant five year old. Do you, you don't have a your boss and accent is is besides the words that we besides those

words. Yeah. I for the most part, there's a couple of other words that people say when I say them, where are you from? Yeah. I must say them weird. The most, most prominent one is worry. Oh, okay.

Yeah. I don't know why. Whenever I say, don't worry about it. People are like, where are you from? Wait, what was weird about it? I don't know. Yeah. That's the thing is I don't know what's weird about it.

Did it sound weird to you, Mitch? No, but I think I know what he's talking about because I, I, I feel like I get hit on, on like weird words like that too. But for the most part, I don't have a bunch of a Boston accent. Maybe if I'm there, like around people in Boston, I will slip into it more. Yeah. But, but not much. I didn't, I never had too heavy an accent.

Nick is still confused. So I'll explain this. Worry. Like, like what, like, it almost sounds like it's like, it's like, Worry. Worry. Don't worry. Worry. It almost sounds like W-E-R-R-Y or something.

Worry. Worry. Oh great. The robot is breaking down. Okay. I was trying because I was like, how do I, I think I say worry. Is that different from how you say it? No, you're right.

And then he would just say, Worry. Worry. Worry for like 35 minutes. Inputting, inputting, inputting. Hey, buddy. Worry. Worry. Worry.

Inputting. Buffering. Spilling. Spilling. Spilling. You've got your water up. Like, be careful. Don't spill.

You're making me laugh. I was holding my water. It's a parallel situation. So Jason, this is, you know, we're a food-based podcast and, and we of course wanted to have you on. You say, you know, we're a food-based podcast. Yes. It was that you, yes.

All right. We've got that for though. Come on. You know, a brand new listener who's starting listening in the middle of this episode only. I was going somewhere with this. Okay. You're a food, we were, we, we cover food on this podcast and we of course

wanted to have you on. And, but, you know, it was trying to figure out what we could cover on this podcast was a little bit of a challenge. And that's partially because you have a, you have a, I'd say a pretty serious allergy that, that affects how you eat. Yes. I am, I have a like life-threatening food allergy to eggs. So I can't eat anything that uses egg in it or has egg as an ingredient at all.

So, right. That includes a lot of breads, a lot of, you know, like almost every place you guys go are like egg-heavy places, you know, like breaded, battered, fried, you know, buns, all that stuff. So the, for the most part, as a fan of this show, I would always be like, oh man, I want to do dough boys, but like, what could we do that wouldn't be lame? Sure. Because there's so, because I was like, well, I don't want to just do, I remember

it was at some point you guys did Starbucks with someone. And I was like, oh, I could do that. I could do something that is like that level. But I was like, ah, but I'd rather do, I'd rather dig in on what you guys like digging in on. So for me, yeah, food, I have a very difficult relationship with food just because I'm limited so much in what I can eat and where I can eat it, you know, in terms of whether or not I trust places, all that kind of stuff.

So finding someplace was a little bit difficult, but we found it. That is crazy that just an accident could have life threatening situations. Oh yeah. When Weiger and I were eating, I was saying, you know, I've had a number of instances where, especially like on sets or something like that, I will eat something and then a couple of times had to have to be like leave work to go to the hospital because something has, you know, somewhere along the line, something got, you know, touched egg or uses egg.

And they just weren't thinking it all the way through. Yeah. The thing you mentioned to me that I was like, oh, and it kind of like hammered home the breadth of thing of foods that are affected is, as you were talking about candied nuts are often glazed with egg whites. Yes. And so the way you candy them is to use egg whites in it. And then, you know, if that's just like a very insignificant garnish on the dish,

a lot of times people don't think through all the steps for all the ingredients in a dish. They're just like, oh no, there's no egg in that, you know, not thinking like, oh, wait a minute, in order to candy those nuts or in order to clarify the stock to make that sauce, we use an egg yolk to clarify, to pull all the kind of all the stuff that's floating in the stock. You know, that's like a weird one. That's crazy.

That's insane. Or like put fries in the same fryer that you put like a battered, you know, whatever. And if any of that batter is still off and clings to the fries, that'll get me. Yeah. Because even like a fried chicken, a lot of times there's an egg in that bag. Oh yeah. Absolutely.

All that kind of stuff. I've never, I've had fried chicken once in my life. Oh, wow. Just because it was egg-free. But I've never been able to have fried chicken or any breakfasts or any of that. We're an egg-crazy country. We are egg-crazy. And I think when we like first talked about this a while back, when I was like,

oh, you got to come on the show. And, you know, I never thought you would because it's a tough show. You're a great man. Thrilled to. I love this show. When you told me your situation, my eyes opened wider than they've ever opened. Which is, which was to say they almost were open. I think there was a creaking sound as they actually opened up.

And I was like, oh, we got to think on this because it's very hard. So as, so do you just, do you not, by the way, all you little trick or treaters out there next time you throw an egg at a house, think about it. It could take a life. I got egged on Halloween once when I was a kid. Did you really teenagers driving by in a pickup truck, throwing eggs at just groups of kids. And I got it with eggs and had to go home.

Oh my God. Throw something. It's time to change it up. Yeah. Eggs have had their way. Just throw rocks, bullies. Stop throwing eggs. Kids have allergies.

Just throw rocks. I like that. Throw rocks. So you mentioned this happened when you were a kid. This incident happened when you were a kid. But what age, I imagine pretty early on you discovered you had this age. Oh, as a baby, like as a, as a baby, truly. Like I don't remember it, but it was, you know, whatever, whenever you, like at one

or whatever, when you start feeding a kid solid food, one of the things you feed them is scrambled eggs because it's soft and easy for a baby. And I, but this is also like the early seventies. So not a lot of awareness of food allergies. So I kept getting horrifyingly sick, like in hospitalized before. Oh my God. And that happened like twice before doctors were like, what's he eating? You know, and made the connection.

And then it was, you know, from that on. So yeah, no, I've never not had this. I've never not exhibited a degree of vigilance over what I eat. That is inappropriate towards anything else you would do in life. Right. Cause that's got to be, I just imagine, and I'm just thinking back on my own childhood of just how many times it was at like a friend's house for dinner or how, or how many times I was shared, like trading a lunch item with a,

with a classmate, like it just, it feels like there's so many interactions where you don't realize that you might be in peril. Oh yeah. Well, and that was a big thing. And I've talked about this before too. That they had that idea that like as a child, you know, more often than not, as kids, you feel invincible or like you, nothing in the, but I grew up feeling very vulnerable.

I grew up feeling like, because for me, my parents were like, don't eat anything anybody gives you. This is your food. Only eat this. I wasn't allowed to go to sleepovers. I, whenever I went to like a birthday party, I had to bring my own, you know, food that I could eat just to like, it felt very much like, especially again, because it was a time when there weren't the amount of food

allergies that exist now. Right. There was a lot of the tactic with which my family and my like pediatrician used to impress upon me. The severity of this was to just scare me. Was to just be like, you will die. Right. You will die.

And they had that idea for a kid of like, oh, being so aware of your own mortality was really weird. You know, like I never grew up feeling like I'm invincible. I can do anything. I grew up feeling very fragile. Right. Like the most, like, you know, like being like your example of being at a friend's house and like his mother being like, here's some cookies and

being like, getting into fights with people's parents because I'm saying, does this have eggs in it? And they're like, no, no, no, you're fine. And I'm like, well, no, can you read the box? And then they parent being like, no, I'm telling you. And then me eating it, then an ambulance gets called. Then my mom and that mom get into a fight and it was like a mess. You know, that's crazy.

That's really crazy. Did you ever feel like there's a, there was a guy, Brian who was in my, I've mentioned it before. He puked on my shoes at the 10 year reunion. I probably said his name. He was, he was a classic. He was a quiet, he was a quiet guy and then, but he also got a stigma for being like, he had a stigma for being like the guy.

He was very allergic to everything. Did you have to deal with that? Very much. Not in a bad way though. And a way that was actually kind of nice because I grew up in an incredibly small town. There was a way in which like, um, I was walking on the street in New York, you know, when I was probably 30, 31 or something.

And a New York city cop who's in the middle of the road starts screaming, Hey, man, Lucas. Hey, man, Lucas. And, and I'm, I'm like, I'm not on TV at this point. I'm like, and I, and I don't know who this is. It's just a cop. And I'm like, fuck, what did I do? And he comes out of the street, comes over to me.

And it's a kid I grew up with. It's a kid I grew up with who was a, excuse me, who was a Boston cop and was doing an exchange with New York. And he was like, Hey, it's me, Steve. And I was like, Oh my God, I hadn't seen him in like 15 years, probably more. And he goes, Hey, are you still allergic to eggs? And I was like, that's it. I was like, that is your memory of me.

And it was all because in Boy Scouts, he like, they were like, you can't let this kid die. Like all the Boy Scouts had to be like, they would always make their eggy food over there and everybody would give me the cold cereal. So that I would, while they were eating whatever omelettes, I would just be eating all of the Cheerios. And it was very, he remembered that very clearly. Did he notice gone into a crate of eggs for you?

Yeah. He said, this is for you, brother. I like how there's this, this New York, Boston cop exchange, like just like learn how to bully a different kind of minority. Wow. Wow. Wow. Going after New York now too, huh?

Both cities have problems with their police forces as does LA. It's a nationwide problem. Maybe the king of that. Has LA had any police problems? I'll look it up on Wikipedia. Will you cop to that? So wait, you were, so you were a Boy Scout then. I was.

What rank did you achieve? Oh, fuck you, Wiger. What's right below Eagle? Life. That's where I went. Yeah. That's as far as I got. I just didn't have the follow through to do everything that was

necessary to get Eagle. You got to get so many merit badges. Too many. And then you also have to do an Eagle project. Wasn't going to do it. Which is like, you have to like, oh, I'm going to go to a national park and I'm going to improve a trail or something. It's like an all day thing.

I was like, this is too much. I mostly did it because I enjoyed the hanging out social aspect. Sure. And once I was like, I'm not going to do work now. Just for rank. I didn't care about that. Right. Yeah.

Because it is kind of like, I guess getting an Eagle Scout, because that was the thing, the incentive they always tried to say in our troop was, you know, you don't like become, like you don't, you aren't like, oh, I got Eagle Scout. You say, I am an Eagle Scout. Sure. So like when you're a man, you're still an Eagle Scout. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just like a thing that sticks with you for life. When you're like, man. Yeah. It seemed like kind of an incentive, but not really. What happened? I'm having an allergic reaction right now. You are? For real.

So what's going on? I don't know. Do you want an EpiPen? You want to just do it and see what happens? I wonder if it would, it probably would help. Got an allergic reaction. Are you sure? Is it just psychosomatic because we've been talking about allergies?

That happens. I have a guess. I have a guess what it is. What's that? I think your arm has been down on the glass table. It's gotten sweaty underneath and it has gotten aggravated by being sweaty. There's like little bumps though. Interesting.

Psychosomatic. Maybe it's from the boxes you pulled in. Oh, I have an allergy to feathers. I hope there's no feathers in that damn thing. Here we go. I thought you were going to say you had an allergy to hard work. Fuck you. What the hell, Weiger?

Are you engaged in some physical labor? I don't know. I wonder what if you open those boxes and it's not a couch at all. It's just feathers. And it's just an elaborate plot to murder you. From Weiger. It could be. They could be, they could be stuffed with feathers.

We got a sponsor. We got a sponsor, buddy. And it's a box. Just open it. Don't worry about it. That's my Weiger impression. That's actually my impression of Gabriel's Weiger impression. Right.

I was sad to be. I was sad to be allergic to. I was, I went to the, what's it called? Allergist. Thank you. And I got tested. I was allergic to cockroaches. Great.

Thank God. I don't need them around. You know, yo, I thought you kept them as pets. That's got to be heartbreaking. I was allergic to cockroaches, mold, sure dust mites, everybody. Yeah. And and feathers. Yeah.

So my whole life and I was like, man, I was like, I got sick a bunch when I was in. I got sick a lot. Yeah. And then I was like, oh man, I had like down blankets and down pillows growing up changed at all. Have you noticed the difference? You know, I didn't really do too much.

Cut to your bed is still like a down comfort. Just I lay on a bed of feathers. Just a nest. You have a nest full of goose feathers. The cats like it. It's good. That was actually, I think that's how I started to get sick was the cats were pulling out dust from under the couch and the cats

always had feathers. You know cats get feathers. Yeah. Yeah. You've got some of those feathered cats. They'd have a feather coming out of their mouth after eating a bird. That's how it works like a cartoon. You have cartoon cats, right?

Are you alert? We went to Azure. You're not allergic to cats. Are you? I'm not. Okay. I'm like minorly allergic to dogs. Like in a very ordinary way.

Oh wow. A dog allergy. Nothing. Nothing too crazy. I feel like the cat allergy is a lot more common. I wonder why there's that did that. That when it was a disproportionate. I wonder if it is disproportionate.

Maybe I've just heard of more people saying that. Who is that cat? What's the cat? Is it Heathcliff you hate? Oh, Heathcliff. Heathcliff? How do you feel about top cat? I have no beef with top cat.

Okay. It's a top cat reboot. I saw it. Thank God. It's like a direct to DVD movie. Or no, direct to direct TV. Did you not like Heathcliff because you preferred Garfield and you were like, this guy's just coming after Garfield's lasagna.

Here's the thing. I think there's a chance Heathcliff might actually predate Garfield. Oh, for sure. He does. Heathcliff, I feel like is a top cat. Yeah. Pierre. He's been around for a while.

My issue with Heathcliff is that the character, the comics have reached a state where and some people appreciate them as just, you know, oh, they're just so surreal and absurdist now that they, you know, that like that's, there's kind of some fun to, to, to exist with that. But from what I've, what the fuck? Here's a double screening. I'm trying to find something on your computer. Now you have switched to your phone in addition. I'm trying to find, because I had at one point, I had a bunch of Heathcliff saved and I was

trying to find the quickest way to get access. Wait a minute. What? All right. Wait. No, no, no, no. Hold on. Hold on.

Let's back up for a second. Why do you have a bunch of Heathcliff saved? All right. Let's unpack that nightmare. His phone was full. He deleted pictures of Natalie, his wife. There is no record of your wife existing on your phone. You have 128 gigs of Heathcliff clips.

All right. I was, I was, if you died and the cops found your phone, they would contact the creator of Heathcliff and be like, your son has died. So, okay. And that suspect is like Mitchell. It was a murder. There were feathers at the scene.

But speaking of the creator of Heathcliff, that's, that's part of the issue is that George Gately created Heathcliff and he's passed his legacy as a lot of comic creators has passed his legacy to a younger generation. And so it is his nephew, but his nephew does not seem to understand what comedy is. So, for instance, so here's one I brought up, Jason. This is a recent Heathcliff from December 27, 2017. I'll show this to you. It's Heathcliff is making a snowman and Mitch, you can maybe get a look just on my phone.

I can see it a little bit. Yeah. And there is a wig on top of the snowman and the caption is an old man looking out from the window saying, I guess my toupee does look a little silly. Yeah. They're like, what is it? What comment is that making? Because to me, that is just incoherent.

Well, that's basically saying now that I see it on the snowman, I realize that it mustn't look good on me either. Okay. Fair enough. I'll give you that one. Here's another one from December 27. I was easily solved. Wait, Weigart, do you need me to explain Heathcliff to you?

I might just need my hand out a little bit. This is like hanging out with my nieces. Here's another one. What is happening? Here's another one. Okay. This one. Unpacking old Andy Cap strips as well.

Cut to a half an hour from now. I actually like Heathcliff. That's my favorite comedy. Fuck Garfield, buddy. Alrighty. Here's another one. Here is Santa. Okay.

He is working at a window that says complaints. Heathcliff is at the complaints window and the caption says, I knew you'd show up. Well, because Heathcliff is a notorious complainer. So Heathcliff is upset about his Christmas presents. Is that the idea? I think Heathcliff just goes to any complaint window he can. But why does Santa... Why is Santa at the complaint window?

That's my question. What's the... Why put Santa in the complaint window? That doesn't add up. It's clearly at a mall because there's escalators behind them. So I get it. It's Christmas time Santa's at the mall, but who puts him in the complaint window? If that's the case, whose lap are children sitting on while Heathcliff is complaining

to Santa? Exactly, yeah. I guess the idea is that maybe you could assume this is after Christmas and so he's complaining to Santa. That he got coal? Yeah, maybe that's what it is. All right, here's another. This one I think is just amazing.

I know some people that gave their son coal. Really? Yes. What the hell? Like a throwback punishment. As a shape up kid. Wow. They also gave him presents.

Like recently? Yes. Jesus Christ. I think if you did that to me even as old as 20, I'd probably be sad. Well, you still believe in Santa, right, bitch? Like, I feel like your belief in the devil might as well translate to Santa as well. You get how it is around there, around our parts. I do.

I understand I do not share it or participate, but I know where you're coming from. It's there. And I was just, you know, a lot of people give me a lot of guff for believing in ghosts. Sure. And I just in the last week, I've talked about this a couple of times for weird reasons, but how do you feel? New England is old and weird. You can at least give me that.

For sure. For sure. I am not a ghost person at all, but I feel like I know way more people that believe in ghosts like that believe in like haunted places that believe like that. I feel like is very, I that to me is less surprising than the devil than the actual figure of the devil. The exorcist had us. The exorcist got me good.

Yeah, I really did. It really got me for, you know, so funny, but ghosts. I, I'm, I'm not one of those people that ever is like, I was at a, like an old, old, old hotel in New York and a friend came up to visit me and was like, came into my room. And I'd been there for like four days at that point and it was like, ooh, oh, I don't like this room. This room is freaking me out. This is like creepy, something about this room.

And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then I recommended that hotel to another friend who stayed there a couple of months later and was like, I didn't like that hotel. That place is weird and haunted. And I was like, what am I not a turn to that you guys are both in, in touch with? That's a possibility. Yeah. And maybe I just sense the devil more than you guys perhaps, perhaps you think you have

a closer connection. I might be able to sense the love. Do you think your fear of the devil, do you, are you, do you have like a, um, do you have a relationship with sin that is related to the devil or do you just worry about worry about, um, like, uh, the devil's intentions befalling you or are you like, oh no, I'm sinning right now. The devil must know what I'm up to. When I was younger, I think I felt like I was sinning and the devil would come and get

me. Yeah. And then I was, did your parents tell you that? I'm wondering if your devil thing is, was that a boogeyman that was used as a, you know, a device to keep you on the straight and narrow so that you weren't out like stealing radar detectors with Wu Tang and Frailbot. Right. There's some, I imagine there's some amount of Catholic guilt wrapped up in all of that.

Going to a tea stop and breaking into cars. My father worked for the MBTA, so, so I was always good for, to the tea. Yeah. Oh, that's good. Yeah. No, I only say that because like there was a very brief period of time where I hung out with like bad kids who would go to the Wonderland stop, the parking lot at the Wonderland station and break into cars and steal a radar detector.

Oh, yeah. Oh no. Julie, this is bad. That's, I was, I was the same, same exact way and that's probably why we're both in comedy now. Oh, very much so. I was saying this recently, but like that to me is like some of the most terrifying, I think back on like when I was a kid and went to like some drug dealer in Quoth's house.

The sketchiest stuff I've ever done. It was from when I was like 13 to 15. Yes. In those years, when I was hanging out with much older kids who were bad news and we did shit that was bad, I mean, not super bad, but I mean, like, you know, bad in a way that I was like, well, why would, why did that was not? I should not have been anywhere near any of that. I felt the same way.

Yeah. I think I think I'm going into the combat zone to like buy sketchy shit from like clearly drug dealer dudes. Yeah. Yeah. The combat zone was a scary place in like a bad part of Boston. That's now gone. Yeah.

Totally. Totally gone. I think I think it is. It is. It is only now a part of the game fallout for maybe Quincy's there too. So it's not. I got very excited to I was like, wait a minute, if I bet is my town on here and I just started walking east until I got to not and I was like, this is crazy.

All right. I got buried in my laptop for a second there because I wanted to bring up some more heat cliff. Jesus. All right. All right. This one I think is is I would only describe as as almost brutally lazy. Okay.

Heathcliff is on a couch on the corner of the couch. There are two women, two older women looking at him and the caption says he's using the couch. Okay. So this is obviously a commentary on the patriarchy is that these two women feel as though they can't use the couch while Heathcliff is on the couch. So is that I feel like that's a pretty incisive commentary on the patriarchy. I was also going to say that one maybe makes me laugh the most.

Generally, some of these I think are inadvertently. They're such non jokes. Mitch, do you ever not use your couch because one of your cats is on it? Sometimes. I want to leave them alone. If you're like, Hey, you got this. Don't worry about it. They look very comfortable.

I'll try to stay away from them. That's cute. Oh, so by the way, yeah, his son got the Heathcliff nephew. He said, right? Oh, his nephew. Yes. His nephew, though, took over. Yeah.

His nephew took it. The creator George Gaitley passed his legacy on to someone is family circus like that as well. Circus is like that. Bill Keane's son. That's right. Beedle Bailey. The guy.

Bill Keane's son is named Beedle Bailey. That is. That is shocking. Yeah. So there's a chance that like Donnie Schultz could take over peanuts or something. Is that not from prison? It happens. Donnie Schultz.

Oh boy. If he can get out, maybe. Right. And at some point, you know, Dilbert's adventures will be continued by Scott Adams, the third. But we've got to, but continually the Heathcliff world. Here's, here's a series that he had like a run where he's just. This is no longer a fast food show. This is just a Heathcliff pod.

Welcome back to the Heathcliff pod. All right. Look, here is Heathcliff. The old man who's his owner, a little kid who I think is a neighbor, a bird and a fish, all blowing bubbles. And the caption is we're a gum family. That's funny too. What is the joke there?

They're a gum family. That they all like gum so much. Also like, I don't think it's safe to give a fish gum. Yeah. Or a bird. Like, I don't know. That seems just irresponsible. That seems to be sending the wrong message.

But also it's the same two older women in the background commenting. Like, again, let them in the living room. This is again, where the women are relegated to a different room to comment on the events that they are not allowed to participate in. Yeah. They don't have the fun roles. Come on, Heathcliff. Straight man.

I got a fun, bad kid story when the wire, you can look for another Heathcliff. I've got him queued up. All right. Well, I'm going to tell the story. I've already seen the next one. And the next one also involves gum. All right. Let's see the next gum one for God's sake.

The next one. Is there a, I'm now noticing a file on Weiger's desktop that says Heathcliff gum. I've archived some Heathcliffs. I'm going to have a similar thing. It's two terabytes of data. Look, this is, this came out. I'm starting to think these are your Heathcliff drawings. That I'm ghostwriting this trip.

Yeah. You plugged in the USB. So this one is, now keep in mind this came out that this was released the day before the comic that we've just looked at. Okay. So this is the chronologically the day before. So he clearly was in a gum rut. This is the old man from the couch now being threatened by Heathcliff,

blowing a very large bubble. And then the old woman is in the background saying, stop using gum as a weapon. Hmm. Hmm. Okay. Well, this is obviously a commentary on like gun violence in our country. Sure.

You know. All right. One more. Here's what it is. Gum, gun. It's one letter away. These are one letter away. Right.

And that is about the dangers of having a gun in the house. I like that. Okay. That's good. Except it's about having gum in the house. Guys, these are not that hard to understand. Fair enough. That said.

Okay. By the way, there is another gum one about to happen. Oh my God. Just find her. What's going on with you? Just four days prior to this trip. They released another one. Now here the old man.

So this is gum week at Heathcliff. This is gum week. The old man Heathcliff and the neighbor child are all blowing bubbles and levitating in midair away from their suburban neighborhood while the old woman calls out from the porch. Oh, and we need more gum. Okay. So gum does not have like a clear, like it's not like, like I get what you're saying with a gun thing, but it's not like a clear like find and replace logic within the Heathcliff

universe where it's a stand in for some sort of weapon. Like gum can kind of be whatever they want it to be at any point. Almost as if it's a cartoon. That does not need to obey any of the laws of physics or anything else. I understand you want your, your comic strips to be naturalistic to the environment that we live in. We'll take a break. We'll be back before the voice.

Hey Mitch, you know this, but our listeners may not know this. We're up to about 50 episodes at this point. We've been doing this for almost a year and there's a new, like I mentioned, there's new episode every Tuesday. They're like our regular shows, but a little looser. For instance, we did an entire episode about toast with our friend Aaron Whitehead from Why Are Old Horses. We did a snack log.

We're right through our backlog of snacks with the Lana Johnston. And of course we had our feature commentary for Star Wars, The Force Awakens. That was very polarizing as you might expect. Well, you know, that's the kind of content you can expect if you're a premium subscriber. So join the Golden Play Club for $5 a month that works out to about $1.25 per episode and you'll get access to our entire back catalog as well. You can listen in whatever your favorite podcasting app is. Mitch, I know you're a member.

I'm a member because you signed me up. That's right. I pay for it with a Doe Boys corporate card. Hey, you know what? That's kind of a weird inception thing that someone subscribed. Subscription is paying for your subscriptions. That's true. Yes.

Well, thanks for whoever is sponsoring Mitch so he can listen to his own podcast. You don't listen, right? No. Okay. Well, you can listen. Go to patreon.com slash Doe Boys. That's patreon.com slash Doe Boys to join the Golden Play Club. And if you're already a member, you're doing okay.

Check it out, baby. Welcome back to Doe Boys. We're here. Our restaurant is Sugarfish. Jason Mansoukas is our guest. Mitch, before we went to break, you said you had a bad kid story. I want to hear your bad kid story. Then I want to get to this restaurant.

Oh, well, okay. Well, I may, I may have told it before, but there was this one time where it was, there was a fight in Wu Tang was actually involved. Where were you Kelly's roast beef outside Kelly's roast beef on Revere Beach? I wish I was, but I wish I was by Kelly's roast beef. We were by the 711 and Burger King, where we hung out in Quincy in Quincy. And and there was a big fight. People were fistfighting.

The cops came and why are correct? If I told the story, I might have told it before we all scattered. I jumped in the car. We make it about a, you know, a good, a good mile or so away. I look around. I'm in the car with all the bull, all the bad guys. I had powered. Wow.

I jumped. I mean, I see where that could happen. You like went with the safe with the tough kids. I jumped into the wrong, the wrong, the people that they were all fighting. What happened? They got like they all of a sudden they were like, Hey, who the fuck is this guy? And they were like, we should beat the shit out of them. And then there was one kid in the car.

It was like, I know him. He's like, if I quote him correctly, he was like, he's a pussy. Just let him get out of the car and they let me get out of the car. Yeah. And, uh, and I walked free. I have a good, bad kid story. Similarly, we were all, this is not as bad. Um, we were all at the beach lighting off fireworks in Swamp Scott.

Um, like somebody had like real fireworks, you know, like big, good, real fireworks. So we were lighting off fireworks and the cops came. And so everybody scattered. You know, the thinking being that they can't follow all of us. I think there was only two, we was one cruiser. So it was only two cops. Classic rabbit maneuver. So, um, we all scatter and, uh, everybody gets away and we get, uh,

but I wind up with someone and jump in a car. And so then we're driving back towards, uh, back into town towards whoever's house. We'd started from. I can't remember. And we pulled up alongside our buddy did like the most genius move, which was he didn't run away at all. He just took his shirt off. It was summer.

So he's wearing shirts, took his shirt off and pretended like he was jogging. That's great. So he just, he wasn't right. He was just out for a jog so that if the cops, cause the cops, I guess he said the cops passed him like twice, but he just looked like he was a guy out for a jog at night. That's amazing. That's genius.

And I was like very smart move. A move that would not work as well for me. Me either. Cops see me and they're like, we want to talk to you regardless. You do not look like you're from around here. Well, getting, getting into your Greek ancestry a little bit. Uh, the Boston area has a, uh, there's a lot of great Greek, like a, like a lot of good sandwich and sub shops.

Some of those, and honestly Kelly's roast beef. Uh, there's a lot of great roast beef sandwich places that are, that are Greek owned. Yeah. Mine was, I would, I, we used to go to Kelly's sometimes, but we used to specifically, we would go to Mino's roast beef in marble head, which was all great guys, which I loved.

And that was our late night. That's where for me, where all the fights would happen because Swam Scott and marble head were rivals, even though they're both kind of Tony or Boston suburbs. So if we went to go get sandwiches late at night, inevitably somehow it would turn into a fight. Yeah.

Yeah. But you had spots like that too. I tried to stay away from them constantly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Constantly. It's still to me shocking how,

how much I feel like I'm almost about to get into a fight whenever I'm back in Boston. Oh yeah. Like it is as an adult man, I almost never feel like, oh, I'm about to be in a fight unless I'm in Boston in which I'm, in which case I'm like, oh, I'm about to be in a fight. And I'm like, oh no, I've done nothing.

And it really is just like the, the, it is the people are so close to fighting like in their everyday life that it takes very little to tip. I think it's gotten better over the years. I think it's, you spend more time there, but, but, but no, but I think you're right. I think, and I,

I especially look back on that when I'm 15 or 16, I'm like, that was terrifying. Oh yeah. Every day terrifying. It was terrifying. Constant. Yeah. I don't know what people need to,

they needed to relax back then. I don't know what the deal was. What is it that climate? Is it just like how, how close to each other everyone lives? Everyone's like right on top of each other. What is it about that makes the city anything? It's a great question. I'd like to know why.

And I don't know if it's, if it's always been this way or if this is just these generations or I'm not sure, but I've never, I've never been anywhere else. I lived in New York a long time. I mean, I lived in areas of New York that were not particularly safe and I felt totally fine. But like, oh, we got a call.

Do you need to answer? What happened? Oh boy. I was happy. By the way, this happened in the meeting yesterday too. Here's what happened. Why are you trying to sabotage everything? Here's what happened.

Are we not paying enough attention to you? Did you set an alarm for like one minute? No, for one minute, then they'll have to look at me. This is Heathcliff alarm. We're going to get back into Heathcliff. I accidentally started. I accidentally started a timer. It's my laundry time.

I accidentally started my laundry timer. Are you doing laundry right now? No, I didn't. I'm not laundry. I started your laundry. You have a designated laundry time? I know how long my dry cycle is. Doesn't it beep when it's done?

Well, no, because I'm in like, it's an apartment complex. It's out of the way. Yeah, it's a lot of the way. It's around then. Sorry about that. In any event. Is your laundry done? Apology barely accepted.

I have like a quick. We were in the middle of bad kid stories, Nick. You want a bad kid story? I got a bad kid story for you. Yeah, right. Jesus. Right. So in elementary school.

Oh, boy. Oh, cool. So usually the setting for bad kids stories. So in elementary school, there were a. You dismembered a cat just to see how it worked. Some kids were, were kicking a red rubber ball and the, the coachy who were like oversaw recess. Wait, the coachy?

Yeah. What the fuck? Her name was coachy. She was, she was a female coach and everyone called her coachy. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, that's weird. You should probably have explained it. I thought it.

Yeah. You said the coachy as if that's a word everybody knows. And in fact, it's one of those words nobody knows. I was going to give some context for it. But coachy, this woman we called coachy pulled, pulled these two kids aside along with me and was like, you all get pink slips for kicking. You're fired. Ball.

No pain. You're fired. We're letting you go. We no longer need your services here. So the, our disciplinary thing we get on the playground was a pink slip. It was like a little, you know, like right up on pink paper and then you, it would be like a little shameful thing that you take back to your teacher and your parents and having it aside.

Do they still give you these when you visit the playground? Okay, hold on. But then the other kids were like, do you hang out at playgrounds being like, Hey, it's me coachy. Nothing, nothing weird here. Just coachy handed out pink slips with his phone number on each one. So these kids were like, we're like, you know, that the coachy was like a coachy was like, Hey, you guys were, I'll stop saying coachy.

Please never stop saying coachy. If the, if the episodes, if the episodes weren't titled to the, the name of the restaurant, I would want this one to be called coachy and the we can, we can put a slash coachy and the pink slip sugar for slash coachy. We'll see. How do you spell coachy? I assumed it was. I was wondering if it's why you're IE.

Yeah, I never saw it written down. I only heard it spoken and it's not coachy's. No, it wasn't coachy's. It was coachy. It was coachy. Got it. It was like a coach, but it was like an affectionate way of saying coach. At any event, uh, so they, they, so coachy got the three of us and said,

you three were kicking this red rubber ball. You're all getting pink slips. And the other two kids were like, wait, Nicholas wasn't doing it. And she was like, Oh, okay. Well, sorry. And then I was free to go. That's your bad guy story. Story is that the bad kids didn't want you to be labeled.

They were like, no, no, no, no, that was us. We take full responsibility. We don't want him part of this. They knew I had a future. And then here you are in what seems like an insanely strict elementary school where you get a pink slip for kicking a red ball at recess. Yeah. Because the red balls would pop if you kick them.

So you weren't supposed to do it. What were you supposed to do with them? You can like hit them against the wall with your hands, but you weren't supposed to kick them. And how much recess time before you had to go it back in and have your stuff recalibrated by the doctors? Let's talk sugar fish. So, so Jason is fascinated by that.

We discussed some different chains. This was one of kids a ball that they can't kick is like an experiment. It's not, it's not a game. Yeah. That's like punishment. I guess I didn't think about it at the time, but it is delicately roll this to each other. Right.

That's, that's a bizarre. And those were the bad kids too, by the way. The kids who were kicking it. Yeah. I guess they'd done something a little bit. I mean, I don't think that kids in Boston would have just like, like popped the ball intentionally. Yeah.

And then coach you to go fuck yourself. Yes. And then told coach you that you did it. Yes. Yes. Oh, yeah. You didn't, you didn't know a swear words in elementary? I knew swear words in elementary school, but I mean,

there was a kid who showed his penis at in third grade, but that was a different thing. Well, that's very different. Slick. Biger. Slick. Biger. So sugar fish.

Sugar fish is a chain that began out here in Los Angeles. It's a, I said Los Angeles, Los Angeles. I was going to let it go. Figured I'd acknowledge it. The chef at Kazanori Nozawa, who's kind of a legendary. Oh, I didn't get to, I, you, you must, you record the intro explanation, not live cause I didn't hear it. Yeah.

Do that separate. Got it. I'll pick that up later. But the heartbreak call, he had a reputation that they called him the sushi Nazi at one point and cause he had this, this restaurant called Nozawa and studio city for many years. And it was just like this wildly anti-Semitic. Right.

It was very, and it was a very like tightly regulated thing. Where he'd tell you what you could or couldn't eat and he'd yell at you for eating things wrong. And so he partnered with somebody to sort of take this, this one standalone restaurant and turn it to something more palatable and more mainstream. And that's where sugar fish comes from. Jason, this is a place you've been to a number of times previously. Yes.

This is a very sushi, as we were saying at Gallagy before, sushi is very safe for me. Right. I don't know. Wait, I'm curious. Growing up here, did you have sushi as a kid? Not a lot. I think of it as a very West, a much more predominant West Coast thing.

Right. Cause I didn't have sushi until I was college age. Yeah. It's not older. Yeah. I mean, I had a family that ate very, we basically ate white people food and then Mexican food was as ethnic as we got in terms of our, it wasn't particularly daring family. Yeah.

But I did have sushi in Hawaii when we visited as kids. And I also had sushi just from classmate, like just friends. But it was like a thing. Yeah. I couldn't have told you where sushi was even served within 20 miles of where I grew up, except for inside in Boston itself. Yeah. And it certainly becomes something that's been a lot more, you know, on the present

nationwide, I think just in the course of our lifetimes, like, you know, it used to be kind of an exotic delicacy and now it's like at every Walgreens. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Drug stores in New York that have like a sushi counter.

Right. To me, it was always in, cause it was like later on that I, that my parents like got sushi and I had never, I had never tried it. And it was, it was completely foreign to me and crazy. And my parents still don't eat it. Yeah. Yeah. I get that.

I feel like that a lot of people back on the East Coast probably, probably don't eat it. Oh yeah. I think it seems great. And then I mean, they'll eat seafood, you know, plenty of, you know, I grew up in a lobster man town, you know, it was like tons of stuff around. That's the funniest thing about it is it is such a seafood area, but for whatever reason, just the raw fish.

It just, it seems completely foreign and strange and I was the same way. I didn't try it like I would try it when I was younger. I'd take a piece of sushi and I'd be eating it and like chewing it like gum and being like, this is raw fish and it would, it would gross me out, but I liked wasabi and then my dad would get like wasabi peas and I liked wasabi a lot, but sushi was, was out of the question for me for four years. And even like you said, like in college, I would have it, but I didn't, I wasn't going on on my way to have sushi ever.

Same. Yeah. But no, you know, I, because it's a so safe and B so delicious. Yeah. I eat sushi to a degree that is, and sugarfish to a degree that is probably problematic in terms of mercury. Right. Right.

You know what I mean? Like it is that. I remember recently about a guy who had a tapeworm salmon is giving people tapeworms and he was like, a worm came wriggling out of my ass like a six foot worm had to work its way out of his asshole. And I was like, after I stopped jerking off to that story, I was like, I have to eat less sushi. Yeah.

They, they apparently this is a New York state thing and I don't know if there are other states where, but they've, they've recently changed their laws there where you have to freeze, like flash freeze the fish before serving it to, to kill any bacteria. But a lot of parts of the country. Yeah. You could still just eat this fresh raw fish. But yeah, it is, I mean, I guess it's like, like, like, you know, anything you should, you should, it's best to eat in moderation.

But I do think that sugarfish is a very good execution of like, like what they're trying to do in terms of like, kind of mainstreaming sushi consumption and kind of presenting this, this kind of higher end option, I'd say the price point kind of akin to like a cheesecake factory. Like it's like, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's an expensive night out for a lot of families, but it's, it's kind of like making this, this, this food that's like a delicacy still to some people, a little bit more accessible and presenting in a very polished way. It's also simplifying it to a degree because while they do certainly offer all a cart, all

the different kinds of fish, they also have prescribed orders. They have like three different orders that you can just order that thing. And it is like a preset list of things they'll bring you. Yeah. So you don't have to dig in and be like, okay, now what is Unagi and what is, you know, what are all the, what do they all mean? It's really like, oh, here is what just order the, you know, it's called trust me, trust me light and trust me nozawa.

And, and, you know, they are one, you know, each bigger than the last, you know, three different sizes. And then it's like a, you know, not a, it's like a prefix kind of thing. Yeah. All, but it's like a sampling of all different stuff, which is great. Omakase is what they call it. Yeah. They've, they've, they've coursed it all out for you and they've just sort of given

you a little bit of everything. Well, let's, let's get, I mentioned this is a place, this place is a favorite of yours, you'd say. It's a favorite of mine. I'm going to say this. I like actually don't love sushi. I still like, like, like, uh, I've had, and I've had, I can't eat bad sushi. I went to this place.

I went with Armin, I believe for the first time and he loves sushi. He's a West Coast boy and we went together and when I ate sugar fish, I was like, I love this. This is this. It's, it's, it seems so different, so fresh. There's warm rice. There's a big part of this place is totally is that warm rice. There's each piece of fish is basically on top of little warm, right?

Warm bed of rice. And I, I still, I'm not a big, I'm not a huge seaweed fan, so like, but I've gotten more accustomed to it. I, so I like the rolls more now, but that was always for sushi for me growing up that like crunchy, crunchy seaweed, like super salty taste. I didn't love when I, and I don't like people eat like the sea. You know, in like a lot of like writers rooms all the time, they'll have like the seaweed pouches and people eat like the dried seaweed.

Yeah. Just seaweed is a snack. I'm not into, but it wrapped it is the wrapping of a roll. Like I like it. Yeah. Yeah. No, I've come around. It seems, I'm pretty benign on it.

It doesn't bother me any, but I cannot, I still cannot wrap my head around, um, uni. Yes. Yeah. The eggs, the, uh, no sea urchin is what it is. Sorry. Um, I can't, that, it's on a texture level. I can't deal with it. Yeah.

Well, it is so, and you know, it's, it's not something I think that's, that's even common place on the, uh, the, the tasting menus. They got it sugar fish, although I think they will have it as a special on occasion. But yeah, it has such like a specific, almost like, uh, what's a, a stringent kind of character to it. It's like such a bizarre taste. I kind of like it, but I think it's, it's a very, it's a very particular thing. And I get why it's polarizing.

I don't know. What do you, what do you think, Mitch? You a sea urchin guy? All that, like stuff like roe or whatever and, and, and sea urchin, I'll, I'll eat it. But it's kind of how I feel about sushi too. And this is probably going to sound dumb to a lot of people, but I will never eat 7-Eleven sushi. And if I get, if I'm eating sea urchin, if I'm eating roe or if I'm eating it, even

just sushi, I want it to be sugar fish level or above. I know, I know that sounds snooty or something, but I'm not even a guy who really eats it that much. It just has to be, it has to be good for me to, to really enjoy it. I think that's appropriate, you know, because there is such a market difference between like supermarket sushi and really good sushi. Right. You know, it is, that is one of the things that you are like, oh no, there is like a

significant difference. Yeah. If you're going to, if you're going to choose something to be snooty about it in a food sense, I mean, it makes sense to, to do that with sushi. Like I don't know that there's that much of a difference between like a, you know, McDonald's burger, a in and out burger and like a $30 on a brioche bun fancy burger at a steakhouse type burger. Uh-huh.

Those to me are very like, obviously one will be better than the other, but it's pretty much, it seems to me to be similar. In terms of like the sourcing of the ingredients, I mean, maybe if McDonald's is going to be crappier in terms of quality of ingredient, but still I feel like, but then sushi, if you like low, I mean the frequency with which people get sick from sushi is significant. People get sick from eating raw fish. It happened. It happened at the place next door to UCB.

Oh yeah. I got, I got sick. There were multiple people got sick there. That's a perfect example. I would never eat at that place. Yeah. I would not eat sushi from that place. Yeah.

So that place. Should we say the name of it? Well, I mean, it's shut down now. Yeah. That became something else. A new name. Yeah. It reopened as a place that as far as I know has a clean bill of health, a sushi stop,

which is great because it just has a- That's a chain. Yeah. It's a chain and their logo is just a rip off of GameStop. Is it really? Yeah. It's the exact as the GameStop logo. But by the way, that is where I got my food poisoning from.

Oh, okay. All right. And where I got my copy of Fallout 4. But I was thinking of the previous occupant of that space, which was also a Japanese restaurant, which was a very dim, dingy Japanese restaurant. And at one point, I remember I was at the UCB theater when the toilets like overflowed and then just like raw sewage from the toilet mains was just draining into the Japanese restaurant next door. And the house manager from UCB went into that restaurant and was like,

hey, let them know what was going on. And the restaurant was still just operating. They just had sewage on the floor in the back where they were preparing raw fish in the kitchen and they were still just serving it to customers. Oh, that's the grossest thing. Totally normal. That is awful. Totally normal.

With a bunch of improv student shit. Right. And that's nasty shit, too. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. So, I mean, yeah, you can find- Don't roll the dice with sushi. You want to get something where you hopefully know it's source-responsible.

Yeah, it's raw. It's raw food. You know, I think you have to be a little bit like- Unless you've got like a really strong constitution. Yeah. I think you have to be careful. If I'm going to a place like Sushi Stop, or I would never go there again, but any place kind of like that, I would probably do like a California roll

or even like some tempura roll or something like that, that had some sort of fried version. Right. I'm just more afraid of the raw stuff at other places. So, I'm not a person who eats sushi a lot, but when I do, I'm snobby about it just because the idea of like lower grade raw fish gets- Of course. Makes me sick, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Well, let's get into our meal at this particular sugar fish visit. Jason, you and I went together just before- It was a very fun date. Oh, we had a great time. I hope you told Natalie. I don't want her to think I'm trying to steal you away. I let her know.

She's not concerned. She was happy. Please. I got a text from an unknown number that said, he's yours now. So, we both got the- You mentioned the different variants. We both went with the Nozawa Trust Me, named after the chef.

And so, you get a bunch of different things in sequence and they course them out to you pretty efficiently. I'd say pretty much by the time you're done with one, they're bringing you the next one. It's a nice little exhibition they got there. Mitch, you got yours to go, yes? I did, and I also got the Nozawa to go. Nice.

And honestly, and I- Look, I think one of the best things about this place are those little beds of rice are so- Warm rice. The warm bed of rice is so good. Was it warm when you got it? So, here's the issue. One, I used Postmates and it was bad,

but I've eaten at this restaurant multiple times. So, I know what it's like. Sure. But I do think that there is something to also reviewing the- because they do a great job with the to-go box. That little box is great. I get it. I'll get it to go a lot, like for lunch or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's all really bad. It's really well set up. And all the different sauces are in the different containers so that you can sauce each fish correctly. It's pretty great. And they try to tell you which fish takes which sauce, but sometimes they kind of look the same in the box.

I'm like, which one gets the sauce? But the plus side of eating in the restaurant is they do almost all that work for you and then also tell you when they bring it to you. Like, this one is already sauce, so you just eat it as it is. Right. But the box, like Jason said, it's very like- it's just constructed.

It's one of the best take-out boxes there is, for real. Yeah, it's an impressive feat of engineering. Yeah, yeah. And there's all this information when you open it up on the lid. It's great. Yeah. And so I guess we could just say, since we all got the same thing,

we can kind of take this course by course. You start with a little edamame, and then they also bring out some tuna sashimi, which is just sitting in like a little bit of... I think it's like a little bit, just a little bit of a soy sauce. Is it like a ponzu sauce? I couldn't tell if it was ponzu.

There definitely is a ponzu on the other ones. Ponzu is on the tuna, on the sashimi? Yeah. Oh, that is it. That's a ponzu sauce. Yeah, so it's got a little bit of citrus on it. With what's it called? The little green scallions.

Scallions, yeah. So that's what starts you off. The edamame... I find edamame to be a real interesting first thing to hit the table, because I find everybody eats edamame differently. And it's always fascinating. Weiger takes all the beans out of the pods.

What? And eats them off of his plate. Is this real? I unshelled them first. What? I thought this was some sort of joke. You unshelled all the... He unshells them first, which is...

I didn't think it was that weird. What? Oh, man. I didn't say anything until right now. Weiger is busted. Oh, boy. Weiger's some sort of de-beaning weirdo. No, and I do the thing where I squeeze it

and pop the beans into my mouth. That's what I do as well. I've seen people pop the whole thing into their mouth and then pull out the... Ooh, that's kind of crazy. Absolutely. And that always strikes me as... I feel like people's different approaches to eating edamame

is fascinating. I'm glad that you and I do it the right non-weirder way. Well, that's like Boston. We figured out how to do it in Boston. Boston does it right whether it's right or wrong. Weiger, that is insane. I don't think it's that weird. Do you eat the beans with a knife and fork?

No. I eat them with my hands. He did say this meal doesn't add up to a hill of beans. At one point. And the sashimi is nice. I mean, it's interesting to start off a meal with just like basically just like the straight... Like just like...

A pile of raw fish. A pile of raw fish when you're getting a bunch of it. And it's cold. That dish is chilled. Is edamame... What is it? Is it cold? Because I forget just from having last night.

I feel like it's room temp. Yeah. I think. It is good. But it is just a funny fit. There's two kind of big mounds of... There's a bunch of beans and then a pile of raw fish that you start the meal off with.

I do find edamame to be a very fun snack. Sure. It's a real hoot. And it's a nice... It's a real hoot? Yeah, it's a real hoot. It's a real hoot. Just a pile of beans in front of you.

And then you get a... You start getting your sushi. And so kind of in a row. This is what you get in the nozawa, trust me. You get some albacore, salmon, yellowtail, pirame, and snapper. And they sort of bring those out two by two before you get to the hand rolls.

And then there's also a daily special, which varies. Today it was the... Large scallops. The large scallops. Oh, I have the kanpachi, kanpachi sushi. I don't know if I'm saying it correctly. Which I never had before. I didn't have the scallops, scallops, scallops, scallops.

My mom and sister made fun of me for this because I said scallops recently. And in Boston, you say scallops. Oh, weird. That is a funny... That is a weird Boston one. And so I had shrimp instead. Okay.

For me, like I... And I got an order of the sweet shrimp on top of what I ordered for to go. Oh, that's fun. Did it give you the heads with that? What's that? Did it give you the heads with that? No, no, no heads.

It was just... A sweet about it. It just is kind of a little bit sweeter tasting. And it's just a piece of... Is it a sauce or something that makes it sweet? Or the shrimp itself is a sweet shrimp? I think the shrimp itself is sweet because there was... I don't think there was any sauce on it.

I just dipped it in the wasabi. It's not like molasses is on top of it. If they could slide molasses by anyone, it's me, what I wouldn't notice. But it's just not... It's similar. It's on the bed of rice or whatever. It was good.

Yeah. I've had it before at other restaurants. Yeah. It just has... I mean, it kind of, as it's described, it's a little hint of sweetness to it. For me, like, I mean, I think this is... The kind of the standouts here were the albacore

and the yellowtail. I did like that scallop as well. I think if I usually prefer a seared scallop to a scallop sushi, but I think this was a good execution. The salmon, I just... I feel like I've had so much good salmon sushi. I feel like I've had that done well so many times.

And here you kind of get like a little bit of a thinner strip of fish. The salmon sushi is my favorite one. It's good. It really is. I love it. It's great. I feel like I've had better versions of that.

It's got little sesame seeds on top of it. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Little sesame seeds, right? Yeah. You get some little seeds on there. By the way,

they put the two sweet shrimp pieces of sushi in the same box. Yeah. So it was just all loaded into one little section. Wait, what do you mean? You were asking how it was delivered. It was just in the same box of the taco box. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. They just crammed it in there. Got it. Did you guys have any... I mean, Mitch, you said the salmon was your favorite. Any other highlights from that run? I mean, the...

To me, the albacore is always great. Yeah. And the harame I liked as well. That was really good. I don't... You know what? It's all... I find...

Because I will order that same thing every time and I now almost barely differentiate the fish from each other as much as I am now expecting that this is the next taste. Yeah. You know, in a weird way, I've now just... I now think of it as the food I'm eating

rather than, oh, this one is a softer fish or this one has a little bit more bounce to it. I don't know what. Yeah. Yeah. The whole thing is a very satisfying meal. Right.

Yeah. I mean, like, because... And I think this is maybe a Jason to the point you're making, which is the... For me, one thing that I've found myself, it will drive me crazy if I actually break down the price per piece for sushi. I realize how much money I'm spending.

Do you do that? But if I think... I've done that before and I've sort of calculated, I'm like, oh my God, this thing, this little bite, this single bite that I'm going to put in my mouth and I'm going to like chomp once and that's basically the experience.

This is costing me $3. Okay. That explains something too because when we were eating together, each time you would put the fish in your mouth, you would say chomp and then you would swallow. Right. Chomp, gulp, chomp, gulp.

Just that single chomp. But I know what you're saying about not registering. Yeah. So if you kind of blend it all into what... into one experience, like this all kind of like flattens out into, okay, I'm... This is a part of this larger dining,

this larger meal that I'm having. Like it drives me, like it makes me a little less insane about the amount of money I'm spending. Yeah. Because even the Albuquerque sushi, which is the first sushi that comes up, is great.

And you just, you forget how good even that is. But it's... I like that salmon sushi and I like the yellowtail and snapper a lot. Yeah. I mean, everything's a winner and no losers here.

And then you get into the hand rolls. The Toro hand roll and the blue crab hand roll. You know what? Here's the thing. There's a concept that a few different food trucks and store friends are trying now, which is like the sushi burrito, which I find disgusting.

I think that's disgusting as well. But I feel like the hand roll... Wait, I don't even know what that is. Sorry. It's basically like a hand roll but just blown up to burrito size. Oh, okay. But all the ingredients

are what you would find in a hand roll. Exactly. And for me, that's just like the proportions are all out of whack. The hand roll is nice because that's like about the right size for that sort of thing.

I mean, I like Toro a lot. Toro's a very expensive ingredient. But I think the blue crab one was the winner for me here. And that was one that has a little touch of mayo, correct Jason? Yes. So you can have that one. So I did not have that.

I did not have that. Wait, which one has a touch of mayo? The blue crab hand roll has mayonnaise in it. Oh, shit. That is one of... I like that one a lot. So I can't have any of that. Any...

The only place I really run into trouble with sushi-wise is when there's mayo in certain hand rolls. Right. You know, like your spicy tuna rolls, all those have some component of mayonnaise. And so I had instead a yellowtail roll, which was delicious.

It's similar to the Toro hand roll in that it is just fish and rice wrapped up. There's nothing else to it. Yeah. Can you never... You can't have pizza, huh? I can have some pizza. Okay.

You know, it really depends on... If they use egg in the dough? Egg in the dough. Okay. And for the most part, I can eat like... Most like sliced pizza. It gets dangerous for me as pizza gets fancier.

Okay. Like I can't eat mozza pizza. Yeah. You know, because it's like a very fancy... They put egg in the dough. Sometimes they glaze the pizza with egg to make it shiny. Fancier pizzas are more dangerous for me.

I can go and eat a slice at Joe's Pizza in New York. I was going to ask you if you liked Greek or Italian style pizza better. Italian. Yeah. Because that's to me as pizza. But you know, all my Greek relatives who own pizza places and...

I was going to ask John to not thrilled about that. I'm sure. But I would always go to a Greek place for like any of those other Greek dishes. You know, Greek, you know, whether it's Yeros or, you know, Suvlaki or, you know, anything, you know, roast beef sandwiches in New England is such...

Sub shops in New England are such a Greek kind of cabal. I've tried to explain that on here. I've failed every time for two years. Yeah. Sub shops really only exist in like New England and like Pennsylvania. Yeah. Where you get hoagies.

Yeah. Really, that's kind of... It doesn't exist really. Yeah. And especially the ubiquitous sandwich to me was roast beef sandwiches, which nobody else has really. Like that idea of just like slight...

Even now I'm like, ooh, that does sound insane. Just like half a pound of sliced roast beef is like nuts. Like that's the sandwich. I think that should be on every... I think this should be at least half a pound of roast beef. Thinly sliced?

I could only get mine on pita bread because bread has eggs. Oh, wow. Damn. But pita bread does not have eggs. Does not. Hey, that works. Most flat breads are fine

because they don't need egg as a binder. Oh, all right. Cool. All right. Guys, we're learning so much. I'm fascinated by all this. So then the hand rolls Mitch, any standouts there?

The hand rolls, I love that blue crab hand roll. And I like the other one too. I just get tired of it. The... What's it called? Toro. Toro roll.

I would say if you're going to get Toro, like get like a piece of nigiri, like get like that, like spend the extra money and get that fatty tuna because if you get that it's done well at a good place. It's outstanding.

Here in the hand roll, it gets kind of buried. I'll also say real quick, I think I generally prefer a cut roll versus the hand roll. Oh, really? We're going to take these nibbles off of. If it's cut up for me

and they're all individual bites, to me that's how I prefer to have my sushi delivered. Also got an iced green tea, which I thought was pleasant. And they were, they gave us ample refills. Yep. Great.

As I told Weiger while we were there, I was only told recently that green tea has caffeine. Wait, did I tell you this? No. No. I just was telling the story. I only read,

like I was doing, I was going and having sugar fish a bunch and afterwards in the afternoon, I would feel like jittery and crazy and out of my mind. And then I, somebody was like, Oh, well,

that green tea is like loaded with caffeine. I was like, I don't think so. It's just tea. And they're like, no, it's got like, because I was getting like four glasses because they just refilling it.

Yeah. And then I would be insane. That's, that's, I get the same thing. I'll get anxiety from. Oh yeah. Oh, I got like, really like panic attack.

Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. Cause yeah, you're drinking like four cold brews basically. I got to, I got to drink that green tea. It's good for your liver.

Nice. Okay. I mean, do it. I mean, do it. Shug down some green tea, that green glow,

that slime like glow. It is very slimy there. It's like you're drinking a cup of ice cold gack. Yes. It really, like the slimer made, it looks like like a secretion from slimer.

Looks like a secretion from slimer. It does. It really does. It's like a slimer piss. If you go into the back of sugar fish, they've got a slimer like in a box. Right. And they just squeeze the piss out.

And it's screaming. Yes. Oh, it's awful. It's like how they do foie gras. Well, let's get to our final thoughts on sugar fish. So Jason, you've heard the podcast,

you know, this will work, but just a refresher will go around. We'll sort of give our closing argument and then a scribe at a rating from zero to five forks. You're our guest. We will begin with you.

You know, here's the thing. First, I very much appreciate you guys making a special consideration and doing a restaurant that is not technically fast food that is more higher end than you normally do in terms of price and so forth. I mean, it's a sushi place.

It's not, you know, we didn't go to like a, you know, a, one of the kind of chain restaurants you guys normally do. And I know that was because of my allergy and I'm very appreciative. I told Weiger about your allergy and you know what he suggested for a restaurant.

What? Egg slut. What? Come on. Weiger? Weiger? No. This is not true.

How dare you. Wow. Weiger's trying to take me out. He wants my seat on how did this get made? I know what he's up to. Oh boy. I want to lower the subscriber base of that podcast real quick. Oh, you're like the podcast cooler.

Yeah. We've got to, we're growing at an exponential rate. We're growing too much. Get Weiger as a guest. How many people are using that me undies coupon code? Get Weiger in there. Listen, I said it.

I love sugarfish. I go quite a bit. It is an LA institution. It is a perfect, especially a perfect lunch. Like grab and go in those cool boxes, blah, blah, blah. I really enjoy it. Now are there places,

are there like standalone places that are better sushi? Yes. You know, like if you really want to like go bananas, go to Sushi Park and have your mind blown by sushi. But this is really good, really delicious. I eat it all the time. Each piece I think is, is perfectly soft, perfectly cut. It's tastes great.

Like I, I really like, I like, it's a, it's an easy hang. You know, like we just sit and chat and whatever. It's not like loud. It's not crazy. I don't know. I'm a fan of the place. So I'm going to give it five chopsticks. Five chopsticks.

Wow. Because which is, which amounts to two forks. I'll give it five forks. I'm going to give it five forks. Wow. I mean, yeah. Well, I got it. I can't, I got, I have no real knocks against it.

Right. So I don't know what I would detract points for, you know, fair enough. The toilet was clean. Yeah. You know, it's a very, the restaurants are very, they're very clean and good set up in there.

You know, considering how much, because you're in and out quick. Yeah. You know, they, the turnover is fast. So that's what I'll you know, they're doing a, and a volume of business that is impressive that they are still

operating at that high quality and that it's that clean. And they, I thought the wait staff was fantastic. Every time I've been there has been on it and you never are sitting there. They do have like beer and wine. If you are there for dinner, which I've had before and is good.

I don't know. It's like a solid spot. Yeah. It is like, and just to speak to the service real quick, like, you know, cause they're a whole, their whole thing is they, they're not going to see your whole party till everyone's there.

And some places are kind of dickish about there, but they're there friendly. Yeah. Like they'll, they'll communicate that in a friendly way. Okay. Go ahead, Mitch. I was going to say the only knock on it is probably the fact

that there can be long lines there. And hey, Nick, you can edit this up, but you got to get the cups from the draw, the drawer behind you. And then all the drinks are in the, in the, so you know, I don't care.

And I, we can keep this thing because who cares? Oh yeah. We're keeping it. It's good content. If we don't keep this in, I will sue you. So I've said it before that bed of rice,

just the experience, the takeout experience is great. Postmates, they took forever to get it, but it's a popular place. But even still, if you carry out that box, it's usually great.

If you go in and sit down, it's a great atmosphere, great food. No, Nick, there. It's in the bag on the top shelf. This is a disaster. This is a true disaster.

I was going to get it. I could have gotten it by the way while Nick was doing his breakdown. The rice is just so good. That's, that just like knocks it home for me. That, that warm bed of rice is so good.

It's my favorite sushi and New York Times wrote a scathing review of the place. Did they really? They, or not New York, was it New York Times and Nick or was it, it was a New York review.

It was New York Times. And, and, and it's crazy because this, this place is, it's, it's a five fork restaurant. I'm giving it five forks.

It's great. I agree. It doesn't deserve anything less than five forks. I agree. I agree. I love it. Great experience, great food.

It's, it's the best. I can do it. I'm sure that you'll see more of it. I was talking to Nick and I was saying that they should do a sugar fish in the staple center. You mentioned this before.

Yeah. Yeah. They should do it. I mean, I think it's a, I think it might be tough to pull off. Shut up. Logistic landing is just tough.

Yeah. That's fine. Five forks. Nick, it could go into the platinum play club. Just so you know. All right. And the hand holding club.

And the, and the, like, why do I know this? Why do I know that? That was the look on your face when you said that. Why do I know that? Why does that exist?

Why do I know it? Why do I, why do I repeat it? Why do I now let other people know that I know it? I enjoy sugar fish. I agree with what Jason was saying earlier. Like, yeah, you can find better standalone sushi spots,

but you know, what we always try to look for with this podcast is how can it, how does it succeed at what it's trying to achieve? The goal of this chain is to try to expand the reach of high-end sushi, make it more accessible, make it maybe marginally more affordable and, you know, produce it at a,

at a level of quality while still expanding to a number of different locations on both the west and east coast now. And there may be more, I assume there are more locations coming across the country. So Mitch, Mitch referenced the New York Times review. So this was described as a scathing review and I looked it up. And I don't know if scathing is,

is where I'd go with it. Oh, wow. Okay. I mean, because the thing is a lot of people centered in on the fact that it got a zero star. Oh, wow. Review, which sounds awful, but this place has kind of that antiquated Michelin star system where

zero is fair or satisfactory, one star is good. And like, you know, every reviewing movie is a one star movie is, is garbage and a zero star movie is unwatchable. So like, like the Michelin star is like three stars is like a perfect restaurant and it's almost never achieved.

And that's kind of akin to the kind of system they have, not exactly. So, so they considered it like a fair restaurant. And if you actually read Pete Wells critique, a lot of what he's saying is basically reiterating what we're saying, which is that like, there are, there's better sushi there.

One thing he even references is that, you know, that they don't really usually have sea urchin, which again is, you know, a very acquired taste, shiny skin, fishy tasting species like mackerel or sardines are not available.

Is a little a thing that you, and like, I feel like a lot of people who are maybe a foreign to sushi or maybe sushi is an occasional thing, aren't going to like that kind of fish. I mean, I like mackerel. I like sardine when I get it at sushi at a good place, but it is very super fishy.

And it is a little off-putting to someone who maybe doesn't need sushi with any regularity. So I think I'm impressed by what they're able to accomplish with this chain and at the scale that they're able to produce it and the consistency and the level of quality. I think the service is great. I think you're getting your money's worth. I think it's good to stay.

I think it's good to go. I mean, why, I think it would be, I would be like picking nits to give this less than five forks. So yes, I am going to go along with the pack of five forks. Wow. For sugar fish.

Nice. Welcome to the platinum plate club, the elite territory where other famed chains lie. And hand-holding club. And the hand-holding club. Let us not forget the hand-holding club. And what's weird is that you guys are actually making us all hold hands. Which I haven't only listened to the podcast before,

didn't know this was part of it. No. I don't like it. It's a key part of it. Everybody's hands are so sweaty. And I'm so close to Mitch's rash. Which by the way has gotten bigger since the, since it's gone up my arm.

Wow. You're absolutely right. What happened? I don't know, but I guess it's just psychosomatic, Nick, or whatever you said it was. Yeah. I think it might be.

All right. That was a review of sugar fish. It's time for regular. I thought it went great. It was great. Yeah. I liked it. I had a great time there.

So Mitch, it's time for regular segment. We got a beverage. You can decide if you should pour it down your throat. It's drink or stink. Mitch, I was a little confused as to why you had me get cups when we had individual cans.

And then I realized each of these cans is a different flavor. It's a different diet coke. I got the new diet cokes here. Okay. So they're, they're taller and slimmer just like I plan to be later this year. We're running tight. Taller?

Mitch, how are you going to get taller? We'll see what happens. We're running tight on time. So yeah, we'll kind of speed through these, we'll get right into the next segment. We're moving,

we're moving back to the next segment. We'll get to the next segment. So what are the flavors we got here, Mitch? We got, I see a ginger lime. Ginger lime, feisty cherry. What is that other one, blood,

something blood orange, blood orange, Zesty, Zesty, blood orange, and this is twisted mango twisted mango strange. Okay. So,

I want to just, should we go, should we go one at a time hand the sodas down? Yeah. Do you want to each do the same one or? Yeah. That's good. Yeah.

We can each take sips of it. Okay. All right. He's got, Oh. Yeah. I'll take one actually. Perfect.

Yeah. No, this is good. All right. I'm going to take a sip of this, of this ginger lime. Somebody was like, somebody in the, like very good headphones was like,

wait a minute, there's a girl in there. Wait a second. I distinctly heard a girl's voice. MR engineer is here. This is, this is the only time a woman is in your house, right? Thank you.

Great Mitch. God damn it. And then what's the next flavor we got? So we got feisty cherries coming around. Okay. Feisty cherry. Ginger lime. I'm, I'm, I'm drinking ginger lime.

It's fine. Yeah. Ginger lime was underwhelming feisty cherry. I'm interested in what makes this feisty. I'm not really getting much ginger, frankly, or lime. Yeah. The ginger is very,

very subtle. The lime is just tastes like a Diet Coke. Right. I guess all of them are probably going to taste like there again. There's a strong Diet Coke flavor also with the feisty cherry, but I wonder what you guys will think. I liked it.

Also, all of these are like, not going to be around in like a year, right? Anytime they try like new flavors like this, they never last cause people just want the regular. Possibly, but they're putting the Diet Coke cans in these slimmer tallow cans. Like I will be later this year. Yep.

And, and they, So if, if it's April or August and you see Mitch out on the street, just compliment him on how much taller he is in slimmer. If I grew a few inches with that creepy out. Hey, Alexa. Who's Mike Mitchell? He's just going to say the Steelers. Damn it.

You haven't cracked it yet. Hey, you know what? You keep getting recognized by celebs like Jack Black. Someday you'll overtake that Mike, that Mike Mitchell. Alexa. Who's Mike Mitchell comedian? Oh boy. Why do you know how to do that?

Here's something I found on Wikipedia. Mitchell, meet Mitch Hedberg. Alexa, shut up. Shut up. Stop it. All right. So the next one we got this. Disrespected by your own Alexa.

The zesty blood orange. Oh, wait. We went to zesty blood orange. Is that where we're on? No, feisty cherry. Feisty cherry. Okay. I'm feisty cherry.

Zesty blood orange coming your way. Boy. I liked feisty cherry. I didn't love feisty cherry, but I also don't like cherry flavored things very much. It's subtly cherry. It's not particularly feisty. I like a cherry soda, but this zesty blood orange is maybe my

favorite one. Yeah. Orange, orange peel. It really emphasizes the artificiality of the sweetener that make orange. None of them have a taste that I am enjoying being part of the Diet Coke taste, which I already usually don't like. Yeah.

You know what I mean? I'm a Diet Coke fan just because I can't drink regular, regular Coke. I'm going to bypass twisted mango because I don't like the taste of mango. Fair enough. Fair enough. The regular Diet Coke cans are now, they're really pushing these,

I feel like. These taller skinnier ones. You've mentioned it, Mitch. Yeah. This is, this is a strong, this is the strongest tasting one. I think, I honestly think twisted mango may be the best. This is the best of all of these. Oh, ginger lime is the best for me because it's the subtlest,

I think. Right. I mean, yeah. The mango one is, the mango one is straight. It's really weird. Again, you can taste it pretty artificial, but the mango is pretty prominent. And, and it's, I think it's not bad.

I think it's my favorite of this batch, but overall I think these, I'd rather just have a Diet Coke over any of these if I'm going to drink a Diet drink. So yeah, I think I have to say stank for the batch. Yeah. Stank. I would say stank for all of them. I'm giving half stank, which is for the zesty blood orange and the

mango, and given half drank for the feisty cherry and the, and the ginger lime. Okay. Yeah. They're, they're, they're all right. They're, I would, I would, I would have. You know what? I would give a half drank to ginger lime just because it,

it almost tastes just like Diet Coke. I mean, it's almost, that's how subtle. Yeah. I had a joke I was trying to say about zesty blood orange earlier that I kind of got steamrolled, but I'm just going to say it now. Yep. And we'll cut it in. Okay.

Is it about, is it about Dracula? Wait, why do you have to hold up the cut the, the can to do your joke so that you might, so you might spill it on. Do you need to do object work? Yeah, this is going to, this is just helping me as a performer. You know, this is an audio medium. I understand, but it helps me as a performer to be doing this.

So I'm going to do a zesty blood orange. Boy, Dracula got excited by the first two words in this. Oh my God. Wait, that was worth coming back to. I didn't say it was worth coming back. But you did, but you implied that it was because you came back to it. If I didn't go back to it, it would have bothered me. Wiger.

Cause I got just the word Dracula. I want that to stay in only because people, please, if you liked that joke, hashtag, drag you like liked it. And if you didn't like it, hashtag, drag you. Nope. Why are you like, you know, in like a documentary where they like look at kids when they're younger and they go back to them when they're adults,

like the seven up series, seven up series. You are like, you would be a fascinating one when they're like, he's now into like he collects Heathcliff comic strips. I don't collect them. Look how sad he's turned out. I do too, but anyways, half, half, half drunk. By the way, looking at Heathcliff again, looking at Heathcliff.

Did he go into the Dracula folder? They're on Dracula Heathcliff. We've so far we've exhausted his folder of Christmas themed ones and gum themed ones. Not until the January archive just went online because they only bring. Why do you know this? Because it's not till the next month where they bring up the previous months. Like for all of January, only December was on.

So the January ones are new to me. Any event, that was Drankers Tank. Just like a restaurant value feedback. Let's open up the feedback. Today's email comes from Tony Peterson. Tony writes, a couple of weeks ago, I was sitting in my house in Quincy, Massachusetts where I moved to a few years ago. It's a city on the grow during a bad nor'easter.

Usually I'm prepared with some snacks around the house because I know that no restaurants will be accessible during the storm, but I plum forgot. No frozen chicken wings, no chips, not even any ice cream. What kinds of foods do you like to stock up on when you know you'll be trapped at home? Thanks for the question, Tony. Any, any snacks you guys have to have stocked up in the home? Man. Hmm.

A winter day. I love, I love, I love like my mum will make these breakfast pastries that I've talked about, these breakfast muffins. I like just like warm on a snowy day, like, like a Guinness beef stew. I would love and I will, I will jump on. Yes. Like, like a hearty stew. Yeah.

Is a big thing was a big thing for me growing up like a can stew. No, like a homemade. My mum would, my mum would, my mum would make a, not a beef stew, but like a various different kind of big stewed kind of pork and leaks and all sorts of stuff was one of them. And it was like that to me is like winter, hearty winter food. Right. Yeah.

Sometimes mac and cheese wager. If you want to do like a, if you want to do a more brand thing like a craft mac and cheese or something like that could be good on a big stormy day. Right. Yeah. I mean, I may have never experienced being snowed in, but I would just save like snacks around the house. I like having string cheese and some peanut butter.

Jesus. It's a good go tos. For storms. Cheese and some peanut butter. Yeah. Not together, but they're both good snacks. It's interesting. Like out here, there aren't like, like I find conceptually speaking, those hot,

hearty meals to be comforting, you know, in the face of a storm or whatever. But on the West coast, like there is no comfort from an earthquake. Yeah. There is not like, like there are no, it's not like, you don't, the weather is so, you know, the threats are not, the threats are like fire or earthquake. They aren't like, oh, you're just snowed in. Wager is holding string cheese and peanut butter and shaking around the house. Oh no.

Natalie quick, earthquake. Get the go bag. It's full of string cheese and peanut butter. If you have a question you'd like to, uh, stance or the podcast, uh, do boys podcast at gmail.com and we can field it. Okay. This last Heathcliff. I don't think it's comprehensible.

We're in rush. You went through the mail bag so fast, but then here we go. Slow it down for Heathcliff. He's bundled up. He is in front of a narwhal. Okay. So there is, there is, he's in the Arctic or the, he's in the Antarctic because they're penguins.

There's a narwhal and they're bumping fists and two penguins in the background comment. You can't really call that a fist bump. Is it because the narwhal has a fin and Heathcliff has a paw? I get, yeah, I guess so. Wow. Wager you don't. Joke check set.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know why they're fist bumping. I'm with you in terms of why are they fist bumping? Also, I'm now noticing that, um, and this is apparently part of the Heathcliff comic strip that I've never known. Yeah. The, every strip appears to be Heathcliff doing an action and people in the background

commenting. That's pretty much it. Yeah. It's never a first person Heathcliff. Right. Story. It is always someone contextualizing Heathcliff's behavior for us, the audience, as if to say what he's doing would itself be not understandable to us.

Right. Were he to tell us. Yeah. And then you were added on to it. Wager by tearing it apart yourself. That's true. Let Heathcliff do his own thing. I think that Garfield's innovation of the thought bubble to let him be somewhat verbal.

Yeah. Really helped that strip. All right. To get the Doughboys double. Oh, and plus there's no Nermal. Yeah, that's true. He got mailed to Abu Dhabi. Ooh, the new Nermal.

To get the Doughboys double our weekly bonus episodes, join the Golden Play Club at patreon.com slash Doughboys. Jason Menzugus, thank you so much for joining us. Being so generous. One of the funniest people around. The best. We're so happy to have you. I love this show.

Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast. Thank you for doing it. Do you have a gig for it? I was just saying, I'm off to the, off to the Super Bowl, Nick. I'm going to, I'm going to see the Patriots play the Eagles. I am not a sports fan, even remotely. Disappointingly.

So I'm sure for you, Mitch, but that is fun. Yeah, it will be fun. Where are you going with your best friend, Tom Brady? Wu Tang's going. Nice. I'll see if I'm sure Tom Brady will remember me from that funnier dive video I did. Right. We're going to go to the, where is it?

Minnesota. Yeah. It's going to be cool. It's going to be cool to tell. Yeah. Do you have any plugs? Um, yeah. Sure.

Um, how do you, you can listen to me and Paul Scheer and June Diane refuel, talk about bad movies on how did this get made on your wolf on iTunes or wherever you get podcasts? How did this get made? Um, yeah, I was on the good place recently. If you watch the good place, everybody should watch the good place. It's funny. Yeah. It's great.

And that podcast is great, better than our podcast by a million miles. Check it out. And I'll do it for this episode of dough boys. And I'll next time with the spoon man, Mike Mitchell. I'm Nick Weigher. Happy eating. See ya. Dough boys media.