Doughboys - The Olive Garden with Christine Nangle

Episode Date: May 5, 2016

Writer and actor Christine Nangle (Inside Amy Schumer, Kroll Show) joins the 'Boys to evaluate the biggest Italian chain restaurant in America: The Olive Garden. Mitch and Nangle face off in the return of beloved segment Pie in this Guy.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Grand Forks Herald is the second largest newspaper in North Dakota. It's the paperware in 2012, then-86-year-old columnist and informal food critic, Marilyn Haggerty, published a glowing review of a newly-opened franchise of the world's biggest Italian restaurant chain. Haggerty's rave went viral for its refreshing absence of irony in praising one of America's most well-known eateries, one often derided by coastal elites for its inauthenticity. The restaurant traces its origins back to Red Lobster founder Bill Darden, whose Darden restaurants group was purchased by a massive processed food conglomerate General Mills

in the late 1970s. The company subsequently expanded its portfolio in 1982 by opening the first branch of a sit-down Italian concept in Orlando, Florida. It would become Darden's fastest-growing chain of all time, expanding nationwide on the back of its menu of Italian-American favorites, along with its value-conscious offering of unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks. Now with over 800 locations and a reported $3 billion in sales, its financial dominance of the sit-down Italian sector is unquestionable, but where Haggerty's accolades earned?

When you're here, are you really family? This week on Doe Boys, The Olive Garden. Welcome to Doe Boys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I'm Nick Hagger, alongside my co-host, The Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell. How you doing, Mitch? Good. Nice intro. You know, friend of the podcast, Evan Susser, pitched me the last line of that.

When you're here, are you really family? Oh, interesting. Evan Susser weaseled his way into the podcast. We would have thought that would happen. Well, it was good. I liked it. I just want to say, say, howdy ho to Spoon Nation. Here we go.

Hmm. Oh, what a f**k. Oh, what a f**k. What is that f**k? Oh, what a f**k. Yeah, yeah. JJ did it. Oh, trippy.

I heard a little JJ did it at the end. That's nice. That part of it. That was from Garlana, what the hell, Garla Nastings at Garla Hastings. But then his Twitter name is Garla Hastings. I don't know. Great job. I liked it.

It was a trivia round. I hope you forgive Mitch reading your name and then going, what the hell? Garla Garland Hastings. There you go. And then his Twitter name is Garla Nastings. Yeah. Didn't have enough characters to fit in that full name. Got it.

Well, good job. I liked it. Trippy. Mitch, are you doing okay this week? Do you have any strong opinions you want to get out there on pop culture, the world of sports, perhaps some famed scientist you wanted to fame? No, I'll say my regular f**k you to Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Okay, so this is now just a part of your intro to every episode, alongside your drops.

F**k those two. F**k Hawking's as well. But the rest you sign. Wait, Stephen Hawking? Yeah. You know what? You scientists, don't watch out or you'll make my sh** list. There's more out there.

What do you have against Stephen Hawking? I don't know. A brilliant mind. He's smug. I don't know if he's smug. I think he's pretty smug. Okay. No, Hawking's is all right.

I guess I'll leave Hawking's alone. I don't know. Wasn't he a asshole? Wasn't there a thing like he was supposedly a asshole, right? Apparently there were some infidelity allegations, which is maybe not a great thing to do, which is definitely not a great thing to do. Yeah. He's got some skeletons in his closet.

Yeah. Well, then f**k you too, Hawking's. Also, I just opened a Diet Coke. I apologize. That's all right. No, not too much going on. I'm going to be dieting again. You know what?

I'm talking about that on the air. I'm going back at it. Good for you. The munch madness really, too, really took me to the edge. Yeah. And we're a month out from munch madness at this point, but you're still feeling the residual effects. For sure.

I mean, aren't you? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I gained weight during that. It's insane for this podcast that we do for no money that the two of us both endangered our health. That was just like a really foolhardy thing to do. Well, you got two guys who are interested in getting into the ground quicker. It makes sense that we're both trying to kill ourselves in any way we can.

But yeah, no, I think I'm going no carbs and no sugars except for my Doughboys meal every week. So that's my, that will be my one meal every week where I eat whatever I want. Mitch, we have our fisticuffs on this program, but I wish you the best of luck. Thank you. I hope you succeed in this diet. I know it's very difficult to monitor your nutrition, and I know, especially as someone who loves to eat, which I am.

And I also admire your dedication to the podcast that you're going to continue to eat these meals. Thank you very much. I feel like if I make it public on the podcast, I will either stick with it or be very much shamed when it's all said and done. And I hope to get big and buff and as soon as I'm strong enough, which I am now, I'm going to beat the shit out of you. I want to get really big and musculary and then beat you up.

All right. Well, just keep in mind, adding muscle mass, not necessarily related to diet. So that's that involves a whole other factor. Let's introduce our guest. You a scientist now all of a sudden? I'm not. No, I'm not a scientist. My dad is a chemist, but I'm a scientist. Yeah, your dad's a chemist. Yeah, as a chemistry professor at Cal State University at Dominguez Hills.

Really? Yeah. What does he do? So all right, he's retired now. But that's what he did for many years. He taught chemistry. Interesting. Yeah, it's really interesting that he ever had a breaking bad sort of dealer. You know, this is insane. I don't think I told I don't think I told the story on the podcast before. But I like this.

My dad had a former. His first boss was like he had this boss. And then years later, that boss got arrested for running a meth lab, went to prison, got out of prison, died in a boat explosion, trying to set up a meth lab at sea. Wow. Isn't that crazy? And this was like at my, I think it was Cal State University Bakersfield, where my dad, the head professor at that chemistry department, was this guy who later went on to cook a meth Heisenberg style.

Wow. Yeah, it's really something, right? So your dad's old identity died at sea. Let's introduce our guest, a writer and actor from Inside Amy Schumer and Kroll Show. The great Christine Nangle is here. Hi, Christine. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for being here with us. Yeah, thank you for putting up with that. My pleasure.

And I have to say, if you guys don't mind, I know you have Spoon Nation and the Burger Brigade, but I also have people. Oh boy. So I would like to say hi to them. Sure. If you don't mind. Let's get some little tighties. What the fuck? That's so tight.

Are you that Spoon Nation? Spoon Nation, you know, get your act together, tighten them up. You piece of shit. OK, there we go. That's just a little thing I play every time I go on a podcast. My music. Oh, boy. Oh, man, that got me good.

It's just a little something from the Nangang. Oh, the Nangang. That's that Nangang. You know what? I'll be honest with you. Join that gang if you're going to join any one of these. It's definitely better than either of our. No, we're violent.

Y'all heard of Chicago? That's us. Oh, it's just Chicago. No, it's like what happens? Are you from Chicago area? Not at all. No, I'm from Philadelphia. Oh, OK.

Yeah. What is the Philadelphia? All right, I know I certainly everyone thinks of cheese, cheese steak. I think some a few people think of tasty cakes. Is there anything in the regional Philadelphia cuisine which you would hold in high esteem outside of that? Or is that what you think of?

Well, aside from those things, I the one thing I would say that I find to be uniquely Philadelphia and aside from water ice, which I've heard you make fun of. Yeah, is soft pretzels. And oh, interesting. It's just the it's a cultural thing in Philly. I went to Catholic group in the city and I went to Catholic school for, you know, all through grade school and high school.

And it first of all, people sell soft pretzels like on the median and on everywhere. That's crazy. At least they did when I was growing up. Like you drive out, you pull up in your car and how you might see someone selling out here in Southern California, you see someone selling a bag of oranges or some flowers. Someone will be there with a soft pretzel with a yeah,

with a big paper bag full of soft pretzels that like they'll break up and you say like, give me four or whatever. And then that was just totally normal. Like you never wondered like, where do they wash their hands? Right. Like it just would pull up and get them. And in my grades when I never thought this was weird until recently, we we didn't have like a cafeteria or anything like that. Everybody brought their lunch or you went home for lunch

because it was like such a neighborhood. So you just there's enough time to walk home and eat and come back. We would have pretzels every day and people. It was like an honor to be chosen as like the pretzel people for your class. So you would have to go down and like count out like the amount for the day. And it would be like, I remember it was like a dime when we first started. And then by the time I graduated, it was a quarter and you'd have to like bring your quarter, line up at recess

and get your soft pretzels one at a time. Wow, that's insane. And mustard was like held as a form of power. Like if the class was good, you could get mustard. If it wasn't, you didn't have mustard. Or you'd be like, did you hear about Room 405? They have spicy mustard. And it was like this weird like thing that was like taking place in this

in a huge city, but sounds like something that would happen on like in like a farm town. And is that universal to like Philadelphia schools? Or is that something that was an unique feature of your private school? Do you know at all? I think it was something that was specific to Catholic schools. The thing about Philly is that there's Catholic schools aren't they're private in the sense that they're religious schools, but they are not private in the sense that they have really any more resources

than the public schools. In fact, I think they have less. OK, OK. It's just like more cultural that you know, a lot of us just want the Catholic schools. Yeah. Yeah, but Boston has some of that, too. I don't because we would have CCD at the Catholic schools. And they were a little bit nicer. What's CCD?

But shit, it's like Catholic Sunday School. Yeah, it's like Catholic class. I don't know what that actually stands for because it was because people call the central city dump is what the little kids said. But I had I had a Sunday school, which wasn't on Sunday. It would be like Tuesday nights or something. They call it CCD. What did the hell did that stand for?

It's possible catechism is in there. Yeah, yeah, something. Yeah, I don't know. But it's a good question. Hey, tweet at us. Let us know what the hell that stands for. Hashtag, whatever. What? What's CCD?

Yeah, what's CCD? CC Define. Yeah, there we go. Hashtag CC Define. Something we could easily look up on our phones, but do it for us. And I always used to get in trouble because I would break the pencils of the kids in Catholic school, whose desks I sat in. Oh, because he got in trouble for being an unrepentant bully.

So not much has changed in the course of your life. You know what? That's funny because because like I went to Catholic school, like you would on on Monday, you'd come to school and you'd be like, sometimes things would be missing or things would be weird. And they would be like, those CCD kids CCD kids. I was put in like the crew of of I was put in like a crew of CCD kids that they were like, we're watching all of you. You're a bad crew of CCD kids.

But that was like where I could be bad. I felt like more because there were no repercussions. In fifth grade, I had two. There were these two girls who looking back, it was probably like a schoolgirl crush or whatever. But at the time, they were just like really mean to me. And maybe they just dislike me. Who knows? They were really mean to me at the playground and like really just like

bullying at me to recess, like throwing stink pods at me. And yeah, you guys have stink pods. They're like they they're little things that would drop from a tree. And they were like, like, I don't know that they remember from Lakewood, California. I don't know if I see them as much out here. But they're like hard boomerang shaped things that just smell really bad if you crack them open that fall from some trees. But yeah, anyway, so there was one of them and she had in her desk,

she had like a really I noticed one day she had like a brand new thing of chalk. She got like a thing of like, you know, like like 10 brand new untouched stocks of chalk, whatever you call a chalk piece. And so one day, like during recess, I stuck in there, a piece of chalk. I snuck in there and I I took her brand new chalk and I took all the the chalk out and I emptied into the trash can. And then it took the smallest chalk nub I could find off of the chalkboard and put it back in there and sealed it back up and put it back in her desk.

And I actually witnessed the next day when she took her chalk thing out of the the drawer and just made like a horrified, enraged face. And it was the sweetest revenge I've had in my life. Oh, my God. What the fuck are you going to do to me? That I think it's funny that you you kind of said bullying, but then we're like, maybe it was a crush. Yeah. Because it's funny when it's like girls bullying boys or boys bullying girls. The thought that it could be a crush is always there.

But with boys bullying other boys, is that ever a thing? Or hopefully it will become a thing like it must be. I never I never as much as Nick likes to paint me as a bully. I never really bullied kids too much. But I would say that there was one. I think I told this though. My one bully was my freshman year when I got sent to private school, who then turned into professional hockey player, Ryan Whitney.

Wow, was the only was the only guy ever who like really I felt like bullied me where like we tried to like fight in class where like I had acne. He's like, why don't you use clear cell more? And I was like, hmm, that's not a bad. And then like he like threatened to fight me. We stood up in English class and I was like, why isn't the teacher like stopping this? Because I was stepping up to because I was sick of his shit.

Yeah. And this is like ninth grade. I got sent to a private school. And I was like, I'm going to stand up to this guy. But at the same time, I was like, the teacher will shut this down immediately. And she fucking didn't shut it down. And I was like, I'm going to get my ass kicked. And he turned he turned into an NHL player. So he would have beaten the shit out of me.

He was just aggressively giving you good tips. No, he was he was a fucking asshole. And then I felt other other people felt that same way. But I never really bullied anyone. But I feel like when I was like in middle school, I was probably like snotty to some girls that I did like for sure. Yeah. What a terrible time, though. It's a terrible.

It's a terrible time. Like most times, it's terrible. But especially terrible. It's especially terrible. And Ryan Whitney, if you're listening to this podcast, we hope you tear your ACL. I think he's out of the league. He's out of the league. All right.

Well, good. You're washed up. You know what? If Ryan Whitney is listening, maybe we should just fucking bury the hatchet. Or let's fight. We should have a we should have a big fist fight finally. Come on this podcast, Ryan Whitney, beat the shit out of Mitch. And then you drank or stank? Yeah, we'll do drink or stank.

That would be nice. I could I could I could bury the hatchet with Whitney. So I got so with Philly and I get it with like people are always like, Oh, Boston baked beans. I've been to Philly. I rode on the Skookle River. I was a rower in college for two years because I'm a loser. And my brother was a rower. OK, we're both losers, I guess.

Your brother's way cooler than me. And I like I love the city. It's a it's a very pretty city. I like to run on the school. I have a lot of good memories there. And I like the cheese steaks. I like I like everything about Philly, Philly, Philadelphia cream cheese. Is it so when people hear like, Oh, Boston baked beans are like,

is there a lot of baked beans? And there's not, you know what I mean? But is is it the same thing with Philadelphia cream cheese? Do people not care? People don't care. I feel I feel no association with it whatsoever. I honestly I wonder like looking into the background. I almost feel like it's something different.

It's not like it's from Philly or anything. Oh, that's why I even brought it up because I feel like it's not. It feels like it's not like like an area thing. I don't get how Philadelphia cream cheese plays into it. But maybe I don't know. I'm trying to think of the I guess California raisins. Yeah, but that makes more sensors, right? Doesn't it? I get. Yeah, there's a lot of great.

There's a great surplus because of the wine industry, I guess. Maybe that's what it is. But I also like as a lifelong Southern Californian, I don't feel any great attachment to raisins. I don't feel like any Californian out here. I'll be like, oh, man, raisins. That's what it's you know, I mean, in the way that maybe a native New Yorker will talk about their pizza or their bagels.

That's true. I feel like with the Dunkin' Donuts thing sticks with yeah, Massachusetts or whatever. But well, speaking of which, Nangle, you are a something of a Dunkin' Donuts aficionado. Am I correct? I really like Dunkin' Donuts, but I wasn't allowed to do Dunkin' Donuts. Well, it's not that you weren't allowed to do Dunkin' Donuts. You suggested a few chains.

I ran them by Mitch. Mitch said that maybe we should do Olive Garden. I thought Olive Garden was good, but now I now I feel bad. No, no, don't feel bad because I got to, you know, have a tour of Italy plate. No. Well, actually, the thing is like I that my first choice was Friendly's, but they don't have those out here. Yeah. And then the other choice was the other choice. There was another one that I said you like some because Friendly's in

Oh, Dairy Queen, Dairy Queen, Dairy Queen. Friendly's in Dunkin' Donuts are I think of them very much as New England things. So yeah, do you ever spend time up there? Or was it just just a little bit of an aunt up there? But if we're where I grew up, so I grew up like in the city, just not not a place people move to on purpose by choice. Just like row houses, just like a nice place to grow up because there's people everywhere. Sure. Do you live by Boathouse Row there?

No, not at all. No, OK. But when we were growing up, there's I have three siblings and my parents and we just like didn't have money. So eating out at restaurants was just not something it wasn't even like in our brains. It wasn't an option. Like we weren't the kind of kids that would like if we drive past the McDonald's, we'd be like, oh, mom, can we go to McDonald's? It just like at least for me just wasn't part of what we did.

So like, in fact, I realized I can't believe I never really thought about this in order to get to my grade school that we used to walk to of Saint Martin of Tours. We had to there's this road called the Roosevelt Boulevard that is like this huge divider in a big part of Philly. And it's like the old Mississippi River, something like that. She's like, what's out of the Boulevard you live on? The Mason Dixon line. Yeah, I got that. The Carl's Junior Hardee's Continental Divide.

Exactly. It would be like, you know, oh, mom, could I go to this person's house? What side of the Boulevard do they live on? OK, hold on, like you need dad's got to drive you or whatever. But we had to cross over that highway. It was like a four lane, not really a highway, because it wasn't like like elevated. But there was a footbridge that that went over it that went from my side of the Boulevard to my school.

Gotcha. And the light that you waited for that to to get to the footbridge, there was a McDonald's there. And so every single day for nine years, I like at least twice would pass by this McDonald's and just never think twice about like, oh, there's a McDonald's there. But there were like the kids that went to McDonald's. They're like, in my mind, they were like a certain kind of kid, I guess. Not bad or good.

And then every once in a while, it would be like a thing where, because like I said, you could go home for lunch. And when we were younger, we went home for lunch. And then my mom went back to work and so we stayed for lunch. But I think like in seventh or eighth grade, you were allowed to go to McDonald's for lunch for all like from time to time. You need a note from your mom because you weren't a go home for lunch kid. You were a stay for lunch kid.

Yeah. And it was like the most exciting thing. Like you and your friends would plan it like weeks in advance. And then it would be like the day it's like, OK, we're going to McDonald's for lunch and we will have our notes just go across the footbridge, get McDonald's for lunch and then go back to school. I feel like shit, but it just like I said, it just like never and because we my mom would just cook, sure, whatever. And it wasn't any sort of like health food thing or anything.

It just like wasn't what we did. And every once in a while, my grandma would take us to friendlies usually one at a time because four of us is too much. And like that was just like the most exciting thing in the whole world, to like have a waiter or a waitress and like be able to get food that we'd probably be eating at home anyway, like normal stuff. But dining out is its own experience. And yeah, certainly if it's a rare thing, it feels exotic.

Do you have so OK, so I'm I'm a friendlies neophyte. I don't know anything about it. What is friendlies all about? Ice cream mostly. OK, fribbles, fribbles. What the hell is a fribble? Oh, you fool. Yeah, you're the weird one. It's like their version of like a blizzard or whatever.

Oh, OK. Yeah, their thing. Like it was just we would go there after dances. We would either go to friendlies or the Aramango diner, which is a diner. I feel like and like it would be like chicken fingers, burgers, fries. But then it was like these Sundays, this one Sunday, that had like the ice cream with the cone on the face. Yeah. Oh, that's fun. So the cone was like the hat on the clown.

Yeah. And it had like like was it Reese's peanut of Reese's pieces? Yeah, that was the thing with friendlies. It was that they had some sort of deal with Reese's pieces. So they could with Reese's so they could have like the Reese's like peanut butter toppings on things and friendlies. It was always I always enjoyed friendlies. I feel like it was it's a dying chain, right? Like I feel like it's it's not doing too well.

I haven't heard anything about it. Yeah, there hasn't been too much friendlies news. It's kind of quiet on the friendlies front. But but like great chicken fingers and fries. Like it was it was just like I don't know if you knew Brigham's. Brigham's was like a Boston based one. And I like friendlies and Brigham's. I like both of them.

Brigham's also just is it they also have food beyond ice cream. They have food beyond ice cream. Brigham's is has died. Quincy had one of the last Brigham's ever and it's officially closed. It was bought by Hood. Hood Milk, the Hood Milk Corporation. I think you mentioned this before. Yeah. And and and and now it's it's officially they shut them all down.

They still sell Brigham's pints of Brigham's ice cream. Speaking of Hood Milk, I was thinking about what foods we ate when I was growing up and we I a couple. I don't know when it was, but maybe it was in college. I said to my mom, like, how come you never buy that milk anymore that we used to get? And she's like like it was like it like tasted like vanilla. And she's just started laughing.

And she was like, that was powdered milk that we got from the government that I would add water and vanilla to so it tasted a little bit better. I was like, oh, I like that. How come you never? She's like, yeah, we used to get that and cheese wheels like from the government. Oh, my God. So we should have called that Hood Milk. Yeah, I've had that before.

I've had it, but I've had it on Boy Scout trips. We would go on Boy Scouts and milk obviously won't keep, but you take some powdered milk and you mix it with some water on the trail and you have a milk substitute. Were you a Boy Scout or are you one of the leaders? I was a Boy Scout. OK, yeah. My dad was a leader. What level did you get up to?

I got up to Life Scout, which is one tier below Eagle Scout and actually got all the merit badges for Eagle Scout, but I didn't do my Eagle project, which is you have to do some bit of community service. It's like a big it's it's like a it's like a a nerdy or science project. Basically, you have to like, oh, I'm going to repave this parking lot or I'm going to, you know, paint this fence at the church, some sort of like big, active community service. And I just never did that.

My brother was an Eagle Scout. There's like an element of it that it has to like sustain itself or has like whatever the action is that you do, it has to have a keep going. I guess I don't know. I'm trying to remember Eagle projects I was a participant in. And they were always things like this basketball court. We're going to repaint the basketball court. So the kids, these kids can play basketball on a court with freshly painted

markers or whatever, you know, I mean, like. So those kids can beat up the Boy Scouts on the freshly painted. You're painting over the blood that you spilled on the basket. Yeah, you were a life scout as a life scout. Yeah, you know, if we if we bring Ryan Whitney in here, it's probably going to be the show. Yeah, I don't know. I'm glad I didn't go all the way to Eagle Scout because it kind of taught me

the lesson of it's OK to quit. And I feel like that was the big the biggest thing I got a Boy Scouts. I hated my entire time in Boy Scouts. It was terrible and it was annoying. Going on campouts was horrible and dirty. Didn't like the other scouts for the most part. But I do like that I got almost to the precipice of success, almost to the the apex of achievement in Boy Scouts.

And I just walked away. And I feel like that's like that's kind of it served me well. It's what I did at college. I didn't graduate. I just walked away. It's what I've done at numerous jobs. I've just walked away. No, no, my marriage to my lovely wife, Natalie, is ironclad. She's the one who should walk away.

Her life would improve. I think it's a good lesson, though, to to know like what that it's OK to quit. Yeah, that is something my parents were really good about. It's just like if you don't want to do this anymore, you don't have to. That's great. I worked my day job while I was in in New York doing UCB stuff was as an assistant for a nonprofit that helps people become teachers.

That's all I'll say. And I like kind of got roped into helping like interview people, like in the first to kind of like weed out because a lot of people apply for it. Sure. Weeding out the first level. And we had all these buzzwords we were supposed to listen to, listen for and like these like metrics and stuff that we were or rubric. What's the word metric or rubric? I think both work. Yeah, whichever.

Mitch, you're a resident vocabulary genius. Rubric. I'm sweating. His hat jumped off his head when he said it. And and like one of the things that was like huge was like listening and asking questions to see if they've about quitting things. And you had to like they were like out, they were if they quit something. Oh, wow. Like basically you you were only asking questions to find out like

how did you push through on things? And I was so uncomfortable doing it because I know that I've quit things. And I think that that's like a good. So like, for example, like if you were on the swim team, like there was a girl I remember specifically that was like on the swim team and just it just academically wasn't working out and like for all these other reasons and she quit and, you know, was a better student because of it. Sure. The point of being in school.

Yeah. And it was just like it rolled her out is because she quit something. And it just was like that's such a I mean, maybe it's just because they were so popular that they needed something to weed people out. But it really like for me didn't feel fair. That's crazy. Yeah. You're you're asking people to I don't know. It sounds like they're just looking for goody two shoes or right?

Like kind of. I mean, it's like if the idea was you you're going to quit this thing that you're you're applying to then. But then it's like, well, who's to say that? Like they're not also going to join CrossFit or something. Sure. Yeah. And then that's going to interfere with their job. And then they're not going to want to quit the other thing. You know, it's just, yeah, maybe I think that's 100 percent what it was.

It's like they're looking for like the type A, A, A, A, A, A people. I've been involved in a handful of job interviews in my life. But one was I don't remember why they asked me to do it. I think just because I was someone who worked the same position and they just wanted someone else to sit in the interview is in addition to the hiring manager. But when I worked in video games, this guy came into an interview for a game design position, which was the job I had. And I don't know what it was.

But during the interview, I could kind of read like, this is kind of a guy like me, like I don't know if he was like a little disheveled or just like a real like visibly uncomfortable around people, like whatever it was. I was like, this guy, this guy is kind of a guy like me. And this company was very strict about getting in on time. And I am I'm not as bad as Mitch, but I'm notoriously late to things. And I could just kind of tell that this guy would want to know that. So I was like, I was like, so you good at getting in on time.

And he's like, he's like, yeah, yeah, pretty good. But, you know, I could tell he was kind of lying. And then I just kind of underlined. I was like, you know, this place, they really care about getting in on time. They get really upset. You know, I've seen people get terminated. And he was like, I was like, oh, okay. And like kind of filed it away.

And then later on, I found out they were like, hey, man, we're going to hire that guy, but then he just, he just turned it down. And I think I persuaded him that he wouldn't have been a good fit there because he's just not punctual. And sometimes if you're not punctual, you're not going to be a fit in an authoritarian workplace. And now he's a professional hockey player. Yeah.

I was going to say, you said a guy like you, was it, was it Timothy McFay? Mitch, you know, the timeline could not have possibly worked out for that. The Oklahoma City bombing happened in 1993 or 1994. I was not out of college until well into the 2000s. It's well early in the 2000s. You never know. I was pretty good at, I mean, I wasn't good at it. I quit a lot of stuff, but I always felt guilty.

I had that Boston Irish Catholic guilt for every single thing I've done. More so, I'm just surprised that people like to do stuff so much as I get older. Right? Sure. I don't like to do anything. Yeah. That's my, that's the issue I got going on right now. I have trouble finishing a TV show.

Like I've gotten far away into its season of TV and they're like, I don't fucking give a shit about this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's what happens. I got a dog two years ago and it just made me the most boring person. Like I just go home and hang out with my dog.

I don't want to do anything. Don't want to join any clubs. I don't want to go to parties. I just want to hang out. That's, I feel like that is a thing that happens as, as you go to Britain. I'm also like, was I dumb young when I was younger for wanting to go and hang out?

Is this the better option? I can't tell. I don't know. No, it's, it's not. It's not. Objectively, no. Yeah. Maybe you're, but it's so nice.

I mean, honestly, do you want to go out and, but I know that it's bad for my mental health when I'm like isolating myself. Yeah. Sure. That's true. But it's so nice. My dog's so nice. Oh yeah.

I mean, that, that sounds great. Tell us about your dog a little bit. Uh, I have a pit bull mix named Philby. Philby. That sounds like a good dog. The dog. Yeah. He's a good guy.

Is he a, is he a barker? How old is he? He's two and a half. I got him at six months. Okay. He's, did you say, is he a barker? Yeah. Is he bark?

He does not bark too much. Okay. He's easily startled and, uh, he only, he barks at the curtains when the wind comes into the window. No matter what time of night it is. And, uh, he barks at boxes. Gotcha. Maybe you can see ghosts.

She's lost. I don't, I don't want to talk about ghosts. Do you believe in ghosts? I don't like to talk about ghosts. Oh my God. Wow. You and I should have a, we should, you and I should talk after this. I think I heard one of your episodes.

Like it's one of those things where. One of the episodes that don't always want to, my like episodes and quotes. Yeah. The episodes of dope boys. It's, it's one of the things that like ever since I was little, I don't have any like evidence. I've never seen anything or heard anything that makes me think that, that I interacted with a ghost or something, but it's something that is, it's so unknown.

It's so unknown to me. And so I'm so scared of it that I can't even think about it enough to talk about it. Oh yeah. Why, why, why, why be littles me for believing in the, in some sort of uh, spirit realm. But, uh, that's more just generally because I take joy in belittling you. I don't have a problem with people who believe in, I understand that there's a, I'm maybe a skeptic about the paranormal, but I understand people have different

experiences and worldviews. You're also a ribs skeptic. I, on the previous episode, I did say it was a ribs skeptic or something. Ribs don't exist, ribs don't exist, show me a rib. Wait. So Mitch, you like, have like theories about how a ghost exists in other realms and stuff. I mean, I, I, I, I, I am a believer in ghosts and I, I do get made fun of for quite a bit, but how, who are we to say who knows what the hell happens?

You know what I mean? I don't even dare to think or have an opinion about it. That's like how freaked out I am about it. So I might be a skeptic, but I won't allow myself to get to the point where I'm thinking about it. Yeah. It is the tears of things you're allowed to believe in. Is it like, if you say like you, we may have gotten into this in the podcast before,

but if you say like you believe in ghosts, that's one thing. But if you say you believe in aliens, you're like, I think people think maybe you're a little crazier or a different kind of crazy. Like I feel like ghosts is the most acceptable. And then maybe in some regions of the country, depending on how religious your, your area is, maybe goat, maybe angels is the next tier, but certainly out here, like angels, people would think you're a wackadoo. I don't even know.

I feel like angels is maybe crazy. You think, I don't, I feel like if you're in the heartland or if you're in the deep south, I feel like saying you believe in angels does, yeah, does not make you feel. Yeah. If you're a mom, I don't think it makes you seem crazy on angels. Yeah. Actually, my mom, my mom said, uh, I'm Irish Catholic too. Well, this could be a part of where the ghost, the ghost thing comes from.

And also northeast kind of area. There, I think there's a lot of things that line up that make you maybe think that there are ghosts. Definitely a lot of history out there. Yeah. Like the houses are creepier. You can drive by a house and be like something awful happened there. Yeah.

But my mom, she, like, she believes in guardian angels and, you know, saints and all. There's like, my parents backyard has three Saint Francis of Assisi statues in it. But like, I got, it was one of the, I got a job. I don't remember what job it was. I got, it was like, after a couple jobs, it was like, not the first one. And I, so I told my, call my mom's holder, I got this job. And she's like, I swear, you have a guardian angel looking out for you and getting, and like getting you these jobs.

I was like, yeah, mom, it's my agent. It's her job. And that's what they do. And she was like, I don't know, Saint, Saint Teresa is looking out for you. Well, what was the job, do you mind if I ask what job it was? Because that could also be like, if it was a shitty job. No, it was a good job. It was a good job.

Yeah. I wonder, I feel like guardian agent is a sellable pitch. Someone like a down on his luck actor has trouble booking work. His agency drops him. But then an agent who was a famous huckster who maybe lived a sinful life of. This sounds like a 1990, like HBO movie or something. I feel like this could be a movie. This guy, he gets one last chance to prove himself by getting a job for this actor.

Yeah, I feel like this, I feel like this couldn't be a movie. It feels good to me. I think 20 years ago, maybe it could be a solid pitch. If it was a movie on like, if it was like a Hallmark Christmas movie. Oh, yeah. And he gets it. He gets this actor who used to be a smarmy actor. He gets him a job as a Santa Claus at a rec center for underprivileged children.

And it changes his life. He changes his life and he falls in love with a single mom. Let's fucking write it. I think the three of us should write this. Touched by a guardian agent. I love it. I get why you quit on things halfway through Nick. It's probably right.

I feel like Sasquatch or the Skunk Ape of Florida are most the El Chupacabra. Yeah. Then you start to see him a little bit crazier. And then if you're talking about, I was saying, they're the most acceptable. Oh, those are the most acceptable. No, I'm not leaving an El Chupacabra is more acceptable. I feel like Skunk Ape or Skunk Ape from Florida. No, I'm on board.

I got really obsessed with this a couple of years ago and I found out a lot about the Skunk Ape of Florida. Just like Sasquatch mythology and stuff like that. Sasquatch, I feel like that's like not that crazy, like a big ape beast or something. No, it is crazy. It's pretty crazy. I don't know. But it's crazy to ask, but I think maybe regionally people, if you have someone that

you know and you respect and all of a sudden they tell you, I saw, I seen a Sasquatch. Yeah. Like, I feel like you can't just like break off that relationship by being like, you're crazy. Also, I need some wood from you. Or whatever. Our friend, our friend Matt Mazzani listens to the podcast, told me once he had an experience with a goblin. That's Mazzani.

What the fuck? That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. A sexual experience? Yeah. I'll have to get him to re-re-re-lay the anecdote to me and perhaps I can be sure that's what we need. We're going to get him on here or something. We're going to hear this.

But anyway, I've heard a goblin story in my lifetime, which to me is like the same as like telling a story about a giant. It's just like, it's so crazy. Someone believed in giants. I want the Sasquatch to come back around. I think it was fun when he was around and when he was popular in the 80s. Yeah, but it did a little bit. There was a show called Finding Bigfoot, which I think is still on.

Oh, that's true. Yeah. Where it really, I mean, I definitely was hooked. Like, every single episode by the end, I'd be like, oh, they're going to find, like, did they ever get close or anything? Or no, I mean, no, it's like they, they have this. They've decided what the clues are and what Sasquatches eat and like the evidence they leave behind.

But then, like, if the only thing they find on a particular investigation is like deer tracks, they'll be like, well, this is good because we know that's a steady food source for the Sasquatch. So they'll use that as proof that there is a Sasquatch. But it's one of those shows. This is the way it's edited that, like, I'm, I do not believe there's a Sasquatch. But by the end of the episode, I'd be like, oh, my God, they're going to find them. Wait, man, you're falling for it.

Some of those videos are impressive. I will say, especially if we're back in the day, those were good qualities. Yeah. I also want to touch on goblins quickly. My papa, my dad's dad, kind of the, the. Call me your papa. Yeah. Okay.

My dad's mom and dad were Nana and papa. And my mom's mom and dad were grandma and grandpa. Christine, what do you call your grandparents? They're all dead. Okay. But I do. My condolences, do you guys? Thanks.

My mom's parents are grandma and grandpa, the G-R-A-M-M-O-M. And my dad's parents were mom, mom, and papa. Oh, that's nice. That's nice. Out here, it's just grandma and grandpa, both sides. Both sides. My, my, my two grandmas are going strong. And, but my grandpas have passed away.

But yeah, grandma and grandpa. I lost them right in a row. Sixth, seventh, eighth grade. Oh boy, that's rough. That was the last one. And then when I was eight was my dad's dad. And he was kind of the more mysterious one. And he used to sit me up on his lap and he used to sing this,

he used to say this poem about goblins. It ends like, with the goblins, we'll get you if you don't watch out. It's a really creepy fucking poem. And I was like, you know, like five or six or whatever. Do you think, did this, did this at all contribute to your hatred of the Harry Potter franchise? The fact that you were being warned of goblins at every turn? Yeah, who's that little sheet?

No, because the goblin in that, what is it? Dory or whatever? I don't know. For the fuck its name is the least scary goblin I've ever seen. He sucks. That's your thing with Harry Potter, is you want it to be scary? I want those goblins to be scary. Yeah, he used to say this little poem to me.

And his house was like a little spooky and it was about goblins getting you at night. I think that did instill fear in me for a long time. It was like a Catholic thing or was it like an Irish thing? It might be like a weird Irish thing. It's a weird East Coast thing. Someone look it up online, shoot it at me. Hashtag, my papa was a strange man.

It's about this story about this guy and the goblins will get you if you don't look out or watch out or something. It's about this little boy who didn't say his prayers. It's one of those weird East Coast things. But speaking of East Coast, and to segue us a little bit, East Coast, especially where you are, I would say, and north of south of where you are, it has some amazing Italian food, specifically.

I know that Philly is known for, what's it? Pats and Geno's. Would you have a favorite of the two, by the way? Everyone usually likes the ones that aren't Pats and Geno's. Yeah, that's where I am on that. Okay. Wait, Pats and Geno, these are Italian restaurants? No, these are the Philly cheese steak restaurants.

Oh, the cheese steak places, okay. Pats and Geno's, I got you. But where is Italian food rank for you? Is it like one of your favorite foods or like how do you feel about Italian food? I love Italian food because it makes me feel full. And that's kind of all I have. Like I've realized something about myself with doing this.

And also just like in my trepidation towards evens, like wanting to do this podcast, was like I don't really have opinions on food. Like I'll easily forget something. I'll just be like, that looks good, that'll fill me up. And then like the next day I'll be like, what did I have for last night? Like I won't, or I won't get aggressively angry

about things being bad. You eat for fuel, not flavor. Kind of, but I eat for fuel and emotional numbing. Gotcha. Which maybe is helpful with a whole of cardin. If you're not looking for taste, it's probably the place you wanna go to. I mean, I could appreciate a good Italian restaurant.

But like I said, we just didn't really, I don't associate Philadelphia with like a time in my life where I ate out at a lot of places. And I don't have any Italian relatives really. So no one was really cooking for me. You lived in New York for a time. Any great Italian food out there? Yeah, but like I don't remember anything.

I'm sure like I don't, I could go to a restaurant every night for a week and still be like, what's the name of that place? Okay, what street is there? So you're like not a, as they aim quotes, foodie. You're not a foodie at all. No, I'm not a foodie at all. Like I kind of will know something

is probably supposed to be good. I was nervous to do the Olive Garden because I still have to like look up, like slyly look up which pasta is which, like I just forget. Like I know linguine and I know spaghetti. And then after that, it gets a little foggy. I'm like, I don't, which one's-

They can get confusing though. There's a lot of them. But you should be able to like retain the basic ones. And I just like, I think I just, I find myself to be very disappointed in myself. This experience in terms of my class and just my level of sophistication and what I actually bring to the world was just not much.

Well, we are the two classiest, most sophisticated guys around me and Mitch. I agree with that. So, but do you have any idea, any theory as to why you have this blind spot for food? It doesn't, is it from the upbringing of the powdered milk and all that? Yeah, I think it is.

I think my mom was never, never had, she was never confident in her cooking. Gotcha. And it just wasn't, like my grandma, my mom's mom, like what she made is like the, just the classic stuff you think of, like just gunk that you think of from like the fifties. Like when, like you just see, watch TV,

like Mad Men and stuff. And it's just like the grossest stuff all from cans because that's what you were being told is like food. You start, she stick to your ribs, food. Exactly. And just a little bit of Polish influence, I guess, because my mom's mom was Polish, but so the stuff that she cooked and she ate as a kid

that she cooked and made for us. And it was just things like, and also my mom, you know, my parents, I can't imagine how they did it at the end of the day. Like, you know, they would just be like, we kept four children alive today, high five. That's how we did it. Yeah.

But yeah, we would have like macaroni and cheese with hot dogs in it. We would have lots of pasta, chicken tonight. You guys remember chicken tonight? I do remember chicken tonight. Yeah. I remember the song specifically. I feel like chicken tonight.

Oh my God. I feel like that's like one of the rare things all three of us could just pick up immediately and sing it. That's fucked up. Was that in the Simpsons though or something? There was a Simpsons episode where they said it. Yeah.

That's not why I know it though. We just had it. No, I remember it from the commercials. Yeah. That one, I remember the Teddy Grahams jingle. I don't know that one. The Teddy Grahams. The Teddy Grahams.

Oh yeah. I don't remember that. I think though in terms of why I kind of feel like this is it's that, so my mom was like self-conscious about what she was cooking. It just wasn't like a thing. It was just like, oh, this, this and this. Okay, sure.

Gotcha. There was a priority on us all eating together, which is nice. But I think it was like that combined with a little bit of a, who do you think you are type thing about people who did know a lot about food? Oh, interesting. Like there were some people in our life

who knew different kinds of food. I mean, this is, like if someone mentioned like Gaspacho, it would be like, okay, must be nice. And so there was like this like weird thing about that. And then there's just like the other thing, which is just like being a woman and like food and body image and all that stuff. And just like talking and being excited about food

just wasn't something that was just like big in my house. I got you. I mean, this is a great perspective to have because you could see Nick and I and we're perplexed because I think we're two guys who all of our memories and our life are formed around food. Those gave us our greatest moments. But I understand that completely.

I get where you're coming from. I feel like food became so much more of a thing to me. I mean, like I'm actually good, good food. Like when I was like 17, 18, then getting out of my house and going to college or whatever and getting out into the real world. But I get that. Like I remember some of my grandma's meals

that were really great, but there's a big gray sketch. I would stretch, I'm sorry, gray stretch of like, oh yeah, I think I had mac and cheese like every other night probably for a few months straight, which was terrible and made me a big fat guy. Like when you think back on those, the high school or school years, there's a big stretch of like,

man, your parents gonna feed you meals seven nights a week and what the fuck are they supposed to do? Like how are you supposed to change it up? You know, like I feel like kids are so picky too that once you get something that works, you just go with it. It definitely makes me feel ungrateful forever complaining as a child when I look back on it. Considering I can probably,

I'll probably prepare myself outside of breakfast like two meals a week and my dad and our mom were making dinner six or seven nights a week consistently for a family of four. And that's like a lot. And then anytime I was just like, I don't like it. It's just like, oh, what a fucking little shitty kid I was. I was ever complaining about this.

I used to eat baloney and ketchup sandwiches. That's crazy. And when I was like a boy, you know, like I eat that like almost every day. Yeah. That sounds good though. Pork roll. I don't know if anyone's ever talked about pork roll

as a Philadelphia thing. Okay. Yeah, all right. It's like a thick baloney that's like a breakfast meat. Ooh, that sounds good. Like there's Scrabble. Is it Scrabble? No, Scrabble is another big filly thing

that I would never touch ever again. But. Everything but the oink. Yeah. They say. Yeah. I learned about Scrabble via an episode of Diners, Drivens and Dives with Guy Fieri.

And it's one that coincidentally, Gene Hackman is in. Oh. It's very strange. He's just in the background. Yeah, he's just, he's like coincidentally at the diner. Oh, I was going to say, Gene Hackman, a guy who like, you can't even get to do movies. No, he's retired from acting.

He's retired from acting and never liked doing movies. He was kind of like a notorious to be trouble on set. Yeah. Was in an episode of Diners, Drivens and Dives. It might be his final role, but yeah, he's in Diners, Drivens and Dives. He's just like a patron of this Philadelphia or Pennsylvania, wherever it is.

I don't know where specifically it is. He's in a diner that has Scrabble and he just like has like one moment where he's like, yeah, it's real good here. You know, that's it. It's really weird. Crazy. Yeah.

It might have also been his final role. Like the last time he ate a roll of dough. All right. He's still with us, right? He's still with us. Just not eating roll. We're protecting the future. It definitely wasn't his last roll of dough.

I will say, I have to say like my brother and partly cause in high school he was a rower, but like my brother would eat constantly all the time like crazy. And there was just like some sort of like, I would just like I would eat with him a lot. Like he would just eat like a full meal when he came home from school,

full meal with us and like a full meal before bed. And like I would do that with him sometimes, but then sometimes would just be aware like, no, I'm a girl. I can't really do that. Sure. Which is not, I have to say, not that they're listening,

but like never a message I got from my parents. It was just like a message that had to be like, I guess the rules are different now. Yeah. And that's something two fat guys over here, which you are fat Nick, never had to deal with. Like, but I will say to your point about eating, when I was rolling, I didn't change my diet at all

and I ate everything and I lost like 50 pounds in like two months, you know, not even two. Yeah, it was crazy. It was in it. So it's, it's such a thing. I mean, that seems like a good life except I would never, like I'm sure Rob Gronkowski eats so much food and enjoys eating food.

I don't know if it's worth it to be doing all that activity. How does the payoff is worth it? We're like, what's that, that swimmers theme? Michael Phelps. Yeah, yeah. In a lot of subway. Yeah.

Yeah. Pancakes, that was news. It was news about all the pancakes. That's true. You know what? I never, I'm not a huge pancake guy. Is that weird? I mean, I like it more than French toast,

but I don't like too much sweet stuff for breakfast. I think I've said it on here before, but I'm more of a savory. I'm with you. I think starting off with sweetness is a little much. What about you, Christine? Yeah, no, well, I love pancakes, but I don't really put syrup on them.

Oh, what do you put on your pancakes? I usually just try to get a runny egg and put it on. Oh, really? A runny egg on pancakes. Yeah, mix it up. That's the first time I've ever heard that. I've never heard this before either. That is like my, once I get the idea of having eggs,

last year I stopped eating meat other than fish and eggs, but like now I just eat eggs constantly. Yeah. When I get any idea in my mind about eating eggs, like I will not rest until I get the eggs exactly the way that I want them. But I actually consulted my younger brother for this because I was like, what did we eat?

And we were just like, you know, we're talking about chicken tonight a lot. And he's like, we had breakfast for dinner all the time. And it was like a trick that my parents would play on us. Like, isn't it exciting? It's breakfast for dinner. But it's cheaper. But it was cheaper, but we didn't care.

That's really, I've never heard anyone. Well, I mean, we never did breakfast for dinner almost ever. It was a pretty regular thing in my house. Really? Yeah. All right. Probably about once a, not super regular, probably about once a month.

I would sometimes have a bowl of cereal or something for dinner if I didn't want whatever they were making or if I wasn't home in time or whatever. But eggs on a pancake, I wonder, I wonder if anyone out there does that. Eggs on a pancake. What? A great exclamation, like a super hero says it.

I am interested if any, if you've done it, what, give us a hashtag. People use it for toast. No, that's true, yeah. People will put a, are you talking about like putting an egg and runny egg on toast? Yeah, I'll do that. Or like, sopping up the runny egg with a toast

that they're eating. I will definitely do that. I think it's definitely novel with a pancake. I think it's novel with a pancake. Which is usually. That's a compliment, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an innovation.

Yeah, let us know if you're out there putting eggs on your pancakes. Yeah. Hashtag. Hashtag. Egg cake. Wait, what'd you say, Nael? I said Nangang.

Nangang. Oh yeah, hashtag Nangang, that works. All right, let's talk the Olive Garden. Yeah. So what is your, as someone who doesn't have a lot of memories forged in the realm of food, what is your attachment to Olive Garden? Why did this chain come to mind?

It came to mind because much like you probably, people from small towns will say like, and all of a sudden we got like this chain and we were like, oh, this is exciting. Yeah. We're a big town now or like, whatever. I remember when the first subway opened in Lakewood, it was a big deal.

Yeah, it's like legitimizes it. Cause you're a hero right there? God damn it. Yeah, you're uncle. Congrats on him. He was in all that weight, that was awesome. No, but it was like our neighborhood, you know, it's like a very urban residential area,

but like there weren't chains. It was just people's houses and churches and schools. And then up the Boulevard, as I mentioned before, there was a Boulevard in like further northeast Philly, and I grew up like in the very beginning of northeast Philly and then had tremendous prejudice against the people in the northeast because like we just thought they were like fancy.

Of course, yeah. Like must be nice. Which in Philadelphia can turn fancy fast. Like, I'm saying like if you're, one part of town can be really bad and then there can be these beautiful million dollar houses. The thing about it, like looking back is like they weren't. It's just like we just thought their houses,

like maybe they had single houses or houses that were only attached to one other house and we were like, oh my God, they're rich. Yeah. Quincy does a similar thing with Milton, the town next door. They're kind of like to us, like the snooty or fancy or richer part of the city. You know what I mean?

It's two different towns, but yeah. It's really like looking back, just the division and the divisions you create in your mind between neighborhood. A lot of sounds, like just your neighborhood is like everything. And just looking back, it's like who the fuck cares? You guys are 10 blocks of nothing. But anyway, going up the boulevard,

so they opened an Olive Garden and it was like, oh my God, like we got like a restaurant, like a fancy, fancy restaurant. And it just, it was so exciting. It was like the talk of the town of the neighborhood and it just, you couldn't get, it was just, there was hours and hours long waits. And it was the first place, or I don't know,

for us it was this novel concept where they gave you that little thing that glowed when it was your table was ready. Like we might as well have been these natives and like we saw, it's like in the gods must be crazy, like the glass thing, like that's how we felt like, what are these things? So that opened.

That was a huge moment in fast food slash chain restaurant. The buzzer, the last major thing. The buzzer of, yeah, the waiting buzzer. I didn't encounter that until adulthood. Oh, really? Yeah, it was like the ones in our town never had that little buzzer that would vibrate, wouldn't flash red.

It was a big game changer, you could go in and enjoy yourself a little bit, yeah. And this one wasn't, I believe now they've built up stores around it, but it was just kind of just by itself, as I recall. But it went up like when I was in high school. So it was, people would go there for graduations or like dates, and I remember going on a date there.

And it was like, it was just like a time in my life where that just, it felt fancy and like new and novel and exciting, but also there was an anxiety about it because it was always so crowded. Yeah, yeah, that's so funny to think of going on a date to an Olive Garden like that. I feel like you might have been the last date to ever go to an Olive Garden.

Is that actually, are there people still do that? Young people do it, and you can tell. Oh my God, I remember the sweater he wore. Like it just, it's, I'm like almost like sweating thinking about it, just thinking about the fact that you would have to put your name in and wait. Yeah. And how awkward that would be because like your date

would like feel like he had to, it just was so awkward. Yeah, if you don't have reservation or something. Then and now, it's not, it's no better now. No, that's true, that's true, it is not really better now. We were too young to go like drink at the bar or anything. So we kind of just like sit in there next to each other like wringing your hands. You can make some conversation.

Maybe that's a, maybe that could work out for you. I agree though, it's awkward though. I'll go back and tell my teenage self that. I'm sorry, I tried to make light of it, but yes, it is an awkward situation, right? Let's talk about, so let's talk about our most recent experiences at the Olive Garden. How long it had been, Christine,

since you'd frequented one of these establishments? I honestly don't think I had been there since high school. Wow, okay. I remember I think, I'm pretty sure I went there for my high school boyfriend's graduation. Gotcha. And it was like a big celebration. Yeah, but definitely been some time.

I will say there were at the one we went to in Manhattan Beach, California. There were a number of celebrations. There was a baby's first birthday party, I believe. Wow. And there were, among the birthdays, I think there were at least three different birthdays. And then there was also some sort of shower.

I couldn't tell if it was a bridal shower or a baby shower, but there were, I heard the happy birthday song sung at least three times. It was really something, yeah. Yeah, there was a couple birthdays when I was there and I was surprised that they just sang happy birthday. Yeah, isn't that like, I always felt like, well, maybe the legal ease is,

because it was a legal thing for a while, right? All these chain restaurants would have their public domain birthday songs that they would sing. But yeah, they just sang the happy birthday song. Yeah, they sang, I worked for a couple years at a chain restaurant when I was living in Pittsburgh and we had a very specific song that we had to sing. Which restaurant?

It's called Max and Irma's. Okay. It's a chain, I guess, in the Midwest. And I liked, I thought the food was really good. That you guys were talking about mascots recently. Was the Chuck E. Cheese episode? Oh yeah, Chuck E. Cheese, check about mascots. And we had mascots, like you would get a better shift

or you would get a free shift meal or something if you would dress up as one of the mascots. Oh wow. I did a few times. So this was a real family-friendly sort of place? That place was. Gotcha. Yeah.

I don't even remember going to Olive Gardens. Like, I know I had been to one before, but I can only think of one time before this. When I was driving cross country with my friend, Scott Keefe from Quincy, and we went to like no local places and it was a terrible trip and we did it in like three days.

Then I was mad at him and we ate at Olive Garden one night and it was, and so that was like, and that was like, you know, like a few years ago, two or three years ago. Does Scott Keefe have a dumb Quincy nickname? Scott Keefe? Yeah.

He's Keefe. Great. Yeah, Keefe and I drove across the country. He was a huge pain in the ass. Sorry, Keefe, but you were. And we stopped at Olive Garden and I was like, I knew I had eaten there before that, like maybe once or twice, but not too much.

I love Italian food. Quincy is pretty much like all Irish. For the most part, it's Irish. It's changed over the years. But there were like a couple of Italian families that grew up on my, or lived on my street and I grew up with their sons and stuff, the two foes. And I would go over and eat Italian meals over there

and I love Italian food. It's one of my favorite foods. Is one of the two foes your godfather or godparent? No, those are the Kailes. Those are the Kailes, okay. Yeah, yeah. And Anthony and Dan Tufo and Chris, there was a three two foes.

They had the, their houses was haunted at one point, which I've talked about on the podcast. You were just saying that and looking at me. And also there was a Sasquatch somewhere nearby. I wonder how, were you raised in a religion, Nick? Episcopalian, but we're not particularly, not a particularly religious household, although I hope my grandmother Hanson is not listening

because she would probably be scandalized to hear that we do not still regularly attend church. I think she would have been scandalized a long time ago when we've talked about like, when we've had come talk. Oh yeah, but yeah. But I wonder like, cause the, the, how much being raised Catholic has to do with ghosts. Oh, I think, I think it's a huge part of it probably.

And I think, I think the Northeast is old and scary and there's, there's a lot of that in that. I didn't mean to sound, I felt classist before when I was saying no one goes on dates anymore. I get it, people go on date to Olive Garden. I just, to me, it just, it feels like such a joke of a chain. And, and- That was more ageist than classist, I think.

Yeah, that's true. It could seem classist, cause I think there are parts of the country where there maybe aren't a lot of fine dining options. Dammit, we already got over it. I'm ageist and classist, okay? And racist. I'm a man, oh fuck you.

The class and race, it goes hand in hand, it just is true. I'm a man of the people. You're a fucking fancy California boy. Anyways, there's a Bertucci's that has pizza out there. It's like kind of like an Italian. Do you know Bertucci's? I do know Bertucci's.

Bertucci's, to me, blows away Olive Garden. I think it's so much better than Olive Garden. The bread that they give you is like, feels like fresh baked bread. I really love Bertucci's. So Olive Garden, I didn't see, I don't have the nostalgia factor on there cause I didn't go much.

I've never, I've never gone a lot in my entire life and I love Italian food. So I wasn't the happiest. Do you want me to go into my experience? Yeah, let's get into it. I'm with my friend, Michelle, and we went and we went to the Olive Garden in Glendale. That's where I went.

Oh, okay. Yeah, and it was funny, I walked into that Olive Garden and there's an open, at the front, there's like this big glass open area and the sun is shining through there. It looks like such a nice place to sit and eat. And we went up to the hostess and she let us into the back where it was dark

and smelled so much like an Olive Garden like trash barrel. Gotcha. And it was cold and there was no sunlight coming through and I was like, this sucks. Like I would, there was one, that one area that looked like beautiful and now here we are like sitting back and like kind of like the cave of the Olive Garden.

Is it against the rules of the podcast to ask to be seated in a different spot? It's not, no, and I probably should have done that, I guess. Maybe that should be a rule though. Yeah, maybe. We're good at adding arbitrary rules to things. Yeah, why not? Let them treat you how they want.

You get the experience you get, I guess, is the way to do it. Started off with a diet coke and a water and then we got the endless salad and breadsticks. Was this a lunch meal you went for? It was a lunch meal I went for. So everyone, and we got some cheese on that salad which has like Italian dressing

and it's kind of like a classic like iceberg lettuce salad. Yeah. Everyone goes nuts over these free breadsticks and salad combo. Who gives a shit if it's free? Like eating it, I was like, like especially when comparing it to Bertucci's, I was like, these like taste like they're frozen.

It doesn't taste good. I don't care if I'm getting it for free. I like the salad because I just like iceberg lettuce and like Italian dressing and I was fine with it. But for the most part I was like, these breadsticks are fine and they are probably like one of the better things there is the breadsticks and salad. But I just, I don't care.

I don't care enough. Like people are like, whoa, what a deal. And I'm just like, it's not that great. You know what I mean? Yeah, you're weighing, I mean, you're definitely paying in terms of quality for the all you can eat factor. You're getting a little bit lower quality food

but you can get as much of it as you like. What about you, Christine? You went to the Glendale one. What did you start off with? I went with two friends and I started off, first I was surprised by how that was bright. Like it was kind of, it was nighttime was there but there were so many windows and it was so open

which compared to the one that I grew up at. It was much darker and more enclosed. Gotcha. So that felt weird. But yeah, I started, we started off with, we were like, we're just gonna get the fancy drinks, like the quote unquote fancy drinks. So I got a Sangarita.

Wow. Which was a Sangria Margarita. No, well it was a Sangria but with tequila. It was bad. What did it have? So it had like wine in it but also. It had wine through and tequila. Wow, what the fuck.

I'm not a big tequila person. I don't quite like tequila but I thought it was funny to say Sangarita and then say Nangarita and be like, that's my name, that's funny. But because it tasted like a bottled juice or something. And then we got, and they had those things that you can order from the table, like the screen. Oh, they have zeus, yes.

I've never seen one of those before. Oh yeah, we've talked about them a little bit on the show. Way back in the day, yeah. Yeah, they're big news. They were, two of our earlier episodes we did, our very first episode, Chili's, Thieve Anderson and I think our TGI Fridays episode with Jordan Morris, those were both our, those were within the first

10 block of episodes and that's when we encountered the Zosk, which is like an iPad mini-shaped and size device that you can use to order additional drinks and appetizers and desserts and also to pay your check. It's very strange and off-putting and they just put it at the end of the table. Or to call your server. Or to call your server, yeah, you can page them.

Which to me, as someone who's a server, when I was a food server and I delivered food, I just, thinking about, I quit my real job to be a food server when I started getting into comedy so that I could have a job that I didn't have to think about when I wasn't doing comedy. Gotcha. So I just leave it there and go do whatever.

And it's just not in my nature to do that. I took the job so seriously because I would be like, but these people are having a good experience. And like still to this day have anxiety dreams about it. But it kind of weirded me out that that thing existed because I was just thinking about how much work it is to be a server and I was like, oh, kid. And then we got a trio appetizer thing

where you could order three, where we got stuffed mushrooms, calamari and some sort of cheese balls. Ricotta balls. Ricotta balls. Yeah. How are they? It was fine. I'm going to give my assessment of the whole thing now,

I guess. Okay. Do you want to hold the fork rating? Yeah, hold off on your fork rating till later. Okay. No, it's not my fork rating. It's just how things tasted. Gotcha.

Which was, well, let's just say like everything tasted the same in the thing. It all tasted the same too. Yeah. The calamari kind of tasted like sand. Although I will say the mushrooms didn't taste like sand, so it's good, but everything kind of tasted the same. Did it have a gritty like sand like quality?

Like they were unwashed calamari, it just tasted like sand. No, it was something about the breading or the battering. And then we got the salad and the breadsticks. And the breadsticks were not soft. I even like took my knife and went to both of my friends' breadsticks and knocked on their breadsticks just to check. And I was like, if you're going to try to get me to keep getting more breadsticks,

at least make the first one soft and hot. The adjacent, like our breadsticks were pretty warm and doughy and soft, but the table adjacent to us, I overheard them complaining to the server that their breadsticks were hard. So I think this is a common experience at the Olive Garden. Yeah, yeah. And then the salad, my friend was commenting

on how interesting it was that they just go all in on red onions in their salad. Yeah. Which is a- See, I think I love red onions and I didn't get enough. I liked them too. So I was like, oh, that's maybe this one thing I like about their salads.

She took them all out. But I was eating the salad and I was like, this is the thing I really remember really liking. And I think it was, it's because A, like I'm always just always so used to at this point saying like, dressing on the side or just like dipping things on the side or just like half the dressing and it's just like all in there.

And then I went on this whole explanation to my friends about why I liked it. And I was like, you know how sometimes you find that you're like eating ice cream, but it's just because you're thirsty. And they were like, no. It's like really like you've never eaten a ton of ice cream and then gone,

I probably just wanted cold water. And you're like, no, that's not what happens. I was like, well, anyway, eating the salad is like drinking. It's like, if I was thirsty, I could eat a bunch of this salad. I think I lost them as friends. Well, I appreciate that they have salad and I like to eat a salad before my meal.

So I enjoyed it and you must have taken all of the red onion with your guys. It was good. I really liked it. Was Claudia with you? Was Claudia O'Darty with you? Yeah, Claudia O'Darty was there. Your Mitch's, bitch, your TV girlfriend.

TV girlfriend. My TV girlfriend. Sadly for her, I am her TV boy. She came right from shooting. She came right from shooting and apparently you guys had to do a lot of kissing that day. Oh wow, yeah. I remember that when we had to kiss,

I apologized to her and said, I'm sorry that you have to kiss me. Which I feel, I don't know that well, it seems like something you would do. To someone I was dating? Yeah, yeah, I certainly would. I'm in the Nangang now. What the fuck are you?

You joined the Nangang? She's great, very funny. That's funny, she's from Australia so I wonder what she thought of this bizarre chain restaurant that she's running. I think they have them, but she had never been to one and it was, I think we all kind of had similar, like. Sure.

Oh, nice. Well, she wasn't nauseous from having to kiss me on the set that day. So I agree with you that everything kind of tastes the same. The funny thing to me is like when you open the menu, you just like look at the menu from afar and it looks like pink wallpaper. It like looks all the same.

Everything in the menu looks similar, like this like pink and red kind of like mush. The design is not, you know, the graphic design of the menu is not particularly striking. I mean that too, but I mean like I feel like, I feel like the options are kind of. Oh, you're talking about the pictures. Yeah, the pictures are all just kind of the same.

It's a lot of breading and red sauce and pasta. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of the same stuff. I got the lasagna frittata, I think it's called. I also got the lasagna, just Frida actually, not frittata, lasagna frida, which is described as already the menu description real quick. Fried Parmesan breaded lasagna topped with parmesan cheese and marinara sauce with creamy Alfredo.

So kind of like a, I think like the closest analogy in the real world is a toasted ravioli, a St. Louis delicacy. Ooh, that sounds good. So it was by far the best thing I had, like the entire day, it was decent. I'd agree with you, those were very tasty. They were tasty.

Those were appetizers? Yeah, they were appetizers. They were like little like nugget sized bits of deep fried lasagna and they had some red and white sauce sprayed over it. Oh yeah, I saw the photo of that and I don't eat beef so I didn't get them, but I was like, that is just a good idea.

Yeah, it was good and I feel like it was one of those things where it's just like you get a good deep fried appetizer that's deep fried properly. Like they came out hot and crisp and tasty and well cooked inside. It was by far the best thing I had. And also, I think they were meat free. You maybe could have had them.

Fuck. Really? Yeah, I think so. The raviolis are not meat free, I think. And I think, I don't know. But the lasagna treatas were meat free, I believe. They were good. And then I got the chicken parm ravi,

I'm sorry, the chicken parm lasagna as my main dish. And it fucking sucks. It was really, really bad. This is basically what it sounds like. It's a chicken parmesan sitting on top of a lasagna pretty much, right? Yeah, we saw the photo and we were like, it looks like it's wearing a chicken parm hat.

That's kind of what it is. And it's a special, you know what I mean? It was new for the month or whatever. But I was not feeling it. My guess of the chicken piccata, I try to buy to that. Here's my issue. When I was cutting into my chicken parmesan, I couldn't cut through it.

The chicken was like too rubbery. And I was like. Not even with a knife? You couldn't saw through that? And then I eventually, I mean, I did get through it. And there was like the other side of it was like crispier. I took a bite of it and I was like, oh, this is like poorly, just like poorly done.

It was, it was, they didn't fry the chicken. Cause all they had to do, I think it was fry a chicken patty or whatever and they didn't fry well. And then the lasagna was just fucking like mushy and fucking bad. And I had a bite of chicken piccata and it was the chicken just like, I was like, oh, it was better than my chicken parm but the quality of the chicken wasn't that great.

It just wasn't good. And I had a little piece of zikini, like the little zikini thing with like something on top of like breadcrumbs. And that was decent. That was also like another thing I was like, oh, that's good. But I, I barely ate any of my chicken parm lasagna. It was, it was like one of, one of the worst meals

I've had on Doblois. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, it's not as bad as Kara was, but it was, it was bad, bad, bad, and I was disappointed. Cause the lasagna frittas, I was like, these are good. And the breadsticks, I was like, they taste frozen. They taste like they're frozen breadsticks that are heated up, you know, put it in an oven

and heat it up, but they're not terrible. I get the appeal of it. When you eat the breadsticks, you get white people like them. You get it. And then, although I wish they just gave you something to dip them in, and then, sure. You can't actually. You can get marinara, right?

You can, there's like three. I only know because today I was looking up what I ate and I saw the whole menu item that was like dipping sauces. Oh, you can order as a menu item, just some dipping sauce. But, and the salad was good, but it's nothing special. So overall, I did not love my experience at Olive Garden. Especially someone, I love Italian food. I know that I don't, I want to think about this as in like,

oh, this is a fast, casual, or you know, like a chain restaurant, Italian food. You got to think of it in that way, but Bertucci's outdoes it. I'm trying to think of other fast food Italian places. There's not too many. Bertucci's is regional though, right? Bertucci's is regional, but I'm trying to,

what else is there? There's not a lot, there's like Carrabba's Pasta. There's Bucca di Beppo, which is its own thing and is a lot more expensive. And a much more involved dining experience. Yeah, I think nationwide, I don't know what, in what nationwide Italian restaurants there really are. Olive Garden is by far the biggest.

Nangle, let's talk through your mains. What did you get beyond the appetizers? We decided to split up a tour of Italy, which is, I guess, I think you could change up what you had, but it's some Fettuccine Alfredo, lasagna, and chicken parmesan. But we added an order of eggplant parmesan for me. Okay.

And I do love anything with eggplant normally. And our waiter was very accommodating. He was a nice kid. And they separated it in the back for us. So everything was like plated, like they made three little plates of everything. Oh, that's nice. It's really nice.

And his idea, and by that point, I think we got Chianti because he had ordered it and it tasted, I hated it, but that might just be me. It tasted so much like communion wine. Oh, wow. You know, the blood of Christ. Jesus, yeah. It tasted like the blood of Christ.

But so, yeah, we all split up that. And the Fettuccine Alfredo tasted like dessert. Really? Yeah, like it, maybe it's just something I don't normally eat, but then just everything, it tasted like I could have been eating the stuffed mushrooms where I could have been eating anything and it all kind of tasted the same to me.

I feel so guilty for saying anything mean right now. Like I'm feeling myself. Don't feel guilty. That's just giving your opinion. I am giving my opinion, but I know how much work goes into the olive garden. Those cooks, they tried so hard and the waiter tried so hard and everyone tried hard.

But yeah, that was kind of, that was the feeling that I had was, and none of us finished what was in front of us because it just kind of felt, bleh. There was no, and no memories were flooding back when you were there. None of like, oh, I remember this thing. I remember this item beyond the salads.

No, the salad was the only thing that I was like, oh yeah, this would bring me back. Or it's like I had the soup. But it was kind of one of those things that if I ever did eat out when I was younger, it would be, I would only order something that my mom would have made anyway. I gotcha, yeah.

So it was like, oh, I've had this iteration a thousand times and better. So I just felt like a judgy old lady and that was like really coloring my experience of it. Yeah. Well, don't beat yourself up over it. Yeah, do you know how I feel bad about this? Yeah, it's you're dressing the cis.

I mean, I will. All right. All right. I've chosen to, and I'm gonna do it. No, put it on me. Fuck Olive Garden. I hate Olive Garden. Well, one thing I'll say before you go to,

is like when we were, you know, there was like family, there was people there who had been shopping, or there was like families, there was birthdays that were happening, and everything seemed fine. And like, there wasn't like a, you can tell when, maybe because they weren't so busy, that there's like, the service isn't good and people are running around,

and everything seemed fine in that way. And then before we were leaving, oh, and we got dessert too, which was like a dessert lasagna, which tasted like the sangorita. It all tasted the same. But there was like a young woman who was a waitress, and she was like putting in her order,

and this like young guy about her age, who was like, had been dining there, came over, and was like asking her about what it's like to work there, and what are the hours, and like, how does he get an application? And that kind of just like showed them, I was like, oh, this is just like a starter place. This is like where waiters and waitresses

learn how to be, learn that job, and my cooks learn that job, and like people learn how to like Italian food, and then everyone is supposed to move on to the next level, and then it's kind of depressing when you don't. Yeah, well, it might be a similar experience for diners, perhaps. Maybe you get a taste for Italian food there,

and then you graduate to a more esteemed establishment. My issue with it is that all told, it was like $60, like it was not inexpensive. It was kind of expensive. See, I thought, maybe because we all kind of shared, I was like surprised by how cheap it was because we also got drinks and desserts. Sure, yeah.

And my reaction went like, I just laughed out loud when I saw that. I was like, oh, I was like, first of all, I'm writing this off because this is work. But I was like, when something was as cheap as it was for as much food that I saw on our table, I was like, on one hand, this is so great if your family is on a limited budget

and you have to feed a lot of kids. But on the other hand, I was like, how is it food what we were eating that we're spending so little for? And of course, then my newfound not-me-eating conscience was like, how are those animals treated? If you could spend that little, I know. And then I was just thinking about

the workers and all that and all those things just because I was like, fuck, that's cheap. But it's just because it's like me and a couple other single ladies that are just going out. But if I had four kids like my parents did, I'd be like, yes, this is great. I think there's something too. I think you can be value conscious

and get a dining out experience with a family. And I think there is maybe, that is part of its appeal, certainly. That certainly seemed like a lot of the patrons there were families who were able to eat out on not too much money. I mean, you can't beat free salad and breadsticks, you fill up your kids.

That's the thing you can really load up on those. Exactly, exactly. But for me, it was still just a little too expensive, especially for the quality that it was. When you total up the bill, it's not an insignificant amount of money. I will say, I got a glass of red wine, our server, who was very nice

and he was perhaps a little curt and serious, but I think just because they were busy, but he gave us a lot of attention and delivered everything appropriately. He gave me a taste of a head-to-head red blend and I had a sip of it and I was like, this is not bad. And so I got him, I ordered a glass of that and it was $6.

And in LA, there aren't necessarily, a lot of places you can get a glass of wine for $6. That's true. Beyond the lasagna frito, which you mentioned, and I agree with you Mitch, it was the highlight of the meal. I got the, instead of salad and breadsticks, I went with a soup and breadsticks. I got chicken and gnocchi soup.

A creamy soup made with roasted chicken, traditional Italian dumplings and spinach. It was pretty good. It was, you know, the thing was, it was not pipe and hot. Like when I get a, I got a bowl of soup and it was just kind of lukewarm. And for me, that's just kind of unappetizing, you know? It wasn't cold.

You found the creamiest thing on the menu. Wow. Yoki soup, that sounds good. It was, the gnocchi bites were pretty good, but there were like three gnocchis in the whole bowl. But yeah, it was not, it was not super warm. I wasn't in love with it. However, unlike Mitch, I was not a soupless bitch

after this meal. What the fuck you? I also got the braised beef and tortelloni is my main, which was described as tender slices of slow braised beef, portobello mushrooms and asiago filled tortelloni, tossed in basil marsala sauce. So basically like a, you know, like a filled pasta that's got some shrooms and some cheese in it.

And then just sort of like, basically what seemed like stewing beef just draped over the top of it in a mushroomy, instead of basil marsala sauce, but I got a lot of the mushroom character in the sauce. That's fucking gross right now. It was not bad. I mean, it was not terrible. The meat was a little tough.

I definitely liked the cheese inside the filled pasta. Like that was the, like with the lasagna frita, that stuffed, cheese stuffed pasta, is I think they do decently well. It was not bad. And, you know, I don't know. I mean, it didn't win me over, but I was like, oh, this is, this is okay.

And it definitely got kind of like a Nellie, my wife came with me and she sort of commented that the, it kind of had a new mommy character to it. And I think from all the mushrooms, and that was kind of a nice part of it. It wasn't bad. It was fine. She got the tour of Italy herself.

And I think she enjoyed her tour of Italy. So what I think we may be experiencing to some degree, aside from variations in personal taste, I think we're also dealing with, we went to the Manhattan Beach one, which where, which is a different- It's probably fancy. Yeah, I think it's a little,

maybe a little nicer than the Glendale one. And maybe just, or maybe just the manager of that individual chain just does a little bit more of a better job running that individual franchise. But that's a thing that I think that we can absolutely consider, we should consider when we're evaluating a chain of like, hey, one is good, one is bad,

one we're gonna have, you're gonna have a better meal, another one you're gonna have a worse meal. I mean, that's not a good reflection of the chain's overall quality. Agreed. Yeah, an interesting meal. And you're a soup filled bitch, but. I will say that the Zosk,

which we mentioned earlier, I find very alienating. And I do not want a Zosk on my table. I don't want a little iPad that, I guess it's partly there probably so kids can play games on it. Although I don't know why they do that over playing on their phone.

But yeah, it's so weird with Olive Garden specifically, that's like trying to be like, hey, it's this Italian restaurant. But then also here's a weird Zosk on your table. Are you allowed to take the Zosk off your table? You can move it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you can probably take it off too, if you want.

I don't know, it wasn't explained to us. We got no Zosk tutorial, unless if I hadn't been to previous restaurants with the Zosk, I would have been, what the fuck is this thing? And that's how we paid our check and our server dropped off our check, didn't tell us that we were supposed to use the Zosk.

He did a good job, but I think he was just maybe on autopilot. And we had to kind of figure out like, oh, we pay using this iPad. Our server was a little, she was a little strange, but she could have been having a bad day, who knows. I never care, I never usually care.

And she got us everything that we needed, refills and all that. But I wondered if a part of that strangeness was because the Zosk existed and you don't have to really communicate as much. We've talked about it quite a bit. And I know that you don't, but it's funny because you don't like

to talk to people ever. And this seems like something you would like, but. I don't mind having a conversation with a server, if they're like, I'm okay with that. But I feel like it's like, you're trying to have it both ways. If it's an all automated place, fine. But if we've got like a server,

but then we've also got their replacement. This electronic replacement is on the table that they have to like kind of loosely interact with. It's very weird. It's like, if when you go to a bank and there's tellers, but also you could also deposit your checks in the machine. So, you know, I don't know. Is there animosity between the tellers and the machine?

Well, more so like. Do they sit together in the break room? It's kind of like if the teller was stationed above the ATM. So like you went up and like you would either like make a transaction with them or go below them in their line of sight and be doing the ATM. I mean, that's so awkward for everybody.

And it feels that way with the ZEOS. Yeah, because when I got the check, they were like, oh, you can just check out on the ZEOS and I was like, okay, I know how to use it. And then I will say, I did, I think it might have been, oh, we checked out at TGI Fridays, but here too, I, you know, I swiped my card and then it printed the receipt from the ZEOS, which I was impressed by.

But also I was like, this is weird. Yeah. It's kind of like what are you tipping the person for? Like I wonder how their tips get divvied up at the end of the night. And then it is like, it automatically goes to 20%, which I did do anyways. I usually do it, but you're right.

I mean, like, would it be easier? I don't know. I mean, it's just a confusing thing all around. Why even have it, like either go all in or go all out, I say. It is helpful, excellent. But it would be helpful for the servers to have it. Like if you just need like extra butter,

it's easier for that than for you to flag me down and like have to come, whatever. Yeah, true. But I don't know. It just needs a better setup or something like, hey, here's the ZEOS, this is what you use it for, this is what you don't use it for, there you go. I find it alienating.

I feel like it's another level of electronic bureaucracy between you and the server. And I feel like you could just have an interpersonal connection with the server. I don't think it makes anyone's lives easier. I think it just complicates everything. Coming from a man who is willing to spend thousands of dollars to not talk to a customer.

What was a customer, like a representative, right? Oh yeah, I was owed some money and I didn't want to talk to somebody, so I was just gonna not take it. We discussed it before. I ended up doing it. I made the phone call, it was fine. All right, Nangle, let's get to our final thoughts.

So give sort of your closing argument on the Olive Garden and then cap it off with a rating from one to five forks. Hashtag Nengang. Okay. My closing argument is everyone tried really hard. Oh my God. And did a great job, it was nice, it looked great, it made me food and there are people that don't have food.

So I was happy to have food and sangarita. But everything to me, there was nothing that appeased my older palate. Sure. As a kid, I would be super psyched about it. So in terms of just how the food tasted, it felt like any one of those could have been a lean cuisine that all kind of tasted

that you put in a pot and mixed together, including the sangarita and the chocolate zanya. Wow. I know that was mean. No, it's not mean, please. But in terms of the ambience and the experience and like would I bring a family there, would I bring someone there that wasn't much of a foodie

or if I was out and that just was really hungry? I would go back because nothing awful happened. Okay. Nothing awful happened. Nothing awful happened, the end. Yeah, so that's my final statement on that. Great, and do you have a fork rating you wanna give us? Turning blue because I'm so uncomfortable

with all the judgment. What's the fork equivalent of nothing awful happened? Fork equivalent of nothing awful happened was one and a half forks. Bro, okay. Is that bad? Is that bad? No.

Two forks, five forks. No, no, no, no. I wanna buy this chain, I wanna be the manager. One and a half forks I think is great. All right, go ahead, Mitch. Like I said, I used the ziosk, which like you said, it's confusing, but I guess helpful, I don't know.

I don't know what the hell's going on over there. I feel like it's hacky to make fun of Olive Garden. Like I don't wanna make fun of it. I wanted to like it. I had, when I had the lasagna frita, I was like, oh, not bad with the salad and the breadsticks. They're not great, but they're free and it's not bad in this lasagna frita.

Then my main meal was such a fucking bummer. It was so bad, it was like, inedible. And I will usually be fine with eating whatever. I'm a big fat slob, who cares? I'll eat whatever you put in front of me. Not this meal, it was not good. I really like Italian food. I feel like there are places that just do Italian better

and I don't wanna shit on it, but they gotta figure out what the hell is going on over there. It's one of those places where I'm like, this feels like a 90s thing that was big. It feels lost. I don't know what the deal is. I know that they still make a lot of money,

but then also they're also having trouble all the time, I feel like it's- They have contracted and have closed some restaurants a little bit. It's just as confusing. It feels like they're doing terrible, but then also it feels like they're doing well. I don't know what the deal is.

I guess my main thing would be don't get chicken or try to just stay to the cheesy pasta things, but even though my lasagna was not great, but I guess that's their fried cheese slash pastas, the thing they do the best, but they don't even do it that well. And also it's called Olive Garden. I like olive oil, but who likes olives themselves?

No one just eats them plain. But they don't make a big deal about the olive, actually. We were talking about that. There's not any sort of selection of olives. Even in their salad, I didn't remember even having any olives in the salad. Yeah, no, there's olives in the salad, but other than that, it's not like-

Yeah, there's not like a lot of like olive heavy dishes or anything like that. I had a special, it wasn't good, and this isn't the worst of the chain restaurant or fast food restaurants, but it's close to the bottom for me after today. And I have no of that nostalgia factor with this one, so I'm going one and a half forks as well.

Also one and a half forks. Here's the thing. I think you make an interesting point, Mitch, regarding nostalgia, and I'm really curious who actually has nostalgia for the Olive Garden, who looks upon Olive Garden with fondness and is like, oh, I have my favorite dish from there.

You think of a place like Red Lobster, and I can think of someone who just loves those Cheddar Bay biscuits, and that's why they want to go back to Red Lobster. They're just like, oh, I love that, that was just my thing, you know? And I just don't know what the equivalent is at Olive Garden.

People like the salad and breadsticks, but people do like that value. But I don't think they like the flavor of it. I don't think anyone's like, oh, I have the sense memory of the breadsticks. Those are so fucking good. I mean, maybe there are people like that, but that doesn't strike me as a common assessment

in the common shared memory regarding the Olive Garden. As far as the name, if we look at the origins of this chain, it was opened not by like an Italian immigrant who had a passion for food, who wanted to share his grandma's recipes with North America. It was opened by General Mills, and I think a name like the Olive Garden

probably comes from a focus group. They probably tried to like try it out a bunch of different Italian concepts and this focus, it focused tested well calling it the Olive Garden. So they're like, great, we'll call our chain this. He was a good general, though. Yeah.

He served really, really well. So I think like, you know, I don't know. It's very corporate. Everything about it feels corporate. It's fine. I just don't know who this is for. I feel like it's just, it's a mainstream Italian offering

that's very bland and very neutral and at best kind of delivers on your Italian offerings on the Italian food you may like if your small town doesn't offer anything else. I don't know. My experience was fine. It seems like this chain differs a lot in terms of individual locations.

I remember liking the one in Long Beach and I think the other one in Cerritos when we went to as kids. But it seems like this place has some consistency issues. I've definitely read a lot of complaints about it online. And for that reason, I'm knocking a half fork off of my score and I will go with two and a half forks

for the Olive Garden. Wow. Two and a half still higher than us. It's higher than you guys. You're so much madder than us. I know. I thought you were gonna go lower than us. Here's the thing.

I had an okay experience. Nali and I enjoyed our meal. It wasn't like, oh my God, that was terrible. What an outrage. That was fucking disgusting. It was like, oh, that was fine. That was good. There were some elements that we enjoyed.

The service was nice and they were very busy and they took care of us. But I just feel like overall, I just don't know who this restaurant is for. And I don't know why... One thing else. I don't understand it's popular. Yeah.

I think that's such a good point. And for me and people like me, I think what the restaurant was for or what it presented was this idea of a restaurant that you have to wait to be seated at and they have wine. And you see these movies and TV shows where people go to these fancy Italian restaurants

or anything that happens in New York, like is it an Italian restaurant. And there's just some sort of, I don't know if it was a status thing or something where when you got to experience that or practice that or experiment with what that was like to be at a restaurant like that, this was all you had.

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't like the taste of the food or anything. It was just like that experience of like going to a restaurant that was like felt exclusive, but also felt like the lighting was a little bit dim and there was wine and there was like delicious cake or whatever, it just felt, it was the feeling. Yeah, and I love like kind of East Coast Italian hole

in the wild places, but the food is usually good. You know what I mean? Like they, it just doesn't do much well. You ask who it's for and I guess for the most part, it's a horny, awkward team. Yeah. I don't know if it's, I don't know if you're a family when you go there.

I don't, it doesn't feel like a family. One thing I noticed was that they have a kids menu and there's like kids menu and then there's a section kids with bigger appetites. Oh yeah, that's weird. There's a fat kids menu? Yeah, a fat kids menu. Oh my God, maybe I'd like this place a little bit more.

All right, that was one of the thoughts of the Olive Garden. It's time for the return of a beloved new segment. I've got a piece of pie and Mitch and Christine must divine a series of clues to guess what it is. The winner keeps the pie. The loser goes home empty stomach. This is pie in this guy. And I didn't queue up.

Beloved segment. How could it be the return of a new segment? Well, look, we did it once and people liked it and I got a lot of positive feedback online. So I thought I thought I'd do it again. He loves being a quiz master. There we go. There's Warrant's Cherry Pie.

The official theme of pie in this guy. Very cool. All right, on a major delay. All right, let's get into this. So here's how this will work. Okay. I'm going to give you a series of clues. Nangle, would you like to go first or second?

Second. Okay, you'll go second. Mitch will go first. All right, cool. The clues will get increasingly less difficult. So we'll get increasingly obvious as we progress and you have two lifelines. You can phone a friend, call someone who is not in this room

and see, get their assistance. And you can also do the smell test, which is you will get a brief smell, a closed-eyed sniff of what is inside that bag. That's one of the lifelines? That is one of the lifelines. Phone a friend and smell test. Anytime you want to invoke a lifeline, feel free.

All right, Mitch, you're going first. So we're trying to guess what kind of pie. We're trying to guess what kind of pie is in this bag. Okay. All right, here we go, Mitch. Can I call Susser and ask him if he knows which pie you got? He does not know.

I bought this pie on my own and I am the one person who knows what it is. All right, Destin may have sold her too. Okay, here we go. First clue for you, Mitch. Indiana Jones's weapon of choice is a choice part of this pie. I don't know, whip.

Something whipped, whip. And we can just guess, by the way, right? You can guess, yes. Whipped, whip. In fact, I advise you to guess after each question because there's no penalty for a wrong guess. I'm going to guess a strawberry whipped pie. Strawberry whipped pie, is that a kind of pie?

Strawberry whipped cream pie. Strawberry whipped cream pie, like a kind of like a strawberry show. That is not correct. Okay. All right, Christine. I mean, it's impossible to get on the first. The first one is very, very obscure.

They'll get increasingly more obvious. Christine, your clue. No one wants a bad car, but many want this good pie. What the fuck? No one wants a bad car, but many want this good pie. Lemon meringue pie. Nangle, you have one pie in the sky. What the fuck?

I was going to call, I know Phillips knew what it was. I was just going to call him on the next one. I was going to call Jake Samansky's wife. Wow. Well done. Bad car is a lemon and I knew there's whipped something. Wow, you kicked my ass on that one. That was good.

You can have half of it. Yeah, you guys can share this if you like. I love lemons. You know what, like I said, I'm starting a diet. You go for it. You go for it. You get the pie. You won fair and square.

It's a full $3.99 lemon meringue pie on clearance from Ralph's. Wow, you didn't have to go all out. So please enjoy, Christine. Congratulations. It does look decent. It looks good. Yeah, it doesn't look too bad. I come back next week and talk about the pies.

Yeah, yeah. Just like knock on the glass, like, hey guys, I ate the pie. We're going to have pie, guys. Yeah, please, please send your review of the pie to us. Can you tell us the other clues that you have here? Yeah, here are the other clues. The other clues were clue three. I think this one makes it really obvious.

This is a Bemin Grange. That's clue four. Clue three is this pie unites a citrus fruit with an eggy dollop on top. This pie. Lemon meringue pie. Yeah, yeah, right. And then the fourth clue.

This pie rhymes with Yemen harang. Yemen harang? Yeah, two real words. Oh my God. A proper noun and a deep vocabulary word, but two real words. Sounds like a really great wrestler in the Middle East. And also, let's not forget, Indiana Jones' weapon,

the meringue. It's a whip. What the fuck? Yeah, it's a whip. Like a whipped egg white, which produces the meringue. Oh, fuck you. I think it's a valid clue. And clearly, Christine agrees, because she got it right.

If this was cakes, you could say something like, why is it always got to be cakes, right, guys? Or is that just the name of a great bakery that I just came up with? Yeah, that's good. That's the name of a nice cake food truck. Yeah, cakes. Why is it always got to be cakes?

It goes alongside India Jones, the Indian one out here. All right, that was pie in the sky. Congratulations, Nangle. You did a great job. You deserve that pie. Mitch, you were 0 and 2 in pie in the sky. I think we'll keep doing this, because you said it was pie.

This also rhymes with my name. Kind of. Lemon. It doesn't matter. You know what, guys, let's have a great night, we've had. All right, just like a restaurant, we value your feedback. Let's open up the feedback.

Today's email comes to us from Sam Knox. Sam writes, hey guys, a popular activity when I was in high school was something called tray sliding. This consisted of stealing two serving trays from a fast food restaurant and placing them under the rear wheels of your car with the parking brake set. You could then very easily do donuts or drift your car in some deserted parking lot.

Can you think of any other fast food related hijinks, pranks, or hooliganism that you got up to in your youth? What do you guys think? Anything come to mind? You know, I was too much of a worst. There's the ketchup thing where you step on the ketchup and it shoots the ketchup on someone.

Wait, what's this? Like if you put like a ketchup packet on the ground and stomp on it really hard, ketchup is gonna shoot out on somebody. Oh, okay, wait, is this thing you've actually done or you've just heard a legend of it? I think I've seen people do it and yelled at them. I once at a diner, we were on a family road trip

and I thought it was funny to, I don't know why I thought it was funny, it's not even a prank. I took some leftover jelly packets and like the little jelly containers you get with your English muffin or your toast or whatever and they put them behind the wheels of a parked car so that when they backed up,

that jelly would go everywhere. But anyway. Oh, wow. It would just go everywhere. It would just go everywhere. I would go everywhere, on the walls, I was like across the street. I thought this was really cool.

And then I- Oh, you're like a Batman villain. Yeah, I did it, but then I saw like waiting outside the restaurant, I saw this old man like looking at me suspiciously, like you saw me do it and I like looked at him and got scared and like averted my eyes. And then my family, as we were driving down the highway for like the next four hours of the road trip,

I was convinced the old man was following us. Oh my God. And that he was gonna pull us over and yell at me in front of my parents. I wish that had happened. What had taught me a lesson? The other thing is, like especially when you're getting extra giddy with your friends,

is like pouring all the drinks into one drink and then- Oh yeah. And then like putting ketchup in it or salt or something and daring someone to drink it. Yeah, I've definitely made a mess. And I think it was just like, oh, we're just gonna make a mess at this restaurant. We, I hung out down near a Burger King.

I told you this when I was younger with my buddies, like we hung out like in this like place that was near a Burger King. And so there was a lot of hijinks and stuff going on then and we were drinking and getting into trouble. And I remember this one guy, Sebastian, got thrown through the window with the Burger King. I think I told that on the show once.

From the outside to the inside? From the outside to the inside, yeah. But I can't think of like too many things like that or like stealing stuff. I remember going to the Pizza Hut buffet and I would go there for the pasta dinners with football. I think I told this too. And I would sometimes like,

people would leave pizza and I'd eat it because the fat guy taking a slice of pizza off someone else's like empty table is funny. Yeah. But I don't remember too much kind of crazy like that with like doing donuts or things like that. But I would always- Yeah, this sounds insane. Yeah, I would always go to like,

like you know, like late night Wendy's being drunk or whatever and stuff like that. Sober driver. And getting a bunch of food and stuff like that. But nothing specifically that crazy. Yeah. Two things I remember were, my buddy David and we used to walk to the AMPM

by my friend John's house. This was in middle school, baby early high school. And my buddy David once stole a hamburger from AMPM by putting it inside of the AMPM rip off of the Slurpee cup. So he put it at the bottom and then he put Slurpee on top of it so he got a free burger with some Slurpee on top of it. That sounds awful.

Yeah, it was really- Why did he just buy the burger? I don't, I think it was more for the stunt of it. He just wanted to do that. But the other thing, and this isn't really hijinks, but this is maybe, this was maybe a Weiger style hijinks. A thing I used to do with my leftover food, if I had any food leftover,

I would carve it into the letter N for Nick. So like if I had like a leftover pancake, I would carve a little N and then like leave that on the plate. Just like you did later to your victims. I remember the first time I stole- Where's that killer's name begins with a Z. Sorry.

That is good. That's a thing that people don't comment on much. If you turn it sideways, the end is the Z. Yeah. You're not asking the right questions. You'd see that in a thriller, the moment where the detective tilted it 90 degrees and- It's Weiger.

No, yeah. Immediately. I remember the first time I stole a Snickers candy bar from a Dairy Mart coming home from elementary school, which we were talking about earlier, that's so weird that I just would walk home from elementary school like fourth grade or whatever, third or fourth grade.

And I was in fourth grade and I stole it and I remember it had snowed a bunch that day. And I remember I felt so guilty I laid down in a snow bank and stared up at the sky and was really sad that I had stolen this Snickers candy bar. Of course, ate it seconds later. Wait, you felt guilty, then you ate it. I felt guilty and then I did eat it eventually,

but I laid down in the snow bank and stared up at the gray sky as it was snowing and felt very deeply sad about myself. One of the only things I've stolen, I stole ever, was a little coconut cream, chocolate egg from this like corner deli near where I grew up. And I asked my mom if I could have it. It must have been Easter time,

cause it was like an egg shape. And I asked my mom if I could have it, she said no. And then we're in the car and I'm like eating it. I just have flashes of this. And I remember she like yelled at me and I just like, I can't eat coconut to this day. Like it just like, it took weeks for me to get over how sad and embarrassed and shamed

I was about it. I get that, yeah. No, especially one of the first times you do it, it really hits you close to home. It really, it breaks your spirit or whatever. I didn't do too much crazy stuff, but my friend Pat Frailbott used to steal stuff from 7-Eleven all the time when he was drunk.

But I always just wanted my food was the big thing. So I like never wanted to risk, like run the risk of like being like, you can't have your food or whatever. Like I would do silly stuff, but nothing like too crazy memorable of being pains in the ass. Like people would put hot sauce and stuff

in people's drinks or whatever, but nothing like that where I would steal trays or anything like that. Or especially run the risk of not getting my food. I know from my youth that there is no greater fear in a Husky Boy's life than not getting his meal. Of course. Yeah.

If you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you can email us at doboyspodcast at gmail.com. Check out our Facebook page, Do Boys, follow us on Twitter, at doboyspot. And if you have a free second, rate and review us on iTunes helps out the podcast. Christine Nangle, thank you so much for coming here.

Thank you. For sharing so much of your life experiences, for discussing the Olive Garden. Do you have anything you would like to plug? Just at Nanglish, hashtag Nangang, I guess. The birth of Nangang. I can't believe this is the birth of Nangang. I feel like we're a part of something cool now.

I love it. It's the first time ever. Yeah, I've definitely experienced. The birth of a Nangang. I've seen you nangling, people. But Nangang, I think, I hope this becomes its own phenomenon. Thank you for joining us. That'll do for this episode of Do Boys.

Until next time, for Bike Patrol, The Spood Man, I'm Nick Weigar, happy eating. See ya. The upright citizens brigade theater is in a crossroads. With three stages, a training center, and four different types of house teams, it's grown and grown. And now it's threatening to burst at the seams

and become divided. But there's hope. A person who can bring the upright citizens brigade theater together again, Mike Mitchell. As artistic director, he will work tirelessly to unite the theater and make it better than ever. Stand up for a more united theater. Stand up for a better theater.

Stand up for Mike Mitchell.