Doughboys - Tournament of Chompions: Steak ‘n Shake v. 6-seed

Episode Date: March 11, 2016

In the second proper match of #MunchMadness 2016: The Tournament of Chompions, actor and composer Michael Daniel Cassady (Drunk History, the Doughboys theme song) joins to judge this week’s Burger Brawl. Michael, Mitch, and Wiger weigh Platinum Plate Club member Steak ‘n Shake against the hungry winner of the Eat-in Minisode. Plus, the return of beloved segment The Leftovers.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Few figures in chain restaurants are enshrouded in as much mystique and controversy as Sardar Bighlari, the enigmatic entrepreneur who led a corporate takeover of a beloved Midwest diner chain and subsequently expanded the brand westward for the first time in its 80-year history. The restaurant was a subject so heated we dedicated two full episodes and embarked on a four-hour round trip drive to Victorville, California, a sleepy checkpoint on the highway from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to give it a full evaluation. Weighing in at 544 locations, it secured its spot in the Platinum Plate Club, but only

after a mediocre first outing that left it on the outside looking in. Now as the third seed, the only platinum inductee without a first round buy, it will have to battle against an upstart six seed looking to become the tournament's Cinderella story. The dust settled on our Eden match, the winner now faces off against this Heartland juggernaut. This week on Doughboys, the second matchup of the mild card round of Munchmad 2016, the tournament of champions, Burger Brawl, Burger King, Steak and Shake. Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I'm Nick Weiger alongside my co-host as always, the Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell.

How you doing, Spoon Man? Doing great, what's up, Spoon Nation? Mitch, I have a suggestion for the future, is that you could listen to these before playing to see if they're six minutes in length. Well, that was from Daniel Tomerlin. Thanks Daniel. I don't have your Twitter handle on me. I guess I shouldn't give out your email.

But maybe I should for a crazy drop. It was insane. That was an insane one. It was fun, just a lot. Just a lot. I didn't even get, isn't that special in there either? Yeah. People forget that one.

It's important to me. And victory is mine. Well, whatever. We'll give this shit. All right, let's get to it. Listen, you were traveling along last episode and then all of a sudden you got hit with a flying spiky blue egg shell. It was crazy to me.

And now the rest of the world hates me and Susser. The outcome of this mini-sode. So we dropped this mini-sode. The mini-sode came out yesterday, Wednesday. You're listening to this on a Thursday or this is coming out on Thursday. Well, you might be listening to it some other time. I've fucking the timeline. Forget about the timeline.

The mini-sode came out first. This came out subsequently. In the mini-sode, we had Burger King versus Five Guys. To be it seemed, Five Guys is so clearly better than Burger King. And Mitch and I split. Mitch picked Burger King. We went to Evan Susser, friend of the podcast, Evan Susser, to see what he thought. Evan also picked Burger King.

It's whatever. But today we're doing Burger King versus Steak and Shake. That's our matchup. Don't get mad at me. Get mad at Susser. I'm mad at both of you. I put in a vote for the Whopper, baby. All right, whatever.

It's fine. Whatever. This is what we're running with. We got Burger King. You were in first place. You got hit with a lightning. Yeah, whatever. This is who gives a shit.

It's whatever, fine. You're right. The Mario Kart analogy definitely tracks. It's like Five Guys was in pole position. They're sitting pretty. They're about to cross the finish line. What is pole position? Does that mean winning?

I assume that means winning. They're in first place. Blue Shell comes in out of nowhere, thrown by a couple of buffoons. A couple of... Basically, we got a Wario and a Morton Koopa Jr. in the back of the pack and they decide from on high they're going to chuck this Blue Shell and take an obvious contender. I don't care. It seems like you care.

Yeah. No, I don't care. A quick birthday shout out to Ashley Conway. She is a Steak and Shake fanatic, so a happy birthday, Ashley. As a Steak and Shake fanatic, she might be pretty excited about half of this episode. I think everyone listening will be excited about half of this episode. Yeah, Steak and Shake is definitely the frontrunner. Yeah.

I mean, Steak and Shake is, well, we'll save our thoughts on that before we introduce our guests, which I'm going to do right now. You know him from Drunk History, from Don't Stop or We'll Die, from Love on Netflix. He's also the composer of the Doe Boyz theme song, actor and musician Michael Daniel Cassidy. Hi, Mikey. How you doing? Oh my God. Hey, guys.

I'm here. It's like a dream. Well, we've wanted, you're long overdue to be in here, and Cassidy's one of the best all around, guys. He's one of the best. He's a talented man and a musician. And a great dude. And a great dude and a great friend, and he's got a nice family and wife.

Rigby is his daughter. Don't say my daughter's name. A better man than Nick and I. You want to give out Rigby's email address? A better man than Nick and I, whose years of playing virtual boy have killed all our sperm. I didn't play that much virtual boy, but it's well-killed all your sperm, then. Could have been a hundred things.

You guys are too sweet, and I'm a huge fan of both of you. I love you guys. You're the funniest. And every guest that you've had, I think, has said this, but I listen to every episode. It's my favorite. Oh, wonderful. It's very rare for me, like, even podcasts that I frequent. This is like the only one that I'm like, oh, all right, Thursday, doboids.

It's like the modern musty TV. Used to have that Friends and the Single Guy and Seinfeld and Caroline and the City Block on Thursday nights in NBC. Now you got doboids. Oh, boy. Yeah, Paul's little rendition of the song made it into that drop. Today, I heard. Oh, yeah, that's right.

His ramp up. He sang the theme song for us, which we would prefer guests didn't sing the theme song from here on out. I should make a new one out of that. We do love the theme song, Michael. We get a lot of compliments on it. Thank you so much for doing that, for giving us such an iconic song. What word am I looking for?

Not send off. I was going to say send off and then I'd say start up. It kicks the episode off. It's a nice start up. Yeah. Yeah. A booster rocket. A booster rocket.

You confuse send off and start off. I'm just scattered right now. I feel like I don't know what's going on. There's been a bomb that's been dropped and I'm kind of walking into like the wasteland of what happened on that mini-episode. Yeah. Well, we'll get into it, I suppose, but you guys are still welcome. I love that you asked me to do that song.

I love doing that kind of thing. Yeah. Michael did the sports song you hear in the beginning of this episode as well. Oh, yeah. We got a little Monday night football slash round ball rock derivative. Just sports jam, just to pump you up at the start of it. Just a sweet sports jam. A little nice little sports jam.

Yeah. Weiger is definitely shaken by the results. If anything, to the listeners out there, that alone was worth it to see him squirm around in here. Your rage could be felt all over town, and rightly so, right? I mean, I don't know. I feel like I'm, I feel like Mitch, you think it was bad too. It was a bad decision, ultimately, for the tournament, right?

I mean... I have a theory about why he chose Burger King. Can I hear it? Well, yeah. And hey, I love Evan Susser, friend of the podcast, Evan Susser, we're all friends. I think that the thought of his beloved Steak and Shake being dethroned, oh my god, you're right, was perhaps too much for him to handle. You're right.

Wow, Evan is like a Roger Goddell steak figure. And I will say, well, before, you know what, this point is moot at this point, so this doesn't even matter. But I'll say, he didn't have anything to worry about, because Five Guys, to me, my experience with Five Guys, Steak and Shake would have still probably prevailed. You never know. You never know. He was taking a risk, but I'll tell you what is not a risk.

Hey, we can't ruin the episode. These two contenders today, Burger King and Steak and Shake, are meeting on the gridiron, eye to eye, equally, equally paced, equal quality. Cassidy has eaten all three of these places. Yeah, I ate all three. But I mean, I've had a ton of Burger King. That's like, that's easy to talk about. You've had a ton of Burger King.

Have you had a ton of Five Guys? No, I haven't had a ton of Five Guys. I think it just goes into my narrative, Burger King is better than Five Guys. No, I think Burger King has been around longer. It's been around since before the 90s, or the early 2000s, when Five Guys was founded. It's got a 60-year history versus a 20-year history. Well, and you can't say that rice is the best food, because people eat more of it than anything else.

Hmm. Just because you eat more of it. Rice is the best food. Potatoes are up there for the best food. Yeah, they were some Mars. You know, speaking of sort of basic foods, corn is in there. And Cassidy, you went to college in Iowa. I did.

That segment was slick. Oh, thanks. I feel pretty good about that. Yeah, I'm an Iowa guy. What is it? Are you from Iowa originally? Did you go out there? I am.

Yep. So what are the Iowa eats? What can you get out there that you can't get out here? If anything. There's fast food-wise, chain-wise, I feel like I grew up eating a lot of Wendy's, a lot of Hardie's. We got Hardie's there. I can attest that Hardie's exists.

Hardie's was at the end of my paper route when I had a paper route one summer. That's wholesome. I mean, I was such a coward and an awful little dork and I got a paper route and then I did it for a month and I was like, it's so early and my mom, I don't know what she was thinking, but she finished my paper route for a month and I remember being ashamed and I quit that paper route. But the highlight of that paper route when I showed up for it was at the end, on Sundays, Hardie said, all you could eat biscuits and gravy for some reason.

And the biscuits and gravy was like really, the biscuits was like the thing. Yeah, Hardie's. Yeah, Carl Jr. Carl Jr. like they do like breakfast in a good way like that. That's the kind of thing, I kind of have a knit to pick about the McDonald's all day breakfast. I think it's kind of a sham. I don't think that, like, for me, fast food breakfast is completely about that biscuit

and a McGrittle or a McMuffin is not it at all. And the all day breakfast doesn't include biscuits. It's a very limited menu. And yeah, I mean, that's a whole other thing to McDonald's all day breakfast. But yeah, it's really like that's the thing where I feel like they overpromised and under delivered because when they say all day breakfast, I'm like, okay, great, I can get their full menu and then you get like a little selection. I don't know, it's a bait and switch.

It's like the the by the glory version of steak and shake, a mini version that they have where it's not you go and expecting the full menu and they don't have it. You know, I don't know. I think it was maybe their their sales are increasing and maybe maybe for most people that whatever basic few options they have is enough. But I don't know. I want that the full if you're going to go breakfast all day, I say go all the way. Yeah, I agree.

I completely agree, especially about the biscuit and and Burger King, you know, I mean, whatever. Well, we got to talk about Burger King stuff like this. One of the one of the things that I do really like about Burger King is that's one of the only places where when they're serving breakfast, you can get fries. Yeah. You don't have to get the hash brown things. You can get those fries, those hash brown nuggets, which aren't great. Yeah.

So hash browns are the greasiest thing always, I feel like in a fast food place, they're so greasy. Yeah. I don't love it. Yeah. It's too much filled with a grease, a grease you don't want either. I mean, you don't want you don't want to you don't want soaked up fast, like the grease from the fryer from McDonald's or Burger King.

Yeah. I'll also say too, like we're on the subject of fast food breakfast and we'll save our Burger King burger talk, but I feel like Burger King has some of the wackest breakfasts of any chain. Yeah. Like I feel like that Chris Sandwich is just really just not good. Burger King, I don't know anything about whether they're the first to do this or not, but I remember that was the first place that I had pancakes that came with like sticks.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dipping. The dipping. Yeah. Dipping. That's right.

I hate picturing myself like sitting in a car like dipping a pancake chunk into a, I don't know, it seems gross in retrospect. Bless you. Bless you. Sorry, everyone. You did a good job of sneezing directly into the microphone. Yeah. Yeah.

Whoa. Someone's a little testy because they're precious five guys, which they gave three fucking forks. I gave three and a half forks to it. I retconned it to four forks. It's not even my precious five guys, I'm a loyalist to many other burger chains above five guys, but I feel like it's so clearly better than Burger King. That the fact that we're, the whole episode is a sham.

It's like it's, it's like alternate history. It's like I want to see whatever is going on in Earth 2 right now, where that's like now that's the correct meta narrative. This is like, this is the alternate timeline. Go over to Omega Earth and follow that version of Doe Boys through whatever cross dimensional portal you have access to, because this is whatever, fine, we'll, we'll do it. Hold on a second. Yeah.

I mean, I understand it. There's three of us here. You made a point about Susser with his steak and shake thing. Do you want to bring it back into the tournament? It's a three way, it's a, it's like one of those basketball games where they have three teams involved. So yeah, we're nullifying, we're nullifying the mini-sode that people already listened to.

Yeah. And saying that this is now a three way battle. A three way battle. Right. Mario Kart, it's a battle, it's a three way battle. We've all eaten at three places. There's three of us. Can we decide on one or do we each choose a place and call Evan Susser again for his,

for his decision on which place wins? I'm fine with that. We each choose a place between the three of them or between. If it's a three way tie. If it's a three way tie. Okay. Then we call Susser again and he, and he discerns, discerns the winner. So if we do not come to a majority.

That's right. Okay. Great. I'm fine with that plan. Okay. And this, this, we're going to change things up a little bit too. It's not which burger would you send to the grays? It's, and I apologize because I've been in a bit of a gremlins mood lately, but which

burger would you feed to a Mogwai after midnight? A piece of chicken? Wait, you, wait, so gremlins, you're not, you're not supposed to feed Mogwai after midnight because they turn into gremlins. That's right. Why would you want to do this? This burger's so good that you have to give it to the grem, the Mogwai after midnight. That's how good the burger is.

You can't bear the thought of a world where he doesn't know what it tastes like. That's right. So you give it to him. I mean, I feel like that's what happens in the movie. All right. Yeah. So which, which of these? Also, you kind of kill your friend.

All right. I guess you don't kill him, but he turns into a green rascal. Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine with that. I mean, it is the worst criteria anyone has ever used to evaluate anything. But I think, yeah, let's go with it. Okay.

So this, it's, it now. Okay. So now it's one against one against one. Everybody, like it's five guys is back in. Great. Yeah. Five guys feels like they got screwed, like Roger Goodell, like screwing the Patriots, which he always does or something.

Yeah. And just imagine the team showed up again, we're going to make this a three-way match somehow. It's a three-way battle. Susser has, Susser's, we're taking his judgment out of that. So we're saying we're not it up and we're bringing that in. Yeah. Okay.

Great. All right. Great. I like this. I like where this is going. This is a fun development. I didn't mean to really shake the calls up that much, but I'm so happy. Oh, we needed it.

We needed it, baby. I'm glad. All right. So let's get into it. Uh, we got a lot to cover now. We've got steak and shake versus Burger King versus five guys. Let's start with steak and shake. Now Cassidy, the three of us all went there just before we recorded this podcast tonight.

And we're all full and sick. We're all pretty full from our five guys experience, but we had a lovely meal there. Again, you know, we're only talking about burgers. This is a burger brawl. So the atmosphere, the aesthetic, the service, that can all, we can all forget about that. You know, the sides, they stay on the sidelines, the drinks, they're in the Gatorade container, which is also on the sidelines. We're just talking about burgers.

Can I ask you a quick question? Of course. Oh, wait, where are you going to? Are you going to get to a question through all this? No. Well, I wasn't. No, I was just going to talk for a little bit. All right.

All right. No, I was going to get to a question. Of course I was going to question. All right, cool. I'm fine to interrupt you then. What is a burger meat? What I asked this to Jess, what's a burger meat to you? What are you looking for in a burger?

Good question. Yeah. Like, what's the spirit of like a good cheeseburger? What is like? Mm-hmm. I feel like I probably have had the best, there's a lot of kind of like barbecue cookout burgers that I think are the ones that I think of when I like picture a hamburger. I picture like a kind of a grill out, kind of a cheeseburger.

And for a long time, I feel like in high school, especially, I ate a ton of cheeseburgers, like when we would go to a nicer place or like fast food or whatever, I would eat just a lot, just so many cheeseburgers because I loved them so much. And I haven't eaten that many of them recently. Like for this podcast, I've had three, four different kinds of burgers in like the last three days. And then I'm like going to a mommy, like I planned this week so poorly, like I'm going to go have like an umami burger and hate it now.

But the burger that I like most is like kind of, what's nice about it is you get kind of refreshing toppings, like kind of something that gives you a crunch and something that's a little like, it's not all warm, so it's kind of like refreshing to bite into in that way. Right answer. And like that's a huge part of a hamburger. I think you could say the exact same thing about a hot dog, like it's all in what's on it because it's hard to mess up a hot dog in itself.

And you can definitely mess up a cheeseburger, like you can mess up a burger. So I feel like I've eaten fewer burgers recently because maybe I've just become a little more like, I don't know, when I want a cheeseburger, I usually kind of want to eat a nice, a good burger. Like I want to take the time and eat something that's good instead of like, you know, I would eat a ton of junior bacon cheeseburgers, which are like so great still, but now when I crave fast food, it's almost exclusively Taco Bell or something like that. It's almost never I'm going to go get a burger right now.

So I don't know, maybe my taste is evolving a little bit in that way, but I like toppings that I feel like are in good shape. Like when I go to a fast food place now and eat like a Burger King, for example, like, you know, I notice when like the toppings are a little like, like if I was in high school, I wouldn't even look at it. I wouldn't even think one second about the lettuce. Yeah. You're just getting those calories.

I didn't care. Yeah. Exactly. And now I'm like, that would have been nice to have a little crunch or something. I don't know. Is that the answer to your question? Yeah. No, I think that's a great answer.

Very thorough. I think, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And you know, now I think at this point I can refresh everyone's memory on how we're evaluating the burgers in this burger brawl. We're scoring things on a scale of zero to 10 basketballs in the categories of creativity, presentation, condiment slash bun, and burger slash taste. And it sounds to me, Cassidy, like you prioritize that middle category condiment slash bun pretty highly and I think you're right to do so.

Yeah. I think so. I think that's kind of, you know, if the burger is, you can kind of think of it as a full meal in parts that you're eating all at once, like if the burger itself is like the main course, like you want the salad, that helps you kind of get the main course down and then the bread is the bread, I don't know, whatever. You know what I mean, though? You could kind of like divide a burger into layers, which is like the fun of a burger,

that's what makes it, I think, a fun thing, kind of like a lot of, I don't know, it seems like a very fun interchangeable kind of food. Now, say like the Baconator from Wendy's, do you like a burger that doesn't have any of those vegetables on it or...? I don't like it as much. I mean, I love bacon and I almost always get a bacon cheeseburger if I get a cheeseburger. Like if I'm going for it, I'll usually get bacon. I do like that Baconator.

I would say it wouldn't kill them to put some veggies on there that wouldn't make me like it less. You know what's like the most, I think, stripped down mainstream burger available is the Jack-in-the-box Ultimate Cheeseburger, which is just beef and cheese and then mayo and ketchup, and that's it. It's like so bare bones. They even had an ad campaign in the early 2000s, I think, the Meaty Cheesy Boys, it was a fake boy band that would dance just about how meaty and cheesy this sandwich was.

Those Jack-in-the-box guys... They got some tongue-in-cheek marketing. And they have Jack himself. The guy who actually wears a giant jack head when he's running through the commercials. You know this, right? Yeah. So the guy wearing the, like I believe the, from what I've heard from people who have been in Jack-in-the-box commercials, a few actors we know, that he wears, I don't know if he's

the director or if he's the head of the ad agency, but he's the guy, he acts in the spot and he wears the giant jack head. And if you're not familiar with Jack-in-the-box, if you live in a region that doesn't have Jack-in-the-box, go to YouTube and look up some Jack-in-the-box ads, you can get a sense of what we're talking about. It's basically a human actor who's got like a bobble head, an oversized white clown head that he's wearing like a mask that fully covers his head. That's right.

And he's their mascot. It's very strange. Burger King does the same thing, but with a king face now. It is like the Burger King King. It's very much in that model. It's similar and he's supposedly kind of an asshole. Yeah, that guy's like kind of a task master, if you will. And he wears that giant head, but with a square cut off so you can see his face.

Are we defaming him right now? Oh, shit. Can we get sued? I don't know. Oh, I hear he's a good guy, too, though. That's a very funny guy to have be like a megalomaniac that wears the Jack mask, because also whatever, he's rich, right? No, but also I can say fuck you to the guy who plays Jack in the box.

It's an opinion, can't I? Yeah, but I mean, if you're saying that you've heard he's an asshole, that's maybe a little defamatory. Right? I heard from me that he's an asshole. Fuck you, Jack. Although I do like the restaurant. Anyways.

Wait, so one of the categories is, I love this, so there's three of these categories are bafflings. Yeah. I loved when, last time when you were making up, also I got, I was about to say like, it's not a Doe Boys episode. Oh, no. Am I crackling? Okay.

No, you're good. It's not a Doe Boys episode unless like some rules are rewritten in the moment of competition, and I'm glad that I got to be a part of it. The reviews for the Tournament of Choppings are in, and quote, unquote, it's a mess. It was one of the top ones. The categories are creativity slash presentation, condiment slash bun, and burger slash taste. Although in the end, those are all arbitrary numbers because it comes down to one question and one question only.

Which one would you feed to Mogwai after midnight? Yeah, of course. Of course. Which burger is so good that you're eating it, and you say, I know that if I feed this to Gizmo or his friends. Yeah, your little furball is playing the little Casio. And he's playing your Casio, and he's a cute guy, and you like him, but you're like, this burger is so good that I need to have Gizmo or one of his friends eat it, even though

it means it could be the end of the world. Wait, are they called the Mogwai? Yeah, they're called the Mogwai. They're Mogwai. The species of them. The species of the Mogwais, but he's Gizmo, the hero one is Gizmo. That's his proper name. And Gizmo never turns into a gremlin, or does he?

He never does, but. He spawns them. He like pops them off of his back. Oh, gotcha. Gizmo has written a new gremlin's movie for himself. Yeah. Maybe he doesn't want me saying this. Yeah.

Oh, I'm sure that he wants you to. And then tell a lot of details about it. One of my ideas is I said, what if Gizmo turned into a gremlin? Because I think he'd be like the ultimate bad gremlin. Oh, that's good. But I mean, like, you love Gizmo, so it's hard to picture him as a bad guy. You know, they did that in Terminator. What was the latest Terminator?

Terminator Salvation? Genesis? Genesis. They did that in Terminator Genesis, and John Connor kind of became a bad guy. I was really like, I was like, I'm not into this. Yeah. I don't watch, you know, I'm not into seeing John Connor, this guy who you're trying to save the whole time.

Yeah, he got corrupted by a machine, but still I'm like, I don't want him to be as a bad guy. Make him the good guy. Okay. I don't know. I think, I think. Yeah, you like cried for a month, right? I didn't have fun at that movie.

Man, Terminator Genesis. Not a great movie, but better than Force Awakens. I disagree. I strongly disagree. What do you think, Cassidy? Oh, man. All right. Well, I wondered how many minutes it would take for us to weigh in on Force Awakens.

Then we have to get to everyone's mortality and how to quit dough boys. Mitch and I have had this conversation a little bit. I did like Force Awakens. I think that it was, I was talking to you guys about this earlier. We were talking about movies that you look forward to, and my go-in mindset is to brace myself for being just a huge piece of dog shit. I'm just going to walk in assuming it's going to be awful, and then any pieces of value I can glean from it, then it's like, oh, see, that made my day a little brighter.

Force Awakens was, Mitch, I hear you. I totally hear you on Force Awakens. You were right with your idea of it being dog shit. No, I don't think that it was, though. I went in thinking like, oh, man, this could be a huge, just a colossal disappointment, but I wasn't disappointed by this movie. You've softened since you've had a kid. If I stole Rigby away for a couple of weeks, you'd think Force Awakens sucks.

I'm sure that that's the cause of it. Yeah, there might be an irreparable rift in your friendship if you kidnap his beloved child. Just for, I'm saying, oh, Jesus, that was a bad mistake. Look, the only part of, like, Mitch's claim that I get hung up on is when he says that the other prequel installments, those first three episodes are somehow, I just don't even believe you that you think they're worse. Yeah, Mitch thinks that Episode 7, The Force Awakens, is the worst Star Wars movie.

Yeah, Seventh Place. I think it's Seventh Place. But it just can't possibly be. Yeah, I don't buy that at all. I just can't imagine how Deadpool would be the worst Star Wars movie. That's how I... Oh, boy, your anti-Deadpool rant isn't going to give you any friends. No, I'm not going on a Deadpool rant.

Fine, how the Avengers movie would be the worst Star Wars movie. You think Avengers is worse than all the Star Wars prequels? Well, that's part of your deal with it, though, is that you don't, you like, have, I feel like part of your gripe with Force Awakens is that it's like been put through the Marvel machine and grinded into a thing that it's not a Star Wars movie. Yes, I mean, that's a part of it. But I think that in a way that it's just, I don't even care that you don't like it. Like I want you to dislike it.

A big fuck you to Nick Wiger because I would treat Rigby as a queen for those two weeks when I took her away. I'm her uncle Mitch. We did... Oh, god, am I going to talk about this baby show right now? We had like a little stand where people made like bibs and Mitch did make a bib that our baby wore that said, Uncle Mitch is always watching. I love Rigby.

She's great. Well, thank you so much. She's kind of like undecided about you, but I think she'll come around. I think that I... I'm just joking. She loves you. Of course. If anything, before I die, I don't know if I have enough time, but I will teach her that

Force Awakens is the worst of any of the Star Wars movies. This could be good for her though. By the time episode nine comes out, they could be good by then. I'll say that my main thing that I would say in defense of episode seven and then who cares honestly, but I do think they basically kind of laid down the infrastructure for future cool movies. I excuse a lot of it because they're setting like the tone of the franchise, they're resetting the tone of the franchise to like a modern version of what we liked about the ones that

came out when we were kids. It can't be the same as then, but they're like, what's the new version of that thing? I feel like you got to like lay a bunch of pipe in this movie to like get people on board for it. I think that they kind of did it. I don't mind the balance of old and new stuff in it. I thought it was good. Yeah.

I think that's the modern franchise model is it's less storytelling, it's more world building. Like we're setting up a bunch of shit and yes, I maybe have some criticisms with that in the abstract, but that's a criticism you could levy against almost every blockbuster these days. Oh boy. I don't know. I thought Force Awakens is a lot of fun and whatever.

We've talked about this at length in previous episodes. I'm not going to convince you. They can't all be Bridgespies, Mitch. I love Bridgespies. Where would you rank Bridgespies among the Star Wars movies? It will, I would rank it maybe fourth. So the original trilogy then Bridgespies or do you have Revenge of the Sith? Sure.

If that was just Star Wars characters, like the Russia or whatever was the dark side. Mark Rylance does the Simon Pegg portions, man. Yeah. I think I would give that fourth place maybe. All right. Yeah. I would like that. That would be an interesting just something just purely about the political intrigue within

the Star Wars universe. Kind of that a Star Trek paste kind of just slow plotting, you know, sort of, I don't know. I think that might be interesting. Well, they're all one and the same now. Star Wars and Star Trek are the same thing. Anyways, you're right. Okay.

It doesn't matter. JJ has made them the same thing. Anyways. Shit. There goes my chance of playing Chewbacca's friend in the next episode. Oh, never would have happened anyways. Listen, I know I have never given you what you want on The Force Awakens, but I gave you what you want here, a new mystery box, five guys is back in this thing.

I'm happy to hear that, honestly. I love it. All right. So let's talk about it because we got three restaurants to cover. And let's just go through them. Let's just take them one at a time. So let's start with Steak and Shake. Okay.

Cassidy, what's your experience with Steak and Shake? Is it a place you've been to in the past? Is this a new experience for you? No, this was very new. I went with you fellas earlier this evening and they have them in the Midwest. I've seen them around. It's just not a place that I've ever gone, I don't know, for some reason that was not a place my family ever went.

Yeah. And then I was in college and I was kind of my fast food, I don't know, I was just eating like Arby's and Taco Bell and I didn't, I'd never took to it, but I had it tonight. And we went to the new one that just opened up here, so not one of the crappy like awful big lorry ones that we've heard Laura of on this very podcast. So there's a stripped down Steak and Shake in Santa Monica, California. There was a full Steak and Shake in Victorville, California, which we take a road trip to in December for our year ending episode with friend of the podcast, Evan Susser.

But this Burbank one has since opened up in the new year and it is a full Steak and Shake. So it has the full menu, it has sit down service, waiter comes to your table, takes your order, the whole deal. So if you'd just waited a couple months, we never would have had have done that fucking dumb ass four hour round trip that we did. Well, yeah, because was this the one, was this one we went to tonight akin to the one that you went to there? It was basically the same, yeah.

That's very funny, because I wasn't expecting it to be a full one for some reason. I was expecting it to be. It still had the big lorry name. It may not, it maybe didn't have everything, but the sandwiches were on par. It had the chili and everything because that's what's missing from the Santa Monica location, the limited location. That's right. Yep.

And so, all right, Steak and Shake. So tonight, I had, Mitch and I split some stuff. We had the bacon and cheese double steak burger. I got the name, yeah, I think that's what it was called, which is kind of like one of their, it's like one of their classics. Yeah. It's the original steak burger and we got the bacon and cheese double steak burger. Yeah.

Which was an excellent sandwich. In terms of, all right, so we just go through the categories, should we just go for it? We just kind of touch hats. We can talk about it a little bit more. Well, to break it down, it's two beef patties, American cheese, fresh lettuce, pickles, vine ripened tomato, onion, and Heinz ketchup. And it comes with a side of fries to just let it be clear again, sides, stay on the sideline.

Right. Those drinks, you better put those in that Gatorade, right? Cooler. Also, also on the sidelines. Yeah, so I think in terms of procedure here, we'll discuss our thoughts on all these restaurants and we'll save our basketball scores for the end when we give our closing arguments. Great. And then we also split a Frisco.

We had them cut that burger in two and then we also split a Frisco melt, which the Frisco melts. Which was very good. That was something, my wife, I'll do what Paul has also adopted, I'll say my lovely wife like Nick does, like the burger boy. Get at us with the hashtag, my lovely wife, what do you think of us talking about our wives? But she said, you got to get this Frisco thing and she was right, it was well worth it.

Yeah. It was a patty melt. Yes, which we talked about and that's why we decided to go with two burgers, because Nick said it, but everyone, I don't know if that's a real burger, Nick was saying at the table. I was saying, I was voicing a hypothetical dissenter. I said, I think a patty melt is a burger. But I think since we have a category that is bun, half of the, one of the three categories

is bun. Bread is bun. I don't know if bread is bun, I feel like bun is bun, bun is a distinct thing, right? Well, I mean, I feel like, God, that's rough because I think bread is the category and a bun is an installment in that category. Like is a tortilla a bun, if you had a tortilla round the burger? Oh Jesus Christ. I'm just saying that's not logical.

It's a croissant bun, you can have a croissant burger. Cupcake is pie. I think a bun is a bun, it's its own thing. I think a patty melt still qualifies as a burger because I think the bun is fairly incidental. Okay. But I think there might be some people who would say that maybe it's not. You know, well, in this particular case, I would say, I would make the argument that

if the bread wasn't doing, if the bread choice wasn't doing a service to the sandwich, then you would think, well, what was the point of that? But in this case, it was very good and you saw why they had it on that bread. It was not on a bun for a reason. So it was purposeful. It wasn't just like, let's do some weird thing that makes no sense. And it was also, you know, I was glad that we also got the regular bun just so I could see what theirs was like because that was a very good bun.

Cassidy, that's a nice bit of nuance there on the bread question. I think you really, I think you really knocked that one out of the park. It serves the burger. You're right. That's a good way to evaluate it. Well, great. Thank you. Well, it's cool to see Nick lose his mind in the middle of a podcast.

I like the observation. That was a good observation. Well, I feel like a bun is, that is a part of a burger that you can really mess up, I feel like. Yeah. And more so than a patty is, you know, they are very, they can be nuanced also, but if you have, if, I don't know, I feel like taking, if you have a bad bun, it can really ruin a sandwich even faster than a condiment.

Here's my thing. I got to say this because I think you're right, but I think a lot of this comes down to burger and when you boil it down to it, the patty is the most important part of the burger. Yes. Agreed. So, when it comes down to it, my thing is that I feel like five guys patty isn't seasoned as well as, like, you get that flame broil taste from Burger King and you definitely

have a good seasoned patty from, from a steak and shake. It's really tasty and juicy. It is. I almost got like a buttery quality to it. That's right. And I feel like the five guys burger is really, really delicious, but it's just not really that, I'm just tasting good burger, like, like, they're, they're, it feels just very much like a plain burger, if that makes sense.

Well, yeah. I think it's a choice. I think it's a choice to put ground beef at the forefront. I like it. I think it's like a good, you know, they, I mentioned this in the mini-sode, but they, they, they specifically describe it as being well done and juicy. It's like a, like a super well cooked, well done burger, but yeah, you're getting a lot of that beef flavor.

It just comes down to whether or not you like it. I happen to like it. Well, for our first come out, I just, I just want to explain for people who don't know, it's two steak burgers with American and Swiss cheeses on, yeah, that's like we said, the buttery grilled sourdough and sweet and tangy Frisco sauce. I've had that sandwich. That was the sandwich I had on the, on our first visit to steak and shake, the limited menu.

And I tell, I say that is real, it's a real tasty sandwich. It's a real tasty patty melt. And that sauce is real good. Yeah. It was, it was a really well made sandwich. There's not a lot to it. Like there's not very many ingredients. That's right.

There's no excess in that way. It's very simple and it kind of has to be because those few ingredients are very potent. They're very kind of strong taste wise. They kind of go to an extreme and also it is a very greasy, it's not a greasy sandwich in a negative way. Like you can hold onto it and your hand isn't wet, but you can bite into the sandwich. My hand was wet though, before I got the burger. Yeah.

That was pretty weird. You were soaking wet all night. But like you would bite into the bread and you could just feel oil like squishing out into your mouth. And it was delicious, but it was certainly, it seemed like a cardiac disaster compared to the regular burger. It seemed like there was a lot more going on. My heart is definitely hurting right now.

I went for a physical earlier today. I got everything checked out. Oh yeah. You showed everybody at steak and shake. That is actually true. I did show them the band around my arm from, they took blood from me today. There's no doubt in my mind that they're going to call back and say I am filled with disease and my cholesterol is through the roof because of this podcast.

Not because of a trip to Columbia, but because you do a podcast. There's something wrong with me and I'm pretty sure it's just a year of doing this. This is like, supersize me, but for every restaurant and I'm going to die because supersize me at least ended. He did it for 30 days, right? But he did it for 30 days straight. He jammed that all in there. This is like a once a week indulgence.

I don't even have five fucking cheeseburgers in two weeks. Yeah. Well, this is the tournament of champions. This is his own thing. Oh, god damn it. Not every month is a tournament of champions. Get into the spirit, man. It's the tournament of champions.

Here's the thing. You got to realize that I eat fast food normally. So this is going on top of what I already eat. It doesn't have to go on top of. It can replace a fast food thing. You know what the restaurant is in advance? You just say like, okay, instead of this trip I'm going to make to Arby's or Carl's Jr., I'll make this a trip to whatever the restaurant of the week is and it's not adding

to your fast food intake. It's just replacing an existing fast food intake. I don't have a wife who will plan dinners for me that are not, who will feed you pretty much like a baby man. My wife doesn't spoon feed me. Yes, she does. She doesn't. I'm a single guy who eats out a lot, so this is adding on top of all that.

I'm done for. Anyways, it doesn't matter. This is good. Should I call you out on saying you eat out a lot? Yeah. The way you did me. Right after you said you were single? I'm a single guy who eats out a lot.

Every female listener could hear you winking through the microphone. Oh, God. I do hear what you're saying though about the Five Guys Burger, that they seem like purposefully simple in a way that the taste might suffer a little compared to these other burgers. The Five Guys, the actual patty is not what hits your tongue when you eat it. It tastes like quality meat and everything. It might be boring. I don't know what to say about it.

I like it. I think it's a very, it's a conventional burger. It's a conventional burger. I'm satisfied when I eat it and I'm like, oh, that was tasty good burger, but I'm just kind of like a whopper sticks with me more. That Frisco Melt stuck with me more, which by the way, I enjoyed the Frisco Melt more than I liked the double cheese burger. How did you feel?

I don't know. I kind of touched on this when we were there, I guess, but... Was there bacon on that burger? I don't remember bacon being on it. On the burger? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. Oh, maybe my half was...

When you went to the bathroom, I took all the bacon pieces and put them on my half. No, there was, but not on the Frisco thing, but on the burger, definitely. The Frisco thing was really great and I'm so glad that we had it, but it's the kind of thing where if I was going to a steak and shake a couple of times a week, like if I worked around one or whatever, I don't think I could get that one on their eggs. I would have to get a simpler thing, just wait. It's just, it's a lot. It's like having like a Monte Cristo sandwich or something very rich in flavor.

The normal, the bacon cheese burger, I think I would prefer probably for that reason alone that the other one would be kind of a special treat once in a while, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would be the burger. It's like you've got another source of all that grease from the flat top, because it's basically you've got that grilled bread that's soaking up all that grease and then that with a greasy, juicy burger. It's just a little excessive versus a conventional bun. What'd you have?

I had my steak and shake burger was the jalapeno crunch steak burger. This is the menu description, seasoned on our fiery hot grill and topped with pepper jack cheese, chipotle mayo, fresh salsa and jalapenos, all topped with crispy fried onions. I don't know if a Midwest chain like this is the best source for a south of the border concept. It certainly wasn't an authentic, you know, hamburguesa, but it was pretty tasty. The Spanish for... No, no, no, no, no.

I know. It's a, you know, that said, had a good amount of heat to it, which I like with you get something spicy at some of these restaurants sometimes, and it's just sometimes it's just so muted. Sometimes you get like a spicy thing from Taco Bell or the Quiznos spicy sandwich, and it's just like so dialed down to make it palatable. I could tell you took a bite and you ran around the walls like Roger Rapp. Well once the steam stopped shooting out of my ears, and I stopped breathing a visible fire, I was able to take a second bite, and it's really, it was very tasty.

Fresh sauce I could take or leave. I don't think you needed it. I can't imagine like a such a boring man in a cartoon world. There's a rule. Like if principal Skinner started shooting fire out of his mouth and running around the walls. He kind of did on maybe not an exaggerated version of that, but there was certainly the incident with the steamed hams when Principal Chambers came over and he lit his kitchen on

fire. Got a little manic. One of the great Simpsons moments right there. Yeah, 22 short films about Springfield, right? That's right. Great episode. Great episode. But yeah, jalapeño crunch steak burger was good.

You know, I'd had that Wisconsin buttery burger, buttery steak burger before, and that one is just delicious, and I wanted to get that again, and I regretted not getting that again. But this was a pretty good spicy burger, and I feel like, you know, if you want a little bit of heat, you could do a lot worse. Patty is very juicy, and you got to hand it to steak and shake. That steak burger has just a lot of juice to it. Mitch, you mentioned before, in a previous episode, that you wanted juiciness to be a category.

That's right. You know, like I told you guys in the restaurant, if juiciness was a category, this would get 10 basketballs, because it's a very, very juicy burger. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah. I just, full disclosure, I just want to say I got a side of Cajun fries and a cherry limeade that went with my meal. I got a side garden salad with blue cheese dressing that I accidentally spilled on the

table. And then he started licking the blue cheese off of his fingers, and everyone in the restaurant vomited. That's not true. No one saw me licking the blue cheese off of my fingers. I didn't see where the napkin pile was, and there was a lot of blue cheese just globbing off, and I didn't know the quickest way to, I just thought it was the most efficient way to get this blue cheese cleaned up.

I made this a converse here because I could have sworn I saw you pouring that blue cheese on your fingers intentionally. And then I also got a root beer. How was that root beer? Pretty good. It's barks. Okay. Good fountain drinks over there.

Yeah. And a diet coke. And a little pot of baked beans. Alright. Interesting side choice. What an odd order. Well, I had Burger King fries for lunch today, see, in preparation for this heated match-up. Alright, so let's talk about...

Remember, sides stay on the sidelines. Right. But let's talk about your Burger King order. Mitch and I, we discussed Burger King previously on the mini-sode, but we can perhaps recap when we get to our final evaluation. But tell us what you had at Burger King, Cassidy. Well, I've had the Whopper many times, Whopper with cheese, love the Whopper with cheese. Today I got just the bacon cheeseburger and then, which was just kind of for lunch today.

And then I also, I got a crispy chicken junior, which does not apply to this current contest. Because I believe the main courses that aren't burgers stay in Maine where there are no NFL teams. Yeah, correct. Okay. Let's check the rules on that. I can call the commissioner and see if we're on point there, but... Let's never call him again.

Or invite him back to the podcast. Yeah. So, pretty simple burger for me. That Whopper, you know, for all the reasons that Mitch campaigned for, to get it, to eat it by five guys somehow, like, the burger tastes good, you know. It does have a taste to it, maybe more of a taste than five guys. I'm not sure I bite into it and go, hmm, that's a high quality food. Yeah, that's fair.

Toppings, the lettuce was just a little sad today. Oh, no. And that just, you know, with a place like Burger King, I think that's the price of doing business. When you go in that place, I feel like it's a crapshoot at that place. More so, or maybe as much as McDonald's. Maybe that's the same. I feel like maybe that's the same rate of failure, but... McDonald's doesn't rely on veggies as much.

You know, the Big Mac has shredded lettuce and onion, but Burger King definitely relies on lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, and let's see it, I think. That's part of their habit, your way. They have to have a few more options to deliver on that customizability. I'll say back to Steak and Shake for a second, because the toppings, that Steak and Shake, the burger, I think it succeeded on a lot of levels. When you took a bite of it, I feel like each ingredient kind of hit at the right time. Like the patty had its moment, the cheese was just like great, great, just had its moment,

the bun was great. And then the way that those toppings worked, like the pickle was cut kind of like diagonally, and it was a thicker, it was a good pickle slice, and it was a good crunch, and they felt like somebody made it more than my Burger King burger. Burger King burger seemed, you know, a little more slapdash. My complaint about Steak and Shake, the toppings were too wet, and that, they just, the lettuce and tomato, and onion, and onion and pickle were just a little bit too wet. Also, Mike Cassidy is having one of our drank or stank items from our last full episode.

How is it? I like it. It's not bad. Yeah. Now it really does sound like we're getting paid to promote Henry's Hard Soda. You should be. Yeah, but we're, well, I just want to remind everyone, the Doughboys can't be bought. Yeah.

I want to remind someone, I can 100% be bought, and Burger King, I will let you win this competition if you give me $20, oh yeah, a burger. A date with the king himself. Steak and Shake, the toppings were a little bit too, a little too wet for me. You know what I, well, Weiger seems like yours had the most of the wet toppings. Well. There's all that sauce on there. Yeah.

Well, certainly I got that, that sauce, the thing is the salsa component at Steak and Shake was a little minimal. I will say just real quick on the five guys, Mitch, I think that's a fair observation, and I think that can happen sometimes if you go a little, I'm not, I'm not even saying, I think you exercise moderation. You may have gotten some wet veggies, but if you go like, you know, I think all the way is their standard thing that gets, I was saying Steak and Shake, but five guys as well.

Oh, okay. I fucked up. I had some listening issue there. Oh no, that's all right. But, but. So you're saying your Steak and Shake veggies were a little too wet. Yes. Actually, I didn't have that issue at five guys.

What I was going to say at five guys, I think when that can, and obviously you weren't even saying this, but this is just a full tangent now, but that can happen, I think if you get too many toppings, and certainly like some of their toppings, like those mushrooms kind of, they just have a lot of moisture inherently. So you know, I think if you exercise some moderation there, you can avoid that. But yeah, I didn't really have an excessive moisture issue from my toppings from Steak and Shake. I think, but then again, I think some of these toppings were a little drier, you know, the

fresh salsa was a little, certainly had some moisture to it, like you mentioned Cassidy, but the crispy fried onions were, you know, those were very dense and crisp, and those weren't particularly oily. All right, so let's talk about your five guys experience, Michael. Five guys, I had been like, I went to the one up here, down mid Wilshire, and I had a bacon cheeseburger there also, all the way with all of their toppings, which is mayo, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, ketchup and mustard, which seems like a lot.

I guess you say that. Yeah. That's a lot. I like a place that is the quality level of five guys that offers mushrooms, like I like that being a thing you just kind of can get if you say I want everything on a sandwich that they put that on there. Sure. I like that that's a part of their thing for, I don't know, that kind of sets them apart

a little bit. That's a lot of toppings. It really did, you know, halfway through that burger though, you got to kind of, you got to clear some of that shit out of that. Yeah. It's a messy, it's a really messy burger. And the bun there, I liked the bun at five guys quite a bit, but it's just a little, it's just like a little more of a squishy bun, like kind of a more processed, like Wonder

Bread-y kind of, kind of, you know what I'm talking about, the kind of bread that I'm talking about that kind of gets gummy. Yeah. It's like that sponge dough. Yeah. Which is very much like an American white bread. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is what they're going for. That seems like the five guys thing through and through, but it kind of, that got in my way after about halfway through also. When you're done with that, I mean, that bun is just greased out and the bun is just, it's cling for dear life towards the end of that. By the way, I just want to interject and say, when it comes to mushrooms, I love them if they come up in a question mark box in Mario Kart, but I do not like them on my burger. I say, keep them away from my burger.

Mario can have them all he wants. I feel like if it's like, Wendy's does like a cheddar and mushroom melt burger and then I'm okay with it. Yeah. But if it's just like an additional topping, no thank you. They have to be like well sautéed and well seasoned if it's just kind of like a, you know, they just heated up some mushrooms and they're still kind of just soggy and wet. Like, yeah, that's not the texture I want on there and certainly raw mushrooms never

make any sense on a burger. But yeah, also too, you know, speaking of Mario Kart items, banana peel, I'm happy to get it from an item box in Mario Kart. Certainly don't want it on my burger. Red shell. Oh man, I love getting that from an item box in Mario Kart. Oh man. Certainly don't want that in my burger.

I love to get an electrified smiling star. Oh sure, yeah. You know, but not on my burger. No, you don't want that in your burger. I'll say one thing. I don't really like getting the ghost in my question mark box. And if I got a ghost in my burger, hell no man. Yeah, but I don't like that one either place.

I will say this though, if I, as much as if I drive off of Rainbow Road, I would like to be retrieved to the course by Lakitu in exchange for two coins, if I were to drop my burger off of a highway overpass, I would prefer that Lakitu would fetch it with his fishing pole and I would pay him two coins in exchange. What two coins? Two nickels. Two nickels? Yeah.

You cheap fuck. It's just a burger from the ground. Yep, there's Old Nick sitting up on the highway overpass contemplating suicide and eating a burger. Yeah, I will say like, you know, this is a thing, this is a point I should have brought up on the mini-sode and it wouldn't have swayed you guys. The mini-sode shouldn't have happened, let's just put that off. You're right, it was a mistake, it was a waste of everyone's time, that's why we retconned

it out of existence. It has been known. I'm still mad at Susser, but Burger King talks about have it your way and they go crazy about how you can customize their burgers. You can customize five guys way more. The customization options at five guys are far, the variations are endless. You've got more toppings and more different ways you can customize it. It's more better though, I guess.

It's not always better, but I'm just saying like, even in that aspect, which Burger King considers to be a signature aspect of their brand, five guys does it better. I don't know, I mean, I just don't, I still don't see it, I'm getting ahead of myself because we still gotta do evaluations. Here's what I'm gonna say, five guys make a signature burger. They should make a signature burger. Give us five burgers to pick from and then we'll pick one of those five burgers. They should do that.

They should. They should actually, they should have a signature one that's like with their, not just the all the way, which is like a bunch of different toppings all crammed in there. They should decide, this is our sauce. These are our toppings. This is like how we want to present this thing. I agree with you 100%. Yeah, it wouldn't take much.

No, it wouldn't. Like, Steak and Shake hasn't done anything insane to make it, like their steak burgers all that they need. They just had one thing and they went for it. Yeah. Five guys could make a decision, I suppose. They're probably also doing fine. People will never change.

I know. Mikey, I have a question. So you got bacon on your five guys burger. You're a bacon burger guy. I do like a bacon burger guy. What do you think of their bacon? It was pretty good. Yeah.

It was better than I expected. A lot of the time, I won't get bacon. I'll get bacon at Wendy's just because I think I have like a nostalgia. Yeah. I love Wendy's. I just have a nostalgic place for like junior bacon cheeseburgers, I think. But I won't say that Wendy's has the highest quality bacon. I just get it there.

I feel like a lot of places on this tier, on the Burger King kind of tier, like I won't get bacon at those places. Five guys was great. And it was kind of enough bacon for the sandwich. It was a little too much, honestly, like the last half of it, I kind of cleared everything off and just ate it like a cheeseburger. I've tried to stay away from bacon a little bit during this tournament because it is, it can overpower a little bit.

For sure. Yeah. But I think it can be, it's becoming a key component in burgers. It's a big thing, but it is something of a crutch. I don't know. I feel like this is a little bit of a tangent, and I may have said this before, but I feel like avocado is the vegetable version of bacon in that it can just like cover up a lot of mistakes.

And I feel like you throw a lot of, you throw bacon on a burger, you throw avocado or guacamole on a burger, it kind of like, it can be a very overpowering and a good way thing. But I think you're taking the right approach, Mitch, which is that to be something of a, to be something of a purist and really focus on the meat that's that patty, which I think is a central component. Yeah. I feel like the best bacon burgers are the ones that are kind of like the baconator that don't have a lot of other things going on.

Like that is kind of what the burger is about. It kind of has to be. The beef and bacon. Yeah. Yeah. Though I will say that steak and shake one tonight, like I said, each, I feel like every piece of it kind of played its part perfectly in that sandwich. So it was a burger, burger, burger is a sandwich.

Yeah. Yeah. Burger is a sandwich, bun is a bread. It's a kind of bread. Bread, depending on context, can be a bun. Sure. Okay, great. What we got?

We got that all figured out. Listen, it's all a mess. Yeah. It shouldn't have happened. Rocktoberfest shouldn't have happened. Every time we try to do something new, we fail and we should never try anything new ever again. Yeah.

We have a formula that kind of works and we should probably just stick to that. But maybe these deviations remind us the value of the regular episodes. Oh, what the fuck? No, maybe there's a moral to be gleaned from. You go on a little bit of an adventure. You go on a little bit of a side quest, but then in the end, you want to go back to that main adventure. So this is like the Hobbit in Doe Boys' Like Lord of the Rings?

Yeah. Yes, Mitch. Are you just trying to find a way to say it shitty? Oh, yeah, I actually liked Hobbit 2. I liked Hobbit 2, too. It was a lot of fun. Hey. I like that barrel chase.

Yeah. I don't like that. The barrel chase has come up before. We've talked about it. We love it. Yeah, we like Hobbit 2. Yeah, you want it to be at the amusement park, right? I think it would be fantastic.

That's a good, this is a good podcast where multiple times we've said we like Hobbit 2. We like Hobbit 2. Oh, good. All right. Well, forget Hobbit and put yourself in the mindset of gremlins because it's now time for our final evaluations. Okay. Here's how this will work.

Cassidy will go around. Will each rate each of these chains category by category on a scale of 0 to 10 basketballs. Again, the categories are creativity slash presentation, condiments slash bun, burger slash taste. After we've all given our decision, we will decide which one we are going to feed to Gizmo. Are we just going to say Gizmo or are we going to say a Mogwai? A Mogwai.

Let's not do that to Gizmo. Okay. Which one are we going to feed to a Mogwai? Maybe Gizmo. What's another Mogwai? There's a... I don't know their name. Stripe.

Yeah, Stripe. Wait, Stripe is a gremlin though. Well, I guess that's a Mogwai still. Are you a Mogwai first? Are you a Mogwai first? After you turn? Okay. I guess so.

All right. Which one are we going to feed to Stripe after midnight? Kind of fun, too. Wait, so we're feeding it to a gremlin now? Oh, wait. No, I'm sorry. The kuki-eyed Mogwai. The kuki-eyed Mogwai.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Well, I haven't seen the gremlins movies as much as you guys have. Yeah. I have like a little bit of a familiarity with the franchise, but it's not something I'm super familiar with. Well, feed it to the one that goes to the microwave.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Wait, which one is that? I don't know. That's from gremlins too, right? Give it a one. Yeah. No, that's gremlins one.

Oh, that's gremlins one? Mm-hmm. Is someone's a paper shredder or something? The new batch. Yeah. Oh, yeah. One gets paper shredded. That was the part I remember being a little grisly.

Yeah, that is grisly. Then there's the lady gremlin. She drinks the lady formula. Okay. Which, by the way, they have formulas that could turn a man into a lady instantly in this laboratory or a man into a spider up in their little laboratory because there's one turns to a spider gremlin and then there's electricity gremlin. Yeah.

And then there's smart gremlin, of course. I sort of remember some of this. The thing I remember most from gremlins, the new batch, is that the twin scientists, they're twin scientists, right, are the same as the cop from Terminator 2 who gets killed by like... That's right. You get killed by the T-1000 who turns into him and you realize the way they were able to shoot that is they cast twin actors.

Yeah, that's a fun little IMDB trivia thing for you. Oh, wow. That's cool. I had a blast. Look for it next time you rewatch T2. And don't bother with Terminator Genesis. They make John Corner the bad guy. You don't want to see that.

All right, so Cassidy, so if you need a refresher to these ending categories, let me know. But zero to ten basketballs and creativity, presentation, condiments, fun, burger taste, and we're talking Burger King, Five Guys, Steak and Shake. Okay. Take it away. All right, so... All right. This is complicated.

There's... Oh, yeah, it is. All right. Well, let's just go in the order we talked about them today. So Steak and Shake, let's see. The category that we'll do first will be burger slash taste. Oh, so you're mixing up the order of the categories too. Wait, which order would you prefer?

You can do whatever order you like, but creativity slash presentation is first. Steak presentation for Steak and Shake was...it was fine, but it was honestly a little less than I anticipated. When I got there and we had table service and it was a sit-down place, when they brought out the burgers, it was a little, I don't know, like it wasn't like it was on a nice plate or it wasn't very restaurante after that initial part. I'll say, but the burgers looked good. This just kind of wasn't given with flair.

So let's give presentation to that burger, eight basketballs. Burger King gets five basketballs and five guys. I disagree with you a little bit on the foil, I think. I think the foil is good. I think that that is a little personality and I feel like it holds the burger together and they know that their burgers are kind of overloaded. So I feel like thought goes into that. And so I'll give them six basketballs.

Still not great, but better than Burger King. Okay, so that's creativity presentation. So the bun, okay. The bun at Steak and Shake was very, very good. It was a restaurant quality burger bun. If you had had a lesser bun, I feel like it would have taken away because like I said, all the other ingredients were shining in that burger. Let's give that bun nine basketballs.

Wow. Wow. Let's give the Burger King bun, again, I'm going to give that five basketballs that is right down the middle of the road, totally adequate. It was a burger bun and five guys was also great. Like I said, it was a little squishy, which I kind of like. I like that taste, kind of that scratches an itch, but it didn't last the whole burger through, right?

So for that, I got to dock it a little bit. We'll give that seven basketballs. All right. Is anybody keeping track of how many basketballs? It doesn't matter. That doesn't actually have an effect on the final outcome. I know. That's what I love the most about it.

Okay, so. The big one. The big cheese, which doesn't involve cheese, the one I wanted to do first, we're talking about the main course of the burger, the burger itself and overall taste. So, Steak and Shake, like I said, I already sang his praises. I really do think that each ingredient worked in the sandwich to the point where I asked if there was a special sauce on that burger, because it tasted just kind of there was something harmonious about it.

They figured out a formula over there. It's very good. I'm going to give that a 10 basketball burger to Steak and Shake. The Burger King burger and taste, again, was truly right down the middle. I will say that you can taste a flame broil. You can taste something going on in it, and I'll give it six basketballs just because I feel nice about Burger King. It's out of its league, frankly.

Wow. This is disappointing for me to hear. With these five guys and Steak and Shake competitors, now that we have three men in this ring, or women, maybe we'll personify these fast food chains as women, look, there's no chance. I can't even imagine a world where I give it more than that, so I'm being very nice and giving it five, six basketballs there. Then the burger and taste of five guys, I agree with you, Mitch.

There was a little something too simple about it. The burger tasted good. The condiments got in the way a little bit after a while, but it was very good. We'll give that seven basketballs. That's a lot of basketballs. That's a good breakdown. I like your scoring. For me, presentation creativity for Steak and Shake, they have a nice selection of burgers.

They switched stuff up. They had a beef dip burger, which I liked. The presentation was nice, if not plain, but I give that eight basketballs. Four condiments slash bun. It took a little hit because, like I said, the condiments were cold. The Frisco, because I want to give this six basketballs. The Frisco really helps out because I love that sauce. Yeah, this is so good.

So I'm going to give it seven basketballs. It really helped out. That was a six basketball score, if not. Taste slash juiciness. I got to say, it's burger slash taste. Oh, burger slash taste slash juiciness is in the category graveyard. Steak and Shake really gives you a juicy burger. It's real juicy.

It's really juicy. It's got a good taste. Eight basketballs. Wow. And then are you sticking by your previous scores for Steak and Shake and Burger King? I'm sticking by my previous scores for Burger King and Five Guys. Which there's no way on earth I'd ever remember. Even if we record this mini-sode within the same hour, which maybe we did, I'd never remember

the scores I gave. So you got to go back and listen. It's pretty close. I feel like it was like seven to six, and then eight, seven, eight, seven or something in favor of Burger King. Creativity presentation for Steak and Shake, a fiercely creative chain, especially in terms of burger concepts. I feel like they do a lot of really interesting, they take some big swings.

Some like this jalapeno crunch steak burger, maybe it might have been a ground rule double. It wasn't a grand slam, but some of them they hit, and they're real good. And I like that they take chances. I like that they have a bunch of different concepts. I like that they try things like that French dip burger that you mentioned. And I think these things always come out looking well prepared. They look like you could photograph them and put them in a magazine. For that reason, Steak and Shake, nine basketballs for a creativity presentation.

OK, OK. Condiment slash bun, good fresh baked bun. I definitely like the bread on that patty melt concept. I think it's pretty good. Condiments are pretty solid. I'm going to go eight basketballs and burger slash taste. Boy, I tell you, I do enjoy the flavor of those burgers. They're distinctively juicy.

Yeah, Cassidy's right. They can sometimes get a little greasy, but I think they're up there. I think it's a I think it's a very strong competitor. And I would I would give it eight basketballs and burger slash taste. Is this is a very strong chain burger that they have at Steak and Shake. I like Mitch. I'm sticking with my previous ratings for five guys, whatever those were, if you want to refer to the minisode.

But I agree with what Cassidy says about Burger King being out of its league. So I am going to go ahead and downgrade my ratings for Burger King in all three categories. What the fuck to one child sized basketball. They're not they don't get an NCAA regulation basketball that you would use in the tournament. They get a child sized basketball that you would use perhaps in a an under five league for small children. And they get one a piece in each category. Burger King, you don't belong here.

I'm sorry. It's not your fault. It was a weird circumstance. It's like when a 15 seat upsets a two seat and they're in the second round, they just get totally spanked. They don't belong there, but it's not their fault for being there. Oh, God, you'd rather have Duke. Yes, I would rather have Duke. I'd rather have I'd rather see excellent guys.

I don't know if I don't know five guys is Duke. I mean, clearly, you know, because Duke at least gets some respect. I'll tell you a Cinderella story. Yeah. This podcast ending for good after this tournament. It's not quite the arc of Cinderella, but I guess that I guess that would be a happy ending. All right, sure. Okay, so here's what we'll do.

We did this in the mini so I think we'll do this again here. Instead of using the finger hold up system that we did for the the first mile card match for this one on the count of three, which you can count us down. And we will say our winner of Burger King five guys steak and shake, whichever one we want that will move on to face our two seed Wendy's. So wow. So yeah, this is this is a this is a big decision, guys. We're deciding which one we are going to feed to a Mogwai specifically.

Do we sell on Stripe? I think the one that's in the microwave. Okay, which one did you feed to the Mogwai that ultimately turns into the gremlin that dies in the microwave? So the one that's going to have a grizzly fate, but he's hopefully going to have a very tasty meal as a send off. Yeah, that's a nice way to package that. All right, so on the count of three, Mitch, if you want to count us down,

let's let's decide which one is the winner of this match. Three, two, one, five guys Burger King. Mitch, you said Burger King. Are you out of your fucking mind? Also, I think that's a three way tie. I said five guys. You said steak and shake. You know what?

I'm so glad I am. God, you know, I hate this. I hate that we're doing this. He's crying. What do we do? I almost... He just ripped off his pants to reveal he's wearing a diaper. I don't... Do I get Susser on the phone again?

I don't know. I don't even know who to pick up. I might have gone to bed. Wait, I got a hell to pay with Susser. I totally threw him under the bus. Jesus Christ. Well, I was right before we did that. I was like, this would be really funny if I said Burger King now.

And I'm super glad that I did it because if now I know if I had said Burger King, that would have been the end. No, hang up on Susser. Do you honestly believe that that is... That's honestly your choice, Burger King. You take Burger King overall. You're being loyal to an idea. I'm being loyal to the Whopper, which I love.

But I just ran over a question mark box. It's a ghost. I'm going to steal one of your two answers. I'm going to go with Five Guys. Wow. Wait, you picked Five Guys. Five Guys lost to Burger King in the mini-sode. That's right.

And now you're saying Five Guys wins? That is a Cinderella story. Five Guys is the winner. How? Well, you know what? You didn't eat a second meal. You're comparing it to the same... You didn't go back to Five Guys and Burger King in between these episodes.

Oh, God. It was changed. It was a really tasty burger. I really enjoyed it. This is madness. I feel like you're undermining the whole tournament because no one can trust that you're being honest. I am being honest here.

This is the truth. Here's what I have to say. I'm happy I came down to this. The Whopper is a great, great, great burger. But I know that when we're judging this category, it has to just come down to what that burger is all about. And the components of the Whopper are good, but Burger King has slipped in Five Guys.

I'm basing... I'm ranking Burger King on a memory. I will say this. Yeah. I applaud you reversing your decision, Mitch. I think you're making the correct move. But I'm curious as to why you think Five Guys is not... Why you would prefer Five Guys to Steak and Shake.

Because I do think Five Guys is better than Steak and Shake. Wow, okay. All right. Great. That's interesting. That's a very direct answer. And I mean that genuinely. I actually...

My second trip with Five Guys, it was a really juicy burger. I've liked it. It's come down to the wire just like these NCAA games. It's been fun and exciting. Sadly though, the Whopper has to step down. Five Guys has to take over. It's a close, close match between these two. And I wonder what Sussword would say.

But I know that he'd definitely say Steak and Shake. He would say Steak and Shake for sure. And I'm going to... Before he can even say anything, and it seems like this whole thing is rigged because he's a Steak and Shake guy, I'm going to go with Five Guys, which I had the other day and I enjoyed the experience. The burger, never mind the experience.

I enjoyed that burger more than I enjoyed either of the two burgers I had tonight. The combination of this crazy whirlwind and the fact that the AC is broken in the studio. It's a favorite pitch. It's like 95 degrees in here. I feel like I'm going insane. Not to mention your pants are off and your diapers revealed. I'm so glad that Five Guys won. That was very unexpected.

I'm also glad that since I feel like I popped the bubble on Sussword's decree that I did vote for Steak and Shake. I was the lone vote for Steak and Shake. I'm very surprised at that. Five Guys is a great burger. I wish it all the best in this tournament. I think it could really go far. But guess what, it's going up against my fucking boy Wendy's in the next round.

That's a competitor. That's crazy. Five Guys versus Wendy's will happen in our semi-final match. Two weeks from today. What a ride. What a ride. Wendy's is more than a memory though, you know? Wendy's is more than Burger King by Longshot.

Oh, definitely. What a thrill. What a thrill ride this is. You guys, oh, to be here in person for this, the emotions run high in this room, higher than you can imagine. Nick, are you, what are you doing? Are you texting mommy right now? Is everything all right?

No, I'm getting a cue ready for our next segment. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what I'm doing here. I should have done this a second ago. But that was our most recent match in the Tournament of Champions. Five Guys takes down Burger King and Steak and Shake in a three-way brawl. A great place, Burger King. The Whopper is one of the best.

Should I go back to Burger King? No, no, I should say. But it rightfully, Five Guys rightfully goes on to the next round. All right, Five Guys moving on. It's time for a regular segment. We have a fast food item that we bought yesterday, and we're going to test how it held up after spending a night in the fridge. These are the leftovers.

What? Oh, that's right. That's a terrible theme song. It actually is a pretty good theme song. I like it. It's the theme song from season one of the leftovers. Apparently it's changed. Apparently they used a theme song?

Yeah, you have a different theme song now, but I like the old one. I like that one a lot. That's what we're singing over this segment. All right, so Mitch, tell us what you, if you're cured, what has been sitting in that cooled bag for the past 90 minutes since we've been talking through the three computers. With a nice pack. With a nice pack.

Today, you could smell it as soon as you opened it. The leftovers today are Subway sandwiches. Oh, boy. Oh, God. We got a six-inch sub for everybody here. Cassie, I'm just going to toss you on. Yeah. Ready?

Soaking wet. That's just condensation from the bag, I believe. But give me one of those bad boys. So what we got here is... Cold cuts? 12-inch meatball marinara with provolone cheese. And this thing has green peppers, onions, pepper chinis, olives, and provolone cheese all on.

Like I said, I believe I said it, a 12-inch white bun. I'm going to get a shot of this real quick. I would say that in this insanely hot sauna of a studio we have right now, the prospect of eating a cold meatball sub is some sort of like nightmarish Gitmo exercise. But I'll try it. The bun is pretty moist. Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot of moisture here. Subway bread is... Yeah. All right. I just took a bite. Time for some on-mic chomping. And like, hmm, I don't know. Everyone's favorite on-mic chomping.

It's not bad. The bun, the sandwich bun does not hold up well. No, it's soggy as hell. I'll tell you what, I was really, when it was Subway, this is, I have bad memories of leftover Subway, like eating Subway the next day from college. And I will say that the topping choice here really saved you some grief, because if there'd been anything in the way of lettuce or tomato on here or cucumber,

I think this bread would have been sopping and dripping over itself. And this is pretty, I don't know, it's not fresh bread. Like, it tastes gross, but the vegetables are still crunchy. The meatball is still a meatball. Mm-hmm. That's not so bad. It's kind of like a leftover piece of pizza, more than a sandwich. Abs, you're dead on, you're dead on.

And it's, the Christmas of the veggies does a lot here. It is, and you chose those veggies, I asked you what type of veggies you'd like. Because I was gonna just do it plain. Yeah, we sort of built this via text message, and I chimed in with a few selections. I'm not taking credit for this, though. No, I mean, yeah, I went out and bought it by myself sadly every night. But yeah, I mean, maybe that's a thing to consider if you are gonna buy,

let's say you're a light eater, and it's got the $5 foot long deal, and you decide to buy that $5 foot long, and you're gonna have half of it tonight, and save half of it for lunch the next day. Yeah, consider your toppings, because some of those are gonna hold up better in the fridge than others. And certainly like a crisper, crunchier veggie is gonna, that has a little bit more texture to it, has a better chance of staying fresh, or at least an approximation of fresh overnight.

Lettuce and tomato, so this was toasted, by the way. And then I put it, went out. Oh, really? Yep. I came home, put it immediately in my fridge. I will say, I think one of the biggest saving graces of this thing is the meatball itself. The meatball is actually really tasty. Yeah, I think you could say the same thing you said, Weiger, about the protein in here,

that if it had been more of a cold cut combo, or certainly any of the tuna salad variety, the same thing would have happened. But a meatball is kind of an already contained thing. Yeah. So, it doesn't run the danger of kind of taking over the whole sandwich. Like, I don't know, I'm not surprised, I'm honestly very surprised, because you would think that the sauce, the meatball sauce would have done that, and didn't do it, that didn't make it sopping wet either.

It's, it is, this is something that was shocked to me, because I expected to take one bite of this and gag. And, but no, I've eaten more than half of it, and I kind of, I'm down to eat all of it. It's very, it's actually holds up quite well. So, is it getting left behind? Well, and also, just so you know, if you want to keep it overnight, no lettuce, no tomato, it's going to destroy that sandwich. So, are you leaving this behind, or are you taking it with you?

This one, wait, is taking it with you good? Taking it home is good, right? Taking it home is good. Yeah. Oh, oh, so are we leaving it behind in the restaurant, or is this coming, are we taking this with me to be leftovers? Is it going to heaven with you, or is it staying on earth, where the leftovers take place? We're dying too.

Yeah. So, we're dying, we're going to heaven, and we're deciding if we're going to have this ascend with us, and hopefully it'll survive the trip. That's right. But in heaven, can you just have every food that you want? Yeah, but if not, you could never have ever eat this. All right, I think in this, I'll indulge you, and I'd say I'm taking this one with me. This is a, this one I'm not leaving behind, this one I'm taken to go.

Leaving behind is bad. Taking it with you is good. Did it pass the test? You know, I suppose if compared to enough other things, I would take this home before I would take home a lot of like fast food, but if you're putting me in the situation where I'm looking at this six inches of sandwich, and I'm going to take it home and eat it later, I'm not going to take it with me. Interesting.

I got to leave it behind. I'm taking it with me, and I think it's done better than some of the other ones, for sure. Yeah. In this, in this game, which is, which it's, it's tough. This is, this is one of our segments that's not easy to, I feel like, to get, to get taken with you, or whatever the fuck this dumb shit is. Especially with a sandwich. Yeah.

Something with a lot, this much bread. Yeah, no, I, I, it's coming, it's coming with me. This, this, this, this held up decently well. Yeah. There's something about like expectations, I feel like, where this is so, so much better than our expectations, and I think that's part of why we're holding it in such high esteem in this exercise. That's fair.

But yeah, this, this is very much decent leftovers. Way to go, meatball sub. Well done, meatball sub from Subway. Welcome to the club, bub. Oh, thanks, man. Appreciate that. All right, that was the leftovers. Just like a restaurant, we value your feedback.

Let's open up the feedback. Today's email comes up to us from Mitchell Rake. Mitchell Rake. I think I'm saying that right. Mitchell writes, Hello, dough boys. I'm an instant of the Spoon Nation fleet in Michigan. Living so close to Canada, I have lots of experience with the greatest thing to ever

come out of Canada since hockey. Poutine. Poutine has recently come to vogue as being a popular food to make with artisan toppings and ingredients. That is not what poutine is. Poutine at its heart, fries, gravy, cheese curds, maybe some green onion garnished on top. That's it. And it is delicious.

Amazing. More places in the USA need to serve it. Are there any foods that you think are similar to poutine in that the simplest form of it is the best? That's a great question. I have an immediate answer, grilled cheese sandwich. Yeah, good one. They, there are a lot of these artisan places, and I don't know if that's

if it's just a thing that's in cities or if it's happening throughout the country, but there's kind of this, this artisan grilled cheese craze. And there's all these like the grilled cheese truck and these different grilled cheese concepts where they'll do things like, you know, here's a grilled cheese that's got a Gruyere and pulled pork in it, you know, like they're doing all this crazy shit and they're throwing all these extra proteins and all these extra vegetables and all these different types of cheeses. And I'm just like, I don't need this one that's got a brie and pear slices. Just give me a regular old grilled sandwich with some good bread and some good cheese.

And I think that one just like, it's just hard to top the basics when it comes to that. I agree with that. You know, it's funny because in a way what we're doing this whole thing about is burgers have become fancier and fancier too. And I can, I can be fine with the McDonald's cheese. I mean, we've talked about this before on the podcast. I can like a cheese pizza. I can like a plain cheeseburger.

You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I agree with you on that on the on the grilled cheese thing. Like it doesn't have to be super fancy. I think the best version of it is the classic grilled cheese with a bowl of tomato soup. I don't know. I can't really think of others. I like some fancy ice creams.

I was going to say maybe say ice cream, but I like some like sometimes you'll have like, oh, churro ice cream or something and it's good. How about you, Cassie? Do you have any that come to mind immediately? The grilled cheese example is a really fine example. That might be the better one, but maybe like nachos. Oh, that's interesting. Where like, I feel like a plate of nachos stuff.

Like there's a there's a breaking point of toppings where I'm a hundred percent really start to like have just wet chip bed. If you add a lot of veggies or meat and stuff. No, but just cheese and chips for me wins. My heart in every single time and much. It's exactly the same as a grilled cheese sandwich. No, thank you to pulled pork to talk pulled pork taco. I like, I mean, sorry, nachos.

I liked pulled pork sandwiches. I liked pulled pork. I don't like pulled pork nachos. Like like in for the most part, I'm like, okay, yeah, I can do Buffalo chicken nachos. But besides that, I'm not that seems like a lot to me. Yeah, it seems crazy. Buffalo chicken nachos are some of the only like wild version of nachos I've had. But when it comes down to it, I'm just like in regular cheese nachos cheese.

And truly, if you just put some cheese on tortilla chips and melt it, I'm almost all good. Have you guys ever had go ahead? I was just going to say that the poutine things a little, you know, I wouldn't mind if there was a place or two that served poutine, but I'm not. If fast food places in America started messing with poutine, I think it would be a disaster. We're so fat already. I mean, here's the thing. Canada is, it's just, you guys are just such a cold weather country that poutine fits in so well

up there. And I agree with you. Poutine is awesome. I love poutine. I've had some amazing poutine up there. Cassidy, you and I have had great poutine together and then I almost died. Oh my God, what a crazy night. I almost died in Canada and Cassidy saved my life in a lot of ways.

Wait, what is this? I almost drank myself to death one night. Oh, okay. Yeah, in Montreal when we, but there's also poutine even there, and this is just the Montreal version of poutine, like there's obviously great. There's like cool, great restaurant poutine that's very good. And then the fast food poutine is a totally different animal, which is like, which isn't always good.

Like I also had bad poutine there where it was like, this is great for a drunk person. I'm just saying like, I feel like American change would mess it up real bad. I went to McDonald's and got poutine in Montreal and it was, I mean, I was, maybe it was that night where I couldn't cease right in. I believe I peed on an elevator door. I tried to stop you so valiantly. I tried to stop you and you insisted. You persevered.

So my apologies to the Hilton in, or whatever, that probably wasn't a Hilton. Who stepped, didn't somebody like step into the elevator? It was like, it wasn't, it wasn't Mark Merrim. It was like some person like that is like, oh, stop pissing on yourself. Well, we're making Mitch sound like a real classy guy. This is the one time this ever happened to me, ever in my life. I will say that that's, you wouldn't, yeah, we like went, we like went up to help you and you were in rough shape, man.

I've never seen you like that. And before or since. Yeah, you and Harris, you and Harris Whittles helped me, helped me out big time. Yeah. My, my, my, my, my long lasting memory of that is puking in the sink of my hotel room and look at seeing myself in the mirror as I was pushing the puke down the drain with my hand. Oh, Jesus Christ.

What a fucking image to end the podcast with. No one wants to hear that shit. Well, don't write emails about poutine if you don't want to hear about God. Puked down the sink. What the fuck? You know what? I'm just trying to tell a story. I got, I got really drunk one night.

Like everyone does in their entire life. Get off your fucking high horse. I'm not a high horse. I think it's fine. It's glad that you're on edge. You've been on edge ever since Burger King made it to the next round. Jesus, it's your God. Well, now it's dead.

It's hot as hell in here. I'm going crazy. If you have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you can email us at doboyspodcast at gmail.com. Did we answer his question at all? Yeah, he asked if there are any foods that you think are similar to poutine and that the simplest form of it is the best. And he also asked, can you give me a mental image that will make me never want to eat again?

Maybe deliver it on both counts. Maybe a baked potato too, actually. Oh, baked potato. That's good. Oh, baked potato is great. Yeah, symbolify. Oh, baked potato. That's our answer.

Also, my, my story ends with my Cassie being a great friend once again and helping me through the day. A great guy, a great guest, a great friend of the podcast, the man who composed our theme song. We're so thrilled to have you, Michael. You'll have to come back sometime. Thank you for participating in the Tournament of Chompians. It's been a delight. I'm a, I'm a super fan.

I'm so happy to be a part of it. Do you have anything you would like to plug? Collie, playing some music shows, Hotel Cafe. I guess just my Twitter, Michael Cassidy. M-I-C-H-A-E-L-C-A-S-S-A-D-Y. Awesome. Check that out. Also, check out our Twitter at doboyspod.

Follow us on Facebook, just Do Boys. And that'll do it for this episode of Do Boys. Until next time, for The Spoonman, Mike Mitchell, I'm Nick Weiger. Happy eating. See ya. Bye-bye.