Doughboys - Wingstop with Emmy Blotnick

Episode Date: December 4, 2015

The 'boys review one of the biggest players in the Buffalo wings game with stand-up comedian, writer, and wings super fan Emmy Blotnick (@midnight, Not Safe with Nikki Glaser). Plus, another edition of Drank or Stank.Want more Doughboys? Check out our Patreon!: https://patreon.com/doughboysSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The energy in here is always fun. It's always youthful. Not only that, you know they got my favorite lemon pepper wings in the world, so it's just a natural attraction. Those are the words of rapper Rick Ross, as quoted in a 2014 Forbes profile by Zach O'Malley Greenberg. He's talking about this week's chain, a chicken wing concept that was founded in 1994 in Garland, Texas.

Ross, as if to prove every day I'm hustling, is indeed his lifestyle, now owns nine franchises of his beloved wing joint, from which he profits handsomely. Having such a famous franchisee in the limelight squares with a chain's business model of aggressively pursuing new locations, which has led to 650 restaurants worldwide in just over 20 years of operation. With a simple, narrowly focused menu that eschews the draft beer and big screen sports model of Sector Kingpin Buffalo Wild Wings, this restaurant has exceeded by focusing on a takeout experience centered on wings, strips, and sides.

According to its website, 70% of its customers prefer to grab and go, in lieu of eating in their ostensibly pre-jet aviation-themed dining rooms. The wing craze isn't going away anytime soon, and neither is this titan of deep-fried chicken forelimbs. This week on Doughboys, Wingstop. Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants. I'm Nick Weiger, alongside my co-host, Mike Mitchell, the Spoon Man. How you doing, Mitch?

Wow. It was the whitest version of Rick Ross I've ever heard in my entire life. I did drop the G from Every Day I'm Hustling, so I give myself credit for that. Oh, dear God. Just want to give a big, uh, to Spoon Nation, a little shout-out to all those monster squatters out there, and, uh, well, isn't that special? Wait, isn't that special, is that to the monster squatters, or is that also to Spoon Nation? That's everybody.

That's the whole crew. That's everybody. So even if you're not affiliated with one of those particular tribes, you still get a isn't that special. I'll have the church lady, Dan McCarvey's character from SNL. Great. That tracks. Can I mix things up on this podcast?

Yeah, do whatever you want. None of this matters. It doesn't matter. Do whatever you want. That's for sure. Real quick, we want to give a, uh, a happy birthday to someone who's perhaps a member of Spoon Nation, perhaps a member of Monster Squad or herself, Kaley Murphy. Happy birthday, Kaley.

Your friend Jenny requested a little shout-out to you on there, so we figured we'd do that up top. Happy birthday. I hope it's a fun one. Yeah. Hey, what do you like? You like cake? Or you like ice cream cake?

What do I like? Cake or ice cream cake? I don't know what I'm talking to, but no one? It sounded like you were posing it to, uh, to Kaley, who were, were well-wishing. Oh yeah, the person who can't hear me or respond. I thought you were going somewhere with that. Um, I prefer- Let's try to have a conversation with you for once. I prefer, I tell you what, I prefer ice cream cake.

If you're pushing me and saying like, pick one or the other, I prefer ice cream cake, but I could eat regular cake more frequently. Yeah, not surprised. What about you? What about you, Spoon Man? Uh, I might be an ice cream cake guy. Yeah. I think, I mean, I love, the cake is, I mean, first of all, a lot of people know about my

controversial stance that, uh, cupcakes are pie. Yeah, insane, absolutely unhinged. But, um, that's like, that's the flat earth theory of the Doe Boys podcast, Mitch's crackpot theorem that cupcakes are pie. You know, you really, you try to turn a lot of people against me and it didn't work. I know, I know, I don't have your, your natural charisma. I don't have all the, uh, the fans clamoring for me, uh, but I do, I feel like I have an ironclad position here, which is that cupcakes are more cake than pie.

And I think yours is indefensible. You know, okay, fair, whatever, I will say growing up, my mom used to get me, my birthday is in October, October 6th, to be exact. And, um, she used to get me some really cool cakes for my birthday, a lot of Halloween themed cakes. Uh, and I like cake, I do like cake a lot, but I don't know, you know, as you get older, there's so many different pies. Chocolate cake is the thing that really kind of wins it back over, like as an adult, like

a slice of chocolate cake with chocolate, like a nice slice of chocolate cake, uh, is, is, is really tough to beat. Um, but if I'm going, if now, if it's like, oh, I'm going to grab a cake for, I would be like, oh, I hope they get an ice cream cake, it would be nice. It's a nice mix of ice cream and cake, you know, we'll kind of go wrong. Yeah. Yeah. So ice cream cake for me too.

All right, great. We're on the same page. I just want to get some cake talk out, but you're not, you're not giving me anything fucking back. You're just staring at me. No, I was, I just, I wanted to hear more about these haunted cakes. Oh, they were great. Yeah.

We go on haunted hay rides. That was a kind of a big thing, uh, like, uh, cause my, like I said, my birthday is close to Halloween. Yeah, I got you. So my mom will get some sort of like, you know, it was like a tree stump and there were ghosts on it. That was a cake. They were really nice looking cakes.

Oh, that's fun. Yeah. They were good. They were, they were, they were, uh, there, you know, there was no cake boss back then. Yeah. So this was a pre cake boss. Cake boss wasn't born. Um, did you ever get a Halloween cake that had your birth year, uh, but it was shaped

like a tombstone and it also accurately predicted your, uh, death year of 2017. I was just saying, if your mom ever did that, that was kind of mean spirited. Uh, you wish, Wiger, I'm taking over this pod also, uh, now everyone remembers Nick Weigar's guess, Mike Mitchell's email game. Oh yeah. We had that contest a few months ago. I want to start one too. Okay.

Guess Nick Weigar's credit card number. Nick Weigar owns a Visa card. I do have a, are you talking about my, are you talking about my debit card or are you talking about the Visa Amazon Rewards card? I'm talking about your Visa debit card. Okay. Well, your guess, guess my debit card number. Okay.

I think that'll be a fun, whoever gets closest, uh, maybe we'll give a prize to. They're going to guess a series of numbers. Uh, what is it? How many numbers is it? I'm trying to think. This will be a fun contest, Mitch. Guess a 16 digit sequence. Yeah.

A hashtag, uh, Nick Weigar's credit card. Uh, whoever's card. Debit card. That's the one that'll give the rest of that you're on your own because I don't, I want no part of organizing this contest. Closest win some sort of terrible gift like last time. The winner of our, uh, of our guess, Mitch's email, uh, contest, uh, spoon mail, hashtag spoon mail won a $25 gift card to Darden restaurants, which includes Olive Garden, Red Lobster.

I think that was a pretty fine prize. Maybe our biggest failure, uh, we've never done, uh, was that entire contest, but let's try it again with your credit card number. At the end, uh, we'll tweet out Nick's actual credit card number and, uh, whoever's closest, uh, they win it. What do you think? I love it. The contest is boring and based in nothing.

That says no justification. Just like everything else, uh, dough boys related. Yeah, yeah. Um, let's introduce our guest. She's sitting there very patiently, a very, very funny standup, a writer for at midnight. She's a writer for the upcoming Nikki Glaser show on Comedy Central. Our good friend, Emmy Blotnick is here. Hi, Emmy.

Hi guys. Does the Nikki Glaser show have a name? It's called Not Safe. Not, Not Safe. And when will it be on? Uh, February. Oh, okay. So come on.

So in the new year. So this will, this episode will be out in December and this will be, uh, is in the new year. You got a new year treat in 2016. Check out that show. Yeah, your listeners will have eight weeks of suspense. Um, so Emmy, where do you stand on ice cream cake versus cake? I go straight up cake.

I go and the cupcakes being pie thing is mind boggling me wrong. It's like, that really, there's no grounds for thinking that at all. You worked with Nick. You like him. I know whose side you're going to take immediately. If you were both strangers, I would still say that that's ludicrous. I just think that cupcakes do a lot of strange things that are, can be more pie like than cake.

Is it, maybe you've just had bad cupcakes where the outside gets like over baked to a crust like texture. But that's so far fetched. This is also, this has also happened before maybe Mitch, it's just a vocabulary issue and you're unclear on what a cupcake is. We need flashcards, like picture flashcards. I can't wait till we go to heaven. We both die soon as we both die, 2017 and we die in a murder suicide and we get to the

pearly gates and God says cupcakes are more like pie and he shoots you down to hell. I'd be happy to be there because I want no part of heaven with that fucked up God in your imagination. This is literally why people, the expression what kind of God would allow this from that particular anecdote. I mean you did, you said the word, you squeezed the word cheesecake in there earlier and I think I know where you were going, like where does cheesecake fall under that whole cake spectrum?

It's not my favorite, but it is the dessert of the heavens. Or so says Philadelphia Cream Cheese Commercials. I like cheesecake, it's good, yeah it's good, it's good, I liked it more as I grew I'd say. I never want a ton of cheesecake, but a regular golden cake I could slip and slide through with my mouth open, I could eat endless cake. You're talking like a yellow cake or a vanilla cake? Straight up yellow cake.

There's probably some videos like that on mine, I'm sure, of people slipping and sliding through a cake. Yeah that's like a erotic or not, I'm sure they exist. I'm sure that was a stunt on like super sloppy double there back with when Mark Summers was hosting. Was it ever called super sloppy double? I don't know, I don't know. No, it was never ever called super sloppy double there.

I don't know where those adjectives came from. Porn. Yeah, we should check super sloppy double there. By the way, I got some nuts, I'm snacking this episode. Yeah, that's fine. So if you hear a crunch every so often, it's Spoon Man, he's snacking, what can he do? Yeah, so if you've got a problem with crunching and munching on the podcast, it happens sometimes, so just deal with it.

I haven't eaten dinner, come on. I didn't realize what a solidified alter ego the Spoon Man was for you. It's impressed Spoon Nation, it's got up so much going on. Oh, he's run with it, he's created his own lore. Well, I will say, Emmy also saw the other side of me, which is very much a man who lives with his mother, a quiet man who likes cats and would live with his mom the rest of his life. She gets to see the other side of that, the old Spoon Man.

Yeah, busting out the drawer. Emmy, you know, Mitch talks a lot about being from Quincy, you're also from Massachusetts, correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where are you from? Cambridge. I don't know, I don't know that state at all, but are chain restaurants a thing there? Were that a thing you would go to growing up?

Yeah, for sure. And we did a lot of, like, my family did a decent number of road trips and things, so I feel like there were definitely a lot of fast food restaurants that I didn't experience until I left Massachusetts entirely, like I had never been to a Wendy's somehow. That's insane. Wow, I have to say, because Wendy's is like the Rolls Royce of fast food restaurants in Massachusetts, I feel like specifically. It might be the best we have.

It's one of the best we have. I love a D'Angelo's, I love a few others, like the local ones, but Wendy's is kind of like the best that we do. Is D'Angelo's nationwide? I don't think so. Wait, are you claiming Wendy's is Massachusetts' zone? Is that correct? No, it is not at all.

No, I'm sorry. I'm saying that Wendy's is like, it's one of our, I'd say it's, I don't know, we'll see. Pearl, you, for the Massachusetts, for Mass Spoon Nation, the section of Spoon Nation that's only in Massachusetts, let's see what they think. The hashtag, shoot us out, say, is it Wendy's, hashtag is it Wendy's? I hate hashtags, that works though, because I think Wendy's is seen to people in Massachusetts or the Northeast as like one of the best. Hashtag is it Wendy's?

What is that? Hashtag a question? Yeah, hashtag is it Wendy's? Yes or no? It's the easiest thing you can do, yes or no? You got to call them Massa Spoon Shits. Yes, all right, fine. Hashtag Massa Spoon Shits, hashtag, wait, Spoon, Spoon Shits?

All right, hashtag Massa Spoon Shits, hashtag is it Wendy's? Give us a yes or no, let us know. This is for Massachusetts Spoon Nation members only. If you don't live in Massachusetts and you're in Spoon Nation, you tweet this out, that's fucked up. You hear me? All right, kid. Oh wait, what, Thanksgiving just happened, right?

We're gonna, fuck, we're gonna, yeah, Mitch, we're recording this before Thanksgiving, but yes, Thanksgiving just happened. You didn't have to say that, you could have just thought that I'm so dumb that I didn't realize that Thanksgiving just happened. No, yeah, we're recording this in advance, but this episode will be out just after Thanksgiving, so we can discuss Thanksgiving a little bit. The people won't come to us for five months. I didn't want to, well, here's the thing, I didn't want to fucking put Emmy in a position

where she was lying, where she had to fib like she just had a Thanksgiving dinner. I didn't want to want to do that to our guests. I don't even want to watch you guys lie. But if we're lying, let's lie. Yeah, let's lie. We just had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal, it's late November, early December, just before this episode comes out, boy, what a holiday, right? Where were you for your Thanksgiving?

Oh, me, yeah, well, we took a great trip, we went, we got, we loaded up on the Potty X Sunfire and we cruised on over to Mesa, Arizona, had ourselves a full spread, a little campfire, roasted a turkey in the desert, it was great. I feel so bad. Oh, it was desperate. Yeah, yeah. So bad for Natalie that this is all fake, and instead you'll be eating Del Taco, Thanksgiving day.

You know what, she'd be happy, she would have a great time. One time we went, I mentioned this in the podcast before, one time we went on a Thanksgiving day fun run, we went on a turkey trot in the morning, and then we had lunch at Denny's and we enjoyed it, we enjoyed ourselves, I, Instagram that we were at Denny's on Thanksgiving and people started to text me that they were concerned. Did you get any donations? Yeah, yeah. But you know what, I think she would enjoy like a little chain restaurant Thanksgiving

if that's what happened. Did Denny's tweet at you and say, cut it out? We hear the cry for help. Do you have any, but talking about the world of Thanksgiving, we don't have to invent anything. Emmy, do you have any thoughts on Thanksgiving as a holiday? Oh, big fan. Big fan. I think, especially, I don't do Christmas, so Thanksgiving is kind of both, it's all

of the holiday shit rolled into one for us pretty much. I thought we were going to have to lie, so I was getting ready to be like, all of our discussions of politics went smoothly, without any disagreements, but no, I'm a big Thanksgiving fan. On our last episode, Weigher talked about how he thinks Thanksgiving's a great idea. He's an idiot. I want to say, I wanted to ask, as far as Thanksgiving goes, let's rank these sides. You know what I mean?

Oh, I like this game. Oh, boy. Yeah. I want to see what you think. Thanksgiving, you've got a lot of options. There's a lot of different things. What are some of, one of the most important things to you, where do you put them, so on and so forth.

Let's hear it. I think also too, like, we also will get into people have different sides. There are regional variations, there are family variations, so I think this is, I mean, this can be part of the discussion. But I also, you know what, yeah, let's get, let's get the, let's get Spoon Nation, everybody in on this, hashtag ranks giving. That's not bad. Yeah.

That's not bad. Yeah. It's good. Just like everything else. That's not bad. It will be a week late because of when this is coming out. Yeah. It will be fresh on their mind.

They'll know what they, maybe a week after Thanksgiving, they'll know, they'll just have experience with the sides. They'll rank where they think they should go. Sure. They'll rank Massa's scoop sides. Dear God. Done and done. Here's how I'd rate them.

Number one, stuffing. And I'll tell you my argument is that you, it's just not something you get year round and it's good. And I think that for that reason, it's a Thanksgiving standout. Number two, mashed potatoes, can't go, can't go wrong with mashed potatoes, even though they're probably maybe fourth or fifth in my, in my potato preparations rankings among Thanksgiving sides, I put it number two. Number three, again, might be a regional variation, not sure if this is eligible, mac and cheese.

Some people do mac and cheese for Thanksgiving and I think it's, it's damn good. If you get that done right, it's, it's really satisfying. That's fucking stupid. What do you mean that's fucking stupid? Mac and cheese. Yeah. Four years old. People have mac and cheese for Thanksgiving.

It's totally fine. God damn it. What do you think, Emmy? Well, I was thinking about your regional, the, the, every region has different Thanksgiving things. Like I have a brother in Atlanta and when we do Thanksgiving there, they always have corn, pudding, which I had never experienced in any form prior and it's like, oh man, the most fuckable of size.

It's so great. It's basically cornbread that's like a hot mush. It's so good. That sounds great. Yeah. That sounds really great. That's a, that's a, you know, like out from the darkness into first place for me. But I, I agree with you about stuffing.

I'm a cranberry lady. I like homemade and the can type. Wow. Good for you. cranberries are good. I think the, there's not a lot of cranberry ladies left or men, cranberry men or ladies. I feel like a. Hashtag.

I don't have it in me. If you're one of the dying, dying breed of cranberry ladies, there's, there's the one cranberry lady who sings the songs and all. Yeah. Hashtag endangered. We're the preservation society. It makes sense. You're, you know, ocean spray and all that.

We got cranberries in, in Massachusetts. That for sure. Yeah. Did you ever go to a bog? Oh, come on. I went to a bog. I went to a bog. All right.

I, uh, I waded through the bogs. I, yeah, I did all that. I too waited through the fog. What is that like? You get, you get some big boots and you just, uh, trej on in there? Pretty much. They're like a few Gordon's fishermen spin offs that work there. And they kind of guide you through the water and you're just like, what are all these berries

doing here? And then you go home. Yes. They're just floating on the surface pretty much. Yeah. That's crazy. Can you just eat them? I forget.

You can. I mean, they don't taste very good raw, but like there is something very appealing about picking up a cold berry out of a weird lake. Yeah. So. Sucking it down. So they're, uh, yeah, it's, you know what, Cape Cod is a good type of, you know, the Cape Cod potato chips.

Do you ever go to that factory? That was a nice little visit when I was younger. Yeah. That's a fun one too. Those chips are good. I've been trying to convince them to make an all folded bag, a bag where all the chips are folded on themselves. That's a great call.

That was a great idea. Nobody answers my letters. That's a, Cheez-It just recently did that with like a kind of like the, the toasty Cheez-It. They got the, the more burnt Cheez-It became, you can get a box of those. I didn't know that. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Cheez-It is having an identity crisis.

No way, man. Cheez-It. They have no idea who they are. Cheez-It's, they are, Cheez-It's is maybe one of my favorite snacks. So much better than Cheez-Nips. I'm a Cheez-It's guy through and through. I prefer Nips, but I guess. Oh my God.

You're such a fucking. I prefer Cheez-Nips. I think they're a little bit better. I think the cheese flavor is a little bit better. Um, I prefer Nips, of course. Of course that was going to come out of your mouth. You prefer Nips to Cheez-It? Yeah.

I like Cheez-Nips more. Ugh. That's so wrong. And you know what? I will die with that opinion. You will never, you will never change my mind. You certainly will. Um, you know, I, I mean, I think you're right is that, that Cheez-It used to be just like

they were just the Cheez-It and then now they've got so many different varieties. Much too many. It's like crazy. And they've kind of done the same thing that Oreo has done, which is just like, we're just going to come up with like, we're going to go from having one flavor to having 25 flavors and just sort of see what sticks. It's like, we are going to have a meltdown and take over all the shelf space. Yeah.

But you know what? All the power to them because Cheez-Its are great. And they came up with those toasted, the toasty Cheez-Its and they're, they're delicious. I can't, I guess people do like that and I can't, I can't hate on that as a person who wants a bag of all folded chips, so. Here's a fat kid snack I used to do with Cheez-Its and Nips. I would get them and then I would get some, some cream cheese and I would spread cream cheese on them and make a little cream cheese sandwich with a, with two edges being Cheez-Nips

or Cheez-Its. I believe that's called an orgy. That sounds great though. It was super sloppy for sure. I like that you fucking like Cheez-Its more. You're fucking a rotten human being. I'm going to rank my sides for Thanksgiving by the way quickly. Oh yeah, go ahead.

Besides the bird, I love the bird obviously. Not a side. I'm not a side. I love, I love the, I love the turkey. Nick doesn't love turkey. So I just had to, I had to, I had to get that out there. My godmother does a deep fried turkey. She does three different turkeys at Thanksgiving and she does such a great job.

And the, the turkey is the star, but as far as the sides go, I got to go mashed and gravy up top. I just love mashed potatoes and gravy. Stuffing second. I think, I think that's a good call. I think putting stuffing number one, I won't argue with you, but I just, I love mashed, mashed and gravy. Here's my dark course.

Here's my third. The green bean casserole, green bean and then it has the, you know, like the onion strings on top of it. Yeah. That's one of my favorites. Yeah. It's a fun Thanksgiving one. Yeah.

Yeah. It's fun. It's not going anywhere near my top three, but it's fun. Okay. That's okay. It's not going anywhere near your top three. No. Yeah.

No. I'm maybe number nine or something. Oh my god. I don't know. I just feel like there are other things I like more, but yeah, it's pretty good I think of you doing. Fucking asshole. You guys have a very like sportsman like way of talking about all of this.

It makes me wish there was a fantasy football for Thanksgiving dishes. Oh my god. That would be a treat. I love that idea. Yeah. I would draft mashed in gravy first. Maybe you couldn't draft gravy with mashed though. Oh, that's an interesting wrinkle.

And also too, if we're talking gravy, are we talking packet gravy or talking giblet gravy? Oh my god. You get to make that gravy fresh from the bird, dude. Yeah. So I mean, but are those different tiers? I haven't had both of Thanksgiving. Okay. Yeah.

Fine. Yeah. You can draft either one, I guess. All right. Okay. Well, I'm glad we were sorting out the logistics of this fantasy Thanksgiving. Fantasy thing that will ever happen. Yeah.

Maybe next year. Maybe we'll do it next year. I'll be done with the show. So we're talking about this week's chain and it's about, we're going to get into Wingstop. But before we went to Wingstop, you and I have been to Buffalo Wild Wings a couple of times and I wanted to get your opinion on that chain because that is kind of like the gold standard for mass market chicken wings at the moment. I'm like highly pro Buffalo Wild Wings and in fact, us having gone there set like too

high a bar for Wingstop, I think, like for example, I took an Uber there because I was like, well, I'm probably going to have like a whole bunch of beers. Yeah. It does not accommodate that way. No alcohol. Yeah. It's a very different experience and they are very much geared towards the takeout experiences.

So if you go on there expecting a Buffalo Wild Wings, it's just not going to meet your expectations. But you are, you are something of a wing aficionado, correct? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When did you develop a love of wings? Only pretty recently, actually.

I, like, I didn't eat a ton of wings growing up and then I sort of found them in adulthood, mostly living alone. And now I eat the whole thing. So that KFC, I Eat the Bones campaign is kind of a biography for me, but, you know, I tried to reel in some of the bone crunching around. That would be my hat. It's a bone cruncher. You do like the marrow, you like really not on the bones.

You get all the marrow out and stuff like that. I'll do as much as human teeth can do. I know people, my God, my God sister, I think I said it on the podcast before Sarah Kiley, she does such a great job. She, she, she gets the marrow out and stuff and I'm always like that I'm impressed by it. It's really, it's really like people, some really will enjoy the like getting in the bone and that flavor that they get out of it.

I, I, I'll go get it down to the bone, but I don't, I don't go much deeper than that. Yeah. It's a little much for me to crunch open the bones, makes me feel like an ogre. But I will, I will definitely like gnaw on the gristle and get all that meat off of it. I do, I do feel like kind of as a point of pride, maybe as a point of respect for this animal that has been dismembered to like kind of just try to get as much meat off of that bone as I possibly can. I agree with that philosophy.

And I think the only reason, your sister friend and I are just lesser evolved humans. No, no, no, no. No, you're both, I think higher evolved humans. Yeah. I, but that's, I, that's an interesting angle that it's out of respect for the bird. That's kind of beautiful. Yeah. It helps me rationalize like the hellish factory farming I'm complicit in as the host of this

podcast. Jesus Christ. The sort of medieval quartering of chickens by the millions. Yeah. It is crazy how many, like if you look at the quantity of chicken wings, like I remember, I don't remember the exact number I cited on the, on the podcast we did about Buffalo Wild Wings with Matt Selman from The Simpsons and, but there's like, there's something like a billion wings on Super Bowl Sunday alone that are consumed.

Oh geez. It's like crazy. Like the, the just the sheer amount of slaughter that goes into chicken wing production is like staggering. Always great way to start off the old chicken podcast by talking about how much slaughter there is. But even when we walked into wingstop, you could see over the counter them emptying like a clear plastic sleeping bag of wings into a fryer.

And it's just, yeah, I don't feel like terribly emotional about chickens. So I don't know. I said this on the podcast before that there's, there's no greater change from such a cute little baby chick into a monster, terrible adult chicken. So I don't really feel too bad about it either, but there's still the fact that like it is such a known thing that they, they treat them worse than anything. I feel like the chickens are still getting fucked over really bad. Yeah.

It's not a pleasant life. It's not. You know, but whatever. We've dealt with all of our feelings of guilt and you know, now we can talk about it. Well, we've talked about this on the show before. It's a hard thing and we can't, we can't, we can't harp on it too much because we've already said it once and we feel bad, but we like meat and what can we do? I wish that I wish it was better.

I wish it was a better world in every way. Yeah. That's all. There are, I mean, there are steps we could take. No. We're choosing not just. It looks like we can't do anything that we already haven't tried for good people. We're all out of ideas.

Morally we're in the clear. Yeah. So let's get into Wingstop a little bit because I mean, we talked about having you on the podcast. We're so happy to have you on and knew you're a Wing fan and you were so gracious to, I believe take your, your first visit to Wingstop. That's correct. So we went to the Wingstop, we, we, we paid, actually it was last night.

We last night we went over to the Wingstop in Western and Santa Monica Boulevard here in Los Angeles. And it is just like the thing about Wingstop, it really is like the size of a quiz nose. They're really, really, they're pretty compact and there's not a lot of seating area in there. You know, there's a couple TVs with blood that are going to be playing a sporting event, but really it's just kind of there just because they feel like they should do that. And it's clearly that was about the aviation theme, which they reference on the website

and what you've seen some of their signage is really kind of half-assed. It's not really fully realized inside. Not at all. So yeah, kind of a bare bones from a design, from an interior design standpoint, it's kind of a bare bones, no pun intended presentation is, and you kind of line up and you order at the counter and we got there and we got a few different combos of, of wings. So let's get into that a little bit. Emi, what did you end up getting?

I did, I think it was five pieces of a Korean sauce on a wing. And then both with, yeah, it was that and hold on, let me take this again. It was the Korean wings and then it was the original hot and then I threw in some veggie sticks because we had a lot of fries. Yeah. So you kind of get, we kind of each individually got a combo with the idea of we were going to share it all. I went with a 10 pieces bone-in combo.

I got five of them, lemon pepper, which is Rick Ross's favorite, five of them, Cajun, which is their third spiciest underneath the mago habanero and then the atomic, which is at the very top, which I wouldn't dare try. I got some, I ordered some cheese fries, which were delivered without cheese, but they were gracious enough to put cheese on them when we noticed the air and some blue cheese for dipping and a 20 ounce of Barks vanilla from the fountain. I could disagree with Rick Ross, by the way. The lemon pepper was maybe my least favorite.

Interesting. But I'll let you know what I got. I got 10 wings. I got half mild and half Louisiana rub. And then also I got a diet Barks vanilla root beer. And then when I went and got a refill, I got a diet vanilla cherry doctor pepper. And you get some regular fries. And I got some regular fries with mine.

And there were also some boneless wings. We got five boneless. We asked for garlic parmesan, but they delivered five boneless also with lemon pepper. We had to get that air corrected. There was a little bit of haggling involved with that one. Yeah. Yeah. We had to deliver the old nuggets.

Because why are we not each ate a boneless that had lemon pepper on it? Which is how we know on site, you wouldn't necessarily be like, oh, these are clearly lemon pepper. It could be any sort of dry rub. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then we noticed the air. We ate a couple of nuggets.

They demanded the uneaten nuggets back, returned us, I think with, we had eaten two. So there were three left. They returned us five boneless ones with the garlic parmesan. I think they just took the three existing ones and rolled them in the sauce and tossed them a couple more. I think, no, I actually think that they were all new because they were extremely hot. Oh, okay. Okay.

I think another employee was like, why did you get these other wings back? Yeah. Because she shouldn't have asked for them back. You know what? You get a little treat. You get three more. You know, if it gets messed up like that, what are they going to do? They're going to toss them away anyways.

Right. Where's the accountability? Yeah. They truly got the order wrong. It wasn't like we were, it wasn't like Wyger and I were scheming like we usually do to try to get more wings. They actually genuinely messed it up. So yeah, it was a little sloppy in that regard.

But I will say, I don't know, here's my thing. I always thought Wingstop was Wing Street. Yes. So my biggest thing with this place is that I thought it was a different place always. Yeah. Wing Street I think is the, it's the sub-wing restaurant or the wing brand that's associated with Pizza Hut. That's right.

It's not its own entity. And I in turn thought it was Hot Wings Cafe, which is a totally unrelated place too. Hot Wings Cafe is a local LA institution that is not a nationwide chain like Wingstop or Buffalo Wildlings. Yes. And it was such a funny thing to me because I was like, man, Wing Street kind of sucks. And then when we got there, I was kind of pleasantly surprised. I kind of like Wingstop.

I don't think Wingstop is bad. Yeah. I thought the service was bad. I thought we were eating in a hallway. But I thought that the food was actually not bad. I thought the wings were decent. Yeah. What did you think of the wing quality, Emmy?

I thought the wings themselves were okay. They were just fine. But the sauces felt, the word I wrote down during the meal was chemically charged. I get that. They were very bright in color. Like if they stained something, that that stain would outlast the apocalypse. I can't remember which one it was exactly. Maybe the Cajun?

Or there was one that was like a really neon. The Cajun was really red. Yeah. Yeah. Blood of an alien red. It really was. Very tasty. But like, you know, you should be wearing protective gloves or whatever.

I agree with you and I will also say this. We talked beforehand because I was going to do, I was thinking of getting the classic hot and you were going to do the classic hot. So I said, I'll get mild. I got mild. When they came, the mild had a nice orange look to them. The classic hot, they were red. They were red.

And I kind of preferred the mild to the red. And this is to the, I'm sorry, to the hot. I liked the milds compared to the hot. And it was because it was that red and not enough butter or whatever it is. But that was a question I was going to ask you guys. When you do get hot wings, how much do you like the atomics? How much do you like the really hot ones? Because to me, the perfect looking wing, it is kind of like an orange looking sauce.

And let us know, I want to know what people think to you. Are you going for like a hot, redder sauce or an orange, an orange sauce? Hashtag it, masasauce preferences. Masasauce preferences. Hashtag hot, hot chicks, hot chicks, whatever, hot, hot chicks, X, hot, oh my God, what are you doing? I turned into Rain Man suddenly. Hashtag, H-O-T, C-H-I-X.

Hashtag, massive, oh God. Here's what I'm going to say. Whatever Emmy said, just hashtag it. I just add more X's and T's to hot and chicks. Do you think that we've done too many hashtags on this episode or not? Here's what I'm going to say. Forget the Weigar's debit card dumb contest. Throw that in the trash.

What the fuck? But that's bullshit. However, if you out there can transcribe every hashtag that was recited on this episode and fit them into one tweet, whoever can do that first is going to win a prize. That will be the contest. And also the Weigar thing is still on. Anyways, I'm like in a good orange colored wing. If it's red, I'm like, there's too much hot sauce going on in that thing.

It's interesting how the color can indicate that so vividly. I guess it's just what you were saying, the proportion of Frank's red hot or whatever the hot sauce of choice is with butter. It is kind of an observation I haven't made, but you're right, that you can kind of tell how intense something's going to be just by how orange or how red the color is. It's like frogs in the rainforest, how poisonous they are. And I would so much rather enjoy it. You know what?

I used to be, I used to love spicy stuff. People would give me peppers and I'd eat them like a big dumb ogre like you were saying. I would just eat anything and be like, it wasn't that bad. I used to love stuff like that. I've gotten older. My stomach doesn't do as well as it used to. But I would rather just enjoy it. I mean, I still don't shy away from spicy stuff, but I would just rather, oh, these

are just spicy enough. I got a kick out of them and it's good. But to give Wingstop credit, I didn't think anything was really too spicy. I thought we didn't get atomic, but all the other spicy wings that we got, they were still satisfying. They weren't crazy spicy. I think that was partly that their spiciness rankings are accurate. They reflect them correctly.

I feel like sometimes a place will be like, this is the crazy abanero, but they're actually just trying to make you feel good and it's something that's not actually that spicy. I feel like the spice rankings, they are actually reflective. If you're going to go a tier above, and I think that was also our ordering where we kind of were like, oh, I don't think any of us want to go the daring hot. We got some blazin' wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. And those are hot. Yeah.

Those are just unpleasant. That's too much heat for me. I get it. If you're a daredevil, if you're a heat chaser, knock yourself out. But for me, that cajun, that two tiers above the top is about where I'll tap out. I agree. I think that's about right. I do like the way we ordered overall.

I feel like with Wing Places across the board, the way to do it is cover as much ground as you can flavor-wise. Yeah. Divide and conquer. Sort of speak. Kind of order your main ones. I really want to try these two, and then we talked about it. We did do a good job.

I congratulate us on that. And I sort of like doing lots of like separate little nibbles, because then later it's harder to visualize the heap of garbage you ate. Oh, yeah. It was like, well, I never saw it all in one place. I don't know if that makes any sense. No, it 100% does, and Nick and I do this sort of thing all the time, and we try to pretend that we are not eating terrible meals every week.

And now, as the holidays come, doubling up so that we can have enough episodes, because Old Weigar likes to release one a week, as he says. Here's that. I think we... Wait, that's not a quote. But I think it's just podcasts come out once a week. That's just what happens. So, both the Steve and Nick Weigar.

This is a wing discussion. Do you like drumettes, or do you like the winglets? Do you like the flats? Give me a mix. The ones I don't go for are when they leave the toe on, you've got to break that toe off. I've never really had to deal with that too much, and that is awful. I think maybe it's more in restaurants rather than chains. I feel like chains do a good job of like, breaking it up and removing the chicken from

the equation as much as possible. But when they leave like a toe in there. If you're at Buffalo Wild Wings and you get a toe, I say that you're sending that back. You're sending everything back. I'd say it's probably pretty unlikely that that's going to happen, but yeah, if you are, I'd send that order back. Weigar is not a drumette's guy. No, I'm not a drumette's guy, but I will say that I think that drumettes are good, but

the flats, some people call them the... What do people call them? The thigh gaps. The thigh gaps. I think the thigh gaps are kind of the thinking man's wing, because it is kind of the wing part. Oh my God. You have to do a little bit more work to get that meat out.

You kind of have to disassemble it a little bit, but it's like you get a little prize. Yeah, it's the oyster of wings. They are more work, and I agree then, that you've earned your wing more with the flat. Thinking man's wing? Because you tear it open and suck out all the meat in between the two parts. It's a little bit more work. If you don't want to be brainless, you'll go in there, you get the boneless. You don't have to do any work.

The drumette's kind of a midpoint, but I think you really want to get into it. I feel like you have to disassemble that flat and suck the meat out from the middle. How do you guys do it when you're eating the flats? Do you take a bite of the skin part? You know what I'm saying? Bite on first, or do you break up the two bones first and then eat the chicken? I take the flat and I take a big bite out of it, like holding it, what's that, parallel to my mouth or whatever.

Like a harmonica? Like a harmonica. Exactly. Actually, that was great. Like a harmonica, I take a big bite out of it, and then I kind of... Do you blues travel it? I blues travel it. People confuse me for John Popper or whatever his name is.

Look is a good song, I will say, on the side note. It is a good song. Yeah, it is. It's a really interesting song. It's about hits. Go back and listen to it. Maybe we'll blow your mind. Then I take a bite like that, and then I kind of work the bone open from there.

How about you guys? Do you have a technique? I mean, that sounds pretty much like what I do. I don't necessarily have a game plan when I'm going in, but I think, yeah, you take a big bite and then you do a little break in with your hand to finish her off. It depends. Sometimes you can kind of get it out without too much wiggling. Other times you have to crack at it a little bit more.

I'd say the flats have too many veins in them, though. That's my issue. Sure. A lot of veins, a lot of stuff going on in there. You get meat, but then you also get some chicken veins. Can I ask you guys, what are boneless wings? How are boneless wings? I don't quite understand myself.

To me, they're basically just like they're trying to repackage nuggets in what sounds like a classier, more adult version. Yes. I thought maybe there was a piece of information that I didn't have, that it was like winged meat that had the bones extracted somehow, but they're always just nuggets. Someone was withholding information about them. It's a clever nugget rebrand, I think. No, it's not quite like a seedless watermelon where there's some sort of genetic engineering

going on. It's flapping around with just like loose like, I don't know, monsters. These tentacle appendages without bones. Tentacles. That's a great word. But yeah, no, I think it's basically like, because I believe boneless wings first came about from chilies. I think that's the first place that had boneless wings.

If you order them at chilies, they're basically like you're just getting nuggets that have some wing sauce on them. And I think that's what very much feels like where you're getting a wing stop. Well, you know, Massachusetts, there's a lot of boneless fans over there. And I don't know if I would call them nuggets. I've had a lot of good boneless wings that are just different to me. Sure. They're not like the chilies boneless either.

But I get it. I get it. I get people giving them a hard time, but I've had some really, really good boneless wings. I thought the ones at Wing Stop were really fascinating. We said that it was very much like eating the carpet of a movie theater floor. Yeah, it was like the essence of a movie theater. Yes, the essence of a movie theater. Just to say better than how I just did, eating a movie theater carpet.

It was like, there was a lot of, because we went back and got these, by the way, they were all steaming hot. They were fried and they were very, very hot. And there was garlic kind of butter on there, which already kind of felt like a movie theatery thing. And then just this, like, what was it, like a cheddar, the big heap of parmesan. Oh, okay. Sorry.

Parmesan cheese that comes in the shakers you can put on popcorn or something. Right, right. Sort of like a drug dealer's bounty of parmesan. I felt like it was in sort of like heaps on each piece. Oh, yeah. There was like a mountain of it on each individual piece. Yeah, they were kind of like, you know, beignets dusted with confectioners' sugar in terms of presentation.

It was just like a whole bunch of white powder on top of these little fried orbs. Way to make a more relatable fancy boy. If they called them savory beignets, they'd be a fucking hit. Oh, yeah, yeah. I think if that was the frame of mind I had going into those, I think I would have been really pleased. Yeah, they were surprising and they weren't the only movie theater tastes we had because I thought those Nick got cheese fries and they were so much like a movie theater nacho

cheese. It just smelled like a movie theater. It was really strange. I also kind of liked those boneless wings, by the way. I was enjoying myself inhaling the parmesan cheese. I liked them too. I just thought that the taste was so like, I was like, where do I know this from? And I was like, oh, Fresh Pond Cinemas in Cambridge.

The cheese fries were like a veritable goop festival. They really were. They really cut loose on those. They did. Yeah, it was both intense flavors, but I didn't hate either of them, I'll say. Yeah, I hadn't gotten the cheese fries there before. And so I'm not sure if, because when I ordered the cheese fries, they gave me regular fries. I brought it up to the counter.

It was just like, hey, this is what I ordered, show them their seat. They took them back behind the counter and then almost immediately handed me back a thing just covered with cheese. So I don't know if that's like the standard amount or if they were like in a hurry and just like squeezed too much, but it was like doused in cheese. It's like so much cheese sauce, just permeating like every, all the surface area of every fry. And to me, it was just a little overwhelming.

It was just too much. I could have used about a half as much cheese sauce and got a little bit more of that fry character and maybe have some room to dip some and catch up a ranch if I wanted. That's fair. Fair, fair indeed. I was like, what do you guys think of cheese fries in general? Like, you know, you've got your, you've got your fries. We got in this a little bit on our last episode about Del Taco, but you've got your fries,

your regular fries. You can put some toppings on them, you can get some cheese on them, you can put some chili and cheese. Those are kind of the standard ones. You can go crazy and get like the Irish nachos, which have like bacon and green onion. You can get like your carne asada fries. What do you guys think of all the different fry variants? I'd sooner go nachos than any of those, I think.

Yeah. I'd rather have not. I'd like a nice crisp golden fry that I can dip in like ketchup or some other like aioli or whatever. Aioli. Hey, I can get fancy too. You know what? If I'm going to do anything on those fries, I'm going to make them garlic fries.

That's what I feel like. Garlic fries aren't good if you get them right. It can be bad. I do really like chili cheese fries. I will sometimes take like just a regular cheese fries, but yeah, I think I just want my everyday walking around fries. You know, I just want the ones that I can just standard and can dip in some ketchup and ranch unless I'm specifically craving that.

Yeah, nachos versus loaded fries. That's a tough one for me. I might go loaded fries. I might rather have some fries with a whole bunch of crap on top of them. Maybe just because I like fries more than tortilla chips. They're so much messier though. They're definitely a lot messier. Even messier than nachos.

Yeah. At a ballpark, you'd rather have nachos or a movie theater than loaded fries. True. True. Yeah. I disagree, but I also feel like the fries at this place... What do you disagree with? About, I don't know, pretty much everything you said.

No, your stance on what you'd rather have. I just don't agree with that. And probably everything else you said. But I feel like a, oh no, I forgot what I was going to say because you fucking had to interject. Was it about wingstop? No, probably not. Was it about Mario Kart?

God damn it. Was it about how you prefer Waluigi to Wario? Actually, I'm a toad guy, as you know. Oh yeah, you like the high acceleration. Yeah, high acceleration, just keep it going for the rest of the race. I mean, you're not really a gamer, are you? Mario Kart's one of the only ones I do in no one play. And I'm a Yoshi lady.

Oh yeah, there you go. Girls always just like Mario Kart. But that's what we understand Mario Kart. Why? It's straightforward. Why do girls always love Mario Kart? You know what? If you can't handle the rest of the games, get out.

Jesus. When did this turn into like this, your men's rights activist hashtag gamer game movement? This is like a spoon snack smack down is the word I was trying to say. Don't give me this Mario Kart shit. Spoon man with the misogynist heel turn, alienating half of Spoon Nation. Let's be honest, alienating 10% of Spoon Nation. No way. I love the ladies of Spoon Nation.

Don't you dare. I think Mario Kart is a game that can be enjoyed by all. I think if you're a fan of Mario Kart and that's what you like, that's great. Hats off to Shigeru Maimoto. Yeah, the legendary designer behind that franchise and many others. Yeah. Did you know that? You Mario Kart fans?

Jesus Christ. No, I'm not a Davler. I'm a Davel. What are you doing? Attacking our guests. I'll see myself out. I was going to bring up the napkin situation at Wingstop, but we might not have to discuss that.

We probably won't get it. You know what? No, no. I can't joke on this podcast and give her a hard time about Mario Kart. You can absolutely joke on this podcast. God damn it. Just keep it. Just keep it.

It's all in good fun here, guys. I'd play a little bit of Super Bomberman if that makes you feel any better. It does, actually. That's a good one. That really does. And I would play Mario Kart with you any day of the week. You'd probably kick my ass, I'm sure. Not really.

I'm really, really good at it. That was so falsely modest, so, probably false. This napkin situation we absolutely have to touch on. So here's the thing at, I mean, do you want to go through this, because I have some thoughts on this, but you had some pretty strong opinions we were talking about in the restaurant. I'd say we could just, to run off the bat, we could just say you could categorize it as a clusterfuck. Yes.

I called it, I said it was an utterly degrading napkin solution. While we were there, trying not to talk about the restaurant, but it was, for an entire wing franchise, one roll of thin, crappy paper towels that you wouldn't line a birdcage with for everybody to go rip from with saucy hands. Public school quality paper towels, just as a roll, like one of those, you know that- I went to public school, so that's insulting. So did I, so did I, but like that brown paper towel, you know, that shitty thing you'll get in like an airport bathroom, that's what they had on the counter, and not at every

table, just add on the counter. Yes. So when you ran out of scraps from having torn your own paper towels in willy-nilly and unusable shapes, you had to go back up with wet sauce hands, and they were very saucy wings too, and go shred your own like a cat. No, like maybe outside of barbecue, no food necessitates napkins quite like wings. And for them to have an inadequate napkin solution in store, even if dining in is just 30% of their revenue, I get that it's not a priority for them, but man, you got to have,

just have the napkins you give for takeout on the counter in that case, like don't make us like rip from this paper towel roll that isn't even a quality dispenser. And also, I went up at the end of our meal and asked for some wet naps, and the lady behind the counter said, oh no, we don't have those, just paper towels, and pointed at the empty roll. You just squirted a ton of cheese sauce into your hand. But no wet naps, like to me, I expect that at the end of my meal at a wing restaurant. You're going to be presented with some, will you pay at the counter there, but if you're

paying at a restaurant, like a Hot Wings Cafe, if you will, they'll present you with the bill, they'll give you some wet naps that you can clean yourself up with. It felt like it's a bad taste to have in your mouth when you leave the fuck you of no wet naps. Yeah, it was, like you said, the sauce was very sticky, and it was, yeah, it was... Toxic. No, I didn't think it was good. They were good.

Well, let's get into that a little bit. I thought the spicy Korean, which you got, was good. That was a standout for me. I liked that one a lot. It wasn't a standout for me as much. It was really syrupy. It was really, really syrupy, and the type of thing that you need wet naps for, like there's no coming back from that, like your phone is going to be sticky later if you don't

get to wash your hands. I thought I was bleeding later in the night, but it was wing sauce that had collected in my cuticle pool. The old cuticle pool of wing sauce. I know that well. But I thought the Korean was good. I thought the dry rub was also especially good. Which you were kind of, I got to say...

Or I'm sorry, the Louisiana dry rub, I apologize. That was one of the ones I ordered, and not to attack you, because I apparently attacked you over Mario Kart. I had enough of this. But you didn't think that the dry rub was going to be good. You weren't a big dry rub fan before that, correct? Right. Right.

And then it turned out being one of the ones that you liked more so? It was more of a moist rub, which I know is a word that doesn't sit well with everybody, but like a dry rub at Buffalo Wild Wings is like KFC, like crunchy, dry dry, and the dry rub at Rick Ross's House of Wings is sort of like a sweating wing, like it's not drenched in anything. It's like it's just got some, that's terrible. That noise, we lost subscribers because of that noise. Our listeners are used to that.

They're used to us chomping and chewing the microphones. I know exactly what you're trying to say. I had some, yeah, there's probably a German word for it. I will say that I thought that Wingstop had good crispness to their wings, and that to me is really important. And yeah, I want a crisp wing. I've said this before, I like a well-cooked wing, a crisp wing. I want that skin to be crackling.

I want a nice crunch when I'm biting into them. Yeah, I'm a crispy wing guy. Yeah, I think if crispness is your priority and you're viewing it as a binary, then I would say there's more crispness and crunch for what you're going to get a Wingstop versus Buffalo Wild Wings. It's just a choice, it's kind of a crunchier wing. But I think weighing that with the sauces, I like the crispness of the wings, but I'm on Emmy's side with the sauces, then a lot of them were just, I didn't feel like there

were as many hits as you'll get in an average order of Buffalo Wild Wings, where I feel like they have more sauces, just a greater quantity of sauces, and I think there's individual sauces are more likely to be successful. I did like that, Louisiana rub, I thought that was good. I did like the Cajun, I thought that was a good amount of heat. Yeah, Korean barbecue for me was really good. I like that it was, because sometimes those sweeter sauces, they're just like, you're just overwhelmed by sugar, and this having a little bit of spice on top of it made it

more tolerable, although it was probably more like teriyaki than anything that you could actually identify as Korean, not that I know Korean barbecue all that well. It's kind of a fast food buzzword, I feel like. Yeah, it is. Like, Sriracha has had its peak, and now calling something Korean feels a step more like novel to us, I think. I think you're right, I think that that is maybe going to be a trend we see more and more of.

Insulting to an ancient culture, we're just taking like, we'll just take your nationality and use it to describe some random Pan-Asian flavor. It's the most American thing. Yeah, it is very American, but I thought that was a good sauce. Original hot, mild, yeah, I feel like I'd take the mild over the original hot, and I'm with Rick Ross, I think them lemon peppers pretty tasty. I'd get those lemon peppers, I'd get those routinely. I didn't like the lemon peppers, but I also don't like lemon pepper as a flavor.

There was a thing when I was younger where I was sick one night, my mom was making lemon chicken and it filled up the house, and I smelled it and I got sick or something, lemon and chicken don't go great together for me anymore. Gotcha, so you've got a sense memory that prevents you from enjoying lemon pepper chicken, but you have no problem with something that you would associate as the flavor of the floor of a movie theater. In fact, I actually really liked those. Emma, wait, you said something last night about lemon pepper, is that correct?

Yeah, so my sister-in-law is a chef and she I think had some bones to pick up on with lemon pepper because it is not technically a spice, like it's not a plant the way like rosemary grows from the ground, lemon pepper is like lemon flavored pepper. So it's more of a man-made creation, I guess. I don't know if that makes it better or worse, I'm not wild about the flavor myself. Yeah, I'm not big on it. Do you think that's common among chefs or is that you think that's your sister-in-law's own opinion?

Well, I do think that it seems like a fact to me, but thinking of it as lesser maybe might be, I don't know, food people can get snobby about anything. Yeah, but I mean, I guess who cares, right? Because like you can just like, like mayonnaise isn't like a thing you like mine from the earth, it's like a created thing, so mayonnaise is good. Right, but if mayonnaise was included with like, air, you might have an issue with... I got you. You know, I don't know.

Relax, Nick. I'm pretty hyped up about this lemon pepper thing. It's funny that Rick Ross' favorite is lemon pepper. I know. That's an interesting choice. Yeah, it is my least favorite of the bunch. I did, despite it being a movie theater taste, I liked the garlic parmesan. Those were an experience.

They were. They were a nice little experience, and they were nice and hot and crispy, and the spicy Korean was good, but it wasn't great for me. I liked the Cajun. I didn't love the hots, but they weren't bad. I liked the milds just more than the hots, I guess. And then the Louisiana rub was maybe was my favorite of the bunch. I didn't try, I will say I didn't try a lemon pepper wing.

I just had the boneless accident mistakes, and then that was enough for me. Yeah, that's kind of how I rank a mild. The Cajun, I'd say Louisiana rub and Cajun were up there along with the mild as my favorites, my top three. I think I said this last night also, but I think if we had taken that order to go, we would have probably had an entirely different opinion of the place. Sure. Because just the environment, especially when you're expecting something like a Buffalo

Wild Wings, is just such a like, you're like at divorce dad's house, basically. And my ultimate review of the place is that I went and ate wings somewhere else afterwards. Wait, where did you get wings afterwards? Oh, dear God. I know. That is really funny. It was really fucked up. The Oaks Gourmet, next to UCB Franklin, does wing night, and they're oven roasted.

So it's kind of a different, kind of a different enough thing where I was like, okay, they're in front of me, like my friend was having some, and so it's like, all right. Oh, you can have one or two more. You know, it's almost like continuation. I have four more. Okay. That makes me like some kind of a sea creature or what. How are those?

They are good. They're definitely, they're not fried, so they don't get crunchy on the outside. They're like just, they fall off the bone or whatever, sort of like a wing and rib marriage. Okay. I feel, I'm honestly feeling some pangs of guilt that your wing craving was not satisfied by our meal. Yeah, we fucked up.

I feel like. It was satisfied. Other wings were just, they just happened coincidentally to be offered to me in an hour later. And I had no discipline. That's, I tip my cap to you. I think you're cooler than Nick and I, and you did a good job. You went and got another wing. We should be doing it.

We call ourselves the dough boys, and what do we do? We went home. My dough woman, you here. We went home and texted to each other the rest of the night and probably did nothing. Nothing at all. Talked about Mario Kart. What did you guys text about? I don't know.

What do we usually text about? Oh no. I think we're, I think honestly think that our texts are generally about scheduling this podcast. And it's usually me reminding you that we have a podcast, you complaining that we just recorded an episode, me reminding you that it's a weekly podcast, so that means we're going to record one at least once a week, and then you eventually acquiescing and then asking what time and day it is.

What a beautiful friendship. What did I do? No, no, I wouldn't text about anything, but actually I'm not seeing anything timestamped for last night in particular. You had a show afterwards. I just went home and laid on my couch like normal. I had a couple hours to kill. Wings can do it to me.

I will say that. Wings can make me feel, and I actually didn't get to say this on our last episode, but like Del Taco, I can feel a little groggy after Del Taco. I can feel almost sick. Wings I can sometimes, they'll mess with my stomach a little bit sometimes, especially if they're the spicy ones. I did all right with these ones. I didn't feel too bad, but I also didn't even eat any of your veggie sticks.

I feel terrible about that. They were the same veggie sticks you'd get anywhere else. No place does, no place has their own take on veggie sticks. Maybe that's the next step in just wing innovation. As someone figuring out something to do with those celery and carrot sticks, so they're just not so generic everywhere. That's a good point. A different side.

Maybe it's not fries anymore. Maybe there's something else. Kind of into some fun shapes. Yeah, do something with them. Maybe season them a little bit. Have a different distinct dipping sauce. I don't know. There's something to do with those carrots and celery sticks, so they're just not the

same. They feel like they're from the same supplier. Yeah. You fry them up. Fry them up. They're coming naked to the party, you know, put them in some shit. Well, forever they were to cool things down, I feel like. They helped you.

Yeah, I'm not going to eat a wing on this one, but now it's not mainly all hot wings anymore. There's a lot of different flavors. Yeah, I do like that that has happened in the wing sector, that now you can get so many different sauces. I love that. I love that you don't have to just, it's not just about a heat check. You're getting a tour around the world with all these different sauces and rubs.

I will say the ranch and the blue cheese were both tasty. Yeah. The wing stuff. They did a good job. They have good sauces there. Where do you guys rank wings and kind of the pantheon of like American food or pub food, wherever you want to characterize them? Quite hot.

Yeah, I'd say it's top five. I mean, I would even say it's top three. What do you got? I'd go top three, too. Burger, pizza and wings. That's it. The big three. Wow.

The worst wing I've ever had was still like a seven. Yeah, sure. You know, like the worst they can be is a seven, and more often they're like a nine or a ten. Yeah. Yeah. So, success. Burgers, wings and pizza. And then I think if you put a fourth in there, I'd even put like French fries.

But then if you put like, what, if you keep going, what do you get into? Like mozzarella sticks, jalapeno poppers or something? I mean, what do you get to do? No, not even close. Take a high-cold mozzarella sticks. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is like wings, I think have the versatility of you can have them as an app and you can have them as a main.

You know, you can make that your meal with a side or you can have those as a starter and then have a burger or sandwich was your entree. And you know, I'm going to give a quick shout out to the fact that they have one of those cool Coke machines and we, and I, like I said, I got to try a couple of cool different diet flavors of a soda, which makes things fun. Yeah. That was a stupendous soda fountain. Yeah.

It really is. They got one of those ones with like the touch screen where you can customize yours. And I got to say, I just kind of chose it on a whim as a flight of fancy, but vanilla root beer. Man, that's great. Yeah. It's like a real like tour de force of soda flavors. Honestly, like a high point of the meal for me.

I was just like, cause I was so surprised and I was like, oh man, that is good. And I enjoyed that whole cup of soda. Their soda fountain is as good as their napkin system is bad. That's true. That's really saying something. Yeah. Yeah. Those, those new soda fountains, man, we talked about it a little bit last night, but it's

kind of like some sort of red box system. If they make those a standalone. I mean, that's, that's just a thing that could exist because those are, it's so satisfying to have all those different menu options you can pick through and the syrup to soda water proportion is almost always just spot on. Yeah. They, they, they do a good job with those things. Cats off to Coca-Cola.

Yeah. Those robots are going to take our jobs. Let's get to our final thoughts on Wingstop. So Emmy, this is how this will work. We'll go around. We'll each sort of say our piece, our closing argument, if you will, our overall assessment of the chain. And then at the end of your, the end of your argument, give a rating from one to five forks.

Five is the highest. So we'll start with you. Okay. Let me just shuffle all my paperwork around. Stacks. I, not to repeat myself here, but I think had it been a takeout order, it would have been a higher ranking, but because the place itself has this, I could, the aviation theme was kind of lost on me and the, the, the whole, there was just something off about the place,

I think. But the movie theater shit was all cool and good. I'll give it a three, three forks. Three forks. Three forks. Maybe, maybe that's too high. As soon as I said it, I thought, can I do a half fork? You can absolutely.

You can do a half fork. You can do a tine, whatever you like. We're doing a 2.5 fork. Two and a half forks. Two and a half forks. Wow. Wow. All right.

Go ahead, Spoonman. Well, I didn't know this place existed. I thought it, I thought it was Wing Street. The sign is so generic, like, I was like, oh, I've like probably driven by this place a bunch. I've never noticed it. You've been distracted by the check cashing places on either side. They were, there were a lot of check cashing places on either side of it and a wing stop

was just in white font and it looked like, I don't know how it is at other places. I always thought it was Wing Street. I always thought Wing Stop was Wing Street. I don't like Wing Street. I do like Wing Stop. I like the crispy wings. I thought the sauces were pretty good, especially for what it was. I don't like the theme, but come on, who likes any of the themes?

The napkin system is absurd. It's one of the worst things I've ever seen. It was terrible. You don't get individual napkins at all. That was really bad. I like Rick Ross, so I, you know what, a thing that kind of hurt it for me was the fries. They kind of did like the, they had good season, the fries were good, but there was too much skin on them.

They were like the hand cut skin on kind of Russet, Russet fries or whatever, right? Tim Russerts. Tim Russerts fries. You know when you eat those fries and they just taste a little too much like potato skin? That was kind of my issue with it. But yeah, like I said, the garlic parmesan and the cheese fries were kind of guilty pleasures that I enjoyed and I liked the Cajun, I liked the mild and I really liked the Louisiana Rub.

I think Rick Ross is a boss and he's a wing boss apparently and he owns some of these places and I think you're doing a good job. Rick Ross, if you ever want to come on and discuss this, I'm down to hang out. We can chat and talk about how Wyger butchered your lyrics earlier in the opening. Here's the hashtag, Rick Ross, a chooset and you know what, hats off to you, Mr. Ross. I give Wingstop four forks. Wow, four forks going high. Or you guys going low.

You're like the Randy Jackson of this bunch, I feel. It was too generous. Much too generous. Like the Randy Quaid. Good, I love Randy Quaid. Easy, you know, he's great in those vacation movies, a lot of fun. Do you, I'm so sorry to interrupt you, I forgot the other thing is that there were sauce stains on the wall.

You know what, that's a good observation. There was a sauce stain on the wall, damn it. Absolutely fair observation and it wasn't like a recent sauce stain. There was like, it was like a caked on, like sauce was flung on the wall some point months earlier and just was never sponged off. When your parents were first falling in love, that's when that happened. And that was right next to our table and that was a little bit, that was pretty displeasing. And I think that does kind of fold into my thoughts on the franchise.

Thank you for pointing that out at me. Here's the thing, the wings at Wingstop are undeniably good quality, like they are good wings. All right, four forks. They're good wings, they're crisp and hot, they're well cooked. The different sauces, there's some winners, there's some losers, but you can find sauces that you like and you can find a preparation of wings that you're going to enjoy. Whether you're a drumette guy, whether you're into flats, whether you're into both, whether

you're into boneless, whether you're into strips, which are an option which we didn't have, which they also have, that chicken's going to come out hot and well seasoned. And for that reason, in that sense, Wingstop succeeds. And I think their fries are pretty good too. Their fries are, I agree with Mitch's observation of the russet nature is there. You're definitely getting a lot of potato character. It doesn't bother me, but it's a thing to note. However, the dying in experience at a chain restaurant is paramount as far as I'm concerned.

Certainly, you can go to a place like even a very fast food-oriented chain like McDonald's or Wendy's or in and out burger can have a dining room experience that is still pleasant. Preach flagger. Yeah, that is still something that you can enjoy your meal there and not feel like you're in an environment that is frankly hostile. Yeah, I think hostile is fair. That's kind of what I felt like. This is all these factors here in this space are competing with me, enjoying my meal.

And especially when compared to the sector leader, Buffalo Wild Wings, which has one of the best dining experiences of chain restaurants currently. There's fucking the beer is flowing. They're pouring your drinks. They're bringing out wings. There's sports on the TV. You're having a great time with your friends. It's a great place to hang out.

You can sit there for four hours. Wingstop, I feel like the second I walked in, I wanted to be out the door. And you know, in 1988, the Democratic nominee for president was Michael Dukakis. His running mate was Lloyd Benson. Lloyd Benson had a quote talking in reference to Dan Quayle and I'm going to paraphrase that now. Wingstop, I know Buffalo Wild Wings. Buffalo Wild Wings is a friend of mine.

You, sir, are no Buffalo Wild Wings. Three forks for Wingstop. That literally brought tears to my eyes that is so, that was moving. You know, you're out there, you're up there on an island with four forks. I think that's a, thank you, I mean, I appreciate that. I don't know. I think you're rating it too highly. I just, I get what you're saying.

You seem to be ignoring, yeah, you're ignoring these snuff film remainders on the wall next to us. And it didn't scare me to run to the bathroom and hide like Wyger. I was okay with the soft stains on the wall and I, you know, I, I, I just, it's a takeout place. Yeah. It's like going to a pizza. You know what?

You're right. You have to think of it that way. It's, it's a weird way to think about it, especially in embarrassment of Buffalo Wild Wings. But yeah, think of it like dominoes. You're not going to order dominoes and eat in the dining room. That would be insane. You have to think about Wingstop the same way, unfortunately, for better or for worse.

All right. That's easier to get in and out of than Buffalo Wild Wings. That's absolutely true. Yeah. I think if you place it to go order, and you know what? Also, I will say, my wife showed me the, the, the ordering app, the website. It's actually very, very good. It seems very, very functional.

So I mean, that's, that's maybe a thing to go. If you're going to get Wingstop, maybe order online or via phone, pick up and get out of there and take it home. All right. That's our discussion of Wingstop. It's time for a regular segment. We've got a beverage and we're going to determine if it's worth pouring down your throat. This is Drank or Stank.

So here's how this will work. I'm going to run out of the room and get our beverage. In the meantime, you guys can vamp a little bit, maybe talk about Cambridge versus Quincy or whatever you Massachusetts folk want to discuss. Cambridge is kind of the Quincy to the North. The sophisticated Quincy to the North, we, we, we, we touched on that last night a little bit. Right.

Right. I will say that, you know, like you and Weigher are closer, but I feel like I've won you over and you now like me more than Weigher. Yeah. I think all the insults and attacks on my gender really helps. Oh dear God, don't spin this this way. You know what, actually, I, but you guys were running a little late before and I asked Weigher if we could talk about this mug that I saw and we both as Massachusetts people, like

I didn't grow up with anybody who was like, oh, out and out redneck-ish. Did you feel, did you have like, like, no, no, no, not really, no, like the blue collar comedy tour is way over my head because none of those references like resonate for me. When I went to college, I got a little bit more of that in upstate New York. Yes. Yeah. But there is a mug that's popular in the south that I just saw and I'm going to hand you my phone and you should just read this out loud.

Oh boy. Mr. Ducks. No, no, read the letters individually. MR. Ducks. MR. Knot. Oscar.

Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, just read all the letters. Read all the letters. MR. Ducks. Oh, fuck. MR. D-U-C-K-M.

No, no, sorry. Ducks is a word. Oh, okay, okay. MR. Ducks. MR. Knot. O-S-A-R-C-D-E-D-B-D.

WANGS. L-I-B. MR. Ducks. Are you teaching Mitch how to read? It's a kind of mug. In this mug, it's also t-shirts that are popular. It's a conversation between two nameless rednecks about whether or not there are ducks.

Oh, wow. MR. Ducks. MR. Knot. O-S-A-R-C-D-E-D-B-D. WANGS. L-I-B.

MR. Ducks. What on earth? That makes so little sense to me that it's way over my head, too. I think the C-Dem-E-D-B-D Wangs is the funniest word. Oh, C-D-E-D-B-D Wangs. Oh, like Wings. Okay, I get what they're saying.

It is. God. It's one of the stupidest things I've ever seen, but it made me laugh until I cried. Nick and I, I think, both have soft spots for stupid boardwalk t-shirts. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like dumb souvenir shit. Is that why you live in Santa Monica? I'm Remma Jason.

All that crap. Well, did you mention your oversized mug you've got on your desk? Oh, yeah. I've got a 26-ounce mug that just says, one crazy bitch. I really love souvenirs where people self-identify as bitches. I think it's so funny to be like, I'm a bitch. Bitch one and bitch two t-shirts. Oh, yeah.

Hot stuff. I love that. Yeah, it does a lot for me. Bitch one and bitch two t-shirts. I also want to say, I did not attack the female gender over this Mario Kart thing. I am not a pro gamer, Kate guy. Well, you did a pretty mean impression. Listen, everybody says Mario Kart's their favorite.

Come on. All right. No offense, Emmy. You're great. And I would play Mario Kart with the Anyday of the Week, and we'd both kick Wiger's ass as he was, who's your character? Peach? Oh, I'll do a Peach.

I'll do a Daisy. Yeah, I don't know. I'll mix it up. I don't have a go-to. I used to be a Koopa back in the day. If we're talking Mario Kart, the Super Nintendo Mario Kart, I would go with Koopa. But in the modern iterations... Party villainous, yeah.

Yeah. The modern iterations, your Mario Kart 8s. Yeah, I think I'd probably usually go for sometimes like a Toadette. I liked one of the Koopalings. Was it, is it Iggy? I think I liked Iggy. Ooh, Iggy's a good Koopaling. Yeah, Iggy's pretty good.

All right, so here's the beverage we got for a drink or steak. This is Coca-Cola Life. Oh, I've been curious about that. It's sweetened with cane sugar and stevia. As you guys can see, it's got like a green label. Ingredients are carbonated water, cane sugar, caramel color, natural flavors, a bunch of stuff, and stevia leaf extract. And it's got 160 calories per bottle, which seems like the same amount as regular Coke, but...

I think regular Coke is actually maybe more. Yeah, but I guess it's like a slightly healthier version that's not made with... Oh, it's got 35% fewer calories than Coca-Cola. So let's take a swig of this. Definitely a little bit of a different character than Coke. Stevia is kind of funky. Like, stevia is kind of like a funky leaf. It doesn't...

What is the deal with stevia? I don't get it. What's the deal? No, I have no idea. What's the deal with stevia? Who's Steve? I don't know much about the plant, but I can taste it in stuff more than aspartame, I think. Yeah, it's definitely very forward in this.

Coca-Cola Life? Yeah, weird brand name. What the fuck are they even... This won't last. This will be gone in the next year. Yeah, this will be gone for sure. This is like, what was the one they tried a little while ago, Pepsi Next? That was like...

Oh, yeah. It was like a reduced calorie Pepsi, and I don't think you can get that anymore. Or the Dr. Pepper 10? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which has no place existing? Yeah, why bother? If you're going to go with the diet version, just go all the way to zero, right? And that's how I feel about this, too.

Diet Dr. Pepper does taste good. Yeah, you know what? I will say, though, Dr. Pepper 10 is pretty tasty. It gives you just enough that it works kind of. Mr. Gamer King likes to be soda for men. Okay, now I disagree. You're going to call me a gamer again. You know what?

I am sick of everyone trying to... Oh, the girls trying to play Mario Kart. This... I can't believe that Coca-Cola would think this would be a success. Yeah, really weird. It's just... It's like... It's still 160 cal...

I think the other one is 220 calories for a regular bottle of Coca-Cola like this, a 20 ounce bottle. So, 160 cal... It's just not worth it. Just get a regular... Yeah, just get a regular cup. Or get the cane sugar regular Coca-Cola, the Mexican Coke, as they call it, right? Yeah, get anything else. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the stevia, it does add... I will say that I'm not... I don't hate it as I'm sipping it. It's good. It has a weird kind of little aftertaste, but that's not like regular Coke. Yeah, the aftertaste is really unpleasant. I would say it tastes...

To me, it kind of tastes like RC Cola. Oh, yes. I kind of get that a little bit, but then the aftertaste, the stevia really hits you and it kind of lingers. It's more like a Shasta on the way out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Coca-Cola going in, Shasta coming out. I agree with that.

Yeah, it's sort of a mullet of soda. Yeah. Yeah, for me, if my options are drank or stank, this is a definite stank. I can't see myself drinking this again. No, yeah. I wouldn't waste my breath even discussing this a minute longer. Stank. This gets a stank for me, too.

This is a stank. This drink is a stank. This segment is great. Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola. I love a good old-fashioned Coca-Cola. Oh, yeah. It's a great soda.

I think it's the king of sodas. Absolutely. Are you a Coke over Pepsi? In a heartbeat. Yeah, me too. Who is Pepsi over Coke? There are people who like Pepsi. There are Pepsi families.

A rhythmic heart. Have you liked Pepsi over Coke tweeted us with hashtag I'm an idiot? Because that is a terrible opinion. Our friend Blaine likes Pepsi more than Pepsi. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Our good buddy, Blankapatch. Over a minute.

Would you bur... No, sorry. We don't have Coke. Is Pepsi okay? And he'll always say, even better. That's... Yeah. The sound of mine's blowing.

It's a nice power move, though, I think. You make the waitress feel, yeah, give a little... Sometimes a waiter or waitress will crack a little joke. You crack a little joke back at them. Because they're usually depressed that they have Pepsi products there. Yeah, this is... Come on, what's the point of this thing? A disappointment.

I don't know what you're doing. The life branding is confusing. You got a green label. Coca-Cola, come on. It does not give me life. Yeah. Stop. All you guys, we're talking about Cheez-It earlier.

Just stop fucking around. Stop. Just do what you do. Stop trying all these... Nope. These crazy things. They found the toasty Cheez-It's... They did their job.

All right. They did it well. That's Drank or Stank. Just like a restaurant, we value your feedback. Let's open up the feedback. Today's email comes to us from Allison Thomas. Allison writes, hey, little wiger and spoon man. Love the podcast, big fan.

My question is, do you think that maybe you should remove your feelings of nostalgia when rating the restaurants? Sometimes this factors in when giving out your forks, which doesn't necessarily paint an accurate picture of your recent experience, just something to ponder. On another note, I think that there is no problem with expanding your experiences to restaurants that are branded, i.e. Simpsons restaurants, but not chains. Why not? Do it up.

P.S. Nick, please stop picking on Mitch. Your comments are sometimes pretty harsh. I kind of went off the rails at the end there, Allison. I know that she's... Oh, wait. Now you're going to pick on her too? Hey, don't pick on Mitch. Shut up, Allison.

You're a monster. Overall, a good question. What do you think? I mean, nostalgia as far as consuming food stuffs, as far as rating your dining experiences, how should that factor in? It seems like it'd be hard to remove your previous experiences from your current experiences. I think this point has nothing to it. I think, Allison, I like the way you're thinking.

I know the nostalgia side of it, but when we're reviewing some of these restaurants, some of that stuff's going to come into play for me. I'll try not to be nostalgic about it. The thing is with Burger King, we reviewed that a couple weeks ago, or a few weeks ago now. I don't know how the hell things work on this podcast. But with that, if I was being nostalgic, I think I would give it even a higher rating than I did.

Sure. It's tough. I know what you're saying, and we've seen chains come and go, but it's hard. What do you feel like? I feel like you've got to, we're trying to make a rating on what it is now. Yeah. I think the, and I got into this a little bit on the Fudrecker's episode, I feel like you have to embrace the nostalgia because that can govern how you rank something, how

you assess something. It either lives up to your expectations or it disappoints, and either way, that's part of the experience. If you've got something to get some sort of childhood attachment to, and you go there and it's continuing to deliver on that, that's in its favor. If it's starting to disappoint, then I think you have to factor that in as well. I don't know. We can't, Emmie's right, we're not automatons.

We can't forget the past every day. That's part of life. If only, huh? Thank you for attributing a smarter quote to me. No. That was your point. Yes. I don't know.

I mean, yeah, I don't think you can divorce yourself from the nostalgia. It's, I don't know. And what was the second part of her question? She just was more giving a recommendation. For you to stop picking on me. Oh wait. She said that, but she was also saying there's no problem with expanding your experience to restaurants that are branded, but not changed.

So it's like gimmicky restaurants that aren't individualized. I think we would maybe do that. Like Simpsons? I didn't get that part of this. She meant like the, I think she meant the Simpsons Universal, the most tavern there. Don't you worry about that, because maybe that's coming up in the future. But yeah, a little sneak peek on Doe Boyz. I do agree with you about Weigher though.

He is the human version of Bowser. He's an awful guy. If you out there have a question or comment about the world of chain restaurants, you can email us at doeboyspodguest at gmail.com, check us out on Twitter at Doe Boyz Pod, check out our Facebook page, Doe Boyz, Emmy Blotnick, you're one of the funniest people around. Thank you so much for coming in. Thanks for having me. You were great.

Wonderful. Thanks for. Despite being buddies with Weigher before you. Thanks for discussing Wings with us. Please come back. Is there anything you would like to plug? Twitter, I guess? Sure.

I'm at Emmy Blotnick. Yeah, that's it. What do you see your followers skyrocket after the premiere of Doe Boyz? Doe Boyz will come rushing in, Spoon Nation will carry me as I crowd surf. Spoon Nation, give her a follow. She's great. She's also kind of like the opposite of Nick in a lot of great ways. I can't believe you guys are friends still.

I'm going to talk to you about this after the podcast. But you were a great, great guest. You know your Wings. You do know your Wings. Thanks, guys. Like you promised. That'll do it for this episode of Doe Boyz. Until next time, for The Spoon Man, Mike Mitchell, I'm Nick Weigher.

Happy eating.