Fine Dining - Gordon Biersch Brewery (Part One: Eat Deets) feat. "Pretty" Peter Avalon (All Elite Wrestling, Ring of Honor)

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Get Part 2 next Wednesday! All Elite Wrestling & Ring of Honor's "Pretty" Peter Avalon joins Michael in Burbank to learn all about the restaurant of the week Gordon Biersch Brewery stands behind the claim that they invented garlic fries Michael dives into the Eat Deets about Gordon Biersch Gordon Biersch cost Oskar Blues Brewing approx. $32,000 from a cease & desist Michael drops knowledge about Shakey's Pizza Parlor's prominence in the Philippines An embarrassing story from 25+ years ago about Michael's dad, and his special way of saying "Gordon Biersch" Michael & Peter read the negative end of the review spectrum in this week's Yelp from Strangers   Music by: James McEnelly (@Ramshackle_Music) Theme Song by: Kyle Schieffer (@JazzyJellyfish) Segment Transitions Voiced by: Sandy Rose "Fine" Dining is on Patreon! Get an extra episode every month (October's episode explored Dave's Hot Chicken), extended Yelp from Strangers segments every other week, merch discounts, download access to our music including the 7 singles from our Olive Garden musical, and more! Patreon Producers: Sean Spademan, Joyce Van, & Sue Ornelas   Get the 5 Survival Tips for Casual Dining at www.finediningpodcast.com!   Send in your Gordon Biersch stories at [e-mail].   Follow the show on TikTok and Instagram @finediningpodcast   Let me know where I should go next by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, PodcastAddict, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I read every one!   Next week on "Fine" Dining: Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant (Review)! I'm joined by All Elite Wrestling's "Pretty" Peter Avalon, and for the second part of the episode, we'll dish all our thoughts and feelings about our meal at a Gordon Biersch that closed down one week later. Ever work at a Gordon Biersch? Send your stories to [e-mail].

From this point forward, the word cheese will be bleeped because Michael finds it offensive. Hello and welcome to the Fine Dining Podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. I'm your host, Michael Ornellis, and I'm looking for that perfect 5.0-0 experience out of 10 to find you the litmus test that you can use to compare every restaurant that you go to from then on. Currently, it's the Applebee's test. Applebee's sitting at a 5.02 on the Chotchke of mediocrity, the most average place. out there so far, but I think I can do a little bit better. Last week, I had to go to the melting pot, and I'm, as a non-cheas eater, a little pissed off

about that. So I'm in a mood. I'm grumpy today, but I should be excited because I had a very special guest with me. I have a wrestler from All Elite Wrestling. This is my fandom, you guys. I am a giant wrestling fan, and I got to have the self-proclaimed hottest boy in a AEW, pretty Peter Avalon. Peter, how's it going? Good. Thank you for having me, Michael. I appreciate you. You said AEW wrestler. It should be the AEW wrestler. I am the man, the biggest man of

wrestling, definitely the best-looking man at AEW, the hottest boy, if you will. Shout out to my man Babson, who helped me make that incredible song, so I'm excited to be here. I'm just glad that you're not taking issue with me saying self-proclaimed because of the level of subjectivity involved. It's all right. I had to self-proclaim it and then everybody had to back me up and agree with me, so it's okay. So, welcome to the show. This is a show where I'm going to restaurants and I am rating them based on their atmosphere. Based on their service. And based on their food. You get it. So we went to Gordon Beersch Brewery. This was picked at the end of the last episode. And you were gracious enough to join me at Gordon Beersh Brewery. We'll get into it. But before we get into that, if you want more, episodes of the show, go check out our Patreon. That's patreon.com slash fine dining podcast.

There's an exclusive episode every month. Fine dining party of two. But for now, I've talked too much. Our table is ready. Let's get to it. Your table is ready. Follow me. Have you tried our chicken and breasts?

Serving pancakes and ritz. I recommend the spaghetti. We're here to satisfy not to impress. Your table is ready. Complementary butter and bread. These walls have growth signs. Nick-knack, cowboy hat, good luck at Altigraph guitar, some crap from your city

Behold the chotch key of mediocrity. Fine dining. Just fine dining, fine dining. Two ledgers on the sign are shining. Neal flickering irregular timing. Identify the perfect by. I'm John Glover. Emmy Award winning researcher, John Glover,

and I'm Marissa Pinson. Critically unacclaimed TV writer Marissa Pinson. And we're the host of the new podcast On Brand with John and Marissa. Join us every week for an exploration of the world's most interesting and iconic brands, like Walmart. Do they still have the old people who say welcome to Walmart? No, they got rid of them. You just want more old people in the store? I want every staff member to be over 90.

And Heinz. Heinz. Heinz. Heinz. I say Heinz. I'm a German dictator. And while you learn about these legendary brands, you'll also. learn a bit about us. Hey, John, do you still sleep in shoes?

There's probably, I would say probably three times a year I fall asleep in shoes. You told me the thing that you should never look under a Costco chicken. Well, I don't think you should ever look under a chicken. So tune in every Wednesday for a brand new episode of On Brand with John and Marissa. Available now, wherever you get your podcasts. See you there. First Impressions. All right, so Peter, I got there about like 15 minutes early or so, and I was just kind of scoping out the place.

So I think I noticed some things that maybe you didn't. A lot of elderly. Yeah. Like in the, not just in the area, but like there was literally an old guy who's, it feels derogatory to just say old guy, but I mean,

that's the only feature about him I can identify. Yeah. Who like sat on the bench right outside and kind of had like, I'm feeding ducks vibes to him. Right. He wasn't feeding ducks. No ducks. Sitting outside,

another old guy just like walked in. to Gordon Beersh. They've got like this outside like hell in a cell cage area. I'm trying to speak your language for you. Putting things in terms of you understand. I think I got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, they've got this like these big iron gates outside for a patio area that was completely empty. Yeah. And then they have like, you know, those little like display cases right up front where like one, you put the the menu in and people can walk up from outside, be like, oh, do I want anything? Right. And then the other display case, all it had was the letter. A. It was just their health code rating. That's, yeah, that's what they want you to know.

But they were so proud of it that they were like, we're just going to give this its own case. We don't need anything else in here. They worked hard for that. Nothing. They really, it was pretty clean. It was very clean. It was a very clean, well, you did notice a thing. That is true.

What are those brown water spots dripping from the ceiling? Yeah, the, the, the ducy drips as it looked like, you know. The sludge. The ceiling dukey drips. The jeep. Jesus. off to a ringing endorsement already of Gordon beer. Nearby the,

uh, the, the giant beer tanks. So that's what you want in your beer is some dokey drips. Right. Well, at least this was like high up in the ceiling. True.

It was like on the other side of the wall where all the, the, the breaking bad tanks were, were clearly making something on the other side of there. Something. Yeah. But yeah. I mean,

that's kind of all I noticed. It was very empty. We kind of, very empty. It was to a point where when I first got there and, And you hadn't come yet. I was just like, oh shit, are they closed? Yeah.

Like I literally walked up to the door, pulled it open just ever so slightly. The host just kind of like stared at me and I just let it go. And I was like, all right, yeah, they're open. Took that information with myself. And underwhelming lunch hour, I guess is what they have. I don't think people are like swarming a Gordon beer shit noon on a Sunday. Yeah, clearly. But we certainly did.

Mm-hmm. Us and the grandpa. Us and the grandpa. and like, well, I'll have some notes on some other people that we dined near when we get into atmosphere. But before I do that, I kind of want to get into the background of Gordon Beers. Do you want to learn way more than you ever thought you would need to know about Gordon Beers? Absolutely, because I know nothing about Gordon Beers. Oh, you're about to.

Oh, I'm going to know everything now. Well, we're going to jump into what was formerly Rusty Fact Roundup, Eat Deets. Stupid, right? I like it. Eat tales, details. Right. Yeah. But I'm worried that, like, people are going to hear eat teets. And I'm just, they're probably not going to, but it is possible that someone hears that.

Maybe you'll find a restaurant that that's the gimmick. It's just like, yeah, teets, you know, you drink some milk. Just a very cow-centric place. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's jump into eat deets. Eat dates.

Okay, so I changed up the noise from Resty Fact Roundup because my mom didn't like the whip sound that we used to use. use. But now with Eat Deets, I'm one week in and my mom already doesn't like the new sound that I use. So now I have to censor that with a new sound. So Peter, help me make a noise, just any noise that you think accurately describes a Gordon Beersh. You don't necessarily have to make the sound. You could also just tell me what the sound is. How about just like a squeaky door like opening? Honestly, it sounds like you're pushing out of Duky. Oh, see, back to the Duky drips. Okay, all right.

I have a story that I have to tell you. All right, let's hear it. I don't know if this is funny, but it is true. And I think the fact that it's true will make it a little funnier. So the only background that I have with Gordon Beersh, this was probably 25 years ago. I think I was like nine years old. My family took a vacation. We went to Canada, and we went to a Gordon Beersh.

and my dad again, I'm not claiming this is funny, but it is what he did thought that the name Gordon Beersch would just be very funny if he would pronounce it like Gordon Beersh and I don't know why he did that but my brother and I who he was 14, I was 9 were like it sounds like you're pushing out of Duky

and the term Gordon Beersh for a while in our family became a code word for I'm going to take a shit Oh. So. Beersh. You get it. Yeah, yeah.

That might be the sound effect. And so I need to show you this picture that my mom dug up when I told her we were going to Gordon Beersh. We have a photo that my family had on our fridge longer than any photo that has ever graced our fridge. And we call it the Gordon Beersh picture because literally, this is from that trip. It is outside of a Gordon Beers. You can't tell from the photo. Right. And it is all of us making a Gordon Beershersh.

face. That's a good, yeah. You can see as a child there really committing. Yeah. Definitely going to have, uh, probably blow out my sphincter. Yeah. I'm going to post this on our social media. It's a good shot. Yeah. So I think that's got to be the sound effect. Beersh. Yeah, that's the one. Beersh. Real hard bee. Real hard bee. Yeah.

Beershs. Gordon Beersh was founded in July 1988 in Palo Alto, California by Dan Gordon, a German educated brewer, and Dean Beersch. So it's both their last names put together. Oh, okay. I know. They reached real far. Real far, yeah. Beersh.

Gordon Beersh currently has 13 American locations, including Hawaii, and six in Taiwan. All right. Now, in an interview about it, Dean Beersh said, the Chinese like their beer, too. And just given the political climate, calling the Taiwanese Chinese, is just a A choice. Yeah, it's a choice. And Dan Gordon's contribution during that interview was to say, we took pot stickers off the menu.

Wow. Being like, well, we don't want to insult them with making an inauthentic copy of their food. Right. I guess. Yeah. At least they're trying somehow, right? Yeah. Beers.

They also have some beer and fry stands and major sports arenas and airports. Honestly, most of the sports teams in California have Gordon Beershers. stands in their stadiums. Okay. They also brew beer for Costco and Trader Joe's. And I mean, they did start with like, beer was kind of

the thing. And then eventually when they started getting these stands, they were asked about, well, do you have food to pair with it? And I'll get into that in a little bit. Dan Gordon said, in spinal tap ease, our brewery goes to 11 and does most things breweres don't even know about.

They have a real high opinion of clearly. But they've got like duky drips going from the ceiling. So it's like... I mean, but they're talking, they're talking spinal tap. I'll turn it up to 11. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm all there for it.

Beers! So Dan Gordon went to the technical institute in Munich, studied German beer brewing, and wanted to start a brewery focusing on German styles of beer, brewed under... Oh, I'm going to butcher this. I don't speak German. Reinheitzgabat or something?

German purity laws that restricted ingredients to just water, hops, barley, and yew. yeast. So that's kind of a philosophical approach to how they brew their beers. Okay. Makes sense with the beer that I drank. Oh yeah? Yeah. Beers. Gordon claims to have

invented garlic fries. It's all over the internet. It's his legitimate claim to fame. If you look up who invented garlic fries, Google will respond. Gordon Beersh did. Wow. So while studying in Munich, Gordon had a professor who specialized in garlic. That's right.

impressive. Like was it Professor Van Helsing? Yeah. And often asked him to translate his German to English for visiting English professors. During a visit, the professor gave an American counterpart 10 different dishes featuring garlic, which gave Dan Gordon the idea to douse fries with garlic as a late-night snack during final exams. Good contribution. And Gordon literally says,

According to my kids, garlic fries are my most important contribution to society. And then he says my favorite thought is of getting on a nice five-hour flight from D.C. to San Francisco sitting next to someone that just had them. Oh, yeah. Which I think is him trying to be cute. But in my mind, I like to think that this guy, like, kind of has a weird garlic breath fetish. Oh, for sure. Just into it. He just loves when people stink of it.

I don't like the way you drew out the word stink right there. It's that odor. It made me feel away. Bears. Gordon was quoted as San Diego. the whole concession success was something that happened by accident when I tried to sell our beer into Candlestick Park and the food and beverage director Jerry Greifer Greifer asked me if we were known for any of our menu items. The rest is history. I hate that quote. The rest is history. That's just your way of saying, I don't feel like going deeper into it, man. Read the book. Go to my Wikipedia. I'm over it. It's on there. You can find it. Do your own research.

Bears. In 1995, the founders sold their controlling interest in the company to Lorenzo Fertita, a billionaire casino mogul who was also a former CEO of the UFC, the guy at the helm when it transformed into a major phenomenon. They sold for $11.2 million in 95. And then Gordon went to say the best tie with UFC for me was when Dana White, the CEO of UFC, took me in the gym and had me do a boxing workout. It was eye-opening.

I don't know what it's eye-opening for. for? Like, is it just, oh yeah, fighting is hard? Yeah, I guess. It was not training. You do wrestling. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard, right? It's very hard, yeah. I don't think I need to, like, go see it to know or even assume that he thought it was pretty easy, like, before then? I could do this. I could, yeah, I could fight some guys and then, like, they're just, like, ground and pound, just, like, elbowing them across the forehead. He's got, like, this is a lot harder than I thought. As he's, like, actively getting CTE. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Damn. Bear. Bear. They Sold to Craftworks and then SPB Hospitality in 1999, the same company that owns Logan's Roadhouse, among other chains.

Beers! In 2011, Dan Gordon went after Oscar Blues, a Colorado microbrewery, because they had a beer called Gordon Red Ale, named after Gordon Knight, a founder of area craft breweries and a pilot who died in a helicopter crash in 2002 when he was fighting the big elk fire. Gordon Beer sent them a cease and desist letter for calling their beer Gordon ALE. Huh. And Oscar Blues obliged changing the name to either G Knight or Goodnight, something like that, but like named after Gordon Knight, right? Yeah. He had to destroy 15 pallets of beer amounting to a loss of $12,000 because of the seasoned

assist. Wow. All just over the word Gordon being used in the name of a beer. I am Gordon and just me. And like, in a tribute to someone who died fighting five. Like if like I would let that go probably I mean yeah or at least let them sell the palettes and then change the name or something So that's just okay you cannot have Gordon near anything beer related not at all all right and then combining the destroyed product with their marketing Oscar Blues costs to date amounted to about $32,000 lost from that cease and desist Come on Gordon yeah

Beers! In 2018, Craftworks, now owned by SPB Hospitality, closed the Palo Alto, San Francisco, and San Jose Gordon Beersh restaurants. Palo Alto is that, that's the OG one, right? Palo Alto was the OG. And Gordon said, it's depressing for Dean and me to see what happened there. They're treating it like a Chili's instead of the jewel that it was. He's got a very inflated opinion about. It's what happens when you sue another Gordon beer, you know.

And you're the inventor of garlic fries. You're the only person ever to think of putting garlic on a fry. Clearly, yeah, you're the number one. Or at least you're very good at marketing that you did it first. Beersh. In 2019, Fertita sold the brewery back to Dan Gordon for an undisclosed amount, but Gordon said it was an extremely generous price to allow him to realize his dream. Hmm.

Yeah. So Dan Gordon now owning Gordon Biersch, again. They don't have a ton of locations still out there. I think what I say, it was like 13 American and six in Taiwan. Yeah. They're not crushing it. It's a lot in Taiwan. It's more than you'd expect, right? You want another crazy fact. You know what's huge in the Philippines? Right. Shakey's pizza. Shakey's, really? Yeah. They like their mojoes, man. You know that shitty shakies that we have down the street? I sure do. That abomination of a lunch buffet. They're all about the mojos, man. Those mojo potatoes. They're not even great.

They're not. Shakeies is dog shit. There was one in Glendale that we would eat at after a championship wrestling from Hollywood. We ate there a couple times and I hated fucking Shakey's, man. It's not good. They're fried chicken. If you catch it fresh is like tolerable. Right.

The pizza is just an actual bad pizza. It's Duky. It's dude. Word of the episode. Duky drips. Duky drips, baby. That sounds like a like a 90s attitude era gimmick. Duky drips.

Yeah. Yeah. Here he comes. Dukey drips. And then when he's not brewing beer, Gordon plays bass trombone in a big band jazz group. Get back. Get out. So he's still a man with more dreams to chase.

Oh, man. I hope he becomes the biggest bass turbonous. In history. In history. And that'll do it for this week. Yeah. Eat Deats. Damn.

What a stupid name. Man. All right. Well, we've covered our first impression. We're at the table. We're all set to review Gordon Beersh, which will be next week's episode. But before we can give you our review, we got ahead to Yelp and see what other people are saying about this Gordon Beersh brewery in this week's Yelp from strangers. We need a little yelp, a little yelp, a little yelp from strangers.

A one star, two star, three star, four or five y'i So get a little yelp, a little yelp, a little yelp from strangers A little yelp, a little yelp, give us those complaints while you literally want. Yelp! Okay, this is Yelp from Strangers, our segment where we go to Yelp and read out our favorite one, two, three, four, and five-star Yelp reviews from the very restaurant at which we I'm going to start us off in a land of negativity. I'm going to bring us in with a one star Yelp review.

This was written in June 2021 by Carmonious S. That is the person's real name. I love it. Carmonious. The second most ridiculous name I have ever heard. Second. Norv Furnum. Oh, yeah.

My cousin, my cousin, Norm. Yeah. your gimmick name in TNA. I was looking at your Wikipedia and I was just like, that's not real. No, it's real, all right. And I was like, if I just say those words to him, is he going to be like, what the fuck he's talking about?

That is me. Nope, was me. There's ownership. Yep. But if you're looking for a new gimmick name, Carmonious. Carmonious. I like that.

One star. Ordered the large order of wings and was given seven tiny ass drumsticks. Do better. You're a fucking brewery. No need to skimmy. on the damn wings. Oh, my friend got the Wagyu Burger and the fry portion was a total disgrace.

They put them in a tiny steel cup. As I said before, do better. Carmonius coming in hot. Yeah, he was upset. Do better. Garmunius has high expectations of a G. How many fries did he want?

I don't know, but not a tiny steel cup. Yeah. Carmonius has written 20 Yelp reviews and now I genuinely want to go through his entire history and see what he has to say. Because he seems like the kind of guy who only deals in one stars and five stars. He seems like a year. Carmonius has never written a three star review in his life.

He'll give it a one if it's a three. He can't be bothered. No. You're either one or five. And then of course Gordon Beersh responded, we're so sorry we let you down with our portion sizes. Can you connect with us at Gordon Beers restaurants? When you have a moment.

We'd like to get a few more detail. Like they're always so impersonal. Yeah. Yeah. Why do I? I mean, I just gave you. He just did it in a review. What he told you was wrong.

Now he's got to go to another website. Can you tell us your review but where we want to hear it? Yeah, yeah. Where we give you like slider options and not any place to add your actual comments so that we can interpret it how we want to conveniently. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Two star review. I have a two star review here from a Katie E.

She has very nice silver hair, Katie. So shout out for your silver hair. She's from Lacrosena Montrose area. It says here. She's elite 2023. So she's B, B,

O. So she's signed to A.W as well. She is. She's in, she's all elite. She's one of the bucks, I think.

She's the third buck. Third buck. Katie Buck. She gave two stars. Funny enough, she gave this two star review on my birthday of last year,

June 14. Happy birthday. Thank you. She's done 92 reviews. Okay. She said, the appetizers were great, but our service

was very poor. I don't like it when waiters come to the table too often, but we hardly saw our guy most of the night. They probably had our person. I like how she's like, I'm cool. Don't worry. I'm not a narque. I'm not requesting too much.

Yeah. She's like she's really trying to like play it down like, I'm not a camera. I swear. I swear I'm not. I'm not that needy. Aside from the poor service, we also had issues with at least three different street people coming in through the open gate and bothering our group while we were on the patio. I'm sorry.

street people street people in your words norv who would street people how do you interpret that either it's a racist thing

I think or she just really is belittling homeless people I don't know because we were both there in that part of Burbank what street people

I mean yes it was very slow on a Sunday afternoon could be like the old guy feeding birds maybe just anyone who happens to like walk by and wave at a friend that they see and she's like Oh, street person Street humans, gross.

Yeah. We were surprised that the restaurant didn't keep the side gate closed to keep this from happening. Regarding food. The appetizers were excellent, especially the pretzel and the ribs, as were the drinks. But the pokey bowl was way too salty, as was the pokey, mahi, mahi, mahi. She tripled it. I don't know if Mahi is three.

Typically it's two. Yeah. I don't plan to return unless they fit. their issues with service and they learn to keep aggressive street people from bothering you on the patio. They are now aggressive street people. I would really love the narrative where like a high school friend that she recognized saw her and was trying to get her attention. She's like, oh, these street people, like it's someone she knew. I wish she explained like the time of day. It's like she maybe she went on like a busy evening. It's Friday. It's busy. There's kids that are walking out of that urban outfiters that's

nearby. She's like, blah. Street people. Blah. Disgusting that there's, disgusting that there's other people out at the same time enjoying themselves. Don't they know that I'm Katie E? And Gordon Beersh responded the next day and said, Katie, we sincerely apologize for your experience at our Burbank location. This level of service is not up to the high standards we try to live up to. Please connect with us at Gordon Beers restaurants and reference yo. Yeah. Get your life together, Gordon Beersh. Okay. They're already telling you the opinions. She gave a real strong too, but then she said the food was fucking great. That food was awesome. I love the best meal of my life but the homeless.

That triple Mahi. She was all about it. Sounds like a tag team finisher. The triple my yes. You can go download our full Yelp from Strangers segment at our Patreon. The link for that is in the description of this episode or you can go to patreon.com

slash fine dining podcast. And we're now offering a one week free trial. So what do you have to lose? Go check it out. People have wild opinions. And we get to read, oh, so many of them. Thanks. Okay, so we've done Yelp from Strange. We've heard what other people have to say.

The table is set, Peter, for you and I next week to tell the world our review of what we experienced at Gordon Beers Brewery. Oh, I'm ready. You think they're ready? I hope they're ready. I hope they're ready too. But in the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram and TikTok at Fine Dining Podcast. You can follow Peter. On Instagram at PPA all day.

I don't have a Twitter anymore, so. Why bother? Yeah. It's a cesspool. It's junk. Yeah. But stay tuned next week. Our table is officially ready.

I don't know. We already did the theme song. See you next week.