Fine Dining - Gordon Biersch Brewery (Part One) 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 FIND EINING podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. I'm your host, Michael Ornellis, and I'm looking for that perfect five point double zero 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 five point zero too on the Chachki 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 nonch**s 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 AEW, pretty Peter

Avalon. Peter has 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 at Pro 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. So, 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 Beersh 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 not too impressed Your table is ready Complementary butter and bread These walls have growth signs Knit knack, cowboy hat For the cat, autograph guitar Some crap from your city Behold the trusty of me, be up ready

I'm dining Yes, fine dining Fine dining Two letters on the sign are shining Now I'm flick, two letters on the sign are shining Neil Flickering a regular timing Identify the perfect by- How the ten? I'm dining

I'm dining I'm John Glover Emmy Award-winning researcher, John Glover, and I'm Marisa Pinson. Critically unacclaimed TV writer, Marisa Pinson. And we're the host of the new podcast on brand with John and Marisa. Join us every week for an exploration of the world's most interesting and iconic brands, like Walmart. Did they still have the old people who say welcome to Walmart?

Nope, they got rid of them. So 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. Like I'm a term 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? I'm a shoe. 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 earlier so and I was just kind of scoping out the place. So I think I noticed some things that maybe you didn't. Mm-hmm. A lot of elderly, yeah.

Like in the, not just in the area, but like, there was literally an old guy who feels derogatory to just say old guy, but I mean, that's the only feature about him I can identify. Who like sat on the bench right outside and kind of had like I'm feeding ducks vibes to him. He wasn't feeding ducks, but sitting outside another old guy just like walked into Gordon Beersh. They've got like this outside like hell in a cell cage area. I'm trying to speak your language for you. Put it putting things in terms of you understand. I think I got it.

Yeah, yeah. But no, they've got this like these big iron gates outside for a patio area that was completely empty. And then they have like, you know, those little like display cases right up front where like one you put 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, that's, yeah. But they went 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 dukey drips. It does look like the sludge. The ceiling dukey drips. But Jesus. I off to a ringing endorsement already, of course.

And nearby the the the giant beer tanks. So that's what you want in your beer is some dukey drips. 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 breaking bad tanks were, were they clearly making something on the other side of there?

It's 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 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. We us in the grandpa. Us in the grandpa and like, well, I'll have some notes on some other people that we dine 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 Resty Facts Roundup, eat Deats. Stupid, right? I like it. E-Tails, details. Right. But I'm worried that people are gonna hear eat teats.

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, eat teats. You know, you drink some milk. Just a very cow-centered place. Yeah. Yeah. All right, well let's jump into eat teats you have teats, you know, you drink some milk. Just a very cow-centered place. Yeah. Yeah.

All right, well, let's jump into eight deets. Eight deets. Okay, so I changed up the noise from resty-fact roundup because my mom didn't like the whips sound that we used to use. But now with eight deets, I'm one weekend, 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 a dukey. Oh, see, back to the dukey drips.

Okay, all right. I have a story that I have to tell you. I don't know if this is funny, but it is true. And I want, and I think the fact that it's true will make it a little funny. So the only background that I have with Gordon Beersh, this is 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 Beersh 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 nine We're like it sounds like you're pushing out a duke yeah

Yeah, 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 like that. Oh, so, beish, you get it. Like that, 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 Beers.

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 Beers picture because literally this is from that trip. It is outside of a Gordon Beersh, you can't tell from the photo. Right. And it is all of us making a Gordon Beersh face. That's a good, yeah.

You can see it. Yep. As a child, they're really committing. Yeah. Definitely going to have, uh, probably blow out my sphincter. Yeah. I'm going to post the center social media. It's good shot. Yeah. So I think that's got to be the sound effect. Be sphincter. Yeah, I'm gonna post the center social media. It's good shot.

Yeah, so I think that's gotta be the sound effect. Beersh! Yeah, that's the one. Beersh, real hard B. Real hard B. Yeah. Beersh, these dudes. Gordon Beersh was founded in July 1988 in Palo Alto, California

by Dan Gordon, a German educated brewer and Dean Beersh. So it's both their last names put together. Oh, okay. I know, they reached real far to that. Real far, yeah. Beersh, these dudes. Gordon Beersh currently has 13 American locations, including Hawaii and six in Taiwan.

All right. Now, in an interview about it, Dean Beers said, the Chinese like their beer too. And just given the political climate, calling the Taiwanese Chinese is just a choice. Yeah, it's a choice. And Dan Gordon's contribution during that interview is to say, we took pot stickers off the menu, like being like, well, we don't want to insult them with making an inauthentic copy of their food.

Right. I guess. At least they're trying somehow, right? Beer, these dudes. They also have some beer and fry stands in major sports arenas and airports. Honestly, most of the sports teams in California have Gordon Beersh 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 brewers don't even know about.

They have a real high opinion of clearly, but they've got like dookie 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. I'm all there for it. Beer shoots. 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, well, I'm gonna butcher this, I don't speak German. Ryan Heitz-Gabbott, or something, German purity laws that restricted ingredients to just water, hops, barley, and 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. Beer, these dudes. 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 Beershted. 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 fat-of-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 kinda 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. Yeah. Beer's that odor. It made me feel away. Yeah. Beer, he shoots. Gordon was quoted as saying, 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 Greffer, Griefer, 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. I hate that quote. Wow. The rest is history. That's just a way of saying,

I don't feel like going deeper into it, man. Yeah. Read the book. Good luck Wikipedia. It's on there. You can find it. Do your own research. Beer, cheese, dudes.

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 1995. 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.

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 no,

or even a city. Do you think 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. Oh, this is a lot harder than I thought.

And he's like actively getting CTE. Yeah, exactly. Damn. Beersheetstoots. They sold to craft works and then SPB hospitality in 1999, the same company that owns Logan's Roadhouse among other chains. In 2011, Dan Gordon went after Oscar Blues, a Colorado micro-brewry, 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 Beers sent them a cease and desist letter for calling their beer Gordon ale and Oscar Blues obliged changing the name to either G night or good night. Something like that, but like named after Gordon night, right? Yeah. He had to destroy 15 pallets of beer, amounting to a loss of $12,000 because of this season to assist. All just over the word, Gordon being used in the name of a beer.

I am Gordon, it just me. And in a tribute to someone who died fighting fires, like if I would let that go probably. I mean, yeah. Or at least let them sell the pallets and then change the name or something. So that's just, okay, you cannot have Gordon near anything we're 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 season to six. Come on, Gordon. Yeah, man. Beers, these dudes. In 2018, Kraft works now owned by SPB Hospitality, closed the Palo Alto, San Francisco,

and San Jose, Gordon Beers restaurants. Palo Alto, that's the OG one, right? Palo Alto was DOG. And Gordon said it's depressing for Dean and me to see what happened there. They're treating it like a chiles instead of the jewel that it was. He's got a very inflated opinion about.

What happens when you sue another Gordon beer, you know? And you're the inventor of garlic fries. Is 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 at first. Beer, these dudes. In 2019, Fertida 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.

Yeah, so Dan Gordon now owning Gordon Beersh once again. They don't have a ton of locations still out there. I think what I say was like 13 American and six in Taiwan. So they're not crushing it. It's a lot in Taiwan. It's more than you'd expect. You want another crazy fact. You know what's huge in the Philippines? Shaky's pizza. Shaky's really. Yeah. They like their mojo. 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 mojo's, man.

Those mojo potatoes. They're not even great. They're not shakies as 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 shakies, man. It's not good. No. They're fried chicken.

If you catch it, fresh is like tolerable. Right. The pizza is just an actual bad pizza. It's dukey. It's not good. They're fried chicken. If you catch it fresh, it's like tolerable. The pizza is just an actual bad pizza. It's dukey. It's, it's, it's dude. Word of the episode. Dukey drips. Dukey drips, baby. That'll, that sounds like a, like a 90s attitude era gimmick.

Dukey drips. Yeah. Here he comes. Dukey dramps. And then when he's not brewing beer, Gordon plays bass trombone in a big band jazz group. Get that out. So he's based trombone with more dreams to chase. Oh, man, hoping becomes the biggest bass trombones in history.

In history. And that'll do it for this week's. Yeah. Eat deeds. Damn, what a stupid name. Man. All right. Well, we a stupid name. Man. All right, well, we've covered our first impressions. 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 to head to Yelp and see what other people are saying about this Gordon Beers brewery in this week little yelp from strangers. I'm gonna get a little yelp, give us those complaints why you literally want to die. Yelp! Okay, this is Yelp from Strangers, our segment where we go to Yelp and read out our favorite 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 star Yelp reviews from the very restaurant at which we dined. Where are you?

I'm gonna start us off in a land of negativity. I'm gonna bring us in with a one star Yelp review. This was written in June 2021 by Carmoonius S. That is the person's real name. I love it. Carmoonius. The second most ridiculous name I have ever heard. Second.

Norfernum. Oh yeah, because it's the cousin norfer. Your gimmick name in TNA. Yep. 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 gonna be like, what the fuck are you talking about? That is me. Nope, that's not real. No, it's real, all right. And I was like, if I just say those words to him, is he gonna be like, what the fuck are you talking about? That is me. Nope, that's me. There's ownership. Yep. But if you're looking for a new gimmick name, Carmoonius. Carmoonius.

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 skimp 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. Carmonia is coming in hot. Yeah, he was upset. Do better. Carmonia says high expectations of a GB. How many fries did he want? I don't know, but not a tiny steel cup. Yeah. Carmonias 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. Carmonias 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 Beersh restaurants when you have a moment? We'd like to get a few more detail like they're always so impersonal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why do I mean, I just gave you my, he just did it in a review what he told you was wrong. I always got to go to another way. 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 Locust, Santa Montrose area. It says here that she's elite 2023. So she's BB. So she's signed to AW as well. 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 of you on my birthday of last year, June 14th. Happy

birthday. Thank you. She's the 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 narc, I'm not requesting too much. She's like, she's really trying to like play it down like, I'm not a care and 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, norve, street people. How do you interpret that? Either it's a racist thing, I think, or she just really belittling homeless people. I don't know because we were both there in that part of Burbank. What's street people? I mean, yes, it was very slow on a Sunday afternoon.

It could be like the old guy feeding birds, like just anyone who happens to walk by in a way that a friend that they see in the air. And she's like, Oh, three persons, three 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 pretzels and the ribs, as were the drinks, but the Poke Ball was way too salty.

As was the Poke 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 fix 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. We're 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 outfitters that's near by. And she's like, ah, street people. Ah, disgusting that there's other people out at the same time and join themselves. Something know that I'm Katie E Katie and Gordon Beersh respond to 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. Yeah. They're already telling you the opinions. She gave a real strong Two but then she said the food was fucking great. That food was awesome. I love them best meal of my life

That's a homeless Triple my he's you sound like a tag team finish it Yeah, you can go download our full Yelp from Stranger's segment our Patreon. The link for that is in the description of this episode, or you can go to patreon.com slash find outting 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 Strangers. 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 Find 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 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 you