Fine Dining - "Officer Hot Dog" Pulls Michael Over at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co.

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

Michael & Garrett are immensely disappointed by the churro stand next to Bubba Gump Michael tells the story of getting pulled over in Alabama "for having California license plates" Forrest Gump narrates the boys' adventure JUB makes souvenir pennies 7 year-old Nora "hates the man on the bench" in another adorable Munchkin Menu Musings segment Michael & Garrett go HAM on Forrest Gump trivia   Get our 5 Survival Tips for Casual Dining at www.finediningpodcast.com!   Send us your Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. stories at [e-mail].   Follow us on TikTok and Instagram @finediningpodcast   Let us know where we should go next by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, or wherever you get your podcasts. We read every one!   Next time on Fine Dining: Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ! If you have ever worked for Gyu-Kaku and have a story to share, or if you’d like us to hear your child’s review of the Gyu-Kaku kids menu, send it to [e-mail].

Hello, and welcome back to the Fine Dining Podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. Pause for the bird. There it is. I am your host, Michael Ornelis. And I'm your host, Garrett Zwerk. And before we jump in, I just want to thank everyone who has taken the time to leave us a review on... It means so much to us. On iTunes, on Spotify, on the Google Store, wherever you get your podcast, we are trying to climb the charts. So if you could help us do that. Yeah, you are helping us grow so much. And we read everyone. It's basically our comments section. So if you have a restaurant that you want to see us get to, leave a review.

We will read it. We'll add it to our docket, basically. Believe me, we read everything. We really do. And so what is this show, Garrett? How would you best describe it to people? I'd say we are here to find the true measuring stick in which you can describe any restaurant. So we want to know what the bar is to compare things to. Yeah, we want to find that perfect 5.00 out of 10. We want to find and define mediocrity. And we're doing that based on atmosphere, service, and food. And the closest we've come so far is Olive Garden,

which if you haven't listened to our Olive Garden episode yet, it is a full-on musical. So go ahead and listen to that one. We made, what, seven or eight songs for it? Pretty wild. Detailing our one-night encounter at an Olive Garden. Many different genres, all that good stuff. But this week is not about that. This week is about Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. I picked this one mostly due to the location. I have no affinity one way or another for Bubba Gump. I'd never eaten it one before. But I knew that there was one on the Santa Monica Pier. Yes. And that has hallowed ground for us for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is Pokemon Go. You remember the hot spot for that game. Yeah, it was at 2016. 2016. Sprinting down. Like there's a blast. The pier looking for a dragonite. Yeah, you go out onto the beach and there's like a circle of like 400 people. It was on, it's very surreal to have, it's such a weird experience. The first month of the game. Wow. But more importantly, at least for the sake of the podcast.

Churros. There is a churro vendor that, I mean, I don't know if they are fabled in the world, but they are fabled to us. Yeah, like to us, this is the world's best churro. Staying hands down. They are right outside of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company entrance by about what? 20 feet, 30 feet at most? Something like that, yeah. And you go up and they're just fresh and they're warm and it's wonderful.

Juicy moist. That's in a mini crisp. I love it. That's how it lives in our mind. Not necessarily how it lives in our reality having gone there. So we'll get into that later. We'll get into that. Fine dining party of two. For now, let's just jump in. Our table's ready.

Your table is ready. Follow me. Have you tried our chicken breast? Serving pancakes and rips. I recommend the spaghetti. We're here to satisfy, not to impress. Your table is ready. Complimentary butter and bread. These walls have growth signs. Knit, knack, cowboy hat, good luck hat,

autographed guitar, some crap from your city. Behold the trash key of mediocrity. Fine dining. Just fine dining. Fine dining. Two ledgers on the sign are shining. Neon flickering, irregular timing. Identify the perfect fight.

Ballot 10. Fine dining. Fine dining. First impressions. What? I mean, I guess we can... Where does this even start? Yeah. Like, is it from the moment we park?

Is it from the moment we see the restaurant? There was a lot going on. It was. I mean, we're in a very busy, touristy part of town. I want to start this off. When we parked the car, this was for about a half hour straight. Some dude was looping the song Imagine over and over and over again. Yeah, which was tough because we were filming some stuff for YouTube.

And we were like, well, we can't use any of this because there's copyrighted material in it now. Yeah, that was unique. Yeah, like, we're not strangers to this area, but I have never heard someone looping the same song over and over again. At least with that level of frequency. Like, if you're doing it like every 20, 30 minutes, I get it. But this was like, oh, the song ended.

Let's listen to it again. Yeah, it was... Oh, it wasn't John Lennon's Killer just like paroled or something. Read a news story related to this. Yeah, I don't know. But that was a big part of... I mean, is that the first impression? Hundreds of feet away from the restaurant.

That's the first impression of the pier, for sure. I think that's of our first memorable event. Yeah. What I also remember is parking. 20, 30 feet from the restaurant. We reparked after we shot some stuff, came back, parked where the restaurants literally 30 feet away from us. And we can't get in.

We started, there was a path leading up to the restaurant, blocked off. So yeah, like we parked at the beach level. And if you go up the stairs, usually... Yeah, you're just right there right next to Bubba Gump. Right next to Bubba Gump. That whole area is closed off. I have no idea how long it's been closed off for,

but it was very heavily barricaded. And then they had those guard rails in place trying to filter people in a certain direction. But it didn't actually seem to go anywhere. So we had to walk underneath, I guess, the bridge over to the pier around upstairs. And by the way, as we were kind of getting lost in this maze of guard rails before we ended up going under,

there was this European guy with a shawl draped over his back, like a cape. He looked super fancy. And he had such a mansplaining attitude of like, oh, no, no, no, you just got to go this way. Like, I know, trust me, there's stairs, follow me. And we didn't because he was overly confident, but also walking in two different directions

a couple different times. And it brought me immense joy that we arrived in the line before. So I remember that. And then we went up. We waited 20 minutes. We gave our name. They texted us. It was fine.

I think this is, or obviously this is intentional. Right there while you're waiting, what do you see? The gift shop. Oh, they have a very pronounced gift shop. It's open air, but there's no way to get inside to the restaurant from the gift shop, even though it's connected. That also was blocked off.

But what I did love about the gift shop was it was just unabashedly forest gump, like stupid is as stupid does. Like the insurance restaurant. Yeah. And like all the run forest run, it's a very forest gump themed restaurant. There's no way around it that this restaurant would not be

if it weren't for forest gump. It's an interesting movie to hit your franchise to, especially now that it's almost 30 years old. Movie came out in 93 or 94. And just like, I also find it weird that it was Viacom that started the restaurant. I feel like they would have to be the one to do it. Yeah, no, it's literally one of the bad generals

to get into the restaurant business. So kind of silly, but entertaining at least. Which is weird. Okay, I checked into it. Apparently they were already in the restaurant business. They owned this restaurant chain called the Rusty Pelican. And did they transform that? And then the Rusty Pelican over the period of about a year

changed into Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. There's only one Rusty Pelican remaining. Was it? I imagine it was the original one. I don't know if it's the original, but there was just only one of them didn't get changed over. Interesting. Yeah, I don't mind it.

I really liked Forest Gump when I was younger. It's been a long time since I've seen it, but. Yeah, it was a very well done, cohesive theme. Yeah. And given that it's a movie about a whole bunch of different events happening over the course of someone's life, and they're all kind of major historical events,

you can then take all those major historical events and decorate your restaurant with them. Yeah, there's an unlimited amount of material. Now, there's the gift shop, which technically is first impressions because we haven't gone in yet, we haven't gone to our table. But it was a little hard to see because there was a mob of geriatrics

at the front of the restaurant waiting. I'm truly guessing 80 to 90 year olds. Yeah, they were like, didn't we count 23 of them? It was about, yeah, it was like 23, 24. I don't know, they kept moving around, so maybe we double counted or missed someone, but. I just want to know what's going on over there. So, Michael, what's going on over there?

It was a reward from the nursing home for them to go to Bubba Gump Shrimp for being good this week. None of the inmates was the word that first came to my brain, and I feel like that's the wrong word. Inmates, probably. What would you say? Residents, none of the residents had an octogenarian chlamydia. So they're like, hey, guys.

Because it's a problem. No STDs this week. We're taking everyone to Bubba Gump. And they're like, oh yeah, we're going to have so much sex when we get back from this. And it's like, oh no, we already promised them. Oh man, okay. When you wanted to interview them,

that's why those two ladies turned you down. They thought you were hitting on them, but they already had partners. They'll swing. When you're that late in life, I think it was just, we don't know, will they renege on the Bubba Gump reward if I break my celibacy streak right now? Is this like the equivalent of a dad

like actually following through on the thread of, we'll turn this car around. Yes. That's what it is. But instead it's nursing home attendance being like, God, they had sex. How do we stop it? We took them so, we were there.

We took them in public. We were watching them the entire time and they still did it. We were at the pearly gates and then they got exiled. I think that's what was going on over there. Yeah, that's what's going on over there. Stupid. And when I thought about those nice nursing home ladies getting frisky, well, for no particular reason,

I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road and when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought, maybe I just run across Greenbelt County. I figure since I run this far, maybe I just run across a great state of Alabama. And that's what I did.

I ran clear across Alabama. No particular reason except for maybe imagining those old people all intertwined and whatnot. Oh, I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured since I got on this far, might as well turn around. Just keep on going.

Michael, this was an absolute chachki paradise. Wall to wall. Yes, it was. You're not wrong. It was Chachki's Galore. It reminded me of a specific like lakeside grill and bar that I used to go to with my parents on Lake Austin in Texas called Ski Shores.

And it would just have kind of just that like steel shed sort of siding. Corrigated metal roofing and siding. It's exactly the water side restaurant. You filled with like signs and neon and all sorts of different all sorts of different things. So it's very forest gum themed. You know, you had a life, what the inner tube thing that's not inner tube because it's not inflatable. But it's like a man or smart rotation device.

Oh, that was actually one of my favorite. The flotation ring. Is that what it is? The flotation ring that said Jenny on it. Yes. One of the first things I noticed as we were walking to our table was another elderly man, not not as old as the geriatrics from the nursing home. But you know, very gray hair, probably mid sixties,

climbing over his booth onto another booth to like escape presumably to go to the bathroom. He was on the inside of a booth of six. And it looked like he was waiting like the person the other two people would not go. He was fed up. And it was already such a claustrophobic area like the waiting area. They kind of funnel you in and there's stop signs on the ground that are like, don't move past here, wait for a server to go and bring you to your table.

00:13:59,760 --> 00:14:02,960 I can't get past what those churros. These are supposed to be the world's most amazing to the churros. Everything is coming back to the churros. It actually, I would say it weighed on your experience. I would say it literally brought the atmosphere down. Like, no, I mean, it was it was super dry. They were dry. It was like and they were powder warm.

We tried again. We found another churro vendor and they were a little but they were a little better. They were at least not as cardboardy. Yeah. Yeah, they had a better taste. They see they seem like they would have been amazing hot. Yeah, like the first churros the inside reminded me of a pixie stick. It was just this dry powdery bullshit going into my mouth.

I'm like, yeah, part of my life has been taken away. I feel like a part of our soul died that day. Yeah, we were looking forward to these churros so much and we literally couldn't get our mind off of them even while like, you know, it took a solid, what, 15 minutes into the bubblegump before we were able to like really embrace the bubblegump experience because the churros had brought us down exactly like we normally we sit down, we take stock of everything, we start taking notes, but we didn't even know how to start forming thoughts, take notes. Yeah, yeah, do words.

I was very overwhelmed and I'll attribute it to the lackluster churros that we had built up so much on it. It's literally the reason we went to this location. Yeah, like there were closer ones. There's one in Universal City that's closer to both of us. We didn't have to drive that far, but we made the trip for the churros and the churros let us down and I'm sorry, Bubba Gum Shrimp Co, but that affects you. Yeah, because it's right next to you and that's why we chose you. It's unfair.

It's unfair. Yeah. But hey, it's just as fair as our truth. An entertaining conversation at the table next to us making the atmosphere better. Yeah, no, that's fair. I'll give you that. So what else did we have? We have the music. The music is all over the place. I loved it. You had like some songs that were like Forest Gump soundtrack.

You had Harry Styles. You had Selena Gomez. It was such a hodgepodge of different things and then there was just like classic rock that wasn't in the movie. But like a hodgepodge is a movie soundtrack. I thought it was appropriate to, I guess, like the hodgepodge of Chachki all around. Everything was kind of chaotic, but it was uniformly chaotic. The modern songs, though, they threw me off.

It's not even a detraction. No, I'm not going to say it's a detraction, but it is unfocused and and I clocked it. I noticed. Okay. That's that's about the extent of it. It stood out to me. Now, it also had a lovely smell of brine. Like it just smelled like the side of a boat. When we were going up the stairs at the end of the night after our meal, it just smelled like barnacles.

It smelled like the Santa Monica Pier, which has its own unique smell. It's not a pleasant smell, but it's an appropriate smell for a Bubba Gump. It's the smell of sweat and sand caked on to old rotting wood. Kind of gross, but hey, Santa Monica Pier. Speaking of kind of gross, their bathroom. OK, I'm not going to say it's a nightmare, but it definitely had a lot of you could tell that a lot of sandy shoes have walked in there and kind of depleted the quality of the floor over time. There was a comically large plastic out of order case blocking off one of the two urinals

and the only one that was available was the kids urinal, which was also comically low. Like I know kids urinals are always shorter. They should be. But this was like shin height. This was kind of weird. But I kind of liked it. There were pictures of forests and tire company in Vietnam right outside there. Our friend who is with us told us about that.

I know you saw it. I never actually saw it. So I took a picture. Was it the characters of the movie specifically? Yes. Let's see. I didn't know if it was like random fallen veterans. Oh, yeah.

It feels really somber for a chachki. We've got Lieutenant Dan Bubba Forest, his entire crew at basic training. Another guy. Oh, there's another Lieutenant Dan. I love Lieutenant Dan. Don't do you not love Lieutenant Dan? Gary Sinise. Everything he does is beautiful.

I saw that movie when I was like six or seven and on a weekly basis. On a weekly basis. I think of the scene at the end where Lieutenant Dan walks up and he pulls up his pant leg and we see the shiny new, like I think he says it's titanium or something, but we see the shiny new like prosthetic lower leg that goes like it. Lieutenant Dan, you got new leg. I can't do a good forest. Lieutenant Dan, you got new legs.

I don't know if that's better, but now I'm kind of stuck in this. Yeah. Oh man. Now I want to talk about my favorite line from Forrest Gump, but it's wildly inappropriate. What is it? We can edit it out later. It's the scene where the principal at that one school is talking to Forrest's mom. She's like, your son's IQ is over here.

This is normal, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever it is. And then she's like, is there anything I can do? And the principal just goes, is there a Mr. Gump, Ms. Gump? And then it flash cuts to the sound of them boning. But it's a shot outside of the house and it's Forrest sitting in a rocking chair out front and you hear the groans of the principal and it's like, Oh God, I blocked that out. And then the principal walks out, wiping the flop sweat off of his forehead and he just turns

to Forrest and he goes, your mama really cares about your schooling, boy. And Forrest just goes, mimicking the sound that he heard the principal make while having sex with his mother. And then the principal walks away. I've completely forgotten that moment of the movie. It is an iconic moment in the movie. You don't notice it when you're a kid because it carries no meaning. I haven't seen this literally since it came out.

And when you're an adult and you watch that scene, it is just a chef's kiss moment of cinematic history. It was super loud. It was very loud. The music, the people talking, all of it. It was very loud. I don't think it was negative loud. I know you're more sensitive to it.

I'm very sensitive. I actually took out a decibel meter and measured how loud the environment was. That's what you were doing. I saw like some graph on your phone. You're so weird. And like, let's just say for legal reasons, I'm not going to share the exact numbers. But at times, the decibel range reached the level between gas-powered lawnmower and motorcycle.

Yeah, that's fine. That was our level. That's what I expect out of a bubblegum shrimp co. I thought I would have been overwhelmed by this, but there was so much chaos. It just blended in. Yeah. You know what else was part of the atmosphere? I mean, I guess this is outside the restaurant, but very much a part of the restaurant.

They had one of the benches from Forrest Gump, like the bus stop bench that he's sitting at. During the meal, you had a really good fact about those. I will get to the facts about Forrest Gump. There's going to be a lot of Forrest Gump in this episode. Lots of Gump. A lot of Gumpen. It's in the name. And they had the front halves of Forrest's shoes embedded in the ground made out of like that old

McDonald's play place like plastic that you would see a grimace and it's made out of it. And I'm sure there's materials in there that give you cancer. I'm not sure. For legal reasons, I'm going to back away from doubling. I'm not going to double down on that and say, I don't know if it does. But you know, it was kind of that old plastery plastic. Yeah, we're in California and the signs are everywhere. Then they had a fake suitcase and box of chocolates and all that just sitting on the bench next to you.

So they have like a nice little recreation for photo ops and no one respects the line. I got in line to be after someone for a picture and another family just wandered in front and all started taking pictures and I'm just sitting there like, well, all right, I guess I'll wait through this as well because I'm grumpy. Oh, actually speaking of the shoes and running outfit, the one of the costume pieces from the film was prominently displayed in a glass case in the restaurant, too. They also had one of those, you put in a penny and two quarters and then you crank it. Oh, I love those.

And it gives you a souvenir penny, is that what it's called? Yeah, they had one of those machines at the front and I was trying to take a picture of it and there was a woman standing in front of it kind of looking at me like she wasn't oblivious, but just not clocking that I wanted a picture of the machine or not caring because she just would not move even a little bit. And like I even like kind of nodded at the machine and she just kind of like kept staring at me and it was bizarre because she didn't seem angry, she didn't seem to have an attitude, but she also didn't have the social awareness.

But who broke eye contact first? It was a very quick amount of eye contact, I don't remember. That's one of those situations where I would have just kept eye contact as long as possible and the first one to break loses. Yeah, but you're also a sociopath. And now a word from our totally not made up sponsor. Oh, hi, it's Job. I'm so glad to be back with another product for you.

Last week I took a little bit of time off because I got in trouble. I'm back. I used the extra time to chew the cud and think about what am I good at? What do I want to bring to the table? And after chewing all that cud, I decided to look at it after the fact and I noticed, hey, that kind of looks like that weirdo from that movie in Alabama. I could make a fortune chewing down on souvenir pennies. So all you got to do is stick in 50 cents.

I'm inside the machine hanging out at the bottom. The penny falls into my mouth and I'll get you a portrait of forest gum. Or if you want a shrimp, I can do that too. I'm real talented with my molars. All you got to do is look like you mean business. I got to bounce it. Get out of here. That's right, Petunia.

She hangs out right outside the front of the machine and she'll give the mad dog stare. Anybody who don't look like they're serious about getting a souvenir penny from Job. Who's this Petunia character? She's my sister's old roller derby teammate. She's got real broad shoulders, but she's the best person around if you don't want no funny business. Well, anyway, somebody's putting some quarters in. I got to chew down. If you're interested in supporting this venture, go ahead and call my name.

I'm right inside the machine. I'll hear you. It is soundproof in here because of all the lead. So you're not going to hear me respond, but know that I hear you and I'm responding in spirit. Okay, bye. My girlfriend Aubrey and her friend Herbert came with us. Always great to have extra people along because that provides multiple opportunities. They can help us enjoy ourselves and not fixate on one another's frustrating.

That's exactly. I love you, Garrett, but you weigh on me. Oh, exactly. Like, I think that's our chemistry right there. Like, if we don't positions, you have placed on exactly like if we don't make each other's life slightly miserable. Uh-huh. We're not doing it.

Yeah. Why are we making a podcast? Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right. Yeah. Yeah. No, Herbert is another one of my close friends. He was there with us.

And being in such an Alabama themed restaurant triggered some things with us. Last year, 2021, I believe still feels like forever ago, but I decided to embark on a massive road trip and it spanned 58 days. It spanned like 29 states and Herbert joined me. And so his leg of the trip that he did with me was New Orleans to Huntsville, Alabama, because I was visiting a close friend of mine who I hadn't seen in over a decade. So he was with me for almost a week. And Herbert is a darker skinned fella in the South with me.

He is a Latin man. I love how careful you're being with this description. I'm Mexican too. So I can't like it's fine. It's more that it's just funny to me. You're being so careful about your own people. It's just making me laugh. Well, he looks like my people.

I don't look like my people. I look like other people too. I mean, I am a big mix of a bunch of things. And we're on our way to Huntsville from New Orleans. It's been probably eight to 10 hours of driving that day. And he's driving my car on the highway. And this big ass Ford F-250 pulls up behind us and puts on siren. And there weren't markings on the car.

Why'd you pull over then? Because we were being pulled over by sirens. I don't know. If it's an unmarked car, you call the local police station and say, hey, this unmarked vehicle is trying to pull me over. Is that one of you guys? And they're like, yeah, that's one of us. And then you pull over.

I didn't do that. Also, Herbert was driving. So Herbert pulled over because, you know, we're not about to get into a police chase on an out of state freeway. Come on. You don't want to reenact Dukes of Hazard. That sounds fun. No.

So we pull over to the shoulder and the cop, this giant hot dog of a man. What? The hot dog of a man. Describe it, please. OK. So somewhere between purple and orange skin tone, somewhere in there. So like he has a drinking problem, obviously.

High blood pressure plus, you know, the Alabama sun plus just high cholesterol. Looks like he played football in high school and peaked then. You know, he's kind of like built in that kind of like stockier sort of way. And then he's got like a forehead vein. Like he's like he's just always pushing, you know, like, you know, you know how like people can make their head. Yeah, their face red by just like it was it was that kind of literal. He looked like a hot dog.

So he pulls us over. This is my impression. It's not what he sounded like. But it's all I hear when I think of this man. Huh, you guys got California license plates. Where are you headed to? We're ultimately going to Jacksonville, Florida. But right now we're going to Huntsville.

Interesting. That's Huntsville is pretty far out of the way. If you're going to Jacksonville. Yeah, I'm going to visit a friend. Must be a pretty good friend. That's how friends work. You go out of your way to see them, especially if it's been a decade. Like, what are you talking about?

And so he's just like, well, it doesn't make a lot of sense that you'd be going on this highway with like you're coming from California. I don't know what you're doing down here. And I'm like, well, sir, I didn't leave California this morning. Seeing as we're in Alabama, I kind of had to make a few stops. You know, and I visited my family in Texas and I picked this guy up in New Orleans. He's like, huh, and you're going to Huntsville and then Jacksonville. And it's a very roundabout way.

And I'm like, and he's like, I don't know. I'm just trying to put together some things that don't add up. Took everything my power not to say, that must be hard for you. Oh, you should have. The worst that would have happened is you get a ticket, whatever it would have gone over. Anyways, he ends up separating us. He asked Herbert to get out of the car. And I'm just sitting there like my dark skinned friend is in my blind spot.

And I don't see him right now. I'm genuinely like starting to get really worried for my friend. And then the hot dog kind of walks up to me and he was like, so how long you've been friends with him? Nine years. We met at a wrestling show. What's he do for work? Something to do with engineering. He's a government employee, but I don't know the specifics.

You don't know the specifics, but you've been friends for nine years. What kind of friend are you? I was like, I just told you what field he I don't know his title. And so I don't know. He like made a big deal out of it. And he was like, well, just your your route doesn't seem to make sense to me. And I'm like, I have it written on an itinerary. If you would like to see that, he was like, oh, there's no need to see that.

What? There's no need to give me what I asked you for. Yeah. And he was like, so where tell me where you're coming from and exactly where you're headed. And I was like, okay, do you really want to know? I started in Los Angeles. I went to the Grand Canyon. I stopped in Albuquerque.

I visited my family for two weeks in Austin, Texas. Then I drove to New Orleans, picked him up. We're driving to Huntsville to visit my friend. We're stopping in Macon, Georgia on our way to Jacksonville, Florida, where we'll be for three days. Then we're going to Richmond and he's flying out of there and I'm continuing on to Baltimore. Then to New York City where I pick up my dad and we're going to Niagara Falls, Buffalo and Cleveland where he flies out after the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

And then I'm going to Chicago where I've got family and we're going to be there for six days. And I'm picking up my mom and we're going to Sioux Falls, which is funny because my mom's name is Sioux. And I took a bunch of pictures of her on the ground and it was funny, but I haven't done that yet because in the context of this story, I'm telling you my future, not my past. And then Rapid City, Grand Teton National Park, Yosemite, then Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, then Snoqualmie, Washington, because I'm a big Twin Peaks fan.

Then I'm going to visit a friend in Seattle, visit a friend in Portland, drive through Ashland, visit family in San Francisco, and then I'm going to Los Angeles because that's where I'm from. And it's just for fun. Does that process to you, you f***ing swine? And I don't mean that in like a, you're a pig kind of like, it's not a cop slur. It's more of a, you're a hot dog slur. Yeah.

And then I was like, and again, if you want to see my itinerary, it'll back up that entire route. And he was like, and then he just kind of walked back to Herbert. That's insane. And then that's when Herbert started kind of like, I was literally like turning my head at all angles to be like, I don't see Herbert anymore.

And right as I'm kind of freaking out at my most, Herbert walks up to my window, hands me my license and is like, so do you want me to continue driving? And by the way, they didn't have like a department written on their uniforms. It just said task force. So I don't even know if they were real cops or just, you know, Alabama's finest, just like doing civilian,

like citizens arrest sort of deals or whatever. But they ultimately were like, you can't have the frame around your license plate, which was a dealer frame, like from when I got the car. It wasn't even like a custom. Like it didn't protrude over any letters or anything like that. And their car had a frame. My mama was always protecting me.

She even called that sheriff's station. Said we got pulled over by a hot dog. The department said something about how they was always just trying to catch drug smugglers or something like that. Total shot in the dark. They do that from time to time. Anyways, I had no drugs. So that's all I have to say about that.

They had license plates on the table that said run forest, run and stop forest stop. And I think it's like when you go to a Brazilian steakhouse and you have the, you know, the little thing that you flip over and it lets the people that come by with the like platters of meat of whether you whether or not you want more, like the button at crane barbecue.

Yeah, exactly. And so it was just kind of weird to have that at Bubba Gump because they didn't have like an all you can eat aspect. Like it wasn't like there were people walking around like, oh, do you want us to top off your crab bucket or whatever it is? I don't know. It seemed like a weird feature to have. We got to rate the atmosphere.

How you how you going with it? I thoroughly enjoyed all of the Chatsky. Like it was a strong recreation of what I would think a movie restaurant would be. Mind you, this is actually the U.S.'s only successful movie franchise based restaurant. I mean, Planet Hollywood is generically movie franchise based, but like the theme is movie franchises, not a franchise.

I think they did a great job with the authentic memorabilia from the show, including the benches. Yeah. The music was loud, but it fit in. Everything, absolutely everything was thematically on point, but those churros were so disappointing. The churros were disappointing and they literally stayed on our mind the entire time.

The smell, not great. The bathrooms, not great. Like a lot of the experience was sticky. I didn't get any of that. The tabletop to me was kind of sticky. There was like a random chair at the end of our booth that caused everyone to have to like go around. Okay.

Which is actually, it's funny. That's my fault. Oh, you put that there? Okay. So it was weird. There were three chairs on my side of the table. They didn't fit there. I'm just like, no, I'm moving this for two reasons.

One, it's out of my way. Two, I'm curious. It gives us a wide berth. I'm curious what another thing does to change the topography of people moving around the restaurant. It was a weird experiment. How does this factor in for your rating? What would you give in it?

I'm going to go one thumb up because the churros tanked the experience. They tanked an otherwise wonderful atmosphere for me. For me, the stickiness and the churros, I mean, the churros way less heavily for me, but the overchotchification of this place. Chotchification. Yeah.

Coined. Coined just now. Also speaking of coins, the lady in front of the penny machine. You know, there's just a bunch of factors of crowded, but narrow, but people climbing over seats. It was a lot. It's a zero thumbs. Not the worst rating.

00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:06,960 Not the best rating. It's just, from an atmosphere perspective, it's just there. Okay. You've got zero thumbs. I've got one thumb up. That's an all right experience. But we'll be back to talk about the service after a quick break

because this was what really made the experience. Yes. Hello. My name is Forrest. Forrest Gump. Do you want a chocolate? I could eat about a million and a half of these. My mama always said,

the server you get at a casual dining chain restaurant was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. I think it happened, Garrett. Keith has been dethroned. He has. I think we have a new champion. We have a new best server, Brandon.

Right? Brandon. Brandon was great. I'm going to get this out of the way too. You tipped our hand right at the beginning of the meal. It wasn't right at the beginning. I think it was our third or fourth interaction with him. Okay.

So and I honestly did not notice a change in demeanor before I told him that we do a podcast or after. So I genuinely didn't get a vibe from him that it was turned up. Oh, I agree. Other than like him being like, I want you to get the full experience. Let's do the trivia, which sounds like a thing that they do for people anyways,

but maybe not everybody. I don't know, honestly. Probably for people that come in and they're like, we're fans of Forrest Gump or whatever. It's I think it's a standard thing. Apparently there is a list of 10 things every employee must memorize. So oh, sure.

You can go to any Bubba Gump location around the world and still fit in work or something like that. Brandon was great. Yeah. He was he was attentive. He really seemed genuine. Yeah. No, that was that was the best part.

And like I actually felt like any table that he had, he would have made equal efforts to connect with them. Yeah. He cared. I could tell. And if he also seemed like the type of person who would have been able to pick up on the queue of like if a table was not really talkative or wanted to like make a thing out of like

the interactions with their server, that it would have been whatever he would have adjusted and kind of it's like that Uber driver that knows if you want a conversation or not. I like conversations. You don't. He was the one that would be like, I can read this room. Yeah.

Nothing I hate more than an overly chatty Uber driver. But with servers, I don't think you mind. Well, at least with me when you're out with me. So I don't know how that affects it, but he was our new best server. Yeah. We have a new king of the mountain.

We have a new king of the mountain. Keith held the record from episode one through seven, but episode eight to the age of Brandon, baby. Brandon time. Brandon time. And the thing that I really liked about this experience, which I didn't expect to because if you had told me that we were going to do it beforehand,

I would have like kind of rolled my eyes at it. But once you're in it, if you're if you're a competitive person like I am, and he goes, all right, we've got some forest gum trivia for you. Did I just say trivia? We've got some forest gum trivia for you. I am all in.

Yeah. And you killed it. How many questions did he ask us? He was like seven, eight questions, something. I'm trying to think of what I can remember. Like which presidents did. Which three presidents did Boris meet during the movie? You know, where did he get shot?

Or what did he say was the best part about getting shot? What three sports did he play? It's the free ice cream running football and ping pong. Yes. Oh, actually, this was this one. I had no idea. Yeah. How many ping pong balls were supposedly used in the movie?

Which we had different answers for because I actually used to be a tour guide at Paramount Studios and would talk about forest gump. And I had a scene that was an example of CGI, early CGI, you know, 1994. And there is a specific scene of like from the perspective of the table of forest playing ping pong. And you see the ball kind of going back and forth

in the foreground to the paddle, back to the foreground to the paddle. And there was no ball. So my like sleeper cell tour guide training kicked in. And I said zero. I was like, they were all CGI. He was like, no, they had they had over 500. He said 525.

And I was like, oh, well, for this one scene, there was zero. He was like, oh, that's cool. Oh, and you got him on the bench trivia. Yeah. So one of the things from my tour was how many of the benches did they manufacture? The replica benches of the bus stop from the movie. And the answer is four. I don't remember where all four of them are.

Two of them are at different bubble gump shrimp locations. Oh yeah, two of them are at bubble gump shrimp locations. One of them is at Paramount Studios on the lot. And another one is in one of the producers backyards, which was like a talking point or whatever. So that's a thing. That's what I brought to the table. And he was like, I'm going to use that.

Well, you were in the bathroom peeing down by my shins. Yes. The manager actually came over and checked in. Yeah. He was just seemed like a really nice guy. He was asking like, oh, so you guys are doing a podcast about this? What's it about? Oh, how was everything? Did you mention the mediocrity aspect? No.

That was the part where I was I was hesitant to bring it up and I didn't want to because I didn't want them to think like, I didn't want them to feel insulted because just because we're looking for mediocrity doesn't mean that there aren't moments of greatness and their service experience, the part that they personally should be the most proud of was the best we've had. Yeah.

Yeah. I didn't want to like put a damper and be like, we're looking for the most mediocre restaurant. And we thought it might be you when the, you know, the truth is just we're going to change. We're going to chain restaurants and we're seeing what happens. But yeah, they were they were very cool. They seem cordial, interested, accommodating. Like they genuinely wanted us to have a great experience and

they succeeded. I walked away not loving the food, which we'll get to, but loving the experience. Yes. I really did. The best. It was very fun. This is the best restaurant experience I've ever had service wise.

Good for them. I think you can accurately assume both of our ratings for service. But before we go into that, birthdays. Oh, they've got a birthday song. They have, I think this is our first corporate branded birthday experience that we've gotten to have across eight episodes. Yes. Because Buffalo Wild Wings had nothing outback,

sang the normal birthday song. Olive Garden sang the normal birthday song. Islands didn't have any birthdays. Pizza Hut was almost empty, so no birthdays. Denny's. Denny's didn't have a birthday. Show racing. The song was.

But we did see the little kid there with his parents. Denny's is like, do it yourself. That's the show Ray we know and love. Yes. Yeah. This was our first rodeo with like, you know, employees like clapping and like, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, I don't remember what it was.

And six or seven different people, including the manager, just everyone came out and did it. Yeah. And so what was funny is we heard it in another room and I darted up and I'm like, oh, I gotta be involved in this. And I ran to the other room, which at this point it was getting kind of late. So they were approaching closing. So the restaurant was a little bit emptier starting to clear out.

And I like rushed through the door and they had like just finished. And I was like, no, I didn't get to join the birthday thing or witness it. And I was like, hey, can we just say it's Herbert's birthday? Because Herbert doesn't like attention. And so they just came over and they did their like birthday song for Herbert. I don't remember what the words were, but they did call out his face being read. But it was like part of the lyrics. It wasn't like an improvised thing.

It was like part of the thing. I had a boomer moment and I hate admitting it to you, but apparently my phone was recording in my lap. So I asked if they could if I could record the birthday song. And they said, yeah, of course. And I lifted up my phone and I hit record, which stopped the recording. And then when it was done, I hit record again. And I was like, great, I got it.

And really what I did was recorded two different videos, just one looking at the ceiling and one looking at my face from my lap. That's great. But now, did you like listen through the entire thing? Were there any cool sound bites? Oh, no, I didn't. The videos. Yeah, you're actually no video.

I would love to give you a picked up a fun conversation. I've already deleted them, but I think they're still in my recycling bin. So I could salvage them and we could check them out. So rating the service, easy two thumbs up. Easy. Yeah. I don't even need to go in it. Two thumbs up, five thumbs up.

Munchkin menu musings. My name is Nora. I'm seven and I'm going to be reviewing Baba Gum, the kids menu. So I like the chocolate coloring and the shooting stars. I also like the coding dots over here. I love the front of the menu. I like the rainbow and the flower. This may be some little light name, but I love the colors of the pants because they're

Christmas colors and my favorite time of the year is Christmas. But what I don't like is I hate the man on the bench, the painting of the man over here because he just looks weird just sitting there. What looks good over here is the ice cream sandwich, the soapy and the ice cream. But I don't really think I have an opinion for what does not look good because I cannot read the menu. I would give it a 10 out of a 20 because it's really good. This is Ben Nora from Munchkin the New Musings.

Thank you. Food. Yum. We tried a lot of things. Yeah. A lot, a lot of things. We got two platters. We got an appetizer platter.

The run across America sampler. And it came with fried shrimp, seafood, hush pups, chicken tenders, Bubba's far out dip, which is like an artichoke dip with tortilla chips, a remulated sauce, a cocktail sauce, and maker's mark barbecue sauce. I had opinions on these and I'm sure you did too. We want to talk about the appetizer before we go into anything else. I'm so agate. Also, I'm going to get this out of the way here.

I'm not a fan of seafood unless it's sushi or fishermen's outlet downtown. Oh my gosh. Fisherman's outlet is amazing. Go there. Seafood has grown on me in recent years. It's not my go-to. I'm hit and miss on seafood. The one expectation I had of the food coming in here was that the shrimp would be excellent.

It's in the name. It's a huge point of the movie. Yeah. It's just object. It's Bubba's thing and Forest and Lieutenant Dan go into a business doing it, though it's what it's named after. I was disappointed, both with the boiled shrimp that we had in our entree and with the fried shrimp that we had in the platter.

I didn't hate it, but my expectations were very high and they didn't meet them. So the fried shrimp, I go like six out of 10, thought it should be better. Oh, now on the same thing. I'm also going to give that fried shrimp at six out of 10, but that's a positive six out of 10 for me. I don't like shrimp myself, but I actually kind of enjoyed this one. The shrimp itself was firm and succulent. The breading was crisp.

It was a really good eating experience. It didn't taste overly fishy. Honestly, it didn't have too much flavor, but the experience of eating the shrimp was very pleasing. Now, here's where we're going to differ because we talked about it already, not on the podcast, but as we were leaving. None of the food that I tasted, this entire meal, was hot. It had all already cooled off. You know, we do take our pictures and stuff so we can put them on our social media and on

Instagram at Find Dining Podcast. That's right. We're on Instagram at Find Dining Podcast. We're on TikTok at Find Dining Podcast. And you can email us whatever you want, Find Dining Podcast at gmail.com. We might regret that, but I don't know. Maybe we won't. But that's not enough time for things to get cold.

Not that they were cold, but nothing was like that deliciously warm. It was all already kind of just room temp, lukewarm. And it bummed me out a little bit. I mean, it does affect my enjoyment. I know you said for you, it's not a big factor. And I blame that purely on us taking pictures of things and writing notes. Like Herbert and Aubrey both said their food was appropriate temperature when they consumed it. Yeah.

And they weren't taking notes. They just dug in right away. That's fair. Now, I will say the sauces had an impact. Oh, yeah. No, I agree. Like the sauces for me kind of saved it. The cocktail sauce, I had a six out of 10.

I'm not, I'm just not a huge cocktail sauce, but it was fine. And it was fine for cocktail sauce. The remoulade, really good. Seven out of 10. The makers mark barbecue sauce or bourbon sauce, eight out of 10. Wow. I thought that was delicious. I did end up eating more of the remoulade just because I like that more in general,

but the bourbon sauce did really impress me. It was. It very strongly tasted like bourbon. I don't know how I feel about it. They succeeded. I've never had bourbon. I don't drink, so I've literally never had bourbon. But if that's what bourbon tastes like, I'm going to start drinking.

That sauce was, I'm not going to start drinking. The most bourbon-y bourbon sauce I've ever had. Really? Yeah, it was good. The tortilla chips were, you know, they were tortilla chips. Oh, what about those hushpups? I had very high expectations for those. 4.5 out of 10 for me.

4 out of 10 for me. They tasted like nothing. I know. That was the thing. Like, that was the running thing for me. Everything was bland, the appetizer sampler. Yeah, it tasted, I was just like, I want flavor. And I wasn't getting it on the hushpups.

Then there was the chicken tenders, which, I mean, hard to mess up chicken. There aren't bad chicken tenders often. No, those are bad chicken tenders. Yes, exactly. Well, I go 5 out of 10, which is right in the middle. When you slather some remelade on them, they were very tasty. No, no, no, that's a 3 out of 10. Those are nugs, not tendies.

Come on. Okay, semantics. Let's evaluate them as though they were nuggets, even still. Dry. I go 5 out of 10. For me, it was more that they were tough. The first one I took a bite into, I was like, oh, this is a little tough. I didn't love that.

But it was a 5 out of 10 for me just because chicken tenders in general, I think, are pretty solid. Yeah, no, and I have to go 3 out of 10 because I love me some tendies. These things were embarrassing. No pun intended. KFC popcorn chicken is leagues better than what we consumed. Yeah, I mean, there is a lot of better chicken than that chicken. A lot of better chicken.

I would say most chicken is better than it, but chicken itself is good. I mean, this is, you hear me go into this on every podcast where I'm like, well, chicken in general is higher than most things. So for chicken, you know, it's low, but it is a 5 out of 10 for food. Are we surprised that we're disappointed in the chicken from Bubba Gump Shrimp Company? I would say yes, but my favorite part of this whole meal was not seafood. It was the forest's backyard barbecue platter is what we ordered. Yes.

And it came with some barbecue baby back ribs, which I give a 7 out of 10, which again, not the highest rating of everything that I give gave, but it's what I ate the most of. I kept going back. It fell off the bone perfectly. It was kind of like the sauce was like a safe sort of thing. It was just like, we're not reinventing the wheel. We're giving you barbecue sauce that you're familiar with.

You've had a million times. It's good. I'm a Texan. I've had 10 out of 10 barbecue. This, this was not in the same league. No. Right. This is a league below.

But for that league, I thought it held its own. I'm not going to go out there. If anyone's asking for a rib recommendation, I'm not saying Bubba Gump. But if someone's asking for a recommendation at Bubba Gump, I am going to say the ribs. I think the I agree with you mostly on that. Okay. I think the the preparation of the ribs was wonderful.

They were fall off the bone tender. They stayed moist. This is exactly the texture I want in a rib. Yeah. But again, the meat was bland and they were light on the sauce. I'm looking for more of a complete rib experience. So I can only give this a six out of 10 based on a really good texture. Just the ribs.

Yeah. Also, we kind of skipped past it. Do you have a rating for the entire appetizer sampler that we got? Or is there anything else you wanted to talk about in there? Oh, yeah. The far out dip. Oh, yeah, yeah. That it was just basically a classic artichoke dip.

Right. But really all I tasted was butter, cheese and savory. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. That was a little disappointing. Four out of 10 for that. But overall sampler platter, 4.5 out of 10.

It's a bunch of fried food. I can't. You know what's crazy? Go any lower on a big old basket of fried food. All of my ratings for the individual items on the platter are above a 4.5 out of 10. Yet I'm going to agree with the 4.5 out of 10 for the whole. Yeah.

It just it didn't nothing impressed me enough to make it feel worth $21. And this restaurant is the first time across all of our episodes where the price point did actually impact my view of some things. Also, we were a little surprised by the check when we saw the forest backyard barbecue platter price given how not plentiful that platter was. $70. That wasn't $70 worth of food. It was not $70 worth of food.

I have no idea how expensive crab legs are, but they were also pretty small crab legs. Right? Yeah. And there were maybe eight of them. I think collectively we only ate three out of eight or ten of them. So that's partially on us, but you want to taste a bit of everything. There was that had the barbecue baby back ribs,

the crab and shrimp boil we got Cajun and garlic. The andouille sausage was great though. Oh, it was. But where was it? I bet there were like four pieces of sausage in the whole thing. When you say pieces, people are thinking like four little sausages. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, not links slices. Like you took one, like two inch long, maybe one inch long slice,

chopped it into four pieces and they're not that big in diameter. No, it was tiny. I actually have a picture of the one piece that I found in that entire pot on my fork. So we can post that to the Instagram, but it was the best part of that whole setting. But there was almost no quantity. It was upsetting. It came with garlic bread, corn on the cob, red potatoes. Mac and cheese.

Mac and cheese. I think that was everything. The garlic bread, very over buttery, overly buttery. It just I couldn't taste garlic on that at all. It was just butter and parm. Yeah, I go bad on that garlic bread. That was that was the worst part of the meal to me. It was a three out of ten, two out of ten for me there.

The red potatoes were pretty bland. I didn't eat any of them. More like one or two of them in the entire thing. I think there were like four halves. Yes. And one of the halves ended up on your lap. It ended up in my mouth and then out of my mouth and then on the floor. And I was like, well, that's sad.

It was like overboiled. So like as soon as I took my bite, like it fell off the fork and I didn't quite have my teeth in it yet. Yeah, corn on the cob was pretty standard. You know, I like corn on the cob, but this specific corn on the cob didn't do anything special. I go six out of ten on that. Eight out of ten on the sausage, five out of ten on the potatoes.

The crab and shrimp, the shrimp, you know, you had to peel yourself. And I I did not eat a single shrimp after I saw the legs. When you peeled the leg, you pulled it apart. The legs kind of stuck out. It was that's what they look like. It was disgusting. Like you're just grossed out by shrimp. The idea of just like mouthing a seaworm.

Yeah. And I I don't eat shrimp enough to have known. Like I took a bite and then I turned to Herbert. I was like, do I need to peel this? And he was like, yeah. And I was like, oh, oops. Like that moment right there just grossed me out. I couldn't do it. I thought it tasted OK.

Again, it just kind of lacked flavor. Same with the crab legs. I cracked some open, ate it. It didn't impress me. It was very light on meat. Like it just seemed like there wasn't that much content. It was a small, fishy and difficult crab. Yeah.

Like the last time I had crab legs, I cooked them myself. I got them fresh from the local Asian market. It was they were good. They were thick. They broke apart easily. And you could just grab the meat and pull the entire thing out of the leg. Yeah, this was not that. This was like, you know, you crack it in parts

and then you pull you like kind of scavenge what you can get. Yeah, like a toothpick of crab. So we've got that behind us. What do you give to the forest backyard barbecue platter? Oh, man, that whole thing was an absolute mess. It was all over the place for me. It also had fries and I ate a lot of the fries and they're solid fries.

They were fries. So like, I don't know. Like, so I've got ribs six out of 10, the crab two out of 10. Really? I want six out of 10 there. The crab last crab I had was leagues better than this. Yeah, if it's comparable to other crabs I haven't had. I don't know how to calibrate it.

So just as a food, it was like, it's slightly above mediocre. French fries, I'm going to give a four out of 10. But just because by the time I got to them, they were a little soggy. Yeah. Garlic bread, two out of 10. Mac and cheese, I didn't eat that, but Aubrey tried it and she said it was an eight out of 10 with a perfect gooey texture and crisp breadcrumbs on top.

This is the amount of care that we put into our evaluations for you where if we're not cheese eaters, we will bring cheese eaters with us to give us a score to tell you people what that food is like. So the entire thing, 4.5 out of 10. And I go 5.5 out of 10 for the whole backyard barbecue platter. I am appalled that it was $70 though. I felt like, and it fed three people, but even then I felt like 50 is probably where it should have been.

Oh, but the jambalaya we got. So we ordered, and that wasn't a part of the platter. That was a separate order, but we also split a jambalaya. It was very good. I went 7.5 out of 10. And I've had New Orleans jambalaya. I have too.

This was the third best jambalaya I have ever consumed. Yeah, it was good. And it had a much more plentiful amount of sausage. Oh, it was really good. They didn't totally skimp us on the sausage. The Louisiana hot sauce was perfect in that jambalaya. Actually, yeah. I mean, it was basically Frank's hot sauce.

Just like relabeled to be bubble gums, but it was good. Yeah. It worked really well with it. What did I put the jambalaya on? I think I put it on the crab, maybe? Is that weird? I don't remember. It's a thing.

Oh, no, I put it on the hush puppies. Oh, the hot sauce. Yes. The hot sauce. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it worked. It worked well. Yeah, like the hush puppies were a good vehicle for sauce.

Yeah. All right. So then we went dessert. Yeah. Did you try any of mine? I know I had a bite of yours. You did? I had a bite of yours.

Okay. So you got the key lime pie. Yes. And now, okay, the key lime pie, it tasted great. Yeah. It was just a confection sweet goodness. It was creamy. It was flavorful, but it was an authentic key lime pie.

This was just some sweet, sugary, mildly lime-flavored pie that did taste good. Yeah, it was okay. But 5 out of 10, because this is not key lime pie. 01:00:18,800 --> 01:00:20,640 I had a taste, and it was 5 out of 10 for me too. Strawberry shortcake, though, just like my childhood. I got the strawberry shortcake.

I liked it. I went 6.5 out of 10 on it. My bar for strawberry shortcake is actually a fast food strawberry shortcake. Really? It's from Portillo's, which is Chicago hot dog chain. You keep mentioning that. I think I've talked about it.

Yeah, they've got a strawberry shortcake there that I love. Just this little container, strawberries on the bottom, the cake in the middle, whipped cream, and more strawberries on top. Did you have a rating for the strawberry shortcake? Yeah. I've got good memories, 8 out of 10, just like my mom used to make. Yeah, it was good.

Overall, though, good jambalaya and good dessert does not accommodate for two entire platters full of mostly meh with a little bit of good. I really did like the ribs. I liked the fries. But if we're adding up the points of every item equally, it's not a great look. I'm going one thumb down on the food overall.

Oh, wow. Yeah. For me, this was an inconsistent food experience. Yep. I had some twos. I had some eights. Yeah. I don't like the idea of going in blind.

Am I going to get barely edible or some of the best of my life? I don't want that variance. Right. So I'm going to give this zero thumbs, but with a caveat of now, if I go back again, I'll get the fried shrimp for an appetizer. Oh, you can. I'll get the jambalaya.

You can curate yourself an experience that would be more thumbs. I can curate myself a two thumbs up food experience from Bubba Gump. Yeah. With knowledge now. Sure. I think that's a fair assessment. We gave them the opportunity to put a bunch of feet forward, so to speak. Yes.

And some of them tasted like literal feet. And some are really great. And others tasted like feet for people who have a fetish. So beauty's in the eye of the beholder. You know what beauty is in the eye of the beholder? And you know what's beautiful? We got our first Spanish language review. Mari Sustin left us a review on Apple Podcasts.

Subject line, Boy Bueno. The body of the review, Boy Bueno. Love it. Sweet, simple. Mari, if you're listening, go ahead and write us an email, find dining podcast at gmail.com to claim your free t-shirt. We've got a lot of great t-shirts, including an Olive Garden parody logo shirt commemorating our musical from last week.

If you haven't listened to the musical yet, it is my favorite episode. It's probably my favorite thing I've ever been a part of. Go check it out. Go ahead and make sure you leave us a review. And if you hear your review read on the podcast in the future, you can email us and claim your own free shirt. Thanks so much. Final rating.

Okay, here we are at the end of this journey, Garrett. We have to risk the place. It was quite the journey. Got to give it a score. It was a journey. Yeah. And I'm still disappointed from those churros. This is days later.

Yeah. And it's not their fault, but it did impact our experience. So that is part of it. The service, best service we've ever had in these places. If I could give the service a score, it's like a 9.5 or a 10. Yeah. So they did great. The ambiance of the place was very kitschy.

It was. I loved it. I thought it was fine. It was an overall mediocre experience. It was. There were highs, there were lows, but average it together. Pretty average. The food, not great.

I didn't love the food. I loved some of the food. I despised some of the food. So this is going to be mediocre. It's going to be in the range. I have a feeling. I just got a gut feeling that we're going to stick inside of that four to six range. Will it be the perfect 5.00?

Will it be at least closer to 5.00 than our reigning champion, Olive Garden? That's going to be hard to get. They're only 0.1 away. So let's see. Michael, what is your final rating? My final rating overall for this experience with no thumbs for atmosphere, two thumbs up for service and one thumb down for food. So that, you know, that averages to just one thumb out of six possible thumbs up

on a 13 thumbs scale, six down, a zero and six up. It's like a cuneiform thumb scale. It's such a stupid scale. But here we are. I am going to give it a 5.71. So for me, it is mediocre. It is not perfectly mediocre. It is a better experience than mediocrity.

So once we find the bar against which we can measure all restaurants, we can safely say Bubba Gump is better than average. Yes. Now, for me, I gave it one thumb up for atmosphere, two thumbs up for service and zero thumbs up for food. You don't have any thumbs down. So you're you're a much more positive experience, but you also factor in waiting a little bit more than I do.

I wait each individual topic, depending on what happened. Yeah, I strongly did. I normally wait food harder. Yeah. This time, I'm also going to wait the food hard, but the service was so spectacular. This is going to bring my final rating up to a 6.05. All right.

It's time to slap it on the Chotsky of mediocrity. All right. Where's it going? 5.88. Wow, you are safe. I am safe. And if you don't know what Garrett is talking about with that, it's because if ever we pick a place that's better or worse than mediocre,

which we define by that four to six safe space, we have to draw from the you must bowl, which is a punishment written in a you must format that I would have had to do at our next restaurant pick, which we haven't decided yet because we haven't played the headline game yet. But if you have any suggestions for things you want to see in the you must bowl for future punishments, go ahead and email them to us.

Put in the subject line, you must bowl. It can't be anything that's imposing upon other people. There can't be any victims, but we are totally happy to make ourselves look foolish. So yeah, just think about that when you send in a suggestion. And but hey, send in what you want. It's still up to us to choose. If it weren't for the you must bowl,

my son Juicy would never exist. And you would have boring, traditional facial hair. I know. Yeah, that's true. My signature style right now that I am once again rocking is because of the you must bowl. Yeah, seriously, because of your facial hair, you went from like a Florida six to maybe like a Florida eight.

You are a Florida eight. I'm now in LA six. You're in LA six, Florida eight, Alabama 15. I don't have that beautiful hot dog complexion, though. Hey, that takes a lot of time in the sun. By the way, boiled hot dog, not even a grilled hot dog. I'm a boiled hot dog. So like kind of swollen too.

Well, not me, but that the cop from Alabama that pulled me up from the task force. He had boiled hot dog skin. That's so specific and accurate. That's the thing. Oh, OK, well, yeah, it's time for the headline game. It is time for the headline game. The rules of the headline game are as follows.

Michael will present three headlines to Garrett that include this week's restaurant. They can be made up or they can be actual headlines. If Garrett can correctly guess if at least two out of three are real or fake, he will get to select next week's restaurant. However, if Michael stumps him, he'll select again. Are you ready to play, fellas? Oh, I'm ready for this one.

It's this experience was so chaotic. I can only imagine these headlines are great. OK, I have three headlines for you. Bubba Gump's shrimp company won't let their employees eat on the floor after their shift is over because customers complained about having to sit next to people who serve them. People are trash.

True. Envelope containing powdered sugar prompts hazmat call at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. I'm going to go false for that one. I don't see how an anthrax hoax relates to Bubba Gump. OK. Real life couple legally changes name to Forest and Jenny wed in front of Santa Monica Bubba Gump restaurant.

That is awesome. That's so cool. I'm going false just because I don't have faith in humanity that two humans would make something so wonderful happen. OK, so I went true, false, false to recap. Bubba Gump Shrimp Co won't let their employees eat on the floor after their shift is over because customers complained about having to sit next to people who serve them.

You said that's true. That is true. This is actually a headline that came from a Reddit thread in r slash you should know. They tell their employees it's because they're afraid employees eating off the clock will distract employees who are still working. But they then remind the staff that they are more than willing to take their money if they go.

Oh, this is this is an opinion from somebody. But basically people in the comments were like most management companies want their employees to eat there because it shows customers that, hey, these people on their lunch break are choosing this place over the other restaurants around, which makes sense. I have a feeling that this is probably a specific location and not necessarily applicable to all locations.

So it feels like a headline more to do with management than corporate. OK, but I guess I'm still a headline. Still a headline envelope containing powdered sugar promise hazmat call at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. You said that that was false. That one was true, but it was also locked behind a paywall. So I wasn't able to actually read the article about it. I don't know the details, but it was it was in Monterey.

I know that. OK. So so anthrax hoax in Monterey, Bubba Gump. Bubba Gump. Oh, actually the Monterey one, that was the original Bubba Gump. That was you with your fun facts. Yes. Give any other fun.

Oh, another fun one. Chris Pratt was discovered by a director eating at Bubba Gump when he was working there. Interesting. Yeah. So all you upcoming actors eat at Bubba Gump. I wonder if he did like the trivia and they were like, that guy should be Andy on Parks and Rec.

I mean, maybe. Yeah. Who knows. And then real life couple legally changed his name to Forest and Jenny wed in front of Santa Monica Bubba Gump restaurant. You had me on the hook here. I thought you were going to say the answer. I wanted you to say, but then you went false,

which means that you are correct on that. You got two out of three correct. So do you have a pick for next week? Actually, yes, I do have a pick and it's surprised. Could you please leave the room? Why is that, Garrett? I don't want to ruin the surprise. Oh, there's a surprise.

So I don't get to know where we're going. You know, your birthday is coming up. And I think we should turn the next episode into a grand birthday celebration for you. Garrett, come on, you're way too much. You know what? I'm going to give you this week's way too much award. So flattered.

I don't want to spoil the surprise. But we've already done out back. Where else do I have birthday? All right, I'll leave so you can announce it. Who put all this gravel in our studio? Okay, guys, Michael's gone. So what we're going to do is go to Guyukaku to celebrate his birthday. Now, the cool thing about this place,

it's like Korean barbecue, but it's Japanese. They bring all of the meat to your table. And I've got a reservation for 15 people. So we're going to see how good Guyukaku is for birthday celebrations. And that will determine the atmosphere. So tune in next week, guys. We will go to Guyukaku for Michael's birthday. I hope he has a great time.

But hey, if he doesn't, good material either way. Until next week, the search continues. Have a fine day. And hey, while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and make it five stars? Follow us on TikTok, the same on Instagram. All the socials at Find Dining Podcasts. We have a website, finddiningpodcast.com. Buy our t-shirts, then put them on.

And don't forget, you can always suggest where we go next. Okay, we're going to find a mediocrity. The search continues. See you next week. Heard my throat a little. Have a fine day.