Fine Dining - Our Lowest Score Ever at GattiTown: A Tale of Two Gatti's

Episode Date: January 11, 2023

It's A Tale of Two Gatti's with the depressing dichotomy between buffet and arcade Michael & Garrett's air hockey game spills out to the entire arcade Garrett gets a huge wad of gum on his shoe Gray chocolate pudding and translucent fruits are a bad sign that this buffet will suck Michael tries desperately to win a blu-ray copy of Croods 2: A New Age and some full-size candy bars JUB will help you overcome the obstacles in your life Additional voices: Sandy Rose and Nick Adams Get our 5 Survival Tips for Casual Dining at www.finediningpodcast.com!   Send us your GattiTown 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: Luby's! If you have ever worked for Luby's and have a story to share, or if you’d like us to hear your child’s review of the Luby's kids menu, send it to [e-mail].

Huge thanks to Gabe Alvarez at Austin Audio Lab for hosting us this week. That was sad. That was really sad where we went. I feel depressed today. Welcome everyone to the Fine Dining Podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. I'm your host, Michael Ornelis, and I'm your host, Garrett Swerck. And this is the podcast where we're looking for the perfect 5.00 out of 10 restaurant

experience so you don't have to. We are going to rate these places on the atmosphere, the service, and the food. And this week we went to Gattie Town. Yeah. If you're not familiar, so this is like a special location of a different chain. Okay. This is my first time. This is my first time.

Yeah, Mr. Gatti's Pizza is a pizza chain here in Texas and they have a foothold in other states as well. I know that there's some in Kentucky. I know that there's some kind of going up that direction. And they have the occasional location called Gattie Town. And Gattie Town is supposed to be just an absolute blast of a time where you eat up the fun. That is exactly what it says underneath the name when you drive up.

Gattie Town is like a mixture between Chuck E. Cheese and Dave and Busters. It's kind of for that intermediate age. It's not entirely kitty. It doesn't have animatronics or anything like that. But it's there for like birthday parties and stuff. So it's in that middle age range. So it's like this depressed emo teen. Yeah.

This was a depressed emo teen of a restaurant. It was just sitting there listening to MCR the whole time, just getting sad. It got bangs that don't work for it. It learned how to use eyeliner properly. It did. Yeah. It was, I don't want to say a nightmare because I don't think that describes it. No.

It was sad. It was just a sad time. It was like watching a part of my childhood that I'd never really fully experienced as a kid. I think I'd only gone once, but I still watched that memory die. And when I went home and I told my mom, Mom, Gattie Town was sad. She just responded real quick with, It's always been sad. Fine dining party of two.

It made me laugh so hard. So yeah, we'll get into it. We'll tell you all about it, but for now, our table's ready. It's just fine dining, fine dining, two ledgers on the sign are shining, nail flickering irregular timing, identify the perfect five, how the ten. Fine dining, fine dining. First impressions. We pull up in a nondescript shopping center to this generic brick beige building.

I actually, like from the highway frontage road, I literally would not have known that Gattie Town was there. There was a very prominent chilies. You had to go far into the shopping center to find the storefront of Gattie Town. And even then, I didn't notice it until we were literally staring at it. But hey, no, like we saw the storefront. It was clean. It was the cleanest part of Gattie Town.

Everything beyond the doors, everything worse than worse. Everything exposed outside to the elements, much cleaner than the inside. Now we did have one little hint. One little hint on the door that everything inside might not be as it seemed. It was there was lettering on the door. Everyone must purchase a buffet upon enter. Enter. Enter.

Like. It's spelled E-N-T-R. Not everything is all there. And that is just a metaphor for the experience that we had. Not all the pieces are there. There were literal. We'll get into that. Yeah.

So we walk in the door and there's like an admission kiosk. It felt like you're like going to the front of a movie theater and they need to like scan your ticket and let you pass the ropes. They're forcing you to purchase the buffet. And a girl is there that just could not care about if you enjoyed your experience. I loved her for that reason. It was very entertaining. She was very real.

All she said to me was water or something else. That's supposed to mean nothing. Nothing preface that there was no like context. There was no. Hey, if you're new here, this is Gattie's and this is what we do. It was just do you want water or do you want to pay a little extra to get a Mr. Pib extra? We get past the loquacious girl and loquacious. It's just sadness, continued sadness.

Yeah. What we see is like we enter. We just see floor. There's so much. There's a lot. There's a lot of space here. But I think since we're past the barricade, before we jump into atmosphere, why don't we give the fine people listening to us maybe some background on the history of Gattie's?

Yeah, I think they need to learn more about how this place turned out the way it is today. Yeah, let's go into resty fact roundup. The overall chain, Mr. Gattie's. Guess where it started. Denton, Texas. No. Austin. Damn it.

Austin in 1969. I've been doing so good at guessing which cities these Texas chains came from. Okay, Austin. Currently, there are 68 Mr. Gattie's in six different states. With plans to expand to Georgia, 10 new locations are coming to Georgia, according to the website. This does not seem like the type of chain that's on the upswing. But hey, Georgia's going to love it, maybe? It feels like maybe instead of expanding, they're kind of passing the buck like, oh,

we're closing down all these other places quick. Let's get into Georgia and take a new foothold before they realize the truth. Maybe that's just Gattie Town. There are only five Gattie Towns remaining in three states, so Gattie Town itself is on the downswing. But Mr. Gattie's is trying. They're hanging in there. Each Gattie Town is about 50,000 square feet.

And some locations include things like carousels, bumper cars like we saw, carnival rides like we saw. Although the bumper cars we saw, no one was operating them at any point. They were just kind of a corner. It was like a cluttered corner in a hoarder's home. Not going to lie, I don't think I'd feel safe using those bumper cars. Oh, I would have been all about bumper cars. And the name originally came as a tribute to the founder's wife's maiden name, which

was Gattie. Huh. So it's like how she became Mrs. whatever his last name was. So it was kind of the inverse of that, like he was taking her name to make Mr. Gattie. That's really cute. That's cool. The very first Gattie Town buffet slash arcade opened in 1997 in the Oak Hill neighborhood of Austin.

That feels like something from the late 90s. Doesn't it feel like a relic? Oh, yeah, completely. It feels like the arcade from Toy Story with all the little green ale. I mean, you literally got a little green ale. Yeah. That's about it. There's not too much more about Gattie Town that we're not going to talk about later.

All right. Gotcha. That's been this week's Resty Facts Roundup. Atmosphere. Okay, Garrett, we walk through. We can now see the restaurant for all of its glory. Restaurant even feels like a generous term for some reason, and that's a sad thing to say.

It kind of looks like a school cafeteria where things are moved along to the side so the janitorial staff can clean the floor. It's one of those places where you breathe through your mouth because you expect it to smell a little off. You don't realize you're doing it until later. It smelled fine. I'm not going to knock them on their smell. It smelled fine.

The thing I couldn't get past, well, there's these rooms. They're like themed, but they all look almost the same. The only thing theming them are the words above them. One of them says theater. One of them says sports, and the other one says South Park Meadows, which is the location we went to. What? How is a kid supposed to be like, oh, the South Park Meadows room.

I love the South Park Meadows room. That's my favorite part of my childhood is that room. The rooms are sad. They're kind of similar. The theater one's a little bit different. There were cartoons playing. That's cool. Yeah, there was like two projector screens playing whatever what was on Disney Channel.

So much negative space in all of these rooms. It was lots of floor. Garrett, you actually had a love-hate relationship with the floor. It was so sticky. It was sticky, and for you it was a little extra sticky. Okay, so I don't really like kids. They don't always have the logic. I assume multiple kids made a pile of chewed gum, at least four pieces of gum.

It was like a bomb. It was like a imagine one of those like rubber bouncy balls, but just stuck to the floor and made a melted in and yeah, I stepped right on that bad boy. And you just like looked at your shoe and you're like, damn it. And I'm just looking at you laughing because I'm just like, of course, this would have been here. There was no surprise. We had the other rooms as well.

We had the sports room, which had a big TV, only playing commercials. I never saw any semblance of a sport. That's not surprising. They couldn't afford the licensing of the sports, obviously. But like and the commercials that were playing weren't even like the type of advertisers you would expect to see for a sports show. It was like a doctor who specializes in late in life hip dysplasia. So like it seemed like all local commercials.

So only local commercials. That's all Gaddies can afford. But they seemed to not want you to see them because the entire room had just a row of chairs serving as a barricade, which we came to realize is a little bit of a recurring theme. Yeah. Gaddies just is like, we're just going to throw chairs in front of stuff if we want to block things off.

And that's all you need. Yeah, that's completely effective. Yeah. And my favorite room was the South Park Meadows room because again, chairs blocking off the entrance of it. Chairs stacked on all the tables and you can actually, we took pictures of all the chairs. You can see it on our social media. We are on a couple of social media platforms.

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. So you see rows of tables with chairs on them and just one couple there's one couple sitting in this chaired off area, clearly customers.

And my favorite thing happens until I started to feel a little danger. There's a guy who's like sleeping. He's in a booth sitting upright, perfect posture, eyes closed. And I didn't know if it was just like a long decompression blink or just like he's taking an exhale. He's in a moment of zen. It lasted a while. This was a man who was like taking a nap.

But next to him, he had a girlfriend or partner or whatever talking away, which is also really funny because it's just like maybe he needed an escape from just conversation for a bit. But she immediately noticed me noticing him. And so she locks eyes with me and like in an aggressive way. And I'm trying to just keep walking like around this partition to just, you know, angle my way out of her view. And she kept moving with it. She like positioned herself across her boyfriend like she's like literally leaning in front

of his body in the booth to keep staring at me. And then I move even further and I see her move more until eventually I'm like, okay, she's not following me. But I'm just like, what's going on over there? I felt threatened. What was going on over there? I think she was afraid you were going to steal her man. I'm not really like the home record.

No, no, no, no, no, no, not like that. Literally, physically pick up like and steal that human being. I'm going to shoplift her man. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think he did look like a big arcade spender. Maybe she looked at me and she was like, he's broke. He's going to steal my man and make him pay for all the arcade games that we have.

And I'm just like, no, no, no, that's not what I want. And she was just keeping an eye on me. She's like, you get away from my property. Wow. That's that's a healthy relationship dynamic. I don't know if I got healthy relationship from the dynamic I saw between them over the course of the of the thing. I mean, they were they were great parents.

Oh, of course they were staring lady in Papa tokens. Papa tokens. We're going to call them Papa tokens. Yeah, but like later when we were in the theater section, they like walked in and like their kids had been eating alone. So I think what they were what they might have been doing was maybe he was like deep in prayer to the gods of banking and it fills up your pockets with tokens if you meditate properly. And she didn't want that process interrupted at all,

nor did she want us to benefit exactly his tokens. I think that's what was going on over there. That's what's going on over there. There was a marquee. Oh, yeah. Right. The theater room. Yeah. I didn't understand what it said. It just looked like random lettering. It was like, I said, enjoy a S.

Space L. Sideway C. Space EOF. L I F E. Space life. EOF life at Gattie Town. I I had no idea what I was looking at when I saw it there. When I saw you write it out, I put together that it's supposed to be enjoy a slice of life at Gattie Town.

But the spacing was just wow, scants. Hey, just like the spacing of the entire restaurant. Yeah, it was just kind of like, hey, we're going to put two tables close together here and then leave a wide open room. Hey, it was missing. It was on brand. Yeah, no, you know, that's a point for the atmosphere. Yeah, it was missing enjoyment. Yeah. There were those two kids that ultimately ended up being from Papa Tokens

and they were just kind of sitting there, not really watching the TV, just kind of looking straight ahead, eating buffet pizza. There was a birthday party, which imagine going to Gattie's for a birthday party. What are you and I all about? We're all about the birthday song, right? No such thing occurred. No, that's a Gattie's birthday. You don't get sung to everyone.

OK, the birthday party looked like they were having fun. Everyone was enjoying themselves except for the birthday boy. And we were just sitting there. The birthday boy because there were balloons that said ten, like a one and a zero and only one kid in that vicinity looked like he could have been that age. And it was him. There were probably some like high school age teenage girls. There were like parents and then there was one kid.

So I think it was like the family birthday. Hey, to be fair, though, if you took me to Gattie Town to have my birthday, I'd probably have the same expression on my face. And then another metaphor for the entire experience is when we're leaving at the end and we see the one and zero helium balloons out of their hands flying up into the night sky. And they were trying to chase them before it was just too late. And it was just like, yeah, I feel like his tenth birthday did, in fact, get away from him. Yeah, that's a Gattie Town birthday for you.

That's a Gattie Town birthday. You won't get balloons. That's a Gattie Town guarantee. They'll all float away just like your hopes and dreams. We won't sing to you and you won't digest our food properly. It'll take four days for this pizza to leave you. It was sad, very sad. We noticed that a lot of the clientele were kind of like our age, but with kids.

We don't have kids, but like that's always a scary moment. Like we go in public. No, our age cohort, they almost all have kids. Yeah, they looked like they had aged so much more. They're like raising kids at a Gattie Town takes things out of you. Like a piece of you. That takes years out of your life, a quarter of your soul. Yeah, not all parenting does, but if you end up at a Gattie Town,

it's just like every single parent there had to kind of give themselves a pep talk in the mirror before coming to Gattie Town, every single one. When you walk in, you see the buffet front and center and oh, that's it was pitiful. They did not lead strong. It was like the fruit and like cottage cheese and like pudding that was not the right shade of brown. Like it looked like something you lay down on the road to like tar it. It was like a gray brown.

I actually tasted it. I'll talk about it. Unfortunately, you did. They had honeydew that was literally see through. Like it was a green where I'm like, am I seeing the bottom of the container? Like, I don't know what stage in ripeness versus freshness that is, but I don't think it's supposed to be on any of that part of the spectra. The stage of ripeness is Gattie Town.

Yeah, it's just like fresh, ripe, Gattie. Yeah, that's that's the the progression of this fruit. It's a sad life for that fruit. The other buffet stands, they weren't even filled up with pizza. They're one of them. Like, OK, here's like a quarter of a pizza. Here's maybe one slice of pizza. Oh, here's a full pizza, but there's only cheese on like three quarters of it.

There's this giant burnt spot. There was just a lot of effort lacking in this presentation. It was just like, yeah, we'll put a we'll put a pizza on the counter. Don't expect much else and help yourself. And we'll refill it when we feel like it, not when it needs it. There was this really cool cotton candy machine right outside of the theater. I think it's a highlight of it, really. Yeah, it was like you swiped a game card.

So it was like you had to have a game card for the arcade, but you could go and you could spend two dollars and they just had a lobby cotton candy maker. It dropped the stick into, I guess, a circular out of view. Yeah, like it's like an it's a hidden vat. And I'm just like, I really want more transparency with this. We had to like peek into it from a downward angle. But there's also like a digi blue light.

It looks like the underlight of a Honda Civic. And it's just like it just looks like a stick is collecting cobwebs. Yeah. And I'm just like, oh, and now I have to eat that. And we'll talk about what that experience was like later. Yeah. OK, so then we keep moving and there's right across from the bathrooms. There's an entrance way to a fourth section that says Celebration Hall and it was haunted. It was dimly lit.

This, to me, felt like you're in like a like a valve game. It's just like five nights. It really is. Or like to me, like it gave me like portal vibes, like kind of like poor lighting scheme. The back wall has like so there's like a bulb light hanging down and it's like a dim shadow being cast with a slight glare on a sign that just says, let's party on the back wall.

But it looks like you're getting pulled into the principal's office in a horror movie. Like it's after hours, the lights are off. Like I look, I don't want to be a shill for our Instagram. But this shot that we got of this area, please go look at it. It genuinely made me laugh so hard. And then I I walked down like an unlit hallway. And it's only lit by the exit sign. And it was so creepy.

I felt like I was in an abandoned hospital. And there's all these like birthday party rooms that aren't in use. One of them has like a curtain, but the rod is like halfway hanging down. And I like held my phone up to take a picture of what's inside of the room. And it's just like chairs on tables, folded up curtains on tables. Looks like maybe they used to this as a training room. There were some like a few training materials, papers thrown everywhere or like a supply thing.

And then, of course, the end of the hallway leads to the arcade. But it's barricaded with chairs again, because that's all they know how to barricade stuff with chairs here, chairs there, chairs everywhere. Oh, no, they're chairs. I can't pass the chairs. It's a literal chair emporium at Gattie Town. And I'm just like, why are there so many chairs? I don't get it.

Get just like, you know, a little cordon or caution tape or, you know, something like that. I don't know. And now a word from our totally not made up sponsor. Oh, hi there. It's Job and I am back. I'm here to help you, the people. I know what you're thinking. He's always helping the corporations. Well, I'm here for the people this week.

Leave me alone. I'm not fickle. You're fickle. Now, listen, are you wandering around the halls of a restaurant and you want to go to another spot where you're not supposed to be? But there's chairs in the way. If you hire me, I'll help you get around those chairs. Let's play it out right now. OK, there's a stack of chairs in front of me.

I'm gonna. Uh, hmm, maybe if I take this chair. Nope, don't that make the whole thing wobble. Uh, I can do this. I can get through these chairs. Just give me a minute to think. Hmm, maybe if I. Oh, God.

Oh, no. OK, I can't get you around the chairs. I'm changing the business plan. If you're a restaurant and you want help stacking chairs, I'll do it for you. Call me, but not on a phone. Drop a mop into a storm drain just far enough so I can see the handle. It's like a little code that only you and I will get.

OK, I gotta go. Do that. OK, bye. Now, what was on the wall in the celebration hall? You know, those angel wing photo ops that they give people? Yeah, they had pizza wings. Oh, and we got some fun photos with those. We did.

It looked more like pizza was uncomfortably shooting out your shoulder blades more than anything. The design choices here were just haunting, given the lighting scheme. I can't imagine with proper lighting, it would have been a lot better. But genuinely, maybe my favorite part of the night was experiencing this horror hallway. It was it was hilarious. Now we have the part where the atmosphere switched. Yes, it wasn't so sad anymore.

I mean, it still was sad. Don't don't get me wrong. There is a sheet. There is a veneer of sadness across this entire experience. But hey, this was bright, flashy neon sadness. This was our childhood. Yes, it's like our childhood pretending to not be sad or not noticing the things that should make it like not noticing why our parents spent like 30 minutes

like by themselves, just kind of like napping and maybe yelling at the same time. So we go in to the arcade. We get our little game cards and we get to just run free. Now, this was genuinely a good experience. It was fun. Most of our rating at the end of this, I think, is going to be attributed to the arcade experience. Totally. And when you contrast the atmosphere of the truly enjoyable

arcade with just how sad the buffet section was and all the seating and all that, it truly felt like like a like a tale of two gaddies or something. It was that stark of a contrast. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of nostalgia. It was the age of disillusionment. It was the epoch of space to Rome.

It was the epoch of sticky floors. It was the season of appetizing pizza. It was the season of gray and tepid pudding. It was the spring of unlimited buffets. It was the winter of paltry choices. We had entire rooms before us. We had only ourselves and chairs. We were going direct to the arcade's gleam and glisten.

We were going direct to our table's grime and filth. A tale of two gaddies, book the first, recalled a slice. In the year of our Lord, two thousand and twenty-two, it was a Wednesday night early in November. The queue to enter Gaddy Town laid before us. Water or something else? What's that mean? Water or something else?

Did you hear that? I did, Garrett. What did you make of it, Michael? Nothing at all, Garrett. Oh, that's a coincidence too, for I made the same of it myself. Do you want something else with your buffet or water? Hey, water or something else? Water.

Come on, let's just... Okay, plates are that way. Hurry, they dropped out fresh pizza. It takes so long to make more. Quick, get it while it's there. Grab it now. I'm so hungry. Me so, honey.

I'm not wearing any shoes. Is that street pizza? You look gross now. Wow, everyone is so unfortunate here. Oh, Michael, is this how you remember it? It's been 18 years since I've been to Gaddy Town. 18 long years. I hope you care to recall a slice.

Is that really where we landed on wordplay for Recall to Life? Do people even know that Recall to Life is the name of the first book of A Tale of Two Cities? I guess they do now. Do the line. Okay, fine. I hope you care to recall a slice. I can't say. Is that good?

I had a good time with the arcade. I know that I immediately made a beeline for this Kung Fu Panda game that had like six, like, hand drums, I guess? Yeah, bongoes. Yeah, very bongo-esque, and it's like a reflex game where it's like, hey, on the screen, little dumplings will appear here and there. Don't hit the mines, but grab all the dumplings and you have to hit the corresponding thing. And you'd think, this is your jam.

You should excel at a rhythm game. I love something, yeah. I mean, it was kind of a rhythm game, partially a, I guess, processing game, like trying to figure out how to create something. Yeah, no, but I was number three on the drum leaderboards for PlayStation Network for the first rock band game. I grew up on these rhythm games that just hit the thing at the appropriate time. Like, that was my jammed guitar hero, all of it.

I was playing it all the time. So when I go to a place like this, it catches my eye. First thing you always do. First thing. Although I never play arcade guitar hero because it's just like, there's no headphones or anything. Oh yeah, and the inputs on those are so jacked. The inputs are bad, but luckily they didn't have that.

But I tried this game, I got one shy of a perfect score. It didn't let you continue because you weren't perfect. I think there were only three rounds, but I think the amount of tickets I got was hindered by not getting the perfect score. Let's talk about all the games of chance we played. Oh, man, the movie thing. Okay, there was a game where you could win a Blu-ray or a DVD by making, by stopping the brightly colored light at the exact spot.

Right, which you should be really good at. And I'm actually pretty good at those too. The amount of times we got within one and it clearly like jerked the thing to a stop to not go to the one that we should have been on. Momentum should have carried us over to the green light, but no. I really wanted my DVD copy of the Crude's 2, is it Dawn of a New Age? I don't know. Crude's 2, I wanted that DVD and I didn't get it.

That game was 100% rigged. Then there's like the, I think it's called the Storm Chaser, the light that just goes around in a circle and you have to hit the button. Those are always a really good ticket winner. I found one of those machines on a band trip in high school that wasn't rigged and I hit the jackpot seven times in one visit and I got a pair of arcade boxing gloves. I managed to get enough tickets, I got like 1,600 tickets and managed to get four individual boxing gloves, two left, two right,

and then had friends over and no one wanted to box and that makes sense because you're like not that well protected with like these plush boxing gloves. This one was rigged. This one was rigged, I only tried it a couple of times, but the second time I tried it, I wasn't even paying attention and I swiped on a side where there was no button. I don't know if someone just got infuriated and tore it out. I don't know if it was just the ultimate rigging,

like here, we'll take 50 cents from you and you don't even get to play. Get on your way, kid, like, I don't know. And I went right to one of those coin drop machines. You spent a while there. Yeah. There's something very meditative, but watching coins go down like a pachinko tunnel and then landing at the bottom and just pushing out. I like it.

Yeah, you're like creating clutter to hopefully push something off. I create clutter to create cleanliness. And you ended up, I won like this Wonder Woman card, it has no use, but you have it. But I have a thing that apparently is pretty rare within the scope of this game, so I was happy. Meanwhile, I was sitting there doing the same type of game, but with chocolate. Yeah, you found a hack for it.

So, well, I won't go that far, but I found like, so it's like a crane game, but it's all candies and you get two plays for a dollar. And they're like the good candy bars, like they're big, they're not king-sized, but like they're like a full respectable like Snickers, Milky Way, Three Musketeers, Twix, Payday, you know, those sorts of ones. And it's a crane game. So, first one I do, I grab it, it goes down and I'm like, oh, this is easy, I got a Payday, literally.

And then it brings it over and it doesn't drop it in the catch thing. It drops it into what you were talking about with your coin game. It drops it into one of those little things that like has an arm that pushes back and forth. And I'm trying to knock candy into the delivery hole, as it's called officially. That's the term, the delivery hole. And it doesn't go in and I'm like, oh, well, that sucks. You were pretty mad about that.

But then I realized I get another play and because I didn't realize that I had two plays, it literally went to waste and I never, like I never even dropped the claw before I ran out of time. But then I'm like, OK, now I know what the playing field is. Let's try again. And there were a couple, there was like a Hershey's with almonds and something else that were kind of like half on, half off the ledge of the delivery hole.

And I decided to swing the claw back and forth and then drop it. And then it literally went down and hammered the side of the Hershey's bar and knocked them both into the hole, caught another thing, went up, dropped it on to the like pusher thing and pushed another candy bar in. So I ended up with a Snickers, a Hershey's with almond and a payday in just two plays. It felt good. So that was probably, I did not feel good, but it was four or five

bucks for three candy bars. You got a good deal. Not two bucks, two bucks, two bucks for three candy bars. I feel like I won out over what like 7-Eleven pricing would be. Yeah, those are pretty big bars. Yeah, I felt like a winner that day. Once we started competing against each other, you also ended up the winner. So we did a couple of games.

The one you beat me in was an accidental win and we had both conceded that I was about to win. It was a game of connect four and I'm like, oh, crap, you know, at the end where you're just forced into plays. So both of us saw the same angle. We're like, OK, well, this game's over. I literally had three horizontal stacked on top of three horizontal and the only places left were those two rows.

And you just had a 50-50 chance of dropping one and you would have created the height that I needed for you. Yeah, you were setting up the winning drop regardless of if you picked the one on the left or the right because we played a whole game just blocking each other. So we kind of ended up in this end situation. You go to drop it and you're like, good game. And then all of a sudden the game ends with both of us assuming I'm about to

win and I was like, oh, is this like a checkmate situation where they don't let me drop the winning thing? No. And then all of a sudden it clears out and there's four blue in a row. Hey, you accidentally won and we're both just like, yeah, game. I feel like sometimes the only time I win in life is by accident. You stumble your way into victory. Hey, it's the story of my birth.

I was an accident. Wolf. They had a bowling alley. Like not real. Weren't they the size of like bocce balls? They were like grapefruit sized, little rolly balls, very chipped away at like these were not perfectly snorkel at all. And the bowling lane was instead of like real pins instead of a real length,

it was probably about half the length of a bowling lane, maybe a little more, but like half the width too. And then pins that were on strings, almost like a marionette. So you knock them down and then they pop right back up. Which means they didn't really register properly. It's like I bowled a strike, but it didn't count it. It gave you eight or something like that. Yeah, I definitely had a few.

I was like, oh, it's set it up for the second frame differently because it knocks them all down even for the second half of the frame. It set it up differently than what we left it as. I won that one, but I don't think the score has even mattered because it was such shoddy scorekeeping. So, you know, that one's kind of a push. But the real game of competition that we had against each other, we played two games of air hockey.

The first one we were unable to complete. Why is that, Garrett? Because this design was so shoddy. Every time I hit the puck, it flew off the table. Every, like you've heard the term in wrestling like a knockdown drag out brawl. It literally felt like the air hockey equivalent of that. This air hockey game went all over the Gattie town. We ended up having to pick a puck out of the gutter of the bowling lane.

Three lanes over from where we were, because it flew into my my hand. What's the gripper thing? It's not my paddle. Sure. Yeah, you like hit it so hard into my paddle that it flew off into the bowling lane. There was another one. It flew off right into the bumper cars. Yeah. And like we had to like go through the exit gate while no one was looking to get

this puck off the floor. We had to go get a tech guy that was working in there to pick up the thing from the bowling alley because we were just like, we don't want to be those guys that are just like willy nilly hopping across all the lanes or anything like that. But this happened every time I touched the puck. Like, I don't know if this is a me thing. I did it once maybe, but nine incidents of this. I grew up with air hockey.

So I'm used to a certain. You're an aggressive boy. And you know what, you were so much at that game. I'm going to say you were way too much this week. I'll take it. This is. Congrats, Garrett. How many times have you won the this is way too much awarded?

This is like probably three or four, right? Probably. I feel like I'm the most frequent winner of this award. You are almost as extra as Pib extra. But I don't taste like cherry. Congratulations, Garrett, on another win. Thank you. The victory feels good.

Oh, it does. You were kicking my ass in that first game of air hockey that ended up ending via timeout because so many pucks flew out because we took so long trying to be like, should we go into the bowling lane before? Like we had to like literally go find a guy. And we're also lucky that there wasn't like some like Karen mom there to like like yell at us for having like the puck fly too close to her kid or something. Book the second, the Golden Game.

With a wild rattle and clatter and an inhuman competitive spirit not easily understood at a location containing a blockaded sporting region, Michael and Garrett squared off at air hockey. The weathered puck crashed from paddle to paddle and Kareem sharply off the table as was custom of such hard playing. Women screamed before it and men clutched each other and clutched children safely out of its way. At last, after one swooping thrust, the puck flew off with a sickening little jolt.

What has gone wrong? Pardon, Monsieur de Restis, your puck flew with the bowling alley. Why does she make that abominable noise? Did we hit her child or something? Excuse me, Monsieur de Restis, it is a pity, almost, yes. Almost, well, we clearly did not. I'm sorry, Madame, we meant no harm. Killed, dead, my child.

Zinnocence is dead. What? It is extraordinary to me, Garrett, that you cannot take care of your erratic paddling. How are we ever supposed to finish our game? Your game? My child will forever tremble at the sight of disc-shaped objects. Oh, hey, hey, guys, it's fine. I'm a technician here, so I'll just go and get it.

Yes, please. Thank you so much, Michael. Let's move on, we have to finish this review. My child will forever be burdened with melancholy, air hockey melancholy. Now my child has taken in the vapors. Is there no manager present? Ma'am, it's OK, nothing really happened. Now my child will quake in fear at all arcades.

No, now my child will quiver at the mere sight of claw machines. I ask, no, I demand to have a manager present. OK, well, here's a $50 game card on me. I'm sorry you had that experience. And don't forget, dial 459-2222 and get a Mr. Gatti's pizza delivered. Jazz hands. Yeah, that weren't that good.

Wait until I write my review. Two stars, the bathrooms were pretty OK. So you were winning that. So, you know, I give you that, but then we got to play like a real game where like we were just quicker about puck retrieval because make no mistake. It's still happening. Yeah, it was still all over the place. And I won that game, but it was a nail biter.

Yeah, it was like a seven six game. Yeah, and it was like and like when you got to six, it like blinked in such a way. We were like, wait, is that it? Did you win? Good game. And then I managed to score two and kind of pull ahead. So a worthy adversary. Yes, shake your hand. For those of you listening at home, we actually did just shake hands.

Yes, it's not just a bit. We really did just shake hands. I know it's an audio medium, but I want you to know that the visuals line up with the experience we're giving you. Oh, there was a carnival ride. You know what? You're right. In the middle of this arcade, there's a carnival ride.

You've got space for a carnival ride indoors and in arcade. They clearly don't because there's like a it's called the frog hopper. So there was this metal frog that's supposed to go on top of the like two posts underneath it, like two prongs that slide into a couple slots on the top of the thing. But it's too short for the arcade. So the metal frog is just sitting jankily propped up against the ride. Yeah. So the thing that's supposed to be like, I guess, like the calling card or the advertisement that, hey, there's a ride here is just kind of sitting against the side.

And that's what I noticed first before I even noticed the ride. And then we're like, oh, they put a mini roller coaster in here. I'm terrified. And then we saw some kids ride it and I was genuinely worried for their safety. Yeah, I would not touch that thing. It's kind of like this hydraulic ride that like shoots you up and down and like, you know, it just very like abrupt and jerky and it didn't look safe. And I can guarantee the employees there aren't watching the weight distribution on this either.

For sure. And then we have the issue of it's also too close to the ceiling because we couldn't fit the top of the ride on. So it didn't look like an actual safety hazard in terms of height. It stopped at a respectable thing. But it's still a thought that occurs to me when I'm like, you can't fit the top of this ride on there. There were enough things to give us pause to where we would never get on this potential death trap. I mean, for me, it's the amount of food I had just eaten. There was a sketch photo booth.

Yeah. And it was just like, make three poses and we'll take a picture and we'll draw you. It looked like an M.S. paint. Yes, I masterpiece. That's fitting of us. We're two mediocre guys and this was done in a very mediocre fashion. And then we get to the end of our of our experience and it's time to cash in the prizes. Oh, yeah. We got to spend our tickets, our wealth of tickets, my one hundred and fifty three,

because I was kind of fixated on playing games that earn tickets. And Garrett, you had 60 or something. Yeah, but you were more like playing like games and stuff. And I'm rocking this sick ass winking emoji with the tongue sticking out necklace that is probably on a chain that will cause my neck to break out in hives. Yeah. And I got this little, it looks like an alien that can wrap around your finger. Yeah. And a sequined blue diamond plush blue diamond thing that has absolutely won that from a game.

Right. Yeah. You got that from a little line up the light. All 60 of my tickets went towards this wonderful green alien. Yeah, my little buddy. OK, so we got to rate this atmosphere. It was sad, very sad, but it was also fun. There was a redeeming element to the atmosphere because of this arcade. Part of it was terrifying.

Yeah. Part was kind of inspiring. Yeah, I cannot overstate how depressing the eatery part of Gattie Town is. It is bad. The only thing that was more than the depressing was how sticky it was. Yeah, it had such nursing home vibes minus the elderly. It was just it was that same energy where you just go in and you're like, oh, like that. We were just like missing the overly energetic, smiley guy with the acoustic guitar.

Yeah, you know, that that lady that was eyeballing me. I felt a little threatened in the atmosphere. Everything about the front of house was sad. The spooky part was very fun for me. That was cool. The arcade part was fun for me. And you know what? Just the amount of chairs that were used, stacked everywhere to block things off,

saves this for me from being too down. I'm going to go one thumb down on atmosphere. This seems like a two thumb down experience for me. But no, this arcade, I honestly had a blast. It was fun. It may not have been the prettiest. It may not have been the cleanest. But the point of the arcade is to enjoy yourself.

Right. Go back to your childhood. Forget about what's happening outside. Just play some games. Yeah. And because of that, yeah, we gamed it up. The arcade section improved this to a one thumb down experience. I see illustrious arcade and loving people rising from this buffet and in their struggles to avoid flying pucks in their shining prizes and rigged machines through recessions to come. I see the apathy of this time and of the previous time gradually wearing out.

I see the listeners for whom I lay down my taste buds, enlightened, entertained and knowing what Gattie Town tastes like in that listener land, which I shall see no more. Book the third. The snack looks rewarmed, like reheated, like, you know, like in a microwave. I see that I am the cholesterol buildup in their hearts and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence, I see them all across the world. Weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see them lying in their last earthly beds, most honored and enriched, knowing deeply in their souls

what Gattie Town truly feels like. It's very sticky. We already told you what it feels like. I see the children growing up, knowing my story, going forth on that path to Gattie Town, which once was mine. I see them winning at air hockey, at bowling, at stopping the light at the right time, so they get the crudes too on Blu-ray, becoming the foremost of arcade champions and honored buffet enjoyers. And I hear them tell their children my story. No, Garrett, our story.

Yes, we hear them tell their children our story with a tender and faltering voice. It is a far, far better thing that we do than we have ever done. It is a far, far fowler flavor we taste than we have ever known. Service. I think you got a slightly better service experience than I did. I mean, OK, so we've heard our rants before on service, like Pizza Hut, but that was a different situation because we expected something and we tried to get an answer and we weren't delivered that. Here, it's a buffet, it's a little bit different, so our service is kind of like the team, right?

And honestly, I had low expectations going in, and they didn't even meet that. I mean, when you're greeted with water or something else, you know, it's kind of everyone I experienced at least was just purely apathetic. It's like they did not want to be there. Pure apathy. It's like they were just standing in the kitchen, talking to each other, looking at their phones, not restocking the buffet. Yeah, I did have one person in the service team that I genuinely liked.

I never interacted with him. I'm calling him the immediate busser. He was so on it, it was almost like he was cleaning. OK, he was like Canadian curling with how quickly he was sweeping what was being like moved out of the way. It was like people were on their way to the table and he's like scrubbing right before they get there. I know I didn't notice him. He completely ignored anywhere where we were near. I still stepped in that gum.

I still saw all the water and pizza everywhere. It didn't seem like the floors were his jurisdiction. It felt like tables were like the worst time you got up. He's the one who came by and like took our plates. Ah, OK, so yeah, I don't know. It may have just been a timing thing, but every time like he was on it, OK, he was on it. I appreciate you. Immediate busser.

I like you, man. I don't know you immediate busser, but I trust Michael's word. Good job, guy. The admissions girl. Very funny, loquacious girl. He was the most talkative one of all. Water or something else? Is that all you're going to say?

I need or something else. I need your signature. Oh, OK, you got something else. I have to sign my credit card payment. It was kind of like an assault on the senses with the service experience where it was just like the amount of apathy that you could feel. You could feel it. Yeah, honestly, it was funny.

It fit the vibe of the place so well that it didn't bother me. I mean, that doesn't mean it's getting a good rating, but it didn't bother me. You're the one that told me eventually about the breadsticks. I couldn't find them anywhere. OK, I went and asked. I was like, hey, do you guys have non cheese sticks? Like we just want to taste your regular breadsticks. And they were like, oh, yeah, give us 10 minutes.

And then, you know, we did multiple trips about, you know, 10 to 12 minutes later, still no breadsticks. So you're sitting there and I'm on my second plate now. And I'm like, OK, I want these breadsticks. They told me they made them. Yeah, I imagine they did. And I imagine that they're not gone already. And so now there's a guy behind there. We asked a girl originally for the breadsticks.

Now there's some dude and I'm like, hey, do you have normal breadsticks? And he just kind of looks down, opens a drawer and pulls out a tray of breadsticks and sets them out. So they store their breadsticks in drawers? I guess, I mean, or I don't know if it was maybe it was in a slot or something. I can't say that he opened a drawer, but he reached down to drawer height and reached his hand into something and pulled it out. OK, and then put out the breadsticks with one breadstick missing.

So I don't know if an employee took it and just kind of walked away and didn't put it out. Or like, I don't know what the mystery of the missing breadstick is. Could be a quality control thing. Oh, yeah, quality control thing. That would make sense. Just like, are these good? I would do that. Breadstick, Joe Guy, you are the service MVP.

You are. Well, no, immediate buzzer for me is, well, no, actually, we had a few service MVP like candidates for me. In immediate buzzer, the arcade breadstick drawer guy and the arcade text. That's right. There was a guy just kind of like walking around with like trays full of stuffed animals that he was restocking machines with. He looked like he wanted to be there. He looked like he was having a good time.

He was testing out the games. Yeah. No, this guy looked like, I don't know, a little bit older, kind of longish gray hair ponytail and a ponytail. Guys, ponytails are awesome. He's an arcade tech need. We actually say ponytail. It's implied. And he was the one that retrieved our puck.

He was all business. Yeah. And then there was another tech guy that he talked to. And when we went to be like, hey, we need a puck, it was almost like a pow wow. Like, hey, guys, we got to huddle up. How do we retrieve this puck? And they're like, well, we could just walk on the lane. It's like, OK, let's do that. But they were very helpful.

They were nice. They actually seem to be walking around doing a lot of work throughout the the time we were in the arcade. So that other than the other employees behind the buffet, that was about the extent of our one more. Yeah. Who do you have our prizes? Oh, yeah. The woman at the ticket counter. She was really friendly.

She was fun. Also seemed like she enjoyed her job. She gave very good. She enjoyed our company. And I like that. Yeah, I like feeling enjoyed. So far, this is our third place without table service. Yes, we had Pizza Hut, which we weren't expecting. Well, and we tried to get clarification.

Yeah, so that they dropped the ball there. And then if you subscribe to our patriots, right, we have a Patreon now launching at the end of the month. Rudy's Rudy's gas station, country store and barbecue place in Texas. It's great. We made a country song. Amazing barbecue. We have a sit down Q&A with Jubb.

Yeah, the elusive Jubb, our longtime sponsor. You know how long it takes for Carrier Pigeon communication to happen? It's not easy. No, certainly not quick. And then we also answered some fan questions. So I think you'll genuinely enjoy the content we're putting out there. We're going to give you an extra episode every month and review some places that, I guess, are a little bit outside of the scope of what we are,

you know, consistently covering on the normal podcast. We'll let you know when it's live, but get ready for that. We're going to have some good stuff. Are you ready to rate the service? I am. OK, so I will say out of these three non-traditional service restaurants, this was by far the worst service. I kind of have to agree by default, but I don't know if I my expectations were met. They were really low expectations.

I guess that's the fair thing to put it, because the pizza hut, my expectations weren't met. So I think that's why I'm a little bit more forgiving here. I'm not going to trash it. You know, the vibe of the place and the quality of the food, I think, is kind of influencing how we receive the service. But like everyone we interacted with was nice enough other than Loquacious Girl at the front. Yeah, there was definitely a lot of apathy. But, you know, immediate busser guy amused me.

And he actually had his hustle on the text. They were great. The lady behind the counter for the ticket thing. They helped pull this out of the trenches a little bit for me. And I'm going to go one thumb down. I hate to be fussy, but when my service experience, are you a fussy little boy? Yes, I'm a fussy little boy. Why are you a fussy little boy?

When my service experience begins with water or something else, how do you think I'm going to rate the place? Yeah, I mean, it's fussy, but I get it. I am going to give Gattie Townservice two thumbs down. You know, they they fought a valiant fight. Ultimately, they did not prevail. Food. Everything was lukewarm.

Everything. Yeah. Everything was lukewarm unless it was at like the cold bar with like the fruits, the puddings, the gravies and ranches. And oh, just like weird amalgam of like sad jalapeno peppers and pepperoncini. Yeah. So at this point, I walk in, I start depression eating. Well, you also told me in advance, you were like, I'm going to need to be rolled out of here. Because that's a pizza buffet. And for the bit I want to go hard.

Me at pizza buffets, I go hard. Yeah, always. Yeah. We had various pizzas. We did. And I did make sure to get a sample. So I guess we'll I want to go through this plate by plate. I ended up having three plates of food. OK, do you remember what your first plate was? Yes. My first plate was two pieces of pepperoni pizza

and one piece of pepperoni and jalapeno pizza. OK, very similar for me. I had two slices of pepperoni, one slice of pep and jalapeno, and then I got a pineapple and Canadian bacon just to say, hey, haters of pineapple on pizza, you are correct. But how could you? What if your son saw this? Juicy doesn't have to know about what I've done.

And if you don't know who Juicy is, episode three, the old spaghetti factory, I had to dress up a pineapple like me and interact with it like it's my son for the duration of the meal as a result of the you must pull. And I commit it, but I got a son out of it. I have a pineapple with googly eyes and mutton chops like I had at the time. And he now resides on the Chachki of mediocrity, which you can see on Instagram. Go look at my son, Juicy and Garrett, don't bring your brother into this.

Don't bring your adopted brother, Juicy, left him home in Los Angeles so that I could go eat pineapple. Who's watching him? I'm a negligent parent. I'm glad you said that. Yeah. But yeah, so I had pineapple on pizza, which I usually don't like. And I was just like, I'll have it just to prove a point that I'm willing to do it for the people.

The pepperoni for me, very average, five out of ten. Pepperoni and jalapeno, a little bit better. Five out of ten, still very average. Canadian bacon and pineapple, four out of ten. Decidedly, not very good. But the part of this that was saddest to me, I guess, one, I mean, like the texture of it, first of all, I said lukewarm, not great. Texture is very chewy kind of chewy.

Yeah. And then they don't have crushed red pepper shakers. They have one big container next to the buffet and nothing to put it in. So I went up to get crushed red pepper after the plate was already sitting on the table and I made another trip for my crushed red pepper, didn't see anything around. And I was like, you know what, this is the venue for it. And I just took a big spoonful and put it in the palm of my hand, carried it over and just sat throughout that entire plate with a balled up handful of crushed red pepper that I kept divvying out onto my pizza slices

to, you know, get them to my desired spice level. I was like one of the most gattie town things. It was so gattie town. Oh, man. The pepperoni pizza for me. I think I loved it a little bit less. And by loved it less, I mean, this was abysmal. Yeah, this was cardboard with sauce, flavorless cheese. The pepperoni was decent.

Now, what you didn't have that I did was any level of nostalgic attachment to this pizza. So I'm just looking at this. What does this taste like? Yeah, this is the pepperoni was three out of ten, the jalapeno and pepperoni. I'll give that a four out of ten. Yeah, but I'm just straightforwardly looking at this pizza and its trash. Then we had plate two. This is where I got to have those breadsticks.

You know, I asked that guy to pull them out of the little hidden slot that they had. The breadstick slot. Oh, this is one of the best parts of the meal. Their breadsticks were very good. They were generously like had like parsley and oregano on them. I like them. They were an eight out of ten for me. They were pretty good. They were better pizza.

They were buttery there. What did you say? I said they weren't better than pizza. OK, I thought you said they were better. No, they were not better than maybe man. Pizza Hut was great when we went on their breadstick game. These were still a good six out of ten breadstick for me. But what really disappointed me about plate number two, I was brave.

Yeah, guys, this is all for you. So you don't have to do it. I had the cheese sticks. Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, other people like doing that kind of stuff. You and I, we're not cheese boys, but now I've more for you guys. We want to leave you all the cheese. We're generous. We care.

Have you ever had a cheese stick that tasted smoky and earthy? Is that what it tasted like? It tasted, I don't know, like, was there some Gouda like overly ripe Gouda? I don't really know. But this is a one out of ten thing. I had a bite, couldn't eat more. Oh, man. Yeah, those cheeseless breadsticks were on point.

So my plate number two is off to a strong start. But then I decided to divert course. I decided to go away from pizza because I knew you were going to go ham on pizza and try all the different pizzas. So I was like, you know what? There's a little spaghetti scooper. So I got myself some spaghetti and some marinara sauce. And boy, were those noodles sad.

They were just weird and the sauce was too sweet. Three out of ten spaghetti and marinara. And that's a food that I traditionally love. So to score a three out of ten is bad. But next to it was another sad container of corn. And it verbatim from my notes. It just says, I like corn six and a half out of ten. It's hard to mess up corn. Corn is, you know, it's corn.

Yeah, corn is such an up solid American food. Yes. My final plate, actually, I had more plates. I went back to grab some more pepperoni pizza. So I just stuffed my gullet. Yeah. But my final plate was one slice of barbecue chicken pizza. And this barbecue sauce looked like from a bottle slathered on. There was no like ratio consideration. It was overflowing with this barbecue sauce and the cheese.

It was baked and it had melted. But at this point, it's so past lukewarm. This is just solid congealed cheese. And I think that it was so saucy. The cheese had nothing to adhere to. It was like putting something. It's like putting a bandaid on the ocean. Where it just floats and it's just like, oh, well, that's just there.

It's not sticking to anything. There was one good part. The sliced red onions in this barbecue chicken pizza. Oh, I didn't know it had that. We're decent. Very good. But I had one bite of this. I winced. Oh, you winced. I set it down and I could do no more. This is trash pizza.

Trash pizza. This one's garbage pizza. One out of ten. One out of ten. I felt like I needed to be a healthy boy. So I went back to plate three to load up on my fruits and veggies. And by that, I mean just fruits. I got some of the cantaloupe. I got some mandarin oranges. I got some apple, cinnamon, breadsticks, and I got chocolate pudding.

So I got two desserts, two pieces of fruit, cantaloupe, not quite as translucent, but still kind of translucent. It looked, I don't know, it looked like the thing. It looked soft. It was a shade of orange. It actually had a like a crunch to it. Oh, wow, it didn't look that way. Yeah, machine. It didn't look chewed.

It looked like someone had put it in their mouth. It wasn't a great texture just because I said it has a crunch. Doesn't mean it was good. It was like kind of like I got part of the rind, but there's no evidence that there's rind on it. Like it didn't look like rind at all. It looked translucent. It was a weird experience.

Four out of ten cantaloupe. It was bad. The mandarin oranges. I love mandarin oranges. They tasted so off. Like if tang orange juice became a natural fruit without really changing flavor profile. I go three out of ten on the mandarin oranges. That's right.

I'm giving fruit, you know, something from nature, a bad score because Gatti's managed to ruin nature. Oh, my gosh, what a headline. Wow. Gatti's ruins nature. Enemy against mother nature. Then I had the apple cinnamon breadsticks. These were the second best part of the entire meal next to the regular breadsticks.

Still very lukewarm. I wish, you know, kind of had like that apple pie topping amidst like cinnamon crumbles on top of a breadstick with a little bit of butter kind of baked on. It didn't look appetizing. It did not look good, but it was pretty tasty. It was a seven out of ten food with like a two out of ten presentation, but the taste was there.

But now the chocolate pudding. It was a special shade of gray. It was not good. I know what I described it to you as was it tasted like a new shoe, which is better than an old shoe. It tasted like that like chemically smell you get when you open a shoe box full of new balance. And you're just like, ah, if I could boil that into a taste,

why don't we make a pudding? Yeah, that's what Gatti said. And boy, did they deliver one out of ten chocolate pudding. That was trash pudding. Did you have a third plate? The third plate was actually the fourth plate was the barbecue pizza. Oh, how many plates did you get? I think I had before that six pieces of pizza, maybe four breadsticks.

The cheese stick got an insatiable boy here. I love me some carbs. Yeah, not that I loved this food, but just the presence of carbs. Yeah, I like carbs. I'll eat it. Yeah, I'm not real. I'm a fussy little boy, but I'm not that picky with my food. So overall, this food, we did not have a good experience. No, two thumbs down, dog.

Yeah, total two thumbs down. No justification needed. Two thumbs down. I think this entire segment has been all the justification that we need. Yeah, OK, well, we'll be back with a final rating for you. Final rating. I think this has been the most thumbs down we have given so far. Yes, pretty awful.

I went one thumb down for atmosphere, two thumbs down for service and two thumbs down for food while I went one down, one down and two down. So that's nine thumbs down in pretty bad, you know, out of a possible 12. That's not a good showing, I would say. It is a showing, but I think that disparity in thumbs between just you and I. We'll see how it affects our number, but I think I'm a little less hostile. It might be nostalgia, but I mean, I also had a lot of fun with the arcade, so we'll see. Overall, I'm going to give this a one point nine seven.

Geez, you're giving it under two. Gattie Town doesn't deserve a two. Oh, God, that is so low. Yeah, I am not going to be able to give it a one point nine seven. I am not going to be able to salvage this up to the zone of mediocrity. That's that's anything within a four to six. I'm giving it a three point four two. Still not good, still not good, but I had fun with the arcade.

The horror hallway was not by design, but I liked it. So that puts us at a two point seven zero. Our lowest rating to date and what that means. Well, this place was not mediocre enough. Not mediocre enough. Draw from the bowl. The you must bowl. It's time to draw from the you must bowl.

The you must bowl is our bowl that has a bunch of you must statements written in it. And they are punishments that we need to abide by if we bring you a place not mediocre enough. Pretty self-explanatory. If it's outside of four to six, I got to pay. And because I picked Gattytown, let's see what I have to do at our next restaurant. What'd you get? Really, dude? What is it?

Oh, you must wear a cone of shame. The little dog collars that stop them from licking their surgery wounds. OK, this will be great. So at our next restaurant, I have to wear a cone of shame. That's stupid. How are you going to eat with that? Difficultly. Let's find out where you're going to have to do this.

All right, it's time to play 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?

I'm ready. Let's go. All right, so I'm presenting to you, Garrett. Just because Gattytown is a special location of the chain, I hope you'll allow me to choose headlines that have either Gattytown or Mr. Gatties in it. Yeah, it's the same chain. They're the same thing. Good to go. OK, police fingerprinting kids at Gattytown. Oh, that seems like that seems illegal.

So true. Successful Mr. Gatties canned food drive raises one thousand three hundred sixty four dollars for Corbin women's shelter. False, you said you have successful in Mr. Gatties in the same sentence. All right. Gattytown not planning to reopen after extensive fire damage.

Well, I'm going to go false because from the looks of the place, they open no matter what the state of the business is in. Even if it's like literal burn damage, they're like, yeah, you can still get pizza here. Yeah, it's it's fine. We'll just block it off with some chairs. Yeah. All right. So you said police fingerprinting kids at Gattytown. You said that was true.

It is true. Oh, successful Mr. Gatties canned food drive raises one thousand three hundred sixty four dollars for Corbin women's shelter. You said that's false. That was false. Oh, yeah. And Gattytown not planning to reopen after extensive fire damage.

You said false. That was false. You are correct on all three counts, Garrett. Wow. And you get to pick next week's restaurant. We're still in Texas. Is there any Texas fixture that you want us to go review? You know what?

I want to go and get the Luan platter at Lubies. OK, I haven't been to Lubies since, like, I want to say, like a middle school field trip for band where they were just like, everyone off the bus, just go just go eat at the buffet. OK, yeah, I have had a lot of friends tell me that they have nostalgia for Lubies. I don't particularly, but I'm willing to check it out. I have no expectations.

I don't know what I'm getting myself into, but I want to try it. All right. Well, we're going to go to Lubies next week. Thank you so much for listening to the Fine Dining Podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. Please continue to leave us ratings and reviews on iTunes. It helps us out a lot. Hit the subscribe button, download our episodes.

You know, we love hearing from you. So write us anything you want at Fine Dining Podcast at gmail.com. Suggestions for the you must pull. These are the fun ones. Nothing that, like, will ruin other customers' experiences. But it's OK if it ruins our experience. Something that makes us look silly. But at the end of the day, the most it'll do

is make other people point and laugh. If you ever used to work at Lubies or even if you just have a story, like a noteworthy story from Lubies, go ahead and send that in. We didn't find it, but the search continues. We'll see you next week. Have a fine day. The search continues. We still need the perfect fire.

The search continues. Like and subscribe. The search continues. Our journey did not conclude. The monorail in search continues. Write us an iTunes review. And hey, while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and make it five stars? Come on.

Follow us on TikTok. The same on Instagram. All the socials. At Find Dining Podcasts, we have a website. Finddiningpodcast.com by our t-shirts. Then put them on. And don't forget, you can always suggest where we go next. OK.

We're going to find a mediocrity. The search continues. See you next week. Hurt my throat a little. Have a fine day.