Fine Dining - The Only Hooters with Breakfast feat. Alexander Poncio

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

Hooters Casino Hotel—now rebranded as OYO Hotel & Casino—has been called the worst hotel on the Vegas Strip. But is it really that bad? We put it to the ultimate test by spending 19 hours trapped inside, eating Hooters for dinner AND breakfast (because yes, this is the only Hooters in the country that serves breakfast). And if that wasn’t enough? We also hit up Aussie Heat (a male strip show), sang Dear Theodosia at karaoke (to everyone’s disappointment), and dealt with clogged toilets, broken elevators, and staff who couldn’t care less.   "Fine" Dining is now on video! Head on over to my YouTube to WATCH this episode!   💀 Spoiler: It was a nightmare. 💀 WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE: 🍗 The final Hooter Bowl – Our third (and last) review of Hooters  🏨 The hotel experience – Broken elevators, clueless staff, and the weakest toilets on Earth 🍔 What we ate – Some of the worst food we’ve had… except for the beef sliders, which slapped 🎤 Karaoke chaos – From The Little Mermaid to Rap God to Little Shop of Horrors 🕺 Aussie Heat adventures – Featuring the return of JUB, our ex-sponsor! 💩 Alex’s worst restaurant experience EVER – A little girl took a dump on the floor next to his table 👀 WATCH UNTIL THE END: We give OYO/Hooters its official score in our search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. 💬 COMMENT BELOW: Would YOU stay here? Or better yet, what’s the WORST hotel you’ve ever stayed at? 📢 SUPPORT THE SHOW & JOIN THE COMMUNITY: 🔥 Patreon (Get exclusive episodes & extended Yelp reviews!): https://www.patreon.com/c/finediningpodcast 💬 Discord (Talk chain restaurants & share horror stories!): https://discord.gg/6a2YqrtWV4 🔗 All links in one place: www.linktree.com/finediningpodcast ⚡ Like, Subscribe & Share if you enjoy deep dives into chain restaurant chaos! 👉 NEXT WEEK: We’re heading to SUBWAY. 🚊🥪 Patreon Producers: Joyce Van, & Sue Ornelas Follow Alex on Instagram @ponciosa

The Hooters Casino Hotel. The only Hooters with a breakfast menu, but the toilet clogs at a single wad of paper. A truly hilarious strip show that was not meant for me, but our hotel room overlooked the haunting remains of the demolished hotel next door. Beef sliders that were shockingly delicious, but the elevators are profoundly out of order. We just spent 19 hours inside one of the worst casinos in Vegas. In the tug of war that is my search

for the most mediocre restaurant, are the good and the not good elements of America's most profitable hooters perfectly in balance? We're going to tell you everything, proving that what happens in Vegas can in fact make it out. This is the Fine Dining Podcast. Your table is ready, take a seat. The flavor of the day is mediocrity.

Wouldn't you like to try a bite? Guarantee it'll be the perfect bite. Fine dining, better than you think. Fine! Guarantee it'll be the perfect five! Fine dining! Better than you thought, worse than you hoped! Fine dining! We don't treat media per ads a joke! Breaking every single place we've been!

Looking for the perfect five out of ten! Hello and welcome back to the Fine Dining Podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. I am your host, Michael Ornelas, and this is the show where I'm looking for the precisely in the middle dining experience, the perfect five point double zero out of ten, because only once you know what's directly in the center, can you tell what's good or not good by comparison. This week, it's the third annual and final Hooter Bowl episode,

and I had to do it up big. I couldn't just go to a normal Hooters. So I drove to Las Vegas to stay at the Oyo Hotel and Casino, which still maintains a working website for the Hooters Casino Hotel. They are one in the same. And I couldn't have done all this without my delight of a guest host this week. From Grown Ups 2, The Curse, and Dave, my friend, a fellow board game enthusiast, Alexander

Poncio. Actor by trade. Yeah, by trade, you know. You literally gave me a day of your life to be like, hey, you want to drive to Vegas and go stay at what promises to be not a great hotel? Well, and let me tell you, it was worth it. Yeah? There are many things that are like,

ugh, I didn't have to do that. This was one of, this is a memory that will stick with me. It was worth it for the experience, but it wasn't worth it for the actual experience it offered. No. I feel like if you're not a comedian, stay home. Go to any other hotel. Any other one.

Yeah, you have to really enjoy ironic things. Luckily we do. Yeah. And so we're just going to jump into it. Let's talk about all of the good things. And then we're going to talk about the not good and the just there before rating it all at the end to see is this perfectly in the center? Is it the most mediocre restaurant in America? Play the jingle for the good. This is the good, done like it should be.

The stuff that's fang-a-lickin' or stickin' the land in. This is the good, I knew that you could. This is the good! How long is your good list? It's not that long. Okay. It's like a lot of little things, but it's one of those, you know when you're just trying to find the silver linings

to give things the benefit of the doubt? That's kind of what my good list is here. That's what it is. That's mine. Like, I have the dumb signage inside of a Hooters. You know, the signs where it's like, if Hooters delivered, it'd be called Knockers. Yeah. You know? Stuff like that.

That is good in the end. It is good. Or like, you know, I'm paraphrasing, delivered, it'd be called knockers. Yeah. You know? Stuff like that. That is good in the end. It is good. Or like, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but something along the lines of warning consumption of alcohol may lead to you thinking you have a shot with a Hooters girl, and then in parentheses, you don't. That's, you know. Which also isn't true.

Like, there are definitely people who have, like, landed dates with Hooters girls. Like, that's a thing that occasionally happens that someone that you meet at the restaurant. Yeah. Hasn't been my experience. That's just something that happens at restaurants. Yeah. We had Wandy.

Shout out to Wandy. So, all right, just to kind of tell the story. I mean, we're gonna get into like the process of like we first walk in and all that, but that doesn't belong here in the story. I mean, we're going to get into like the process of like we first walk in and all that. But that doesn't belong here in the goods. So we can't really go in chronological. No, this is going to be a segment of silver linings. Like I said, it's going to be a Tarantino esque dissection of everything.

You get the ending first. Yeah. Or the middle or something. So we checked in and fairly quickly, we had just driven four hours from LA. We're pretty hungry. So we didn't wait too long to do our Hooters dinner, knowing that we wanted to go see one of the shows that this place offers.

And they had a couple of seven o'clock shows, and then they had some nine o'clock action going on. So we were like, let's just get eating out of the way. So we go in and our server is this woman named Wandy. She had the vibe of a Hooters girl. Is that the move? Do they always like put their name down? I haven't eaten at enough Hooters to know this.

I don't think that, actually I do think that, I wanna say Amy was the name of the enough Hooters to know this. I don't think that, actually I do think that, I want to say Amy was the name of the first Hooters girl that I had. I want to say Amy did something like that. But yeah, wrote her, and actually didn't even write it in front of us. Like brought it as, it's like when at a convention someone just signs a bunch of headshots and you just give them out. It was, she didn't even sign it at the table.

She has this little napkin with her name and a heart on it that she gave to us. But I was wondering, like, but just kind of like, we don't know where she, she just brought it over. She probably has a stack in back. Yeah. She's, yeah.

The way they serve it on the little plates when you get there, I would assume that's how they do it. Yeah. Now, Wandi, overall, I'm gonna say her service was good. Yes. Overall, but she did do a thing that bugs me where it kind of drops off a little bit.

Like you get the attentive service until you're like, oh, can I check out dessert? Or, oh, can we close out this check that you dropped? It becomes like a, oh, now they're nowhere to be found. Yeah. And it's kind of tough, but it wasn't so egregious close out this check that you dropped, it becomes like a, oh, now they're nowhere to be found. Yeah. And it's kind of tough, but it wasn't so egregious that I'm going to say that it's not good.

I'm gonna still put Wandy in the good. Yeah. Because I'm clinging. I'm clinging for things to be positive. They're gonna be few and far between here, folks. So what's a good thing for you? The first thing I wrote was friendly enough staff, like friendly enough. Yeah.

I was like, yeah, this, this satisfies what and it wasn't the experience. So we'll get to that later, but the, a lot of the reviews obviously are saying like it took forever to get sat and, and that happened to us the second day. But the first day I feel like we sat pretty quick. Yeah. We got even our food pretty quick. Like the, the service was, I feel like we sat pretty quick. Yeah. We got even our food pretty quick. Like the service was...

It also wasn't super busy. We kind of ate at an odd time, like 4.50. You know, you're kind of right before the dinner rush is starting. Yeah. You're like, you are the start of it. Ergo friendly enough. Yeah.

Like they got the job done. I felt like, cool, this is great. You know, no complaints here. This is a good thing in the end. I agree with that. I did ask Wandy about the shows. So, I'll just come out and say it. I left it to chance.

I have this little app on my phone that I use that you put your finger on, and someone else puts their finger on, and then it picks one of you And you can do up to like six or seven people. I think board gamers will know this is for board gamers This is a thing meant to choose who the first player is randomly. It's just points of contact and it chooses. Mm-hmm and I thought One because I like games and gamifying things

I thought one, because I like games and gamifying things, it would be a fun way to choose which show we went to that the OYO offered. Now let me tell you about the shows that the OYO offers because their website declares that they have three shows. They have the hilarious seven, which is a standup comedy show, seven comics, 70 minutes. My one regret is not seeing all the shows, but there's not enough time in the world

to see all the shows. So yeah, the hilarious seven. And by the way, we did this thing where like, yeah, we could have just had this app pick from three shows. We did a round robin style tournament where each show went head to head and whichever one, two, whichever got picked twice, determined which one we went to.

So the second option was King of Diamonds, the Neil Diamond tribute show. I know it's gonna be obvious, but what are like three Neil Diamond songs? Okay, so it's not that. I couldn't tell you. Did he do Sweet Caroline? I wanna say yes, and that's like the song.

That's the extent of my guess, and I'm not even confident. And I don't, here's the thing. I don't even care to look it up. No. I'm like, I don't care. I'm fine to just be wrong. Yeah, I don't give a shit.

And the third option, Aussie Heat, a male review with Australian male strippers. And it is essentially their knockoff version of Thunder from Down Under, which is over, I wanna say, at the Excalibur just across the street. That sounds right. Because I went to review Dick's Last Resort there

and there were some shirtless Australian men just standing outside for photo ops right outside of the restaurant that we ended up going for that. So I assume that's the location. It would be weird that they're advertising it not at the hotel it's at, but whatever. So south end of the Vegas Strip, down under.

Literally. I was wondering why specifically Australian, why that's a thing. Yeah. Just the men are hotter. I don't know. That's what I was talking to my wife. She's like, it's probably like the beach culture. Like there's a strong beach culture.

Yeah. And also the accents, the accents, the accents are a big draw. I'm sure. Because like UK is a little too refined, it's too nice, Australia is like, it's like a British cowboy, you know? Right, yeah. So it makes sense. I can see that.

And so first match, King of Diamonds versus Hilarious Seven, Hilarious Seven advances, so one win, Neil Diamond could go out with no wins if it loses the next match. So we do we do Ozzy Heat versus King of Diamonds and Ozzy Heat gets selected by my app. So now Neil Diamond is out. It's a 50 50 shot where a coin flip away from either going to a comedy

show in Vegas or an Australian strip show. Man. And baby boy, do you know it, it shows Ozzy Heat. It was Ozzy Heat, yep. And so we mentioned this to Wandy, we had just done this process when we're eating and we asked her about the show like, hey, like how intense is this show?

That was the word I used, cause it's just like. I think that's the appropriate word. I think that's the appropriate word. I think it's the appropriate word. She kind of giggles and said, sometimes I go try and sneak a peek. She just pops her head in, which is cute because she had a little bit of an accent. I think English was her second language.

Just that little bit of language barrier made this moment a lot more innocent and kind of yeah It's like a playful something we like that's funny. That's just universally funny. Yeah, I try to sneak it. Yeah, that's great. Yeah Yeah, we're still in the good. We're still in the good. Okay Let's not go too much further into Ozzy heat. No talk about the food. Okay, let's do it Cuz there were a few items that were good. We're probably going to say the exact same ones? On three.

One, two, three. Sliders. Oh my God. That was a good slider. The bar was low. Yeah. For Hooters? It was through the floor.

I did not expect anything to be good, and I have thought about that slider. Yeah. Have you that slide. Yeah. Have you? Yes. Okay. They had, I mean, I, so I notoriously dunk on white Castle all the time. I hate white Castle.

I think white Castle is trash. Their sliders suck. This was a good, like this proves that a slider isn't an inherently bad food. White Castle is just bad at it. I don't know what the fuck is going on in the Hooters kitchen to make a slider this good. I don't, while the rest of the menu kind of suffers. It, but it's very simple.

It had mustard, pickle, and just a really flavorful burger meat, and then yours had cheese on it. And that was it, and then bun. So, you know, five ingredients for you, four for me. And it hit, and it and then bun so you know five ingredients for you four for me and it hit and it hit to a point where like if I'm putting together a dream plate of Like like if I'm making a tier list or something of Chain restaurant appetizers. I think this slider might make the cut. It's not topping out the blooming onion, but it's making the cut Yeah, I I would put like a Chili's mozzarella stick.

I'm a big fan of those. I don't know if you are. I don't do cheese, but. Oh, that's right. But. Yeah. Chili's mozzarella stick is, they're bricks.

They're like mozzarella bricks, and I'm a fan of mozzarella bricks. Oh, I see. Okay, so that, and I would do the cider, and then bloomin' onion is an excellent option. Yeah, it was good. If I had to score it, I'm going eight out of 10. That's exactly right. On a Hooters appetizer, eight out of 10.

Delicious. If you find yourself at a Hooters, well, one, they have a burger menu, and it doesn't look bad, and this actually gives me hope that their burgers may be pretty solid. So while I haven't tried them and I can't recommend them, I don't think you're gonna go wrong

if you try a Hooters burger evidenced by these sliders. But if you wanna be safe and go off of my endorsement, get a slider. Yeah, I did an exact eight. We didn't talk about it beforehand. We both did eight. That was... I feel like you have the Vegas, like we're magicians.

Like, I don't know this person beforehand. Hey, well, I just came from Vegas. So I'm in a Vegas mood, baby. Hooters. Hooters, bro. So stupid. And then the other thing that I gave a culinary thumbs up to from that first meal was the funnel cake fries,

which I think I only really liked because I remember finding them kind of middling the previous years. Hooter Bowl last year when I did Hoot's Wings, it didn't taste great. This felt like there was just a little element of maybe it was a little bit warmer, maybe it was a little bit fresher and the raspberry dipping jelly or dipping sauce, raspberry reduction. It the combo with the funnel cake fry made it taste like a toaster strudel. Like exactly it was conjuring up. It's giving toaster strudel. Mm hmm. The little jelly was exactly that.

The chocolate wasn't. They probably just squeezed it out. And yeah, they wrung out the inside of a toaster strudel. That's what happened Yeah, you know the funnel cake fries are gonna be on my just there So do you want me to get to that or do you want me to go ahead and just talk about it? So I'm not a so it's not a fair metric by any means, but I'm not a funnel cake men in general I'm yeah, I'm not a it's a kind of intense food. It's a little much. Yeah, it's just like if I'm going to eat a funnel cake, I'm going to eat the batter with the powdered sugar by itself.

Like that's maybe a strawberry. Maybe. Yeah. Funnel cake is a food that does make me just ask why. Why is this happening? It doesn't mean to. It's too much. It's gluttonous. I'm not a fan of just like fried batter. Well, I will say I like the long John Silver's little crunchies and

I haven't been to a long John Silver's in a very long time. I have no recollection. That's reasonable That's a reasonable response to that But anybody who knows long John Silver's will know what I mean when you ask for the crap like that like the hush puppies Nope, that's it. Just like crunchies. It's the crunchies, and it's just little batter bits It's like old leftover batter. It's like when you order like Chinese food And they just put like the little fried strips of some places call them wontons, but they're just like crispies Yeah, you know whatever but is it similar noodles. It's not It's similar to that and that it's just like a fried thing

But that those are actually elevated above what this is, which is like, this is like, oh, we put a bunch of fish in the fryer and hushpuppies and shit, right? And they take them out, and then there's leftover crumbs that have fallen off from the fish, and then they put it in the tray. I hate that. That's what this is, and it is gluttonous, it's super gluttonous, but the funny part to me is like, it's a thing.

Like you can ask for the crunchies from a long John Silver's, put some malt vinegar on it and then know what you're talking about. All right. So that's the beauty of this country. My score for the funnel cake fries is a seven out of 10. I'm going to assume you're closer to the middle. Yeah. I'm, I'm a, I'm like a four.

Okay. Now, normally I would stop at one meal's worth of food, but this is the only Hooters in America that serves breakfast. We got to have morning after Hooters. And it does not belong in the good category, but I did get a Texas French toast. Did you have a bite of it? I did, it was good.

They can do French toast well. So yeah, my note just says this slapped and it came with Mrs. Butterworth, which I was like, oh, and then I was worried it was Aunt Jemima. I was like, wait, is this the one that we shouldn't be having? Is this the one that's not around anymore?

Is their syrup old? Yeah. But no, it was Mrs. Butterworth. It was soft, it was a really good ratio of like, you know, like the egg to the bread, to the syrup, to the butter, all that. I also went eight out of 10 on the French toast. I didn't order it, but that's what I would give it.

It was like, it was real French toast. It wasn't like a Sonic how they have French toast sticks, or it wasn't like a frozen. It was like, oh, this is a real piece of French toast Yeah What just happened? You just run out of breath. Yeah breathe in between Okay What else do you have is good

Just a little detail that about the I'm gonna go back to the sliders, but I'm not going to dig in too much. I can't talk about these sliders enough. They were that good to me. They were very good. It's like, we're both Texas boys. We're also high butt crack boys, but that's not... We're high butt crack boys. We are always at risk of plumber's crack.

Yeah. We suffer from having high butt cracks. It's a thing. What's the problem? HBCB that always boys if my shirt slightly goes up that crack is shown. Yeah, and that's not a good thing. Yeah, so We're both Texas boys. So we both like you like Fuddruckers, right? Yeah big Fuddruckers boy That's what this was it was Fuddruckers buns like that like soft fluffy Fuddruckers bun with the Fuddruckers quality me. I don't know what they fucking do I don't know why they like their slider so much, but that's that And then as far as something new

The end of my good No, are we at the end? We're at the end of my good, but which is the time we had at the show So I want to save that for I mean not too much longer But I do have a couple of other things I do have a couple other good things to put but but I will just say I had a good time at the show and we'll delve into with I Can't say I was there No, I can't say I attended this show. Oh, oh, yeah. Yeah, we'll get to that I can't say I attended this show. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get to that. I can't say I attended this show, but I heard good things.

Now, I did like an impulse gamble on the way out. Just on the way out the door, I was like, I've got 60 bucks in cash in my wallet, put it on red, and I hit. Yep. That's good. It felt like a very mathematical moment, where it was like, oh, clearly it's it's been black enough time is like it.

If you follow the pattern, it has to be red. And here's the thing. I didn't even think about that. I didn't care. I'm at every spin is a new spin. I'm a degenerate. Yeah, I'm it's I do the same thing with baseball, too. Or I'm like, OK, they've they've this man. Like, we're bound for a hit.

Like, it has to, probability-wise. That's a skill game. Yeah, it is a skill game, but for example, like, if you know Otani, right? Yeah. He's a super incredible guy. You never stop hearing about him, but he struck out so many times that at,

it was like one of the last games before playoffs, I was telling my wife, he was like, he's gonna hit a home run. Like, probability-wise, he's struck out enough times, where he's like, he's going to hit a home run this time. He has to. And he did. Home run.

All right. That's what gambling is for me. Like, it has to hit at some point. Sure. But yeah, tipped the dealer five bucks, walked away with $115 that started at 60. So. That is a good, that's a win. Yeah, not bad. Is that their fault?

Not really, they didn't really cause it. No, it was cosmic. It was cosmic. But it was still a good experience that I had in the doors of beneath the roof of that casino. And then the other thing I wanna talk about is, we did karaoke, which has elements of being good and elements of just there.

And both for kind of the same reason. It was there was a sadness in how sparsely attended it was. But that meant that we got a lot of reps. And I like that. When I go to a karaoke bar, one, I don't want that booth shit. I want to impress strangers. Like, I do not like going into a room with my friends to do karaoke, because I'm like, why are we doing this?

We can do that in my living room. I want to be discovered, damn it. Yeah. And I got a very fun reception after doing Somebody to Love by Queen. I did Forgot About Dre by Dr. Dre and Eminem, after which a woman came up and hugged me and was like, when do you breathe?

And I was like, I can do Rap God. And then the host overheard that. He's like, you can close the night off with Rap God. So he also questioned you. He was like, can you? Yeah. Can you do Rap God? And you're like, yeah.

Feet to the fire. Mm. We don't just say we can do Rap God? And you're like, yeah. Feet to the fire. Mm. We don't just say we can do Rap God around these parts. We do Rap God. Yeah. And yeah, so overall, I got to go up a bunch, did a couple duets.

What did we do? We did a duet, right? We did, and we brought the energy down so low, dude. We did Hamilton. That's right. Oh my God. Okay, so I said there were no more good. I would say, I'll put my little bow around it. The experience that we had was good overall.

Like it was a fun memory. So I don't wanna say it was no good after that because we had fun, but that's because we're fun. But again, it was like watching a So Bad It's Good movie. It was like, I appreciate how much of a train wreck certain parts of this were. But yeah, karaoke had good elements, had just their elements,

honestly had some not good elements, but overall I enjoyed doing it. So I think it's worth mentioning here. Anyways, so you went to Ozzy Heat with a friend of mine, with a friend of the show, who we haven't seen in almost to the day a year. Yeah. A guy by the name of Jubb.

Mm-hmm. He was our season one sponsor of the show, and he would even just try wacky shit. Weird dude. People say he looks like me, but whatever. He lived up to his reputation, I'll say that. Yeah, so I'm gonna let you talk about Ozzy Heat. You can like kind of set the table,

tell the story from start to finish. I'm gonna go look for Jubb and see if we can get him to participate in this discussion. Yeah, he's gotta be around somewhere at some point. You just keep him in the back or something? You just kind of like call out in a way that doesn't use a phone and he'll find a way to arrive. That's right. It's weird.

Yeah, so anyways, go ahead and the floor is yours. I'll lay it down. So, Ossie Heat, you know, I've never been to a exotic dancing review burlesque type show. I've participated in theater which has burlesque elements. That there was, they ran a burlesque show at it, but it was only one part of a talent show, if you will, a literal talent show that one part of it was burlesque.

So this was new for me, and I obviously, it's not so much that I'm like, ugh, I don't wanna see that, that's frickin' nasty. It was more so that I was like, no, it's just not entertaining to me. But it's hilarious in an ironic way for me, especially me and Jeb together. What an experience. So I'll see. He is a it's a strip show. Yes. But also there's some comedy in there.

There's some there's some comedy in there. There's some light elements of comedy. Hey, I'm going. Oh God. Oh Jeb, how you doing? I'm good. Yeah? Yeah.

Quite an evening, huh? I don't think it was that different from a lot of nights I've had in my life. Oh, okay. For me it was, but. We went up to buy tickets, like kind of last minute, impulse buy, we came up to the guy who was working the door during the comedy show

and we were like, hey, we wanna buy tickets. He was like, for the comedy show, okay. And I was like, no, you know. Not the hilarious seven. Not the hilarious seven, but the hilarious seven inches. There we go. If you get my drift. I get it.

He was like, oh, I'll come find you later. Let me get this show situated. We went back up to the room. We hung out. Whatever, I got to know you. I was like, who am I going to this strip show with? Who's this guy? Yeah.

And I'm sure you felt the same. Yeah. So then we go back down finally to buy tickets. I destroy your bathroom. We'll get to that later. Yeah, you sure did. And then when we go back down finally to buy tickets. I destroy your bathroom. We'll get to that later. Yeah, you sure did. And then when we come back down, he's like, where do you guys want to sit? And I'm like, well, wherever's funniest.

So they sat us on the aisle seat. Mm hmm. Oh, this woman immediately comes up to us. She's like, please tell me you're willing to be part of the show. Yeah. You didn't want that. I was willing. I. Yeah. You didn't want that. I was willing. Yeah. You didn't want it for yourself. Was she even asking me?

I don't know. Whenever we're in a room together, I think they're gonna go for you. I have to say. That's a crazy conspiracy. Jab, you have quite the charisma, I must say. I was like, can we record? Because look, I do it all for the gram.

Right. Limp Bizkit did it for the nookie, I did it for the gram. So I was like, if we can record it, sure. She's like, yeah, go for it. I'm like, all right, job will go up on stage. Then she tries to upsell us. Yeah.

They have these consent bracelets, which is an invention. Oh yeah. Tell people about the. We kind of both assume that once we're in the show, like, oh, it's kind of all bets are up. Like they're going to dance on you lap dance on you, whatever. The business side, which is genius, is that you have to buy these. I guess they didn't call them consent bands.

That's not very sexy. That'd be crazy. But they're consent bands, essentially. They're just these little green wristbands. They cost you 10 bucks, and it basically means during the cock clock, which is a three minute break that the strippers take to go out into the crowd and just grind on horny women and men, if you have a green bracelet,

you are a prime target, and it means green light, go, go, go. And they did. Some of the wettest chairs I've ever sat in. Yeah. Yeah. My chair was pretty wet, but that's mostly because I carry around swamp ass all the time. Gross. They're bringing people up on stage

to get grinded on in front of a room. And like, you know, there's a woman there for her 50th birthday that is like, this is the most physical contact I've had in a while. And she's like trying to get her words, trying to get as close as she can to the, the gyrating, you know, she's kind of put on a desk and I've like, I'm like, I've seen this on Pornhub.

I've definitely seen this, the start of this scene. Oh yeah. It just gets wild Yeah, you took a video of me just kind of looking at the camera while some pretty intense grinding was going on right behind me I got the same for you. Uh-huh. It was a madhouse and only five strippers Yeah, so the structure of the show there was this section where they are stripping on you But the structure of the show was essentially going through every sort of fetish, like doctor patient, student teacher, like lumberjack. Sex robot.

Sex robot. There was cowboy ones. There was blindfold stuff. Yeah, it's like every fantasy, I guess. They also had a bucket at the front where if you put any money in a big cha-ching plays out throughout the arena and they weren't playing in arena. The club, the club and an article of clothing has to be removed. So when they first introduced this naturally, the guy who kind of doubles

as like the the the main stripper. Yeah, the MC, the MC, You know, he's prepared for this, and so he's got like six pairs of different underwear on that gets smaller and smaller the more layers that he removes. And the last one is like a giant Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer, like long nose with a red dip at the end. And I definitely saw his scrotum. Yeah.

Only his flappy bit was inside the Rudolph. The balls were on the outside and they looked unhealthily purple. Oh. It was like hot dog meat color. Are you serious? I'm not kidding. I didn't see.

He had a very purple scrotum. Oh, oops. That's probably not good. It was like a laser that my eyes were just drawn to. Yeah, I don't blame you at all. Couldn't look away. And like the dance moves are impressive. Yeah, I'm gonna be, like Look away. I'm like the dance moves are impressive Yeah, I'm gonna be like it's just it's an athletic endeavor. Mm-hmm, and I'm not hating it, you know

It's that's not for me, but lots of like a couple bachelorette parties and people getting grinded on it's it's the same approach as like a As a comedian you can watch another comedian and a pretty and even if you don't think it's funny, for me, I can watch and go, oh yeah, clearly they're getting a reaction from the crowd. The crowd is into it. They're good at what they do. They're hitting the marks, baby.

They're getting it done. They are. No, they are absolutely crushing. Yeah, and they're funny. And they're funny, yeah. The comedy was landing with me. But then I started to get FOMO and panicked because as the show went on,

it's like an hour and a half long show and they had asked Jub, do you wanna be a part of this show? Oh yeah. And I'm a performer at heart. So I'm ready. I wanna go up. They weren't calling you up.

They weren't calling me up and they're pushing it for later and later and more people are being brought up and I'm just like, is it because I didn't buy the consent bracelet? Oh yeah. Everyone that was up there had one of the green wristbands and I get nothing for the gram.

Yeah. But then a girl was brought up and she had no bracelet and finally the woman that works there, like the waitress or hostess or whatever she is comes over to me and was like, it's time my child. And she caresses the side of my face. Yeah. She's like, you get on up there.

Are you okay? Doing a body shot job doesn't drink. I can't do that anymore. So I was like, if you've got a non-alcoholic, they're like, we got you, Jub, don't worry. All right, I go up there. Two other women are brought up, and we're told that we're gonna be in a competition for who does the best body shot off of this Australian god.

Gloves are off, Jub's gonna win. Yeah. It's basically just like an ottoman, essentially, that the stripper then lays on. And you can choose to take this body shot off their mouth, off their chest, off their abs, or off their penis. They have jeans on. So it's basically just like a denim table, but you know what lies beneath.

The girl in front of me, she went for the mouth. Me, they didn't give me a choice. They just put the shot glass on the penis and I'm just kinda looking out to the crowd like, oh God, what is this, college again? But I'm a showman. The performer had pulled me aside and told me, while they're introducing the bit, like,

hey, do whatever you want to me. Just don't knock me out. That's literally what he said, right? Those are literally his words. I go up, I take the little body shot, hands free. I like spit the cup out like I'm Triple H at WrestleMania. And then I reverse forward, whatever the different cowboy orientations are. I am just kind of dancing over this ottoman

with the stripper in between, like I'm making a stripper sandwich with an ottoman, with ottoman and jub bread, essentially. And I'm like, you know what? I can do a move that no one's going to anticipate. And I put my head between this guy's legs, not what you're thinking, and I do a straight up headstand.

Feet in the air, kicking around. The crowd went literally wild. Yeah. And then when I look in hindsight, I realize he was kind of like drumming on my dick as I was doing it, which I didn't feel in the moment because I'm just assuming like, oh, well, just in good faith,

they're holding my legs up for balance. But no, they were making like a like a bongo out of my balls. Yeah. Which is fine. It's for it's for the laughs. And then not the first time either. And then as I grind my way across them, like a snail trail, the job starts to lose his balance and whoa, whoa, whoa. And I fall head first into a straight up 69 with this guy.

And look, it's not what I was going for. It was a complete accident, but it was fun. Ozzy heat. I give two thumbs up. That was a two thumbs up experience. I got to say. And then on top of that, the audience voiced their preference for my performance in that little body shot dance.

And so I won free after the show photos with the full cast of dancers. They said, you go first. And I was like, okay, you know, we got some photos, some silly, some dirty, some raunchy. They were just fascinated with us being there. They were. We were the only two people who looked the way that we did

who were there participating in this show. Although there were like a lot more straight men than I expected. Yeah, there was a lot of like, I don't know. I think they were there just because their girlfriends or partners wanted to go or whatever. But yeah, Ozzy was fun. And then we bailed after it was done

and a girl came out and tried to hit on us both and it was like, whoa, well, job's taken. Yeah, we're, um, your boy is married. And, uh, she, she kind of found her first available out of that conversation then. Yes. And we hit up karaoke and I did part of your world from the Little Mermaid and it was a blast. And then I called it a night.

Yeah, you were done. You were tired at that point. Speaking of which, I'm tired. I'm done Oh, yeah, please. Okay. I'll see you later job. We had a good time Love you, boy. All right. I love you little daddy I'll see you on the next one. Okay So that was job. We had a good old time. I mean it was it was it was pretty fascinating I'll say what a good experience not one that I expected to have.

This is definitely something that goes on the good and it's on my good list. Anyways, sorry, I couldn't find him. Did he ever show up? Oh yeah, he was here, all right. That's everything I have for the good. Yep. All right.

Let's cap it off there and talk about the not good I'm just gonna read my notes the dinginess the room Ocean view over the demolished remains of the Tropicana, the art, like already from the point of check-in where it was unclear where we buy tickets for shows and we go up to the room and the hallway smells like air freshener that you spray after a fart. The entire hallway smells of that. There's a greasy handprint on the outside of our door that appeared between the first time we went and the second time

we went and it was neither of us because we only touched the handle. Yeah. So that felt like a horror movie or something greasy. A lot of liminal space elements to the design here, just abandoned, open industrial space. Yeah. We walk into the room and it's just remarkably unimpressive. It felt like a insane asylum room. I get felt the tile was surprisingly clinical. There was nothing. There was definitely like a blood stain.

Yeah, oh yeah, we have it on footage too. There was a blood stain on like, was it the bathroom floor? Yeah, it was in between the tiles. Like in the tiles, yeah. Yeah, nothing felt like it had been redone in a long time. For something that I read in the Eats Eats

has had so many renovations. It is very questionable of like, what did you even do? You surprised me if this is a renovation. Yeah. The smell that you used is the poop, poopery, but with poop. I, my bad is that the smell is still stuck in my nose. Like, I started making myself like panic because I was sick.

I was like, I don't want to smell it anymore. And it's like the fault. The going crazy. It's sticking in my nose hairs. I would describe it as like instead of washing, drying, using soap, whatever, it's like they just keep adding soap. They just keep putting soap and not washing it and not drying it.

So instead of cleaning, they just add another layer of soap. Right, right, right. So it just, it has buried every smell in soap on top. Nothing has ever been scrubbed. No, ever. And then the artwork I've never been like offended by hotel artwork, but this was this looked like it was just pulled out of like Like a magic eye. Yeah booklet where it was just like I don't know. Here's some pattern. It means nothing

It doesn't inspire anything. They looked like homework one of like parabolic, like you're learning geometry graphing for the first time. It was like a elementary school workbook if they took all the text off the front. Yes. It was just like, and we're not talking like the nicer ones with like a little kid and like a lizard or something. We're talking the old ones where it was just like shape. Yeah.

Vague shape and a color, like half color. Yeah. There was a rail rail. Yeah. just like shape, vague shape and a color, like half color. Yeah. There was a rail rail. Yeah. They had just like a rail that is at about like chest height right at the window. You can only open the window about like six or eight inches.

And then there's a rail stopping you from stepping forward at all. From jumping out. From jumping out. From jumping out, from like, it was perfect height for if you wanted to do cocaine off of it or like bend a partner over it, you know, it was all these things. It was the most Las Vegas rail I've ever seen

just right at the edge. And the view also inspires that romance. We saw what is now basically a quarry. All of the demolished remnants of the Tropicana are just still being cleaned up and sorted into like dirt piles. And I don't know, I don't know if they're in the building stage yet, or if they're in the removal phase,

but it looks somewhere in between. They just tore it down pretty recently. They demolished it with bombs and it was like a whole thing. An implosion. An implosion. And the weird thing is, is like, I get it. Like I'm not even mad about it. Look, it's like, what do you do?

What are you supposed to do? Alex, this was called the ocean view room. Yeah. First of all, ocean? Not even in Las Vegas. Not even the pool, like, you can call a pool view an ocean view, like, I would go, okay, cool. Well, and so what I wonder is,

did the Tropicana have like a prominent pool on this side of the building that the ocean view was looking at the Tropicana? You can't use somebody else's pool in your description. It's stolen that? No. You can't do that. You're not allowed. That's not okay. That's such a little cop out. Hey, you know that thing that our neighbor has? Well, you can be close to that if you stay here. I guess it does sound nice. Like as opposed to interior view or just a strip view. That's a good, that's more realistic. Castle view.

Castle view, that's good. The Excalibur is right out there. See, this is. Yeah. For a place that kind of offers this image of a party atmosphere, the pool was closed for the season, which you know, it's the outdoor pool. I do get it for temperature,

but also I do feel like it would have been warm enough to get in the pool this weekend. Yeah, it was fine this past weekend. And it's Vegas, Vegas is hotter. And again, November, which is hotter than I would like it to be for November. And the pool looked nice, nice enough. The pool area was like, yeah,

that's not a horrible motel pool for My Name is Earl, you know? But also probably because it hadn't been used recently, they were able to put it in that condition. That's probably what it is, but I don't know. There is gonna be quite a bit of the food. We touched on our meals. Quite a bit of the food is gonna fall under this.

And even some of the vibes of like, there, like there was a manager that came in, uh, a female manager. So, I mean, this is slightly less creepy, but even still walked in and kind of like gave a motion where she grabbed the sides of her tank top and like wiggled her boobs a little bit, I think indicating to the hostess like, Hey, show more cleavage, which I feel like we're past that day and age. Apparently not. Maybe that isn't what it was.

You know, it was just a body language thing, but it did strike me in a way where I was just like, that makes me uncomfortable. Yeah. Stop telling her how to keep her boobs. It's not even giving the benefit of the doubt because like that would be something that they would do there

And other hooters have done. Yeah. Yeah, so that must have been what it was. Yeah Uh the Service in the morning was not great. No We waited at the front for a while and like it bothers me that like servers will walk by and not look over Like if you look over and just be like, uh, just just give a minute, or I'll go find someone that's not my post, or whatever it is. Yeah. But like, don't just pretend we're not there. Yeah.

It was a- They were trying not to see us. It was kind of wild. Yeah, it was a solid several minutes of just constant walking back and forth and not acknowledging. And it bummed me out. So I'm gonna say that the morning service was not good.

Not good, at least from a host perspective. Yeah. So curly fries are ass. Their curly fries were so bland because curly fries come with an implied seasoning. Even without the seasoning, like if it was just a curly potato French fry, it was chalky. It's really, really hard to have a bad fry that's awful when it's at least warm. It was like, oh, there's no reason for me to ingest this and I'll eat anything.

It didn't have a bad taste, it had an offensively bland taste. It was nothing. It was nothing. I went three out of 10 on these curly fries. Yeah, I did too, but yeah. It's the equivalent of like bringing out just like a slice of white bread. Like no butter, like no special, anything.

Just like, there's no reason for me to eat this, honestly. Yet with Texas barbecue, I will. With Texas barbecue, that's a little bit. But here's the thing, it becomes your napkin. You get like barbecue sauce on your hand and then you're like, yeah. Or like pickle and onion juice, you know, whatever it is. And on top of all that, there was this weird fry fiasco

where what we really wanted were the waffle fries because I mean just texturally there's a little bit more satisfaction, some heft to that. And we were like, do you have waffle fries? Sorry, we're out of waffle fries. And then later they're like, oh, we're, the waffle fries are on the way out.

Wait, there's waffle, oh, you said you didn't have them. And then she goes back and then kind of pulls it off the table again. It goes, oh, psych, there are no waffle fries. And you're like, oh, well, can we get fried pickles? Thinking that it's gonna be like, can you offer this to substitute for this thing that you're missing?

Yeah. And then they ended up charging us for the fried pickles and for all the different fries. Yeah, it was- Which I would not pay for. The fried pickles also are under the not so good. That's probably the worst fried pickle I've ever had. I'm trying to see if I wrote something down about it.

I love fried pickles and even a bad fried pickle is good. This was probably, it was the worst. It was like, this is on the lowest end of- I liked their fried pickles, I wanna say in the first episode I did. So either this location wasn't good, this location had an off night, or the quality of the pickles have just kinda gone down.

Yeah, they were like really dry. It was like pickle potato chips. They're really, really dry. Okay, also in the food, the bacon hurt to bite. It was like, it wasn't even that it was like burnt, but it had that level of crisp to where it hurt my teeth. And I don't have weak teeth. I have strong teeth. Yeah. You, you talk about your strong teeth a lot, actually. I am known for the strength of my teeth. That's his thing. It's my thing. They call me strong tooth Mike. Yeah. STM. I have. I a lot actually. I am known for the strength of my teeth. That's his thing. It's my thing.

They call me strong tooth Mike. Yeah. STM. I have, I've called you that. Most of the time I've known you. Mm-hmm. You've called me STM. That's what he is in my phone. You can see it.

And this bacon hurt strong tooth Mike. That's wild. That's a wild thing to say, strong tooth Mike. Yeah. This is the weirdest episode. That's a strange thing to say, Strong Tooth Mike. Yeah. This is the weirdest episode. That's a strange thing to say, High Butt Crack Boy, Strong Tooth Mike. So yeah, I went three out of 10 on the bacon for the texture. The taste was like fine, but like, I don't know.

Bacon should be scoring like six, seven, eight. Yeah. Bacon is good, so a three on bacon is weak. I don't know how they managed to have dry bacon. Yeah. That's wild. My note said it tasted lame. Yeah.

And then the eggs tasted like, you know, they come out of the carton. Yep. Oh yeah. You had scrambled scrambled eggs. I gave those a two out of 10. So I don't on the whole recommend the breakfast at Hooters. I wasn't brave enough after what I got for my entree the night before. I wasn't brave enough after what I got for my entree the night before. I wasn't brave enough to do,

they had like a Hooters Buffalo Chicken Biscuit. Oh yeah. Which would have been the thing to be like, oh what's the signature Hooters breakfast item? I just wasn't brave enough. That's a swing. So I went French toast with American breakfast sides. That was my Hooters breakfast.

But I don't recommend Hooters breakfast. Yeah, I just don't. I don't want a buffalo chicken biscuit in the morning. I gotta say, there's very few scenarios where I'd ever eat that in general. Yeah. I got coffee. I don't ever expect coffee at these kind of places to be good.

I'm a little Starbucks hoe. Yeah. I like me my Starbys. And was this still worse than expected? It was really bad. It was the worst coffee I've had as well. And I've had coffee, I like bad diner coffee. It's always good.

Like a good IHOP coffee, oh my God, I love it. It's like slightly burnt, you know, it has like a very round taste. I'm a fan of that. This one was. It like made you want to cough after drinking it. I get tasted like it def for sure. And you coffee drinkers will know what I'm talking about.

It definitely sat in the little heater for days. It had not been changed because it was also stronger, too. It was really strong. It's like a bad drug. It was really strong. Uh, it's like a bad drug. It was just like, Oh God, I'll get this down, but shit. Yeah. I don't like that. I'm about to shit my ass. That's a sentence.

Uh, and with your high butt crack it like, dude, it looks like you ever watch like hydraulic press videos and it gets to like play dough. Yeah. We're already talking about gross stuff. It looks like you ever watch like hydraulic press videos and it gets to like play dough shoots Yeah We're already talking about gross stuff. I'm going to I don't want to make this gross So I'm not gonna like use excessively gross language, but I do need to tell the story of the bathroom Clogging. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and the only reason I'm bringing it up like normally it's just like okay Yeah, you're in a hotel and the toilet clogged and that's the thing that happened mm-hmm I put borderline nothing

down there yeah I had one wipes worth of paper mm-hmm that was it I saw it and it clogged the toilet yeah and I this is mentioned in one of the Yelp reviews last week you call customer service, you call, they had four different speed dials. It was engineering department, housekeeping, front desk, operator, and like room service, but I didn't use that. So they had four that were applicable to this.

I called all four, they rang off the hook. And I felt helpless. And we were, you know, you wanted to go to Ozzy heat on time. And so I was like held hostage in the room. You actually needed to use the restroom and went down and used a, like a lobby restroom or something like that. And yeah, there was just no recourse. And I wanted to cry.

I called four times before I finally got through to someone. Then I called again 35 minutes later to ask for an update and they were like, oh, well, you know, it usually takes like maybe 45 minutes, but I can't give you an exact time. Another 15 minutes passed, I was like, it's been 50 minutes. Yeah.

Where is someone? At this point, give me an exact time. Give me an exact time. Give me an exact time. And then another 10 minutes later I called and I was like, can you ring them again? And like at that moment they knocked on the door. And so they came in and it took them 30 seconds to fix because again, there was nothing.

It literally just needed a little plunging. It didn't need like a lot of force or pressure. It was just, it was a bad bathroom. I wonder what was in there before we were there. I don't you don't wonder what was in there Let me wonder hold on. No. Oh That's not good That alone makes me say service because again the service is something that I would usually Just talk about like my waiter and maybe like the host or whatever, but we're reviewing this whole casino, this whole hotel service I'm giving.

Uh, I'm giving one thumb down, not two, but one thumb down overall for the service at this hotel, the food I'm probably giving one thumb down and the atmosphere, I think I'm giving two thumbs down. Yeah. That's, that's accurate. Those all belong in the not good section. Yeah, there is one that is a negative that was like genuinely so bad. It's good that I'm going to talk about in the next section. So I think we were good to go to the next one.

Yeah. All right. Let's talk about the things that were just there. This is a weird one. I'm not quite sure what to say about it. Yeah. This is for the stuff that is just there. The elevator situation was iconic. Okay, so there's three elevators, like a tower with three guest elevators. You go, two of them say they're out of order. One of them, there's a line forming for.

You get in, there's a big, like, you know when someone gets their car wrapped? Yeah. In like, like an advertisement? This elevator was the Hooters equivalent of that. Right, it had a rack. And our elevators are out of order. How do we solve this?

Let's take up a third of the real estate inside the elevator by forcing elevator attendance. So there are Hooters employees inside this elevator just there to push buttons for you. Doing something that we could do. Maybe because that one Yelp review said, maybe it stops where you're planning to go. Maybe it doesn't, maybe there's like a right way. You know how those people who it's like, ah, you have to get me it to get my jukebox working or whatever. That's probably what it is.

It's probably, you have to like bang the panel in the right angle or something. None of the elevator buttons did work as like from a light perspective. None of them had lights did work as like from a light perspective. Yeah, none of them. They never lit up. Maybe. So we ended up just defaulting to using the service elevator, which was working and had its own attendant. And the first time we saw him, not the last time we saw him, it's this guy in an eye patch, which just stands out. I'm not shaming it.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but you notice it. Yeah. And he's listening to explicit rap music on his phone, not on headphones, I'm not shaming it. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but you notice it. Yeah. And he's listening to explicit rap music on his phone, not on headphones, just like out. And he's just eating Cool Ranch Doritos. He's got Dorito breath. He had the whole elevator. It reeked of Doritos, which is a crazy thing to say.

And this was what we just got used to. Yeah. This was like a Stockholm syndrome type of situation to where I'm not even putting this objectively bad thing in the bad category. No. Because it was just so egregious, I found it funny, and so at this point, it was just there. Yeah.

He just welcomes you, not welcome, that's a very, that's a stress. Inapplicable. He goes, where do you wanna go? And I'm like, Bellagio? Yeah, get me out of here. And I loved it. And I also don't know if he had an eye injury

or if he's just a Las Vegas Raiders fan. Yeah, it looked like studded or something. It didn't look like just a normal one. Yeah. Like rhinestone or like, what do you call that? Like stickers. So bedazzled. Yeah.

It was bedazzled. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just noteworthy. Yeah. Oh, and then the elevator opens up to like the employee back of house headquarters. Offices and offices, offices, and like, Offices, HR,

All of the above. Yeah. And they see us looking in, and they just get up and close the door. And it feels like in a movie where you're like, oh, I shouldn't have seen this. It's also like, well then what is this? Mind you, the guest elevators,

there's three of them, and two were out. Yeah. So like, I don't know, apparently the elevators have been an issue for a while. Just fix this if you don't want us back there at all. Yeah. I don't know how else to tell you this.

Yeah, and they looked at us like, oh, this is new. No one's ever looked at us. Yeah. That's just patently impossible. No way. That's impossible. We're not nosy. No, I don't care.

I don't care about you backstage hooters. Yeah. Shut up. Back're not nosy. No, I don't care. I don't care about you, backstage Hooters. Shut up. Backstage Hooters. Shut up, nerds. Their HR office is next to their gym, which just to me felt like passive aggressive. Like, we don't wear Hooters. We don't like that we have to have an HR department,

so we're gonna put you next to all the clanging and banging of these iron plates and stuff like that. Yeah, it was weird. That's a weird location for it, but made me laugh. As far as the foods that were just there, yeah, for me, the fried pickles were just forgettable, four and a half out of 10. The karaoke ultimately being so dead in certain ways,

took it, like, I liked that I got to perform a lot, but also, I don't know, there was a guy that we met. Timothy. Timothy. Never forget. Who I think he's trying to, like it felt like he had a goal. Yeah, that's possible.

But yeah, he invited me up to do Be Prepared from the Lion King. He's like, do you know the hyenas part? And I was like, boy, do I. Turns out I didn't in terms of like, like I knew some like. Like, I know that thing, but I don't know, like all the background vocals. No. And so he was kind of looking at me like, why aren't you nailing this?

I was like, this is my I'm sight reading. One of the other choices that he was pitching to us was the Frollo song from Hunchback. I don't know it. It's the one about like temptation and like it's very sexual. I'm like, the point is like, oh, I wish I could. Then my point stands.

Yeah. He was trying to make a move. But that's not a fun karaoke song. I don't think so. Now let's talk, this does not belong in the just there, but speaking of fun karaoke songs, you crushed with Feed Me from Little Shop of Horrors. That's my go-to.

That's my go-to song, but I don't normally do it by myself. Yeah, I wasn't familiar with the other part. No, so I played Seymour and Audrey too. And by the end, my stomach hurt. Yeah, it was bad. You were literally like, I'm so, I dug too deep. Dude, that hurt.

That was physically painful. Yeah. We killed the crowd with Hamilton. We did Dear Theodosia, which actually I thought we did well. It was okay. Our rendition was not bad, but it was not, you know, read the room. It wasn't for the Hooters audience. It wasn't for the Hooters audience.

Which I don't, I don't know. What is it? 80% male. Yeah, just I'm gonna get all my food stuff out of the way now. Yeah, I have two to mention. Onion rings or whatever. Onion rings or whatever. Four out of 10.

They're edible. I got the lemon pepper wings. I like the lemon pepper rub at Hooters. I don't know what the wing quality is these days. It, they were well cooked. I mean, they, they were, uh, fried. It was, I just got the regular that they're known for the breading. Yeah. And, uh, it was serviceable.

It was, it was a wing. Yeah, I'm a wing stopman. So one of the frustrating things to me was you can't have two sauces. Yeah. Which isn't even asking that much. Like, can you can I just have five and five? I got 10. Yeah, that's just a weird like wing. Like people want sauces. Give me. Yeah, that that is the thing you go to a wing place for is the variety

of like, I want to try, there's a, there's a place called, uh, I think it's just called BBQ chicken or something. It's like a Korean chicken wing place. And they're like, no matter the size of order, cause like Buffalo wild wings, you order in increments and it's like, if you want six wings, you get one flavor. But if it gets 12, you'll get two sauces or whatever. Yeah. Regardless of size at this Korean chicken place,

only one sauce. That's just annoying to me. It's very frustrating. I'm getting wings for that. You know that and that's so easy to do. I want the variety. Yeah. But the biggest just there thing for me,

I got the Hooters Buffalo Chicken Sandwich with spicy garlic sauce. You get to pick what sauce you want the chicken tossed in. It was one of the hotter options. Apparently, not for you, I guess. She was the only reason I can't do it. She was pushing like, are you sure? Yeah.

Can you handle this? So I was like, oh, this is not good. This is scary. Yeah. And I thought it had a hit to it, but like it didn't debilitate me, you know the first bite I had was probably the hottest and then I Regulated to it, but the rest of the ingredients made it not great Like I didn't like the sauce well enough the chicken felt whatever the lettuce was soggy

The other veggies were kind of just like falling out of it. Pretty hot, but not hot enough to be what she built it up to be. Four and a half out of 10 overall for, like if the meat quality was better, the sandwich could have really kicked. Yeah, I mean a good spicy little chicken sandwich is good. Even if it was like Chick-fil-A quality.

Yeah. Yeah, do you have anything else that was just there? What was the other food items? What was your breakfast? My breakfast, I got the chicken fried chicken, which is also just there. It was actually like well cooked. It wasn't extraordinarily dry

and it wasn't extraordinarily under cooked, which is a no go. They managed to hit that perfect middle. But my eggs were super oily, like a literal layer layer of oil on top, which is kind of hard to do with eggs. So it wasn't bad. Like it was a serviceable breakfast that did what it was going to do. It came with sourdough toast, which was like, it was good. It was decent sourdough. I would put that all of it, just a four, just a four, not even like a five.

And then the last thing was like, if I'm going to like a place like that, I want like a good beer selection and there was maybe like five, which is kind of a thing for me, like for those kinds of spots, like Chili's great. They have so many beers on for me. Yeah, yeah. For those kind of spot, like Chili's great. They have so many beers on top or Yard House, whatever. If you're gonna have mediocre, magnificent food, if you will. Have a bunch of beers, you know?

What's interesting to me is when I look at the menu, variety isn't a problem, yet it kind of is. Like so many things on a Hooters menu are in the same vein that like everything will scratch the same one itch. Yeah, so to speak. That's what it felt like. So, yeah, is there anything else about this experience that you would say was just there?

The gift shop was just there? The gift shop was just there. The gambling was just there? The gambling was, yeah, nothing looked cool. Like, oh, I gotta try this. Yeah. It was also really small. So like it scratched the itch if you needed to gamble, but it kind of felt like gambling on a cruise ship,

which is just like, well, I'm stuck here and there's 10 games. So I guess I'll play one of them. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's all one of them. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's all of the elements. Is there anything that happened to us that we're forgetting? No. Okay.

I don't think so. Cool. Well, we have to put this whole experience into a number. We have to boil it down so that we can put it up on the tchotchke of mediocrity. Alex, I've done a ton of episodes of the show. My scale is in line with itself. This is your first time on the Fine Dining podcast.

So I need you to calibrate your scale, your zero, your 10 restaurant experience. So we are gonna take a stop at the calibration station. ["Calibration Station, comparing this meal to the best or the worst. Calibration Station, chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-choo-choo. Cool. All right, Alex, let's hear it. You can start with your worst restaurant experience ever or your best, your choice.

Okay, I'll start with the worst to get it out of the way. All right. And we talked about this a little bit. I didn't tell them about what happened or what restaurant it is. I just mentioned I know what it's going to be. Sure. I went to, is Stoneworks a chain?

I haven't heard of it. Okay. That doesn't mean it's not, but I haven't heard of it. They have a couple in San Antonio, which is where I'm from. And it's like it's's similar to yard house. It's industrial. They have like a little steak, you know, whatever.

Um, I never actually ate the food. I didn't get that far. So we're there for my dad's birthday dining experience. You didn't dine. I didn't dine. Okay. But it was, it was just from the get's birthday. So your worst dining experience, you didn't dine. I didn't dine. Okay. But it was just from the get-go.

I was like, okay, this is not going well. Yeah. It was my dad's birthday and we were just like, oh, let's go somewhere easy. It was relatively nearby and relatively nice enough. We could just get it done. It took forever to get sat. It was the same thing. Okay, I guess nobody's going to seat us.

We finally got sat down. Server didn't arrive for a long time, which ended up being the biggest detriment. What when you say a long time, is that 20 minutes? Is that 45 minutes? Yeah, that's like I would say 15 to 20. OK, that's a long time to sit without like water and acknowledgement. Like, I don't want to be a dickhead here But like yeah, what the fuck it happened to me at Lucille's

For the show. Yeah, mr. Chow. Do you know mr. Chow? Yeah in Vegas the one I went to the one in Beverly Hills Okay, and that one it took a while really? Yeah for a place a nice scale Yeah, I didn't feel like I had the best service. Wow, Mr. Chow, come on, dude. I counted on you. So it took forever. That always bothers me because it's like, you know you sad us. So ideally somebody would be available in that window.

Hopefully the host would alert the server, whatever. So that's fine. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it did lead us down a terrible path. So while we're sitting there, it's been a while, we're about to like say something. A little girl walks by and takes a shit on the floor. What? And takes a shit.

There was no world where this is what I predicted would happen. I told you. This was not a normal story. No, she takes a shit on the floor next to us and then walks up and one of her friends. How old? Old enough.

Okay, we're not talking like a three-year-old. We're talking like she's walking by herself to go to the bathroom, right? She probably like was having a problem, but that's not my problem. Well, they did become it. Yeah. Uh, I would say she is probably like 10. That's too old.

Like a fifth grader. Oh, yeah. Too old. She took a shit on the floor and her friends following her. Like she came after. So the little girl shits then walks off and then her friend like walks up. I walked off Oh, yeah, so there's just shit on the floor next to the table, right? Right next to which by the way of anything that could have happened makes you feel trapped cuz you're like

I don't want to accidentally step on it. Yeah, I can't really walk around it and it's the social Contract is like do we stay do we leave like what do we do right now? Because our server hasn't come by. Like, I would yell. Excuse me, I don't know what that is. Yeah. Genuinely, I would be like, Hello?

This needs some attention and some immediacy. I've seen some real shit around here, but never this. Okay, boo. And then like, people are passing by, right? Not noticing. The server, not noticing. And people are avoiding it luckily. And then we're going, whoa, whoa, whoa,

watch out there's shit on the floor. And then at one point I'm like, oh my God, I don't want to stay. And my family's like, do we? I don't know. And I was like, no, we leave. Yeah. We didn't order anything, I don't want to stay. And my family's like, do we, I don't know what, and I was like, no, we leave. Yeah. You just, we didn't order anything.

We don't even have water. Even if you did. Let's leave. Even if you did. And they're like, just wait a second, let's find, it's like, no, I don't want to be here anymore. I don't care if it's your birthday. I don't want to do this right now.

And I explained later why, but somebody, a server then walked and stepped in it and slipped No, yeah and slipped and it was just spreading and people were just walking No, and I was like, okay, I have to leave we're not doing this. All right get to your best I'm done with this. So End of that is like I need to leave because I'm scared of scared of people throwing up. That's a zero dining experience. Worse, I don't want to do it ever again. Happy birthday, dear daddy.

Best dining experience ever is a little restaurant that doesn't exist anymore. But it still does in another form, but it's in San Antonio. It was called Cook House, and it is a New Orleans-inspired fusion food. And I say fusion because his wife is Vietnamese. So they would mix things every once in a while,

and now it's a brunch spot, actually. They changed it, but. Same owners or no? Same owners. Okay. He's from Louisiana, super nice dude, incredible chef. Nice. Like top, I mean, everything you order

and the menu change all the time. The best version of that you've ever eaten. Every single time, they love what they did. There is one of those like- Do you know what it's called now? NOLA. NOLA Brunch and Beignets. If I'm in, oh, okay.

Yeah, if I'm in San Antonio, I'll go check it out. 100% should. They are fucking, If I'm in San Antonio, I'll go check it out. 100% should. They are fucking, and I'm a food boy. I've had three Michelin star food. I've had fast food. I love all of it. I am a foodie.

My favorite two barbecue spots in Texas just got announced as having Michelin stars. Oh yeah. That was pretty recent, huh? Yeah. So man, I'm excited about that. Cool, well you're all calibrated, that's your zero. And that's your 10. Somewhere in between 19 hours at the Oyo Hotel and Casino, is it closer to shit on the floor,

or is it closer to the best fusion food you've ever had? I don't know, but let's jump in and give it a final rating. Final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score, final score It is time to reveal the Bible's core. It's going to go up on the Chachki of Mediocrity. Will it be right in the center? Will it be more mediocre than the current leader Cracker Barrel at a 5.01 on the Chachki of Mediocrity? I don't know, but let's find out. Let's go. Do you want to go first? Do you want me to? This wasn't good.

Yeah, between a karaoke night that I still couldn't totally get into and I like karaoke, two meals at Hooters, one of which being breakfast, and I'm like, you know what? I'm glad that all their other locations don't do this to the customers. Good French toast, I'll give them that, but like no heart to it. Yeah. Um, you know, two, two meals at a Hooters is too much.

I won 60 bucks. Uh, the room was really bad. The room was really bad. I don't know, man. And then the elevator situation was just crazy. Not good. When I'm thinking of a number for the oil hotel and casino. So I got to say year one Hooters got a 6.16.

Wow. Year two hoots wings fell down to a 4.90. Sheesh. And I think we're continuing the downward trajectory because for me, the Oyo Hotel and Casino, or as I'm gonna be calling it for the sake of the tchotchke, the Hooters Hotel and Casino, 3.63. Hmm.

3.63, what say you? Okay, overall, everything. And I am a fan of cringe. Yeah. I'm a fan of irony, and I love those kind of experiences. You don't mind Cool Ranch Dorito breath. No, to me, that's a memory, and that's funny, and I'll never forget it.

Having given my gauge of what I enjoy, it was not good. It was not, not a great experience. So after all that being said, and including the good of enjoying the ironic aspects of all of it, I'm gonna give it a 4.21.

4.21, when you put our scores together. Hooters Casino Hotel Las Vegas goes up on the Chachki of mediocrity at a 3.92. Wow. Honestly, it deserves less. If you wanna compare it to the experiences in Vegas that it has to offer for the same price point, do not fucking stay here. Yeah, don't you can do better.

You can do better. A room at one of the nice places for the same price. Yeah, that's the crazy part. Now all this means is that this restaurant slash hotel is definitively less than mediocre. And because it is less than mediocre, because it wasn't the perfect five point double zero out of 10, I got to go somewhere next time to determine if it is the most mediocre restaurant. Let's see.

So I'm turning to the you must bowl I am going to draw. And next week, I will be eating at... Subway. Eat fresh. Mmm. I like them grits. OK, calm down. Is that good? Yeah, that's great. OK. Alex, thanks so much again for joining me in Las Vegas.

Do you have anything you want to plug? Tell people where they can find you. Alex, thanks so much again for joining me in Las Vegas. Do you have anything you wanna plug? Tell people where they can find you. Find me on my social, Ponciosa, IMDB. I'm Alex Poncio, Alexander Poncio. Thank you very much. And then hire me for your sketches, movies, TV shows. He's a funny dude and he's a pleasure to work with.

Or as a writer. All right. And you can follow me on Instagram and TikTok at Fine Dining Podcast. I post clips from the show and links to the episodes if you wanna check them out on other platforms. If you're audio only, you can check it on YouTube or vice versa.

And yeah, check out my Patreon, exclusive episode every single month, as well as the Extended Yelp from Strangers segments. Lots of fun stuff there. We didn't find the most mediocre restaurant in America. The search does, in fact, continue. I'll see you next week. Have a fine day! The monoratum search continues, Rattus and I do's review.

And hey, while you're at it, why don't you go ahead and make it five stars, huh? Come on. Follow us on TikTok, the same on Instagram, all the socials, at Fine Dining Podcast, 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 it! Mediocrity! The search continues! See you next week! Cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough cough-PHAVE-PHAVE-