Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster - Ep 81: David O’Doherty (Bonus Episode)

Episode Date: October 31, 2020

Ed and James welcome wonderful comedian David O’Doherty to the dream restaurant for this very special live-streamed episode of Off Menu as part of Unmute: The Online Podcast Festival. Hope you’ve got your microwave plugged in.Follow David O’Doherty on Twitter and Instagram @phlaimeauxBuy David O’Doherty’s album ‘Live in his Own Car During a Pandemic’ on BandcampRecorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive Productions.Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design) and Amy Browne (illustrations).Part of Unmute: The Online Podcast FestivalFollow Unmute on Twitter and Instagram @unmutepodfestFollow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial.And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show.Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, listeners of the Off Menu podcast. It is Ed Gamble here from the Off Menu podcast. I have a very exciting announcement. I have written my first ever book. I am absolutely over the moon to announce this. I'm very, very proud of it. Of course, what else could I write a book about? But food. My book is all about food. My life in food. How greedy I am. What a greedy little boy I was. What a greedy adult I am. I think it's very funny. I'm very proud of it. The book is called Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy. And it's coming out this October, but it is available to pre-order now, wherever you pre-order books from. And if you like my signature, I've done some signed copies,

which are exclusively available from Waterstones. But go and pre-order your copy of Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy now. Please? Welcome to a very special episode of the Off Menu podcast, James. This is a little edited down version of a live-streamed episode we did for the Unmute podcast festival with a very special guest indeed. Yes, very exciting. We had a really good time with our episode. It was so fantastic. And our special guest was none other than David O'Doherty. O'Doherty. David O'Doherty came in to talk about his dream meal in his dream restaurant. We can't wait for you to hear it. It was a really fun episode. If you didn't see it

happen live, you missed out on some stuff like our faces, some very amusing hand gestures, which won't necessarily come across on the audio version of the podcast. But let me tell you, it was great. And a funk cover of a certain book as well, which we'll be talking about during the pod. And you'll have to imagine it with your mind, or maybe you can find it online. But we had such a good time. We did. And as always, we had a secret ingredient that if David mentioned he would have been kicked out of the restaurant, I'm not going to give any spoilers. Did he get kicked out of the restaurant? You'll have to listen to find out. And the special ingredient this week was ghost peppers. Ghost peppers. We're

nearly at Halloween as we record this. So we thought it was an appropriate ingredient. Ghost peppers that I think people say it's the hottest pepper in the world, or, you know, nearly. I think it's a bravado, James. No one's eating that for flavour, are they? No, no one's eating it for flavour. Come on, it's just a flex to all your friends. And do you know what? I'd do it. Yeah, you do flex, don't you? You love the bomb, you love flexing. Yep, I've got a bottle of the bomb in my fridge, and my nephews are obsessed with it. Have you used it? Yeah. Do you use it for fun though, or are you just doing it to show off to your nephews? Mainly to show off to my nephews. That's what most things

that I do in life are, including my career. That's true. That's lovely. So ghost peppers, if they come up on David O'Dockey's menu, then he will be out of the dream restaurant slash Unmute podcast festival stream. Hopefully he does not. So for now, this was the off menu menu of David O'Dockey's... David O'Dockey's... Oh, we are live on the internet for the Unmute podcast festival. Welcome to the off menu podcast. What I'm going to do, I've written a little intro, which is rare for me. Normally I panic at this point, and I've not written anything sort of like a food based metaphor introduction. I'm spinning out this bit as well, because I can't even see James. I don't know where

he is. And the longer I take over this bit, the funnier it will be. Although he does seem to be in danger of smothering himself at the moment, which is fairly impressive. Okay, here we go. That's... You can already hear our guests in the background there enjoying what's going on. So welcome to the off menu podcast where we take the carcass of humor, the water of chat, and the herbs of friendship, and apply the heat of the internet to create flavorsome podcast stock. So I actually wrote that. I took some time over that about three minutes. So you'll know what this podcast is. It's a food podcast. It's a chat podcast. It's hosted by myself. And James A. Caster, who is a food genie who can grant all of our guests

food wishes here in the dream restaurant. He lives in a lamp. And now he's... I'm going to rob. I'm going to rob the lamp. There you go. I'm robbing the lamp. I'm robbing the lamp. And here comes... Oh my God. Hello. It's the genie. Hello, James. How are you? Good to see you, mate. Thank you for awakening me from my slumber. Of course. No expense spared there with the genie special effects. Welcome. Yes. That was fun, wasn't it? Out of the lamp. And into our lives. Would you like to explain to the listener what the podcast is? Here on the off-menu podcast, we're going to have a special guest in the dream restaurant and ask them their favorite ever starter, main course, dessert, side dish, and drink. And for this special unmute festival podcast

episode of off-menu, our guest is David O'Doherty. David O'Doherty. David O'Doherty. Very excited to have him here. Please. Well, actually, James, get back in your lamp because you need to burst out on the guest. That's how it works. Yeah, absolutely. Good lad. Oh, he's disappeared again. Please welcome to the dream restaurant David O'Doherty. It's been a lovely... Welcome, David O'Doherty. We've been expecting you for some time. Whenever you do that, I do imagine you're just a barista and you're doing the thing where you're firing air through the... I wonder if they imagine they are genies sometimes while they're making the coffee. They must do. We're very closely related, genies and baristas. People don't know that,

but we are from the same, like, mythical lore. We've both come from that. Yeah. And also, genies always write the person's name on the wish before they hand it over, don't they? Yeah. Well, some genies are a bit too cocky, actually. And we might have the name on the wish, but at the start, we won't ever remember that we won't write anything down. Where have you gone, my dear James? What were you aiming for? Well, I was going to do a riff on how waiters that don't write anything down. And then I remembered we were talking about baristas and not waiters. And then I thought, oh, no. Oh, no, I've had a nightmare. I'm a waiter in this. I'm a genie waiter. The baristas are separate thing.

Yeah. Well, genies... The thing that genies and baristas have in common is, after they've granted you wishes, a lot of the time, genies imprint in the top of your head a sort of leaf pattern. Yes, we do. We move your head around as we're making the wish, got the wish for you, and then send you on your way. And you have to go and ask other people and go, what did that genie put on my head? And they're like, it's a shamrock. And they're like, oh, OK, fine. I've got an interesting thing that I need to share with you guys. Firstly, thank you very much for having me. And I enjoy listening to this podcast a lot. And I was listening to it the other day. And I don't know how... So you know the way after,

usually after the starter, there's an ad break, if you listen back to it. You guys probably don't because you were in it to begin with. Yes. Sometimes I listen back to it, but James has never heard it. James doesn't know what this podcast actually like. No idea how it comes across. I didn't... I hadn't heard the theme music until just now on this episode. And let me tell you, theme music is a bag of shit. So... James, I will have you know that that theme music is very, very free. OK. Point made. In Ireland, the ads are localized for Ireland, the play after each course. And I don't know if it's an algorithmic thing where the ad sort of knows who you are and tries

to target you. But it was the most specific government warning ad I have ever heard. And it was after the starter course... I was listening to Ivo Graham's episode. And so he wanted something posh for his starter, you know what I mean, liquidized poor people or whatever. And the ad was from the Irish government to say Christmas is coming. Please, please, please rethink buying your child a scrambler. It was don't buy your child a quad bike or a scrambler for Christmas, which is the most specific government warning I have ever heard. Especially with everything going on. You would have thought the government had got bigger fish to fry. Was that one of the ones that me and Ed did or won by somebody else?

I can't remember the ones that we record, but mine, if we did it, I'd be going, oh, man, Ed, I can't wait for Christmas on to buy little Jeannie James Jr. a scrambler. No, James, haven't you heard? The Irish government is strongly recommending against it. What? The biggest issue we've ever had with the dynamic ad. I don't think we've ever spoken about this before, but it was absolutely amazing. We'd done an ad for a farm delivery service where you could get proper farm food products delivered to your door. And it was on an episode with Daisy May Cooper, was our guest, our wonderful guest, Daisy May Cooper. It was the first bit of the interview with her and then it cut to the ad and the ad opened with James going, oh, Ed,

I'm just off to milk Daisy. It's unfortunate. It was very unfortunate. Oh, man, we got so many messages going, what the hell are you talking about? Can't say that about your guests. Couldn't have happened to a nice person. And I'm a failure to myself. Yes. Well, welcome, David, to the dream restaurant. We're very excited to have you here. What are you up to there with your hands? Do you know what that is? I remember from a school trip, that's how you milk a cow. Sorry, the Daisy thing. You start at the top and you need, because a farmer showed us how to do it, even though milk is obviously now just an evil thing involving robots and sad cows. He led us to believe this. He came out with a bucket and he did this along the nipple.

That farmer was a creep, mate. I'm sorry that this is how you had to find out that you were abused, but that farmer was being horrible in front of children. Was he doing it on his own dick by any chance? Uh-oh. My goodness. And this is how you milk a cow, children. Jesus Christ. I should have warned you before coming on this podcast, David. Ed is a disturbed individual. It's a lot racier so far. Racy in terms of sexy and also racism. We've had both of those so far, so carry on. Where was the racism? Yeah, just your Irish impersonation. Also, both from Ed. Let's be perfectly clear. Both were from Ed. Yes. I didn't realize I was doing an Irish impersonation, but I can really lean into it if you want. Later on, I'll do the

wanking Irish farmer. He'll come up later on, maybe around dessert, and I'll properly put my all into it. Something to look forward to. It is racier because it's live. Benito would have edited a lot of that stuff out. Oh, there's no way that would have made it in. David, are you a foodie? Do you like your food? Yeah, I do. I definitely am repelled by a certain decadence. There's a level of decadence that I enjoy from a meal. If you go beyond that, I don't want anything to do with it. If you try and put a napkin on my lap, you can have the napkin. I'll accept a napkin sitting on the table, but if you try and place it across me, I will just a straight upper cut. You're going down then. There's a middle ground of restaurants that I very much enjoy. A sad side note to that

is, well, two sad side notes. One, Dublin's on lockdown level five at the moment, so all restaurants are shut. I've over-romanticized the idea of restaurants, maybe a little bit, in trying to think of what I'd get here. Secondly, the restaurant that defined my dream restaurant, well, obviously this is the dream restaurant, but the closest existing thing to it was a restaurant in Edinburgh called Spoon that I have attended hundreds of times over the years and went out of business last week because of the fricking bats. I didn't know that. Yeah, sorry. I've been to Spoon with you many times and the restaurant, and I had a little fun. A little bit of fun. That is exactly my sort of humour. Yeah, good sort of humour there.

For a long time, I was convinced that one of the, I mean, I know exactly what Ed's going to say now, off the back of this, but this was legit. Ed, I was convinced that one of the waiters in Spoon hated me, and I would avoid going in there because I was 100% convinced he hated my guts. Well, you think that about every single place I've ever been with you. You are convinced that a member of staff hates you. That is your personality. That's what you're worried about. It's also a sort of arrogance because you assume that everyone's thinking about you all of the time, so it's a real fine line to tread. I thought you were what I was going to mention. I hate you, obviously. Well, just to describe the level of decadence that Spoon is, which is the correct

level of restaurant decadence, is it's chalkboardy, but not an art decoy, but not in a sort of a cliche mid-century type way. The staff are friendly, but not obsequious. You know what I mean? They don't, they'll ask you how your show was, whether you did a show or not. They just pretend that you did a show. And yeah, so I'm talking about dessert in a glass. That's the vibe. You know what I'm talking about, but I hope the thousands of people watching and listening get that too. They did an excellent cooked breakfast, which felt like a traditional cooked breakfast, but they didn't try and modernize it too much. It was like a nice version of a traditional cooked breakfast on lovely crockery. Yeah, lovely crockery. So I've been for lunch and

dinner with David many, many times, and what is weird is I can't remember a single thing you've ever ordered, David. I can't remember what food you like whatsoever. All I can remember from going for meals with you is that every time I've been for a meal with you, if it's just me and you, if there's 10 of us, whoever, you always have to pay for it. You're very keen to pay. And this is my impression of you at the end of any meal. No, no, no, please, let me do this. I mean, that certainly does. So there was a joke that I used to do for a long time, which was I would pretend that I was going to pay for a thing till the bill came over. You know what I mean? Which is like, no, seriously, you guys, I've been doing all right. And so we'll,

yeah, we'll all just go in on that. It was variation on that. But because I'm slightly older than you guys, I did feel a responsibility because I, you know, I was probably not losing thousands of pounds. I stopped losing money in Edinburgh and at festivals generally before you, you children. So maybe I did take it upon myself to pay for everything, particularly now when you're both millionaires and I haven't done a gig since March. I might have to stop that now. Yes, we are you back now. But what I always liked about it was that there was never, it was never like, I'll pay for this. And we're like, no, let us pay it. There'll never be you then going, no, no, no, it's fine. You go straight to, no! Immediately.

Still a little sparkling, David. Great question. I think for a long time I would have, okay, so there's three distinct eras of my water choices. Up to 30, still, still, still. 30s sparkled through my 30s. But now I've actually gone back. I've gone back to still again. And I think it is, you know, there's a global shortage of carbon dioxide because it's, I think it's a byproduct of ethanol, which they're not making anymore. It just seems like the future generations may look back at the sheer decadence of carbonated water. It's just like, wow, it's like ham with fire in it or something. It's just, that's a bad example, but fire ham. I have, yeah. I just think it's something that we're, people aren't going to believe. It's like

people driving five liter cars in the 1970s in America. Future generations will not believe that we squandered the resources of the planet having bullshit like fizzy water. Do you think when it comes to that in like 50 years time, when like the world's a wasteland, that like sparkling water will be a currency in a way? Oh, maybe it will. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll be, and you'll be able to hear people drinking it, though, because of when they open the bottles. So there'll be like George Orwell type police who just go around listening for the off the top of the bottles then. Yeah. And that is the sound that you make to get someone's attention anyway. So it kind of sounds like that.

You think though, if we repurpose the genie, so with that great release of energy that the genie makes when the genie comes out of the lamp, if we were to plunge the lamp into just a bath of still water, maybe in arriving, the genie would carbonate that water. So that might be a way we can move to a zero carbon, quite literally a zero carbon future. I'll be up for that. I'll speak on behalf of all genies. But then I suppose you end up with just a very wet genie, right? You happy with that? Genies love to be wet. Also, if we're living in a world with genies, and we've run out of carbon dioxide,

probably a quicker way would be to wish for unlimited carbon dioxide. Rather than getting the lamp every time and plunging it into still water and going, right, that's enough sparkling water for a couple of years. Now, I'm not an astronomer, but I've reasoned to believe that they're creeps just with the telescopes. You know what I mean? And they all they all look like wrongs. They're looking down and then they at the last minute. But I think one of the planets is all carbon dioxide atmosphere. So maybe we could send water there. We'll say Venus becomes, you know, the San Pellegrino planet. And I'm okay with that,

I guess. If it's so before drinking, I'd be like, is this from Venus? And then I'd be like, well, I can drink it then. But if not, yeah, I'm not wasting. Hummus would be the other one, where in my 20s wasn't much into it. In my 30s, I got two into it. And now in my 40s, I've kind of over overdone it now, you know? Is there a fizzy planet? I didn't know about this. I didn't know about there being a fizzy planet. Yeah. Yeah. Next question. I think there is a planet, I think Mars has got a CO2 heavy atmosphere. Is it? If O'Brien was here, this is exactly the sort of shit that he would know. When he was on it, he didn't talk about that. When he did this podcast, he just talked a lot

about, what's it called, Boojabba? Steve Bujaya, the comedian. You talking about Steve Bujaya? The Irish Burrito place. Oh, Boojab. Boojab. There you go. Boojab. That's very weird. I mean, I see how if you went there once and you were drunk, you might think this is the best place ever. But it's absolutely fine. It's absolutely fine. But, you know, it'd be like, I'm trying to think, what's a not particularly exciting chain restaurant? It'd be like clay, just because it's not. Oh, there's a bit in Duff from Guns N' Roses autobiography about how much he loves Pretta Manje. It's like they have this place. I think he thinks there's only one of it in London.

So the rest of the chapter has been about just banging and whiskey. And then the next morning, he wakes up and he knows this little place called Pretta Manje. And he goes there and they have all these sandwiches and they've cut the sandwiches into triangles and like they've loads of drinks and great coffee. And that's it. I can imagine if you'd not been to a prep before and you went into a prep for the first time, it would blow your mind. Yeah. And there's a special sort of disappointment in life that comes when you see your first branch of what turns out to be a chain and you're like, this is the one off. I remember it happening with a juice place near me in Dublin and being like, whoa, they've gone to all this effort with the chalkboard and all these delicious

juices. And then I noticed there were like 35 more of them around Dublin that day. Yeah. And you feel awful about the fact you enjoyed it because you're like, oh, great. It turns out I'm just a basic consumer. Pop it up, it's all bread. Pop it up, it's all bread. David O'Dockety, pop it up, it's all bread. I even though I don't even know what your water order is. I'm seeing the count down here on the screen and I'm scared. Tap was the water. The bread is a bread. I'll have bread, please. But I'm going to have a strange middle ground of bread, which is, and this is quite Irish. I want a Guinness treacle loaf where firstly, I only want one slice of it. And I don't want anyone else at the table to have it because if they've any left over,

I will steal it then. And then I won't be able, literally won't be able. I'm going to have to go and take a shit before the main course, basically, will be the only hope then. And I want one of those loaves where when they start to tell you the ingredients, there's at least three things in it where you're like, that is like this Baraka in this, that is ludicrous. You know, salt, sugar, that sort of stuff that somehow in a real, it's almost semi flapjack. You can have it as a dessert, but I want it as my bread, but I'm not going to eat it till the starter comes. So I'm just going to stare at it. I'm going to enjoy looking at it and I'm going to wait for the starter then. So quite a heavy, you want a heavy bread that sort of packs everything into like,

like you've basically got like 1800 calories per cubic centimeter, like that sort of heavy bread that could sustain you. Yeah. I mean, that would be the idea of it would be you don't need anything else. You can basically live on it, but I'm then going to eat a whole lot of other. I mean, the problem with in trying to think of this meal, you do kind of think of like pre-execution last meals then in that I might die after this meal because there's so many delicious things and who like, where they to be head me, it's possible my head would fall off and then just butter would gush out of the socket for 30 seconds. Lovely. Where is this bread from? I it's definitely an Irish bread because it's a soda bread. I have tried to make it and utterly,

utterly failed because I think you have to be over 80 to be able to make it properly for it not to stick to the tin. So you're not using a yeast, you're using a bread soda bicarbonate soda thing. And then you're just, you know, the way like the center of a black hole is just stuff just crushed to get that stuff. That's what this bread is. Yeah. And are you putting butter on it as well or is there enough stuff in there? Nope. I'm putting a heap of butter on it as well. As I said, there is no tomorrow and I haven't been to a restaurant for absolutely months and so yeah, I'm getting it all done. Every course will be a meal basically. What sort of butter do you like? Is there like a specific dairy that you want it from? Is there a specific farmer

who milked the cow by any chance? Perhaps we'd like to hear from him. No, it's no need to hear from him. No, don't need it. I want, yes, I want dairy gold is a Irish butter that's exported around the world that is still a semi-state company. It's still part of our government is dairy gold. I'll have the salt, so just a little, it's a little bit of salt, not much salt. In many ways, Ireland is the mirror image of New Zealand. And so they go on and on about anchor butter and they claim to have invented spreadable butter stuff like that. Whereas I still think we have the superior mass market export butter and I hope someone cuts out that last sentence of mine

and has it as the trail for this podcast because it sounds like a discussion of agricultural projects. Your starter, which is, I mean, we already know that you're having your bread with this starter, so I'm trying to think about what it could be, but I mean, it screams soup to me. Yeah, it is a soup, but it's unique among soups in that it's a soup that doesn't repeat. Ed, you look like you might have guessed what it is, either that or you're going to do. No, no, I was just genuinely impressed that James guessed that you were having soup. Oh, yeah, yeah. I want a chowder, but I certainly don't want tomato-based New York chowder. I want a proper cream chowder, butter, more milk in it. We put yogurt in there, put a petty

fillet in there. I just want a big old dairy chowder and this is the key. I want absolute carnage. I want every time I dip the spoon in, I want new dead things to come out and I want that to continue to the end. Do you remember earlier on the year, there was those awful forest fires in Australia and there was a horrific total of animals that died over the court, something like 35 billion animals died? Well, I want this soup chowder to be the equivalent of that, but instead of burning to death, they were boiled in dairy and I feel that that's a life well lived. Is that too much? Well, no, I mean, you know, I'm the only person on this podcast today who's not getting counseled so far, so that's good. You for those comments, Ed, for what was an

absolutely appallingly racist and... It wasn't appallingly racist. I didn't even do the accent properly. Trust me, if I'm getting counseled, I'm doing it later. Yeah, that's fair enough. Yeah, I want all sorts in. Many times in this podcast, we've spoke about the best seafood chowder that I ever had, which was in Belfast, in the hotel in Belfast, and I had it twice in three days. I loved it so much and then went back to the hotel the next time I was in Ireland and they didn't... Well, there was a chowder on the menu, but they had changed the staff in the kitchen and it was nowhere near as good and it was heartbreaking and I've been looking forward to that chowder the whole tour and I already knew that I was going to have a bad gig that night

because for some reason, every single time I go on tour, I have the best gig of the tour in Dublin and I have the worst gig of the tour in Belfast the very next day. I apologize on behalf of the island, but I think there must be... You could really cut corners with a chowder because no one then you've got to put in, say, the things that make it incredible, which is a little bit of smoked fish, some shellfish, some mussels, bits and pieces. You could easily just... Which is what happens with crap chowder, where they've taken out the salmon and replaced it with carrot, you know what I mean? And that is... Yeah, that's an absolute joke. And then I've got the brown bread as well with the butter. While I've been waiting for the bread course to finish, I've just been towering

butter onto it and yeah, I'm really, really enjoying it. I might even take a bit of bread, put it on the spoon and dunk it, which is... Yeah, you will. It's putting the McDonald's chips into the caramel sundae really, isn't it? Yeah. Delicious. Now, when you say you're pulling new dead things out with every bite, do you know what they're going to be or is this sort of a potluck chowder where there's every sort of animal in it? Because remember, I'm a genie, David, so you want to get your word in right. You haven't seen Aladdin and stuff. You don't just say, I want loads of dead things in milk and petty-faloo and then go, I'm pretty sure that'll be exactly what I want when it comes back to me. No, things of the sea. You see, I struggle with being a meat eater in as much as

if I thought about it for more than a minute, I would definitely become a vegetarian. So I've spent the last 15 years, every time the thought comes into my mind, just suppressing it, just listening to loud music, having a cold shower, that sort of thing. However, the animals of the sea, I mean, I give them a special pass. And by that, I mean an awful pass. And I think it's because as a child, so my granny lived on an island off the west coast, which is where I spent lockdown one with my 82 year old parents. And so I would fish off the rocks and you would catch a mackerel. But because I know we're going to be eating it in a few hours, I wouldn't have a problem with bashing its head off a rock and putting it in a bag. Whereas I would feel bad about doing that to

say Ed's farmer character or the cow that he's milking. Well, the farmer character bashes cows off a rock the whole time. Yes. He can't stop bashing off. Yeah. Yeah, I wanted a chowder like someone's dredged a canal. That's what I want. Do you remember taking me to the island you just mentioned, David? I remember taking you there and I really wanted it to be the greatest experience of your life. Now the problem was that there was an orange weather warning, which isn't don't travel. It's seriously think about traveling. And we had a good think about traveling. And we arrived there. I remember going for a walk at one point where we have to cover up all of our, because the hailstones were sharp, the edges of them,

so you have to cover your whole body. And even if you had a hood, like a Lord Antony hood with elastic, the pins and needles, hailstones would go into the back of your eyeballs. So we did a jigsaw for three days. That's what I remember. But I remember we were there for three days in the little house. And we did this jigsaw puzzle. It was an extremely bad storm for the entire three days. And on the third day, I think you said, I'm sorry, but I can't have it that you come to Ackle and you don't see the beach. You have to see the beach. So let's go and see the beach. And we got in the car and we drove to the beach in the storm. And it's still really bad. And we got there. We were looking at it from the car. And you said, we have to just walk on the

beach. We have to. And we're like, well, we don't have to walk on the beach. Come on. We'll just go over and touch that rock. And it was on the other side. And we remember this feeling, all the weather, just pushing us back as we're trying to get to the rock at the edge of the beach, all of us. And looking at the sea. I mean, to be fair, I took a photo of the sea because it looked absolutely incredible. It was quite breathtaking to be on the beach in that storm. I'm glad that I did it for that view. Yeah. I remember we tried to just pretend this was normal. And my overriding image of that, let's call it a holiday, even though it was like something the Navy SEALs have to do to qualify as Navy SEALs, is my ex-girlfriend playing pool in huge motorbike gloves

because the club was so cold. That's incredible it was. Loved it though. Absolutely loved it. I'll never forget it. So we've got that delicious chowder full of dead things. It's like dredging a canal. There's going to be a number plate in there. There's going to be a shopping trolley. There's going to be some Johnny's. What an exciting culinary experience it's going to be. Little known fact. Little known fact. Ed is one of the only people I know who still says Johnny's. I love it. You must get onto this main course. I can't believe it's 20 minutes left. We've been in big trouble for Bonito. We can run over, can't we, Bonito? Just text us to say we

can run over. Yeah, you can run over. He's actually texted 10 minutes ago to say you can run over. I thought the bugle was on next. I think it's a bit of time until the bugle's on. I go on the bugle occasionally. It's topical political stuff, but we could start pretending we were the bugle. You know what I mean? Then it would really wreck the whole festival. We need to get a reputation as the bad boys of this festival. Then we start bugling. We do blind boy later on. Don't know what else is on. I'm pretty sure there isn't a podcast. We could do them all. It's also, I think, films to be buried with today as well, so we could do that, I'm sure. Definitely. Jaws. Jaws, please. Jaws. Yeah, lovely. Well done. Jaws is your main course.

I can be niche because niche is the special guest on the bugle, so I can... There you go. That was going to be my impression of Brett as well, though, for films to be buried with. All right. What films are you going to be buried with, mate? Oh, what a film. What a lovely film. I'll be Zoltzman then. That's it. It's just to imitate that tone throughout. Yep, I could do it. That'd be good. Well, I like that we've been told we can run over, so now what we're doing is wasting all the extra time by doing an impression of the next podcast. I think we might be the bad boys of the internet. I haven't looked at Twitter, but I bet that's what people are calling us right now. What is your main course, David O'Doherty? My main course is it's a meal that I once made,

okay, and I don't know how I did it. I'm a very instinctive chef, and by that I mean I don't have measuring, any measuring things, but I love to have a go, so I estimate slash guesstimate things, and then having watched quite a lot of cookery shows over time. I've been on Sunday brunch when you're with a really, really good chef, and they never measure anything. They just know. When you know, you know, so I try and use that principle as well, but the problem is I don't know, so I just, I throw salt in, you know, to be in a cool amount, like I'll just raise the thing right up the sun back down again. I'll get some leaves, and I'll do that hand thing like that just to sort of mush them up as they go in. You know how you should be doing that, David?

You can't milk time, which is actually my family, that's my family motto as well. Weirdly, that's exactly what we are doing with this podcast. Um, so I, this is a meal from three years ago where somehow the planets aligned, and it was one of those iron cookware pots that I will not say the name of, but I bet Ed will, and then- LaCruce, I'd love a free one. LaCruce, yes, please. You're on his Instagram of him, like, swimming full lengths in a 15-meter LaCruce. Yes, he's active. Shout out to the companies that messaged me on Instagram, and I never mentioned James, and then I just get the free stuff. More beer based in Bristol just sent me

a lovely crate of beer, thank you very much. Stop this, I'm not being part of this, I am not being part of this. I've got a lot of people. LaCruce, LaCruce. I have a French- So many people lately ask me if I've got chunky donkeys. So many people go in, hey James, I bet you're enjoying the pair of chunky donkeys you've got. I saw Ed's got some, I'm like, what the hell? I ain't got no chunky donkeys. They are sending you chunky donkeys? I don't want to ask what chunky donkeys are. So I'm just imagining you're talking about how, because you've been eating too much over lockdown, your buttocks are enormous. You've got two big old chunky donkeys that you sit on. My pants have got a couple of big old chunky donkeys in.

Oh, that reminds me, if I would like to do an ad in this show now, seeing as I am here, and this will give you an idea of the, I'm actually, I mean, this is what I'm talking about, I'm a real have a go hero when it comes to cooking, but my mother, because she is incredible, and actually knows how much to put in things, buys me the most offensively basic cookbooks still. And it all goes back to this one here, which she bought me when I moved into my first bed set in 2003. And I think it's the saddest, right? So if anyone can't see it, it's a book called Microwave Recipes for One, but look at the picture. There's a dinner setting set up just in front of the microwave. Imagine seeing your own reflection in a, imagine watching the food

rotate, watching the Frankfurters just rotating. Oh, so the really sad thing about that picture is that obviously, just, it, what, that doesn't work. If you set up, if you take, you've got the meal in the microwave, and then you set all that up, and then you just, the door, the door's just going to come and sweep off all the crockery. Imagine you hear the ding and you say, dinner is served, and then you just open it and the fuck. The genie, that's basically as close as you get to a genie is over microwaving a gel-phrase meal for one. Did you ever cook anything from that book? No, no, I don't think I did. I mean, let's see. I mean, the stuff is pretty salmon with cucumber sauce. Like, imagine, but how are you going to microwave salmon? That is

absolutely disgusting. Yeah. Yeah, I always think the saddest point in a divorce must be the first time you penetrate the seal of a microwavable meal with a fork. You know, that really specific, like, noise then. And that's, yeah, that's what this book implies. So what's your main course? So it's a, it's a, it's a large ironware, French-influenced, brightly-colored pot, and it, it's chicken on all the veg. It's that one, right? And it's, you throw it in the oven, and you can leave it in for two hours, but you know what? Leave it in for four. It'll be even more falling off the bone. And this is the kind of, I'm like, you know, the way messy, Lionel Messi in football, probably the coach doesn't tell him what to do. Just goes out,

go out there and do your stuff. Like, I'm like that. You're wasting that on me and Ed. You know, Messi, guys. I thought you were referring to Mr. Messi from the Mr. Men. He is the, so he's the most talented footballer in the, does this game call football, how far back do you go? He, he's an instinctual player, and I am an instinctual chef. But where he is very good, I am very bad. So I fire things in. So we've got the, ah, we've got the ironware pot, and we sear, we do the searing, where you put it on the hob with oil in it, and sear the chicken, like the full chicken we're talking here. And then the problem is, I don't remember what I did.

I don't remember the order. I remember I put various veggies in and potatoes and popped the lid on and put it in the oven for three hours, a bit of stock, some red wine, a selection, handfuls of various things from the herb garden. But I don't remember what I did. And I don't remember what I put up the chicken's asshole. I don't remember anything about it. And I've been chasing that dream for three years now, trying slight variations on it. And every single time it comes out like, like boiled, you know, like children in the Second World War, who had to move out of London and live in the countryside. It's sort of like the food that they would eat. That's what it always turns out as, where the carrots are hard, even though

they've cooked them for five hours, and the fucking chicken is just like, you know, someone has just put it in a tumble dryer and let it just fall around on itself for a week. I love that your approach to cooking, you're from a jazz dynasty, you take a jazz approach to cooking as well. Yeah, I try to, but I am missing the key element of jazz, which is to be highly musical. Like, you know, you know, the way they say about jazz, it's the notes you don't play that are more important than the notes you play. Well, the ingredients you don't use, and the ingredients you use, they're all bad from you. But I'll still keep going. I'll still keep trying. I'll try to chase that dream. And that is what I would like the genie to make for me.

Does the dish have a name? Is it Coco Van? It must be Coco Van, right? Yeah, but like, what is Coco Van? You put stock, you put red wine, you can put white wine as well. I've tried it with that. Maybe I put in white wine. And what temperature do you put it in at 170? Do you put it at 130? Do you leave it in for four hours? I don't know. And so it's Coco David, is what we'll call it. Right, amazing. Absolutely amazing. Your name is David O Dockety, and you call it Coco David. Absolutely incredible. Oh my goodness. It's already in the sky. It's already pie.

Especially as you know that Coco David is the name of the farmer. Yeah, that's, you know that's his name, walking around, a wily little farm with Coco David. So what I'm going to try the next time is I'm going to pull out microwave meals for one, and I'm just going to microwave that chicken for six hours and see what happens. Yeah, okay. So we'll call it Coco O Dockety, but then we'll put a question mark at the end of that, because I don't know what the recipe is. So it's, and you have to say it, you know, the way in a school oral exam, when they made you read from the book, and you didn't know what the sentence meant, but you saw a question mark, so you just rose up to it. So that's the pronunciation. It's like,

Coco O Dockety? Like that. That's what the dish is called. Your side dish then for this half memory of a dish that you once created, like a meal from the film Inception. What is the side dish going to be? I've thought a lot about this, and there's certain things that are delicious. I've no problem with eating things in the wrong order. I've no problem with having two starters or a main at a starter as a main, you know what I mean? Together. But with this, I'm going to, so rice paper rolls, I was thinking that because it might be nice to get prawns in, but then we've already had too much carnage of the ocean from the starter. So I'm going to, I mean, this is quite

sentimental for the, for the off menu podcast, but I went away in the second week of March. There was the bat disease made itself known, and I was meant to be going to Australia, and also all my gigs in the future were cancelled. I broke up with my girlfriend, and I moved to an island off the West Coast with my 82 year old parents. And so when we got there, we were in, I mean, I was in a slightly disheveled, mentally disheveled state. But my father is a wonderful man, and he has a polytunnel down there. So he said, we don't know how long this is going to go on, but it'll be fun to watch things grow. So the first thing we did was bought a load of seeds. And I went to the beach and got seaweed and

hosed it down for like two days to wash the sea salt off, and then buried that under the ground in the polytunnel because of the great nutrients. And then went to the person over there who's got chickens and got terrible chicken shit and put that in as well. And we planted these seeds. And in the end, Irish lockdown one lasted from the St Patrick's Day until the 1st of July. So I was down there for that whatever four month period, three and a half month period. And in that time, the seeds that we planted fully germinated, and we harvested them. And so by the end, we were eating some spectacularly weird vegetables because the island is so harsh. And we definitely got all the nutrients in the soil wrong. The things grew, but they all grew

like horror Halloween versions of themselves. So there's parsnips that look like witches noses. There's carrots that looked like parsnips. There were potatoes that looked like parsnips. Just this horrible sort of Adams family basket of vegetables, but they all tasted incredible. And there came from the earth this, I don't know, a slightly, I mean, resurrective is too strong a word, but a continual sense of life and rebirth, even when during the worst of the pandemic, you would go out and you would look at the, we grew sweet corn and like you can't grow sweet corn in Ireland, but the bush grew up and these big dongs appeared on the end. And they have the amazing silk over, you know, the actual,

I think it's called sweet corn silk, the leaves that grow around them. And so eventually we picked them and we're like, oh my goodness, and then pull them off. And they looked like Frankenstein's dick. They just looked absolutely totally wrong on the inside, but we boiled them for ages and at them and they were all absolutely brilliant. So from my side, I would like pandemic vegetables grown by me and my dad. Obviously, when you said that you got the corn, are you pulled the silk off and it looked like Frankenstein's dick? Obviously, the first thing I imagined is Coco David sticking his head around the corner and being like, you're going to eat that? You did his voice all wrong there, James. Sorry.

Yeah, yeah, I definitely ate all of it. And it was really great. I grew when I was, I was an amazing entrepreneur when I was a kid. And everyone thought I was going to be jobs. I was going to be so in terms of I was always starting businesses, like wash your car for two pounds kind of thing and type typing up business cards and posting them into the. Yeah, I'm sure I set up a detective agency when I was about 10 and we would find your cap for money, even though we never got any cases. And part of it was we would find waste ground and dig it and plant vegetables there. I would make my mother buy the seeds and then we would plant them and then go door to door trying to sell radishes to people on the road. So they would be like, who's this incredible entrepreneur

that will one day change the world with one of his amazing business ideas? Isn't this the guy who asked if I want, if you wanted me to clean his car last week? And so I got into the veggie game from that. It's by selling, I used to sell radishes for three P each. Wow. So how are you, how are you preparing these, these Pani D veg, these Corona veg? I'm popping them all in the unnamed, I think it's called a Dutch oven is the official name of one of those castware pots. I know which it is, it is. There's a double, there's a double meaning for Dutch oven. Yeah. The, which is very unfortunate. I see why LaCruz say don't call it that then. Do you want to, do you want to touch a oven? That's, then they fart under a duvet and pull it over your head. Weirdly, they both, they

both smell like boiling veg. So I'm going to bung them in the pot and the genie is going to tell me exactly how much stock and salt and wine to put in with us at the exact right amount of time. And those veggies and oh Nelly, that is going to be a hearty, hearty and delicious meal as well. Sorry, just I should say it's not tough though. Like we weren't the tough kids of my area, as in the tough kids were no way they were breaking into your garden. And then like what have they done? Have they stolen something from the shed? No, they seem to have just planted a load of vegetables. Who are these absolute nerds? Is your drink homemade also? Have you and your father been doing a bit of a home brewing? I, at this point would be tempted to say a pint of

but I actually don't think physically I could handle it at this point in the meal. You know, what is basically the chowder of the beer world is going to meet the chowder of the ocean down there. This is a very delicious but very heavy menu so far. You've got, you've essentially got bread that you've described as dark matter. You've got a creamy chowder. You've got a massive stew basically for main course. If you pour a pint of Guinness on this mate, you're going through the floor. It's a bold character. No, I'm going to just something light to refresh the palette. I'll go with a white Russian then because, yeah, I mean, come on, who cares? I was trying to think of a cocktail that actually means something to me and the only one would be, I've been out a few

times with Max from the comedy duo Max and Ivan and he is a cocktail correspondent for like one of the glossy magazines and he knows them all and he's really good at when you go to a cocktail bar and a cocktail is like 1150 or something, he'll be like, oh, then just give me, so he got me into, you know, Bundaberg ginger beer, so not ginger ale but the ginger beer, the one with the cool lid that's like a can, that with gin in it and he, so it's a sort of a cheap ass Singapore sling basically and then you steal lime off the bar and you put that in and, you know, if you can steal an olive then save one person gets, what I'm talking about is cocktails on a budget here and there's a way you can have a whole lot of fun for half the price of a named cocktail then,

so I, sorry, I was thinking of doing that but of much more significance to me in my, with my friends is the white Russian just because it's synonymous with me with Nish Kumar's birthday is during the Edinburgh Fringe every year and I don't know how the tradition started, he possibly talked about it on this podcast. We've definitely, I think we have mentioned, we've mentioned it on this podcast before that the tradition is on Nish's birthday, everyone drinks white Russians to the extent that the bar we go to in Edinburgh always runs out of milk and I believe you've done this before David, you've had to go to the supermarket and buy them more milk. Ran to Tesco Express and come back with four liters of, like how much milk does a bar

have particularly after the coffee ends at six o'clock, like they've probably got half a pint just to keep it going for a staff having cups of tea or whatever and we are through that after about 15 minutes then and yeah some severe queasiness that results from that, that's definitely the case but I do, yeah I enjoy a white Russian from that point of view and then I remember once I'd just done a gig in Sydney at the Enmore Theatre and it was the last gig of an Australian tour and which is a silly thing to do, I told the audience we'd all go to a pub up the road and because that's 1800 people or something 300 of them went, it was on like a Tuesday night so we all descended on this empty pub and everyone was buying me pints and it was

very nice and then a man came up to me and handed me like, what the hell is this, it looked like a quadruple Baileys or something and he went, it's a white Russian, I'm Nish's uncle. I thought Nish's uncle was going to pop up at the end of this anecdote. Yeah, yeah so I don't think, I'm not even sure white Russians are a thing in particularly in Sydney at the end of the summer so it's possible he'd have to run out to the nearest Tesco Express to buy them a half a pint of milk to make it but yeah what I'm saying, the nearest Tesco Express in Sydney is miles away, I don't know, it's a really long way to get them like kind of milk for the white man. So for your drink, let's not beat around the bush, you've essentially picked a dessert

chowder. A sweet alcoholic chowder. Yes I have, this meal is going to be an adidas, if you remember what adidas stands for, that's what's going to happen. All day I dream about sex. No, after dinner I do a shit. All right, so me and James immediately just go for the the new metal corn version of adidas which is all day I dream about sex. Yeah, it's that you thought of the song by the new metal band Corn, I mean when you put it on the corn, think about it'll be that. Why an urn, Edward, I mean what a day for your doggity, the only corn he likes is in his chowder or once it looked like Frankenstein's dick. I don't know, corn definitely went with all day I dream about sex. I don't remember the bit in this song where they go after dinner I did a shit.

When I was about 10 years old, the first ever cool shoes I got where I requested them from my mother were adidas boot runners like basketball boots and torsion. They were the torsion bar ones and I brought them, went out to the park in them like you know you're so proud of the new runners you don't even walk on grass you're making sure just to stay on cement and it's they're they're attracting a lot of compliments and then Brian McDonald who was slightly older than us said you know what adidas is short for and this was the first time I'd heard it. He said after dinner I do a shit but he went to step further than that he said they're they're they're shitting boots and it's because when you're sitting down it can put a lot of stress on your ankles so that's why

you should wear boot runners while you're while you're wearing them and he literally ruined those shoes I went home and I was like mom I can't believe you bought me shitting boots. Well we arrive at your dessert now David very exciting. My favourite course and I can only assume you're going to choose a big fat of double fat cream. A funny influence of this podcast is since listening to the Ivo Graham episode I've got really into banana in strawberry yoghurt. Oh okay well yeah it's good it's not bad at all and something that people need to know about David already. David already loves a store bought dessert and there are two classics in available in Ireland one of them is available over there

one of them is not okay I'll talk about the one that's not first which so in art you know the way walls the brand is called different things the franchise you sell to different countries so it's called like Ola in Portugal or whatever and what's it called in Australia it's got a anyway in Ireland it's called HB and one of their biggest sellers was discontinued in the United Kingdom in 2003 and that is one you may remember called the romantica which is a cake it's a store bought cake that has different layers in it it's a sort of a caramel it's got a biscuity element to it it says on the front serves nine or something but you would have half of it yourself no bother um that's a great one uh so I want a sliver of romantica and then I just

want a vanilla uh vianetta it's like it's easy to turn your nose up out of vianetta because they're ubiquitous but just everything about it is a miracle it is uh co-invented by an Irish man called David Hoolahan who also invented the calippo he invented the freaky the freaky foot no he um um the wibbly wobbly wonder he invented a sort of ice cream of sort of um gelatinous ice cream that retains shape when it melts a bit you know what I mean I think that is that was the big breakthrough of probably that era in the 80s when all those ice creams came out and was wibbly wibbly wonder do you not have a wibbly wobbly wonder I do but it's for private do you put a rubber Johnny on it sometimes please David a cheese a wibbly wobbly wonder is another classic news

agent ice pop that is um half a kind of a it's a bit like a loop the loop do you have a do you know a loop the loop no this is really interesting making all these up yeah this is like when Adam and Joe have a sketch where they make up band names it feels like that it feels like you making the fight screams a wibbly wobbly wonder is a um sort of iced ice cream halfway up then jelly at the top that is covered in chocolate so it somehow maintains a slightly wobbly texture even straight from the cold cabinet that sounds great however the vianada uh I need to make it clear we need to shombra the vianada because the problem I think where we're all busy people most of your listeners are very very busy people and they don't have time to let the vianada shombra for the recommended

15 minutes or 20 minutes maybe even half an hour because what you so you end up eating it just like a lot of prehistoric strata whereas what you want to do you know where you just eat the ice cream you bit now a chocolatey bit now an ice cream you bit what you actually want is to get it to that point of meltiness where a sharp cake knife will you know that sinewy sound it makes cracks does it yeah but loads of cracks loads of loads of cracks and how do they get that chocolate so thin yeah it's a it's a marvel it's really good when you said uh freaky foot and wibbly wobbly wonder I was imagining that's what you and your dad named all the vegetables that's what you called yourselves when you were growing the when you were doing the garden and my name's freaky foot and this is my

son the wibbly wobbly wonder yeah just I'm happy with that you know we could definitely have a panna cotta or we could have something uh the spoon did a panna cotta uh rest in piece spoon that was in a just a glass with scottish shortbread that was amazing like you would have eaten six of them if they were there but now I'm just going to go with a I mean maybe this has gone a bit lockdown now but the the vianetta is still available and it's a and a slice of romantica yeah with it as well and which given I mean I never thought I'd say this about uh vianetta but in the context of your menu it is a sort of light palate cleanser finish it's no surprise that your menu has ended with two desserts as well just like two ice cream desserts at the end please thank you very much

I mean does a dessert exist though that's like a light I guess something like a mousse like that to send you off into the night but some ecstasy to lift the taste buds but you've gone with vianetta which I think you should be happy with your honestly I think James mentioned it earlier but your menu is like something the twits would eat on a regional menu back to you David David how do you feel okay for your water course you chose some condensed milk water course tap tap water still water pop it over to a bread you said Guinness treacle soda bread with dairy gold butter starter absolute carnage canal dredged dairy chowder uh main course cacao docate chicken and all the vegetables you forgot the question mark there

cacao docate thank you cacao docate side dish pandemic vegetables grown by freaky fruit and the wibbly wobbly one um drink a white russian happy birthday nish kuma and dessert a sliver of hb romantica cake with some vanilla vianetta that has been left to shomba for 15 minutes perfect I mean I I reckon I could manage that menu but it would be I'd be very full I think just imagine David just like sinking into the ground like it's made of quick sand after the meal no matter what there's just sinking down and then actually just coming out the other end of in Australia the other end of the earth or the wife nish's uncle's there yeah yeah white russian for him I'm nish's uncle I can't manage it now nish's uncle I've just sunk through

from Ireland it's not a meal for a date a hot date you don't have anywhere afterwards you do you want to go dancing and then you just both fall asleep just in the taxi then yeah innocently glide up as your body struggles to process all of this saturated fat you're not going to bed with anyone after that because you'll be creating a real la cruzette yeah you'll be you'll be tying up your adidas to trainers and then walking to the toilet David thank you so much for coming to the dream restaurant you have been an excellent guest we'll have to get you a cab of course and we're going to have to roll you out of the building because you are full baby uh thank you so much for coming David to say thank you David

adocity everyone in your own home thank you David nice you guys there we have it what a fun evening that was we spent with david adocity live on the internet with people watching us james loved it I absolutely loved it great company so many revelations and it didn't choose the secret ingredient which was ghost pepper we're very happy he didn't pick ghost pepper it would not have gone with his menu because it doesn't go with any menus can I just say as well during that recording no context off menu they did an absolutely amazing job they were live meming the whole thing which it would take me hours to years to make a meme yet there was no contact text off menu live meming the whole event I don't know how they even do it

I mean honestly they were definitely working harder than we were oh we were messing around talking to david adocity they were actually doing work but to be fair that's consistent across all of the off menu stuff really yes we we do the bit you hear yeah and then uh bonita has to edit it and no context off menu does loads of social media bonita does loads of social media we just show up and get sent free food baby yeah that is true we get sent a lot of well I don't get sent as much now because I'm not on social media I really missed a trick there I didn't think it through no didn't think absolutely idiot yeah absolutely idiot you should have kept kept you twitter got on instagram muted everyone and just kept the inbox open yeah in your face um so that was a lot of fun thanks to

the unmute podcast festival aka the great bonita hopefully there'll be another one of those soon uh although he sort of just looks quite stressed about the whole thing so don't hold your breath yeah his whole life stressful though yeah that's true david adocity wonderful comedian of course uh he's he's just recorded an album james as comedy special that he recorded in his car on akali land which we talked about in the episode just now and it's called live in his car during a pandemic you can get it on bandcamp and probably other platforms as well check that out but for now thank you very much for listening we'll see you again sometime soon goodbye oh well hello it's me amy glad to you might remember me from the best ever episode of off menu where

spoke to my mum and asked her about seaweed on uh mashed potato and our relationship's never been the same since and i am joined by me ian smith i would probably go bread i'm not gonna spoil it in case get him on james and ed but we're here sneaking in to your podcast experience to tell you about a new podcast that we're doing it's called northern news it's about all the new stories that we've missed out from the north because look we're two northerners sure but we've been living in london for a long time the new stories are funny quite a lot of them crimes it's all kicking off and that's a new podcast called northern news we'd love you to listen to maybe we'll get my mum on get glades mum on every episode that's northern news when's it out ian it's already

out now amy is it yeah get listening there's probably a backlog you've left it so late