Podcast: The Ride - The Tam O'Shanter with Tim Kalpakis

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

Tim Kalpakis (The Birthday Boys, The Sloppy Boys) joins us to discuss Walt Disney's favorite restaurant which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month. Epcot's Splashtacular episode up at The Second Gate: Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Forever! Dog! Warning! The following podcast may be an unpaid-for, two-hour advertisement for a hundred-year-old restaurant. It may veer dangerously into discussion of wet meat, hash houses, and nude witches. The Sloppy Boys' Tim Kalpakis joins us to talk Walt Disney's beloved L haunt, the Tam O'Shanter on Podcast The Ride. Welcome to Podcast The Ride, a podcast about theme parks where we say step aside red table talk. Today's all about Walt table talk. I'm Scott Gardner. Hey, Mike Carlson.

Hey, I'm here. I was going to really dish with you guys and get into some of the heavy stuff about our relationships, but I'm not going to do that now. No, no. We're going to talk about Walt. What they miss is we're talking about the actual table more often. Yes, people want literal table talk. That's right. We aren't in front of one now. There's no table now. No, no.

We're talking about a table that's a couple miles away. Jason Sheridan, hi. No, no. We're talking about a table that's like a couple miles away. Jason Sheridan. Hi. Hi. Yeah. You had me going for a second because I was like, first I had to take a beat to remember what Red Table Talk was, which is the Facebook watch. Dominant.

Jada Pinkett Smith show. Okay. Yeah. But no. And then it became crystal clear when when i remembered what we were talking about today great great good great uh i'm glad you reminded people what it is but also keep his uh wife's name well yeah you know i'm promoting your show i've done more i've done more promotion for the show than facebook has in uh quite some time that's a good point so and i don't

know that that red table, I don't know if it has a tiny little plaque on it that you can't put like a plate or a drink on. Someday, if they ever sell the house and start a restaurant where the red table is. Today, we're talking about a Los Angeles restaurant called the Tam O'Shanter, a restaurant that is very important to Walt Disney and very important to us, I think.

And this topic comes courtesy of a great guest Who's joining us partially Because reddit user greedy cauliflower Said why isn't he been on yet I said I don't have an answer for that he should Be that's great glad he got greedy For our awesome Guest from the sloppy boys podcast from

Birthday boys from comedy bang bang sting cow Back as I yo how's it going thank you greedy Cauliflower You did you got him here you're a one person campaign i had no chance i had to um question about red table talk is that where the gif or or like the meme of of sad will comes from like crying oh i sad i think it is yeah i could be don't quote me on that show when she talked about her polyamory maybe they were talking i know i'm not a big watcher i don't watch it as much as i watch something like i don't know club random or bill mars but i do know that yeah i

think she discussed the polyamory and the things like that uh that's where it came to a head and she referred to it in strange, oblique terms. Yes. I think it's a very angry, clearly. It's a very honest show. I'll say that. It's a lot raw, honest.

Club Random is a different vibe than that. So I'm much a little more into the frivolity and the fun. Yeah, I can tell. You gotta like things random. Yeah.

This is our show. We get pretty raw and honest. We're going to say some real gritty opinions about roast beef today. How much fat should be in a steak? Jason is going to get... We're all crying about that. Bone chilling when you realize what restaurant overcooks the hamburger every time I order it. It's really sad.

That's sad. Before we get into that, Tim, just to touch on some of the other stuff we talked about when I asked you to come on, and also just to bring up something you have in common with Jason, you're both Jersey Shore people. There we go. Yes. You mentioned, okay, Maury's Piers in Maury's Piers in Wild Wait I don't I don't know I don't understand the naming structure of the Jersey Shore places the town that I went to is Wildwood like way down at the tippy bottom of the Jersey Shore and and

there's just like the Wildwood boardwalk is like this two or three mile stretch of just like pizza places and cheesesteak places. And then every once in a while, you get to a pier where there's roller coasters. And the piers, like in the 90s and early 2000s when I was going there, the brand or whatever that owned it was Maury's. So it was like, so I was telling you,

like I was being very technical and saying it's Maury's Piers. But you would really just say like, yeah, Wild jersey jason where did you go i uh my family's always gone to ocean city a lot love it and my dad went to atlantic city uh growing up and we still go is ocean city the one from the mtv show uh no i think seaside heights up further up north yeah no ocean city notable uh they called this once and they've used it in marketing for like 20 years i think travel uh the travel channel called it america's favorite like family resort uh noticeable for being a dry town so you can bring alcohol in

but you can't buy it on the island so you have to take any bridge where you will then find a warehouse-sized liquor store at the foot of every bridge immediately. Yeah. How could this be anyone's favorite anything? That doesn't make sense. Who called it that? What's that? Who called it that?

And they hung on to it for dear life. Like a travel channel special. Oh, okay. Like ranking popular vacation spots. And it was number one. We're stripping that title right yeah that's gone any of this yeah that's gone um what's the vibe of this play is this was this like a uh was it like uh rinky dink was it falling apart was it surprisingly impressive it was pretty good

when i was there but like it wasn't rinky dink and it wasn't it wasn't dingy but it was kind of frozen in time like my experience there was i don't know about you but it's like um i was surprised to then see the jersey shore tv show because like the clubby maybe what like the older kids were up to or people in their 20s were up to um actually do you remember there was like an episode of mtv true life that was about the Jersey shore, whereas about like a Philadelphia guy going and he would like try to find love with the Jersey shore every summer. And then the end with him,

like back in Philadelphia at his construction job, like with a sledgehammer hitting cinder blocks, like, well, I'll try again next year. But I, so I didn't see Jersey shore, the sort of like boozy partying uh gym tan laundry vibe i

didn't see any of that this was more like it was more like boardwalk empire or something it was like real old school ski ball bruce springsteen type of bruce springsteen sad so it was sad everything that happened in boardwalk empire happened to me in my life wow wow for me it was just a lot of what it was i was like a very slick chubby little kid so i was really good at water slides do you mean slick like you were you were naturally wet like you were you were i was sweaty just kind of greek american sweat already on my body but there was a timer on one of the slides at the water park there. And I just went down at normal.

And then a lifeguard pulled me aside and was like, hey, you qualified for the championships. And I was like, mom, dad, can we come back in two weeks for the championships? I'm like, no. No. But like... Speed run. Yeah.

I was like nine years old. And that really stoked my ego that i was really good at water slides who knew that you wouldn't just go the speed of the water that's carrying you down but i think i just like shot ahead real fast so i was really into the water slides and then like as the roller coasters got big and bigger i was into that there's there's like famous pizza places and famous cheesesteak places that i was obsessed with and it was just really and it was like maybe my first little sense of independence like i i could bring a friend on our family vacation and then we'd like walk up and down the boardwalk one of the stores had like playing cards

with naked ladies on them and we saw stuff like that very formative experiences on that board that wasn't like behind a beaded curtain or something it was just it kind of was behind it was not the beaded curtain but it was behind the counter like you did have to ask the guy to buy them and we chickened out wait did wait was it shown to you then it was brought down but not purchased like on a shelf there with like you know uh kind of what would it be the other pervy stuff or even just like cigarettes or whatever it was just like or maybe like tequila in a gun-shaped bottle or things that need to be behind the guy's head it was back there but yeah uh the wildwood is always i mean it is wild it's coincidentally it is a little wild

and appear as wood on it yeah uh so the jersey shore kind of splits like north jersey shore points like um seaside heights there's a lot of people from new york south jersey it's a lot more people from philadelphia yeah just by sheer like closeness and like length of drive time so that's what i because i remember jersey shore coming on tv and going like i kind of recognize this but some of this is also unrecognizable like this is not my experience yeah right there's more of a wildwood being way down there it's like almost delaware it's like a mid-atlantic vibe and it's more like families eating crabs and stuff like that yeah it's not like hey we're yeah we're it's not like city kids coming down to go nuts there's a bunch of like yeah famous pizzeria like in wildwood there's pizzeria called max

yeah i love there's a bunch of them you know city it was mac and mancos and then the manco side of the family like split from the mac side so then it became manco and mancos and regardless of that someone still went to jail for tax fraud um there's a lot of pennsylvania jersey establishments it's like ah tony luke's and i think i mentioned it in passa it's like uh uh cheese sakes and italian pork sandwiches and i mentioned in passing that like oh yeah they were talking about opening more franchises cross country and they were going to open one in la and my dad's like uh I think Tony Luke and Tony Tony Luke Jr. and Sr. might be

serving some tax relief. I think they got the electric chair. I remember when I remember of Mac's pizza I loved it so much when I was a kid. It's like super thin crust tastes like a cracker almost crunchy but when you watch them make it there's no illusion that it's like oh these are the best ingredients to the

point where the tomato sauce is coming out of a hose. they got the hose right onto the pizza yeah i love it it's a sauce hose i've never ever seen it pressurized uh i think it's pressurized i think they they fill up a tub and that's how they get it like the pizza's made and in and out so fast it's a real thin crust and then they don't use pizza cutters they just use like these i don't know what they are gardening shears they slice it so quick wow i gotta see a video of this it's great is this ever like an unwrapped with mark summers or anything i'm sure it is it must it's beloved there it's like a type of pizza that never spread it looks like new york pizza but yeah it kind of tastes like a saltine it It's almost like, have you ever had

St. Louis style pizza? I don't think so. I don't think I know what St. Louis is. Super thin and then like chopped up into squares. Oh,

I don't think it's very good. I like squares. But you know what's good in St. Louis is like at a pizza place, the appetizer will be deep fried ravioli. Oh, wow.

Like breaded and fried. It's great. Oh, geez. I'm a chicago guy so i like the thickest crust um now i feel like a lot of chicago guys say not the deep dish i like tavern style but i've never had i don't know what i don't even know what that is it's like the thin crust yeah of chicago there's you don't know what it is maybe i'm also not that smarter like worldly you You have to be an intellectual to know.

Yeah. You're still mainly going to McDonald's and Taco Bell. I'm eating Pizza Hut in Chicago. That's what I'm talking about. Then this begs the question. Did either of you guys ever fantasize about getting under that sauce hose? I did. Oh man,

I still fantasize about that. I wish my backyard. I could water it down with that sauce hose. I did. Oh, man, I still fantasize about that sauce hose. If it was my backyard, I could water it down with that sauce hose. And slip and slide through it. I had it in December. I had a slice in December. No, you did.

Yeah, sauce hose still going strong. And can you ask just like for like one squirt in your mouth? I think the other thing, I think there's a foot pedal involved. I think that's how you activate the sauce. Oh, you're right. Yes. He stepped on like a metal pedal. Yeah.

Wow. Like a rock guitarist. Yeah. Wow. He's working that thing like Steve Vai. It's very fun to be there off season, like in the winter. My first Wildwood trip, everything was closed. It was like March.

And there was a greek restaurant called quality restaurant that we went to for every meal and we loved it but it's really fun to be in like a summer town when it's like uh snowy yeah they do a lot a lot of the towns like really kind of go all out for christmas or like do a big block party in november like that's cool all sorts of innovative all sorts of tricks to drum up business in the off season yeah Tim can I ask a question uh as a child or even an adult did you like the food scrapple I just had my first scrapple first really oh this is huge oh it's good time this is an east coast food that Jason had growing up we never sort of I was not aware of it at all until Jason

brought it up when you growing up in pennsylvania is it just like as common as oh would you like bacon or sausage or scrapple i yeah i mean i think that's the big difference one of the big differences is like the diners in pennsylvania and even more so in south jersey it's like your breakfast meat options are like there's like seven of them or like uh bacon sausage scrapple pork roll, which they call Taylor Ham in North Jersey. Hot Italian sausage, sweet Italian sausage. That's a lot of options. A lot of options.

Anytime anyone's from the same area that Jason is, I ask two questions. Scrapple and something about Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. I know Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes for sure. I'm a huge fan. Okay, good, good. I just want to make sure. I heard him guest DJ on E Street Radio on Sirius XM recently. I love it. He's still playing. He doesn't come out and play shows here

a lot. No, I wanted to see Southside Johnny played in Asbury Park on the 4th of July last year and I missed him by like two days. I was very bummed. What's the appeal of him not knowing the full war? Is it like a way to is it like the Morris Day and the Time, Two Prince? Like you get a little extra of the vibe that you like? Exactly what it is.

All right. Yeah, that makes me get it completely. Because it's like, Bruce Springsteen is my mega all-time favorite artist by a mile. So it's fun to watch, to get more of that style of music, but like take away the star quality like take away the superstar power and it's just like yeah a guy with a good soul voice and a like a tight band playing r&b music it's fun and a couple songs written by bruce little steven yeah which is fun so you get the like the river the river vibe of like old rock and roll

song that they uh like or did on that album i should say i bet if if you're at a south side johnny show like at the stone pony or something and it's encore time and bruce doesn't join i bet everyone's like looking around the room like where is he i hear this happens every time he's really been popping up in like a lot of people's shows recently yeah mccartney last night yeah that's right and cold play in cold play yes a couple weeks ago get through new jersey without bruce coming on stage he waited longer than the other old acts but with covet i feel like he's going out next year but he waited longer so i feel he's itching yeah give me them cameos next year hey lauren can i play uh many politicians i could play on the show this year um i went uh um to a tape an snl taping when springsteen was the musical guest oh and i

went out i like was like just hanging out in the writer's room but then like snuck out right onto the floor to get real close when he's playing i was like jesus oh man it was during the the river tour so he's playing like meet me in the city and um i was up real close and i was like, oh, man. It was during the river tour. So he's playing like Meet Me in the City. And I was up real close and I was like so starstruck. And I turned to my left. Lorne is standing with Paul McCartney. Just both of us. Jesus.

Just watching. And McCartney wasn't even involved with the show that night. He just hangs out. There, geez. Under the bleachers in Lor's little rosé area, they'll be like John McEnroe or Alec Baldwin just hanging out. John McEnroe. The omnipresence

of John McEnroe in cool comedy is very strange to me. I'm not sure why. I feel like if you have enough money and you're in midtown Manhattan on a Saturday night, you just get like... And if you have enough white hair. I'm bored. I'm going. If you're close enough to the building you get ushered in

yeah like right this way um scrapple gotta say a little disappointed me a little bit i built it up in my head i liked it but i was going i had always heard about denix um uh roast pork sandwich with like the broccoli rabe on it. Yeah. So I went to a food hall to eat that sandwich and I loved it. And then I saw that the little diner at this food market was like a Pennsylvania Dutch diner. So I popped in for some scrapple and it was like the sizzled edges were really good.

But once you carve into it, it was, I wasn't expecting, I didn't know it was processed. It's like mush. Inside is kind of almost like a pate or like a smooth. What I'm looking at, and listeners, if you Google Scrabble, something that I haven't done, I don't think,

in all the time we've been talking about Scrabble, the second image that I'm seeing, which is from something called Forager Chef, this is gray. We are looking at concrete. It's very low. Is this like an outlier this is not a standard no no it's very great well usually the whole thing is gray and then when you cook it in a pan it gets kind of brown and crispy okay so it is a lot like pate but you take away the kind of fancy livery taste that makes pate a delicacy,

and it's just sort of like a little salty and fatty. Yeah, like a sausage filling. Just reading that it's a treat made with liver and buckwheat. You sure treat is in that sentence? Well, kids in that area love running through the buckwheat fields and sucking on the buckwheat, chewing the buckwheat. It's a treat.

Stripping them dry. Yeah, if I was from there, I would understand. But I guess I don't get it. We'll get you some Chicago buckwheat, don't you worry. Okay.

Chicago buckwheat's real thick. Are you big into the Italian beef? I like Italian beef. I don't know big. I mean, what am I big into food- beef? I like Italian beef I don't know big I mean what am I big into Food wise That's a good question

Not a food guy huh I like food I like food a lot You eat it three times a day Come on I eat it Just general all of it The whole genre

I like a Like Portillo's is down in Buena Park Which is from the Midwest Which is a big like Italian beef place And hot dogs There's one in Orange County There's one Yeah

Yeah Buena Park Buena Park Oh yeah yeah yeah And there's one in Orange County. There's one... Buena Park. And there's one in Moreno Valley. I know where they are here. But they're everywhere in the Midwest where I'm from. So yeah, I get a beef and cheddar croissant. It's just

almost like a liquid. It's so wet. And it's really... You could just drink it. It's not even... It's so good though. It's like the whole thing is soaked in. The beef is like wet? The beef is like, yeah. Well, you pick your wetness level. This is not a joke.

You pick your wetness level. How wet your beef is? How much gravy you want on it and they will grab it with tongs and dip it. There's a sitting in a steam table. The standard amount of wetness is very wet you don't have to say anything and they'll just make it it's extremely wet but you could say i want it drier or if you don't want the thing i'm having you just have a regular beef on a roll and it won't be

wet at all you can you can choose your wetness comfort level why is wetness that is why is wet meat the desire and i think i don't understand that. I gotta go try it. You gonna have dry meat? Come on. I mean, that doesn't sound good either. It's gonna hurt your mouth when you're eating. I was at the Portillo's, one in Chicago recently. It was delicious. I had like a hot dog with all the stuff.

Yeah. Sport peppers and pickle spring and stuff. And like a Polish sausage was great. And then afterwards, Mike Mitchell told me like, oh, you gotta get the chocolate cake shake. Oh, that's my man's favorite over here. I was down there. I went to the one in Wayna Park a few weeks ago

because I was in Anaheim and I was trying to wait out traffic because it was saying like 90 minutes back to LA. And I got- If you need the excuse, just get the cake shake. I need the excuse. So I got a Chicago hot dog and i got a cake shake and i was sitting in my car eating it and i watched the sun's the parking lot of

a beautiful view of the sunset it's gonna be your last day on earth in the walmart in the walmart parking lot did it by the trampoline park in the walmart yeah so beautiful sunset white and so after I finished eating, I checked my phone. Dryback City, 40 minutes. So it worked. Nice. So did you have it, Tim? I've never had the cake shake.

Okay. I've never gotten to it. It is good. Does it have chunks in it? They blend it all. They blend a slice of cake into the quenelle milkshake. Full piece of cake in there. Yeah.

That does sound good. How wet is it uh it's very wet i mean it's obviously there's some like hard particles in there some dry particles so it's less wet than a normal milkshake but it's still pretty wet um this is an episode right just going to me trying some of this wet beef and trying to cake well you already talked about two episodes ago we're gonna make you eat things we like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Make Scott eat like us, which is a lot of fruity pebbles, I think. Too much food. Like, too much cooked food.

Mm-hmm. We need to get you some science food. We need to get you some post-World War II. This is too quality. Yeah. All the scientists who were working on weapons and then switched to working on children's cereals and snack cakes.

That's the kind of food. Scott, 48 hours. What have you eaten? What's 48 hours? Well, look, last night, it's thrown because last night

I went to today's topic. Okay. All right. Oh, hell yeah. I pushed my eating comfort, I'd say, a little further than I usually would.

That's so funny because that place, I call that, would think of that as such a safe comfort food type of a place. It is. I mean, yeah, it totally is. And it is very, it's literally meat and potatoes.

Walt Disney seems like he would be very scared of food. Yes. That's exactly right. He ate chili every day, I believe. Yes. Big formel. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was a different one.

A can of Gebhardt's chili mixed with a can of Dennis' chili. It's one of his favorites. You can afford anything in the world, but you want to mix together two cans. That fact, by the way, is not in his notes. That's on his lock screen. That's the wallpaper. That's just what he has ready to go in any moment. I want to hear what you had, but just to contextualize,

Walt Disney's daughter was describing his kind of, you know, middle-of-the-road taste in food. This is quoted in a KCET article. Before he married mother, father had eaten in hash houses and lunch wagons for so many years in order to save money that he developed a hash house lunch wagon appetite he liked fried potatoes hamburgers western sandwiches hot cakes canned peas hash stew and roast beef sandwiches hash i i think like corned beef hash like you know so this is these are the culinary makings of the most significant creative person of the century. That's right. American popular culture of the 20th century.

We're all being held back by not eating more hash. Or hash, yeah. You do, I mean, I get the thing of like, oh, I grew up on simple food, so that's what I like. And almost every fancy chef always has that thing of like, I went to culinary school and did some fine dining. But then when I returned to my mother's cooking, that's when I could really or whatever. But it is still funny that I feel like if I were Walt and I had all that money, how do you not want to just like, at least I would just travel the whole world eating until i found other stuff i liked you know that's well and your ability to go like experience other cultures like as he's traveling the world faster than most people are traveling the world right and yet he's just eating big bricks of meat essentially um but it's what he liked i don't know so are you in general you're a picky eater uh no i don't think so no no i'm

saying i just went like heavier i I would say, than usual. I'll get into it, but just here to fully dive in. I mean, the big context here for people who are not in Los Angeles, this is a restaurant in Atwater Village called the Tam O'Shanter. And why are we talking about it? Mainly because it was Walt Disney's favorite restaurant. And I might go so far as to say disney's favorite restaurant and i might go so far as to say maybe my favorite restaurant oh hey now right is it up there for uh okay for all of

you well tim especially since you uh i i love it so much i'm like a a big steakhouse person in general yeah so i'm like geared towards uh the genre and there's like so many good ones in Southern California. And but Tam O'Shanter specifically is like, yeah, it's it's a jolly place. Like the Mary, especially in L.A., there's not you don't really know what to do around the holiday. I'm from New York. And then when I moved to L.A., I was like, where should I go if I want to like feel like it's Christmas? And it's like the answer is the Tamo Shandor. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there's carolers, and it's packed with people, and it's fun as fuck. Decorated in such a lovely fashion,

like such warm, glowy, Dickensian-style holiday flair. On top of the base of, if you've never been here it is like it's fantasy land it is completely it's a big cottage yeah yeah yeah it's it's extremely snow white in the seven drawers especially feels like that newer that the the since 1983 fantasy land of disneyland uh yeah just so like gentle storybook but then also it is scottish themed it's almost more scottish themed than fully scottish food right there is scottish food for sure they kind of changed the appetizer menu a lot but they used to have a more palatable version of haggis that was maybe like made with beef and it was kind of cooked as a little pastry and um and there's there's some touches there's there's like scotch rarebit and a few

scottish things there yeah yeah uh i i mean it's thematic architecturally it's like a quaint little cottage yeah uh the that's very like other world it It feels like centuries ago, old Europe. It really like stands out still, even though like the, well, there's a Mimi's across the street. So you get some of that storybook vibe over there too. We like Mimi's. We've been to Mimi's. It's a bit of a more corporate version.

We have been to Pam O'Shanter and Mimi's in rapid succession more than once. What a night. Wow. Is that right? More than once? Yeah, probably. I think more than once. Mike doesn't even remember. He blacked out. at water nights back when toys r us was over there

are you kidding me we make it a three three part for a short period of time would go to tam o'shanter every week yeah there was like a couple months there where i was like we're doing a thing we're gonna have a thing this is what we do every week and then the best feeling to have a thing it gets so much it gets increasingly hard to have a thing it's're going to have a thing. This is what we do every week. And then the best feeling to have a thing. It gets so much. It gets increasingly hard to have a thing. It's so hard to have a thing. I used to have a lot of things.

I don't. I know. Where are things? Oh, I would love a thing. Yeah. Mimi's is funny to me because it's got to be a chain. I've only been to that one, but it's a chain. It's a chain.

It's a dwindling chain. They're disappearing slowly. It's French, right? Yeah. Ish. If you were to call it something, there's crepes on the menu and stuff, right? It's a big menu, though. So yeah, it is French. Or is it more of a

New Orleans-y? It's kind of just a regular... I'm trying to think of what a good cop is. Re-Americanized French. Yeah, when I first went there, I thought it would just be like Marie Callender's Or something like that And then there's just There was more international flair

Has a little Epcot to it It's a little It's like Epcot Marie Callender's Yeah That's a good description Yeah Which and those are all gone too right Or at least here they are

Mostly yeah Because there was that beautiful Marie Callender's down on Wilshire Oh damn The campuses were always very nice Very like Yeah Homey and

Lighting Like fixtures in there Yeah The campuses were always very nice, very homey. The lighting fixtures in there. That's all we want, really, is just lamps, nice chairs. It doesn't take much. This very traditional kind of restaurant. I don't know. Now everything's sort of like flipped houses. Everything looks like Property Brothers house or something. It's boring.

The tafferization of these places, I will say, despite loving John Taffer. Love the man. Of course. Any belief he has, I'm on board. Even the ones he won't share publicly. But yeah, the idea that his weird lighting the booze bottles from underneath and it all looks like

standard, like less good than a Taco Bell inside. Yeah, like, I don't think so. You know what's happening now? We've been talking about it on the Sloppy Boys podcast because I'm always trying to figure out like, what's the drink of the summer? What are drink trends or whatever? And I read a bunch of articles about restaurant wise there's a thing in new york speaking of the the

mimi's and the marie calendars and stuff um have you had a dirty dirty shirley it's like a shirley oh this is right up my alley oh yeah you into it because i'm a big i like a good drink that has like a lot of colors in it and as a child child, I was obsessed with the Shirley Temple though. So a couple of years ago when I realized you could do that. Yeah. It was amazing. You're allowed. I didn't know.

I didn't know. You can defile this little girl's name? I turned, that's not, it wasn't exciting to me. The drink itself with a little bit of a buzz is, you know, I turned 33 and realized, wow, we could have a party here. But you still kept it a little bit of a buzz. Yeah, well, you don't want to have too much. You don't have too much.

It's a lot of grenadine in there. Well, you know, it's having a huge moment right now in New York. And the New York Times wrote an article that was like, is this the drink of the summer? And somebody's theory about it was that post-COVID, a lot of people in their 20s left the cities during covid and now they're back with some of the suburban it's almost like an ironic love of the suburbs has come back to cities with them so there's this new trend in restaurants being like

you're in brooklyn at a hip hip restaurant but there's a blooming onion on the menu and there's kind of like the lamps like tiffany tiffany lamps tiffany yeah and kind of like the uncle mo's family feed bag like a bunch of crap on the walls and baskets of mozzarella sticks coming or is is coming back with a little ironic wink to it okay okay a high price tag yeah yeah that's great uh i mean if could, the only thing you want to change really is like to get that food a little better. Better food, right. Because we love the vibe of these places, but if you actually go back, maybe food's not so quality. Yeah.

I think something that I love about this restaurant is that it is a very, you can take your parents there and they love it, but you can love it too. Because places like that can be a swing and a miss. For sure. It's a safe, oh, I bring, I've always brought my parents there. And then Lowry's prime rib in Beverly Hills is the same owners.

So they have the same prime rib. I bring my parents to both of those places. My father-in-law is Scottish. He's from Glasgow. And we brought him to tam o'shanter and at first he was sort of like this is making fun of me i don't know and then he warmed up to it and now it's like every father's day it's a go-to in fact one father's day in the booth uh the next table uh uh cameron crow whoa with his two sons i think

he's divorced and it was kind of having a sweet Father's Day thing with just the two boys. And it was like two boys lost in their phones, and he was like, what are you guys going to get? I think I'm going to get prime rib. It was a very cute dad moment. Oh, geez. Wow. It's a very safe bet. And then with the parents, it always works, because you go, oh, you know, Walt Disney ain't here.

And they go, whoa, well, how about that? You got something to talk about. There's the legend strumming through it. I mean, okay, so like vibe-wise, just to keep saying, because like wonderful on the outside, really distinct architecture, which, by the way, here's another thing about it. 100 years, 100 years this year, the oldest. 100 years this month.

It is really this month. June 26, 1922. What? Wow. Shortly after this episode or around the release of this episode. Congratulations. And continuously run the entire time. It obviously changes because it's been 100 years.

Look, people die. It's what happened. But it hasn't. And it's shifted. Now it's under the hundred years look people die it's what happened but it hasn't like and it's shifted now it's under the ownership of lowry's but lowry's like completely like i believe the current ceo of lowry's is the great grandson of the founder yeah of one of the founders of it so there's a real through line in ownership which i think is extremely rare yeah well it's even more like there's so many connections that founded by lawrence frank the lowry in question i guess that was his nickname he's lowry i didn't figure that out

and then the other founder walter vandekamp together yeah they they the two of them together also founded vandekamp's holland dutch bakeries which went bankrupt in 1990. Then the brand was purchased by a group called Pinnacle Foods that owns Duncan Hines, Mrs. Butterworth, Birdseye, Hungry Man, Log Cabin, Maple Syrup, and Ralph's uses the Vandekamp name on their bread. So the Pinnacle Foods factory, the only place you'd rather be than sitting in a car drinking a cake shake. Sure. Let me lose. factory the only place you'd rather be than sitting in a car drinking a cake shake sure look i bought some van at vanicamp half the price of ura wheat bread also tastes like garbage

the most plain food you've ever had that's like just a puffy pillow yeah it has a little uh windmill on it right yeah it has a little windmill and they're the bakery i think is still uh around this area and there was a they also owned coffee shops and i think it's in arcadia there was it's it became a denny's but it was very like 60s mod roof with a big windmill on top i don't know if it's gone now but they were trying to save the windmill but i remember that jumping out at me before like one of those clearly old style architecture um but that what i was saying about the the little like a little like old world village nature of it that this was just this was just dirt roads at the time now of course fully populated and a mean meets across the street uh but it was essentially in the not the middle of nowhere but like not fully, I don't know,

it's its own odd little hut there. Right. It must have been more of like a destination restaurant back then when it wasn't really a neighborhood. People were coming up from downtown or something. Yeah. I think so. There's letters on the wall you can look at of them trying to drum up business with people

working downtown and it's just a hop, skip and a jump. If you take Glendale Boulevard, like predates the freeways damn yeah so super old school i think the closest thing previously was griffith park because they used to sell boxed lunches for people who would then go picnic at griffith park yeah yeah um and it's well and it ties into all that like old i feel like it's it's it's catering to studios around there that used to be there so like wait i there's a list of like silent movie stars who you would uh find around those parts oh yeah oh there you go not uncommon to spot mary pickford the keystone cops you'll be having lunch with the keystone character oh imagine the hijinks they'd get up just passing ketchup to each other. Tom Mix in his leather chaps.

Or Fatty Arbuckle in his suit and tie. Oh, my. You're dining with fat. So now when it's all of us, when it's all the... We're the new generation. Today's top podcasters. Yeah. We're the new Fatty Arbuckles, man.

We're the new fatties top podcasters yeah we're the new fatty armbuggles man we're the new fatties the new keystone cops that's what the birthday boys felt like I don't know how many keystone cops there were I wish they had as many only six you mean

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Visit PCFinancial.ca for details for details values for illustrative purposes only i've seen it the the on glendale boulevard in echo park the the uh public storage by jack in the box has a little plaque that says keystone cops shorts were shot here because it was owned by it was mac senate studios there's still like a mac senate studio in uh in los feliz but the the public storage was like a whole big studio i think i think so yeah that there's kind of weird shaped building yeah behind uh some bars uh and like down the street from middle school in that area and that's the max senate studios building and um the yeah so i mean walt the what is now gelson's on on hyperion was disney the studios studios where they made snow white where they made snow white to burbank after that so up and did they only make snow white or was it a few

more i think maybe of the maybe they were maybe some of Pinocchio or Fantasia. They made just the long nose for Pinocchio. They animated the nose and then they said, we gotta move. That's all we got. I think they would, even after the move to Burbank, which was like 1940, he was still a regular at the Tam O'Shanter. And what was then Wed is now Walt Disney Imagineering is also kind of a straight shot to the Tam O'Shanter. Right. And what was then Wed is now Walt Disney Imagineering

is also kind of a straight shot to the Tam O'Shanter. Oh, cool. Because I knew, yeah, I think the Tam O'Shanter, like the architecture is just based on being like a Scottish farmhouse or something, but there's rumors that it's like, oh, the early sketches for Snow White's cottage were like based on this. And then nearby there's those like snow white cottages yeah right around the corner from the old studios used to live in one of those

i don't know if it was one of them because the actual there's like eight of them but it was it was they're in that style like he was definitely right there yeah. I looked it up and it was like, those weren't built by Disney, but those were a lot of the people that worked like animators that worked at, at the studio. That's now Gelson's did live in those cottages as like worker apartments and stuff like that. The idea that he wanted his little, his little minions to live in little cottages,

like drawers. It's such a funny little heavy little minions to live in little cottages like dwarves it's such a funny little happy little man oh um eva anderson was telling me you know uh walt had like the nine old men yes the main like the great animators who made made the golden age happen um eva goes to a lot of estate sales and she went to one one of the house of the estate of one of the nine old men after he passed away. Really? Wow.

And he had a whole Playboy room, every Playboy magazine ever, like in order. Wow. A lot of shelves wrapped all around the room. In the date that they, wow. Yeah. Isn't that wild? The date that they came out? Geez.

Did he have like like other memorabilia I guess he probably did he had just only the playboys and no other belongings he didn't know furniture had no need for anything else no food I mean he kept all this sperm you know

he was like Steve Jobs cutting his wardrobe down to just a black turtleneck this guy cut all his entertainment down to just Playboys. He just wanted to read like Gore Vidal stories and look at naked ladies. I do love like an old guy with a white mustache and a cardigan.

And you know, Playboy is kind of wholesome, so it makes sense for like an animator to be looking at a softcore magazine well into the like 80s or whatever 90s it's just to study the human form that's my job what i have to do i have to keep up on the trends speaking of the uh speaking of of the nine old men this is so among the disney touches that you will find when you go in there the big ones are in the lobby and there is a very loving drawing of lawrence frank the owner or the the founder

and this is done by john hench who's one of the one of the nine old men and one of the great like disney imagineering figures as well uh this is from 58 and it is lawrence frank this guy we don't know otherwise dressed in traditional scottish garb and the characters we don't know otherwise, dressed in traditional Scottish garb. And the characters, I don't think the characters look at Walt this way. No. They are in love with this man. It's Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Goofy, all just with the most admiration you could ever have. And then Tinkerbell is blessing him, giving him a little touch of magic.

I mean, this is like like has there ever been a more loving thank you thank you for the lowry's family of restaurants thank you for the seasoned salt the the other picture next to it also very loving and so this was from walt disney studios uh From Walt Disney Studios a few decades later, I think for his 75th birthday. I got this too. Yes. So these are the owners at the time, further down the Frank family line. And so it's the owners at the time, also in traditional Scottish garb, and they are handing a big platter of beef to an awaiting table of six very hungry Mickeys.

Yes, a full multiverse of Mickeys. From every era. So there's some, I mean, it's nice to see the harmony here where the ones that have pupils are sitting with the ones that are just pupils, which are sitting with the ones with wedges taken out of their eyes. They can all, the Mickeys find a way to get a they all agree on big plates of very rare beef it's funny those

looking at those mickeys for years i always think about how weird is that mickey it's not like just the drawing updated but they changed the character where he was like a little stinker originally he was like a bug's bunny and he was getting into shit and then they kind of decided like then he was just like i'm a sweet guy you know like it was like if he's the flagship character he has to just be perfect kind of and yeah lost his bart simpson edge they gave it like to donald they gave some of that to donald so they like separated mickey's personality out and left him with nothing because what does he really have It's like Pluto's having the fun

And Mickey's like What's going on They've made him in the new cartoons They've given him like Now he's like insanely neurotic Like he's really stressed out All the time And it is funny

The new shorts are really funny Yeah He's back to crazy a little bit Is this like on Disney XD Or where am I It's on Disney Plus Probably on Disney Channel Yeah But they're really funny And he's like He's really out of his mind Is this like on Disney XD? It's on Disney Plus, probably on Disney Channel. Yeah.

But they're really funny and he's really out of his mind. But in a different way. He's not as much a stinker and he's much more stressed. The little triangles out of the eyes almost indicate. Is he like high or just super medicated? No, he's medicated. Those indicate like, yeah, something might have been up with him. It's like a Judy Garland situation.

Yeah, back then, even like Astrid. It's like a Judy Garland situation. Yeah. Back then, even like, they kept them pilled up for money. They kept, made them work. Oh, I'm such a,

such a daze. All over the calendar. Medicine back then just had a little bit of speed in it, no matter what you were taking. Yeah. Even in Toontown. Yeah. Even in Toontown.

They should update that with our favorite polo shirt, like early nineties, late eighties, Mickey. They should add characters to that drawing. They should update that with our favorite polo shirt, like early 90s, late 80s Mickey. They should add characters to that drawing. They should draw over the work, the famous drawing. Wait, what's your favorite polo shirt? Mickey when he's wearing like kind of just like a yellow polo and kind of like blue slacks. Like a blazer with rolled up sleeves.

Yeah, yeah, that's good Mickey. Like 80s, 90s, lewd, like lewd, quaaludes Mickey. Yeah, yeah. Mickey like stumbling to his car, Wolf of Wall Street. Like 80s 90s Lude Like Lude Quaaludes Mickey Yeah yeah He like stumbling To his car Wolf of Wall Street Yeah Wolf of Wall Street

Mickey Losing his limbs Well I mean Mainly I look at this And go okay So they gave him Disney gave him Something in the 50s

And they did something For the 75th Where's Disney at They forgot Tam They aren't giving them any presents these days. Yeah,

well, Chapek probably, it's out. He cut it. Yeah, they were working on it. He doesn't want to go there. He's trying to put it out.

$30 piece of art. I heard he's trying to put, he's trying to put them on a business, I heard. To build a new, building a mini park on top of,

or a luxury hotel. Yeah, yeah. It's a hotel with four rooms. Yeah, yeah. So long, Tam. A number of years ago, they did run for the fan club, for D23. You could schedule like a day-long tour where you would tour the lot and some of the archives.

And then the day would end with a three-course meal at the Tam O'Shanter. Wow, wow. Very nice. Yeah. and then the day would end with a three-course meal at the tam o'shanter wow wow very nice um which by the way let's maybe we should get into this aspect of it too the very famous thing about it which is that not only a place that walt disney liked to go but where he had his special table as referred to in the top of the show table 31 that's walt's table there is a plaque on the table commemorating that he and the imagineers it was uh i don't know if it elaborates this is a place they went earliest language in parentheses they've been here more more than once can't promise more than three times it's sort of it is the table that you it's not

like the best table in the house but it is the table of a regular where it's sort of nestled in a corner by the fireplace you're kind of facing out i feel like it's maybe a booth on one side and chairs on the other or something like that where i think that's right against the wall it's a good place to like eat by yourself almost or or have a meeting and um yeah i always feel like when you're there you see people there's always someone sitting in that table and the people walking past whisper and say that's waltz yes and i i always do it yeah of course you have to uh when i went there yesterday i was poking around i was taking pictures i was seeing if there's anything scratched in the table

that would read as a as a photograph and as i was being that guy there was nobody there at them i wasn't like uh pushing people's plates out of the way i shoved them off the table but somebody at a table right next to it then like yeah like like there was a family dinner and there was a mom who like so are you an imagineer or do you well i know i just like this stuff i do do a podcast. Oh, okay, great. What's your favorite part? So I got, I suddenly started this conversation about theme parks just by poking around there and somebody at the table was an Imagineer.

Wow. Uh-huh. I don't want to say anymore that I, or at least like a contractor who's working there at the time. But yeah, hey, I got a little bit of that Tinkerbell Imagine bit of that tinkerbell somebody who shook off pixie dust from the dream factory that day wow okay did they draw you like a sketch of you in the tam or uh he took a picture of me that's plenty okay um i guess yeah god i missed out i should have you should have gotten some do more work for For free, yeah. Yeah. I only saw this on one blog, but I kind of believe it. They mentioned, well, that is referred to, you know, it's got the plaque on it and they

say, oh, it's Disney's table, that he preferred to sit at the bar. He would sit at the bar with Lawrence. Like he would, you know, she was a fat with the owner. Yeah. So, and I believe that that i also prefer the bar i'm a big fan of the bar yeah it's great because you can just walk in and sit down and a lot of times it's not terribly busy and you can order the full menu and then even if you are getting like the prime rib can come out real fast because it's already

cooked and they're just like scooping potatoes and yeah so it's like i've like popped in there in fact i was there like for like a bar night where like friend mike hanford was in town and he was like hey come meet up at the bar and it was like friends hanging around a bar and i got a little hungry and it was like late later on in the night and i just like sat there and was like i don't have a fucking tamar shanter cut and i just sat there and ate like a 60 dinner while like my friends were behind me talking and it was like amazing to just how fast it came out and it was treated like it's bar food and it's like amazing you gotta recall that yeah you like hunched over you have to turn your back to everybody yes i did but what better food to do it for but then hey we gotta talk about next

worst fucking thing in the world next morning test positive for covid i have to text all my friends i was waiting for you to bring it up i didn't want to be the one to bring it up it was it was so shitty because it was like this was like last summer when it was still you know uh new like i felt so fucking scared that i maybe had passed it along to other people that's so much worse than getting it is like knowing the people with children maybe had got it from me and then i were very thought you made it well you did very quick rounds of it you seem to get the get the news out quickly i i had to get that i mean i tweeted like some people are like embarrassed but i tweeted i have covid just so that i could sleep soundly because i felt so bad because i took my mask off to eat my prime rib and then was talking to people right but it

did make me feel better though because i was like wait okay now where was i in relation to him that whole while he was he did have his back turned eating that prime rib for a lot of it so he's breathing at the bartender yeah so they got completely the rib like absorbed that is all the yeah just me and the rib went down that night yeah it can get a little noisy so when they said uh for your side do you want cream spinach cream corn or covet 19 you just said i'm the last one i also recall i i think i had the thought because i was it was there weren't a lot of indoor things going on at the time and i remember having the thought like just calm down look maybe somebody in there will have it but

it's not going to be like the you walk in and the first person that you talk to has it and then the next morning when you say i was like that he was the very first person and i also and i fucking felt like shit because i deserved it because it was this was august uh of last year so it was like we had just got i had just got my shots and then the shots kicked in. So I was kind of like, oh, I think I'm immune. So, and it was like during the two weeks in LA when things were sort of opening back up before Delta really hit. And so I had had a weekend. It was like, oh, Hanford's in town from New York.

So I rode the mechanical bull at the Saddle Ranch? The West Hollywood Saddle Ranch? The West Hollywood Saddle Ranch. And I went to a Dodger game, and then I came to the Tam O'Shanter. So it was like, yeah, I'm gonna get it. Oh, you got it from Saddle Ranch. I got it from Saddle Ranch. I was wearing a mask there, but they snuck through.

Yeah, it's Saddle Ranch. It's strong. Yeah, they have good COVIDs there. You got it from the vibe of Saddle Ranch. Yeah. Yeah, they hand it out of the door. Wait, that's a ride, though. That's something we can... Oh, that is a ride.

I'm not dying to do that. Oh, let's go to Saddle Ranch. Well, you got to ride. The Sloppy Boys all rode it, and you remember once it starts, you're like, oh, the whole point of this thing is for there to be girls on it,

and it's like, hey, it looks like she's having sex. Oh, right, right. So the guy who's doing it is making making you kind of like hump slowly back and somebody controlling it there's a dude controlling oh that's weird it's very weird you get like you like look you can lock eyes with him and he's like oh no i kind of get off on it so it's good but you guys in public yeah you get voyeurism yeah oh it was fantastic we did it as a little competition and uh and jeff won hanford kept getting tossed off that real fast okay but it was fun well we have to do it then i guess yeah that's a ride they had the bowl they got rid of

it at city walk they got rid of a whole saddle ranch which was up at city walk so what's there now nothing a dirt lot i think yeah nothing they replaced it with nothing it's just a or it's just a field needed some dirt up there that's good and it used to be what what's the name of the guy you know the character wheel the wagon oh yeah you know i'm talking about it's like a wagon like hp wagon wheels something like i mean that seemed like the best yeah i can't whatever it was we love is at some point too whatever we love is one of our top 10 restaurants we can't think of what it is well let me see here's what i remember about that space and then the saddle ranch still had it is that it was one of those restaurants that is like

a i said the word campus about three counters and i think i mean it that i love the restaurant where you keep bumping into room after room after room and the rooms are all a little different than each other and you go like and this is here too? And there's a big, like, there's a wedding reception in one, but then just a bunch of people eating in one, and it's all, it feels like a little adventure as you bump around. And I think that's something that Tam O'Shanter has

that restaurants have increasingly let, just as like new restaurant physical footprints are never going to be as big as that place that opened in the 20s. Yes. If John Taffer was walking through, he'd go, why is this room different than the other room? Like it's like people don't like that anymore. And there's totally different vibes. Yeah.

Room to room. It's like quiet, like old couples having dinner. And then my first time ever there, which is probably why I charmed me so much, just happened to be, I sat in the bar and it was a Burns night, like a Burns dinner, which is like an annual thing. That's the poet who it's named. Yeah. The poet that wrote the,

the, the Tam O'Shanter poem, but he also wrote like the lyrics for old Lang Syne and all kinds of stuff. And he's like the poet laureate of Scotland. There's a night every year in January in pubs where people like get together and recite his poetry and get really drunk and there's a lot of like interactive stuff you do so i was in the bar and it was just like all these like drunk old people get it was so charming because it was like it was the actual people and it was their real culture it wasn't a bunch of me's kind of like

horning in on it but they would like stand like like hit like a beer stein on a table to get people's attention then stand up and like say a line of a poem and then everyone would drink to it and there was like interactive sort of like call and response stuff going on and i was like is it like this every night this is fucking cool and it was one night a year i i ended up there once where like an irish like folk rock band was like all right thank you for coming we're going to record our ep right now a lot of pressure for you and i'm there eating uh i think i was uh doing a bar crawl throughout whatever because there's a lot of dive bars there's a lot of quaint bars in that area.

And I think I ordered an Irish coffee and then the table side hot fudge sundae. A tamo shaker. If you listen closely to that EP, you can hear the fudge. You can hear the C.C. McGill. Then you can keep hearing

more. More fudge. I'll tell you when I'm done. Easy. McGill. Then you can keep hearing more. More fudge. More fudge. I'll tell you when I'm done. Easy on the nuts. I don't need that many nuts. More fudge. You're not getting a tip. You know what's a fun thing they might not do anymore is in the bar is the sandwich counter.

Is that, did that go the way of COVID? That's a COVID victim. Sandwich and ale. Sandwich and ale. Yeah, I love that. Was that what it was called? All the good meats like carved onto a sandwich and then you walk over to a funny little counter that had like this like peanut coleslaw and it's like really kind of gross usually yeah i like that

peanut coleslaw though i guess i don't mind if it's gone back you can get all the same stuff now but it's back in the kitchen right maybe better Maybe better, maybe more sanitary back there. But you get dollops of that horseradish, which is crazy. That packs a punch. Yeah. That's like- Wow, wow.

Housemade horseradish. Damn. Real spicy. Yeah. You feel like you snorted it, even if you just took a tiny bite. They give you the spicy stuff, and then they give you the creamy stuff,

and they say, hey, you can customize by mixing them together To your appropriate level Like Walt's chili cans Right which companies What were the chili companies Gebhard's and Denison's I don't know if Gebhard's still in business

I think I had Denison's like in the Boy Scouts I feel like I have a picture of Denison's Do you know do we know what Walt Ordered here because They don't have chili on the menu they have like old-timey stuff like stew and or some i mean uh french onion soup and stuff yeah but like the cocktail i've had the table 31 cocktail and and it's it's like um rye elderflower liqueur and maybe like apple brandy or something like that. A strong apple.

I love that drink for whatever reason. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's in any, like, like that's all my favorite stuff is like reddish whiskey drinks. And that's a nice,

that's a, that's a beautiful orange. It's a well balanced, like real crisp, nice drink. I had it once and I, I loved it. And I was like,

wait, I feel like Walt. I was wondering if i i loved it and i was like wait i feel like walt i was wondering if he really drank and i was like he seems like he would be like a teetotaler to me like uh and i was like does walt disney drink and i looked it up and it's and he did drink and his go-to drink was a like a scotch breeze scotch mist scotch mist it's black and white scotch crushed ice and a twist of lemon so so really just a scotch on the rocks just scotch on the rocks yeah do you know like did he get tanked on those is there any stories of him getting kind of loose i think he got well we've read the big thing is that he would go he uh he got an injury playing polo we did a whole episode on our patreon called

walt's polo injury in which we discovered that he was in two polo games with people who died in the game jesus two men were murdered by horses in front of walt disney brother was like stop playing this game does that happen in polo is that a part of polo i i mean it seemed i guess it's generally dangerous but i don't you have to that percentage because how many could he possibly play did he play more than a hundred games because it was just one game two percent involved death they called him the angel of death so after his polo games he still kept playing but then he would but then he had a horrible injury and fell off a horse didn't die but uh the horrible injury so then for years he had a nurse who would give him a massage while he got super drunk in a little side room at the end of the day called his laughing place like in splash

mountain i'm gonna go to my laughing place and get a massage and a scotch yes that makes sense i'm so curious about the guy because he's so weird it's like i when i moved to los feliz i read that the bio like the big thick biography on him and because i wanted to like walk around kingswell and vermont and like see all of the spots oh yeah yeah that i was trying to remember it all today that kingswell is where there was a house where he first lived it was his uncle's house and he lived with his brother and it's where he made the first shorts the alice shorts yeah so that's there but then like the fancier place that he leveled up to was in that neck of the woods yeah and then like up like uh in in like the hills of los feliz is like his like mansion first mansion he mansioned before he went to like holmby hills when he had like a giant estate right but like there's a key shop or like a copy shop uh shop off of vermont that has a big

mural because it was his first first yeah that studio it was first office so the first like non-house where he made right so because he moved like right across the street from his uncle and then rented a little house and he could like walk to work but he's a fascinating dude because he's uh there's a certain creepiness like you know his uh it's like his staff went on on strike at one point and he just like never got over it and oh yeah yeah he hates he hated unions yeah i mean the undercurrent of his early life seems like there was a lot of hard times and a lot of sadness. Yeah.

And then he gets older and he starts to get successful, but then he's haunted by chronic injury from a insane polo fixation. Yeah, that dimension of it that he was in horrible pain for, what, 30 more years and then died pretty like quickly and violently it

seems like that cancer shot through him smoked like a chimney probably and seems like he kept long hours yeah and the smoking probably helped to keep him alert you know walt had all the same bad opinions that like a john taffer might have you know but his life is interesting and it's full of crazy shit yeah yeah um no it's a weird we yeah we like to think we're one of the only podcasts about this stuff that isn't just like and then an angel named walt disney came to earth i mean that's why i like thinking both things at the same time is it's like it's uh you know there's like disney people that are just like wow mickey and then there's uh and then there's and then there's people that are like oh fucking corporate bullshit man fuck all disney is like i think both can be true at once and i like thinking about wall as

like i do think those movies are has have a magic to them and the disney world charms me in a way that's magical and then at the same time i can walk around disneyland and kind of see the dark side of it and be kind of grossed out by some of the people watching and stuff and i like thinking about both at once so i like thinking of walt like making an amazing fairy tale movie but then getting drunk during his massage in his laughing room or whatever like what makes that weird guy tick because he's like you could tell by the way some of those nine old men and stuff you would think that they'd be really close with them but they weren't like they'll tell stories of their best memories of walt and it's

like you know after i made sleeping beauty he patted me on the back and said good job and i think of that all the time and you're like oh i don't know that he was like i don't think he was very warmest the most grandpa i think the hugger yeah he was because i think his persona on tv was like i'm a big cuddly teddy bear hello welcome to me gives me some money for my movies and theme park but then i yeah like the sherman brothers i think the last time they saw him before he died they were just like he actually gave them a solid compliment and they were like, something's wrong. They like knew something. We got to find a new gig.

Great job, fellas. And then he closed the door and they were like, he's going to die. Man, have you seen that? Have you seen that Sherman Brothers movie? The documentary? Yeah. And then like,

whenever they've been estranged for so long and they see each other in the red carpet and one is still kind of like yeah no it never they never got it because they one of them has passed away yeah uh but no i don't think they ever they never got along really well i think at least one of them seem to allude and it's not a dissimilar way from disney of like having seen some things in the war yeah yes that was that's the one there's one who's a goofball and one who's a war vet who was in the shit and is fucked up forever yeah yeah and that's i think i mean he would drink with the sherman bro like there's the anecdote about like him inviting the

sherman brothers to his office and there's a piano oh yeah yeah he's played the song and they know to play feed the birds it's him him wanting him wanting to hear feed the birds the saddest song from mary poppins and i think that is a very interesting anecdote it is also one of the most heartbreaking things i've ever heard yeah walt wanted to wallow in his sadness so he wanted us to play live one of the saddest songs. But if he... Oh, go ahead. Oh, I was going to say that one of the...

I briefly lived about a half mile from the Tambo Shanter. Yes. And the most... I think the place that the closest I ever came to having a haunt.

Yeah. And I certainly did dream there a lot because I was very depressed at the time. So happy time, you know, there's even happy moments. Did you make any brilliant feature films?

I know. Delible characters? I just got drunk and did improv. Many, like 30 characters a show. Yeah. Any number of little bits in streaming things that are now lost to the ages. Yeah, that are off of the internet.

That are onto beat-up, decaying, Lucy hard drives in people's garages. Did you become, or are any of you, VIP members? Lowry's group? Oh, yeah. Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got the gold card. I looked at my history before recording today because your whole history is recorded if you go online. It'll tell you what days you ate there. Wow, the greatest now the greatest story of how many points you accrued that day i love pulling out that card i feel like a big shot and it does sometimes it's like a pretty you know like it's a crapshoot sometimes like oh dessert was free or it's 10 off i've been there with people where it's like this whole fucking meal was free like yeah you're gonna rack up major point yeah

this is i think the doughboys maybe turned me on to this fact that if you that it's a very reasonable will pay itself back vip program yeah so glad i did it because yeah if you go just for you know for big celebrations or whatever but you went a little further correct oh yes i've bragged to you about how i my wedding was have you ever been to the la river center now no cypress park kind of near the um home depot like on the other side of dodger stadium um on the other side of the river from dodger stadium and it's now like it's this weird place that you can have weddings at but it's sort of just um it feels like it's owned by the city government or something and it's just like this kind of old event space charming outdoor kind of spanish uh courtyard but then a little a little bit dingy

and a little bit dated and when me and jessica were touring wedding venues we were like charmed by the place and then we found out the history of it is um it was lowry's uh like the same lowry's uh and you know like they got real big after the seasoned salt uh oh yes this might be that if her listeners not in los angeles might be where you've heard the name lowry because that's a product nationwide correct a lot of people put it on eggs i was watching the kardashians and chris kardashian was like you can't have eggs without lowry's seasoned salt and then Dutton was saying like oh growing up I always had this on my eggs wow

prime rib we always had seasoned pepper in the house yeah it's a couple brands of it but Lowry's being one of them I'm sure I love their logo just that like that calming big thick swirly L it feels so like 70s 80s you would know the designer.

It's, like, one of those guys. Oh, really? Yeah. Like, Saul Bass? Is that a designer? What? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, now I don't remember what the Saul Bass stuff is,

but, yeah, for sure, yeah. So, Lowry's Prime Rib Restaurant is similarly, like, in the way that Tam O'Shanter is theme-y. Their hook is that they roll around these big brass carts to cut your prime rib from, and so they cut it right in front of you. And then when they came out with this season salt, that was huge, and then the corporation got really big.

So in, like, the early 70s, right after, like, when did Walt die? Late 60s? 66. And he was, like, midway through planning through planning epcot right he thought it was going to be its actual city or something that's what it was at the ti yeah and then they they bought that florida property right before he died i think in the sort of same way that he would have been inspired by the world's fair and stuff the lowry's people tried to open up like an amusement park

type vibe not with not with rides but a cultural center that is now the la river center where i got married it was it was the lowry's california center wow it was their corporate offices for the salt and then also there was um it was like you would buy a day pass and walk around and there was a mexican restaurant and a chinese restaurant and lowry's prime rib and it just went out of business right away like they thought it was gonna be like the epcot of food whoa and it didn't work i'd love to find photos of that that must have been it's cool i i uh i i there are some online because i was looking at it when i was like planning my wedding and it's like their original promotional postcards and stuff are like people sit very much like the

way that california was sold to the midwest is like come out to the rose bowl and eat an orange and all this shit it was like a part of the like look at dining alfresco in in la wow anyway lowry's has a deal still has a deal with the la river center and so that they cater weddings so the food at my reception was Lowry's prime rib. The carts that you push. Oh, that stuff's happening. All that shit. They did the spinning salad bowl.

They did all the shit. It was so fun and it was great wedding food. But that way I signed up for a Lowry's card right before my wedding. So you would normally have to accrue points. I entered as a platinum guy because I spent like thousands of dollars in one night.

So I was eaten free at the Tamo Shanter for like years after that. Wow. That's amazing. Wow. What a good deal. What a way to actually get value out of a wedding, which is nothing but like a waste of money.

Nothing but a waste of money. It's wonderful. But you know what I mean. My wedding was a shame. Yeah, yeah. It's a sham. a waste of money. It's a wonderful thing. But you know what I mean. My wedding was a failure. Yeah, yeah. It's a sham. Love isn't real. We get it, Scott.

You're so cynical, Scott. I did the same thing with like... I had a lot of family staying at the Westin. So I signed up for like Starwood Points or whatever. I was never a points guy.

And I got a bunch of free hotels off that too. So a wedding could be a money-making venture. Wow. I encourage everyone to have nuptials. The gear is just turning in Mike's head because he's great at gaming these kind of... too so you a wedding could be a money-making adventure i know one of the parts of being a member i think for your birthday and for your anniversary um i think now your anniversary of

joining of joining yeah uh Not your shit marriage anniversary. Fraud money scheme. Yeah. I think it's changed where now when you go, if that is on your card, they'll just give you a bottle that says Tam O'Shanter of seasoning salt. For a while, they would mail you a personalized seasoned pepper or seasoned salt. And so, I have a bunch just on my desk yeah and i mean i used one or two of them but it's it's sort of like hilariously not like

you picture like it's it's inscribed in gold but it's just kind of like a piece of paper printed out you see the print marks on it scott ger gardner it's like a name tag for like a hotel seminar have you got the christmas uh ornaments no no maybe this is this might be for the platinum yeah i get the salt on my birthday and then for christmas they send you an ornament and one time it was like a little gold medal with like a ribbon like that would go around your neck and it said lowry's and then the the couple years ago it was a like a silver thing that was just shaped like a season salt like a fancy wow fake season salt treasured ornament there's not a higher level than you are probably i don't know i i just ceo i i've seen

the gold garden and i know mine says platinum but i mean maybe there's like a black card that's really thick yeah that it's just free yeah everything's free you can just snap and like a big rare cut of meat shows up you can get like 30 seconds you can get carolos to show up not christmas time not at christmas time i want to do sing south side johnny go sing feed the birds in the summer and they come see you love on the wrong side you know, the biggest cut of primary about the Tamar Shantor is the Prince Charlie cut, and it's like a big fat steak. And then, but over at the Beverly Hills Lowry's, they have the Diamond Jim Brady cut that I've been afraid to order. Diamond Jim Brady is a famous eater from New York like 100 years ago. Referenced on the Simpsonsons i think it's like sometimes they

call mayor quimby like diamond joe yes yes um i i looked him up when on the on the sloppy boys podcast we're talking about some cocktail that diamond jim brady ate but he was just a guy that would like he was just you know probably like a steel baron or something but he would go out to dinner in time square every night before seeing a Broadway show and would just eat so much food that he got famous. And then so, so that Lowry's like named their double cut. It's two Tam O'Shanter cuts. So I think you,

I think you get two bones. Wow. That's how fucking thick. That's wild. Wow. What's your favorite? Did you say your favorite steak? Oh yeah.

What's your food option when you, when you do it? I find it hard to not. I always get prime rib. I always just get the tamo shantar cut, and I get spinach. Once in a while, if they have a ribeye special where they're actually grilling a steak, I like a char-grilled steak, so I do that as a special. I love the devil's on horseback.

They don't always have them, but there's an appetizer that's like dates wrapped in bacon. Oh, yeah. Oh, cool. They're really good yeah yeah uh if you know if i could go back you something you asked a little while ago is what did walt eat i found one article that seemed to assert that he ate one of the stranger more specific scottish things on the menu which is the toad in the hole yes and the toad in the hole is it's all right let me read their description a scottish mix of filet mignon mushrooms onions and guinness gravy all served in a yorkshire pudding so that's like a little it is like a pastry it's a it's a meat pie it's very medieval uh it it is i've had it

and it's great and i would recommend to anyone that's like intimidated by just like having a giant piece of a cow on your plate it's it's a nicer meal because it's just like little pieces of of filet but um yeah it's like the like a pastry that you're cutting into but and it has gravy in it it's pretty good that's i couldn't tell if it would like wipe me out if that was gonna be like the heaviest thing ever but maybe it's small it's still heavy but it's not as heavy as you're you're at least getting less like protein yeah right there's vegetables and usually a side salad with it, too. They serve a toad in the hole at Universal. At the Wizarding World?

Yeah, one of the Wizarding Worlds. But it's a Yorkshire pudding with sausage, I think, is how I've seen it done before. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They make it more steak-oriented here, probably. I was wondering, because I had heard that they had a secret menu. And somebody said that there's an off-menu burger there that's this open-faced, and it has the Scotch rare bit.

And it's like an old-timey burger that they would have been serving when Walt was around. And I did the thing where I ordered it, and they were like, what? And I was humiliated, and they didn't have it. That's why you never want to makes me shudder you you can just order the burger and add on scotch rare bit to it well here is what i did i went because i wanted to do something i hadn't done and it was a little heavier so my meal last night by the way took the family took my son for the first time that was very exciting worked for a kid mac and cheese out lickety split that's

the most important thing to a parent dining out uh so so that was special to be there uh with him but then uh like okay i gotta go a little heavier here so i did a prime rib sandwich with that side of scotch rare bit which is like if you've ever had that that's sort of a it's a beer cheese yeah yeah with a little bit of kick like a cayenne pepper kick so that they do that there so pouring that on top of just like simple meat sandwich with that coleslaw and the pickles on the this might have been the best thing i've eaten in uh months and months the feeling of dripping that cheese all over like the extra what was the thing you were talking about a while ago oscar when you oscar the oh that felt like an oscar

yeah i've done that at morton's and crab and uh asparagus yeah that's how i'd fit that little extra cake i read a really good article um i'm uh i forget what website it was on but recently just explaining like the thrill of a steakhouse is like and because i love steakhouses so much and i know there's like better food i could have especially in la there's like so many good restaurants i feel kind of dumb for going back to musso and frank so much but i i read an article that encapsulated the thing of like the indulgence like the way that everything is served, like, like a la carte.

And just the idea of like, when you're eating a steak and you have a martini and you have like, Oh, rotten potatoes or cream spinach. It's like, you're not supposed to eat this stuff. You know, you're not supposed to eat this beef in this amount.

Like doctors are like, yeah, have a steak, the size of a deck of cards. You can absolutely have a steak, but it's like when you, like if you're martini, you're just like, that's like gin. You know, it's like straight to the dome and steak and stuff. And that there's like, you know,

that you're like the self-destructive nature of eating a meal like that does make you feel good. So it has to be a special occasion. And if you go there on a Friday or on a birthday or something, you're like, yeah, take this body. I'm going to dip my roast beef sandwich into the into the rare bit and eat it and that is like yeah it's like not meant to be part of your uh of your normal diet but it makes you feel like you're like cutting loose and indulging in a weird way and hing and it's

how much physical space and if you're a table if you're in a little table like waltz table and like it's all overtaken by, here's lots of little side dishes, giant cuts of meat. Like it is so, yeah, I don't know, next level,

kingly. And Walt would have it every night. Chili all day, mashed steaks all night. Yeah. I do like the burger. I usually get the burger when I go there if I'm eating at the bar.

They have a chicken sandwich now, too. They have like a fried chicken sandwich with like coleslaw on top. I think they added a bunch of stuff. It's very solid. It's very solid. That's what I add. The listeners know this,

but you haven't heard this, I don't think, Tim, that I, very early pandemic i were super craving like the places that we miss going like this uh so we did take out with a takeout cocktail a maple old-fashioned from tam o'shanter i did that crispy chicken sandwich just driving over there felt nice and seeing that exterior in that all in the in the thick of it uh a little shot of that storybook village uh but then also sad that it's boarded up and no don't come anywhere close but it was

very nice like comfort food to have felt great and like chilling out a little bit because before the big crazy month i had ahead of me because i was gonna have a baby probably in a month and instead aaron's water broke right then and there and i had half of that old-fashioned and thank god i was drinking slow because then i had to go do the most difficult thing ever and drive her you know so oh my god so be responsible for my family uh so but now i'm like oh now and we kept that bottle yes and my parents got engaged at the beverly hills lowry's really so it's so part of the family yes it's why i'm around it's why my not why my son's around wait no i'm sure you had a couple old fashions that night the fact that i made the fact that i didn't get too drunk off the old fashion and crashed the car is why he's around

um i forget that you're from la right the valley yeah yeah where uh woodland hills i love it um was lowry's like a part and if your parents got engaged there like was that a is that was that a part of your childhood or is that a thing no actually no and nor was tam o'shaughnessy i feel like a real late comer i guess it's kind of far from woodland hills but i um did you ever go to chasen's was that around when you were here i know the name but i it's like a place that a lot of like another old school old school it's gone now and i never got to go but um i just wonder with lowry's they have a funny hook that you go there and while you're waiting for this delicious prime rib they have free meatballs in the lobby and terrible they're like costco they're like costco meatballs and and potato chips that are pretty good.

They're like natural cut potato chips. But all these people who are about to have an amazing dinner are just eating these toothpick meatballs in the lobby. It's so weird. It's like a neighborhood bar that just has a crock pot

with something going in it. Yeah. And if it were a dive bar, you would appreciate it, but you're like, why would I waste any stomach space on this? I need as much as I can possibly get. Yeah.

I have another Walt story. Oh, yeah, yeah, great. This was on the same KCET article. And then there was Biff's, one of the early coffee shop chains, along with the still extant Denny's that sprung up across California after the World War II boom. According to his daughter, Walt believed the cooks at Biff's, which featured the then novel exhibition cooking

in which the chef and grill were fully visible to the diners, quote, did potatoes right? And then there's an anecdote that Thelma, the Disney's maid, went to the coffee shop to see how they cooked potatoes so she could then prepare fried potatoes home fried potatoes in the same fashion go learn she had to have potato tutelage it's on it is unclear whether they told

her to or whether she had that idea herself i think it was like watch learn yeah but come to potatoes what my animators are to human motion um let's talk drinks a little bit as you're a cocktail person you we talked about table 31 but what's your what's the go-to what do you drink when you go there um i will get totally sloshed on martinis it's kind of a i think if i'm having like a lot of a like an old school beefy meal i'll do martinis i usually always just get a martini i ask if they have blue cheese olives they don't a tamo shanter which is sad um tragic yeah really sad you can pick yourself up from that but my go-to steak as drink would be like uh a martini with with gin and i'm not picky about gin so i'll just have like well

gin because it's usually like gordon's and i like that but tan the shanter sometimes i'm like it's kind of fancy i'll have a hendrix martini a couple extra bucks for a good gin ah and then drink them till i'm cross-eyed yeah hell yeah that's what you were saying this was like a haunt for you for a little bit i think if i was walkable to tamish age i'd be in trouble i think i'd be there drinking a lot i think i would be uh 15 pounds heavier like i kind of want this world a little bit but it's probably better that i'm the bart bartenders are chatty and fun. There's one guy who has a thick Scottish accent that I swear is fake. And it's easy to...

If I sit at the bar having a Guinness and you're kind of like, hey, I'm a pub guy. Who tells you a story. You get stories and jokes. Everybody's fun over there. There's a lot of shtick. If I order a martini there,

they'll say... When they're asking like dry or dirty or whatever they've got it's like hemingway or churchill or whatever like they've got little isms there that i like they usually they'll do the like um beer uh combos they'll do like a snake bite which is usually like harp or some sort of other lager and cider is a snake bite and then i don't know what whatever they used to call black and tans which is stout and lager okay um i feel like giving a guinness at the tam is really great yeah yeah i guess just location wise that again is the trouble like truly if we were there all the time because it's not even just that you're drinking

it's that you're drinking the thickest the thickest beer yeah i mean there's thicker it's those people probably they're like guinness it's bullshit corporate now like it's not thick but yeah it is for people that don't drink that much beer yeah we did go the one year for saint patty's day oh my god it was at like two o'clock in the afternoon and it was already pretty sloppy that was like the jersey shore that was that was the jersey shore that was a massive tent outside parking lot uh it was like drink ticket buying here we had to buy tickets uh and then we i think we had a few drinks and then eat at mimi's i remember that day i had a few drinks and i was i think you and geo were there and i was like help me set up my tinder profile like that's what you're doing

this by the way this is not i just spoke with anthony geo about your tinder profile a few days ago how much say did you have it was dude was there a lot of punch up going on i don't know well i was just like is this picture nice do Do I look nice in that? I don't know. Because in my memory, there was a night when we were setting up your Tinder profile and it was the day I got the Switch with the Zelda Switch game, which is maybe the funniest thing I've ever seen is that we were doing your Tinder profile. Then we started playing Switch and you were like, let me try. You took the game.

You immediately stripped all of Link's clothes off his body and set his horse on fire and sent the horse running we didn't know we didn't know any of that was possible we didn't know any of that was possible i have to correct you i think this was a different day probably two days we drove i rode with you you said i need to go to culver city to pick up my switch and you went to a Best Buy. You're right. You're right. That's a different day. And they said, it's at the other Best Buy in Culver City.

So then we had to find a second unknown Best Buy. Yes, that was confusing. Yeah. You're right. Those are two different days. But I was just discussing your Tinder profile in regards to this day. Yeah. 2017, didn't have a ton going on so drinking in the day drinking in the day at tam

o'shanter driving to multiple best buys i have a picture of you guys i think an early place we all hung out was at the bar and i have a picture of you guys at the tam bar and is is it like a posed like hey we're no i just i don't know why i took a photo of you guys going over the receipt, like figuring out the bill. It's a very dark photo. It's not a good photo, but it's the two of you. The boys having fun at a bar. Well, I think we were both trying to get points.

Well, that's the issue. We were both arguing over who would get the points. Not what I was taking a picture of. Probably. Sorting out the, yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is pre-podcast or right at the start? It's pre-podcast. And then I really specifically remember,

we talked about this when you were gone, Mike, that when we did an episode without you, that Jason left early and then we stood by the door and you were talking for a while about, I'm telling you, we got to figure out a project with this guy, Jason. Jason is incredible. He did this and he did that and he did this and

that and you told jason's story after jason's that kind of was like the pixar lunch where the kind of the podcast grew out of that experience that's like a wall i'm kind of like wall your wall yeah dreaming up characters like jason jason's my mickey jason the lucky man. He's more the stinker version of Mickey. He's getting into trouble. Yeah, I would say so. Well, I don't know the anxious, too, though.

Yeah. Dressed in anxious. Current Mickey. Weird that people work in the animation industry might project some neurotic qualities into a character. Sure. Surprising. And with that, with dreaming up these little idea that's another thing if you sit at the table 31 you can see if you look closely you can see little etchings like they

like people drew dinosaurs on the table was that them dreaming up the world's fair dinosaurs or is that uh were these dinosaurs drawn uh six years ago by uh somebody we know by mookie or something yeah um i don't know that uh but did you say mookie yeah yeah i went to the tamish center for mookie's uh dad's 70th birthday wow that must have been why that was in my head yeah you didn't say yeah you were saying it's a good he loves it but it was a perfect the talk about perfect parent dinner. They hadn't been there before. He was in town to see Steely Dan at the Bowl for his 70th birthday. Yeah, what a Tam and then Steely Dan.

Tam and the Bowl, talking about the LA Knicks. I wasn't either. For a boomer dad, what a night. Or for a non-boomer dad. Or a millennial bad boy friend. That's the nice thing about the Tambo Center. Lots of very, very solid flavorful food items but if you are bringing a parent who doesn't have like an exciting like a pal advanced

palette or anything uh plenty of very plain unseasoned items at your disposal dad is gonna be fine if he eats a tam this was seasoned with butter and salt and nothing else i feel that but the mac and cheese is sort of like these days, there's a lot of hip mac and cheeses that have got the Gruyere going on or something. Not that mac and cheese. No, no. So, so basic. He loved it.

It was very special to be there with him. And a lot of pebbles for him to play with. So that's important. Well, that's good. Picked up pebbles. They have the best pebbles around. It's truly the finest pebbles in town. They're not fruity pebbles, but they're pretty good. Picked up pebbles. They have the best pebbles around. It's truly the finest pebbles in town. They're not fruity pebbles, but they're pretty good.

Close. Yeah. For inedible pebbles, yes. I was just going to say, this place, there's a lot of places when you get to LA, you get very excited because they've been around for a while. There's a place called the Smokehouse, not far from here that i feel like is great but tam i feel like is one of the better places that has held up over the years as far as food wise you can go pretty wrong with food at smokehouse you can get that correct for sure i love smokehouse

and i love so many restaurants like that where you have to be on board for the kitsch so i know yes exactly i don't like it but i'd be afraid to bring friends that don't kind of want to laugh at their food tam o'shanter is is like yeah it's like historic and the and the food is still like high quality food it's still around for a reason it's not like it's just waiting to close down yeah yeah yeah it's not like we're keeping up the tradition because we feel like we have to like we feel bad and i know people want it we love it that family-owned thing i think you said like i think it is the the old the oldest restaurant in la is muso and frank's but they've changed ownership so tam might be the second or no el cholo the mexican place is old but it's moved locations okay this is the spot i think that tam o'shanter is the 100 years of still that original family is still involved in the ownership and it's the only place like that they survived

uh prohibition they had to get that's how long it's been around there's photos on the wall of like celebrating that prohibition is over right yeah they survived i did take out once too during quarantine um uh i a funny story uh well i learned some other facts about the tam o'shanter because jane used to briefly work there oh as a waiter and um uh oh will this ruin it are we gonna find out what's really everything uh uh there is i think, unofficially a John Wayne table as well. Yes, I've heard this, yes. Yeah, because he was a regular. Table 15 in the tartan room.

Yes. They only let people with the best opinions have tables at TAM. The other thing she was like, you know that on the top floor, there's men's and women's locker rooms so they can get changed into those goofy tartan clothes wow oh and anyway this is a big thing we've missed in terms of the disney connection is it is it's all tartans and plaid scottish inspired uniforms and that is the uniforms still of the tour guides at disneyland so it might have pretty directly come from that he wanted walt wanted to humiliate people and put fuzzy uh fuzzy puffs on their hats he loved they

should just do they should have a prime rib restaurant there wouldn't it fit well with like blue bayou and stuff if there was also just like a scottish prime river there should be more good restaurants at the park if you yeah you could they they made the fantasyland restaurant a little better than it was it's this gaston restaurant um but i was i was sitting there last night thinking like boy what we accept as theme park food and say actually that was pretty good as opposed to the quality here where you're in a storybook environment it is themed yeah and the food's excellent and the drinks are excellent like boy if only you could plop tam o'shanter or something of its quality right into fantasy land you guys have favorite disneyland foods

that i'm missing i always eat a turkey leg and i think it's bad but i always just look around i spend all day looking for it and then i eat it it, and I'm like, too salty. Yeah. I forget every time. I always recommend the Plaza Inn. I think it's the Plaza Inn now. At the end of Main Street, there's like a cafeteria-style restaurant that does really good fried chicken, and you can kind of smell it outside. Okay, yeah. That did, at one point in time, was like a local kind of steakhouse family restaurant. Not too dissimilar, but i think that changed within

the first six or seven years of disneyland like somebody else owned it yeah yeah yeah what else is the star wars hot dog the ronto wrap is really good oh is it is it wrap all the way around the hot dog pretty close there's a slaw but does it have Star Wars-y about it? Well, it's just got a sauce that's a little spicy It's on a pita I had something in Cars Land that was in a cone Oh yeah, chili? There's many options in a cone There's mac and cheese in the cones

Yeah Trader Sam's food, stepping it up too They have Risky or they have Poke You've got it there, right? I never have This is crazy, I'm a tiki head i love it but i have not that's the thing you say i think it is a pretty legit tiki bar we talked about a while back and yeah it's not just a theme park impression of one like it feels lived in and drinks are solid that's what yeah like they have some or it's not that it's and it's not like watered down i feel like i had a tiki-esque drink at the grand californian one time but i had like

a light up ice cube in it and it was like the drink was just very sweet and and not too boozy yeah what is your theme park drinking luck been are you judging it harder have you had stuff where you've uh struck out i mean i i feel like I've gotten shithouse drunk at the Carl Strauss beer cart in California Adventure. Yes. Yeah. Oh, boy. I remember I like walking around. I feel like this Disneyland doesn't have too much booze or

they've only barely started to in in Star Wars and the Blue Bayou now, but that's it. I feel like yeah, I haven't been there in a long time. And when I was there, I couldn't find any booze, so then I went to the little wine-tasting place in California Adventure, and that was

a little bit fun, but then just, yeah, pounded beers at that little cart. They sell Walt's Scotch Mist at the Carthay Circle restaurant. This I have to do. I've peaked my head in Carthay Circle, but didn't have time to settle in for a cocktail night. Yeah, you can do because you can just do the bar which that's our favorite well no we like the restaurant too but the bar and then we like the manhattans yeah as well yeah

for you maybe too much yeah give those a shot that might be our favorite drink out there i think the scotch mist at the car they circle i think they have like i think it just says scotch now i don't know how easy it is to get black and white scotch it's a brand of scotch now did they take walt's name off of it black is walt's name still on it uh i don't know because for a while we were like really they're admitting that walt drank yeah yeah so i forget if maybe this is still there it might just say scotch mist and it's maybe in the you know there's like a character winking at you like you know who's you know a certain guy it does if you go there look at some of the pictures on the walls and see walt just doing like his hand like with two fingers and i at first i thought that was the two finger point and then you people online were

like no those are pictures where he was holding a cigarette and they photoshopped the cigarette out and then printed the picture to hang up damn yeah unbelievable them and stuff I just complain about them getting rid of a Krusty the Clown toy that had a cigarette that drives me nuts I love that the idea of a toy having a cigarette

is so funny Mr. Teeny had the cigarette too and I was gonna buy this toy and I was so excited and then they were like, oh, by the way, everyone, there's an update on the toy and then the cigarettes were gone. That's the whole point. Come on. Yeah. Tsk, tsk. Tsk, tsk. Let's do an episode about cigarettes sometime.

All right. I love them. Yeah. We've been going forever. We should wind it down. Oh, wait. One thing we haven't brought up yet. The ghosts. I don't know about the ghosts. Oh, this place is like haunted or like rumored to be haunted.

Oh. I'm all nervous. There's a few accounts online. There's a few accounts online. I found an old blog from a group called the Ghost Hunters of Urban Los Angeles. The one is that there's a little boy who has achieved the nickname Charlie

because he looks just like the painting of the Bonnie Prince Charlie that hangs in the one dining room. Okay. Another story. What's he going to do to me? Is he going to grab my butter knife and try to scratch me up?

I don't know. It doesn't say what Charlie does. I think it's just like they ghost hunters. List the ghost powers so I know how to fight back. Can he walk through the walls? I guess he has to be able to do that. A waiter told us confidentially that many elderly

patrons have died in the restaurant. Well, wait a minute. Many? Many. What? I mean, if you're older and you're housing a bone-in prime rib, like, I'm kind of saying. We get an old person that kicks once a week in this place. Walt played polo with people in there. Can I take the tartan room, bring a couple of horses in?

Mm-hmm. A busboy claims to have seen a man in a mask walking walking in the uh upstairs hall outside the restaurant's office the prevailing theory is that he might have been a burglar and perhaps is connected to the fire that may have claimed other lives uh i think maybe whatever was here before i mean i'd say yeah if i see a guy in a mask maybe uh i mean now it's just anybody but at that time probably i'd say burglar before i'd say ghost yeah it was a ghost of a man it was a ghost of a burglar ghost of a barrel well that's scary so he had like a ski mask or something but he wasn't always a burger he lived his whole life

and then sometimes he burned i don't know if you burgle you get stuck in the in like limbo wear a scarlet mask forever john wayne shot him when he saw he was robbing the place. And then I read a really long Reddit post where someone's like, I worked at the Tam O'Shanter and a couple of times I've like, felt like I was getting very dizzy. And then one time the co-worker felt that. These are a little weak. I'm going to be honest.

Yeah. A lot of these stories are, those sound like, well, was the person hammered and they just saw the picture blur so i was hanging out with him and i felt kind of woozy i felt a warm feeling must be a ghost give me a hug from behind a bunch of people from the past were floating around singing christmas carols only one explanation so i don't know take what you

a hundred year old place in Los Angeles I'm willing to give it the better doubt that may be a little spooky there's some ghosts I don't doubt there's ghosts I just don't know

these stories specifically yeah the whole like Los Feliz was owned by and like Griffith Park was owned by Griffith J. Griffith

and then like after shooting his wife in the face and having some bad PR when he was trying to like re make people like him again. I didn't know that. Wow. He was at like the

Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica I think and he shot his wife in the face. She jumped out the window bounced on the awning and lived and divorced him. Jesus. Whoa. And like got a divorce in the days where that was like. Wow. Things would have a divorce in the days where that was like, things would have been stacked against the lady,

but she had a facial gunshot wound. She didn't get him put in jail? Yeah, no. She was like, he got a slap on the wrist. He was insanely wealthy, I believe is part of the reason he got a slap on the wrist.

But yeah, I mean, I have to think her lawyer's like, well, okay, that's exhibit A and we don't need any other exhibits. I mean, I have to thank her lawyers. Like, well, okay, that's exhibit A. There we go. And we don't need any other exhibits. I mean, you know. But during, I guess, like, his, like, apology tour

of, like, doing things for the city, I think, because he just gave Griffith Park to the city, and it's, like, the largest park in a city. It's bigger than Central Park. It's, like, the biggest park that is, like, within a city, like, as opposed to, like, a, you know, national park that you go to, but it's, like, in a city it's a bigger than central park it's like the biggest park that is like in within a city like as opposed to like a you know national park that you go to but it's like in a city and he just gave it and he gave a lot of stuff and he later said like i that land was haunted i didn't i didn't i didn't like that i was like trying to get rid of it so all of like los filas like and going down to like tamil shder, that is the part of town that I've heard that he was like,

I didn't want that land. Jeez. Wow. He's trying to pawn it onto us, onto the general population forever. I think it's a Marc Maron episode with Paul Thomas Anderson where they're talking about Los Feliz being haunted. Yeah. PTA was like, I would never live there.

I love LA, but I would never live in Los Feliz. Oh, yeah. I mean, the Hollywood sign. The most. Black Dahlia, right? Is that who? Oh, the Jaws house. The Soudon house on Franklin, I think.

They were recently sniffing. They had FBI dogs sniffing for Black Dahlia's bones in the last two years. Thank God. I mean, the other old restaurants in LA, like El Coyote heading west in the city, famously the last meal of Sharon Tate before the gruesome Manson murders. There's weird stuff everywhere. And the last meal on the others at Casa Vega, the last meal those two guys had before they had to kill all those people.

The two real guys. I love that place. Casa Vega is so fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's super cool. Is Casa Vega where I saw Brent Spiner right before the pandemic? I can't remember.

Is that, wait, is that the one in Ventura? It's in Ventura, yeah. Yeah, I saw Brent Spiner there weeks before COVID and I was thrilled. He's leaving and I was like,

he looks great. It's going to be a great year. Man, it's only going up from there. Any other details about this place you want to get out? It's so nice to talk about it. I got one I am dying to say. Oh, yeah, yeah.

The name Tam O'Shanter is both a poem by Robert Burns, but we don't care about that. It's also the name of the traditional Scottish cap from the 19th century, the very same one that Mary Tyler Moore throws up in the opening of her show. Oh, my God. That's a Tam O'Shanter? That's a Tam O'Shanter. Mary Tyler Moore was wearing a the opening of her show. That's a Tam O'Shanter?

That's a Tam O'Shanter. Mary Tyler Moore was wearing a Tam O'Shanter. Wow. And threw it triumphantly in the start of her show. Is like Shanter a Scottish version and like Tam is like the hat of Shanter or something like that? I don't know the direct translation. Tam O'Shanter is the guy. Let me

really quickly, let me cliff notes this. If you can imagine, I couldn't read a long poem that is in dense scottish where every other word i've never seen before in my life but i was trying to figure it out and tamil changer is the main character of it he is a guy who gets drunk at a bar a lot while his wife sits at home mad so he leaves uh a bar drunk and he's heading home and then he sees a church and some witches are having a party with the devil in the church and he is checking it out and he sees

that one of the witches is taking off their clothes and he's trying to sneak a peek at a naked witch and then he gets caught doing so so they start chasing him and he gets on his horse and runs away uh and but luckily remember witches and the devil can't cross over water like hoverboards and back to the future too so the chase didn't work he made it over the river barely but uh just barely because a witch pulled his horse's tail off and that's's the story. Much like Jason in playing Zelda.

He was damaged onto a horse. A scurrying horse. Same thing, basically. There'll be an epic poem about that one day, too. So just picture all that when you're there. Next, it's Mary Tyler Moore, and it's a drunken man being chased by the devil. There was a witch involved?

He wanted to see the naked witch? Is that right? Yeah, a witch took off most of her clothes, and he's like, ooh, hey, not so bad, and then they saw him and chased him. There was a guy, the architect who made this place, what is his name? You have his name, Harry Oliver?

Oh, yeah, he was an art director for movies. Yes, he did a bunch of movies, but there's a place in Beverly Hills that's still there. It's called the Witch House. Witch House, house yeah carly wise i was tweeting about that today yes i guess i was looking this up and i went is that what she just tweeted yeah it is a but there was a thing called a witch house which looks just like tam that's still there that's uh the championship when it was built the early photos of it it looked so like it got crazy and melty and oh yeah because it was originally called uh montgomery's country inn

i think and then uh for a few years they changed the name to the great scott and then in 1982 they changed it back to the tam o'shanter wow it's on walden in beverly hills yeah huh because there's a house kind of like that up in uh like underneath the observatory i love it like la did just seem like a place where people were just like i'm just gonna build a weird goof house you know like there wasn't like local architecture i guess it would have been like spanish architecture but like a lot of people were just showing up in here and being like i'll do a tutor mansion and then i'm gonna do a castle and we'll just do whatever the fuck there's like i was just driving up in the hills of burbank and there's like somebody has like a like a main like blue house that looks

like it's on the coast it's like totally stands out from everything else yeah it's crazy la is it's a melting pot and a bunch of little shit thrown together the land where dreams are made huh that's right i texted mike right before we started recording because the other day I was driving all the way up this one road in Burbank on Hollywood Way, and I'd never noticed this before, but there is a little squat little bar building that is practically on the highway, and it is called The Ramp. And I started reading about it, and it has been there for 30-plus years. It's had different owners, and it appears been there for 30 plus years it's had different owners and it appears they

serve uh tropical drinks steaks italian food and also like all kinds of bar food like it is fascinating it looks like a a nice restaurant a quote-unquote nice restaurant from like 30 years ago huh and it just seems frozen in time and now I'm so curious about the freeway on ramp bar and restaurant and today I texted you the information that if you go to Gideon's Bake Shop in Orlando that they'll give you a little tub of frosting

$1.50 yeah $1.25 $1.50 that's the type of correspondence we have to this day magic all around us clearly well hey so fun talking about this but you know what if just one clip one little plus up i have about the tam o'shanter they got those dressing rooms up there the locker rooms what i want is a little room where i can fall asleep every i want to i want to finish that i mean i would rent that for any amount of money

on some night just let me walk up there and put on like a scrooge sleeping cap and just yeah and they should tuck tuck you in like the knots hotel i want the carolers sing me a lullaby yeah how nice does that sound or the ghosts will tuck you in with the ski mask i might allow it there after i'm fuzzy enough i'll lay where everything's cool ghosting like john wayne and walt ghost like force ghosts in the like the doorway looking at you like oh look at this there's some very comfy high-back chairs next to the one fireplace place which i uh i had thanksgiving here one year and the steakhouse the net or the smokehouse the next the other old LA restaurant. Kind of both places, the driest

Thanksgiving meal I've ever had. But the ambiance could not be beat. You're not wet. You need to get that meat. It's easy to dry out white meat. I've had the Christmas goose at the Tambo Center because I was like,

oh my god, Christmas goose, that's amazing. And it was pretty bad, but I was like, oh my God, Christmas goose. That's amazing. And it was pretty bad, but I was like, oh, whatever. I mean, I guess no one has a lot of practice cooking Christmas goose.

Yeah, not Jason. Well, I feel like I ate a big Christmas goose just talking about this play. How cozy is it to, and look, I know it's all local and we might be listening

to this episode. Like I've never been to this restaurant. This doesn't make sense to me. If you're doing the LA theme park trip, if you're coming out for Disneyland or Universal or whatever, I truly recommend.

Yeah. Cause it's a little slice of theme park that is very legit and a, and a super satisfying, cozy, fun experience. If you're far from LA in your hometown, go to the old kind of prime Ruby, old school,

dusty old place. It's, it's fun to, you can spend a lot of money and feel like you know what i'm keeping the traditional live i'm contributing to history here amen absolutely thanks for contributing to to our history yes uh that's right typical bag as you survive podcast the ride thank you so much uh such a blast to have you finally uh let's exit through the gift shop is there anything you'd like to plug oh check out the sloppy boys podcast or it's a cocktail podcast with jefferson dutton and mike

hanford where we drink a different cocktail every week there and then we're a party rock band with three albums on spotify put them it's a it's pool party music folks rock out to it at your next barbecue fantastic no No Christmas carols Not yet You gotta do a Christmas album I have actually written We didn't have enough for an album But I have a couple of songs

Wow, great, great That's exciting And as for us We do have an album The McGruff album There's enough songs we've made To do an album There's a couple from McGruff

There's Brian Cornell There's Buena Park song There's enough for like a Nine track album I feel like Get in there Do a vinyl release A compilation people Sure

The final release of My song about the CEO of Target Yeah right That would be a proud day. I would be very happy about that. But as for now, the things are that you can find us on the socials at Podcast The Ride.

Merch is available in our TeePublic store. For three bonus episodes every month, check out Podcast The Ride, the second gate, or get one more bonus episode on our new tier, Club 3. You'll find all that at patreon.com slash podcasttheride. Such a blast. Let's all go there now. Let slash podcast the ride. Such a blast.

Let's all go there now. Let's go there now. I wanted to say I did figure out what that name of the place was, and it's just as great. The place that Saddle Ranch replaced. Oh, yeah. Actually, it was two replacements. Womp Hoppers. Womp Hoppers Wagon Works.

Yes. And a guy would walk around, and he's the character of Womp Hopper, like in a fake beard. Hello, I'm Womp Hopper. Ah, that's the. And I'm looking at the pictures and I was like, I know we talked about this, but can we do an episode again and just say the same facts? I don't see why not. And if you, all right, well, go and go to your local steakhouse and locals. If anyone runs a local steakhouse and you're not proud of your owner, like they did something bad, like Griffith,

then make up a character like Womp Whopper, jolly guy, and have him walk around and your business will boom. Guaranteed. Guaranteed. Good day. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com

and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Keep up with the latest Forever Dog news by following us on Twitter and Instagram at Forever Dog Team and liking our page on Facebook.