October 21, 2025 • 30 mins
It’s another serving of American Gravy…where food meets fun, and flavor meets the absurd!
Andrew and Lauren dive into the Cracker Barrel rebrand gone wrong…and why so many food brands are losing their flavor in more ways than one.
PLUS…why diners deserve a comeback…a quick kitchen hack for peeling garlic…and picture day parenting fails!
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
And we're back for another episode of American Gravy. Get ready,
get your bibs. It is on, It is getting messy.
It is Hello everybody, and welcome back to American Gravy,
where this is where food meets fun, flavor meets the absurd,
of course, And I'm Chef Andrew Grouhl and I'm Lauren Gruel,
and today we're going to be diving into some of
the funniest, strangest, and most mouthwatering food stories making the
(00:23):
rounds this week. All right, babe, But Lauren, you know what,
let's face it, food news has gone off the rails
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It always is off the rails.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So we're gonna bring it back to the We're gonna
bring it back to reality today, bringing it back to
so I gotta throw in there, right, I always start off,
see I can't stick to script. But it's kids Picture
Day today at our kids' school. Oh boy, yeah, And
I'm you know, it's funny whenever I hear kids Picture Day.
I remember when I would have the photos and it
was like the laser beams in the background.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Oh yeah, they were so fun.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, but they don't have that nowadays.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
They don't have it. But also let's just go back
to our boys who refuse to wear nice clothes. They
want to wear the same thing that has like holes
in it. It's like stained.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
The only way we can compromise with the kids nowadays
is we'll be like, all right, you got to pick
your clothes out the night before so that you're ready
in the morning. Because getting ready with three younger boys
in the morning is like it's basically a search for underwear.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
They never know where anything is.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
They don't want to wear underwear, which is disgusting.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Okay, they don't know where anything is. They want to
wear the same outfit.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So I've told them you can wear what you're going
to take a shower at night or bath or whatever
you do, you know, spray down and I sprang in
the backyard with a hose many times. And then just
whatever you're going to wear to school. Because they're kids,
you know, they don't stink when they sleep. Just wear
those clothes to bed or at least like the you know,
the shirt or part of it, and be lady.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
We got to be like fifty percent there.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
So now that they've interpreted that is like I can
wear my pajamas to school, so it's school picture day
and they look like they're homeless kids.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
No, my favorite is our youngest. He likes his hair
like what's his name from a dumb and dummer Lloyd?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Is it Lloyd Gosh Lloyd Dobbler?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
He I don't know why. He wants it right in
front of his face. And I was trying to comb
it to the side, you know, put some gel in it,
make it look somewhat presentable. He freaked out rubbed his hair,
so now it's like half to the side, half in
front of his face. These pictures are going to be
something to look forward to.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
And I made some waffles this morning, so the other
son got syrup on his hands and put that in
his hair, so he's sticking straight up. It's great.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
And there's some dribbles of syrup on his T shirts.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah. So I can't wait to see what comes out
on these pictures. But I told the kids because they're young,
and I told them, I said, you know what, you're
going to look at these pictures when you're older, and
they're going to be kind of funny, So just make
the craziest face you possibly can. Like, I don't care
how quirky it is, how silly it is like cross
your eyes.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I love the kids. They all go through like this
awkward smile stage two exact. So I'm so excited I
think that I think our youngest will have that this year.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Well I gave them a couple little tips and tricks
just so you know, so you might be surprised and
you're going to say, who told you do that? When
they say, Dad, I might be in a timeout, so
that the outcome is yet to yet to be determined. There,
all right, Well, moving into the first main food line
this week, I'm gonna take a little deep dive. I
know this is old and we talked about it in
a past, but there's been some evidence that's come about
in regards to the Dun Dun Dun and the cracker
(03:14):
barrel saga.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Oh my gosh, that was so weird. It wasn't weird,
it was right, well, it was right right in which way.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Well, first of all, so for those of you who
don't remember, because this was two or three weeks ago
and we moved at the speed of lightning, is the
Cracker bell rebranded? Not just their logo itself, but you know,
they kind of did like a new brand book. And
then obviously they were interior designed at the restaurants. People
love Cracker Barrel. It's a legacy brand. It's really representative
of that kind of like deep South home cooking. And
(03:44):
they took out mister Cracker Barrel, I forget his name
from the logo itself, the guy that was sitting on
the rocking chair.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah, there was no need to do that.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
They didn't like that, so they brought in this outside
branding company and they spent millions of dollars, as I
had suggested at the time, and to redo the brand.
And there was a huge uproar and everybody was mad
about it, and it kind of became the cultural talking point.
You know, it was like bigger than that, and it
was and we won't get into any of that, but
I think that for me, when I looked at the
Cracker Barrel story, it was indicative of a problem that
(04:14):
we've seen across food service and generally retail brands overall
over the past ten or fifteen years, and that's watering
down brands that have history and legacy and trying to
make them more anadyne and really vanilla.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Right, didn't they do that? With miss Jemima the syrup.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Well that was that was a racial subject. Oh so yeah,
they wanted to remove and Jemima specifically from the bottle
because they thought that that was racist and we don't
need to touch on that just because I don't like that,
like all that fakes syrup to begin with. So it
wasn't a part of their target market. It's really just
high fructose corn syrup and caramel color. Just get the
(04:49):
real maple syrup. But I digress. So now it's funny.
You've seen like a little bit of this cleanup, right,
it was like, oh, the CEO needs to get fired.
And she was the CEO. Oh she was like some
you know, kind of like hot city ceo. I don't
mean hot, like physically hot, I mean like the hot
thing that was taking this kind of southern more country
(05:10):
style brand and trying to make it more chic cheek. Yeah,
like gen Xy. They had done all these cracker bell
pop ups in New York City as part of their
like brand activation, where they had TikTok influencers come in
and they set up I don't know if you know this,
they set up many cracker barrels, like in Union Square,
or in the general Times Square area and had all
(05:31):
and did like these crazy quirky which was part of
your eighty six from last week, was like all these
food influencers being crazy. Oh gosh, okay, I did not
know that they did that, but to me, that was
like representative of this this kind of modern mindset that
has really plagued a lot of our food. What I
said at the time was, here's what's gone down with
(05:52):
Cracker Barrel. They were bought out by a big private
equity firm ten or fifteen years ago, which we know
for a fact, they've decreased the quality of their food.
They've tried to create branding that's more standardized across like
a national audience. Because functionally, the way in which you
can get your franchisese or your multi unit operators. I
don't think that there are a franchise concept, but just
(06:14):
generally speaking, multi unit operators to stick to this brand book,
like everything has to be cut, copy and paste. So
when you walk into a Cracker Barrel and you know Virginia,
it's the same Cracker Barrel and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and
the way in which a lot of those firms try
and get you to do that and to standardize those
protocols and procedures is really by watering down the brand. Yeah,
and I don't like that approach. When we owned a
(06:36):
multi unit franchise group, we had restaurants across thirteen or
fourteen different locations. We allowed a lot of the local
market franchisees to kind of add their own flavor personality.
The seafood was different in each market. We had our
basic format of menu items, but then beyond that there
was obviously like local specialties, and that applied to design
and development for the stores as well. So now Cracker
(06:58):
Barrel is cleaning up and there they've fired the brand,
the advertising agency or the branding agency, I don't recall
the name of it, but.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, so they fired the design company, which is interesting.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well, because somebody had to there needed to be a scalp,
like like somebody had to go take it wasn't going
to be the CEO, which I think like at the
end of the day, it all rolls up to the CEO,
so like you need to take responsibility and you need
to go out there and make a statement. They clearly
don't understand the Cracker Barrel customer. But here was my thing,
the brand itself and by that, the brand, and I
(07:33):
know a brand encompasses more than just the logo, but
we we superficially think of a brand as just the logo.
It was something that I could have gone on five
R and spent ninety dollars to get like an Indian
designer to create.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
How much do you think they spent on that redesign?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I would suggest a million dollars plus geese, and as
part of a brand package, so they all they obviously,
you know they That becomes applicable to the interior design
of the store, which once again they got rid of
all the choschkeys that were around the restaurant. You walk
in and it's kind of this home homie feel like
you want to feel like you're walking into Gramma's dining room.
But they got rid of all that and they basically
(08:09):
replaced it with like just basic home good style tables,
and they got rid of all the stuff that was
on the walls. What have you? Okay, the clutter, although
I think it was like it was artful clutter.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Have we been to a cracker barrel?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah? In Albuquerque. When we went and opened the Albuquerque stores,
I was hitting the cracker barrels out there?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Oh, I thought it was a roadhouse.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
But that's a good question because I'll transition to the
bigger problem that nobody's talking about with cracker barrel. And
the point that I made is that it's the food.
Right at the end of the day, why we go
out to eat at restaurants is cost, convenience and the
food to quality, the quality to price ratio. And I
have never not gone to a restaurant because I didn't
(08:50):
like the logo or the interior design. And nor have
I ever gone to a restaurant in the casual dining
setting because I liked the way it looked and field
if I'm getting good food for the price, that's it, right,
Like that's why I'm going to go there. And would
you agree with that?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, I don't think I've ever gone to anywhere really
even like a regular store, like a clothing store because
of the logo.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Well you don't eat the clothes.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Well I know that, but like you don't. It's not
like a draw to like come.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
In edible clothing is I think a topic for you.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
That's a difference for pants, that's a different store.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
So what cracker Bell has done is they've co packed
over the years, and it's not just Cracker Barrel. This
is so many of these brands. And what they do
is is that as costs go up in the restaurant industry,
you then have to start producing your food off site
because that decreases the units of labor that you need
in the store. And then you can buy all of
those copacked sauces and rice dishes and like pre prepared
(09:46):
foods that are no longer made on site. You can
buy them at bulk using these economies of scale, and
it brings the prices down, but then you lose the
flavor of the food and you lose that home cooked field.
That's what's happened over ten years. So they spent millions
of dollars on the logo, the brand, in the design,
the superficial element, but they didn't fix the food. And
(10:06):
I think that that is the problem altogether, and we're
going to weave that into some future stories. So they've
fired the design firm and conclusion, in addition to the
fact that they put out a ton of press releases
that we read in industry pubs publications saying that all
of the negative response was due to bots.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Very interesting that that's what they blamed it on.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
But and they didn't have much data to prove that,
Like that was the headline that I read in Nations
Restaurant News, But it wasn't It wasn't like there was
no data to support that. So I think it was
the people speaking, and thank you all for speaking. Let's
keep talking about it.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Speaking of rebranding, you know Domino's pizza boxes can look
a little bit different shortly.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, once again, same thing. Like Domino's has put out
a ton of press about the fact that they're redesigning
their brand, their logo, and their pizza boxes, something that
they haven't done in thirteen years.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
We all know Domino's pizza boxes, Like, that's Dominoes. Why
are they trying to, you know, change something that's good.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I like when brands don't refresh them. I like when
they become iconic versus doing a throwback where it's like, oh,
we're going back to our nineteen eighties design. You know
a lot of the soda brands do.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
That and they're coming up with a catchy jingle.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Oh they are. They brought on a they brought on
a musician to do what what's the name of the musician?
Is it like shaboozy, Shaboozy shaboozy?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Would you like to would you like to share the jingle?
Since I clearly have a horrible singing voice.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I don't. I don't know what the jingle is, but
I'm not nor do I want it. I think it's
like Dominos get your pizza. There were two jingles. What
are the most memorable jingles you know from food?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Oh, gosh, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Wama babybag Baby. That's a great one. And then do
you remember Hooty and the Blowfish tender chicken cheddar ranch sandwich.
I want my tender tender crisp chicken chad a ranch
where the French fries tastes like weeds. It was Hooty
and the Blowfish.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
No, I do work.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
It's rid all day. Okay. For those of you who
have heard this, please make a comment when we post
this episode, because you're.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Just going to go on YouTube after this and check
it out.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
There are some really cool jingles. I miss those. I
missed the good old TV jingles when you'd walk around
all day at school and you had like a food
commercial in your head.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I don't I don't know food commercials, but I have
other type of commercials in my head, like like, oh
my gosh, why can I think of anything on the spot. Anyway,
I'll come up with one later.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I want my doublemint double mint, come on and double it,
double mint double fresh.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Okay, did you watch a lot of TV?
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Growing I watched commercials. I was really into commercials, which
is surprising that I'm not in advertising, but whatever, so
be it. What's going on in the world of lifestyle
these days? A line?
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Okay, So here's the thing. I used to think subtitles
were for old people. I every time I would go to,
you know, somebody's house and their parents had the TV on.
There were subtitles, and I could not pay attention to
what was on the TV because I was constantly reading
the subtitles. I was like, who would put subtitles on
the TV? This is so stupid. I am the person
now that needs close caption word. I need it on
(13:12):
at all times. I don't know what it is. I
don't know if it's an age thing, but I cannot
watch TV or a movie without closed captioning.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I love having the subtitles because I don't know what's happened?
And I'm not that old, I'm forty five, but I
can't hear anything you can't, which is sometimes it's selection.
I think it's selective hearing. Do you remember the story
of the guy this like what viral, who pretended for
twenty five years he was deaf so he didn't have
to talk to his wife?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
How did it? First of all, that takes so much commitment,
that's amazing. But did he talk to anybody or he
just didn't talk? Did he have like guy friends on
the side that knew he could hear.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I have a feeling he had like a cadre of
people that were in on it, Like maybe he'd do
poker night and he could talk and get it all out.
But then otherwise at home he was just like she.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Why would you be married to somebody you don't want
to talk to.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I don't know. I've really bad hearing problems, so it
might happen to us. But I'm going to look right now. Wow,
I'm not saying no, I'm just pretend that he has
hearing issues and we'll never speak. I guess we can't
do the show together. What?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, Okay?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I love subtitles. I read them all the time, and
it's actually the way in which we can get our
kids to start like practicing reading. We'll just turn the
TV and put it on mute and be like read
the subtitles.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
You know what I was doing, because I really want
to learn Spanish. I was putting the subtitles in Spanish,
but like listening to it in English so I could
see what they were saying.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Oh my god, that's very academic of you. Yeah, Ola
Lafiesta nosolos.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Here we go with his one liner singers.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
That's a good one. So last week it was pat
lookout you have a chicken on your roof in German
and this week this party is not for the ugly people.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I thought, what say again.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Lafiesa nos paolo.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Fos akay gotcha.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah see so don't worry, you're invited. It's okay. Wow, thanks, Yeah,
I know all right. So so that was that was
kind of a funny story. I remember that we talked
about that on Gutfeldt a while back, and it was
there was there was some pretty good jokes there. I'm
not a comedian, though, so I can't really make some titles. Yeah,
it was like the subtitle thing.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well, what was funny about it?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
This story has gone well, this story has been going
viral now for a while, so it's uh.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Well, I guess younger and younger people are also using
close captioning.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
They are, which is good. What the fork?
Speaker 2 (15:30):
What the fork? And what is going on?
Speaker 1 (15:33):
What is yet? Well? I want to know. There's been
a lot of crazy food stories this week, but one
of them caught my eye, actually caught your eye or
your eyes my eyeballs. Yeah, so why don't you tell
us about this one?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Okay, first of all, this isn't like new, This isn't
a new thing. But a huge fight broke out at
a San Antonio Whataburger just after three am, which is
bad news in general. Like, if you're aut a Whataburger
at three am, you know you just had a long
night of partying, right.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
You're not just or you're working the night shift.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I doubt I doubt that. So anyway, a huge fight
breaks out because there was a mix up in an order,
like somebody took the wrong order and there ended up
being a brawl inside this water burger at three am.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I understand that, and let me tell you why not
the actual fight itself, but don't you hate when you
go somewhere and it's like really crowded and everybody's hovering
around the pickup area, and then somebody takes your order
and you're just like livid because then you got to
go back up and you got to reorder, and then
they got to push it through and you wait for
another twenty or thirty minutes.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I don't think it takes that long. But at the
same time, I'm sure these people, if they were in
their right state of mind, it probably wouldn't have broken out.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
It wouldn't have broken out in a brawl. But I
think people who get into fights at fast food restaurants
or waffle house waffle houses like the MMA Thunderdome of
Fights and restaurants. Waffle House. Yeah, and there were all
those videos that were going viral, Like I remember it
was like last year or the year before it was.
It was primarily during the pandemic because waffle house remained open,
so it was the place to be. It's the public square,
(16:58):
and the waffle house employees like they would throw down
with the customers, with the customers, yeah, with each other.
Now with the customers. I remember there was somebody who
liked threw a chair, and then this lady came the flow,
you know, the counter waitress. She just she like caught
the chair with one hand and then she took some
like nineteen year old drunk kid out with the top
(17:20):
of a chair and a syrup bottle. Never let me
go to a waffle house. I do you like waffle house?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Have you ever been to a waffle house?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I think I went once and I didn't like the waffles.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I'll take a waffle house. I'll take waffle house over
the over eye hop any day. Hmmmm, although there's an
eye hopping near us. Where would you go if you wanted?
Like so, waffle house? I hop Denny's Snooze. What's the
other one?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I don't think there is any morning Watch or morning Watch? Oh,
first Watch, First Watch, morning Watch whatever. I actually like
First Watch. We've only been to one in New Jersey
though there's not any in California.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
That was Florida. We were in front Florida.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
I'm sorry. Is there a lot of.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
People in New Jersey or from in Florida? From New Jersey?
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Sorry?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, what's happened to the diner? Like that's one thing
that we've lost in America is like the good old
corner diner.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I love Denny's. When I was growing up, Oh my gosh,
Denny's was like my place to go.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
I worked at a Denny's. Do you know that. Yeah,
when I was eighteen years old, I worked at a Denny's.
I worked the overnight shift and at the time, we
actually were cracking all of our own eggs. And I
was cracking eggs two am when the bar would get
out and everybody would come in there, and it was
just like Moon's over my Hammi, after Della Dinger, after
Moon's over my Grand Slam. Oh, the All American Grand Slam.
I'll wake up in cold sweats thinking about the All
American Grand Slam because I could never get the hash
(18:36):
Browns right on the top.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Well, now you're great at hash brown Oh.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
I'm the hash brown King. I'm the breakfast king. So
in the restaurant industry, a lot of people don't know this.
This is that when you work through like a hotel
system or you know, like a corporate restaurant group where
you it's high quality, you always start off on the
egg station. So, like before, when I did my apprenticeship
up at in Oregon at Mount Hood, Like before you
could get to the fine diner dinner stage of working,
(19:02):
you had to well, you start off in the dishpit,
then you go to banquets, and then you go to
egg cookery. Right. The reason why egg cooking is because
for breakfast, people want their food in ten minutes or less.
Eggs can cook very very quickly. And the process of
flipping omelets and flipping eggs and cooking eggs, it just
teaches you how to control your station, make sure your
meissan plaus is all in its place. It was just
(19:22):
like your ingredients, your station is clean. And I loved
egg cooking because you're jamming out right, Like you got
ten omelets on the board, two over easy eggs, six
over medium eggs, fritatas you know, they used to say,
maybe maybe she's fatatted, and that was it. Like egg
(19:43):
cooking was the you had to pass through egg cookery.
How many of my egg chefs are out there, you see, Oh,
there's a lot of them listening. There's a lot. We
have a live studio audience here. But what's happened now
with diners and with a lot of these corporate breakfast
change is that All the eggs are bag they're treated
with citric acid. They're low quality eggs. They're cooked in
(20:04):
like these kind of egg contraptions where you just like
pour them in and you like close the lid, press
two minutes and then they're done. Nobody's poaching their eggs fresh.
New Jersey is the home of the diner. That's where
I grew up, right and the good old school New
Jersey diners still exists, especially off Route twenty two to
two to two oh six, you name it, Turnpike, got
a few Time to Eat diner, Felix number nine, you
(20:27):
name it. The Greeks ran the diner system over there,
so we need to bring that back cross country.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
I know there. I can't even think of like a
good diner like here in California, at least, you know,
I grew up here. All I could think of is
Denny's ihop that's really it all that we had, or
Mebe's Cafe. Is that considered a dinam I.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Don't know, but they're closing or they've closed a lot
of them. The reason why the diner has lost its luster,
if you will, is because people don't go out to
eat for breakfast every single day, so brunch, like you'll
have this crazy Sunday brunch, you know, you'll do like
ten or fifteen thousand dollars in sales, and then like
on a Monday morning, maybe you've got the local bridge
(21:06):
club that comes and has like a cup of coffee
and they split a cinnamon bun five ways. Yeah, that's true,
that's true. But we need to bring back the breakfast meeting,
not the Starbucks meeting, not the let's go grab a
cup of coffee and sit for two hours, but like
the hardy breakfast meeting. Like we don't even go out
to breakfast. No. I went out to breakfast with Casey
a couple months back, who's another my cost city councilman,
(21:29):
Huntington Beach. We went to the hangout on the corner.
They had a great breakfast. Oh but it was it was.
It was actually pretty full, but it was everybody just
like you know, indulging in all you can drink coffee.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Refills, little mimosas in there.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah. But that brings me to a bigger point. And
this is one thing I wanted to talk about and
bring up today, is that like the death of the
independent restaurant, a lot of people complain that they don't
have that like main street restaurant, that one of a
kind restaurant that Applebee's and Chili's are taking over every
rest stop and taking over every street corner in some
of these main streat areas, which is one hundred percent true.
(22:02):
And the reason behind that is just the cost of
doing business. So when you've got a multi unit restaurant group,
you can kind of you can bring a lot of
those costs up into a you know, like a corporate
line item, or you can share those costs across a
much bigger swath of restaurants. But what we need to do,
looking at California, New York, New Jersey, Florida's done a
pretty good job of keeping the restaurant economy strong. But
(22:26):
what we need to do is we need to really
dig into the costs that are baring these restaurants, and
cities need to actually start to incentivize bringing in small,
single unit mom and pop operators into their main streets
as opposed to these large, multi unit chains that are everywhere.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
But also, why do you think people tend to go
to these chains instead of the mom and pop?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I feel like because they're they're well First of all,
they market a ton, right, because they have the money
to market a ton by virtue of the number of locations.
That in and of itself is marketing. The existence of
a restaurant is a billboard for a restaurant elsewhere. So
that's number one. Number two consistency, I think people just
feel like, oh, okay, what you're going to get? Yeah,
I know what I'm gonna get. It's consistent, and they
(23:10):
really stand out right. They have better locations, right, A
lot of them have drived through is they've got corner lots,
they've got freestanding buildings. So they're just in better locations, right,
And that's the key. I implore everybody to always look through,
you know, and try and find what the local restaurant is,
to go and support that restaurant. And in many cases
you might pay a little bit more at those restaurants,
(23:32):
but you're typically getting scratch made food that is also
much higher quality. But these are those types of public
private partnerships that I'm talking about where it's like cities
can basically create tax incentives and build out incentives and
permanent incentives, and we're doing that in Huntington Beach. What
are ways in which we can get more of these
small independent mom and pops in and highlight them. Whether
(23:53):
that's making the permitting process a lot easier getting some
of the pocket listings, because when you have a really
good location, one of the cliches in a restaurant industry
is location, location, location. A lot of times those are
listings that never go to market and they go right
to the corporate representative who takes it before it can
go out on the market to get one of those
good locations.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
That's all good information, honey.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
It is great information because if you build it, they
will come. Like it's a culinary scavenger hunt. We've talked
a lot about food, which is great, but I think
it's time that we give some information out to our
listeners here during our Sharpen your Skills segment. So do
we have any cooking tips today? My love?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I have one, And this is funny because if you
watch our cooking show, the one we have on video.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's on YouTube American Gravy, It's on Brave Plus as well.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Andrew always makes me peel the garlic. That's true, always
because he hates when his hands smell like garlic. Anyway,
I have a good tip on that.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Shoot, So did you know you can get your garlic
or like your shallott's, stick them in the microwave for
ten seconds and the outer what do you want to
call it?
Speaker 1 (24:58):
A little jacket, little jacket, little garba jacket, a starter coat.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It peels off faster, It.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Peels right off. Yeah, because the moisture inside the clove
of garlic or the shallot itself, it steams a little
bit because that's where the water is. So it actually
steams the jacket off in that ten seconds, but it
doesn't cook the allium product itself. Okay. Is it just
called the skin? It is the skin?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Okay. I like the jacket though it sounds cute.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
I'd love a garlic jacket.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
No, you wouldn't, Yeah, why not?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
What are you gonna be for Halloween this year? Speaking
at garlic? Ugh?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
What a witch?
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Oh my god, witches aren't afraid of garlic. That's you're
thinking about.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I don't know because last year?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
No, was it last year.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Or two years ago?
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I don't know. I don't know what you're gonna say.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
So remember we went to the Halloween party and I
was so excited. I was like, oh, I'm finally got
to dress up. I dressed up as Uma Thurman in
what's that movie?
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Pulp fiction?
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Pulp fiction was I got the wig, I got the
red lipstick, the fake cigarette.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I was so excited, beauty mark.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Then we get to the party, not one single adult
is dressed.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Uff it is true. So we played it off like
she could. She she left the wig on, got rid
of the beating mark in the fake cigarette. She say, oh,
this is what I happen to be wearing today. So
come to going for the.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Zoom at third one thing, I'm kind of nervous.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
So we did show up at the party and nobody
was dressed. But you guys are ready for you. Laurence
wasn't bad. No, that's not true. Don't you remember I
had the inflatable dinosaur costume on. So that was very
awkward for our social our social group.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, well we're not invited back to that party.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
We were not invited back because the tail of my
dinosaur thing dropped every.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
All the jello shots that they did.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
It did. Yeah, Lauren and I don't have many friends,
so that's why you're my best friend. We're pretty we're
pretty awkward in social settings. Especially because everyone's always like,
oh my gosh, what do you think of the food?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
You're the chef, And you know what, I find that
funny When we go to people's houses, they are so
intimidated to like have us eat their food. They're like,
oh gosh, I hope it's okay, and we're like, what, Like,
we're not picky at all.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
If someone is cooking for me, the food is already
ten out of ten. Like that's what people need to realize.
Do not be intimidated cooking for chefs or restaurant people
because we're used to providing food for other people.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Exactly. We are used to being the ones providing it.
We're doing the events, we're doing all this stuff, and
I love when we don't have to do anything.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
The only thing I'm ever gonna judge is the ratio
of milk to cereal and a cereal bowl.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Well, I don't think we're eating cereal at anyone's houses.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
No, But that's my point is that I'm used to
just eating cereal. So cook you dinner, you do. Lauren
is the chef at home. She cooks us great dinner.
Although last night I threw a little sausage, a little
chicken sausage stew together.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
It was very good.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Shit. Kids love it. Kids loved it. You want to
know what I did? I pants heared a bunch of sausage,
and I threw my chicken breast in the pan, and
then I threw some beef stock in there, and a
little bit of that tomato stuff you had left over.
Then I turned the heat off right and I let
the steam finish cooking everything, turned the heat back on,
pulled the protein out, but then I threw the sausage
was left in the pan with the chicken juices and
(28:01):
the beef stock. So then the chicken was sitting on
a plate, resting and just you know, hanging out, having
a cigarette. And I brought the pan back up to
like a medium high heat, and I threw a big
old chunk of butter in there, mounted the sauce at
the end that's called Monte albert in French cooking burr burr,
and then pulled the sauce together, poured it over the
chicken with the sausage, and bingo bongo. Oh Yeah that
(28:23):
was it. So that's eighty six something today. Okay, what
do you hate? What do you want to see?
Speaker 2 (28:29):
I hate I don't hate and I don't want to
see go, but the over use of AI, because I'm
getting to the age now where I can't really tell
what's what's AI.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
You're getting to the age she's listening in close capching
she's going to bed at six pm on thirty seven.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
By the way, Yeah, but I don't know what that is, okay.
So like I'll watch a video and I'm like, oh
my gosh, and then our oldest son will be like, mom,
that's AI. I'm like, So, I'm not against AI. I
think it's great. I love using chat GPT. I'm not
gonna lie, you know. I think that's nice to have.
But like, these videos are like driving me insane because
(29:06):
I can't tell if it's real or not.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
I totally agreed that I was looking at something with
the kids last night and it was like a tornado.
And then the tornado picked the guy up and like
threw him around and he landed on a roof and
broke through the roof and then he was in the
basement of the house. This is how quickly it happened.
I thought it was real, and then our kids I
was like, look at that tornado. That's unbelievable. Yeah, my dad,
you're native.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
I saw a similar video where the tornado like picked
up the family dog and like took it, and I'm like,
oh my gosh. And then it took me a second.
I was like, oh my gosh, this is ai.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
You know how I know that Lauren loves Chat GPT
is because I'll get like these love notes from her,
or she'll be like and she'll write too much. She'll
be like, I've been pontificating about the romance in our
lives and I think we need to transcend this moment.
And I'm like, oh my god, she's chut ept in
our life.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Your chat GPT a freaking love note to you. I
will tell you that they come from here. And what
I'm doing right now is I'm holding my heart.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
She's pointing to her button.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Got it, but butts, I'm gonna kick yours.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah, that is right. So you know, Wow, we went
through a lot today, but Crackerbell Restaurant Overview, you name it,
eighty six it. We're still looking for the eighty six
items from all of our listeners. So you know, the
place to find us is on X. I'm at Chef Croll.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
I'm at Lauren Girl or Instagram Lauren Underscore Girl. I'm
more active on my Instagram. You're more active on your X.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yes, I am more active on my ex as well
as I'm very very active on my Facebook Messenger.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
That's weird.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I'm actually not. I don't know why. I'm trying to
come up with something funny there.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
All right, Well that note.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, on that note, we're going to be wrapping it
up here, so make sure you hit us with your stories.
Thank you for all the sandwich recommendations that everybody gave
us last week. I've had eleven sandwiches today alone. I'm
excited about my twelfth. All right, and see you later.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Bye,
And we're back for another episode of American Gravy. Get ready,
get your bibs. It is on, It is getting messy.
It is Hello everybody, and welcome back to American Gravy,
where this is where food meets fun, flavor meets the absurd,
of course, And I'm Chef Andrew Grouhl and I'm Lauren Gruel,
and today we're going to be diving into some of
the funniest, strangest, and most mouthwatering food stories making the
(00:23):
rounds this week. All right, babe, But Lauren, you know what,
let's face it, food news has gone off the rails
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It always is off the rails.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
So we're gonna bring it back to the We're gonna
bring it back to reality today, bringing it back to
so I gotta throw in there, right, I always start off,
see I can't stick to script. But it's kids Picture
Day today at our kids' school. Oh boy, yeah, And
I'm you know, it's funny whenever I hear kids Picture Day.
I remember when I would have the photos and it
was like the laser beams in the background.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Oh yeah, they were so fun.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, but they don't have that nowadays.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
They don't have it. But also let's just go back
to our boys who refuse to wear nice clothes. They
want to wear the same thing that has like holes
in it. It's like stained.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
The only way we can compromise with the kids nowadays
is we'll be like, all right, you got to pick
your clothes out the night before so that you're ready
in the morning. Because getting ready with three younger boys
in the morning is like it's basically a search for underwear.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
They never know where anything is.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
They don't want to wear underwear, which is disgusting.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Okay, they don't know where anything is. They want to
wear the same outfit.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
So I've told them you can wear what you're going
to take a shower at night or bath or whatever
you do, you know, spray down and I sprang in
the backyard with a hose many times. And then just
whatever you're going to wear to school. Because they're kids,
you know, they don't stink when they sleep. Just wear
those clothes to bed or at least like the you know,
the shirt or part of it, and be lady.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
We got to be like fifty percent there.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
So now that they've interpreted that is like I can
wear my pajamas to school, so it's school picture day
and they look like they're homeless kids.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
No, my favorite is our youngest. He likes his hair
like what's his name from a dumb and dummer Lloyd?
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Is it Lloyd Gosh Lloyd Dobbler?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
He I don't know why. He wants it right in
front of his face. And I was trying to comb
it to the side, you know, put some gel in it,
make it look somewhat presentable. He freaked out rubbed his hair,
so now it's like half to the side, half in
front of his face. These pictures are going to be
something to look forward to.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
And I made some waffles this morning, so the other
son got syrup on his hands and put that in
his hair, so he's sticking straight up. It's great.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
And there's some dribbles of syrup on his T shirts.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah. So I can't wait to see what comes out
on these pictures. But I told the kids because they're young,
and I told them, I said, you know what, you're
going to look at these pictures when you're older, and
they're going to be kind of funny, So just make
the craziest face you possibly can. Like, I don't care
how quirky it is, how silly it is like cross
your eyes.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
I love the kids. They all go through like this
awkward smile stage two exact. So I'm so excited I
think that I think our youngest will have that this year.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Well I gave them a couple little tips and tricks
just so you know, so you might be surprised and
you're going to say, who told you do that? When
they say, Dad, I might be in a timeout, so
that the outcome is yet to yet to be determined. There,
all right, Well, moving into the first main food line
this week, I'm gonna take a little deep dive. I
know this is old and we talked about it in
a past, but there's been some evidence that's come about
in regards to the Dun Dun Dun and the cracker
(03:14):
barrel saga.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Oh my gosh, that was so weird. It wasn't weird,
it was right, well, it was right right in which way.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Well, first of all, so for those of you who
don't remember, because this was two or three weeks ago
and we moved at the speed of lightning, is the
Cracker bell rebranded? Not just their logo itself, but you know,
they kind of did like a new brand book. And
then obviously they were interior designed at the restaurants. People
love Cracker Barrel. It's a legacy brand. It's really representative
of that kind of like deep South home cooking. And
(03:44):
they took out mister Cracker Barrel, I forget his name
from the logo itself, the guy that was sitting on
the rocking chair.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Yeah, there was no need to do that.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
They didn't like that, so they brought in this outside
branding company and they spent millions of dollars, as I
had suggested at the time, and to redo the brand.
And there was a huge uproar and everybody was mad
about it, and it kind of became the cultural talking point.
You know, it was like bigger than that, and it
was and we won't get into any of that, but
I think that for me, when I looked at the
Cracker Barrel story, it was indicative of a problem that
(04:14):
we've seen across food service and generally retail brands overall
over the past ten or fifteen years, and that's watering
down brands that have history and legacy and trying to
make them more anadyne and really vanilla.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Right, didn't they do that? With miss Jemima the syrup.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Well that was that was a racial subject. Oh so yeah,
they wanted to remove and Jemima specifically from the bottle
because they thought that that was racist and we don't
need to touch on that just because I don't like that,
like all that fakes syrup to begin with. So it
wasn't a part of their target market. It's really just
high fructose corn syrup and caramel color. Just get the
(04:49):
real maple syrup. But I digress. So now it's funny.
You've seen like a little bit of this cleanup, right,
it was like, oh, the CEO needs to get fired.
And she was the CEO. Oh she was like some
you know, kind of like hot city ceo. I don't
mean hot, like physically hot, I mean like the hot
thing that was taking this kind of southern more country
(05:10):
style brand and trying to make it more chic cheek. Yeah,
like gen Xy. They had done all these cracker bell
pop ups in New York City as part of their
like brand activation, where they had TikTok influencers come in
and they set up I don't know if you know this,
they set up many cracker barrels, like in Union Square,
or in the general Times Square area and had all
(05:31):
and did like these crazy quirky which was part of
your eighty six from last week, was like all these
food influencers being crazy. Oh gosh, okay, I did not
know that they did that, but to me, that was
like representative of this this kind of modern mindset that
has really plagued a lot of our food. What I
said at the time was, here's what's gone down with
(05:52):
Cracker Barrel. They were bought out by a big private
equity firm ten or fifteen years ago, which we know
for a fact, they've decreased the quality of their food.
They've tried to create branding that's more standardized across like
a national audience. Because functionally, the way in which you
can get your franchisese or your multi unit operators. I
don't think that there are a franchise concept, but just
(06:14):
generally speaking, multi unit operators to stick to this brand book,
like everything has to be cut, copy and paste. So
when you walk into a Cracker Barrel and you know Virginia,
it's the same Cracker Barrel and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and
the way in which a lot of those firms try
and get you to do that and to standardize those
protocols and procedures is really by watering down the brand. Yeah,
and I don't like that approach. When we owned a
(06:36):
multi unit franchise group, we had restaurants across thirteen or
fourteen different locations. We allowed a lot of the local
market franchisees to kind of add their own flavor personality.
The seafood was different in each market. We had our
basic format of menu items, but then beyond that there
was obviously like local specialties, and that applied to design
and development for the stores as well. So now Cracker
(06:58):
Barrel is cleaning up and there they've fired the brand,
the advertising agency or the branding agency, I don't recall
the name of it, but.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Yeah, so they fired the design company, which is interesting.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well, because somebody had to there needed to be a scalp,
like like somebody had to go take it wasn't going
to be the CEO, which I think like at the
end of the day, it all rolls up to the CEO,
so like you need to take responsibility and you need
to go out there and make a statement. They clearly
don't understand the Cracker Barrel customer. But here was my thing,
the brand itself and by that, the brand, and I
(07:33):
know a brand encompasses more than just the logo, but
we we superficially think of a brand as just the logo.
It was something that I could have gone on five
R and spent ninety dollars to get like an Indian
designer to create.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
How much do you think they spent on that redesign?
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I would suggest a million dollars plus geese, and as
part of a brand package, so they all they obviously,
you know they That becomes applicable to the interior design
of the store, which once again they got rid of
all the choschkeys that were around the restaurant. You walk
in and it's kind of this home homie feel like
you want to feel like you're walking into Gramma's dining room.
But they got rid of all that and they basically
(08:09):
replaced it with like just basic home good style tables,
and they got rid of all the stuff that was
on the walls. What have you? Okay, the clutter, although
I think it was like it was artful clutter.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Have we been to a cracker barrel?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah? In Albuquerque. When we went and opened the Albuquerque stores,
I was hitting the cracker barrels out there?
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Oh, I thought it was a roadhouse.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
But that's a good question because I'll transition to the
bigger problem that nobody's talking about with cracker barrel. And
the point that I made is that it's the food.
Right at the end of the day, why we go
out to eat at restaurants is cost, convenience and the
food to quality, the quality to price ratio. And I
have never not gone to a restaurant because I didn't
(08:50):
like the logo or the interior design. And nor have
I ever gone to a restaurant in the casual dining
setting because I liked the way it looked and field
if I'm getting good food for the price, that's it, right,
Like that's why I'm going to go there. And would
you agree with that?
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, I don't think I've ever gone to anywhere really
even like a regular store, like a clothing store because
of the logo.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Well you don't eat the clothes.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Well I know that, but like you don't. It's not
like a draw to like come.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
In edible clothing is I think a topic for you.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
That's a difference for pants, that's a different store.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
So what cracker Bell has done is they've co packed
over the years, and it's not just Cracker Barrel. This
is so many of these brands. And what they do
is is that as costs go up in the restaurant industry,
you then have to start producing your food off site
because that decreases the units of labor that you need
in the store. And then you can buy all of
those copacked sauces and rice dishes and like pre prepared
(09:46):
foods that are no longer made on site. You can
buy them at bulk using these economies of scale, and
it brings the prices down, but then you lose the
flavor of the food and you lose that home cooked field.
That's what's happened over ten years. So they spent millions
of dollars on the logo, the brand, in the design,
the superficial element, but they didn't fix the food. And
(10:06):
I think that that is the problem altogether, and we're
going to weave that into some future stories. So they've
fired the design firm and conclusion, in addition to the
fact that they put out a ton of press releases
that we read in industry pubs publications saying that all
of the negative response was due to bots.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
Very interesting that that's what they blamed it on.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
But and they didn't have much data to prove that,
Like that was the headline that I read in Nations
Restaurant News, But it wasn't It wasn't like there was
no data to support that. So I think it was
the people speaking, and thank you all for speaking. Let's
keep talking about it.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Speaking of rebranding, you know Domino's pizza boxes can look
a little bit different shortly.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, once again, same thing. Like Domino's has put out
a ton of press about the fact that they're redesigning
their brand, their logo, and their pizza boxes, something that
they haven't done in thirteen years.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
We all know Domino's pizza boxes, Like, that's Dominoes. Why
are they trying to, you know, change something that's good.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
I like when brands don't refresh them. I like when
they become iconic versus doing a throwback where it's like, oh,
we're going back to our nineteen eighties design. You know
a lot of the soda brands do.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
That and they're coming up with a catchy jingle.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Oh they are. They brought on a they brought on
a musician to do what what's the name of the musician?
Is it like shaboozy, Shaboozy shaboozy?
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Would you like to would you like to share the jingle?
Since I clearly have a horrible singing voice.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
I don't. I don't know what the jingle is, but
I'm not nor do I want it. I think it's
like Dominos get your pizza. There were two jingles. What
are the most memorable jingles you know from food?
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Oh, gosh, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Wama babybag Baby. That's a great one. And then do
you remember Hooty and the Blowfish tender chicken cheddar ranch sandwich.
I want my tender tender crisp chicken chad a ranch
where the French fries tastes like weeds. It was Hooty
and the Blowfish.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
No, I do work.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
It's rid all day. Okay. For those of you who
have heard this, please make a comment when we post
this episode, because you're.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Just going to go on YouTube after this and check
it out.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
There are some really cool jingles. I miss those. I
missed the good old TV jingles when you'd walk around
all day at school and you had like a food
commercial in your head.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I don't I don't know food commercials, but I have
other type of commercials in my head, like like, oh
my gosh, why can I think of anything on the spot. Anyway,
I'll come up with one later.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
I want my doublemint double mint, come on and double it,
double mint double fresh.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Okay, did you watch a lot of TV?
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Growing I watched commercials. I was really into commercials, which
is surprising that I'm not in advertising, but whatever, so
be it. What's going on in the world of lifestyle
these days? A line?
Speaker 2 (12:48):
Okay, So here's the thing. I used to think subtitles
were for old people. I every time I would go to,
you know, somebody's house and their parents had the TV on.
There were subtitles, and I could not pay attention to
what was on the TV because I was constantly reading
the subtitles. I was like, who would put subtitles on
the TV? This is so stupid. I am the person
now that needs close caption word. I need it on
(13:12):
at all times. I don't know what it is. I
don't know if it's an age thing, but I cannot
watch TV or a movie without closed captioning.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I love having the subtitles because I don't know what's happened?
And I'm not that old, I'm forty five, but I
can't hear anything you can't, which is sometimes it's selection.
I think it's selective hearing. Do you remember the story
of the guy this like what viral, who pretended for
twenty five years he was deaf so he didn't have
to talk to his wife?
Speaker 2 (13:39):
How did it? First of all, that takes so much commitment,
that's amazing. But did he talk to anybody or he
just didn't talk? Did he have like guy friends on
the side that knew he could hear.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I have a feeling he had like a cadre of
people that were in on it, Like maybe he'd do
poker night and he could talk and get it all out.
But then otherwise at home he was just like she.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Why would you be married to somebody you don't want
to talk to.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
I don't know. I've really bad hearing problems, so it
might happen to us. But I'm going to look right now. Wow,
I'm not saying no, I'm just pretend that he has
hearing issues and we'll never speak. I guess we can't
do the show together. What?
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Yeah, Okay?
Speaker 1 (14:15):
I love subtitles. I read them all the time, and
it's actually the way in which we can get our
kids to start like practicing reading. We'll just turn the
TV and put it on mute and be like read
the subtitles.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
You know what I was doing, because I really want
to learn Spanish. I was putting the subtitles in Spanish,
but like listening to it in English so I could
see what they were saying.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Oh my god, that's very academic of you. Yeah, Ola
Lafiesta nosolos.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Here we go with his one liner singers.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
That's a good one. So last week it was pat
lookout you have a chicken on your roof in German
and this week this party is not for the ugly people.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
I thought, what say again.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Lafiesa nos paolo.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Fos akay gotcha.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yeah see so don't worry, you're invited. It's okay. Wow, thanks, Yeah,
I know all right. So so that was that was
kind of a funny story. I remember that we talked
about that on Gutfeldt a while back, and it was
there was there was some pretty good jokes there. I'm
not a comedian, though, so I can't really make some titles. Yeah,
it was like the subtitle thing.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well, what was funny about it?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
This story has gone well, this story has been going
viral now for a while, so it's uh.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Well, I guess younger and younger people are also using
close captioning.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
They are, which is good. What the fork?
Speaker 2 (15:30):
What the fork? And what is going on?
Speaker 1 (15:33):
What is yet? Well? I want to know. There's been
a lot of crazy food stories this week, but one
of them caught my eye, actually caught your eye or
your eyes my eyeballs. Yeah, so why don't you tell
us about this one?
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Okay, first of all, this isn't like new, This isn't
a new thing. But a huge fight broke out at
a San Antonio Whataburger just after three am, which is
bad news in general. Like, if you're aut a Whataburger
at three am, you know you just had a long
night of partying, right.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
You're not just or you're working the night shift.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I doubt I doubt that. So anyway, a huge fight
breaks out because there was a mix up in an order,
like somebody took the wrong order and there ended up
being a brawl inside this water burger at three am.
Speaker 1 (16:12):
I understand that, and let me tell you why not
the actual fight itself, but don't you hate when you
go somewhere and it's like really crowded and everybody's hovering
around the pickup area, and then somebody takes your order
and you're just like livid because then you got to
go back up and you got to reorder, and then
they got to push it through and you wait for
another twenty or thirty minutes.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
I don't think it takes that long. But at the
same time, I'm sure these people, if they were in
their right state of mind, it probably wouldn't have broken out.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
It wouldn't have broken out in a brawl. But I
think people who get into fights at fast food restaurants
or waffle house waffle houses like the MMA Thunderdome of
Fights and restaurants. Waffle House. Yeah, and there were all
those videos that were going viral, Like I remember it
was like last year or the year before it was.
It was primarily during the pandemic because waffle house remained open,
so it was the place to be. It's the public square,
(16:58):
and the waffle house employees like they would throw down
with the customers, with the customers, yeah, with each other.
Now with the customers. I remember there was somebody who
liked threw a chair, and then this lady came the flow,
you know, the counter waitress. She just she like caught
the chair with one hand and then she took some
like nineteen year old drunk kid out with the top
(17:20):
of a chair and a syrup bottle. Never let me
go to a waffle house. I do you like waffle house?
Speaker 2 (17:27):
I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Have you ever been to a waffle house?
Speaker 2 (17:29):
I think I went once and I didn't like the waffles.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
I'll take a waffle house. I'll take waffle house over
the over eye hop any day. Hmmmm, although there's an
eye hopping near us. Where would you go if you wanted?
Like so, waffle house? I hop Denny's Snooze. What's the
other one?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I don't think there is any morning Watch or morning Watch? Oh,
first Watch, First Watch, morning Watch whatever. I actually like
First Watch. We've only been to one in New Jersey
though there's not any in California.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
That was Florida. We were in front Florida.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
I'm sorry. Is there a lot of.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
People in New Jersey or from in Florida? From New Jersey?
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Sorry?
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah, what's happened to the diner? Like that's one thing
that we've lost in America is like the good old
corner diner.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
I love Denny's. When I was growing up, Oh my gosh,
Denny's was like my place to go.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
I worked at a Denny's. Do you know that. Yeah,
when I was eighteen years old, I worked at a Denny's.
I worked the overnight shift and at the time, we
actually were cracking all of our own eggs. And I
was cracking eggs two am when the bar would get
out and everybody would come in there, and it was
just like Moon's over my Hammi, after Della Dinger, after
Moon's over my Grand Slam. Oh, the All American Grand Slam.
I'll wake up in cold sweats thinking about the All
American Grand Slam because I could never get the hash
(18:36):
Browns right on the top.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
Well, now you're great at hash brown Oh.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
I'm the hash brown King. I'm the breakfast king. So
in the restaurant industry, a lot of people don't know this.
This is that when you work through like a hotel
system or you know, like a corporate restaurant group where
you it's high quality, you always start off on the
egg station. So, like before, when I did my apprenticeship
up at in Oregon at Mount Hood, Like before you
could get to the fine diner dinner stage of working,
(19:02):
you had to well, you start off in the dishpit,
then you go to banquets, and then you go to
egg cookery. Right. The reason why egg cooking is because
for breakfast, people want their food in ten minutes or less.
Eggs can cook very very quickly. And the process of
flipping omelets and flipping eggs and cooking eggs, it just
teaches you how to control your station, make sure your
meissan plaus is all in its place. It was just
(19:22):
like your ingredients, your station is clean. And I loved
egg cooking because you're jamming out right, Like you got
ten omelets on the board, two over easy eggs, six
over medium eggs, fritatas you know, they used to say,
maybe maybe she's fatatted, and that was it. Like egg
(19:43):
cooking was the you had to pass through egg cookery.
How many of my egg chefs are out there, you see, Oh,
there's a lot of them listening. There's a lot. We
have a live studio audience here. But what's happened now
with diners and with a lot of these corporate breakfast
change is that All the eggs are bag they're treated
with citric acid. They're low quality eggs. They're cooked in
(20:04):
like these kind of egg contraptions where you just like
pour them in and you like close the lid, press
two minutes and then they're done. Nobody's poaching their eggs fresh.
New Jersey is the home of the diner. That's where
I grew up, right and the good old school New
Jersey diners still exists, especially off Route twenty two to
two to two oh six, you name it, Turnpike, got
a few Time to Eat diner, Felix number nine, you
(20:27):
name it. The Greeks ran the diner system over there,
so we need to bring that back cross country.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
I know there. I can't even think of like a
good diner like here in California, at least, you know,
I grew up here. All I could think of is
Denny's ihop that's really it all that we had, or
Mebe's Cafe. Is that considered a dinam I.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Don't know, but they're closing or they've closed a lot
of them. The reason why the diner has lost its luster,
if you will, is because people don't go out to
eat for breakfast every single day, so brunch, like you'll
have this crazy Sunday brunch, you know, you'll do like
ten or fifteen thousand dollars in sales, and then like
on a Monday morning, maybe you've got the local bridge
(21:06):
club that comes and has like a cup of coffee
and they split a cinnamon bun five ways. Yeah, that's true,
that's true. But we need to bring back the breakfast meeting,
not the Starbucks meeting, not the let's go grab a
cup of coffee and sit for two hours, but like
the hardy breakfast meeting. Like we don't even go out
to breakfast. No. I went out to breakfast with Casey
a couple months back, who's another my cost city councilman,
(21:29):
Huntington Beach. We went to the hangout on the corner.
They had a great breakfast. Oh but it was it was.
It was actually pretty full, but it was everybody just
like you know, indulging in all you can drink coffee.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Refills, little mimosas in there.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah. But that brings me to a bigger point. And
this is one thing I wanted to talk about and
bring up today, is that like the death of the
independent restaurant, a lot of people complain that they don't
have that like main street restaurant, that one of a
kind restaurant that Applebee's and Chili's are taking over every
rest stop and taking over every street corner in some
of these main streat areas, which is one hundred percent true.
(22:02):
And the reason behind that is just the cost of
doing business. So when you've got a multi unit restaurant group,
you can kind of you can bring a lot of
those costs up into a you know, like a corporate
line item, or you can share those costs across a
much bigger swath of restaurants. But what we need to do,
looking at California, New York, New Jersey, Florida's done a
pretty good job of keeping the restaurant economy strong. But
(22:26):
what we need to do is we need to really
dig into the costs that are baring these restaurants, and
cities need to actually start to incentivize bringing in small,
single unit mom and pop operators into their main streets
as opposed to these large, multi unit chains that are everywhere.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
But also, why do you think people tend to go
to these chains instead of the mom and pop?
Speaker 1 (22:47):
I feel like because they're they're well First of all,
they market a ton, right, because they have the money
to market a ton by virtue of the number of locations.
That in and of itself is marketing. The existence of
a restaurant is a billboard for a restaurant elsewhere. So
that's number one. Number two consistency, I think people just
feel like, oh, okay, what you're going to get? Yeah,
I know what I'm gonna get. It's consistent, and they
(23:10):
really stand out right. They have better locations, right, A
lot of them have drived through is they've got corner lots,
they've got freestanding buildings. So they're just in better locations, right,
And that's the key. I implore everybody to always look through,
you know, and try and find what the local restaurant is,
to go and support that restaurant. And in many cases
you might pay a little bit more at those restaurants,
(23:32):
but you're typically getting scratch made food that is also
much higher quality. But these are those types of public
private partnerships that I'm talking about where it's like cities
can basically create tax incentives and build out incentives and
permanent incentives, and we're doing that in Huntington Beach. What
are ways in which we can get more of these
small independent mom and pops in and highlight them. Whether
(23:53):
that's making the permitting process a lot easier getting some
of the pocket listings, because when you have a really
good location, one of the cliches in a restaurant industry
is location, location, location. A lot of times those are
listings that never go to market and they go right
to the corporate representative who takes it before it can
go out on the market to get one of those
good locations.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
That's all good information, honey.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
It is great information because if you build it, they
will come. Like it's a culinary scavenger hunt. We've talked
a lot about food, which is great, but I think
it's time that we give some information out to our
listeners here during our Sharpen your Skills segment. So do
we have any cooking tips today? My love?
Speaker 2 (24:30):
I have one, And this is funny because if you
watch our cooking show, the one we have on video.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's on YouTube American Gravy, It's on Brave Plus as well.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Andrew always makes me peel the garlic. That's true, always
because he hates when his hands smell like garlic. Anyway,
I have a good tip on that.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
Shoot, So did you know you can get your garlic
or like your shallott's, stick them in the microwave for
ten seconds and the outer what do you want to
call it?
Speaker 1 (24:58):
A little jacket, little jacket, little garba jacket, a starter coat.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
It peels off faster, It.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Peels right off. Yeah, because the moisture inside the clove
of garlic or the shallot itself, it steams a little
bit because that's where the water is. So it actually
steams the jacket off in that ten seconds, but it
doesn't cook the allium product itself. Okay. Is it just
called the skin? It is the skin?
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Okay. I like the jacket though it sounds cute.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
I'd love a garlic jacket.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
No, you wouldn't, Yeah, why not?
Speaker 1 (25:27):
What are you gonna be for Halloween this year? Speaking
at garlic? Ugh?
Speaker 2 (25:31):
What a witch?
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Oh my god, witches aren't afraid of garlic. That's you're
thinking about.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
I don't know because last year?
Speaker 1 (25:41):
No, was it last year.
Speaker 2 (25:43):
Or two years ago?
Speaker 1 (25:44):
I don't know. I don't know what you're gonna say.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
So remember we went to the Halloween party and I
was so excited. I was like, oh, I'm finally got
to dress up. I dressed up as Uma Thurman in
what's that movie?
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Pulp fiction?
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Pulp fiction was I got the wig, I got the
red lipstick, the fake cigarette.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
I was so excited, beauty mark.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Then we get to the party, not one single adult
is dressed.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Uff it is true. So we played it off like
she could. She she left the wig on, got rid
of the beating mark in the fake cigarette. She say, oh,
this is what I happen to be wearing today. So
come to going for the.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Zoom at third one thing, I'm kind of nervous.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
So we did show up at the party and nobody
was dressed. But you guys are ready for you. Laurence
wasn't bad. No, that's not true. Don't you remember I
had the inflatable dinosaur costume on. So that was very
awkward for our social our social group.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, well we're not invited back to that party.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
We were not invited back because the tail of my
dinosaur thing dropped every.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
All the jello shots that they did.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
It did. Yeah, Lauren and I don't have many friends,
so that's why you're my best friend. We're pretty we're
pretty awkward in social settings. Especially because everyone's always like,
oh my gosh, what do you think of the food?
Speaker 2 (26:48):
You're the chef, And you know what, I find that
funny When we go to people's houses, they are so
intimidated to like have us eat their food. They're like,
oh gosh, I hope it's okay, and we're like, what, Like,
we're not picky at all.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
If someone is cooking for me, the food is already
ten out of ten. Like that's what people need to realize.
Do not be intimidated cooking for chefs or restaurant people
because we're used to providing food for other people.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Exactly. We are used to being the ones providing it.
We're doing the events, we're doing all this stuff, and
I love when we don't have to do anything.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
The only thing I'm ever gonna judge is the ratio
of milk to cereal and a cereal bowl.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Well, I don't think we're eating cereal at anyone's houses.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
No, But that's my point is that I'm used to
just eating cereal. So cook you dinner, you do. Lauren
is the chef at home. She cooks us great dinner.
Although last night I threw a little sausage, a little
chicken sausage stew together.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
It was very good.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Shit. Kids love it. Kids loved it. You want to
know what I did? I pants heared a bunch of sausage,
and I threw my chicken breast in the pan, and
then I threw some beef stock in there, and a
little bit of that tomato stuff you had left over.
Then I turned the heat off right and I let
the steam finish cooking everything, turned the heat back on,
pulled the protein out, but then I threw the sausage
was left in the pan with the chicken juices and
(28:01):
the beef stock. So then the chicken was sitting on
a plate, resting and just you know, hanging out, having
a cigarette. And I brought the pan back up to
like a medium high heat, and I threw a big
old chunk of butter in there, mounted the sauce at
the end that's called Monte albert in French cooking burr burr,
and then pulled the sauce together, poured it over the
chicken with the sausage, and bingo bongo. Oh Yeah that
(28:23):
was it. So that's eighty six something today. Okay, what
do you hate? What do you want to see?
Speaker 2 (28:29):
I hate I don't hate and I don't want to
see go, but the over use of AI, because I'm
getting to the age now where I can't really tell
what's what's AI.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
You're getting to the age she's listening in close capching
she's going to bed at six pm on thirty seven.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
By the way, Yeah, but I don't know what that is, okay.
So like I'll watch a video and I'm like, oh
my gosh, and then our oldest son will be like, mom,
that's AI. I'm like, So, I'm not against AI. I
think it's great. I love using chat GPT. I'm not
gonna lie, you know. I think that's nice to have.
But like, these videos are like driving me insane because
(29:06):
I can't tell if it's real or not.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
I totally agreed that I was looking at something with
the kids last night and it was like a tornado.
And then the tornado picked the guy up and like
threw him around and he landed on a roof and
broke through the roof and then he was in the
basement of the house. This is how quickly it happened.
I thought it was real, and then our kids I
was like, look at that tornado. That's unbelievable. Yeah, my dad,
you're native.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
I saw a similar video where the tornado like picked
up the family dog and like took it, and I'm like,
oh my gosh. And then it took me a second.
I was like, oh my gosh, this is ai.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
You know how I know that Lauren loves Chat GPT
is because I'll get like these love notes from her,
or she'll be like and she'll write too much. She'll
be like, I've been pontificating about the romance in our
lives and I think we need to transcend this moment.
And I'm like, oh my god, she's chut ept in
our life.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Your chat GPT a freaking love note to you. I
will tell you that they come from here. And what
I'm doing right now is I'm holding my heart.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
She's pointing to her button.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Got it, but butts, I'm gonna kick yours.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Yeah, that is right. So you know, Wow, we went
through a lot today, but Crackerbell Restaurant Overview, you name it,
eighty six it. We're still looking for the eighty six
items from all of our listeners. So you know, the
place to find us is on X. I'm at Chef Croll.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
I'm at Lauren Girl or Instagram Lauren Underscore Girl. I'm
more active on my Instagram. You're more active on your X.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yes, I am more active on my ex as well
as I'm very very active on my Facebook Messenger.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
That's weird.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
I'm actually not. I don't know why. I'm trying to
come up with something funny there.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
All right, Well that note.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Yeah, on that note, we're going to be wrapping it
up here, so make sure you hit us with your stories.
Thank you for all the sandwich recommendations that everybody gave
us last week. I've had eleven sandwiches today alone. I'm
excited about my twelfth. All right, and see you later.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Bye,
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