Sriracha mayo? It’s been done. Sriracha ketchup? That’s a thing. Sriracha socks? Dude, I literally have a pair at home. Sriracha yogurt? Chobani did that in like 2013, dude. You gotta be kidding me! This is A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal. So what? That makes no sense. Hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What? Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich, the show we break down the world’s biggest food debates. I’m your host, Josh Scherer. And I’m your host, Nicole Enayati. And today, Nicole, we are taking on a massive ecological and economic question, right here. Correct. We are talking about is sriracha overrated? And Nicole, the reason this has an ecological and economic impact, is because we are going through an unprecedented time right now. These are unprecedented times. There’s not a single precedent from these times. No, never, never. There is a massive sriracha shortage that the entire world is dealing with. Bottles are selling for hundreds of dollars on eBay. People are going to- Crazy! Black market sources, I assume. Crazy! And they’re getting their bottles filled up. They’re just bringing empty bottles and some guy in a back alley’s just going and sucking it out of the factory- Siphoning it? Siphoning it. Out of the factory? Spitting it into the bottles. That’s not true at all. But there is a massive sriracha shortage right now. That’s true, there is. And so we are gonna go through the question of like, “Should people even care? Is it overrated all along?” “Is it warranting a shortage,” is what you’re asking? “Is it warranting a shortage?” Okay, fair. But first, we should get into why the shortage is happening. I think we should get into what sriracha is. Okay, yeah, yeah, go back to the beginning. Sriracha is not just a hot sauce, it’s a way of life. Well, hold on. Are you talking about, when you say sriracha, do you mean the rooster sauce? You’re talking about Huy Fong Foods? Well, of course that’s my first inclination. That’s like my first, my synapses tell me. Yeah, you are like in “A Clockwork Orange”, you hear sriracha and you start seeing the images of the rooster in your mind. My eyes are open like this. Maggie’s putting eyedrops in there. And it’s flashes of rooster sauce. Yeah, I’m seeing like the $10 t-shirts at Target with the sriracha- Yeah. Logo on it. It’s iconic. It’s the lime-green tip and the super red orange bottle. That’s iconic. But I know that sriracha isn’t like just that. It is more than that, it’s an all-encompassing sauce, right? It is, but in a really weird, roundabout way. Hmm, okay. Right, so a lot of people might think that sriracha is a brand name. It is not. There is no copyright on the word sriracha. No, that’s one of the questions I have as a person, like from someone who like does not own an LLC, as someone who like, doesn’t like do anything like financially or honestly, intelligently, most of the time, why didn’t the person who made like the rooster sauce that we know and love, why didn’t they trademark sriracha? A couple reasons. So they’ve asked, David Tran is the founder of Huy Fong Foods- Yes. Which makes the most popular sriracha in the world. And people have asked him about it. And he was like, “Well, I didn’t want to gatekeep anything. I wanted to spread the gospel of sriracha.” Such a good person. Potentially, potentially, potentially. Okay. So that’s- In that aspect, he was moral. That’s what he said. Okay. But it may have just been that he didn’t really know you had to do that and then it was kind of too late. Because he has since trademarked, he’s trademarked the logo and he signed his licensing deals. But also several of these licensing deals, so for instance, there’s a micro-brewery that makes a sriracha stout that if you’ve had it- Oh, fun! I don’t need spicy beer. You know what I mean? Yeah, I drink beer to quell the spice. Correcting window. It’s a cool product and it’s actually really beautiful bottle. It has a green bottle cap on it. Oh, cute, okay. But there is sriracha popcorn, sriracha-flavored chips. Sure. And so if they wanna use the logo, then he licenses it to them. But he also isn’t charging them. Just the logo, not the name? It’s because the name isn’t trademarked still. Sure, okay, okay. But the logo is, so if they want to use that, they would have to pay him. But he doesn’t even take money from them. Oh! He views it as free-advertising. And that’s another potential reason to not trademark something. Smart, that’s pretty smart. It’s the fact that Heinz makes sriracha ketchup. Lee Kum Kee makes sriracha mayo. Mm-hmm . McDonald’s was putting sriracha on their burgers. On their burgers! And I gotta say, I enjoy McDonald’s, but their sriracha was really not great. Poopy. It was poopy. It was poopy. It was like weirdly creamy and very, very sweet. Yeah, you didn’t really enjoy it. So part of it is really worked out in his favor. Okay. The fact that everyone wanted to make sriracha, made his sriracha even more popular. It’s cool, okay. But then came what he himself in an interview, called the “rooster killer”, which is Tabasco. Tabasco started making their own sriracha, which- Oh my god, it’s so good! Have you had it, you like it? I literally hoard it in my house. I have like four bottles- No way! At home of the Tabasco sriracha. It is so delicious. My husband literally asked me specifically for it. He is like, “Don’t buy any other sriracha. That’s the sriracha I love.” That’s incredible! So I have this theory, one, Tabasco is just, it’s owned by, what is it? Is it McIlhenny? It’s a family, right? McIlhenny? It’s, yeah, but it’s- McIlhenny. It’s distributed by massive brands. It’s been around for about a hundred years. Yeah, it’s iconic in its own right, Tabasco pepper sauce. A hundred percent. Yeah. So they have a massive marketing budget, massive legal budget, et cetera, et cetera. And so David Tran is now getting freaked out by Tabasco getting in the market that he was like, “All right, maybe I should have trademarked something.” I think it’s still going pretty well for him. But with the shortage, you’re opening it up to a lot of these competitors out there. And now everyone has a sriracha, right? Trader Joe’s. Lee Kum Kee I think makes the best sriracha substitute for Huy Fong. I think they’re the closest. You think so? Okay, okay. Trader Joe’s has the one with the dragon on it. Texas Pete makes their own. I believe Yellowbird makes their own. Yes, they do. And so now there’s a bunch of competitors coming in. Blue agave, it’s a blue agave sriracha. That’s my biggest problem with all the Sriracha competitors. Because I’ve been out there with the sriracha shortage, buying up the competition, because I won it. Sure. And I literally two days ago, just ran out of my big-ass bottle in my fridge. Mm-hmm . But they’re all too sweet. And I think it’s because so many people in America, conflate East-Asian food with sweetness. A hint of sweetness, yeah, sure. And sriracha- I think that’s normal. Does have sugar in it. Huy Fong sriracha does. Definitely! But it’s not like a sweet sauce. It’s very intensely chili-flavored. I would say Sambal Oelek, the one that’s also in the bottle with a green top. Which is, yeah, made by the same company. Yeah, I’d say that is sweeter. Maybe. Am I wrong? No, there’s definitely sugar, there’s definitely sugar in it. That’s more sugary. But that’s a really interesting, so yeah, we should get into the history of sriracha. Sure, sure. Because the Sambal Oelek that the same company makes, is kind of the same relationship to David Tran, the founder. I kind of like it more sometimes. Same, same. I absolutely love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s chili garlic sauce as well, which is really similar. But so Si Racha is a town in Thailand. It’s about a 120 kilometers, southeast, I’m so bad at directions, of Bangkok. Okay, cool. It’s a seaside town, kind of like a surf town. Oh wow! And there’s literally just one woman, her name is Thanom Chakkapak. That’s right, yeah. Who started making what she was calling Sriraja Panich- Panich, yeah, I see it, yeah. Hot sauce and her recipe was incredibly, incredibly specific. It was made with only fresh goat peppers. Goat? Goat! I had never even- Like Kobe Bryant G.O.A.T? Kobe Bryant goat. Yeah, yeah. I had never even heard of the goat pepper. I’ve never heard of the goat, I’ve heard of the ghost pepper. Same. I literally thought it was a mistranslation and then I had to Google it. It’s a cousin of the scotch bonnet or the habanero. Oh, okay. So, round, bulbous, very bright, very fruity. Fruity, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fruity for sure. Intensely spicy. Yeah. When you think of Thailand, you generally think of what we would just call a Thai chili pepper or a bird’s eye pepper. Mm-hmm . You know what I mean? So a small, nuclear, very heavily seeded. The flavor isn’t that like sunny, light, bright, almost a grassier flavor. Are goat peppers specifically in Si Racha, or is it just like a Thai pepper that’s like sprinkled on? So there was no such, sriracha hot sauce was not a thing, like it was literally invented by one family. It was one family’s recipe. It wasn’t Chakkapak? Well, so it was Chakkapak. But I’m saying like it wasn’t- Not everybody had sriracha. Aioli, right? Aioli, you can trace back to like recipes, a thousand years ago, yada yada- Yeah. And all that. That wasn’t the case with Sriraja Panich hot sauce. It was one family, who was like, “I wanna make something new today.” Oh! And it was actually Chakkapak, her grandfather I believe, started like tinkering with it. Shut up! It’s cool as hell! And they would just give it to friends and families. They started selling it. And then Chakkapak herself- Mm-hmm . She started to bottle it at the behest of friends. They were just like, “Yo, you gotta get this out.” “Gotta give me a bottle! You gotta give stuff, man. It’s delicious.” Yeah. And so that was in like the late forties I believe. And then it just sort of grew and grew. And then she sold to a big Thai distributor. Hmm. And then now, it’s the most popular sriracha sauce in Thailand. And they’ve floated the idea of bottling in America and getting the distro rights. But in comes David Tran- And he’s like, “No, no, no.” Who had just, I suppose, visited Si Racha and was like, “Hey, I like this.” But he was making hot sauce in his own style in South Vietnam- Okay. Where he was from. So he’s ethnically Chinese in Vietnam. Mm-hmm . This is after the Vietnam War. And there was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment in Vietnam. Sure. There was the Sino-Vietnamese War. And so he leaves as a refugee. And his boat is called? Sriracha! Huy Fong, close. Frick. The name of his company and so he settles in Boston. Okay. Has a brother-in-law in Los Angeles and he literally calls him and according to his legend at least, he just goes, “Yo, they got chili peppers in LA?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” And he is like, “Bet, I’m gonna be there soon.” Oh, nice, okay. And so, he was making this hot sauce, inspired by the sriracha hot sauce of Chakkapak. And then he gets to LA and finds an abundance of Mexican chili peppers. Wow, okay! So he starts using red jalapenos. Brilliant. And a very similar method, so the ingredients are basically jalapeno, garlic, vinegar, sugar, that’s kind of it. So it’s not American vinegar-based hot sauce, like Tabasco are just sugar, vinegar, chili peppers. Water. And water. Yeah. Actually no, no water. No water in what? There’s no water in Tabasco. There’s no water in Tabasco? It’s vinegar, chilies and salt. Shut up! Which is why it’s so acidic, right? So why is it so watery? Well, it’s vinegar. And they strain it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes sense. So it’s that and then it’s strained. But sriracha is like unstrained, so there’s a lot of chili pulp in it. Pulpy. There’s sugar in it. So you get like a lacto-fermentation, you get the sweetness. There’s garlic in it, so you get that extra aromatic flavor. Mm-hmm . So it’s still very simple, but it’s like a new dimension of taste that a lot of Americans hadn’t had before. Mm-hmm . And also, it’s very different from the Thai version. Yeah, it’s also really funky. Have you ever noticed- Super funky. Like eating the sriracha on its own, like on a spoon, it is so funky and deep. It’s like abrasive too. It’s strong, yeah! It’s a bracing flavor. Yes, it is! And so they actually, NPR did this incredible story where they sent a reporter with a bottle of Huy Fong sriracha, which at the time, was not really in Thailand at all. Okay, that makes sense. And this was after the company had really blown up. It became a cultural phenomenon, right? Yeah, it was like bacon. It was like bacon, yeah. Yeah. They were making sriracha rub bacon, you know what I mean? And so it became this cultural phenomenon and they bring back the sriracha hot sauce from Huy Fong Foods to Si Racha, the town. Okay. And they start like giving it to locals, being like, “Hey, so this is really big in America.” And they’re like, “What? I’ve never heard of this.” Oh my gosh! So they start giving it to locals and at least in this story, every single person they interviewed, is just like, “This sucks!” No way! And they asked them why? And they were like, I guess there’s this Thai term that I’d never heard before called klom klom, which like- Okay, what does that mean? It doesn’t have a direct translation, but it kind of just means like everything is in balance. You have balanced, Thai food is one of my favorite cuisines in the entire world. Because it’s so balanced. It’s so, it’s balanced, but everything is ramped up. Sure. So you have, it tends to be very high acid. Yeah. You think of a papaya salad, right? Sure, yeah. High acid, high spice, a lot of sweetness, a lot of umami – Firing on all cylinders, yeah. Everything is firing. Yeah. And when it coalesces into the perfect bite, there is nothing like it in the world. Sure. And that is called klom klom. And they’re like, “Sriracha doesn’t have that.” They’re like, “It’s bitter, it’s cloying, it’s not balanced.” And they’re like, Sriraja Panich, the OG- It’s all those things. That’s klom klom for days, baby! Huh. You know? And so when you talk about like, “Is sriracha overrated,” you actually think about the flavor and you’re like, “Is this the best thing, or is it a thing that you and I grew up with and became a cultural phenomenon-” Part of hysteria. Yeah, are we just part of the mass hysteria? I mean, I do think sriracha is delicious. But am I just saying that just to say it? I don’t know! Your eyes when we said Tabasco sriracha, which like we mentioned, it is a lot sweeter than sriracha. Yeah, it’s good. And I think- There’s no klom klom. There’s no klom klom. No klom klom. No, no. Like it’s not, you know what I mean? But do you think that there are better brands out there than Huy Fong? And that you’re buying Huy Fong for the label, for the nostalgia that you have for the bottle? Well, the only reason I buy sriracha, is ’cause I live with someone that can’t eat food without chili peppers all over it. I have watched your husband at like a Jewish high holiday dinner, just go, “Ma! Hot sauce!” And he is literally taking like traditional Persian Jewish dishes and just like- Yeah. Dumping red rooster on it. He can’t eat food without hot sauce, so- Welcome to LA, baby, the lifestyle. So I always have like different kinds of hot sauces in bulk. Hm-hmm . Also I love hot sauce myself. I always have it on lock. But what did you ask me? I’m sorry, I got distracted. Oh, do you- Because you went like this on kabob and I’m like, “What’s going on?” No, I’m saying do you think that pound for pound, the green bottle cap rooster sauce, Huy Fong Foods’ sriracha actually tastes better than these others, like in a blind-taste test? Oh! Well, in a blind, I will say that I’ve gone, ever since there has been a sriracha shortage, I have bought about five different kinds of sriracha. Yeah. And the taste of sriracha is iconic and distinct. I will say that. A hundred percent, unmistakable. The Huy Fong one, you can taste it out of a lineup. But is it the best one? I don’t know! I think it has a lot to do with a visual. I think when you open up your fridge and you see that green tip- Mm-hmm . It’s just, you’re like, “Everything is right with the world.” Because you have your sriracha bottle. A hundred percent. And you have it next to your Tabasco and you have- It looks right in your fridge. Exactly! I think- I keep it next to the milk. Like, that’s what I’m saying. Yeah. Like of course, is it the best hot sauce in the world? Probably not. Mm-hmm . Is it delicious? Yeah. But is it the most important thing? No! But is it visually pleasing? Absolutely. A hundred percent. Like when I open it and I see it, I’m like, “Okay, everything’s fine.” Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, same. It’s comforting. It’s this crazy, that green tip is such insane marketing. And it was deliberate. Yeah. It was like green connotes freshness. It’s gonna be a heavy-colored pop against our like bright red hot sauce. Yeah. Made with the red jalapeno peppers. Yeah. Yeah. I have a surprise for you. What? Should I show you the surprise right now? I would love, show me your surprise! Do you want me to cover my eyes? No, no, no, it’s okay. You can keep- Okay, now show me. Now you can show, my eyes are covered. No, no, you, you can open your eyes. Okay, it’s not here yet. I thought you were gonna have it on you. So you know on eBay how they’re reselling sriracha bottles for what, like a hundred dollars? Yeah, yeah. And $50. So I found something in my mother-in-law’s pantry. You found a hundred-dollar bill and you’re gonna buy sriracha with it. No. Get the heck out of here! I found an unsealed, I’m opening it up, an unsealed sriracha bottle, Huy Fong. Now here’s the kicker, when do you think this expired? Do you think it expired? I can tell that this is expired by the way it looks. Okay, when do you think it expired? 2021. No. When? One more guess. 2018? I don’t know. No, no, no, December, 2022. So it’s not the oldest in the world. It’s relatively fresh! It’s aged, it’s barely aged. It’s a little bit aged. It’s pantry age from your stepmom, not stepmom, mother-in-law. I don’t know what they’re called. And as you can see, 329. Now if you want- Oh my God! Listen, listen. David has an eBay store. What we can do is we can sell this and we can go 50-50 on it. Maggie, I’ll give you like, I don’t know, 20%. And we can go 50-50 on it, we can sell this. The fact that it’s aged, might also make the price go up like a bottle of wine. I think it will. Do you want to sell it on eBay? It’s a vintage, no, but at this point, like we gotta sit on it for 20, 25 years. What? We gotta really sit, it’s just gonna go up in value. It’s like a baseball card. You ever hear those stories, like somebody sold a baseball card for $10,000 in 1990? Now it’s worth 9 million! Ah, ah! I don’t know how money works. No, you can, so this is like super dark, it looks super oxidized. But also, this is the thing I didn’t realize. Sriracha, generally, it’s never food diet. It’s never color-corrected like that. Okay. And so earlier in the season, sriracha that was bottled will actually look different than late season sriracha- Shut up! It would be darker, late season. So maybe this is just a late harvested sriracha. A late harvest sriracha? That I didn’t know. It is approximately six months expired. But who hasn’t had a little bit of expired hot sauce in their fridge? I agree, entirely. I have it often. I agree, entirely. Well, let’s see, chili, sugar, salt, garlic, acidic acid, potassium, excuse me, sorbate, sodium bisulfate as preservatives, . Love it. I think there’s something really inspiring about Huy Fong sriracha and David Tran’s journey in the sense that it is a knockoff of a knockoff of something from Thailand that the locals there actually hate. Literally hate it. And that I don’t even know if it culinarily is like the best sauce. However, I have become so accustomed to the unique taste of Huy Fong sriracha- Mm-hmm . Me too. That anything else doesn’t taste right. When you get , right, like I’m not a person who squirts sriracha into the broth or whatever. Me neither! My favorite thing to do, is I take the hoisin and the sriracha and I put it in a little dish and I put them next to each other and then I take my meat and I take it out of the with the broth still on it and I dab it in both and then I slurp up the meat. Okay. And that’s an important part of it, right? Sometimes, if I wanna feel something, I’ll just dip a chopstick in a sriracha and go. Sure, sure, I do that too. And any other brand, it does not taste right in that context. I think it’s because everyone makes it so corn-syrupy. I agree. It’s just unenjoyable to eat on its own. But sriracha- But they got like- It’s good on its own. They just got such a cultural stranglehold. It’s ridiculous. Sort of, kind of plagiarizing the work of others, but also creating a unique product with- Yeah. Local ingredients, right? So we gotta get into the shortage and why it’s happening. Yeah. So sriracha, it exploded so, so, so much, their factories in Irwindale, California, which, the only time I’ve been to Irwindale, it’s probably like 60 miles, maybe like 40 miles east of Burbank. Okay. The only time I’ve been to Irwindale, is because they have a speedway there. And for my dad’s like 60th birthday- A speedway, do you race cars? Like a racetrack. Oh, okay. For my dad’s 60th birthday, we got him this like experience where he could like drive a turbocharged Camaro around the racetrack. That’s cute! And holy crap! That sounds a good dad thing. He was loving it. This is just a fun little aside about how my dad was. So there was another group of young-ish kids, like my brother and me’s age, who also bought their boomer dad, the same experience for his birthday. Cute. So it’s just boomer dad v. boomer dad. And what they did is you start on opposite ends of the track and you’re just supposed to like go around like this. Mm-hmm . Right and you’re never, you’re not supposed to race each other, ’cause that’s dangerous. Okay. But they’re trying to double up on the amount of people that can get on a track at one time. Fair, okay, okay. The other boomer dad was driving too slow. And so my dad said, “Screw it, I’m gonna drop the hammer on him.” And everyone was yelling at my dad like, “Don’t pass him, you’re not allowed to do that!” And my dad was like, “Woo! we’re coming through, baby!” He was from Pennsylvania, he doesn’t have a Southern accent. Were you in the car with him? No, we were like, my brother and I were like watching with the other boomer dad’s kids, just being like, “Boomer dads.” So they’re like, “Boomer dads.” Are those lifelong friends now? No, they’re not. Sorry. I think they’re actually kind of mad at our dad for passing their dad and emasculating him. Mm-hmm . Sorry about that. Point is that racetrack is a couple of miles from the sriracha factory. Nice, nice, nice, nice. And the sriracha factory was literally, it had grown so large against all odds, ’cause it was a small business, that the fumes of the chilies, were literally poisoning the town. And they had to like sue, it was a whole thing. So- Like Erin Brockovich. Just like Erin Brockovich! It’s just like Erin Brockovich! Or the Matt Damon movie with- I don’t know who that is. With John Krasinski. No, you know this one. It was called- I don’t know what you’re talking about. “Promised Land” or something dumb. I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was about fracking and I didn’t know anything about it. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Any . So you basically get this small company that has this massive operation now. Uh-huh. And now things are getting a little wonky. So they had- They’re poisoning the town! They’re poisoning the town, ’cause they just never expected to be that big! And so their suppliers now, they use red jalapeno chilies, right? Mm-hmm . And so they initially were using a farm in California, called Underwood, which- I’ve gone strawberry-picking there. We’ve gone strawberry-picking there. Not we, I. Oh, I’ve been, separately from you. We didn’t go together. Yeah, we don’t go together. I also picked like cucumbers and basil. Yeah, I’ve gone, I used to, I’ve been for my birthday and I actually, side note, you had a little anecdote about birthdays, so do I, I got all of my friends on a party bus, got them absolutely hammered and made them work in the field in like 95-degree heat. And we picked strawberries and it was really, really fun. So that’s their like PR arm, right? Uh-huh. Oh, how do they poison the town? Oh, that’s a great question, Maggie. So it was just fumes. Fumes. Maggie- Pepper fumes! When we cook in here and we cook spicy food? Yeah. And there’s all the chili pepper fumes that you don’t like? Yeah, I can’t, it makes me cough. It makes you cough, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Imagine if you were just sitting in your home and you had an asthmatic child and the fumes wouldn’t stop. Hate that. Hate that, that’s what was happening in Irwindale. But so Underwood farms was their supplier, actually Underwood Ranches. Wild, okay. But I think where we went, is called Underwood Family Farms, which is their like PR, that’s like their client-facing- Oh! Production, right? Well, I love that place and I wanna go again. I loved it too, I had a great time. I got a beet from there. Me too! But anyway, so Underwood was supplying all their chilies and then they had some sort of legal dispute. I believe Huy Fong had to pay a $23 million settlement. Ooh! And they cut ties. They’re like, “We can get cheaper, more abundant chilies from Mexico.” Because that’s where jalapenos are from originally, obviously. Sure. Mm-hmm . And then Mexico basically suffered this super drought and so there were shorter growing seasons and all this. And so Huy Fong hasn’t, they’ve been a little cagey about why exactly it’s happening. All they’re saying is they have supplier issues. Some people are saying it is because of the drought and because of climate change and wonky growing seasons. Oh, oh! However, when you ask any other major hot sauce brand, not even major, minor included, they’re all just like, “We’ve had no difficulties whatsoever.” Have you asked any? I haven’t reached out to them myself. Oh, you haven’t? They’ve been quoted in articles. There’s a New York Times article where they were talking to like Yellowbirds. They were talking to Tabasco, uses Red Jalapenos as well. And everybody seems to be able to get their product out just fine. Mm-hmm . So I get the sense that Huy Fong is just going through some weird, wonky corporate stuff where they tried to switch suppliers. Sounds like it. And then if one supplier drops and they can’t immediately find another one, that they just can’t keep up, which is- Why didn’t they just like breadcrumb them? Just like give 10% to them, give 20% the next season, 30% and that’s what I would’ve done as a person, who does not have an LLC. Huy Fong Foods bring on Nicole Enayati as your official consultant. Yeah! You can find me on Twitter. But that’s kind of what a lot of people have been saying that like they just kind of messed up their supply lines and because they have always been sort of a smaller company, that they didn’t have the resources to actually get there, which is why you see these companies selling out to big distributors. Sure, like Craft- It’s because you have access, yeah. And Unilever and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah. But do you think it’s overrated? Shoot. Do you? It’s rated very high. No, my official answer is no. Right, the taste is so subjective, right? And hot sauce, specifically to me, it’s such a subjective food. Hmm. And it’s also, like Americans have a very unique relationship to hot sauce. “Hot Ones” for example, I don’t think would’ve worked in France. You know what I mean? Like, there’s so many different small-batch hot sauces that make things so unique and so different- Mm-hmm . That I think if you were to blind-taste test me with any hot sauce, I think my palate would be very, very confused. Got it. I think hot sauce is very, it’s a very branding forward. It is all branding. It’s like books. Ass blaster 2000, you know? Like I always judge books by their covers before I read them. You are literally defying the metaphor! You literally judge books by their covers? Yeah, I’m literally a walking, talking anti-metaphor. That’s incredible! I guess I do the same thing with hot sauce then. Yeah, of course we do. Have you ever been to the hot sauce store in The Grove, the mall? Yeah! That’s one of my favorite places to go. It’s great. There’s a hot sauce store on the Jersey Ocean City Boardwalk that I love going to every time I’m out there with Jules. I’m gonna go there in like a week or two. It’s gonna be really lovely. Everybody come find me there. You’re gonna buy an ass blaster 5000 hot sauce? I probably am. I bought a delicious calypso sauce. Oh, yum. From the last time. Yum, yum, yum. You know what I mean? Yeah. But no, it’s so tough to call sriracha overrated. Because I think it’s such a nostalgic taste for me and I would never want to subject it to a blind-taste test. And even if I did, I would know that this was Huy Fong sriracha. A hundred percent. And I would still be biased. And there’s nothing wrong with that. All of you are biased in all foods, right? Of course we are! Food are not in a vacuum. They shouldn’t be in a vacuum. Yeah. But no, I don’t think, I think calling it overrated is unfair. I mean, it’s obviously not overrated. Mm-hmm . I mean, look at the hysteria of people selling it on eBay for so much money. A hundred percent. I mean people are hoarding it in their homes. People are buying knockoffs, trying to get that same feeling- Yeah, they’re trying to buy a knockoff of a knockoff of a knockoff. Of a knockoff. Trying to feel that same delicious flavor and they just can’t get it. You’re like almost there. I know. What’s that thing called where you’re almost there and then you’re not? A phantom limb itch. I was gonna say edging. Am I allowed to talk about it? Oh edging? Yeah, you can talk about edging. You can talk about whatever you want. I don’t know if I’m allowed to. Now you’re making it weird. The fact that sriracha is so, the fact that Huy Fong Foods sriracha is so iconic, there’s no way it can be overrated. There’s no way in hell. Yeah. It’s- It’s almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Exactly. It’s un-American that sriracha is overrated. It’s created, I mean it’s expanded a lot of people’s culinary horizons. A hundred percent. I mean there’s a lot of people, who I know that were like anti-hot-sauce. They’re like, “I can’t stomach the stuff, I don’t like it on anything.” And they now are sriracha fans, because it’s palatable for the American person. It looks like ketchup. That’s another thing. I think that’s a huge key to its success. Oh, interesting. For the American audience. Interesting. It looks and it squirts like ketchup. Hmm. There was a great quote, that was weird, I feel like Maggie didn’t agree with that one and that’s fine. Maggie doesn’t have to agree with everything I say. But there was a great interview with a Vietnamese chef in The New York Times and she used the phrase that I thought was hilarious, just “Sriracha is like ketchup for Americans.” And I was like, “Ketchup is like ketchup for American.” But the fact that we’ve literally switched, right, salsa for the first time, this is a huge cultural moment in the US. This is true, yeah, yeah, yeah. Outsold ketchup in 1993, I think. That’s so funny. For the first time ever in grocery stores, right, showing the changing American palette. And I think Huy Fong sriracha is a massive part in that story. I agree. As well opening up people to different regional tastes, even though this isn’t like particularly an established regional taste- Yeah. Anywhere throughout Asia. It’s not. It’s an uniquely American product. It’s a shibboleth of the American dream. I haven’t heard the word shibboleth in like eight years, man. Yeah, I use it wrong all the time and I used it wrong right now and that’s okay. I like it. Okay, that’s why I was like, “It’s misplaced.” It’s a good example of like the American dream, right? Yes. Dude comes with the kind of knockoff idea. He has an incredible story, refugee from Vietnam. Yeah. Creates a knockoff of a knockoff, poisons a town, makes millions of dollars, kind of screws up, doesn’t trademark anything, but is incredibly successful anyways. And now we can buy sriracha socks in Urban Outfitters and that’s America, baby. I will link my husband’s eBay store and you will see this. And we’ll sign it and we’ll sell it. Maybe not sign it. Real quick, I wanna get into something though. What are sriracha alternatives, like what are other regional hot sauces that you think people might not know about that you would recommend to them? I already said Sambal Oelek. That’s my- So sambal is like Indonesian, right? I don’t know. Sambal is a term for, it’s a blanket term for a lot of different Indonesian hot sauces. That’s true. David brought us one that was a lemongrass-chili one. There was a lemongrass and shallot sambal that knocked my freaking socks off. That changed my life. And if you look it up- It was like my first two weeks of working here or something. And David was showing me like kindness and he is like, “Try this Sambal.” And I’m like, “Okay!” Yeah. And it was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever had. Yeah, check out, try and find different sambals. Heck, I mean if you’re open to ordering on Amazon, just go on Amazon and find stuff. Yeah. There’s another one called ketchup sambal. Ketchup is a Hokkien word by the way. It’s kind of a East-Asian slang term. So ketchup means soy sauce in, I believe, Indonesian. But anyways, it’s like a very sweet soy one. Calypso sauce from the Caribbean. Sure. We have a couple of Trinidadian versions, Matouk’s Calypso sauce. That’s the jam. It’s one of the best things I have ever had. There’s like a spicy shrimp paste that I really like. Is it the Thai one? Is it the one that we have in our fridge right now? I think so, or what is the, there’s also like a stinky tofu that’s like spicy? Yeah. Spicy, stinky tofu is really good too. That’s a fun time. Not for the faint of heart. That’s a fun time. Yeah. Gochujang of course, Korean fermented chili paste. I think Gochujang is kind of used- Overrated? I think it’s used incorrectly by the masses and that pisses me off. Don’t put Gochujang, Gochujang and mayonnaise I think tastes really bad together. I don’t understand why people do it. But if you mix Gochujang with just like vinegar and- A little bit of water sugar. Uh-huh. It’s better. And then you like glaze meats in that or anything? Yeah! That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. There’s a wide world of hot sauce out there. Yeah. Go seek it out. You just gotta find it. Josh, how would you prepare Hawaiian-style shredded chicken over pineapple coconut rice? Well, I guess you start by brazing the chicken thighs, right? That’s gonna take a couple of hours. While that’s going, God, you’re gonna wanna soak the rice, you’re gonna wanna wash it, you gotta bring a pot. And I’m gonna stop you right there. Because how many people really have time for that once fall comes around and we’re no longer in summer mode? Oh, I know where you’re going with this one, Nicole. Because that dish is one of the many delicious options you can get with Factor, America’s number one, ready-to-eat meal kit with chef-prepared, dietician-approved meals that are ready in just two minutes. And these aren’t your typical frozen meals. In fact, Factor is fresh and never frozen. I’m a big fan of their pesto salmon. And the fact that there are over 34 meals and more than 45 add-ons, that gives me so much to explore, week in and week out. Oh! And I love the protein-plus options with 30 grams or more in every serving. So head over to factormeals.com/hotdog50 and use code hotdog50 to get 50% off. That’s code hotdog50 at factormeals.com/hotdog50 to get 50% off. There’s more than one kind of sriracha. Sporked Jordan Myrick tastes 21 different sriracha brands and ranks the eight best ones. Yeah! Just search sriracha on Sporked to find the full ranking. And here’s the URL, https://sporked.com/article/best-sriracha/. Thank you! All right, Nicole, we’ve heard what you and I have to say. Now it’s time to find out what other wacky ideas, that are rattling out there in the universe. It’s time for a segment we call Opinions Are Like Casseroles! All right, y’all, before we get into your opinions, we’re gonna do the classic segment that everybody loves, Review the Review where we take a review from, what is it, Apple Podcast or something and we review it. Yeah. Go review us if you wanna be featured on Review the Review. Do I do a dance for this one? Yeah, we’re gonna call it the All-Male review and you gotta dance like Magic Mike. So Nicole’s gonna do that while I read this review from Deb’s five stars, titled “Whoop, whoop, juggalo nation unite”, “Love, love, love this podcast. So fun, awesome topics and I love you Nicole and Josh, you rock! I definitely recommend for anyone who loves to laugh. Listening to this always makes my day. Cold fruit tea, e.g. raspberry is actually just juice.” That’s not true at all. “Anyway, love you, Josh and Nicole.” Now raspberry tea is raspberry tea. Tea is an actual plant. I can’t remember the scientific name for it. Can I stop dancing like Magic Mike? It’s a plant that is flavored with raspberry. You can stop dancing. Okay, thanks. Do we auction off the sriracha now? Yeah, we’re gonna do it. And now we have a bottle of sriracha, hundred dollars, who’s got hundred dollars, , you in the blue overalls, over there got hundred-dollars sriracha, $125, looking for $125, women with the big, yellow hat, you got a $125. $150 sriracha bid, that’s the $150-dollars bid, sold! $125, the one with the big hat. We’re selling it on eBay. Oh! But that was really nice. There’s a woman in a big hat here that just said she’d pay a $125 for it. That’s the ghost of Mythical Kitchen. I wanted to say one more thing about sriracha. Go ahead, man. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I do this. Sometimes, I forget and it’s not that consequential or anything, but I just wanna say it. Interesting thing when you use a less hot pepper, right? So Sriracha’s made using jalapenos. Yeah. The OG is made using something similar to a habanero. When you use a less hot pepper, but you’re still trying to get a very hot sauce, you end up getting more pepper pulp in there, which means more pepper flavor. Okay. And peppers tend to be bitter, right, pepper skin? So I think that’s accounting for the difference in taste. And I get why some people wouldn’t want that. And I generally like the flavor of chilies, I like that bitterness. But I had something the other day that was made with even a milder pepper, a Romano pepper. Hmm. It was an ajika. Mm-hmm . Which is an Armenian pepper paste and spread. Okay. And I tasted that and I was like, “This is bordering on too bitter for my personal palate.” Sometimes, peppers can be bitter, yes. And so I understand why people might not like the sriracha if you are used to a more nuclear chili pepper being used in your sauce where you’re getting a lot more heat and a lot less of that bitterness. Thank you for sharing. Not consequential at all. Go check out Armenian ajika. I’m glad you got your point across. And I believe they make ajika elsewhere as well. Okay, time for our first opinion. Let’s do it. [Opinionated Person 1] Hey, Mythical Chef, Nicole and Maggie, I have a recipe here that I think you’re actually gonna like. No, it’s Mythical Chef, Nicole and Maggie. Oh! [Opinionated Person 1] So, you’re gonna be taking a tortilla, flour, wheat, doesn’t matter. And you can put peanut butter and strawberry jam all over that thing. What makes it a little bit better, is switching that out for the strawberry Goober spread. Oh no. [Opinionated Person 1] That’s good, I don’t really care what anybody says. Ethically opposed. [Opinionated Person 1] On top of the peanut butter and jam, you’re gonna be putting sweet-chili Doritos. Yes! [Opinionated Person 1] Crushed up. Hell yes! [Opinionated Person 1] Finally, you’re just gonna fold the tortilla over like a crunchwrap. Put it in a skillet, seal both sides and there you go. I don’t know if that makes it an Uncrustable or a different type of crunchwrap, but it’s delicious. It’s got salt cheese. It’s amazing, try it out. This is smart. So I was raised in a non-Goober household, but I would always see the jars and I would think, they were the most incredible culinary invention ever. Yep. So I’m glad that you have Goober. Did you ever actually try it though? I’ve never tried it! It’s bad? It’s something about them being aromatized in the same environment for so long that I find bad. Got it, okay. I think the jelly somehow makes the peanut butter worse and the peanut butter somehow makes the jelly worse. I think it has a net-negative on both products. Okay, I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know. But I would never put this in my mouth. Never, ever. Why? I think you know why. What do you mean? No, but I mean like spicy sweet-chili Doritos, I think they have enough, they’re obviously modeled after a Thai palate. I doubt there’s any actual like Thai ingredients in there. But it’s spicy, it’s sweet. It’s got a lot of MSG in it. No. And I think mixing that spicy and jelly, goes well together. We ate a jalapeno strawberry jam in here together, we both enjoyed. I don’t remember that. Spicy and peanut butter, obviously goes really well together with a lot of ground-peanut-based Thai dishes. I would just use classic tortilla chips. I don’t know if I would do the Doritos. I think the texture of a Dorito makes it, because it’s a little bit lighter and a little bit crispier than your classic tortilla chip. No! You don’t think so? No! You’ve madded Nicole, you’ve incensed her. I think this is really brilliant and I would like to try it. I’ll say I feel like it- Do it on your own time. Might just be better on leaven bread than a tortilla. I like the tortilla angle. I keep a lot of flour tortillas in my house, you know that, a lot more than leaven bread. And the other day, I really, I was about to work out, I wanted just like a lot of calories and carbs that I could go use as energy and I wrapped a thing that I’ve done very often, wrap a banana and honey and peanut butter and a tortilla and eat it. And it was like so deeply unpleasant. Oh really? Did you heat up the tortilla? It was just something, it was like the tortilla- You have to heat up- I heated it up. Oh, you did heat it up. But then you’re putting cold ingredients inside it, so it just gets kinda like dense. And I found myself like suffering through this. I’m sorry. Whereas if it was on leaven bread, it’s one of my favorite treats in the entire world. You know what I mean? I bought some good bread the other day. What kind? From Bay Cities. Oh, like a filone or like sliced bread. A filone. Yeah, nice little, it’s like an Italian baguette. Yeah, that’s good stuff. What’s that girl on TikTok? Pinkydoll. Shout-out to Pinkydoll, come on the show. I like when she yells at her kid in French. She just goes like this, “Ice cream, I love you so much.” “Ice cream’s so good.” Oh, “Ice cream’s so good?” “Ice cream’s so good!” Keep going, keep going. The people are tipping you live actually. “Oh, thank you. I love you so much.” Yeah, “Gang gang!” “Cowboy!” “Got me feeling like a queen.” “Gang gang, gang gang.” There it is. Yeah, we live in a dystopia. “Oh, you got me feeling like a cowboy!” You ever think about that? If somebody just novelized the current time with any of this, it’d be viewed as a “dystopian novel”, right? And then you start thinking how can any dystopian novel even be considered dystopian when we are currently living in a dystopia? I mean we got a hundreds of thousands of people, living on the street in one most prosperous nations of all time. We have people just selling their time and attention, acting like a literal non-person. The idea is that she’s acting like a non-person right now, that’s the essence of dehumanization. “Ice cream’s so good!” And I get it! People are like, she’s out there paying her bills and I’m like, “Yeah, but we shouldn’t have a system in which she needs to pay her bills, doing that thing, right?” I think there’s dignity in all work, of course, but- “Ice cream’s so good!” Next opinion. [Opinionated Person 2] Hi, this is Mike. I live in Michigan, home of Coney Dog Detroit-style pizza and nothing else significant from a culinary standpoint. So my opinion is more the opinion of someone I know, namely my brother-in-law. And he is a big fan of sardine and banana sandwiches. Hell yeah! [Opinionated Person 2] And the first time- You can get grosser! [Opinionated Person 2] I told him about this, or he told me about this, I told him that it sounded like something that a football player, who had one too many concussions might eat. However, his wife then came into his defense and said that she thought that it really wasn’t all that weird. And I’m kind of torn here. I’m curious to see what y’all think of this. Thanks so much, love the pod. Love you guys, everything you do is awesome. You’re wonderful. Oh man! Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a very serious disease. And I hope we can figure out how to negate it in football. ‘Cause I will not stop watching the sport. Stop playing football! Yeah, but I want to keep watching it, ’cause I really love it. Flag, flag. I started to think about this. It’s one of the only things I look forward to in life. Flag football. It’s not nearly as fun. Okay. I have an answer for this. Please? Eat it with sriracha. The sriracha will make it better. Am I wrong? No, I agree with that. I actually think the fishiness and the neutral sweet- Yeah. Could be really good if you married it with some sriracha. Sriracha has a causticness to it. It has a caustic taste. You’re caustic. I am caustic! Several people do not enjoy my company. But I do. Thank you. I think you’re great. You know what I mean? There’s something, it’s very great and it’s abrasive. We talked about that. And I think that marries the sweetness, that marries and it bridges any gap- I agree. That is so far apart, because it’s just like, “Oh my god!” Kinda like bitter, unpleasant, incredibly spicy, like I know it’s not like the spicy sauce, sauce, but it’s quite spicy. I think that would work. This sounds to me like somebody from a remote part of like Lapland. It sounds like a Laplander. Where’s Lapland? Maggie, look up what Lapland actually is? Like Scandinavia, sounds like someone from like a remote part of Sweden, who’s just like, “My mother made this all the time and then my grandmother made this.” Finland. Yeah, Lapland is in Finland. But like, it sounds like something like a cultural mistranslation of how one is supposed to use bananas. Like the flying Johnny or whatever. What’s that thing called? What’s the flying Johnny? The swedish dish with the bananas. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. what’s in it? Bananas. They use tropical fruits in a very strange way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it’s strange to me, strange to my palate, not strange to y’all. But a lot of people around the world, laugh, laugh, laugh at it sometimes. You put the bananas on the pizza. It’s weird. I’m just gonna say it. I’m gonna say that. And so this sounds like that, which again, I do not personally love banana pizza, nor do I think I would personally love this sandwich. Flying Jakob. Flying Jakob, what’s in it? It is chicken, cream, chili sauce, bananas, roasted peanuts and bacon. Unreal. Unreal. This is all that sandwiches. Again, lot of incredible culinary traditions out of Scandinavia. Fish eggs in a tube, I love that. They did that? They have like tubes of fish roe that you can just score on like a . I would like to brush my teeth with that. I agree with that, I agree entirely. Next on opinion. [Opinionated Person 3] Hey lovelies. Hey. Hi. [Opinionated Person 3] This is Claire from Washington. Hi, Claire. [Opinionated Person 3] Adore your stuff. The state or the district? Adore you. What? [Opinionated Person 3] And I know I’m preaching to the choir. State or the district? [Opinionated Person 3] Nobody thinks you’re cool for your food taste. Ooh! [Opinionated Person 3] If you drink your coffee plaque. Ooh! [Opinionated Person 3] If you get your stick extra rare. Ooh! [Opinionated Person 3] If you can handle super spicy food, nobody thinks you’re cool for that. And if you like all of those things, cool. This guy! [Opinionated Person 3] Like them for liking them. It’s not gonna impress anybody though. Hmm. [Opinionated Person 3] I do like all those things though. Same, same girl. We’ve been conditioned! [Opinionated Person 3] Anyways, love you, bye. We live in a society. You know what? Something really interesting, is about all three things she said? I was gonna say toxic masculinity . Correct. No, a hundred percent. Right? Yeah. And I think we frame a lot of, we frame masculine, good, feminine, bad, right? Okay, think about this. I don’t. Personally, we don’t. I’m saying as like a society, right? That’s something, you go to a bar- Not as much anymore. Hear me out. Uh-huh. You go to a bar, you, as a woman. Me? Yes. Lady? Lady. Yeah. Order an old-fashioned. Uh-huh. I, as a man, order a cosmo. Who is likely to get praised and who is likely to be made fun of for subverting the typical gender ideology? I’m more likely to get crap for defying that gender norm. But I think you’ll get more attention. I’ll get more attention. Boy, do I feed off of attention! I also don’t really enjoy cosmos. Yeah, you’re not a cosmo person. I’m not cosmo, okay? I’m not an old-fashioned lady. I get you, I’m drinks the same. I’m not an old-fashioned lady! But I’m saying that you would be like, “Oh my god! Girl can handle her whiskey!” You know what I mean? Sure. You get that? Okay, fair. Okay, yeah. You’re not like other girls. Yeah. And so I think so much of our food tastes are wrapped around that. But I think we are now getting away from that into a point where we are more inclusive. I love it. And realize there’s no moral judgment- With a drink! In taste. Yeah. You know what I mean? What you eat, what you drink, it’s neutral. It’s merely a preference. Yeah, it’s feel for your body. We’re also in, there was a tweet that went really viral of somebody saying, “White people who go to an Indian restaurant and order butter chicken, garlic nun and mango lassi, has the same energy as the white people, who go to a Mexican restaurant and get chips and salsa, enchiladas and a margarita.” And it was meant to be a dig. They were very clear. That all sounds good. I know! And I mean- Sorry. I knew exactly where they were coming from though, right? Yeah. I’ve suffered from the opposite where I go to a Thai restaurant and I’m like, “What’s the weirdest thing they have? I’m like, “But like what region is this? This is from a region? You have a region?” And I’ve had the opposite thing, which I would call the Bourdain effect. I want to be seen as unique, I want to be seen as interesting. You know what I mean? Yeah. And oftentimes, I would suffer, I would rather eat something else. But I felt the need to get “the most interesting thing on the menu”. The most interesting thing. Yeah. And it’s not a personal value that I want to hold, but it’s the same holdover for why I drink black coffee- You have food-FOMO. Yeah. You have FOMO. You’re like, “I’m never gonna see this, let’s just say jungle curry, again. I have to order it, because this place gets the jungle curry.” Oh, I do love a jungle curry though. I know you do. I know that’s- They the whole green peppercorns in there. Yeah, you do love that. But yeah, I don’t know. I mean, if you put a cup of coffee, a black cup of coffee in front of me, versus a cup of coffee with a little bit of almond milk and creamer- Mm-hmm . Caramel macchiato creamer. I’m gonna find myself drinking that one, more so than the black one. Yeah. It just tastes better. It just does taste better. Do you judge people for their order of saying? A coffee shop, right, there’s, how many old-head, white dude comedians have had a joke about like, “When I used to get coffee, it was just called coffee! Now you got your caramel frappe, whatever!” Sure. So many have jokes like that, like, do you judge people for their coffee orders? Because I still do and I hate that about myself. No, not anymore. I’m like, life’s too serious to like care if someone got a macchiato, like I don’t care. Like someone’s food preferences don’t bother me like that anymore. It’s not worth it. Life is too, I don’t know, not serious, but life is too beautiful and complex and busy and decision-making that if Joe Schmo gets a macchiato, but it’s not as typical Macchiato he gets from Starbucks, it’s like a smaller macchiato, like that doesn’t define him as a person. It’s a drink he’s drinking. Starbucks doesn’t actually serve macchiatos! I know. Sorry, I blacked out, I don’t like this part of me. I don’t like this part of myself, I’m sorry. I’m gonna say, I know macchiato means stain, right? Is that what it means? Macchiato or like- Oh, that makes sense. A stain of milk, whatever. But I don’t know. I mean, I used to be that person. Yeah. But the older I’ve gotten, the less I care. A hundred percent. And I’m just like, “You eat what you want and you enjoy. If you like black coffee, drink the black coffee. Maybe pour a little bit of creamer in it, so you’re not pooping your pants.” Yeah. I think, you gotta poop your pants. Don’t eat the stick, if you don’t like it. I agree. I think there’s that wisdom of getting older- Yeah. Where you realize that, “Oh, all these things that we cared about, were these stupid gatekeeping ideals that literally held us back as people seeking pleasure and comfort.” Absolutely! Which is dumb, but did it with picky eaters. I love cooking. Julia has a very picky friend. Okay. And a lot of people’s food decisions, it does stem from things like anxiety and stuff like that. But I love cooking for her, because they’re like, “I love cheese fries with bacon.” Like no other things on it, don’t want no green garnishes, like none of that. If I see green, I’m gonna throw up. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I’m like, “I’m gonna make the best freaking french fries, you’ve ever had. I’m gonna really do this up.” Yeah. And I love being able to bring joy to people, who may like have those limitations, right? Yeah. Who aren’t able to be in the “cool kids club”, who are eating the most epicurean things. I think there being a cool kids club for food is dumb. Yeah. I’m over it. I think though we are headed, I know we’re going over time, I don’t care. I don’t care. And this is a great opinion. I think we are heading in a very strange direction. Mm-hmm . Where all the, think about all the new restaurants in LA right now, which I know we talked about a lot of local stuff, but LA is one of the markets that, it sets the tone for what a lot of other markets- Absolutely. End up doing, right? Well, you’re welcome for Dave’s Hot Chicken, being in your hometown soon. Thanks, Drake. But anyways, I think people’s palates getting simpler and simpler and simpler. That’s so interesting. Which I don’t think is a bad thing, but I think it’s limiting the creativity of chefs and limiting pushing culture forward in a certain way. Hmm. So many new restaurants, it’s Red Sauce Italian, it’s French Bistros- And LA has a lot of Red Sauce Italian. It’s pizza. There’s a great restaurant called Pijja Palace, that’s one of the most popular in LA and they serve, it’s Indian owners and chefs. Yeah. But they serve “sports bar food”. Yes. So all their food are Indian flavors, but it’s all pasta, pizza, wings, burgers. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it’s like very cool in one sense, but then in the other sense, it’s like, “Man, are we only pasta, pizza, wings and burgers now? Is that all society wants to eat?” I don’t think so. I think part of it’s a COVID thing, part of it’s a return to comfort in a way. Maybe. But I think there’s also value in getting out of your comfort. Sure. There’s value in- Trying new things. Other things. Yeah Yeah. I agree. Interesting topic. I could talk about that for a long time. Find me at a party, four beers deep and I won’t shut the hell up about that and then you will leave me. Happened recently. Sorry. No, it was great. Who was it? That’s my ideal night. What? Who was it? Oh, it was just like a random person. A random person? Random person, who just like, somebody brought up something about like flower tortillas and I’m just like- Ugh. I’m about to do, it’s like when an X-Men with a new power is like, “Everybody, it’s gotta get out! ‘Cause I can’t control it!” That was like me. I was like, “You might wanna leave! So in the early 1500s, the Spaniards settles desert.” Thanks so much for stopping by Mythical Kitchen and the Hot Dog Is a Sandwich podcast, a flagship production of Mythical Kitchen. Flag! We got new episodes of that podcast, the one that you just listened to right now, unless you are starting the video backwards and you’re playing it backwards to hear the Satanic messages when you play it backwards. That’s an obscure reference. Cranberry sauce. If you know, you know. And if you want to be featured on opinions like Castro’s, give us a ring and leave a quick message at DOG-POD1. So the new episodes, I didn’t tell you, they come out on Wednesday, the audio versions. And then you gotta wait all the way to Sunday. All the way to Sunday! All the way to Sunday and then you’re gonna get the video version. See these beautiful, shiny faces. But there’s also, we drop new Easter eggs in the video versions. So you listen to the audio on Wednesday and then on Sunday, you watch the video to try and find all the Easter eggs and you gotta watch the whole video. And also to find the Easter eggs, you have to comment, subscribe and click the bell notifications. There’s no Easter eggs, it’s just to trick them. Okay. It’s a trick, ’cause I’m not comfortable in our actual skills to hold an audience. So I try and trick them. For more Mythical Kitchen, check out our other videos. We launch new episodes every week. We will see you next time. It’s the same way that we trick them with the thumbnails when we go, “Ah!” So it looks like the most exciting thing ever. But it’s really, we just made like a pasta, we made like spaghetti. And we’re like, “Ah!” But it’s like, it’s just really spaghetti. All right. You don’t go, “Ah!” It’s like- Ah, spaghetti! If you’re being honest, you’d just be like, “Spaghetti.” “Spaghetti.”