Oh, I was wondering why I don’t have any tongs here but I forgot. I’m like a stone crab. Hey, welcome to Mythical Kitchen. Today we’ll be answering the age old question. Does it actually matter where you buy your groceries and how much money you spend on? We are going to make two identical American breakfast platters. One, using ingredients from Erewhon, the comically fancy grocery store in Los Angeles and the other made with ingredients from the 99 Cents Store. We will have a judge blind taste test both dishes. See if they can guess which one is from the fancy place, which one is from the not so fancy place and also tell us which one was better. It’s gonna be a dog fight out here. It’s egg on egg violence. The is out right now shopping at Erewhon and the 99 Cents store. Let’s see what they got. All right, over here we have all of our groceries from Erewhon, the single fanciest store in all of LA. It is absolutely a parody of itself. We’ll get to that later. Over here we have all of our groceries for the classic American breakfast platter from 99 Cents Only, my personal favorite 99 Cents store. Take that dollar general. Erewhon, for those people who don’t know, they went viral on TikTok because Hailey Bieber’s the person, we can confirm this. She’s the sister or the wife of Justin or both. She’s the wife. She’s the wife of Justin Bieber. She drinks like a $22 collagen strawberry smoothie from Erewhon. Some people think they have the best breakfast burrito in LA. It’s just fine, it costs $16. It was founded on the principles of the macrobiotic diet from a Japanese nutrition from the 1920s. There is a very weird story about it. All you gotta know is last time I went in there I saw the lead singer of System of a Down buying a kombucha. Shout out search tanky. Come on last meals. Any who, so significant price differences here. We spent $161 at Erewhon and then we spent $51 over at 99 Cents Only. We’ll get into the total price of the dish later. Couple key differences here, the eggs. We all know eggs are one of the things that inflation hit the most. $2 a dozen of eggs, I didn’t even know that still existed out in California. $2 per dozen over at 99 Cents Only. And then Erewhon, which one? They just decided to change the shape of egg cartons. What the hell Erewhon? Okay, let’s look at it. Oh my God, and they’re all different colors. Get the Easter egg ass Erewhon, get outta here. This is $14 for a dozen eggs. Which one, I really like? I might typically buy Vital Farms. Let’s see if the fancy ass Erewhon eggs actually come through. Other things that we got of significant price difference on bacon. I didn’t even think Erewhon would have bacon ’cause also V went into Erewhon and was straight up like, “Hey, y’all got canola oil?” And they were just like, “Oh no, this is Erewhon. We only have oils expressed from the finest of avocados.” So we’re doing that. But bacon, this costs about $13 a pound at Erewhon and then $3 a pound over at the 99 Cents Only. Milk is another thing. 3.70 per gallon at 99 Cents Only. And technically this is a quart that cost $8 but they do have half gallons for 11. So that’s still a 600% price increase on the milk from Erewhon. We’ll see if that actually makes our pancakes taste better. But boy do I have my doubts. And then we are getting some fresh produce in there. They got the nice organic blueberries from Forbidden Fruit Orchards, which sounds like a place that would only exist in a romance novel. And then we got Nature’s Love which also sounds like a romance novel I guess. And then of course maple syrup’s going on the pancakes. 99 Cents Only, they do have pure maple syrup. Cost about six bucks. And then they got this at the Erewhon which costs a whole lot more. So I’m curious to see how this shakes out. Bacon and eggs to meat can really vary in quality but also sometimes I think more expensive bacon is just worse. Like it doesn’t need to be all the thick cut, artisanal, black forest rub, whatever. Sometimes I want the bacon to taste like bacon man. So let’s get into it. We’re channeling our inner divorced dad right now. Divorced dads at least from my experience of one of one divorced dads, they love making breakfast for dinner. So do I. So we’re gonna get started on some rough and dirty home fries. You could make hash browns but that’s a really big hassle. So all we’re gonna do is we’re gonna add a little bit of avocado oil. I did not even think- Listen we just wanna do canola oil ’cause that’s what we do. But again, Erewhon’s too fancy for canola oil ’cause they’re like, “They’re putting 5G in the seed oils.” Or what the hell ever, I have no way. I have no idea. So many people are against seed oils and I’m just like I refuse to learn anything about why and nobody comment about why, I don’t care. All right, so we’re just gonna douse this in our avocado oil right there. Also, there’s some crazy stat. You’ll have to Google it but it’s like 70% of avocado oil is just not avocado oil. Big scandal about that, it’s a whole thing. We’re gonna take some garlic powder. Yeah, we’re gonna rub it in so it’s fine. Home fries, we’re just gonna roast them. Sometimes I like to like kinda steam them and then fry them. But this is easier. Also, if you notice we have all the stuff stacked up ’cause we do not have a lot of room. Black pepper. Smells nice. We’re just gonna guesstimate on this. We’re just gonna get some in there. Nice coarse ground black pepper. Listen I get- I know people bought that like $300 pepper grinder that’s like a power tool. I just buy pre-ground black pepper man. It’s 80% as good and that’s totally fine. Yeah that looks nice. Now I’m just gonna go, put it through the wash. Listen, this is valid cooking technique right here. This is rough and dirty. This is, you know you got your parents without partners meeting to go to. A real organization that’s still standing. They do good work, I think, I hope. Unless there’s anything bad about them, then don’t hold me liable. They try and pair- What’s up? Salt? What? Oh shoot I forgot to salt them. My hands are already dirty. But this is fine, right? There’s no- You’re gonna make me wash myself? Ah fascist. Potatoes done. They look the same, I don’t know, they’re potatoes. There’s gonna be no difference. Dump them in there. You may be wondering, “Why don’t you have any paprika on there?” 99 Cents store aint got no paprika. Not on the day that we went. That’s all I’m saying. You know what I mean? Even though I feel like paprika is like the cheapest spice you can get at any normal grocery store. And boy does it vary on consistency and quality based on the price. So we’re gonna make our little egg scramble right here. We could do an omelet but like divorced dads ain’t got time for omelets, or they do. Most divorced dads in my experience, they start off making an omelet and then they screw up and they’re like, “Oh this is why she left.” And then they just turn it into a scramble and then it’s ultimately a metaphor for perseverance. All right, we’re cracking. 99 Cents store eggs, they look like fine. Like the egg yolks aren’t like super pale or whatever. These look like good ass eggs man. Cracky, cracky. Never crack your eggs on the side of a bowl. I’ve been saying that ’cause I heard someone on the Food Network say it once. They’re like, “That’ll get shards in the thing.” Sounds like a good podcast topic on ‘A Hotdog is a Sandwich’. Listen to our podcast you dinguses, dingae. Whisk, I should whisk these. I should whisk these. That’s the thing that happens most of the time with scrambees or huevos revueltos in Espanol. Professor Gomez Lociente shoot This is my professor from college who failed me. Oil goes in pans typically. This avocado oil, don’t know what it does or how you’d juice an avocado to get its oil out. But they did that. What do they do with the rest of the avocado? They should give it to me. They should give it to me. All right, we’re just getting a couple little shreds of mushroom and some green bell pepper and onion. We’re on like classic Denver style. Denver style scramble I guess, I don’t know. Ham coins. I think these are from the same pig. This is like “Sister Sister” of pigs. We got Tia and Tamara and they’re reunited. I did not think Erewhon would have American cheese. But like this, I was dubious at first ’cause American cheese is something that’s by definition very processed. And Erewhon’s like, “We don’t process our things. Alfalfa sprouts instead of cheese.” And like that’s not substitute good at all. But you see the air bubbles in here which to me signifies that there’s probably gelatin in here which means that it is probably a proper American cheese and it is floppy. Whomsoever, if we’re comparing floppage on cheese draft American jiggles, let’s go. That’s the good thing that people typically want in cheese is floppage, right? All right let’s give this about two minutes. Beautiful, beautiful. Now we’re going for a nice hard Denny style divorced dad scramble. Divorced dads love Denny’s, they hate IHOP, all right? I’m just gonna get a little bit of curd action in here. Shout out to the curds. Give them sovereignty. All right, we’re gonna fold in the cheese. This is what I like doing. I don’t like whisking the cheese into the eggs. I like folding it in gently so you can keep a little bit of that like cheese integrity there. But it also gets like half melted in. Also I know what you’re saying, “Josh wow, you’re such a good chef. This is really an incredible technique here.” Thank you. That American cheese will melt quick, that’ll go quick. What I like to do with my scrambles, I like to pool it and then I let that kinda like sit there so the curds can sort of develop and then it all sticks together in one big piece. There you go. Bury the cheese under the eggs. But check this out. Then you go, boom Scrambled done. Done. Waffle house, done. Someone come throw a punch, someone give me a reason. This cheese is not melting, man. So much for processed foods. And it’ll melt with the heat. It’ll melt with the heat. Aint no way I gotta do a fancy clip on that. All right, eggs done. Let’s make some pancakes. Hey, what’s up? Welcome back to the cooking show where I cook sometimes. We’re making pancakes right now. We got everything from the 99 Cents store right here. We got our dry ingredients. That’s flour, there’s baking soda, sugar, baking powder in there a little bit and the same bit of salt. And then we got all of our other stuff. Let’s start making it man. I’m gonna go with 99 Cents store first, we’re gonna pour in that milk. That’s just extra milk in case we need it. I’m gonna dump in this egg right here. We’re making blueberry pancakes and I like to just add the blueberries right to the batter. I like the kinda irregular blueberry distribution. Hold up, I’m gonna dump in the melted butter. I don’t like to add the melted butter though right away. What did we eat guys? We did a ‘Myth Munchers’ pancakes. What did we learn? I don’t remember. Damn it. Ha me neither. We learned something though. We were like lumpy is better. You let it sit for a little bit. We’re not gonna take any of the lessons that we learned from ‘Myth Munchers’ to make pancakes, but you know what? That’s fine. I know we’re hand whisking it. We’re gonna let it rest for as long as it takes to set up the next shot. We’re doing it. Listen, here’s the thing about cooking. I like know how to do it. Do I employ any of that when I actually cook at home? Like no, none whatsoever. I dump everything into like a giant sheet pan and then I just kinda like throw that into an oven and then I eat slop for dinner. And that’s the difference between acting and real life. Like do you think- Who’s the guy that plays “The Good Doctor”? You think he talks like that at home? You know, you think he’s doing surgery at home? He’s screaming. “I am a surgeon” at home? No, he’s an actor. And then we’re gonna crack in our blue robin’s egg. Sorry, I coughed in the pancakes. Eggs look the same. This is just dyed. Erewhon I’m onto you. That doesn’t occur in nature. Dump in our butter. I’m trying to think if I have any predictions right now for what’s gonna happen. I think the pancakes are gonna taste absolutely identical. I think there probably is benefits to buying good flour but I don’t think that’s gonna come through in pancakes. Dump in the blueberries. Blueberries, I eated some. Just suck the batter off first it’s fine. I don’t know. Listen, the organic thing it’s like I know that it does mean something and that it’s probably better for the earth or environment. But also like if you’re somebody who trusts government institutions they’re the ones making the organic labels. They’re just saying sometimes it’s hard to do that. So I don’t know man. I don’t know what to tell you but those blueberries tastes identical. And one was from the 99 Cents store and one was some Erewhon. Okay, pancake batter’s done. This is gonna rest for whatever we said in ‘Myth Munchers’ is gonna rest for. What? Like 30 minutes? Here’s what I do in the morning, how I rest it. I make the pancake batter and then I go, I go, I go. And then I come back, by the time my back it’s rested. I wash my hands. So what we’re doing, we’re gonna put some bacon in the pans right here and then we’re gonna cook out these blueberry pancakes. Bacon. I like that one. Oh man this is like three times as thick on the bacon over here. But that means you get more strips of bacon per bacon with the thin, which I appreciate. ‘Cause if you eat like 15 strips of bacon that’s thinner that’s like eating, you know, like seven strips of not thick. Okay there we go, perfect. We’re putting it in a cold pan because the fat is going to render out of the bacon. And then that’s just gonna sort of like confi in its own fat, right? Fancy French cooking words because we’re at Erewhon. Madonna was a big proponent of the macrobiotic diet. That’s all I know. That’s all I know. Literally all I know about it. There’s a place in LA called M Cafe that was like very famous for it. And again, I have no freaking idea what they did there because I do not run in those circles. I have not gone Hollywood and sold out. Where’s my freaking Fiji water? All right cool, so butter. Again dairy is just supposed to be yellow. That’s why this looks like this, it’s grass fed. Which is pretty normal. We’re going 99 Cents on this side. Okay, half cup in each. Boom, boom, boom, just give it to one of those. Yeah and then you’re gonna finger it out. You’re gonna finger it right back in. There you go. There you go. Let gravity take its course and also mash it just a little bit. ‘Cause I like relatively thin pancakes that are somewhat oblong. You like- What? I won’t use that finger. Oh. That, God dang it this is gross. All right. I also wish I was less disgusting. For people out there that you and I share that common goal. I put so much butter in this pan, I just got distracted. I was like lost in thought thinking about “The Good Doctor” again and then- I had a towel somewhere, no longer. You told me I shouldn’t use the towel that’s over here because this is covered in cleaning chemicals. But this is- KD I want the chemicals. That’s what makes me clean. Oh I was wondering why I don’t have any tongs here but I forgot. I’m like a stone crab. All right that’s looking pretty good. I used the right hand tongs for the left pan so now that’s not even close. I’m gonna jack the heat up on that. There we go, we’re gonna flip the pancakes. Yeah that’s safe. Pancake’s probably ready. They say you know the pancakes are ready when there’s little bubbles on the top. That’s all I got, we have a lot of time to fill. This is gonna be a long edit already. All right, bubbles. Boom. Oh cheese and rice right in the pin area, all right cool. I like felt it. I felt it like a phantom pin sploosh. Phantom pin skull. All right cool. With bacon, bacon exit in a second. That is great news. This is done. If you come back, if you just wait. If you come back in a second I’ll have all of this done. And then you can stop watching me and then I can stop talking about “The Good Doctor” and scalding my panas. Hello. Oh we’re shooting, we’re rolling? Oop. Yep. You guys talking about the- Jordan welcome to the show. We got two plates. This is a classic American breakfast. We got our roasted home fries. We got strips of bacon. We got blueberry pancakes with maple syrup. And then we got a three egg scramble with cheese, mushrooms, bell pepper and onion kind of Denver style. A little bit of ham in there and you gotta eat it. All right, let’s do it. I feel like the first thing that’ll tell me which one’s which is the syrup. Hmm I will say this doesn’t give anything away, both had 100% real maple syrup. Interesting. I prefer pancake syrup and I know that’s gonna upset people. We’ve talked about this on the podcast. I know. We’ve talked about it on the podcast. People got so mad at our pancake syrup ranking at Sporked. Yeah but it was Canadian so they don’t count. I’m like please. We had to change the name of our rankings. It was maple syrup of course, now we changed it to pancake syrup ’cause people were so upset. But there’s a lot of good pancake syrups. Okay, these do taste shockingly similar. Mm. I thought one would be more fake. Wow okay. I want to drink it like a shot. But respect to you. No you can do it. I don’t care. I prefer you did it. I don’t want to anymore, now that you’re goading me. No I think you should do it. I don’t want to. I don’t want to. There’s a lot of sugar and I’m gonna crash. I’ll feel disrespected if you don’t do it. We have more episodes. Can I just take a sip? No. All right. God it really has the consistency of NyQuil. You don’t realize how similar it is until you do it. Mhhm. This bacon tastes more expensive. You know this is like bacon you make in the microwave. That being said, I prefer this bacon. Hmm. I want bacon to be like glass. I want it to shatter in my mouth, which I know not everyone feels that same way. Okay, omelet. Well this is more of a divorced dad scramble than an omelet. Sure, sure. You tried to make an omelet just the way you tried to you know, create a family. Yeah I was trying to be nice. And things happen and then you- But then you find the way to make the best of it by just scrambling it up in a pan. The cheese in this one is not as melted as the other one. Does that give you any clues? Fancy cheddar doesn’t melt as well as like processed American cheese which I think is more delicious. Okay I gotta do the pancakes. Yeah this cheese tastes like Velveeta, which is delish. Velvito. I’m gonna eat the pancake with my hand. It’s like a french fry. You say it like a Frenchman. Mhhm. It’s like, yes they are known for that. I’m very cultured. Okay, let’s see. These blueberries are also tangier. So for what that’s worth, honestly both of them are delicious. Once again, I think that tells you that you probably don’t ever need to go to Erewhon. But they’re both really good. I prefer this one, the bacon’s crispier. The cheese is meltier. The blueberries are a little sweeter. It tastes a little bit more like a platter you would get at a diner, which is what I’m looking for with this. It literally is, Jordan you are absolutely correct. Over here we have 99 Cents Only. Over here we have Erewhon. The price difference though, do you have any guesses on how much it costs to make each of these? Oh. $4 versus like $30 or something? You are so close. It was literally $29 and $7. But this one we also had to sacrifice a baby and it was a whole thing. Yeah they require blood sacrifice to sign up for the Erewhon membership. Sure. And so we did that. Don’t even know where the kid came from. Found him by the tracks. Yeah, they put it in those Hailey Bieber smoothies. Yeah, that is canon. Do not sue us Erewhon. Jordan, thank you so much. And everybody out there, I hope you learned something. Check out sporked.com where Jordan wrote a controversial list of pancakes syrup rankings not maple syrup rankings. And for all you out there you don’t need to be spending $14 per dozen eggs unless you’re really concerned about animal welfares. Listen, it’s really complicated. The world is complicated but this omelet tastes really good. The chickens, were they a little bit sadder? Do you know enough about how the medulla of a chicken works? I don’t. I’m just saying, do you? Are chickens really capable of happiness? Like is this something that we can say for sure? Every single one of these ends with you questioning happiness and it’s bumming me out. A star is born. Shop some off Link’s favorites mythical merch up to 20% off during Link’s birthday sale. Now through June 2nd at mythical.com.