Pret a Manger with Charlotte McDonnell and Libby Watson

This is a head gum podcast.

Want to watch this episode?

Check it out on our YouTube channel by going to youtube.com/slash doughboysmedia.

Audival's romance collection has something to satisfy every side of you.

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Hey, Zach, are you smiling at my gorgeous canyon view?

No, Donald.

I'm smiling because I've got something I want to tell the whole world.

Well, do it.

Shout it out.

T-Mobile's got home internet.

Whoa, I love that echo.

T-Mobile's got home internet.

How much is that?

Look at that, Zach.

We got the neighbors' attention.

That's 35 bucks a month.

And you love a great deal, Denise.

Plus, they've got a five-year price guarantee.

That's five whole trips around the sun.

I'm switching.

Yes, T-Mobile home internet for the neighborhood!

Donald, you still haven't returned my weed whacker!

Carl, don't you embarrass me like this, please!

What's everyone yelling about?

T-Mobile's got home internet!

And Donald's got my weed whacker!

Yes, T-Mobile's got home internet, just 35 bucks a month with autopay and any voice line, and it's guaranteed for five years.

Beautiful yodeling, Carl.

Taxes of these supply.

Ctmobile.com/slash ISP for details and exclusions.

No, there will not be a woman prime minister in my lifetime.

The male population is too prejudiced.

This was the response given in a 1970 interview with the Finchie Press by then Member of Parliament, Margaret Thatcher.

Less than a decade later, Thatcher would go on to prove her own prediction wrong, ascending to become the UK's first female prime minister in 1979.

Unfortunately, this glass ceiling shattering milestone is tainted by the fact that Thatcher was a truly massive piece of shit.

Much like her American presidential contemporary, the racist bad actor Ronald Reagan, Thatcher engineered the wholesale destruction of her country's public sector, making the 1980s the decade of amiserating the working poor and transferring wealth to upper-class Twits.

Though, unlike us Yanks, at least the Brits got to keep their public health care.

But while Thatcher was busy laying waste to her nation's post-war gains in favor of a morally bankrupt ideology of greed, University College London friends Julian Metcalfe and Sinclair Beacham collaborated on a quick-service food and coffee shop named after a French term meaning ready to eat, a play off the existing phrase ready to wear.

Opening in 1983 in the London neighborhood of Westminster, after enduring a rocky first year, the chain quickly became entrenched as an institution in the Big Smoke and then throughout the British Isles.

And in 2000, in a food-oriented retread of its proud tradition of colonization, the chain established its first North American outpost in New York City.

As of 2025, it has approximately 700 locations worldwide, including about 40 in the U.S.

While Thatcher and Reagan now both thankfully burn in hell, the damage these goblins did to both sides of the so-called special relationship has sadly outlived them both.

But the British eatery with the French name established during Thatcher's reign thrives under the neoliberal global order the so-called Iron Lady helped make ironclad.

This week on Doughboys, Prédiminger.

Welcome to Doughboys, the podcast about chain restaurants.

I'm Tiger Weiger, along with my co-host,

Donkey Kong, but he can't lift a barrel and doesn't eat fruit.

The spoon man, Mike Mitchell.

That's pretty good.

That's pretty good.

That's really good.

It is mean.

It's funny.

Michael R.

sent that in, roast at birdfuck.com.

I think you can lift a barrel.

I can definitely lift a barrel.

I'll throw it at your ass.

Do you think that would...

Oh, I'll fucking jump right over it or hit it with a hammer.

I don't think he can.

I'll fucking throw my flames at you then next, or my springs, my springboards.

I don't think he throws the springboards.

Or does he?

The springboards just will come then at some point.

Yeah, the flames come on their own out of the barrels.

He He might throw the springboards.

Okay.

We're going to have to do some research on this.

When's the last time you played old school Donkey Kong?

Because it's, you know what?

It's a good game.

It's really fun to play.

I haven't played it in a long while.

Even though, you know, these

arcade cabinets from the 80s or whatever, or even Donkey Kong's 70s, right?

It started.

Donkey Kong was maybe exactly 1980.

Okay.

They are oftentimes like, you know, hard.

They're not easy.

No, because they were the quarter munchers.

They were the idea, the economics of it was that you'd have to keep putting quarters in to extend your play session.

And as such, the idea was that you would die under two minutes.

And it also is that sort of thing now of like the controls are just like, it's hard to do because the controls aren't good.

Yeah, they've refined certain, you know,

they've refined the physics of it.

They've refined how responsive the controls are.

And then also there's just like feel things that you're used to in modern games.

Like you can die from a fall in

the original Donkey Kong, which doesn't feel right when you're playing a character who jump man is basically Mario.

Hey, he's jumpman and he dies from a fall?

Mitch, preaching to the choir here.

He's not full, man.

He's not fall.

That's true.

He is not fall man.

No, that's a good point.

But even if you jump and then land, like not just a fall, even if you jump and then land to

too far of a height, you still will die.

You still will perish.

You know what I really loved?

Bubble bubble.

Bubble bubble was fun.

Bubble bubble was broken.

A little bit of a later game.

I want to say that I have been on Doughboys before and you guys have talked about Bubble Bubble.

Wait, really?

Yeah, I think that we are now reaching that number of appearances for me where you guys have been using Bubble Bubble references.

Did I talk about how I made it to the final level, like the final level of Bubble Bubble, and then someone tripped over the Nintendo power outlet?

Did I talk about how I finished Bubble Bubble with my friend Brandon, who listened to the podcast?

And when you finish it, they turn into real guys.

It kind of sucks.

Wait, what?

They turn into real guys?

They're like the dragon.

It was like a curse that they were like, we can finally return to our real form.

And then they're just like guys.

You're like, this is the guys?

I don't want to be guys.

I like that they're little dragons.

That's insane.

They're guys the whole time.

What a plot twist.

A rampage.

The same thing happens at the end of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for NES, which I think they were just like, they didn't know the lore of it.

And so you finish the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game.

And they turn into teenagers?

Well, no, it's just Shredder, but Shredder is like, now I can return to my true form.

And he turns into a guy.

Wait, Splinter.

Splinter.

I meant Splinter.

Yeah, not Shredder.

Shredder is a guy.

Shredder is is a guy.

Sorry,

I'll take this back.

Splinter says.

You fucking idiot.

You fucked it.

Splinter the rat says, I can return to my real form and turns into a guy.

Because they won, he can do it.

Because they won, yeah.

What you guys have to remember is like me and Libby are really young, so the only games we know is like, we know like Fortnite.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We know,

I guess.

Call of Duty, but only the modern one.

Yeah.

I have to believe that there is a Splinter on Fortnite.

There has to be Splinter.

Have you ever drew it?

I don't know if the ninja turtles are in Fortnite.

I'm not sure what you're doing.

The ninja turtles are actually in Fortnite.

They are, okay.

So you can be Donatello with a sniper rifle if you want.

Charlotte, who are you?

Shooting Mariana Grande.

Charlotte, what skin are you currently using in Fortnite?

My favorite, like I do love a good like hot lady skin in Fortnite, but my go-to is always going to be the Xenomorph.

Oh, yeah, Zenomorph.

Because now you can put...

You can put shoes on them as well.

So I like to put like the pink bunny slippers on the Xenomorph

and then have her do the little girly dances, and it makes me really happy.

I like the Klebold and Harris skins for Fortnite.

Those are good.

Those are a little edgy.

The weirdest thing about Fortnite is that everyone is scaled to the same because the hitboxes have to match.

So they're all scaled to the same size.

So you could be like any character.

Like Giannis is in it,

but Giannis is like the same height as like Peter Griffin.

It's like, this doesn't make any sense.

Peter Griffin is the same height as Giannis.

Yeah, in the Fortnite canon.

What you have to remember about Peter Griffin is they intentionally, they made him like really buff.

Right.

Like allegedly to match like that, like that default Fortnite model.

Yeah.

Which I'm really, I'm still really mad about.

I think it's one of the worst skins in Fortnite, which is why I grinded for like two months to get it because

I really needed it in my collection just because of how awful it is.

You have to grind.

You have to like

to unlock it.

Yeah.

Really?

That one was in the Battle of Pass.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like good games as well, by the way.

They should just put Osama and stuff.

And why not?

Why not?

At this point, I think they could.

Hey, speaking of good games, Mitch, I had something I wanted to say that might actually, it might actually alienate our guests.

But, but I like, I kind of have this take right now.

Uh-oh.

This is this new game that's out right now, Claire Obscure Expedition 33, which is like kind of the consensus game of the year right now.

It's from a French video game studio, Sandfall, and it's this awesome like modern take on a JRPG.

It's super duper fun.

It's really cool.

And also, of course,

Rudy Gobert, French NBA player, having a great playoffs.

Yeah, and one of the originators of COVID.

One of the originators of COVID, but he's back.

He had an absolute monster game eliminating the Lakers.

You know, like the Wolves are doing great as of the Sir Cord.

Oh, yeah, no, no.

Of course on COVID for him.

Of course, Victor Wembanyama giving me the new face of the league.

And this week's chain even has a French name.

Mitch, I think France is back.

No!

They're never back to me, those traitors.

No, France is back.

They give us the Statue of Liberty, Mitch.

Yeah, but they're cowardly traitor.

I can never forgive them for World War II.

I disagree.

You forgive me.

I think it's fine.

I've been all the Vichy France stuff, too.

That's fine, too.

Water under the bridge.

I think France is back.

I'm going on a pro-French bit.

That's going to be my thing now.

Okay, what's next then?

What are you going to do?

Wee wee, say wee-wee.

You're going to wee-wee?

Yeah.

You think it's French to wee-wee?

Wee wee.

Yeah, I think so.

I'm doing a French wee wee.

The minions, French, miss.

They are French.

Wait, the Les Minions?

I mean, it's a French studio that, you know,

Les Mignon.

Director Pierre Coffin, French.

Do you know after you guys?

Yeah.

If you guys complete the podcast today,

if you like beat the podcast, say, Wags and I will return to our original form.

You like head gum hunks?

Oh, man.

I'll follow that baby.

I love it.

Shed this chrysalis of doughboys.

They're guys.

They're just

guys.

Are they tiny or do they show like a full-screen animated thing of like them as guys?

They show full-screen animated full frontal.

They're just little guys.

They're the same size as Bub and Bob or whatever their actual names are, but they just have like human skin.

In Rampage, they are a little nude.

They're a little nude.

They're nudes.

I like how they walk sideways off screen holding their genitalia.

They're different genitalia.

The one thing thing you remember from the game that they decided not to put in the movie for some dumb reason.

It's like, but just put that, throw that joke in there.

Have that.

Why not have that?

Why not have them be?

It would be fun to see them be a human

after they got beat.

What if at the end of the game you turn back into your original form, but the only thing that changed was that your dick got smaller?

What the fuck?

Just sucks.

I'll be in big trouble.

I mean, for me, that's at least heading in the right direction.

We'll get you, though.

Mitch, I know you have a drop to play.

Yeah, Amelia, hit him with a drop.

Wow.

Butterfly in the sky.

I can go twice as high.

Too much books.

It's too much books.

A reading.

Oh, Joe.

Oh, Joe.

Oh, Joe.

Jesus.

The hell was that?

Hi, Doughboys, and everyone.

Let's hear it for literacy.

Shout out to Kinsey and Alex and Little Sophie.

Love you all.

Ivan and North Carolina.

Wow, thanks, Ivan.

Charlotte, let's not do that for our podcast.

This seems like an awful thing to get locked into doing.

Every single week.

Yeah, 500 episodes.

We open the show with someone sends in an insult and then we listen to

you guys like nutting or whatever.

Yeah, exactly.

Horrible amalgamation of clips from our shitty podcast.

I just want to say, I just want to, we talked about him a little bit.

I want to say thank you to Donkey Kong.

Thank you to Donkey Kong.

Thank you for your favorite.

He's good for you.

He's all you've done.

We're very excited for Bonanza.

Yes, Bonanza looks very good.

Still, still at it.

He's still at it all these years later.

He's got some work done.

I don't know if you noticed.

That's fine, though.

He's got a new look.

Yeah.

He's got a new look.

Dong Kong, my famous character.

Yeah, of course, we know your famous character from your SNL reel, Don Kong,

the human being who's.

You guys know Donkey Kong.

It's interesting, though, Mitch, because

if you extrapolate the Dong Kong lore, that would mean if you finish the Donkey Kong, he might turn back into a honor.

He might turn into Dong Kong.

That could be, yeah.

It could be Canon.

For a character on my S no real, I just wore a red tie, shirtless, and was like, hey, how are you doing?

I'm Dong Kong, the inspiration for Donkey Kong.

And Shigeru Miyamoto, he came into my shop.

I had a barrel shop.

Right.

And then Shigira Miyamoto was loitering, so I threw barrels at him.

Yeah.

And then he was like, I'm going to put you in a video game.

I was like, oh, really?

And then that's how the relationship started.

And then Lauren Michaels is watching that.

I was like, this can't be on TV.

It's too funny.

You meant that sincerely.

I did mean it.

I know, I know, but people are going to think you're joking, but he meant that sincerely.

I like Dong Gong.

Can I tell my Miyamoto story real quick?

Yes.

I interviewed him.

Wow.

I think it was Mario Maker.

I was making a YouTube video for it, and it was so nice to meet him.

It was one of my favorite pictures.

I'm like, it's like one of the only like pre-transition pictures I will look at because of how happy I am to just have my arm around that man.

And I never posted the video because a Nintendo employee fell asleep in the background.

Wow.

And I was so embarrassed about it that I just sort of just blew out the whole thing.

I was just like, I can't do this.

I met the guy, so it's good for me.

That's amazing.

I mean, this,

he's like, we've talked about our, our, the McList.

Yeah.

And Shigeru Miyamoto is a guy who's on the.

Yeah, open invite.

If Miyamoto wants to come on Doughboys and review McDonald's, we'll do it.

But he is, I mean, for both of us, Shigeru Momiyamoto is up there.

Yeah.

I'm sure, Charlotte, that employee was probably just really tired because they'd been working like 120-hour weeks to get, you know, Pikmin 3 finished or whatever.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

100% do not blame them or even the cameraman I was working on because I only could afford to hire one other person who was doing the close-ups and it was in the wine shop that nobody was checking.

So

the blame ultimately falls on me for that.

No, no, no.

Was it that sort of thing where he was just standing still for a few seconds and then he went, I'm tired, and then sat down

in a winny idol animation.

He said something about spaghetti.

Yeah.

And then falls asleep.

God bless.

What was his name?

Who did the voice?

He's retired.

He's retired.

Charles Martinette.

Charles Martinette.

Yeah.

Bring back Martinet.

We're trying a lot.

Wise, I'm a little nervous with you because.

Why is that?

I haven't done it so far.

I've been trying to be very nice because we're close to tour.

And I'm afraid that you're going to,

I'm afraid that.

I think I'm on edge a little bit.

I think you're on edge travel.

I think you're a little, and Amelia just gave a big nod over there.

You think I'm on edge?

I don't, no, no, no, I'm just, I'm disagreeing.

Yeah, we think you're on edge.

I'll speak for everyone.

We're nervous.

I am nervous.

I need a fucking airplane.

I know.

I know.

It sucks.

You know, actually, I did see Nick downloading the Klebold skin on Fortnite.

Watch out.

Me telling Casey, don't show up to headgum tomorrow.

Conover, you're a good guy.

You should have come in tomorrow.

No, I'm doing great.

We're doing great.

We've had a binge of records in anticipation of the tour.

It's always a whole thing because we have to cover those weeks where we're away.

It's going to be fine.

It's going to be fine.

Everything's going to be fine.

Don't get too, just don't, don't get mad.

Everything's going to be fine, and I'm not on edge.

Oh, it seems it.

Okay, good.

Drops at birdfuck.com.

Mitch,

you know,

partly because of the tour, partly, you know, where everyone's got their own travel plans.

Emma's not here today.

Jemmy's not here today.

No Jemmy in this.

No, Jemmy's.

It's like the Christmas Carol.

I see a seat where Jemmy is not sitting.

Speaking of sleeping on camera, that's what Jemmy's favorite activity is.

I know, I know.

But, Mitch, we do have a couple of great guests

on the podcast.

Yes.

And,

you know, you and I are both Yanks, if you will.

We are, yeah.

We're Americans.

Yeah, yeah.

And you ever run across some sort of British thing and you're like, the fuck is this?

I don't know what this is.

Why?

Will someone explain this thing to me?

You know, right before we started, I talked about being upset about birds.

I guess I was talking about something, someone being upset about birds.

And I realized birds is a word for

a lady.

It's a lady slamming.

A little bit bird is like a woman you want to, you know.

That's right.

Yes.

Do something with.

Take the tea.

Yeah.

Take to tea.

Take the tea.

Okay, that's something.

Is that an innuendo or is that just, or is that?

No, I'm talking about shagging.

Oh, okay.

All right.

And is that an innuendo?

Need to get a diagram out.

Well, they have a new podcast exactly for that purpose.

Host of the new podcast, What's All This Then?

Charlotte McDonald and Libby Watson.

Hi, Charlotte.

Hi, Libby.

Hello.

Hi.

Thanks so much for being here.

Hi.

Yes.

Quick question.

First question right off the bat.

Hot topic.

Here we go.

Right off the bat.

Firing questions at you.

This is like hardball.

Yep.

If you said shagging shagging in America, free Austin Powers,

what does that mean?

Do you think people get it?

I think people would think it was a baseball reference.

I actually don't think you're wrong.

In baseball, actually, hold on a second.

I do think you're wrong, but go on.

Like, shagging, like, fly balls out in the field.

Well, I do think you're right.

That was the only usage I ever heard of it before Austin Powers.

Damn, I guess I need a podcast by Americans.

It's called, like, What's All This Then?

I take it.

I think you said it earlier.

You're like, What the fuck is this?

Yes, you're right.

Yes.

What the fuck is this?

What is this?

Shagging flyballs.

That would probably.

You know what's funny?

I have such a connection with Austin Powers when I was playing baseball because I think Austin Powers 1 or 2 came out when I was playing baseball.

And someone would say,

your old coach would be like, all right, go shag some fly balls.

And you'd be like, you think it was funny?

Yeah, Austin Powers.

That makes me randy, baby.

I do wonder.

I don't think that.

I think Austin Powers

now, if you said, like, they're going to shag, I think people are like, oh, it means they're going to

fuck.

Some people, yeah.

Other people might not know.

And that's just the beauty of America.

It's such a diverse place.

It is.

It's a great spot.

Yeah, we love it here.

It's the best.

Okay, so I guess it

on your podcast.

My episode, I believe, should be out as of this episode's release.

We talked about Greggs.

So Gregg's was a black box to me.

I did not know what Gregg's was, although I'd heard of it before we did the podcast.

Can we explain to

what Greggs I was just thinking I said black box but you you were thinking black bag in the Soderbergh film yeah it is it is a bit of a black bag in terms of you're like what's in this bag I don't know yeah but Greggs is a

it what we landed on at least what I landed on is it's roughly equivalent to like kind of a UK dunkin yes yes I think that is absolutely true and also Lewis my husband who is from Massachusetts came to that conclusion independently so it is for sure the British duncan um what I mean how would you describe it it, Charlotte?

Sausage roll place, sausage roll place.

I mean, the interesting thing about Gregg's is it used to be a bakery, so they would have lots of lovely breads and things, and then they also had, like, you know, a hot shelf with sausage rolls and other like pastry items.

And since then, they've discovered that the hot stuff is what's really selling, specifically that

sausage roll.

That's their really big hitter.

And so, they've gotten rid of the bread now, and they've also sort of like added in like pizza slices as well.

They look fucking um yeah those look yeah they really look bad but it is like the most popular like in terms of just like getting a quick bite to eat and like some hot food it is the biggest one in the uk so this is this is so sorry to interrupt this is this is the

the idea of a hot shelf is something we were talking about earlier today yeah

it's it's the idea of a hot i mean i'm not picturing an attractive shelf no yeah you're thinking of an hourglass shelf i'm not thinking of an hourglass i think that would be that's not it would not that, that doesn't make any sense.

Structural shelf.

A shelf with big titties is what you're thinking right now.

Well, the Fitbird's got a hot shelf.

That is horrid.

That is so horrid.

What would it be?

Hot shelf.

I think it'd be a big ass, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Like an ass that kind of goes out like a shelf.

Oh, like the Kim Kardashian picture where she's got the

cup of champagne.

Yeah, yeah.

Which seems like it could be useful, you know what I mean?

If you, you know, like place something back.

It's like Homer balancing his beer on his beer belly.

Yes.

You know, balance champagne on bottom.

Hey, that is a fact guy thing you can do.

Oh, yeah.

You can put something on your belly.

Yeah.

Wally normal love to sit on the belly.

It's very cute.

But they usually go between the legs.

They're big between the legs.

Digby does too.

Between the legs.

Cute.

And it kind of mummifies you when you sleep.

That's the only issue.

You can't really move.

Oh, the number of times that I wake up during the night and I am twisted, you know, like my legs are in one position and my spine is in another and Digby is pinning me down and I can't move.

It's definitely not good for me.

The cat owners

outnumber non-cat owners here today.

That's what I was going to say.

Because Charlotte, you're a fellow cat parent.

I am indeed.

My cat is called Gideon.

Gideon.

Gideon.

So I live in Canada.

He is from the UK, so he also migrated.

Wow.

I don't know if they knew that.

That's so nice.

Yeah, he grew up on the streets of East London

as part of a little gang of cats that was being fed by an old lady in a backyard or back garden, as we would say.

Yes, we would have.

And so I came over one day and

another episode topic.

When you were talking about shagging, the thing I thought of was I've run into trouble because when you say you have to peg it in the UK, that means you're going to run really fast.

And I have run into some issues.

It means something a little different here.

Yeah.

We have something just a little bit different here.

Put this on the Wikipedia.

The debut of the peg brothers bitch.

That's what when you beat the podcast, we've now turned to our true form, and we're just peg.

That's the only difference.

Um,

I want to say, to get back to the hot shelf, yeah, a thing I did not know, and it does tie into today's episode.

There just is like a hot case, right?

Is that what a hot shelf is, basically?

Yeah, is there a hot, does Greggs, is that a hot case store?

Do they have a hot shelf there, or is that like a, you know, because

pretty manger, we'll get into in a second, but

yeah, I mean, that's a thing that's more common in UK chains, it seems like.

I think marginally more common, yeah, but to have it on the, on the consumer side rather than like if you went to, for example, at 7-Eleven, you'd say, can I have that hot dog there that's rolling in the

thing?

What would you call that?

Roller.

Did we just call it a little bit of a hole?

Hot dog roller.

Hot dog roller.

Okay.

How common are hot dogs in the in the UK?

Is it not a thing you see in like a 7-Eleven or anything like that or no?

I'm interested in Charlotte's take on this, but I would say the sausage is more common than the hot dog.

Yeah, it's like the sausage roll, as you were saying, is the Gregg staple.

I think in the UK,

you want a good sausage most of the time.

You're looking for some bangers, honestly.

A bang and banger to go along with your mash, ideally.

That's right.

I feel like, yeah, hot dog.

I always associated hot dog as just bad sausage I don't want.

I think growing up.

Yeah, I think that's true.

I definitely like associate it with America.

Like, I actually have a very strong memory of when I was at uni and they were showing the Super Bowl in the student union, and this would be at like 2 a.m.

or something.

And they were serving curly fries and hot dogs.

And that was like the American food that you could get.

Wow.

Yeah.

Was anyone there?

It was packed.

People wanted to watch the Super Bowl at 2 a.m.

I remember this.

It was the Saints and the Colts, and it was everyone was absolutely going crazy.

I remember that too.

It was a good Super Bowl.

It was like a really good game.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And we all went crazy.

That's a thing they say in the U.S.

that people are watching all over the world.

That I always, even when I was a kid, I was like, there's no way people are watching this out.

People actually do.

That's crazy.

Was that post-Katrina too?

Is that like the win post-Katrina?

I think it was, but look, that doesn't matter.

I think I was in Disneyland with the birthday, with the birthday boys for that Super Bowl.

It would have been 2010.

Yeah.

2010.

So post-Katrina Saints win.

Yeah, I mean, several years removed, but like

that was part of the narrative.

It was like, you know, the recovery or whatever.

Do you have 7-Elevens in England?

Is it 7-23?

You guys are in military time there or no?

You fucker.

Hold on.

No, that was good.

That was good.

Because we would say, because of course we would say 23

Charlotte.

We'd say 2,300.

Yes, exactly.

Would you like to shag at 2,300?

They do military time over there.

They love time.

11 is 11 o'clock.

So say 23 because it's military time.

Yeah.

You fucking, you've got me.

Because look.

Wow, well, wow.

Look at this, watch.

Military time.

Wow, how about that?

Yeah, it's like one of the few things I've not adapted.

No, Charlotte, we don't really have, I don't, I don't think we have 7-Eleven, do we?

We don't have 7-Eleven.

I'm thinking of Spa.

Oh, Spa.

That's probably the most similar in the UK.

Spa.

spa, yeah, spa r.

Oh, there's an R in there, spa, spa, spa, spa, spa, yeah, it's like a corner store type place.

I don't know, I don't remember whether spa had hot food like that, but um, yeah, I feel like the Gregg's thing and the predomanger thing of having like a select few, and this is important, a very select few.

If you are allowed hot options a lot of the time, I mean, obviously, there are places where you can go and get a hot sandwich and stuff.

I'm sure in London or maybe Manchester, or I grew up, right?

You got it.

If you were allowed a hot meal, it was, it was from a hot shelf.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah.

Where did you, where did you, where, what area did you grow up?

So I grew up in a really small village outside the town of Banbury, which is about an hour and a half away from London.

Wow.

Yeah.

And Charlotte, you're from Bath, correct?

I learned this on the podcast.

I am indeed from Bath.

I did also, similar to Livy, I grew up in a village just outside of Bath,

which makes us both seem more quaint and English as well, which is nice.

We both, yeah, we both grew up in little villages.

Yes.

But bath is really nice.

When I was a little boy, I visited

Bath.

Bath?

Bath.

You had one bath when you were a kid.

Yeah, you said this before.

I visited Bath.

I didn't visit the bath.

I visited bath.

I think you can say bath.

I visited bath.

You can say bath.

Yeah, say bath.

Yeah, that's fine.

And you drink the bath water, right?

I had the bathwater.

Yeah, it's a natural hot spring.

Yes.

I feel like, because there is also a Roman bath bath there, which is, because the town was originally like founded by the Romans.

And so like, it was called Aquasulis before that.

So you can go and visit the old Roman baths, but the water there is like full of like green algae.

So you don't want to drink that.

The natural hot spring stuff you can drink, but it does taste rank.

It was, it was weird.

I remember, you know, I just unlocked a memory of when I was in second or third grade when I went to London.

My sister got mono.

Oh, no.

She couldn't go.

She was in middle school.

And so she couldn't go.

And my dad and I went with my godparents' family.

And I just unlocked the thing of being in bath, drinking the bathwater, and having fish and chips.

Yes.

Now

it's fish and crisps, I believe.

Oh, it is fish and chips.

She overcorrected.

Overcorrecting, but we really appreciate the

spirit of the over-correction.

Yeah.

Unless it was, maybe, maybe it was crisps.

We could save you by saying it was crisps.

No, it was fish and chips.

It was.

It was rolled in a newspaper, I believe.

Yep, that's the way to have it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I want to give a shout out to my favorite hot shelf item, which is the Cornish pasty.

Yeah.

That was the big one for me.

I did not have a lot of sausage rolls growing up.

I had some at school, but mostly if I was going out to get like a hot bite, a little hot lunch to take away with me.

Specifically, I would get the cheese and onion Cornish pasty.

But

my dad lives in Cornwall, so I used to go there and get the authentic ones, and they are.

proper good.

Yeah.

We haven't.

We went to Cornish.

Yeah, we went to a chain and we talked about this on Y'all's Pod called Cornish Pasty, which is in Arizona.

And yeah, that's the

place we remember, Mitch,

where the server told us we were asked about pronunciation because a lot of Americans say pasty.

Right.

And he was like, pasty is for lips, pasty is for nips.

It's like a real bro.

Yeah, he was a real bro.

That guy rules.

Yeah, he sounds great.

He was great.

Maybe a possible Patreon goal for us, Charlotte, for me to go to Arizona to go to the Cornish pasty.

I wonder where you live.

Sorry if you can can be thanging around.

Gideon King and just decided to jump on my desk.

He's being a total wanker.

Look at him.

Is that Lewis and Digby on your phone, by the way?

Yes, it is.

Yes.

Very cute picture of Lewis and Digby on the phone.

He pretends he doesn't love it, but he does.

He loves it so much.

What's your

cats in your background?

You will need Nurma?

Oh, that's so nice.

This is Nick's version.

Look if we got my background.

I know what this is.

Ghelain Maxwell at Mindy Kaling's book party

Mindy Kaling's book party yeah all the things that we all hold most precious

uh i want to ask because we we brought up 7-eleven and this is always the question that i think americans are fascinated by because you know this is the prism through which we view the world uh what are the american chains like in the uk like you obviously you got your mcdonald's your kfcs and the like there you got your subways but like are there any american chains which British people are particularly have any sort of affinity for or that where you notice,

and you're both living in North America now, any sort of like

big differences between what's in the stateside varietals?

Let me guess.

You love Burger King?

I can't say that over there, Mitch.

Oh, you can't say Burger King?

No, you can, no.

That's ridiculous.

I did eat a lot of Burger King.

Wow.

Growing up.

I was a big...

I think because I was very picky when it came to burgers and I didn't want any like pickles or any of I didn't want any sort of anything resembling a vegetable.

So at Burger King, I could get the bacon double cheeseburger and it was all just meat, cheese and bread.

And I was very happy about that.

Charlotte, that's so crazy because that is my exact story.

We never went to McDonald's because I didn't like the pickles.

And so we went to Burger King and I got a bacon double cheeseburger.

So I didn't mean to interrupt you.

We had another British guest who called them Gherkins and said the Gherkins were ghastly.

No one liked the Gherkins.

Yes.

And also, can you please check with me next time you're going to have a British guest on?

Well, it was before he did the podcast, so we would never do that.

The Gherkins were ghastly?

Yes.

Yeah.

Ghastly or ghastly?

Yeah.

Ghastly Gherkins.

Yeah.

No, I was like, G-A-S-S-L-Y or something, or like G-H-A-S-T-L-Y.

Yeah, the T-H-Y.

Ghastly.

What did you think I said?

Ghastly.

No, not like ghastly.

Like, it gives you gas.

I didn't know.

Yeah.

Do you guys have Dairy Queen?

not anymore as an irish man i'm pissed off yeah you should be and you're right to do so and i'm really sorry i'm sorry to all irish americans thank you

No,

I don't really think that we had a lot of American chains, other than the ones you named.

Yeah, sure.

Berging, McDonald's, KFC were the main ones.

There are a lot more American chains in London now.

I feel like since I have left the country, there's been a bit of an explosion of American food

in England.

And in general, I think the food has gotten better as well.

Like, you know, more

flavors.

But

yeah, I don't really think, I don't really think we, Charlotte, did you have any chains outside the big ones involved?

I was just thinking a big one for me was actually dominoes.

Dominoes.

I do still think that dominoes in the UK is like, it's the best dominoes I have ever had.

Is that in the UK?

That's my

specific garlic and herb dip that you get at the UK is unmatched, in my opinion.

We called it the cum dip because it looked like cum.

Oh, that's good.

We love that.

Yeah, I like that a lot.

This is what makes you go to London because the dominoes.

They got better dominoes.

That's interesting that you say that, Charlotte, because in 2015, I had to go back to the UK for like two months while I was waiting for a visa, and it was fucking hell.

And while I was there, I got really sad because I missed America.

And I was like, oh, the Dominoes.

And I remembered having it a lot when I was at uni.

We used to get, you know, used to get like a book of coupons through the door.

So we would always get two-for-one pizzas at Domino's.

Wait, is this, because I know you, like me, fellow brew and went to UCLA, but like, was this your time, when you say uni in, in the UK?

Yeah, so I took a year at UCLA and two in the UK.

Um, and uh, I, so I ordered pizza and I got it, and I was so excited to eat it, and it was shit.

It was so bad, but maybe that's just Banbury Domino's, you know, maybe that's just the Banbury Domino's experience.

Hey, they're all you've got to go to bath to get this dominoes.

Specifically, that's the best one.

Well, when you had Brendan on, did he tell his story about Brendan James?

Yes.

Did he tell his story about going to Pizza Hut and it just being absolutely devastating?

I think he probably did.

Yeah.

Because when he studied at Oxford, it was one of the first stories that Brendan ever told me.

No, we reviewed Pizza Hut with Brendan.

I remember getting into this.

I can't remember if it was on or off pod, but we talked about it.

Well, he said that, you know, he went to the Pizza Hut that was on the high street in Oxford and he was like so excited to get to have this little taste of home.

And it was so bad that he just left and like walked home in the rain.

And he was just so depressed about this bad experience he had.

But again, maybe pizza has improved.

Can I guess another one that you guys would love?

Yeah, please.

Oh, yeah, let's hear it.

Burger King, Dairy Queen, White Castle.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

We do have a lot of castles.

We do.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

That's true.

It is a good pull.

Thank you.

We do have castles.

It's true.

I just like, it's, it's the thing, and I know this about the British Isles, but it's just like, yeah, there's the Romans were there.

There's like Roman ruins and shit.

That's really crazy.

Yeah, they that's old.

It's old as fuck.

What are the dungeons?

What are the dungeons?

What are the dungeons?

What's the dungeon?

What's the dungeon?

Is the Tower of London?

Tower of London.

Is that where it was?

I was confused by your question because we simply had so many dungeons.

You have a lot of dungeons?

We were putting people in dungeons all over the fucking place.

Actually, yeah.

New York.

Dungeons are fucking cool.

Dungeons are cool.

Dungeons are cool.

I remember reading that

they have trouble translating dungeons, the word for dungeons and dragons when they're localizing it into other other languages because it like doesn't doesn't

quite mean what dungeons means.

Yeah.

Like what a dungeon was before dungeons and dragons kind of redefined it as like an underground labyrinth with treasure is like it's it that's that's like an invention of fiction, you know?

Yeah.

Because like an actual dungeon is like something, something entirely different.

Yeah, yeah.

I grew up very close to Warwick Castle, which is a good castle to visit if you go to the UK.

World Davis Castle.

No, actually, no, totally unrelated.

Yeah.

That would be cool if it was World Davis Castle.

Yeah, it would be cool.

Yeah,

I don't know.

I don't know if I really have anything else to add to that.

I don't know if I've got a riff on that.

That'd be pretty cool.

It would be pretty cool.

That would be pretty cool.

That's what we're looking at.

That's fine.

Anyway, they have something there called the Oubliette, which was a part of many castles, and it's French for forgotten.

And it basically was a hole that they would throw someone down so they slowly died.

And it was like just big enough for a human body.

And you can go and there's literally like an escape room there.

Wow.

You Brits are wild, man.

With some of the, I guess you are, you say that

it's very self-loathing over there, which may self-loathing over there, which makes sense because.

Because we suck.

Well, no, I'm just saying you come up with such torturous devices

that make sense.

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

I just watched this Japanese movie from the 60s, Onibaba, and it means Demon Woman.

Have you seen Onibaba?

I know of Onibaba, but I've not seen it.

Yeah, I'd never seen it.

But like,

there is an element of like luring a samurai to just fall into a hole.

It's like, what a horrible fucking death.

You just fall into a hole and like, like, you probably don't die instantly, right?

You just like very badly hurt yourself and then slowly die in a pile of your own like goo.

This is why Fromsoft games are so good.

Yeah, 100%.

Because they have that sadistic approach.

Captures that feeling.

How haunted is, I mean, it's a very old place.

How haunted would you say England is?

This is a tough question for me to answer because I don't believe in ghosts.

Yeah, I was going to say, ghosts aren't real, so I don't know what you're talking about.

Okay, interesting.

Yeah, no, no, no, that's.

This is good.

This is good.

I'll say it's very spooky.

There's definitely a lot of sure.

You're not spooked at all

if you're at an escape room that's above like a, you know, like a 500-year-old hole, you know, that people got thrown down.

I would be a little scared.

I'm not a little bit near the hole, yeah.

Wait, wait, wait, sorry.

No, I'm not scared if I'm at an escape room.

No, no, you fucked my job.

I took it from you.

I was going to say.

I sniped it.

Sorry.

Yeah, not scared if I'm at an escape room near your mom.

Leave her name out of your mouth.

I'm really sorry.

I'm really sorry.

That sounds lovely.

What's the ghost skepticism level behind the deus?

Where are we with ghosts back there?

Very skeptical.

Very skeptical.

You don't believe in ghosts or ghoulies or anything.

Really?

Casey, what do you think?

You're an Italian.

You don't fucking believe in it?

I'm pretty skeptical.

I've never had an encounter.

Yeah, sure.

I'll believe it when I see you.

His what's what what I'll say about ghosts.

Oh, you geniuses.

We know more than the universe.

We know everything.

It's all science.

There's no intermingling of spirit.

It's only science.

It's molecules.

You fools.

Look, dude, I fucking love science.

Here's what I'll say about ghosts is that

I have very low tolerance for certain kinds of mystical beliefs.

Like when people talk to me about star signs, I want to fucking kill them because I'm like, that's just made up.

What the fuck are you talking about?

It's so annoying that you would even think to say to me that you know what I'm like.

Stay away from Hollywood Boulevard.

I know.

I know.

And I have no tolerance for that.

But with ghosts, I have a lot more sympathy for people who think they have seen ghosts because the human brain can do some crazy stuff.

And I absolutely believe that you could have an experience that feels only like it could be a ghost, you know?

I just kind of feel like I'd know by now.

Like it would have been in the paper if we were sure about ghosts, you know?

Like it might have been on the news.

It has been in the paper, but you know, certain papers.

Certain papers.

I can't deny the fact that even though I do not believe in ghosts, I am still sometimes scared of them.

Yes.

Like if I am in a, you know, a big old house and there's no one else there and it is nighttime and it is a bit cold, I'm like, it's still going to like kick in like the natural instinct to be like, ooh, but what if?

Yeah.

Like, is there going to be.

So even, I do, I do get it from that front.

Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I mean, you guys are, you're, you're, I'd say you guys are responsible for the most famous

ghost, uh, a man who's afraid of ghosts, is Scrooge.

He's, he's, he's, uh, Scrooge is the most visited by three ghosts famously.

He's visited by three ghosts famously.

One of the oldest examples of a human being being scared by spirits is

one of the oldest examples.

I would have

sorry, it's up there.

I probably would have said Macbeth, actually, but

once again, another example of a Brit.

Yeah.

Macbeth, I mean, Billy Shakespeare is a fucking Brit, isn't he?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, he is.

That's right.

Yeah, he is.

Yeah.

And he's good, isn't he?

I think he's good.

You have so many topics you could cover with Mitch.

I can't wait.

Mitch, I would like to formally invite

to come on What's All This Then and we can debate.

Talk about Billy Shakespeare?

Oh, we'll talk about ghosts.

I'd love to.

We could talk about ghost tours, Charlotte.

I bet there's some really good ghost tour content.

You guys do have the most.

There is a lot of, there's a lot of ghostly activity in the UK.

Yeah, yeah.

yeah like uh edinburgh famously has a lot of uh very stupid ghost tours that you can do maybe i'll do one because i'm going to be there soon so wow

are you are you on a show there no

no i'm just going on holiday it's just really funny to think charlotte have you has it even crossed your mind that we would ever do a live show

actually when i was at the the guys live show recently that our friends the go of kings were on i was thinking oh what what if what's all this then reaches this this level and maybe i can watch like a live podcast show that isn't just five white guys I think that would be really fun

it was really good just to be clear it was a lot of fun yeah hope everyone enjoyed the Doughboys tour

we gave you actually more than five white guys there was

I want to ask about I want to ask about coffee because my understanding is that the chain that we're covering today is, I could be wrong about this, and maybe the UK one is different, but like they are very much front-loading coffee here and is that the case with preta manger in in uh you know on the other side of the atlantic charlotte

well preta manger does mean ready to eat right right so it is i would i have always thought of it as food first but they do put an emphasis on the coffee as well yes uh specifically the fact that it's like a nice organic coffee but i also feel like i can't speak too much to this because i am a big tea drinker.

I don't drink any coffee.

Well, yeah, I guess that's kind of where I'm where I'm coming at this from is because, like, I think, like, would the expectations be at the UK version is like, oh, yeah, they got a bunch of different teas as well.

Or that's like, that's, or is that place like, hey, you get tea anywhere.

Come to us for coffee.

Interesting.

I hadn't really thought, because again, like, most of my experience of Pratt is actually in the US.

Okay.

So I think Charlotte can speak to this a bit more than I can.

But I do, am I remembering right, Charlotte, that like Pratt has like a coffee pass or something?

I think they have like an unlimited coffee pass that you can get now where it's like, you know, you pay X amount per month and then you can go in and get coffee whenever you want.

I was looking into this a little bit.

My understanding is that this did exist and there was some controversy surrounding it.

Oh, we do love our chain restaurant controversies, don't we?

Oh, okay.

And they're always almost always about whether it's woke or not.

Yeah.

The woke virus is taking over England.

Unfortunately, the woke mind virus.

Oh my God.

I think it's reached our shores.

I wish.

I think it's maybe tough to be able to go back and feel safe.

It maybe seems worse over there in terms of the kind of guy complaining about.

You still have those same kind of fucking guy, like a Piers Morgan.

Yeah.

Except they're just being like a complete piece of shit and then complaining about everything.

Here's the problem is that just because it's a smaller country and I think has a less diverse media landscape in general, like our big newspapers, you know, are like the biggest newspapers are all explicitly right-wing and in a way that even the New York Times isn't.

Like the Daily Mail is the biggest newspaper in the UK, and it is fucking vile and constantly full of like, oh,

Mamon benefits

Adam's bar, isn't that a disgrace or whatever.

And,

you know, I think it's definitely like you have a Piers Morgan or whatever.

They are simply louder because of the lack of other voices, you know?

I had, I told a story about part of a story about James Corden once, and then like a a bunch of UK rags were like reaching out to me and like DMing me about for more info.

Yeah.

Well, no, I brought this up because this is the thing I talked to you about.

You maybe don't remember, but someone from the Daily Mail was like, wanted to talk to me, and I asked you, like, do you know about this guy?

And I think you told me, don't talk to that winker.

Wow.

I just say that so often, I guess I've forgotten.

Corden was nice to me.

That was my experience with Corden.

He was nice to me when I did the show.

He was very nice to me.

Wow.

That is the truth.

I know.

It seems like a lot of people don't have that same experience.

Yeah, yeah.

But it was a like it's a

all that said, yes, it's the ghouls, unfortunately, have megaphones on both sides of the Atlantic.

But we're not here just to talk about that.

Mega Mobile.

Sorry.

I shouldn't have had the coffee.

I'm sorry.

I'm I'm really hype up.

But we're here to talk about Pritamanger.

Am I saying that correctly?

Or approximately correctly?

So I just say pret-a-manger.

Pret-a-manger.

So I'm making it as sort of like as English sounding as I can.

Okay.

Because that's what people do say.

A lot of people just say Prat

in the UK.

We just hit the Prat.

I think when I came in, I said, I said Pratt a manger when I came in.

That's what it looks like.

It looks like Pratt a manger.

Pratt a manger.

Well, that's what I mean.

I thought it was Chris Pratt.

I thought it was Chris Pratt owned, Pratt a manger, but it's not.

It's P-R-E-T.

It's a Christian Pratt.

I love you, Pratt.

Oh, I was going to ask whether you know that Pratt is like a British term, a sort of very endearing term for, it's kind of a less aggressive way of saying twat, you know?

Wow.

Pratt is a bit of a Muppet, you know, a book.

Yeah.

Oh, man, Chris is going to hate this.

No, but it's a, but it's, you were saying it's a nice thing.

It's, I wouldn't say that.

Never as a Muppet.

Yeah, it's not nice.

Oh, it's not nice.

It's like less, it's like less aggressive than like, there isn't really a good translation for this in American English to me because like, it's not a jerk.

You're not an asshole.

You know, you're just a bit of a bellend.

Belle end, yeah.

I'm familiar with bellend.

I'm going to DM him this info and see it sit unread for years, like a tomb, a digital tomb.

I think he probably knows about it.

He has that really famous clip of him doing a perfect Essex accent.

Really?

Yeah, yeah.

So

I think he would probably know about it.

Pret emanger.

Prette a manger.

Pretemanger.

Pret emanger.

Never previously reviewed on the podcast.

It has about 700 locations worldwide, including 40 in the U.S., the plurality of which are in NYC.

Like,

it started in London and it became such an institution in London, they tried to replicate that over in Manhattan.

Just like last week's chain, Mitch, Panera, which we've talked about with our friend Kimia, it is currently owned by JAB Holding.

Oh my God, Jab Holding.

Jab Holding, the same private equity firm

owns both firms.

Okay, Jab Holding,

get to work on a woke mind vaccine.

Am I right, Wise?

The Jab.

Jab, the Jab, yeah, the Jab.

This is referencing an old episode.

That sucks.

This one was all that.

Going through the list of all of their companies.

So Brueggers, Caribou Coffee, Einstein Brothers Bagels, Intelligentsia, Krispy Cream, Panera, Pete's, Stumptown, and of course, a third of Coorig Dr.

Pepper are all owned by J.D.

Holtz.

Scab is a strange one.

Scab has got some interesting.

It's very much trying to capture all sides of kind of the quick service coffee base.

Like, so you've got places like Stumptown, which is, you know, from Portland, and Intelligentsia, which is, I think, originally from Chicago, but is so well known for its LA outlets.

And these are kind of like more upscale versions.

Yeah, it's like pseudo for pseudo-intellectuals.

It's like a like a intelligentsia.

I mean, intelligentsia when I first moved to LA.

Yeah.

Is that too mean?

No, no, I was just laughing about how stupid it is that it is true that it's like, this is the smart guy coffee.

It's called intelligentsia.

And it did have a good, I mean, intelligentsia does have a decent coffee, I guess.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, it's, but it's a little bit of a higher price point.

Yeah, that's a place you'd be, you'd see someone in there like working with a laptop.

And it's like, it's, it's just a little bit of a different demographic than, you know, some they're not, not all these chains are serving the same,

you know, the same customer base.

But with specifically Prè de Mager, items are made fresh each morning and either disposed of or donated at the end of each day.

But they are made in advance.

So you're not going in there and you're not getting anything that they're, like, you order a sandwich, even a hot sandwich, they're not making it for you.

It's already been made and it's been sitting there since they opened.

Which we, as Americans,

we don't like that.

Yeah.

We don't like it.

We can be real.

We don't like it.

I don't, I mean, I'm just like,

I certainly don't prefer it.

Like, for me, that makes me think of,

again, we're saying this before we recorded, like, it's like, it's like, I'm getting my lunch from items that they have at Starbucks, or I'm getting my lunch from items that they have at 7-Eleven.

You know, like, it doesn't feel like a proper meal to me.

Yeah, but, but, but, but, Charlotte,

Libby, like, like, you both, you, both of your experience, or I'm sorry, Libby, most of your experiences you were saying were in the U.S.

Charlotte, was this a place you frequented in the UK?

Undoubtedly, I I am the person who has been to Pratt Monger the most.

Wow.

Out of all of us.

So there are so many in London specifically that it's like, it's a very easy default lunch place where I knew exactly, you know, what I wanted was going to be there.

It's very familiar.

So yeah, I would go there all the time for breakfast and for lunch.

I was a big, big, but it was was my like default lunch for a very long time, was to go to Pran.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, for me, I used to go a fair amount when I had like an office job in DC.

And there was one in, I think, in McPherson Square, which is like K Street, you know, where a lot of the lobbying shops are.

Oh, we ate it.

And

there was tons and tons of places in DC that serve this exact purpose.

Like Panera Bread is one.

And then I was thinking of this when we were having lunch, like all these these other chains that I just never think about anymore because they really serve that specific market, like Obam Pan.

And there was one called Cozy, which these are all just places that like, you never have like really strong positive feelings.

You just maybe have fewer negative feelings.

And that's the one you go to.

And Pratt sort of filled the hole, I guess.

Aubon Pan was the one for me growing up.

Why?

Because I don't know.

Like that my mom, there was one in the, in the Brain Tree South Shore Plaza.

Yeah.

There was a O bon pon and they'd have great fresh squeezed orange juice And then there was like a chicken with mustard eat it in like any like croissant sandwiches.

And I had a high opinion of it, even though it was food that was ready to eat mostly.

Well, you know,

it's gone woke now.

Yeah.

No, it's Obama Pond.

Jesus Christ.

Obama pan.

Obama.

Obama pan.

Obama.

Obama pon.

That's what it is now.

Yeah.

The thing I'm realizing about Pratt is that like I can see that for an American, it's going to be like worse

for when compared to I just want to get you you I want you to make me something right now and then to eat it yeah sure but I think like the baseline lunch for a lot of people in UK is the pre-packaged sandwich specifically the one that comes with like the meal deal where you're spending like five pounds to go and get you know your little pre-packaged sandwich or like you know your crisps and a little drink and those sandwiches I feel like are never it's never guaranteed they're made the same day.

They might be like a couple days old.

So prett is like a level up where you know that the thing you're going to eat is actually fresh that day.

Yeah, that's a good point.

I mean, because even if you're going to get a grocery store lunch in the States, like a lot of times they just have a place that will make you a fresh sandwich.

And like, you know, a grocery store sandwich from Ralph's, which is, you know, the, the, the West Coast Kroger, is, it will sometimes be like, hey, that's like actually a pretty decent sandwich.

That's a tier above what you might get made fresh at a subway.

We haven't had him report on this, but we had Zach Zach Cherry.

He was going to be

our British correspondent.

What the fuck?

Come on, man.

He was working over there for a bit.

He was working over there.

He was over there, and

I got fascinated by Charlotte.

You may see some of these, the Spuds trucks.

They're very big on YouTube right now where they're like the Spuds guys where they're like,

hey, what can I get you?

What do you want?

Hey, Matt.

You're Italian.

You know.

And it's like they put like a bunch of

garlic butter and then cheese and then tuna usually is the breakfast.

I was going to say, yeah, my tuna.

One of my best friends growing up after school every day, I'd go around to his house.

He also lived in the village, and he would have a jacket potato with tuna and sweet garlic.

That's what it is, jacket potato.

Yeah, yeah.

Like jacket potatoes.

I love a jacket potato.

It's usually tinfoil here in the U.S.

Oh, is that the jacket for the potato?

I think for us, the jacket refers to its skin, right?

Skin is it?

would i would say that yeah the jacket is the skin yeah for me as well you got to put baked beans on the baked beans

beans were the so there's a couple of viral and i zach was there uh doing uh promotions about this doing promotion for severance and um

so he i was like can you go and uh have a like do one of these like go to the one of these trucks and he's like it's gonna be huge pain in the ass to me and then i was like you please just do it and he did do it that's so nice and he he was going to correspond to us, but we never, we haven't done it yet.

But is that, I guess, jacket potatoes are a thing, but these new food trucks, I guess you haven't, these have popped up.

Like the viralness of them has popped up since you've been gone.

Yeah, I feel out of the loop on this one, Charlotte.

I don't know about you, the jacket potato trend.

Yeah, well, that's the thing about me and Libby is we both are from the UK, but I think you've been out of the UK for like 10 years, right?

Maybe 11.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm in Canada.

I've been out of it for six.

So we like,

I mean, yeah, we're just not up on the trends of why are we doing the podcast, Charlotte?

It's so stupid.

I don't really mean it's kind of spiral out here.

This is the kind of questions that we should be prepared for, Libby.

But here we are.

But hold on a second.

Mitch and I haven't eaten the food for this podcast in like five years.

Just lie to these fucking idiots.

They don't know.

Fucking listeners are so fucking stupid.

We wear fat suits.

We were fatal skinny guys.

We'll return to our real forms after the episode.

We got fat suits from

the clump warehouse.

Oh, I love that place on Sunset.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a great spot.

You say we're going to do white clumps, like, you know, in the day.

White clumps.

Yeah, how come white clumps never turned on?

Yeah, it just never got made.

Because of woke, that was the whole issue.

Yeah, it's woke ruined white clumps.

You both did jump on aboard

on board immediately with jack and potatoes, though.

So this is a thing.

Yeah.

A jack and potato, it's basically what, like a just a baked potato, and then you put beans, garlic butter beans, tuna fish.

Yeah, yeah, not all at once.

Tuna, but um, yeah, those times because our loaded potato is like, you know, sour cream, chives,

cheese.

That's kind of it.

Yeah,

you can throw chili on there, you throw bacon on there, you can throw some broccoli if you want to get nuts.

Tuna, that's not tuna's not usually what we'd fuck with, but it's, I, I would, I'd be open to it.

You just unlocked a memory for me, which is

uh, going to Tesco and getting the, um, we have a lot more, like,

I think the Tesco ready meal is

like a lot more central to the British, I don't know, diet than you know, an equivalent like supermarket prepared food would be here.

But one of the ones I used to get a lot was the American loaded potato skins,

which was like cheese and bacon and chives, I think.

And they're just like pre-prepared, you put them in the oven.

And I remember the packaging specifically had like stars and stripes on it.

Wow.

They were rubbish.

It was so bad.

Now,

now it's nearly problematic now.

You see something like that.

See my ass in there getting the stars and stripes potato.

You unlocked another memory for me.

Yeah.

What's your guy's shitty Times Square called again?

Leicester Square?

Piccadilly Circus.

Piccadilly Circus.

Piccadilly, yeah.

I got McDonald's at Piccadilly Circus.

Wow.

Wow.

And

I remember the specific tour.

You were unlocking a lot of my trip from when I was eight years old.

Eight years old to London.

Wags has never been.

No, I've never crossed an ocean.

I've been to London

and I went once for Hidden America and was there for like the show on CISO.

And I was there for like two days.

It was very quick.

Yeah, I mean, look, it's kind of far from L.A., which sucks.

But

if you happen to be in Quincy for an extended period, again, it's a pretty quick flight.

It's the same flight as going to L.A.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

It's a quick flight.

It's six hours.

It takes me six hours to get out here.

You know, as an American going to another country that isn't Mexico or Canada, then six hours is pretty good, you know, crossing the ocean.

It's not like going to Australia.

That was 16 hours.

Yeah.

I'm going to get fucking castawayed.

I'm going to do that.

I don't know if that's going to happen.

It's not going to happen.

I'm castaway.

Castaway.

Let me cast away.

You think that the lost is going to happen to you?

I might get lost in

the Atlantic.

Lost in the Atlantic is a horrible thought.

Too cold.

Yeah.

I had a thing I thought of, and maybe I'll run it by y'all.

Wilson

absolutely ragged.

The ball is whiter than when we first lost it.

Wilson deflates himself.

When I said the ball is wider, I meant like, yeah, no, I guess those commas, probably.

Yeah, I got what you're saying, yes.

I thought of this, and I was like, this feels like maybe a rude British joke that exists, but let me know if this is.

Does anyone ever say a pret-a-ming?

Does anyone ever say pretty?

Does anyone say pretty minge?

I mean, a minge.

That means ready-to-vagina.

Yeah.

Oh, so, okay, yeah.

Because a minge is a family, of course.

Yeah.

That sounds like a horny American version.

Kind of does sound like a American version of that.

Ready-to-vagina.

What if it was like our version of Hooters?

This is Pretaming.

Pretty minge.

Got all the minge you want in.

Might as well make it pet a minge.

Pet a minge.

Charlotte, that's something for the podcast, right?

We can do pet a minge.

That's a segment.

Yeah, it feels like a segment.

Are we really that strapped for ideas at this point?

Episode two.

Yeah.

A hooter's called hold off.

It's horrifying.

Wait, Amelia, you piped in there to say pet a minge.

You have a history yourself with

Preta Minger.

Is that correct?

So

I had a layover in Paris.

Wow.

And I only had a few hours.

And I was like,

I got to make the most of my few hours here.

I'm going to, the only thing I want to do is go to the see the Eiffel Tower and get a really good croissant.

So I went to a lot of people.

I love that.

There's nothing wrong with that.

There was nothing wrong with that.

It was great.

I went and saw the Eiffel Tower and I walked into the first pastry shop I saw.

It was a Praton Manger.

And I didn't realize it it was a chain that was in the us

oh my god

and a british chain specifically like even though it has the french name and they are in france yeah it is uh it is british it must be really funny being in in france and just seeing a store called ready to eat yeah i didn't think about that

that's a great point yeah that does make it sound so much more like a convenience store or whatever you know like a gas station store like ampm or whatever like ready to eat is on that level i think yeah it doesn't it doesn't sound fancy at all.

No, no, because

to the French, it's just regular, yeah, yeah, exactly.

That's all the time, yeah.

What was the croissant?

It was just a plain croissant, it was really mid, and I left thinking the pastries in Paris.

And then I

flew home, and like one of the first places I saw as like I was like walking around was a Prèse a Manger, and I was like, wait, they're here too?

Like, okay,

oh man, I'd never been to Préda Mager myself before.

I did take a trip to a restaurant to see what it was like yesterday.

I dined in at the Westwood location just south of UCLA campus.

And

I told you they were brewing up some coffee.

Yeah, that was really good.

UCLA Brewing.

That was really good.

You didn't get the ha-ha react on that one, I'm afraid.

But you didn't have to do it because I didn't know that you knew I was like, my sides were splitting.

Anyway, I asked a I asked a an employee who looked like a college student how to pronounce the chain's name and he went and got the manager

is that real yeah it's 100% real yeah he was not confident but I will say I'm glad I went in person

I don't know I guess I'll get the manager

the manager was probably like this fucking idiot that I like you know like he's like like how does he not know the name you got the kid in trouble

they already are seeing a 40 40-year-old man walking into a college location taking photos of everything.

They're already on guard.

Who doesn't look like a professor?

No, yeah.

Anyway.

So I, so, but I'm glad I went in person because this did really hammer home what this concept is.

Cause, cause I, again, it's not a thing you're used to in the States.

All the food, including the hot food, is prepared in advance and just sitting on shelves.

They have a hot shelf, which is just like, you know, we were talking about earlier.

All of their hot items, including their soup, but also their hot sandwiches are there.

It just kind of felt like to me is like, this is like a nicer Starbucks slash high, like 7-Eleven.

It's sort of like in between the two of those, kind of both at once.

Just like basic, basically a Starbucks with a more extensive menu.

And we also got a two-go order to eat in the studio before the record, which we all shared.

And I'll talk about both of those.

But Charlotte, did you go to, did you make a special trip to Prin de Manger?

Did you make an order today?

And also sorry if you did.

And also, sorry.

I did take a 25-minute Uber to downtown.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

That did make me feel a little bit sick, unfortunately.

Oh, wow.

But we only have one Prédemanger location here,

I believe, in all of Canada.

My understanding is that

Canadian Pret-Amonger is owned by A ⁇ W.

So there was like a period where you would go into some like select A ⁇ W stores and they would just have one of the Pret-Amanger shelves just there that you could also pick from.

That's which is such a that really just doesn't fit well together.

So, this is, I think, the first like location they have in Canada that is just a pretty store and nothing else.

And it was my first time going to it.

Um, I was reading into this

as well, and it was the thing I saw is that the coffee they had at A ⁇ W restaurants, like the Pret a Manger coffee you can get there, but I didn't see if they're like what I mean, I'm sure that was a thing that happened in the past in terms of actually having a shelf there.

But yeah, it's a

I don't know if this is a JAB holding company thing or if this is a just it just one of those weird things because AMW Canada is a separate company from the American one, so it has like it plays by its own rules.

Charlotte, what are some of your favorite chains up there in Canada?

I mean, I really like AW.

ANW

Canadian AMW specifically is really, really good.

Excellent fries.

I get their poutine quite a lot as well, which makes me very happy.

They do have a Beyond

Burger.

I was a vegetarian for quite a while up until quite recently.

These days, I have a lot of their chicken burgers as well.

I should honestly go to it less, but there's...

Sorry to make KF.

Do you like that icy mug of root beer?

Oh, I don't.

Actually, I'm not a root beer fan, unfortunately.

They do have the fridge with the glass door where you can see all of the

big root beer glasses in there.

Charlotte, I just want to let you know that Amelia, when you said I'm not a big root beer fan, went,

because I was looking at Casey because Casey is a huge

fan.

Boroot beer for me.

That's how I see it.

That's a great point, Casey.

Guess what, Casey?

I don't like it either.

What the Boro beer for?

What's up with you Brits not liking root beer?

It's rubbish.

Oh my God.

It's not really a thing in the UK, right, Libby.

No, no.

I think I knew as many people who drank root beer as drank dandelion and burdock.

Do you remember people drinking dandelion and burdock?

Charlotte?

I think I have vague memories of this.

Dandelion and burdock and burdock?

It's like a soda.

I remember.

What the fuck is burdock, first of all?

I think it's like a dandelion.

I don't know.

Dandelion and burdock?

It was like a soda you could get it at Tesco, and it would be like this huge two-litre bottle.

It would be like 20p or something.

And it was like, they had their own Brand Cola and stuff, and they had dandelion and burdock.

You know what I think about dandelion and burdock?

Uh-huh.

I think it's rubbish.

Oh, no, he can do it too.

Oh, no.

Well, I do agree.

I think it is rubbish.

It sounds like a

that's dandelion and burdock sounds like a like a royalty-free, like Simon and Garfunkel.

It like sounds like an old folk act.

It seems like one of a BBC show, like a mystery show, right?

Oh, and it ran for uh 28 seasons.

So, yeah.

Can I?

This is this is a thing that I we should talk about on what's all this then, but I worked on

y'all have a Red Nose Day.

Oh, yeah, Red Nose Day.

They brought Red Nose Day to America, actually.

And we went crazy for it.

We loved it.

It is for a good cause.

It's like a huge, yeah, it's, and, and the, you know, it's a

Richard Curtis, who's in charge of, like, I got to work directly with Richard Curtis, a lovely man.

And, and, you know, he, that, that was like the, the best part of the job, but the job itself, like, kind of stunk.

Writing sketches for like Russell Brand.

Yeah, exactly.

It was writing sketches mostly because like every British celebrity was like, yes, I'm in.

And then all the American celebrities were like, what the fuck is this?

No one had any context for what it was, but they brought it over here.

And then also I got

underpaid to the point where there was a lawsuit involving me and the other writers, and we ultimately settled.

But like years later, like eight years later, we finally got the money that we were owed for working on the special.

It was a whole ordeal.

But anyway, you all got red noses too, right?

We all got red noses.

That was part of the compensation.

But I brought that up for some reason that I've now forgotten because I went on too many tangents.

So I guess we'll just move on.

I can talk about, I mean, like, I actually also met Richard Curtis with Vexasia at Gig, and he was the thing he was pushing for.

He's like, I know from your YouTube videos, can you please do some stuff for comic relief?

Like, he really goes for that.

So I did.

I mean, unfortunately, I have another story about a video that didn't go very well because

I wrote a song with the

musical comedian Tim Minchin.

We wrote a song together, which was very fun.

Recorded a video.

The whole time he was like, Are we really doing this in one take?

Because I have a flight to get on.

And I was like, Yeah, I'm sorry.

That's the way we're doing it.

And then

after it was all done, my friend who was filming it didn't turn on the microphone.

And so we just had this like footage of us just playing.

I was playing my ukulele.

He was singing along.

And there was actually no audio.

Wow.

So I had to make a video for comic relief about the fact that I fucked that up basically.

What a nightmare.

Man, when you don't record,

when you're in the recording business, as we are, and you don't record something,

you do want to jump into traffic.

It's the worst.

Oh, man, Emma's not here, man.

Do we turn on the microphones?

Oh, fuck.

You guys didn't need me to record on my end.

Yeah.

So, yeah, like comic relief, Red Nose Day, it's all like this, this charity thing.

It is like a good cause or whatever.

Oh,

know what I was going to say, which was just basically like,

so they, it was, this has been an institution in the, the UK for however long, 20 years or whatever the fuck.

And so they would be like, hey, we're going to show you some bit from our UK show just to get a sense of like the kind of thing, you know, that the what worked on the British version.

And we, obviously, it's a different audience, but we'll figure it out.

And I always had this sort of like opinion of British comedy as like, oh, it's like a more high brow, like more esteemed thing.

And then every clip they'd show me or they'd show us from, you know,

the British Red Nose Day would be like a guy with like the fakest looking wig and like these shitty fake teeth going like, oh, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, and all the Brits in the room were going like, oh,

they're like losing their shit at this guy.

I was like, what the fuck is this?

You like this?

Take that.

Shit, Britain.

This is the show.

All right.

We'd be straightfaced drinking an ice-cold root beer-wise, not laughing at that shit.

Yeah, okay.

I'll say this.

There's a couple schools of British comedy.

There is the kind that I think tends to get imported to America for, you know, like media literate audiences, you know, like

obviously Monty Python, but then also like the Office.

Yeah, for sure.

And, you know, you've seen, you've seen bits of British.

I know a lot of Americans that love Peep Show, for example.

Fucking great show.

And then there's the other kind, which is a guy waggling his bum and going, oh, dear.

Oh, oh look at my bum oh no

sounds good i like this guy i think yeah i think of it as the like male british comedian who puts on a dress and goes oh i'm a nudie like that sort of that genre of british comedy which is um

my personal favorite i love that

yeah i mean you know i think also the double entendre like oh sure There are a lot of panel shows in the UK.

If you're a comedian, I feel like one of the nicest gigs is to get like regular spots on panel shows on TV or on the radio, where it's like QI or Taskmaster to an extent, or eight out of ten cats, or whatever.

It's like you kind of think they're hosted by like Jimmy Carr or whatever.

Yeah, exactly.

He's not a goblin, right?

Do we know?

He's a tax cheat.

Okay, that's a good idea.

I think kind of a twat.

Okay.

I don't know.

I don't know if Charlotte, a lot of the time, if you mention someone famous, Charlotte's like, oh, yeah, I met them and they said I was great.

Let me, let me think.

I don't think I've met Jimmy Carr.

I always just think about his laugh, which is awful.

I've hated him for a long time because he was an early, like,

you know, like mid-2000s, he was really into the shock humor.

Right.

Like, saying, oh, I'm, oh, I'm saying the stuff you're not supposed to say kind of thing, which is so tedious now, but even then it was.

Anyway, except they're saying pretty minge.

I'm like, all right, dude.

No,

that's the high-class stuff I was talking about, you know, the office or whatever.

But no, yeah, there's a lot of double entendres and you know, like

making a joke about, you know, like, oh, I

want to go down there, hank, you know what I mean?

That kind of thing.

Yeah, sure, sure.

That is exactly the kind of like, that's what I'm saying.

What are you talking about?

What?

Yeah, what do you think?

You know, when you.

Oh, you know, when you.

No, I know.

I got it, but that's what they were talking about.

I don't want to, I don't want to go down there.

Here's the thing is my example was bad because I'm so unfunny.

I couldn't even think of a bad double entendre.

That's not true.

You know.

What you're making me like think of is like, yeah, there is a Monty Python bit that's just, and I think is making fun of that sort of thing.

Se no more, say, no more.

See no more.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

No, that absolutely is right.

But that is like 70% of the humor, you know, is a double entendre about bums and willies.

Right.

You know, it's the famous Brits have really taken a hit over here lately.

There's not, there's a

cordon out, uh, brand crazy piece of shit.

Brand.

There's a, there's, there's no, there's a mention of the Piers Morgan real piece of shit, but he was a guy who was like very prominent in the U.S.

for a bit, you know, like all these guys.

I'm saying we need there's room for a Brit celeb to come in and

take that's true.

Yeah, the spot is open.

That's that's all I'm saying.

There's a spot open.

That's what we're trying to do.

We're trying to say, what's all this then?

Well,

I want to have a podcast that, you know, like 10,000 people listen to and no one else knows about.

That's my goal.

All right, we got to get into the food of Predamanjo.

Not so fast.

Another thing we've done wrong?

Well, I do have one question.

I do have a follow-up question, but also cheeky Nando's.

Cheeky Nando's.

You know, I really wanted us to do Nando's for this, but I don't think we have Nando's in LA.

There is the thing.

This is what I'm going to say.

Wigs has never had Nando's.

It's true.

There's a Nando's in DC.

He does not want to review it in DC.

What?

No, I mean, I would say we could go, but yeah, it doesn't feel associated with DC.

We're going to go to a a DC live show.

We're going to talk about Nando's.

Okay, how about this?

Can you double dip and go to Nando's?

You just have Nando's for lunch.

You could.

It's a healthy enough.

Yeah, we could conceivably go to Nando's and then later do a studio record where we talked about it.

That is the option.

We could do that.

I think Nando's is shit.

What about you, Sean?

I really like Nando's.

Wow.

I do really like, but also, I didn't eat chicken when I was like in my prime Nando's period.

So I would have a lot of the halloumi wraps.

Oh, yes.

Which I did really, really liked.

Right.

Yes.

That's the cheese.

Squeaky cheese.

And the periperi chips as well.

I think they're really, really solid.

Yeah.

You think Nando's is shit?

I've only been twice, once in the UK, and then once actually on a date in DC, where I like matched with someone on Tinder, and obviously we're talking about me being British.

No, it wasn't Biden, actually.

It was not Joe Biden.

I didn't match with him on Tinder.

I matched with him on Bumble.

Well, you went to Nando's for a day, more like you matched on tender.

That's so annoying.

That's so annoying.

Yeah, Tender.

Were you actually early on Tender, the Tender app?

Just matching with different chickens.

Anyway, it was a good date.

It was just, you know, it was funny.

He suggested it.

He's like, do you want to get a cheeky Nando's?

And I was like, oh, all right.

He knows about cheeky Nando's.

He does.

Wow.

Yeah.

I think because you're British, was that part of it?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

That's fun.

Nice plug.

I thought Fanny was ming.

Fanny is minge.

Fanny is ming.

Fanny is ming.

Newsflash.

Fanny is ming.

All right.

All right, man.

Fanny.

I know.

All right.

Fanny is.

Okay.

Yeah.

Good to know.

Yeah.

Do you think you guys can get a reel out of that?

Fanny is ming.

Fanny is ming.

Fanny is minge.

Fanny is minge.

Fanny is minge.

There you are.

Are you okay?

Nothing.

I need to say it as well.

Yeah, we wouldn't mind a clean fanny is ming.

Hey, hey, everybody.

Did you know Fanny is minge?

All right, we got a lot of options there.

Okay, so I went to the one in Westwood.

Here's what I got, and then we'll talk about what we got today.

And Charlotte, I want to hear about your order.

I went in store, I got the cheddar and tomato sandwich.

This is the kind of thing I feel like this is, again, less of a U.S.

the idea that you'd have just like a cold cheese sandwich.

It is really funny.

Thinking about that as an American now, like those are just two toppings.

Yeah, right, right.

Yeah.

So it was just basically like a turkey sandwich without the turkey.

Um, and I also got a tea sandwich.

A tea sandwich.

Yeah.

I also got a, uh, a Pretz tuna and cucumber baguette slim.

Now, here's one thing I do like.

You can get a slim from, of, uh, of any sandwich from Pret.

And that is just basically a half sandwich.

Yeah.

And getting a half of a baguette, it was like.

you know, again, like if you're, if you're eating light or you're on a budget, you can just get a half sandwich and that's like a good value.

Um, but also if you like want to have a little indulgence, you can get a little bonus half sandwich and that's kind of what I did I got one whole sandwich and one little baguette slim I got a cup of the white chicken chili I got a pink guava sunshine black tea which is what they call their Arnold Palmer's sunshine tea is that known beyond is that like a UK convention beyond Prat calling sunshine tea is that a thing they invented I'd never I've never heard of sunshine tea I've heard of sun tea but that's an American thing yeah it's an American thing okay and then I also got a chocolate brownie cookie and a hot oat latte as my dessert course

and everything was was pretty solid.

Today we got a whole bunch of stuff, Mitch.

I mean, like, should we just, should we just go down the

menu?

Okay, go for it.

Want me to say my order?

Yeah.

Okay.

What I ordered today was a pink guava lemonade, which has the guava compote

in the bottom.

Yeah.

That's basically my sunshine black tea was a, was like, you know, 50% iced tea, 50% that pink guava.

Kind of liked it, but we'll get into it.

Yeah.

Small tomato and feta soup.

Cinnamon cougan, Like Steve Coogan?

It's Queen Amon.

It's a really, really hard.

Oh, Van Amazon.

I'm laughing.

No, no, no.

I'm laughing because they did actually put the pronunciation on the website, which I've never seen before.

Like, they spelled it out phonetically on the website.

Queen Amanaman.

Queen Amon.

Queen Amon.

It's spelled.

Let's see if I can do this.

K-O-U-I-G-N.

And then a hyphen, and then A-M-M-A-N.

And I actually learned from the website.

Singular M double N.

Fuck.

A-M-A-N-N.

What did you just learn from the website?

I learned from the website that that comes from the Breton words for cake and butter.

Wow.

Wow.

So it's not French in origin.

It's from Breton.

That's France, innit?

Wait, that is France?

Yeah, that's Brittany.

It's part of France.

It's part of Britain.

You thought Brittany was part of Britain?

Oh, no, it's got fucking got the name in it.

I thought you guys were saying Britain weird.

I thought you were saying Britain like Breton.

Oh, old Brittany.

Yeah, I'm from old Brittany, I am.

You know, yeah, Brittany's a northern region.

It is funny, actually, to think about it.

Yes, it is a northern region of France, which is kind of near Britain, and it's called Brittany, but it has nothing to do with Britain.

Wow.

So it's not like Steve Coogan.

It's Queen Amanger.

It's not like Steve Coogan, but I love Steve Coogan, though.

Steve Coogan, very funny.

One of the best.

Yes.

Buffalo Chicken Melt,

which felt like something that's not a regular pret emanger thing.

And then,

and I want to get something that was more a regular pret emanger.

And I got a pret emanger.

And so I got

a ham and cheese baguette slim.

The ham and cheese baguette was marked as one of their famous items.

Yeah.

And

mixed thoughts on a lot of it.

I'm going to say just off the top, I don't think this place is necessarily bad,

right?

Yeah.

Well, that was that was kind of my

thought from both experiences.

Like, I don't know if I call this place bad.

I don't know if I call this place shit.

I don't know if I'd be like, I'm never going back here, which I have that reaction to some of these chains.

Yes.

I'd honestly like, I don't know if I'm ever going back, to be fair.

I could absolutely see myself, absolutely see myself going back to a pretty contextually.

Like, if it's a sort of thing, like, hey, I need a quick lunch.

Oh, there's a pret.

I can literally see it us on tour being like, exactly.

Fucking eat.

Let's fly.

This is fine.

I can get an egg salad sandwich from here.

This is fine.

Libby, what did you end up getting?

So I got a,

what was it called?

Like the rainbow vegetable sandwich?

Yes.

and i got a half sandwich of that um and that is like vegetables with hummus uh like pickled cabbage and hummus and avocado or something um i also got the half tuna and cucumber baguette um because i'm a big i'm a big tuna and cucumber head um actually

um it reminded me of uh last year i was um i went on a hike in uh in the Angeles National Forest at Sunset Peak, which is really gorgeous.

And I went like really early in the morning.

So there was nowhere for me to get food except 7-Eleven.

so i stopped at 7-eleven and got a uh tuna and cucumber sandwich from the thing and i took that to the top for my you know halfway point meal it was a pretty hard hike it's like eight miles yeah um

and uh you know it was just like unbelievably beautiful i didn't see anyone the whole time oh you didn't see mm minem now can can you explain that to me eight miles eight mile

i didn't see you know i didn't see eight miles which is actually kind of crazy if you think about it that i didn't see him because you would think i would see him

yeah that's his thing we were a little confused at the 7 eleven because it wasn't a 721

um i went and said oh is this 723 or what

what's it what's this and

anyway i stopped at the top and it's like so beautiful and like quiet um and it was like just sunrise and um i messaged uh my group chat with uh jesse for our and stephan heck yeah uh has stefan been on the show no we haven't had stephan on Doughboys.

No, he hasn't been on Dooley.

He's never been on Doughboys.

Sorry, Stephanie.

He's never come into the US again, so

because he hates Trump, unfortunately.

Yeah, that's very unfortunate for the podcast.

I know, I know.

Anyway, with them and our Australian friends, Tom and Demi, and I was saying, like, this is so lovely, and it reminds me of tuna and cucumber sandwiches I had when I was on a school trip in Wales.

And Tom said, the English mind's ability to take a memory, a memory that would be otherwise life-ruiningly depressing and feel nostalgic about it is incredible.

And I was like, thank you, Tom.

Yes.

Yes, I am having a nice time on top of the mountain.

Just a nice memory, though.

If Stefan came to do a Doughboys episode and then ended up in El Salvador and the Super Prison,

just because of fucking, man, whatever.

We can't get into it.

But the deportation episode of last week's night, very

just a horrid horror.

Yeah, it's really bad.

If you want a horrid watch give it a give it a watch we all could use a horrid watch right about now yeah you know what i want to watch it you should consume something harrowing you should it's just truly insane just innocent people sent to el salvador and put into prison anyways uh

stephan is right to not uh come to the u.s yeah i wish he would though yes i got a i i he actually was here mitch but it was you were out at you were in toronto yeah it was it was last year because we did the pizza thing right we did pizza thing a u.s canada swap.

That's what it was.

It was a U.S.-Canada.

It was like a prisoner exchange.

You can get for me, you can get like a couple Canadians.

It'll cost you like two or three Canadians.

I got the, I'll just run through my order real quick.

And then, Charlotte, I want to hear

what you got on this most recent trip.

The bang bang chicken wrap, the egg salad and arugula sandwich, which was a slim half sandwich on their multi-grain bread.

The Moroccan lentil soup, a chocolate croissant, a guava coconut chia pot, which they didn't have.

So instead, that got swapped out for a different pot.

Yeah, well, it caused some problems today.

A little bit of an issue.

And then also an iced churro oat latte.

The chia pot.

Wow.

I also got

things up.

I bet you Meli didn't even tell you because she's stacked.

Nothing's fucked up.

Don't worry about it.

No, what happened?

The order wouldn't go through because of your fucking chia pot.

The order didn't go through, but it didn't tell me what the item was.

It said, an item in your cart is unavailable, but it wouldn't tell me which one.

And because of it, I couldn't place the order.

Wow.

so I was just like mixing and matching and trying to decide what was

what what platform were you using Grubhub and then I ended up switching to seamless and you know, it was a more seamless experience

It might be pretty open seamless prett doesn't have its own app

Wow you're fucking nasty little chia pot was the holdup It's this is the whole thing I brought I brought this up because their menu lists a whole bunch of items and I went in store and I was like half the shit they have on their menu is not in the store you gave us a warning about and I get yes and so that this was one thing that we didn't get flagged, but you looked up the Grubhub for this particular location and it did list that one, which is partly why I picked it.

And instead, we ended up auto-bullying for something else.

But Charlotte, what did you get at the Toronto Pret?

I want to tell you first off what I didn't get, what I really wanted to get, but it's not available.

It's every menu item you didn't get.

Sell in.

This is going to take a second.

No, I want to, because there are my favorite things that I used to get at PrET in the UK that I was really hoping would be available here in Canada, but which were not.

I used to absolutely love their falafel and halloumi hot wrap

from that hot shelf.

I would eat a lot of those.

That kind of honestly was enough to make Pretty a destination for me for lunch because I just because I just love I love halloumi so much

The other thing I used to really go in for is the they have the mango and the little slice of like lime So you can like squeeze it and put the lime juice onto the mango,

which was was so, so good.

And they had one with

pineapple in the Toronto location, and I was like, I don't feel like that's going to hit nearly as much.

Interesting.

So, I couldn't do that.

My favorite thing from Pratt always, though, was the

mozzarella and tomato croissant, which was like a little, it was like a hot little pastry with like it was, it's almost like a tiny little pizza, but on like croissant pastry.

Uh, it was mozzarella and what, Charlotte?

Sorry, mozzarella and tomato.

Oh,

It's tomato.

I used to.

I got those.

Tomatoes.

So those are the things I wanted, and I couldn't get any of them, which is very sad for me.

But in the end, I went for the chicken salad and avocado sandwich because I spoke to my brother who still lives in the UK.

I was like, what do you get?

I was like, what's the staple?

What's the classic?

So I got one of those.

And then I also, just because it was me going back to prayer, I had to get a San Pellegrino.

I had to get the sparkling water because i always got that whenever i went and then i would also always get uh one of their little

now i think now here in canada you get a brownie bite i feel like it was more of like a brownie bar but maybe i'm misremembering but that was that was what i went for okay yeah no i did see those at the register And those are just like shelf stable that they had sitting there as like a little, ooh, I'll get one of those too.

I did not get one of those, but I did get the chocolate brownie cookie, which I, which I mentioned.

Let me say this.

Yeah.

What is the background on Halloumi cheese?

Is it big in the UK, Hallumi cheese?

Because I know that it's at, I know it's at Nando's, Cheeky Nando's.

And here

in the UK, you said you got this Halloumi cheese wrap.

It's not a thing before, like when I was at Nando's, I was like, oh, Hallumi cheese.

It wasn't a thing that I knew much of.

I mean, it's Mediterranean, right?

In origin, I think there's just like a little bit less of

there's plenty of Mediterranean food out here, but there's just like halloumi specifically is like bigger in the UK.

Yeah, you'll see it a little bit less in the US.

Hallumi has had a better PR campaign in the UK than in the US.

Yeah, a lot of halloumi on like veggie burgers

in restaurants in the UK for sure.

But it was also like a later in life discovery for me.

Like I feel like as soon as I realized what a halloumi cheese was, then I was like specifically always seeking it out whenever I had like the option available to me.

Especially being vegetarian at the time, because it has almost like a meaty like texture to it in the way that it's cooked sometimes.

But then it's cheese, so that's delicious.

So, yeah, I'd eat a lot of that.

Is that the same with

cucumber and tuna?

Is that a big combo?

I mean, I guess here it is, but

you say cucumber and tuna is a I would say less of a big thing.

See, less of a thing, but I do like it when I encounter it.

Just a more like halloumi, because I wonder if it's something has to do with the American dairy industry because it's just not produced here.

There's so much domestic dairy that I wonder if that could be part of it.

You know, that's part of what gets, what's more widely available or what more, what they're, you know,

is more scalable economically.

But I think it also might just be that it's,

you know, we're maybe just not used to it because it's, I guess Cyprus is the, okay, the, the, the, you, the Cyprus government actually owns the trademark for Halloumi in the U.S.

So I guess they have some government control over it.

Anyway, getting tariffed.

That might be it, man.

200% tariff in Cyprus.

I really

overall was like more impressed than I expected with my dine-in lunch just because I go in there.

I'm like, I don't know what this place is.

I see everything that's just sitting in cases, pre-packaged.

I'm like, all right.

Now my expectations, like, my expectations are like, okay, maybe kind of mid.

Then they start to plummet a bit because I'm like, okay, so I've just got a sandwich that was made this morning.

That's just been sitting in a case all day.

And then I started eating it.

I was like, this home bitch ain't bad.

I don't mind it.

This cheddar and tomato sandwich, not bad.

It's getting the job done.

And I'm having this, this cucumber, tuna and cucumber Baguette Slim.

In particular, I thought was like, oh, the texture from the cucumber was quite nice.

The tuna was a higher quality than I expected.

The white chicken chili, again, just warm there.

But I was like, this is like something I would get from Sioux Plantation.

This is like a decent soup.

It's like a Whole Foods level soup.

This is totally serviceable.

I'm having all this and I'm just like, my socks aren't being knocked off.

They're staying firmly on my feet, but I'm still enjoying my meal.

And I'm still like, this is a satisfactory lunch.

This is a total, if I was like one of these students here who are all like, and I was just like, whatever, there with my, you know, reading Tolstoy or whatever the fuck, and this was my lunch, I'd be like, hey, this is fine.

That's your skin.

Yeah, I'd be like, hey, this is me.

I was reading Tolstoy.

I'd be like, this is fine.

And the chocolate brownie cookie in particular, I was like, I was not as impressed by the desserts today, but that dessert, I was like, man, this is like.

Did the socks shoot off?

No, the socks were still on there.

But I was like.

Sorry, Mitch.

Yeah, damn.

No feet today.

Me and Quentin.

I hate that people say, who cares?

He likes feet.

It's nice.

Yeah, let the man look at some feet.

Yeah, let him jack off to a man too, for Christ's sakes.

I mean, that cookie.

And I imagine as someone else spent some time at UCLA, you went to Diddy Reese at a certain point, the cookie shop.

Blew my fucking mind, I can tell you.

There, my socks are getting knocked off.

I went to a couple of Diddy Reese parties.

Diddy Reese is like a cookie shop, and it's like baby oil.

The cookies are legit, very, very good.

It's in Westwood Village, it's a stone's throw from this place.

It's not that good, but it is like better than I expected.

It tastes like it could be from a cookie shop.

Well, and it was, it was cheap, is the other thing about Diddy Reese.

Diddy Reese is very cheap.

You'd go there, and it was like when I was there, I think it was like $1.50, and you get like a baseball-size ice cream sandwich.

Yes, it's crazy ice tried diddy Reese um I

and I thought the tea was too sweet for me the sweet tea was too sweet uh but the latte was totally serviceable

I'm outright mad at me um

uh

I'm not mad

I knew of prette a manger I didn't know how to say it again I thought it was pretty manger um

but I am not we we talked about this in in the United States I wonder I wonder what you'll think of this Charlotte it's just that sort of thing of

like

the idea of lunch, I think in the UK or people are just like, oh, this is easy.

I'm going to eat this.

And I'm on the go.

And I'm checking off that I'm eating lunch.

And it's, and

I just don't think Americans function in that way.

I think it's like, we want.

Like, we need something more.

We need something satisfying.

Like, like, or not, it has to be a thing.

You want it to be a treat.

You want it to be like, this is my midday respite.

And versus in the UK, you're just like, you have like your, your bite of your fucking scan or whatever the fuck, and you're like, oh, that's sorted.

Let me go back to my job.

You know what I mean?

You would say sorted.

You would say sorted.

Back to cranking the wheel at the Big Ben, you know.

Yeah.

But is it better to have your baseline of lunch just be like, it's fine, it's going to fill the hole and then I can go back so that when you do go to the cheeky Nando's, you do like be, okay, this lunch is going to be like nicer.

I'm going to have a better time.

It's more of a treat, as opposed to, I kind of expect my lunch to always be like good.

That's my argument for things.

That's my argument for things in the UK being worse, generally.

I think it's good all of a sudden.

I think that is a good thing.

By the way, I'm going to fill the hole.

I'm not a thing I say very often.

I think that that is a better baseline.

That's what it should be.

I think this is a thing in the States that has changed with,

you know, the hustle culture has increased over the last 30 years, 40 years, you know what I mean?

Where it's like,

like you were saying, that respite of I'm doing my shitty job and I'm going to have a fucking Jersey Mike's big old sub.

You know what I mean?

Like,

of course, we do the shoveling of the salad, like you've talked about before.

Yeah, of course, but there's also like, hey, I'm going to have Carl's Jr.

You know, I'm going to have like a big sloppy burger.

I'm going to have a, you know, a Panda Express.

I mean, there's there's a

even the salad.

Panda Express is great.

We both love it.

We should go to Panda Inn, the original Panda Express.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But even the salad is like, you go to sweet green and it's like, I'm going to get this thing on it and this thing, and they're making it in front of me, and I get my version of slop.

Yeah.

No matter what.

The idea of the thing out of the case feels like an experience at this is like I'm traveling.

This is what's at the airport.

This is what's at this train station.

I'm going to grab and go this, and it's going to be this thing that was, you know,

there's the illusion of freshness when you're watching watching someone make it for you and also the customization i feel like is a very american thing the idea of like i can say exactly what i want to substitute have it yourself or a mit exactly right yeah yeah i i think you could you could do a lot of you could like extrapolate a lot of cultural analysis from this thing you know you could you could go on and on about like the american treat mindset and uh like you know consumer culture in general like it's it's almost an extension of that kind of customer is always right thing you know like yeah you should be able to have what, you know, if you are a consumer with buying power, you should be able to have whatever you want and it should taste great and it should have all the salt and sugar and fat that your brain craves and all that stuff.

Whereas in Britain, I feel like it's not even that we're healthier.

It's just that we don't, we don't believe we deserve good things.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know, Charlotte, do you agree with that cultural null analysis?

No, I do agree with it.

And it was very interesting for me to go back as someone who's lived in North America for as long as I have, who hasn't had a pre-packaged sandwich in such a long time to go back to it and be like, I feel like I have such a fondness for it with Prat specifically and also just with the concept of the meal deal.

I feel like it's just such a nice idea to be able to get sort of like a good value to go lunch.

And I, I, I think the main takeaway for me, and I'm not sure if it's just this specific prette, but I was like, it's not actually very nice to be eating a cold, like a cold sandwich that's like fridge cold.

Yeah, and I don't know if in like most Prants, if they have the fridges calibrated like properly to the point where it's like not really, really cold.

But when I ate it, I was like, My sandwich is too cold, and this is not very nice.

Icy tuna, yeah, yeah, kind of broke, broke my heart a little bit, unfortunately.

Yeah, I think also it is, it is an expectations thing.

I think you are absolutely right, Charlotte, to compare it to the meal deal because

the Tesco meal deal, which we talked about on our first episode with Jesse,

is

like the baseline.

You know, I feel like that is probably like, I don't know if it's the number one thing eaten for lunch in the UK, but like it's very, very common and popular.

People have opinions about what the best meal deal is or whatever.

And it's just like one of these cold fridge sandwiches, usually, or a pasta or something, and a side, like, you know, crisps or a brownie or something, and then a drink.

And it's, you know, it's four pounds or something.

And so

that baseline of like, you know, cold fridge sandwich from Tesco or whatever, PrET specifically, it doesn't do a meal deal, but it's selling the same type of food.

So it is like, by comparison, it's like, oh, well, it's posher than the meal deal.

Whereas here, it's competing with like going to a deli and getting like a big hot pastrami sandwich or something, which is like the best thing on the earth, you know?

I'm looking at the Tesco meal deals right now, and it's things like you get a Tesco prawn mayonnaise sandwich.

I mean, you didn't have to mention the prawn mayonnaise, you know.

Oh, my mouth is watering.

Oh, I can't wait to go back to the UK and eat one of those.

Yes, you get like one of those and like a Pepsi Max no-sugar cola, and like that's your lunch, or you get another item, too.

Charlotte's hearing this, and she's thinking, Oh, I can do this, and I can have someone yell a slur at me.

Yeah, let me do it.

Let's go, spicy chicken.

You have to get a snack as well.

Yeah, you get a snack, too.

You have to get a snack.

So, I build a deal.

I build one of these.

I see the club, the 360 pounds.

Yeah, 3 pounds, 60 pounds.

well that's the club card price oh got it so if you have the club card it's 360 what do you call the 60 cents 60p

yeah three pounds 60p

um i get a strawberries and cream sugar free pepsi oh uh a tesco chicken and baker bacon cheese or caesar salad and where do i get the i don't know how to build this fucking thing yeah it's not a good website we we uh we had this problem with um with jesse as well uh it's it's not super easy to navigate because obviously everyone who who goes to Tesco already knows what their build is.

You know, you can.

Right, you know, you have your loadout, like you've game planned that in advance.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I'm going in there, I'm getting that,

you know, God, this all looks really bad.

Honestly, I'm looking at this.

But also, part of the decision comes down to you look at the fridge and you see what actually looks good because it's not just like the idea of a sandwich.

It's just like, is this specific sandwich that's in the fridge right now going to be nice enough for me to eat in this moment?

I mean, I remember going to a bagel place in Bambury that I think was called like bagel bite or something.

And it was such a novelty to me that they would make the bagel sandwich like to order with what you wanted.

And they would say, what kind of bagel do you want?

What filling do you want?

And I would watch them make it.

I was like, I've not.

I've not seen this before.

You can do that.

You can have food made to order, you know, which I'm sure there are going to be British people listening to this who are like, oh, just bloody nonsense.

I get that all the time.

I've had that all my life or whatever.

But for me, at least, not growing growing up in.

I like that we have angry Brits like that listening to the show.

I hope you do.

I have, yes, already so many imagined angry Brits haunting my brain.

Right.

Because I didn't even think about that.

Because you, yes, you would have...

To them, it's like, oh, you're my advocate.

You're the standard-bearer for British culture.

Yeah, I would say I'm the standard bearer for British culture.

Yeah.

You're telling what's going on over there to these couple of dipshit Americans.

You better be representing us properly.

Yes, the podcast certainly reflects, I think, for both of us, our mixed feelings about the UK, which is that we think it's bad and often very funny to make fun of.

But also a lot of the time when Americans make fun of it, we're like, all right, steady on.

Right.

Steady on, mate.

Yeah.

And I'm sorry.

Hang on.

No, not you.

You're fine.

So we, you know, we have these like little things that we feel maybe more defensive about or

things that, you know, actually, that's not, you know, Doctor Who, actually, that's that's pretty good, or you know, like the BBC, yeah, all right, you know, something that we might manage to feel not ashamed of.

Well, there's also the element, and I'm sure this

happens in, you know, people's,

this definitely happens when people are

mocking America at large, is like you've taken the wrong angle here, or like you don't have something, you don't, you're, you're,

your, your, your opinion isn't quite correctly formed because like there's some key element that you're omitting, you know, like like it's not like it like it maybe just like not thinking thinking of America as a uh as a monolith as opposed to like there's all these different regions with their own different affiliations and preferences.

And um sure it's the same thing over there.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And you know, all like all of my favorite people in the world are American.

They're they're great, you know.

I've met all my okay, sure.

All right.

Interesting finding this out right now.

That's all right.

Someone is not on the Christmas card.

Let's take it.

Oh, that's not what I meant.

I'm really sorry.

Do you guys call Santa Papa Noel?

What do you call him?

Papa, yeah.

What's up with Papa Noel?

Yeah, what's the deal with Papa Noel?

Are we going back for the Papa Noel episode?

Was he like Father Christmas?

What the fuck is that?

Any Father Christmas, right?

It's Father Christmas.

Father Christmas.

Father Christmas.

This is insane.

You've managed to say something that makes Father Christmas sound even more ridiculous than it is.

Father Christmas?

Christmas?

Papa knows.

Santa Claus is Father Christmas?

Yeah, he's Father Christmas.

Get the fuck out of here with Father Christmas.

I'm sorry.

Look, I'm fine with Fanny and Minge and all that shit, but Father Christmas,

help me out here.

Tim Allen and the Father Christmas clause.

I've never quite wrapped my head around Father Christmas, partly because I think just like the fantastical idea of Santa Claus seems more fun to me, like from a world building standpoint.

Same guy.

Yeah, but it's to call him Santa Claus.

Yeah, you call him Santa Claus.

Yes, because that's the name you knew when you were a kid.

But for me, I was so excited to go to bed so Father Christmas could kind of

yeah, and we would leave out a mince pie for this is insane.

Well, hold on a second.

Mince pie is a better thing to leave out.

Mince pie is fucking good as hell.

Oh, I love a mince pie so much.

Mince piece.

What's in a mince pie?

It's like dried fruit.

She likes fresh.

Oh, that sucks.

Never mind.

Milk and cookies is fun, or biscuits and white water.

Charlotte, I don't know if you.

We're just guessing that's what Bricks got.

We call it white water.

Right, yeah.

We don't know what milk is.

I don't know.

I'm white water intolerant.

I'm so fucking mad.

Yeah, fucking good stuff.

Charlotte, I don't know if you did this, but in our house, it was a mince pie for Father Christmas and some brandy as well.

Wow, that's fun.

And a carrot for Rudolph.

Oh, cute.

I was going to mention the carrot for Rudolph specifically.

Yeah.

I don't think we did.

I don't think we did.

Maybe my dad was just an alcoholic.

You kids didn't leave the fucking brandy for Father Christmas.

Oh, we did.

Yeah, taboo's not as much for Cinder, but I did leave out the carrot.

We'd leave out the carrots and sometimes celery or something for the rendy where we'd do a couple.

Oh, that's nice.

Bang Bang Chicken Wrap sucked.

It was real bad.

It was supposed to be, you know, I'm a bit of a heat seeker.

This one is supposed to be a little bit of a, I think the bang bang is supposed to be a little bit of spice, and I just wasn't getting it.

And then just all of the components on it: grilled chicken and miso sesame, crispy onions, gochijang aioli, and then pickled cabbage and carrots, cilantro, cucumbers, carrots, red onions, a whole bunch.

I didn't need to read all that shit, but it's, it's a seven-grain wrap.

It was just, it was a bit of a dry guy and just didn't have much flavor.

The egg salad and arugula sandwich, which is what I got today as my proper sandwich.

I just got the slim, but that was quite nice.

And that's the sort of thing where I'm just like, I could get this egg salad sandwich if I just had to get to eat lunch in a hurry.

Like, this would totally get the job done.

This is completely serviceable.

Same thing with the lentil soup.

I was like, this is completely fine.

This is a replacement-level lentil soup.

No problem with it at all.

The sweet treat, the chocolate croissant, I thought was

a little too much chocolate, like a little unbalanced, and they're just like a pretty gummy as far as croissants go.

Like, it definitely did not feel as fresh-baked as I would like.

Yeah, I didn't think it was good.

I consider myself a bit of a chocolate croissant head.

Yeah.

And

it was not very good.

And it was also not the like the normal form factor you expect for a chocolate croissant or a pano chocolate.

No.

It wasn't that shape where it's like pillow shaped.

It was croissant shaped with some bits of chocolate on top and then like a like a chocolate filling.

Didn't like it.

It was a little bit like too long and girthy.

It was kind of like shai halud.

It did not look like a like it did not look like a proper.

It was very shy halude.

Yeah I think it was shy hallude.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The queen of mom.

Queen Aman was so good.

That was good.

That was yummy.

That was good.

Buttery as hell.

Yeah, that was the real, the best treat.

I thought the muffin was the blueberry muffin that we got, Amelia.

The chocolate was pretty good.

I thought all the pastries, the chocolate croissant was the one I was saying that like that coffee bean has a better chocolate croissant.

Oh, yeah.

What the fuck?

What didn't we get one?

Oh, we got a cookie or cookie.

Yes, it was the chocolate and pecan cookie.

And that was good.

It was a, I thought it was a little stale around the edges.

Again, I'm a little bit of a snob when it comes to baked goods.

Yeah.

Well, you're a proper baker.

That's right.

i'm a proper baker that's right yeah um and i you know what's your favorite thing to bake oh favorite thing to bake shit uh pie pie crust um wow i i think my pie crust is really good charlotte are you a baker at all no i'm i'm not i i would like to get more into it i did make make myself some uh scones recently oh that's fun or scones

um and uh they were proper good.

I also made my own clotted cream to go along with them with some strawberry jam.

Libby made some dotted cream.

It was so good.

So, so good.

But it's something I don't do.

Honestly, I will do it on a Twitch stream to make it as content because it does feel like, unfortunately, a waste of my time to bake goods for myself.

That's a thing I need to figure out in my own head because it's obviously I can do, I can make myself delicious treats whenever I want.

But yeah, not too much of a baker.

Libby also made some hot crust buns recently that looks really, really good.

I love a hot crust bun.

It's very good.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, the cookie I thought, again, it's like once you realize actually how easy it is to make, like, especially chocolate chip cookies, which I think is maybe a perfect dessert.

Yeah.

Once you realize how easy it is to make those at home and put the dough in the freezer and you start having fresh hot chocolate chip cookies regularly, every other cookie starts to taste like shit.

And like anything that's been sitting out like that, you know, it was just a little stale.

But I thought that the salt level was really good.

I'm very big on salty desserts.

That's a good observation.

And I think that's your trained palate speaking.

Because, yeah, you're absolutely right.

Did y'all's grandmas

make baked cookies?

Because that was the sort of thing I was just like, oh, yeah, grandmas love bacon cookies.

You know what?

My grandma did love to bake cookies.

Just to translate that, what he was saying was,

did your nans make biscuits?

Yeah, did your nans make biscuits?

Oh, yes.

I was so confused, Councillor, completely.

No, actually, not really, not really all that much.

My My nan hated cooking in a feminist way.

Wow.

I wonder if this is a, and that might be specific to your nan, but I also wonder if, like, is this a, is this an American thing?

The cookie bacon grandma.

Is that specifically like an American trope?

For me, it was.

My grandma did like to.

Well, at least my grandma baked the fuck out of some cookies.

I just loved it making cookies.

Cookie bacon grandma.

I know.

I wanted to say the same thing.

Cookie bacon grandma.

She makes me wish I had one.

Yeah.

Casey, were your grandma's bacon and cookies?

No.

Not really.

My mom would make Christmas cookies.

Okay, your mom would make Christmas cookies.

Okay.

And Christmas is a cookie holiday.

Christmas is a cookie holiday, huh?

I think it is.

Not in the UK.

One of the worst bits you've ever done.

The only cookie holiday.

What the fuck are you doing?

You give him mince pie or whatever the fuck you give Father Christmas.

You don't even leave biscuits out for the damn man.

It's not really a cookie holiday in the UK, actually.

It's more of a mince pie holiday.

Wow.

Another data point.

Yeah, yeah.

Amelia?

I agree with Casey.

just made cookies for for christmas for uh

so maybe there's a generational thing for us it was most italian thing yeah like could be italian thing too italian

italians love the christmas cookies and other occasions

like wedding cookies and stuff

the only issue with those cookies is that they taste like

so bad

italians have make some of the best food in the world yeah but their cookies just taste like shit what the fuck is the what is the issue

we disagree over here

oh they taste like yeah let me swap out these chocolate chips for some meatballs

they're like bitter they're

yeah it's nothing they're just like i mean that like a lot of european cookies i feel like they have been elapsed or eclipsed sorry by uh american sweet technology so like you know european cookies is like oh and this one tastes of almond and this one kind of tastes like lemons and almond and this one tastes like orange and almond whereas in america you've got like we have like scientifically determined the ratio of salt to sugar that is going to make you go insane so yeah for sure um i uh charlotte you mentioned uh the lime juice on mango and that's a the the

fruit cart victor the fruit cart guy yeah uh always even if i don't get to heen or chamoy i'll get i'll get the uh i'll get the lime juice yeah i agree that pineapple needs it less than mango like yeah

pineapple is so acidic already um but it is it is fucking good That is one of the best LA things.

And I really loved taking Jesse Farah when he came to LA, taking him to Fruit Cart Guy.

Getting that experience because it's really lovely.

I make a pretty good

apple cranberry pie.

Wages has had it before.

Right, Waggs?

I have.

That was a lovely pie.

I got to make you one at some point.

We got to talk more food.

Charlotte, what was your assessment of what you got?

So, like I said before, too cold.

And that did make me unhappy.

I did think the sandwich, despite that, was pretty good.

The bread was like a little bit thin for me, which is a bit disappointing.

The avocado in there, though, I feel like when you're getting your pre-packaged sandwich,

it's always a fear of is this avocado going to be ripe enough or is it going to be like a little bit tough?

It was perfectly ripe.

It was very, very nice.

They sprinkled some little cranberries in there, some little dried cranberries in that sandwich as well, which was a really lovely surprise as I was eating it.

I really felt like it elevated it.

But I feel like overall, with the sandwich specifically, the fact that it was just like too cold just kind of overwhelmed everything else and just made me a bit sad.

I do have to give a big shout out to the brownie bite, though.

That thing was bloody delicious.

Yes.

It was so, it was so fudgy.

And I,

I don't know.

I don't know why I felt like I needed to do this, but I was like, it's a brownie bite.

I have to count the number of bites.

And I suck up.

It was not very big.

It's like maybe like an inch and a half or something.

You could eat it in one, but because it was so like rich and decadent, it took me eight bites to eat that.

Eight bites.

I was savoring it.

Yeah.

It was so, so good.

And also,

I like a little like sweet treat like that.

I don't necessarily need like a full-size thing.

Just like a little, a little rich treat.

It's great.

No, that sounds like a meal for M ⁇ M.

Eight bites.

Eight biter eight.

One per mile.

Eight bites.

Eight bites.

He has one on each mile.

That's amazing.

Well done, Mitch.

Yeah, well done.

Well done.

I thought it was pretty damn good.

We all thought it was good.

We all liked it.

We're expressing our appreciation for you saying it's good.

I was just looking the other day as Casey not paying attention, Emma kind of hiding behind her laptop.

Emma?

That's not Emma, by the way.

It's a different lady.

Oh, my God.

Oh, boy.

Amelia.

Even I knew that.

What I like also is that Emma is going to hear this when she's editing.

Hi, Amelia.

I don't swap the names of people who have worked with us for

seven years.

Seven years with Emma?

I don't know, a couple of years for you.

I don't know.

Three.

Three.

It's fine.

Yesterday on my stream, there was a thing where people can pay for a picture of Digby to show up.

And there was one where it was a picture of Digby on my lap and then our friend Demi on the TV behind her.

And I said, oh, look, it's Demi and Libby.

Oh, my.

Your own name.

That's my own brain.

It's our brains.

You know what I mean?

As you get older and the, you know, the coronavirus, I think our brain would just turn into mush.

Microplastics.

Oh, God.

I read, I can't remember what the figure was, but like the number of

milligrams of microplastics that are in our brains.

It's probably graphic.

It's fucking insane.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just like.

I've got about a kilo in the, yeah.

It's too much.

I'm on a tech channel with you, and we just, we share a lot of just dark news.

Just that thing, that thing about

how

this is the worst age for art.

There's been no good art.

And that there was a song from 35 years ago that got big because it was just played on stranger things, which makes me want, we need to get Doughboys played on Stranger Things.

But there's a...

You think we can pull that off?

I think if we get bought by private equity, because that was a big part of that article was just talking about how the same thing, like a company like JAB Holding Company exists and just hoovers up, you know, becomes this

overlord of all these subsidiary companies that are all operating in similar spheres.

So it could just completely dominate the marketplace, but in a way that's opaque to the consumer.

The same thing happens with hedge funds and private equity and acquiring intellectual property now.

And now you see like, oh, this private equity firm, this hedge fund bought all Whitney Houston's like entire catalog.

And so now all of a sudden you're hearing all these Whitney Houston songs.

I'm using Whitney Houston as a random example.

Yeah, yeah.

You're using Whitney Houston songs in commercials.

And it's just like, yeah, because a private equity firm is aggressively licensing it out now to try and make money off of their investment.

I went off on this the other night, remember?

It's grim stuff.

When I was talking about, remember what I was talking about,

I don't want to get into it now.

But there should be, like, that's a whole, that's a whole another conversation where IP, you know, law should be reformed, where more of this stuff is going to the public domain.

So it's not people making money off of, you know, a bunch of dead artists' creations indefinitely.

You want me to get angry for a second?

Yeah, go for it.

I'm going to get angry for a second.

I just, I looked at, there was, speaking of Eminem, there was a video of Dr.

Dre and Eminem, and they were talking about Napster, and they were like, they were like, oh,

we don't like Fred Durst, because I was looking at Fred Durst videos.

We don't like Fred Durst

because

he's pro-Napster, and we don't like Napster.

And then all the comments are like, this age like milk, Eminem, and Dr.

Dre, and all you little fuckers out there, you're on big tech side instead of the fucking artist side.

You're going to suck big tech's dick, you fucking dorks.

That's the better thing.

Now you're a slave to fucking Apple and you have to pay for Apple Plus subscriptions your entire fucking life instead of giving the money to fucking artists, you fucking dorks.

Well, also, it's just like having to be in like the Spotify ecosystem or whatever.

It's like you either have to pay out of pocket or you're paying with your time.

You have to listen to ads constantly, or you're just like everything is saturated with ads.

There are things you can pay for now that are just that are covered with ads.

There's no way to escape them.

Music is, I mean, look, music can be played for free, but it's also

an artistry and they're giving you, you had an issue buying a $12 CD.

Who gives a shit?

You have to to pay that money to Spotify or Apple Plus every year.

Yes.

Little fucking dweebs.

Yes.

And it's just all tech bullshit that it's all been assimilated into fucking tech bullshit.

Thinking about how I could have bought 10, $12 albums with my

yearly Spotify charge or whatever.

How many albums do I actually listen to?

It's probably less than 12.

Sure, yes.

I'm just listening to like, you know, Kurt Veil and MJ Lenderman over and over again.

That's it.

You know, like, I don't need, I don't need the

illusion of choice.

Yeah.

Well, it's also that thing of like the music industry has been ruined.

Like, it's like that sort of thing of like, like, uh, music isn't made in the same way anymore.

Like, they don't, like, studios aren't rented in the same way.

That sound is gone forever because everything has been cheapened because it doesn't exist in the same way anymore.

So, anyways, music is still pretty good right now, though.

There's a lot of music.

There's a lot of, I'm not saying that there's always going to be good stuff.

But you're right that the distribution channels have gotten so fucking, you know, onerous and a lot of that just has to do with big tech.

And also it is that sort of thing if you go back to like the mid-90s and you look at a year and see how many different music acts that have like in it.

And it is like someone could just have like a hit, you know, like have a hit song and then they'd be okay to survive and make more music.

And that just isn't, it's not the same, unless it's like a gigantic mega hit.

But it's like fucking everything.

That's like, that's like an actor used to be able to make their year by being in a national commercial and now those opportunities are.

Isn't it weird that there's a weird correlation where the music is like if you like, I'm just saying, in the past, in a given year, there was a lot, there was a variety of music that was better.

The quality and the quantity were higher.

I don't know how much of that is.

I'm not saying that there's quality that is very high.

The quantity was also very high.

There were a lot of different acts that had a lot of great hits.

Well, but

what you're also talking about is like kind of the death of the monoculture and like how this is just, you know,

because

fewer things rise to the level where everyone perceives of them, so it just feels like there's less.

Try to turn my words on me.

I'm not saying that there's not good music now.

I'm not changing your words on me.

People all know that culture is not, is we're flopping about here.

That's what I'm saying.

And it is a lot of the issues are this big tech bullshit.

Anyway, yeah, no, I'm not fucking talking about it.

Dude, you fucking do this guy's over here sucking big tech's dick.

This motherfucker across from me.

What?

I'm not sucking big tech's dick.

Oh, I love this iPad.

Fuck, you got

fucking tech dick installed on the iPad.

I'll say, like, paying for an Apple dick is, like, worth it.

Yeah, you get like three sucks a month.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

Yeah, and I really hate when you have to watch an ad just so you can suck your iPad off.

Come on.

Oh, you know,

you got to go ad-free on this.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Exactly.

Wait, hold on.

What, what are the, did we get all the sweet treats?

Because we should talk drinks a little bit.

I mentioned the sunshine black tea, too sweet for me.

Hot oat latte, fine.

This iced churro oat latte that I've been

sucking on for the duration of this episode.

Hold on, I do want to push back on you.

Yeah.

Name three songs from last year you like.

Oh, I have no, but this is the thing.

I don't consume any modern music.

I don't consume any modern music.

I'm just saying that's my point.

That's all.

I mean, I certainly liked the score for Metaphor Refantasio.

That was a great, great game soundtrack.

Actually, so I mean, like,

there's some good music that's being made out there.

Yeah.

But yeah, I don't, I don't like listen to modern music.

So I'm impressed because I don't know.

I can name a song that came out within the past 20 years.

It's like a pop song.

I don't pay attention to any of that shit.

Interesting correlation there.

Stuff was better when we were young.

Yeah, stuff was better when we were young.

See, the issue is that people are going to just say that's what I'm saying.

And I know to an extent that's what it is.

I agree with you.

Hey, look, the 90s, The Simpsons.

You know, job done.

That's all you have to say.

The 90s had Simpsons.

This ice churro oat latte,

savor of the perfect blend of sweetened spice of our churro latte topped with a sprinkle of cinnamon cinnamon sugar made with your choice of milk served over ice.

Libby, you got the same thing with conventional milk.

It was

like way too sweet at first.

And then as the ice is melted, this is mellowed a little bit, and I'm just kind of getting the caffeine lift from it.

But overall, this is a thing I would never get outside of for content.

Yeah, you need to stir it and honestly shake it a lot.

You do.

Because the syrup like collects at the bottom, and you just like my first sip was just a like pure cinnamon syrup.

Right.

After that, like once I mixed it in and it, yeah, it was like melting a little bit.

It was, it was fine, but it was, it sort of tasted like dusty, you know, like that kind of like replacement level, like, you know, sub-dunkin' like syrup drink.

You know, it was, it was like a, it was like a themed frappuccino that you would get like in a bottle.

And it was also like,

do I need a fucking churro drink?

Yeah.

Does that need to exist?

Yeah, and also like,

it annoys me when they say churro when they mean cinnamon.

Right.

Taste of cinnamon, not churro.

To me, sub-dunkin' is every other coffee, by the way.

Of course, yes.

I know.

It really does seem like the kind of thing where it's just like it's designed to get you to drink it once because you like churros and you sort of hope it will be good.

Yeah.

And there's no other reason really for it to exist.

Yeah.

And it's not going to last.

And that's, you know, they got you, you know?

They got you.

You saw the word churro and you're like, yeah, okay, I'll try that.

That's interesting.

That's different.

Oh, yeah.

It's just a sort of sweet, milky, cinnamon-y thing.

That's kind of what I should have expected.

We got scammed.

We got scammed.

Yeah.

Charlotte, did you?

I apologize if you already said, did you get any beverages?

Well, I specifically just got a San Pellegruno sparkling water, which is not obviously specific to Preta Manger, but it is specific to my experience of going to Preta Monge a lot.

And so I was like, you know what?

I could go for something kind of better for this podcast, but I'm like, they're going to order a ton of stuff.

I'm just going to get the thing that I know and just love.

That's a part of it.

I think that's a great choice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

For me, like a key Prada Manger memory that I just remembered is that a lot of the time in DC, if I needed to use the Lou, I would go to the Prédamanger in Metro Center and buy a Diet Coke so that I had a reason to use the bathroom.

So this is a bathroom.

It's mostly a bathroom.

It's a bathroom restaurant.

Yeah, exactly.

It's a timekill place, yeah.

I did write down notes in relation to Prétomanger's bathroom.

I didn't know if that was going to be relevant because in the UK, you...

you do need to get you need to get your receipt which will have the code for the bathroom so that you can go in and use it

right No bathroom code, the one in Toronto, which I was very pleased about.

Wow.

We've got the all-gender bathrooms, which made me very happy, very comfy, really nice and clean.

But they did have the incredibly fucked up, you know, the Dyson tap that also has

the hand dryer built into it, like over the sink.

I don't know if it's a good one.

It does have one of those things.

I have not encountered this.

No,

it's like a really long tab, covers like most of the sink, and then it has two metal wings that come off either side and then a little notice on the mirror above to give you instructions on how to use the terrifying three-pronged tap in front of you um which i i think it's like dyson i feel like is known for having good design and i feel like the idea of forcing someone to continue to stand in front of the sink to dry their hands yeah is stupid yeah like yeah you've got that's like just ruining the flow it's okay if it's just like a you know if it's just you know a toilet and a sink with that then that's that's fine i understand which is what this was.

But when I see those in like, you know, big bathrooms, I'm like, this is just idiotic.

I'm just, you're holding up the flow of traffic here.

Right.

This show, you're, you're lengthening this choke point when it could be like

broken into steps.

I've, uh, yeah, I've not encountered that specifically.

I will say the bathroom of the Westwood one, it had a restroom key and it was like

I don't even know.

I think it was like a bread basket that they were, that they weren't, they weren't using because it was like a huge thing that you had to hold.

It was so big, it fit on top of the toilet tank.

It took up the entire toilet tank.

Wow.

And I was like, this is way too cumbersome for me to carry to the bathroom.

But it's what they had there.

Toilet tank is a good shark tank spin-off.

Yeah, that is a good shark tank spin-off, Mitch.

By the way, I'm not trying to call you out, Amelia, but

Charlotte was saying, I'm not sure if this is relevant to the combo when you went.

You very much wanted to hear the bathroom talk.

It's relevant.

And then you were more engaged in that than I've seen you the entire episode.

You were very interested in the bathroom talk.

I was noticing you nodding along over there.

I did not,

just the headgun bathroom for me because I did not go into Prédemange.

Do you have a review of the headgun bathroom?

Too echoey.

This is the issue with the headgun lawn.

It's too echoey.

It's way too echoey.

It's quite cavernous in there, isn't it?

It is an unused space.

All right, we got to get to our final thoughts on Prita Manger.

So, Libby, you've done the podcast before I will let you begin.

But, Charlotte, the way this will work, we'll each go around, we'll give our closing argument, if you will, on this particular chain and then give it a score from zero to five forks.

Libby, we'll start with you.

Your thoughts, your fork score on Pritamanger.

Actually, before I do, I want Amelia to say the thing that they said to her when she came to pick up the food.

So, I walk in there and

they go, Pick up.

I go, yep.

And they go, we were just talking about you.

Was that, didn't you have another, you said you had a story too, right?

I told it already.

Oh, you told it already.

Oh, the Crissona.

Yeah, really funny to think that you might be the first person to ever order pickup from that Prot.

Yeah, I mean, look, with PrEP, I think it's important to remember what you guys say all the time about these restaurants, which is like, how well is it doing the thing it's trying to do?

Right.

And I think it is doing the thing it's trying to do pretty well.

You also do have to consider that the thing it's trying to do kind of sucks,

which is like make a mid-sandwich experience that you can tolerate having basically every day of your office job.

You know, you can stop in there on the way from the tube station to your job at the...

What would be a British job?

The baked beans head office or whatever.

Yeah, baked beans head office.

Baked beans head office.

A fish, a newspaper fish wrapper.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

How about 10 Downing Street?

Let me tell you, they should get to work over there.

Yeah, I don't think they're doing very much work.

Abbey Road Crossing Guard.

BBC paedophile.

So I don't know.

I think Prett is like a very solid, if we're doing the thing, if considering what they are doing, you know, like how well are they doing the thing they're trying to do?

Yeah, sure.

Three forks.

Three forks.

Okay.

Charlotte, your thoughts, your fork score from zero to five.

And when it comes to this, am I reviewing my specific experience today?

Great question.

You can think about a lifetime's worth of visits.

I mean, if I'm thinking about a lifetime's worth, then I'm going three and a half, probably.

Wow.

And then this specific visit, I think it has to, it's coming down just to two or three.

I do feel like we are missing some, we are missing the vital context in this episode of the UK, Prett.

Obviously, we're getting sort of like the knockoff experience here, where it's like it is very similar, but it's also been like slightly adjusted.

And I do feel like one of the things I've realized is that I am less inclined personally towards the pre-prepared sandwiches now, having not had them for a long time.

But yeah,

I do feel like it still has a very soft spot in my heart, Pratt.

As like,

I think for me, I just always wanted to

know a place I could go to lunch when I was out in the big city of London as a very anxious person.

And to know that there are, I did write this down, 369 Prat Amangers in London specifically.

Wow.

Just knowing that there are so many and it didn't really matter where I was going to be in London.

I would always know that there will be a Prat that is easy for me to access.

And I can go, actually, I'm I'm going to move it up to four for my like overall experience.

Wow, four specifically for that, just for the like I love it.

It became quite a comfort to me to know why that I always had access to that.

Um,

but yeah, this specific pretty experience in Toronto, I'm going to give it a three.

It was nice that they had um the CN Tower up on the wall in like the Prat style, that was fine.

Oh, that's fun, made me feel happy, yeah.

That's the Nando's in Toronto is where I spent my summer.

Oh, wow,

For lunch, Wags, I'd walk over to that Nando's in Toronto almost any day I had off almost.

I loved it.

I had a lovely time in Toronto.

We had a good time.

And I do want you to try.

I do very much want you to try Nando's.

Try Nando's.

I think that you would enjoy it.

Even though Libby thinks it's shit, I think that you would like it more than Prit.

This is an argument I had recently.

I've mentioned him so many times, but this is an argument I had recently with Jesse Farrar because he was going to Toronto and he was saying, you know, know he was there for like something stupid like 48 hours and he was saying to Stefan let's go to the poop restaurant let's go to the restaurant where all the food is shaped like poop and I was like and Stefan was like no I did that in Taiwan and it sucked and Jesse was like I don't care and I was like Jesse You have 48 hours to eat in like a really good food city and you're always complaining about the food where you're from.

So just go and get the good food.

And he was like, no, I want to go to the poop restaurant.

Yeah.

Also, bear in mind, this is the only meal I got to have

while they were here.

Yeah.

So did you go to the poop restaurant?

I did.

We did not go to the poop restaurant.

Okay.

No, I took them to General Assembly Pizza because it was a good pizza place that I knew and I knew they liked pizza.

And it was right next to a really fancy clothes store that they wanted to go to.

I did nail it on the recommendation for lunch.

Toronto's got some good pizza.

It does have some good pizza.

A lot of good pizza here.

Anyway, my vote would be, although as much as I want to hear you talk about Nando's, don't waste a DC meal in Nando's because there's so many good places to eat in DC.

Wow, I said it before and I'll say it again: Jesse is a dipshit.

Wigs, predomanger.

That's a way you can, you know what?

It's a way you can describe me.

Ready to eat?

Ready to eat.

Ready to eat.

I'm ready to eat.

I'm always, I'm always prette manger.

Hell meat too.

Préta Minge?

No, you know.

Prada Minger.

I don't know how.

I don't know how you say it.

Are you mangering minge?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, so

Prè de Manger, I am always ready to eat.

It's just funny that I'm ready to eat and what Pré de Manger has to offer,

they're ready to serve you because it's all ready to go.

It's all just sitting there, sitting around.

Maybe it is a little too much of a USA attitude about the whole thing where I want it to be made fresh.

And so that, honestly, it's going to ding this place for me no matter what.

It's gonna, it's gonna, it's not gonna go in the Golden Play Club for me.

There's no way.

That being said,

the Buffalo chicken sandwich, which was warm, not, it wasn't bad, it was bad, but it was fine, right?

Like, that's exactly what you said.

You took a body and you're like, this is bad, but it's kind of good.

Yeah, I thought it was bad, but it was not terrible.

Yeah, and I

like my egg salad sandwich more, but you know, whatever.

The egg salad, I mean, and that is that's what I should have leaned into when I went there.

I did, I had the um

the ham and cheese baguette, slim, or whatever.

I had the small one.

And it was, I was like, oh, this is like, the baguette tastes nice.

Like, this is

the slim baguette I'm a fan of.

And I, and, and your egg salad sandwich I liked.

And I was like, that's what I, I should have leaned into more of the thing that they're good at.

And I, and I didn't do that.

But, but the, like, the pastries,

three out of four pastries were good that we had.

You know, they were decent.

This drink, the lemonade drink was, was decent.

And I think for

what it is, for what it is, I think it's a three-forker.

I think it knows what it's doing, but it's not anything that I would care to go back.

Three is maybe even is generous, possibly, but

it's fine.

If we were on the road and

there was a préming and we had to eat, we'd eat there and we'd be fine.

Yeah, I agree.

And I think

I was wavering between two and a half and three.

Because here's the thing, which is I said all that stuff about Americans, but I, A, I'm also American.

And B, I'm like you.

I want a good lunch.

Yeah.

I want to eat good food, and I want it fresh, and I want it my way, and I want it with extra jalapenos.

Yeah,

and I want it with french fries.

You've convinced me, two and a half forks.

It is two and a half and a half.

It's two and a half.

It's going to be three forks for me.

I just feel like this is a place where

everything is totally fine.

And

it's an interesting companion piece with

last week's chain Panera, which is, you know,

they do have pre-made pastries, but it is more of like you're ordering a salad, you're ordering a sandwich, you're ordering a hot dish, they're making it in store, but it's trying for basically the exact same thing that Prédamanger is, which is just a functional sort of workday lunch.

And I'd rather eat a Panera.

It's

one of the headcumb hunks just walked in with a handle of vodka.

Just walked in with a handle of vodka.

We also got in here, there was old taco meat.

Yeah, there was taco meat from the previous day, just like a chafing dish full of like, you know, fajita meat.

You've been sitting at room temp for 24 hours.

I think I'm going to go play beer pong with the hunks somehow.

I'll see you guys later.

That would be the perfect encapsulation of Nick and I's life is that if

the lady who was here to visit us left the room as we were just recording a podcast and played beer pong with the head gum hunks.

I think mine would be being reluctantly let in to the room of the hunks.

It's like, yeah, okay, I guess.

Fuck those hunks.

I think this play you know obviously it's owned by the same company as Panera which is its own thing but yeah

you know what yeah those hunks wouldn't know what to do with that minge if it was right

I'm gonna say it I'm gonna outright say it

oh my god they wouldn't know how to mong it at all

no no

no that's right

it's good to not be a hunk yeah I hate I hate the hunks you're normal men Yeah, remember that.

I strap my seat cap on left to right, just like every other man every night.

I'm a normal man.

I think they

just feel like this place is like, you know, you have to be selective with what you get.

And I would lean into the cold instead of the hot, although maybe it, depending on YAM MV, you might end up in a situation like Charlotte where the cold is too cold.

But

I don't know.

It's like this, it's not a place to get excited about.

It's not a place to get pissed off about either.

And for me, that puts it right in the sweet spot of three forks.

And that's where I'm landing.

I think this is where I'm at with it, which is like Panera is like a completely fucking middle-of-the-road lunch chain.

You know, it's everywhere, and it's very bog standard, and it's not that good, but it is still always trying to pitch itself as like a kind of premium experience, right?

And Prat is also trying to pitch itself as a premium experience because, compared to the rest of British food, it kind of is.

Oh, no,

yeah, compared to Tesco, at least, you know, Panera isn't Panera is kind of a slightly elevated threat to me from my one experience.

If I had a choice between going to Prat and Panera, I'm picking Panera every damn day.

Wow.

I think the thing about it as well is it's a really bad Los Angeles lunch as well.

Sure.

Right?

At least.

In the U.S.,

most of the Prats are in New York.

And it makes so much sense to me that you would be like, I don't know, you're downtown, you're working at your finance job, and you just need your food to eat.

And you're going to grab your Prat sandwich and then head on out.

And it's very similar here in Toronto, it's very similar in London.

But lunch is a destination when you're in Los Angeles.

And so it just seems, it's so silly to drive to the place that has the pre-packaged sandwiches if you have to go somewhere.

You know, that's right.

Totally.

Yeah.

No, the driving thing actually is such a good point because if you're driving to go to Pratt, you fucked up.

And it's in the Westfield Mall on top of that, right?

That's where it is, which is just.

Yeah.

I just happened to be there the other day and

really bad vibes.

Nightmare.

Yeah, very, very scary.

I took the bus to

Prett and it was a lovely bus ride.

That's great.

I love that bus ride.

That's nice.

That was nice.

Was that the big blue bus?

Yeah, it was a big blue bus.

Used to be able to get those for 25 cents with your brewing card.

There's no wild to think about.

I know.

Yeah.

Not anymore.

And you would wear an onion on your belt.

Wow.

That does it for Prett.

Hey, that's our review of Prett.

It's time for a segment.

Can Mitch and Libby and Charlotte solve my baked goods mystery and out with the world's greatest bread detective?

That's right.

It's the return of Sherlock Crumbs.

Oh my God.

Oh no.

Oh my God.

Okay.

He's having issues because he's trying to get the hat over his headphones.

I can't get the hat over my headphones.

Okay, hold on.

Take the headphones off.

Hold on.

No, because I needed to hear Charlotte.

Where did you get this?

Okay, here we go.

Okay, I'm ready to go.

Okay, I just get it from here.

It kind of suits him.

It It does kind of suit him.

It's the return of Sherlock Crumbs.

Oh, God.

It is.

I'm thinking tricked.

Culinarily, my dear Spoonman.

This is a sort of thing, like, if I just, like, this is like, if like, you could, this person could be in a mental asylum.

Yeah, give him a pair of slippers.

I love that I now had to text my friends and say, I'm going to be late to bar trivia because we've got to do Sherlock Cook Frums.

Trivia of a different sort.

I present to you a series of distinct plates of crumbs in sequence.

You must divine the source of these crumb leavings using our skills of intuition alone.

Amelia, what is our first plate of crumbs?

All right, here's the first plate.

Are you actually going to give us a plate?

Oh, you're just showing us.

Didn't you give us plates of crumbs before?

Charlotte's not in the studio, so it's gotta be a good idea.

I get it.

I get work and play.

By the way, Slim Baguette.

Sherlock Crumbs is here.

Go on.

Slim Baguette seems like an associate of Sherlock Crumbs.

Doesn't it, Slim?

Oh, no, never mind.

Slim Baguette, no, I'm with you.

Fucking Sherlock Crumbs didn't like it.

He stared at me.

My actual associate, much like Sherlock Holmes' brother, Mycroft Holmes, is my brother, Rye Crust Crumbs.

Oh, okay.

That's why Slim Baguette didn't register for him.

He had some other fucking bullshit.

I have a guess on what this is.

I think we all do.

Yes, I do as well.

We all think it's a croissant.

We all think it's a croissant.

We absolutely think it's a croissant.

100%.

Correct.

It is a croissant.

Fuck up.

Culvenerly, my dear Spoonman.

Next up.

Oh.

Hmm.

Okay.

This is a baked.

Interesting plate of crumbs.

Ooh, I think I have a guess at least.

Ooh, okay.

I mean, I guess a cake.

I was going to say Cheetos.

I was going to say Doritos or Cheetos.

That's not a bake good.

It's a little big, though.

It looks like goldfish flakes almost.

Big pile.

Hmm.

You've got us good here, Sherlock Crumbs.

What's your brother's name again?

Rye Crust Crumbs.

Rye Crust.

That's why you gave me no response to Slim Baguette again.

Because of

Rye Crust

Clunge.

Rye Crust Clunk.

Crust Clunge.

Yeah.

Do you know who created me?

Ooh.

Sir King Arthur Flower Colin Doyle.

Love is what.

Wait, do you have one for Watson?

Spoon man.

Woutson.

Wowsen.

That's good.

Woutson.

Whitson?

Whitson.

Quitzen?

Quitsen?

Quitson.

Quitson?

I actually can't figure this one out.

This one's hard.

I think it's like Doritos or Cheetos, but that's not a baked good, and I'll be pissed if it's those things.

So I'm going to say cake.

It's Cheeto dust.

You fucking.

Cheeto dust.

It's Cheeto dust.

Charlotte, I think, got that one.

I mean, Charlotte, how many more do we have, Amelia?

We have one more.

I did get it.

We have one, two, three, four.

If we have five more,

we don't have to go through all of them.

Let's do it.

Let's do like one more and then we'll keep moving.

Well, I think we can do it.

We can do some cookie round.

Go for it.

Go for it.

Yeah, let's do it fast.

Do you think?

Cookies.

Cookie.

What kind?

Ooh, raisin.

Oatmeal chocolate.

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

Oatmeal chocolate chip?

Yes.

I feel like

just to give a note to Amelia, I feel like Sherlock Crumbs should have the answer key.

Well, here's the thing.

Sherlock Holmes, really good at his job, but Sherlock Crumbs kind of.

Yeah, sucks.

Sherlock Crumbs seems like a fucking idiot.

Wow.

Oreo?

Oreo.

Oreo.

That's our grand up.

I was going to say coffee because I'm a dumbass.

It's Oreo.

Are you sure?

Yes, you are.

Let's do a speed level.

I want to put out the last three.

Is there three left?

Yes.

Potato,

corn flakes or potatoes.

Oh, that's.

Are these even crumbs?

These are like cornflakes.

They're just food.

You're Sherlock food.

It's hard to find crumbs not in Speedo.

Is that corn flakes?

It looks like brittle or something, doesn't it?

To me, this is like a broken up, like waffle, like one of those waffles.

That is correct.

Wow, Charlie, you're knocking it out of the park.

She's showing up.

Now that is just cereal.

That's cereal.

Yeah.

That's like honey bunches of oats.

What kind?

I don't.

I actually don't.

Braisen brand?

No,

what is the nut brand?

What is the brand one?

Crunchy Crunchy nut?

Crunchy nut, yeah.

Something like that.

I love crunchy nut cornflakes.

Yeah, me too.

Crackling oat brand.

How many bunches of oat?

Deer spoon man.

All right.

This is the last one.

Is this the last one for real?

Yeah.

All right, here we go.

Last one.

This is just food.

These are all food.

Yeah, I think what that is is food.

That's a pile of food.

It looks like food to me.

It looks like granola, maybe, or

like a granola bread.

To me, this looks like you've got a digestive, just a plain digestive biscuit, and you've got a bunch of those, and they've gotten broken up.

It's an opinion.

Sherlock Cross hasn't said anything for like three minutes.

Well, he's thinking.

He's in his mind palace, you know.

This case reminds me of the time I cracked the sign of the flower.

Based off of the sign of the four, which was a Sherlock Holmes.

I thought you were giving us a clue.

He's just doing his little clothes.

You're doing puns.

This looks like.

I just want to say this.

The last four of these have all looked the same.

They look like oatmeal or cereal or fucking.

They all look alike.

I'm going to say

this is some sort of bran again.

I have no idea.

What do you think?

I think it's like a granola-type food.

Granola.

It's a Ritz cracker.

What?

That's fucking.

Look, I'll say this.

The photos are really well done.

They're really good photos.

Another case solved.

This is a great segment.

Another case solved

by the inimitable Sherlock Crumbs.

And remember, whatever you have eliminated the impossible.

Whatever remains, however improbable, must be the recipe.

Yeah, great.

Just like a restaurant, that was Sherlock Crumbs.

Just like a restaurant, buy your feedback.

That's up to the feedback.

Today's email is from Caroline.

Caroline writes, I'm from Nova Scotia, where McDonald's doesn't make lobster during lobster season.

Dairy Queen does a scallop basket in the summer.

They're both both pretty good, not top tier, but acceptable for the price.

Subway has also done a lobster sub in the past.

Not sure if they still do.

What local specialty or ingredient would you like to see a fast food chain put their twist on?

Nova Scotia McDonald's.

Wow.

They got a lobster surplus up there, just like they do up in New England.

And so they have a McLobster seasonally.

You got some Sherlock threads on your head.

Wait, really?

You do from your Amazon basic Sherlock thread.

It's still there.

Do you want me to get it for you?

Sherlock thread.

There it is.

There we go.

Wow.

Wow.

So what's the question again?

I'm sorry, I was distracted by your thread.

What local specialty or ingredient would you like to see a fast food chain put their twist on?

Hmm.

I mean, last time I was here, we did Del Taco and they had the Berea.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Berea tacos.

And I feel like that was, I mean, I don't know if that's like necessarily an LA special, but, you know, certainly like, I don't know, would a McDonald's taco be fucking crazy?

It's certainly a thing.

thing.

Yeah, well, I would just say IHOP has tacos now.

That's the thing they've been trying to do.

Oh, really?

Yeah, IHOP has tacos.

But it's like, I think what

Caroline is looking for more is something that is, you know, locally harvested or locally produced.

And I'm just not quite sure what that, I mean, it's, it's not like everyone has like a commercial, like, you know, fishery or whatever, has like, has that, that's not necessarily the economic engine of every

area.

How about like McCorn?

A fresh corn on the cob.

That sounds fun.

Mick corn is kind of fun.

So good.

Muck corn.

A fresh corn on the cob.

Yeah, because they're usually processing corn into something else, into corn meal.

But yeah, if they just had a corn cob, why not?

Why can't you get one at a fast food restaurant?

I understand this answer is not what they're looking for, but I would like the

muck sausage wrong.

Oh my God, Charlotte.

Yes.

I was just thinking, like, if there was a, you know, like a British McDonald's, what would it be?

You know, like the muck jacket potato.

Yeah, sure.

I love the mcjacket.

McJacket potato is great.

great yeah yeah yeah or like um like a muck toasty yeah you know mick jacket toasty yeah yeah well we talked about that's what i was gonna say mick jacket would be like a a pixar character voiced by mick jagger and like that's good pixar's closet

pixar's closet yeah don't give them ideas what goes on in there when the doors are closed that's a great question we're gonna find out

um we talked about when you were on what's all this thing we talked about the subway hot cross bun

that's right yes yes yes they were doing that over there, and everyone, they were all just saying, like, they're all like, it was terrible.

How about a po-boy?

Give me a fast food po-boy.

Po-boy is kind of fun.

Because

you don't get that po-boy on a large scale.

You know what I mean?

You don't, you know, they don't, they don't try to do the fast food places don't try to do it.

I'm trying to think of what the like what because the thing is, like, LA has so much, so many types of cuisine, but it's like hard to like zero in on one specific thing.

Like something that's grown here.

Exactly.

You know, like, um, like, I mean, we have our citrus trees.

Yeah, we've been oranges back in the day, maybe.

Yeah.

avocados, guava cherimoya, yeah, it's a fruit that you see at farmers' markets here.

Here's one for you: McOyster.

Okay,

oh,

pretty good.

I don't know, I don't know about that.

They come shocked on the, you know, they're on the half shell there, or yeah, on the show, or sort of on the half shell.

That's what it is, yeah.

And they got mignonette sauce and they're ready to slurp them down through the drive-through.

And then you get lovely narovirus as well.

wise are you big uh are you a big chia eater because you wanted a chia seed thing earlier i i strictly grow chia i have a homer chia that's what i usually keep my chia to but are you a big chia eater no i'm not like a big chia guy i can't say that's what you wanted today i've kind of become chia pilled i've started doing overnight

yeah charlotte where are you on on chia

i'm i guess i'm anti-chia anti-chia interesting yeah it looks like frog's eggs it does look like frogs it does look like frog's eggs yeah yeah yeah and it's slimy slimy and it gets stuck in your teeth oh right yeah and and but it's fun to grow yoda's hair out with my chia

um that is that is nice when the guy you know from the thing has the green hair

yoda ming uh oh you know you know yoda minge is nice that's that's the

yaddle minge yaddle minge yeah that's the that's the chia pet i have is the yaddle ming it's very rare um stefan sends us kind of a lot of pics i don't know if he sends these to you but he sends us a lot of pics of Yoda's ming.

Is this true, Stefan?

If you ask it, look, send him a text right now.

He'll send you 50 different

AI-generated images of Yoda with big fat pussy lips.

Jesus Christ.

We got to get him on the show.

What a naughty, naughty man.

Any other, here's the issue is that I feel like this has been done so much, like

a local favorite being brought around.

And like like something like the mcrib is like so seasonally timed to when pork prices are you know like that there's i forget what whether whether they're high or low whatever it is when it makes economic sense for them to be doing that brendan told me that it's when china has a pork surplus is what they i don't i don't quite check that but uh it definitely sounds believable um

i got one yeah

charlotte there's a sandwich uh in toronto That's basically just a ham sandwich, and I can't remember the name of it, but it's a famous, it's a famous Toronto treat.

The Toronto treaty?

Yes, the Toronto hammy.

No, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Hold on.

I'm going to find out the name of it.

Oh, what about like a maple thing?

That's Canadian.

Maple kind of fun.

Yeah, like maple is good.

Yeah.

Like a maple milkshake or something.

Maple ice cream is really good.

Pea meal sandwich.

Pea meal sandwich.

Pea meal sandwich.

That is the famous.

That is a famous.

I prefer poop meal.

That's fucking sick.

It's the grossest thing that's been sent in the whole podcast.

Yeah, it's fucking disgusting.

Sorry, I've been hanging out with Jesse too long.

I have, actually.

The P-meal sandwich is one that I haven't seen, but it is just like a ham sandwich, basically.

Yeah.

Ham is great.

I mean, like, the French ham and butter thing.

Oof.

Man, I've never had a Brie and butter croissant.

Money saucer.

Oh, I've never had a Bri and Butter croissant.

Like, I'm sorry, baguette.

A Brian Butter baguette.

That would be fun.

By the way, I don't know if that got picked up by the mics, but Amelia is exiting the studio to let Susser in.

If I let Susser in for some reason, here he is.

He heard us coping about ham.

He heard there was leftover taco meat.

Anyway, Carolyn, I hope we answered your question.

If you have a question or coming up with the World of Chain Restaurants, you can email us at feedback at birdfock.com or leave us a voicemail at 830-goto.

That's 830-463-6844.

Our producer is Emma Erdbrink.

Our associate producer is Amelia Marino.

Our supervising video producer is Casey Donahue.

Our video editor is Mike Dorfman.

Special thanks to Sherlock Crumbs, whoever that was, just mysteriously disappeared out of studio.

Who was apparel and merchandise available in partnership at kinshipgoods.com slash Doughboys.

And to get the Doe Day.

Oh, you want us to think of it?

You want us to think it's different?

It's a whole layer.

Yes, that's what happened.

Okay.

I saw what you put on the hat, man.

It was like a whole thing.

You need to leave the room.

He had to spread some

Doughboys double our weekly bonus episode plus our entire pre-2018 back catalog, subscribe at patreon.com slash doughboys.

Yeah, who is is Sherlock Crombs?

One mystery we'll never solve.

Charlotte McDonnell and Libby Watson, thanks so much for being here.

What's all this then?

My episode where I learned all about UK chain Greggs is out now.

People should listen to that.

But tell everyone again about the podcast and

yeah, yeah, what they should be, where they can listen to it.

Charlotte, you do it.

I have stuff in my throat.

Well, you can listen to it in everywhere you get podcasts, assuming we did it right.

I mean, we've never done a podcast before.

We have just started it.

Honestly, we both probably should have started a podcast a while ago.

But yeah, every week we tackle a different aspect of British culture, a different bit of the UK.

I'm bringing on a guest and

importantly, don't do much research or fact-checking.

It's very silly and funny.

And it's a good time.

And I'm really happy to be doing a podcast with my cool friend Libby.

Yeah, we seem to like each other a lot more than you guys like each other so far.

Did you leave Charlotte off your list of favorite Brits or something?

Yeah, anyway, so thanks so much, Solid.

We covered Greg's, you covered Tesco

with Jesse Farrar, but you're not just covering restaurants, you're covering everything, all things British culture.

Yeah, episode two is about Mr.

Blobby, which is

I'm going to pull up a photo for you.

That's the Doughboys in Britain.

Mr.

Blobby is a beloved children's TV character and also just general TV character in Britain.

And he's a big pink guy with yellow spots, and he looks like this.

Oh, God.

It's an abomination.

And he can only say blobby as well.

He just says blobby, blobby, blobby as he runs around and sort of like knocks into things and ruins people's day.

So it's like Pokemon Rules.

It's very much like Pokemon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I would say that Pokemon is Mr.

Blobby Rules.

I think Mr.

Blobby came first.

Mr.

Blobby came first.

That's true.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I think Nintendo saw that and they were like, we got to do something like this.

Yeah, but we'll cover all kinds of stuff.

Obviously, food is a big thing for both of us, but we'll talk about other stores, other TV shows, you know, stuff from our childhoods, places in the UK.

You know, what's the deal with Cornwall?

I don't know.

We'll find out.

I liked it.

I enjoyed watching The In-Betweeners when I was over in Ireland for a score stretch of time.

Yeah, briefcase wanker is an all-time joke for me.

Briefcase wanker?

Yeah, you wouldn't get it, Wags.

Yeah, kid with a briefcase, they call him Briefcase Wanker.

What else do you need to know?

That's pretty good.

I met the In-Betweeners.

I met the In-Betweeners.

I was hosting

an award at the BAFTAs.

Wow.

Because it was, I was, because I was like, I did a lot of, we're doing the podcast now, and I still do YouTube sometimes.

But back in the day, I was a big old YouTube kid.

And I think YouTube was sponsoring the audience award.

And so they were like, we have to get a YouTuber to present this award at the BAFTAs.

And I was like, it was cool to be just famous enough to present an award of the BAFRAs, but not famous enough to be able to have someone buy a suit for me for it.

So I had to spend like a lot of money just to hand over the award.

I remember one of the in-betweeners like giving me the weakest handshake in the world and just being like, yeah, you're all right.

Well, thanks for the award and then walking off.

I'm sure they're very nice.

But in the moment, I was like, okay, oh, well, I got to be on television.

I call them the wankers, actually, now after I've heard that story.

Wow.

The wankers.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's an ally.

That's right.

That's right.

And also our Patreon.

We should also plug our Patreon.

We are putting out free episodes every week, but patreon.com slash what's all this then for bonus content where it's mostly just me and Charlotte and we're being kind of naughty a lot of the time

saying

some stuff, and we're being rude about people.

I love it.

And maybe we'll talk about Charlotte's interesting past, too.

Wow.

I have a very story to life.

She really does.

It's crazy.

I'm so boring.

Well, we've got two boring guys on our show.

We're very boring.

I think I'm, I think, quite exciting.

I like that guy with the hat before.

I thought he was exciting.

Yeah, he was fun.

Try to get him back.

What's all this then?

Check it out wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'll do it for this episode of Dough Boys.

And until next time, for the Spoon Man, McMitchell, I'm Tiger Weiger.

Happy eating.

And as Shakespeare would say,

I just have a quote.

Let me eat your minge.

To eat minge or not to eat minge?

That is the question.

That was a head gun podcast.