Where Do These Dishes ACTUALLY Come From?
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Caesar salad is from Mexico, damn it, not Italy. You're telling me Olive Garden's out here slanging Mexican food? Si, which means yes in both languages. Come on, Nicole, you know you can't be mixing Mexican with continental. This is a hot dog as a sandwich. Ketchup is a smoothie. Yeah, I put ice in my cereal, so what? That makes no sense. A hot dog is a sandwich. A hot dog is a sandwich. What?

Welcome to our podcast, A Hot Dog is a Sandwich, the show where we break down the world's biggest food debates. I'm your host, Josh Scherer. And I'm your host, Nicole Inaidi. And if you didn't recognize that last line, that was a dramatic reenactment of Luis Guzman playing Radimus, the sous chef, or maybe line cook, from the movie Waiting. One of our favorites. Which is, I think, the greatest food movie ever made. Yeah, why don't we?

Do you know how Trixie and Katya watch movies together? Oh, no. I don't know about that at all. I'm sorry. They do that. And they're really famous podcasters and drag queens. I know who they are, though. And I think we could also do that, but watching Waiting and Clerks and Dogma. Or Red Dawn.

Oh, I was going to say regular movies. Josh Peck and Chris Hemsworth. Oh, no. I was just talking about like regular like slice of life movies. Oh, okay. Like we could do that with that. Oh, like the original Red Dawn in the 80s.

So that's where the communists invade. I know what Red Dawn is. But you don't want to watch it with me still. Because it's not slice of life-y enough. Waiting is slice of life. It's a potential slice of life. But they had to, in the remake with Chris Hemsworth, where his Australian accent, it's really tough. It's peeking through? Yeah, because there's a line in the trailer where he goes like, this is our home. We have to defend it. But he's so Australian that he literally goes,

Come on, this is our harm. Harm. And it's really tough. And Josh Peck is just smoldering. He plays like a hot high school quarterback. It's pretty funny. Nice. Good movie. But they couldn't do Russians because at that time it was like, you know, I don't know, maybe 15, 20 years after the wall fell. So what was it? It was, I believe, North Koreans, which is...

A perennial movie baddie that you can always just sort of throw in there. Yeah. You know, which I think is fun. But that's not what we're talking about today at all. What we're talking about today is where do these dishes actually come from? And this is born from a somewhat organic conversation that we were having. Sure. Because people always like to throw out the fact that, did you know Caesar salad is actually Mexican? And that is a very, very loaded question.

thing to say in my mind yeah and whenever we're talking about the country origin of a dish it becomes a very loaded thing to say yeah because i've said this a lot the idea of the modern sovereign state especially the ones that we know on the globes that we grew up with which of course are always changing shout out to north macedonia and south sudan yeah you know timor-leste uh

A lot of different countries spring up out of a lot of different necessities, but it always gets really complicated with food. So we're going to go through a couple dishes today and talk about all the nuances of where, quote unquote, they are from. So basically, we're going to talk about like, what is it called? Birthright citizenship? Juice soil? Is that what it's called? Juice soil? I don't know what you're talking about. So, you know, whenever like you're born in a country and then you get citizenship online,

of that country when you're born there. And that's a very American thing. We're going to find out if the dishes that we have accumulated are either from, they get citizenship of the country they were born in, or if it's not, if it's just from the people that have made it. And then also how much that actually matters in terms of what we do with it. I have a feeling it's not going to matter at all.

No, I don't think so. I think a lot of this is it's really semantics. It's the way in which people frame foods. You know what I mean? Like when someone asks me, where are you from? I'm always going to say, oh, I'm from L.A.

Yeah. And then it was, no, no, no. Where are you actually from? Do people say that to you? Do people go, where are you actually from? Yeah, of course. I know that's like a common, like, uh, did, was that racist? Like, would you call that racist? No, I, well, I didn't see it through the lens of racism. I would just be like, I'm Persian and I'm Jewish. Yeah. And I'd be like, okay, any other questions?

What do you want to ask? What else do you want to know? But no, I never saw it as like racist. I saw it as genuine curiosity. And maybe that's just the way I see like the world, I guess. Maybe I just don't see it as like, I just don't get defensive like that. I don't know. I've never seen it as like where you act like the word actually doesn't like hurt my feelings, I guess.

Yeah, I've never been where you're actually from because I say I'm from Orange County and people go, oh yeah. Oh yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at that swoop in the hair. For sure, for sure. Caesar salad is a really good one to look at. It's the best one to start off with, yeah. It's the best one because Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana, Mexico. TJ! TJ, baby! Always wanted to go, by the way. You've never been to Tijuana? I have not.

never been to Tijuana. Oh my God. When my sister was like 23, she went to Tijuana and my mom was like, don't go to Tijuana. And I'm like, son, I was like, I'm going to go to Tijuana and have a great time. And she came back unscathed. You go to Senor Frogs, man. You get a hamburguesa. No, I really screwed up. I really screwed up not going when I was younger, but I think I'm going

gonna go. I'm just, me and David are gonna go. You should go. Okay. So Tijuana, I grew up going to Tijuana because when I was living in like San Diego, if you know anything about geography, San Diego and Tijuana are, they're effectively border each other. Are they 90 minutes of like driving? Not even 90. I mean, if you go to the south part of especially San Diego County, like my favorite restaurant in San Diego County, well, there's a couple, but Tuetano Taqueria. It's in a spot called San Isidro, which is San Diego County. It's

You could throw a rock over the border to Mexico. It's literally the last town. And Tijuana is basically the first major city northwest in Mexico. So, like, the point is Tijuana is right across the border from America. And Caesar salad was indeed invented there by Cesare Cardini, a.k.a. Caesar Cardini, who had a restaurant there called Caesar's.

Cardini, it sounds very Italian because he was very Italian. There's this big wave of Italian immigration to the U.S. in the mid to late 1800s after Italian unification, the Rite of Garibaldi, all that stuff. And so they were Italian-American bootleggers who were in California. So they were...

So they were Italian-American. Well, so no, they were Italian. Italian-Italian. But they had been living in San Diego for a long time. Got it. And San Diego still has a little Italy that rules. No way. There's a lot of fun, old-school Italian restaurants in San Diego. And so they open a restaurant there. They're

slinging alcohol, Prohibition gets passed. They're like, yo, we can go. It's a 20-minute drive. Cars were pretty new at the time, but they were like, we can just go across the border in Tijuana. And so they opened up their restaurant in Tijuana, which was an Italian restaurant called Caesar's. And then there's the whole myth of there were like

Navy guys, because Camp Pendleton is a big Navy base that's right by the border. And so the myth is there were some Navy guys that were eating there, and oh, the chef had already left, and they wanted food, and he whipped together a salad with an anchovy dressing and romaine lettuce called Caesar salad. So Caesar salad was invented in Mexico by an Italian chef who had been living in America. Is this dish Italian? Is it American? Is it Mexican? Does it matter? Well, let me think.

Were there similar salad dishes like the Caesar in the Italian food canon? Oh, that's interesting. Like if you are to actually, yeah, go to the origin of how these things are made. So the Caesar dressing, right? It's...

Would you call it an emulsification? Depends. Not always. Well, I've seen videos of the Caesar salad made at Caesars. Like I've seen the dramatic reenactment of it like with the big bowl and all that stuff. And they mash in the bowl and it sometimes turns out as an emulsification. Sometimes it's more of like a oily, saucy, yummy situation. You know what I mean? So I think it depends on who's making it.

But it is egg yolks and olive oil. And cheese and all it. And what's the cheese on it? Parmigiano-Reggiano. I'm sure, but they use any hard cheese. Estoy Mexicano. Well, I'm sure they just use any hard cheese that was there. Got it with cotija. But I'm just, I've never, oh, cotija Caesar sounds good. But I'm trying to think if there's, well, I'm sure those ingredients are clearly Italian in origin, right? Yeah.

Right? I'd say so, yeah. And the lettuce was what? Just like random like

Romaine? Yeah, romaine lettuce. Romaine Roman. Does that have any link to it? I have no idea. I never thought about where romaine lettuce comes from. I mean, think about making a futon. But California was growing the best lettuces in the world at the time. And Mexico. And Mexico, yeah, of course. And so that seems like a pretty native ingredient. But I'm sure they were eating lettuce. Native ingredient. I love this. This is so much more...

I think this is so much more insightful than I thought it was going to be. I was just like, obviously it's Italian, but... I mean, the Caesar dressing, like, it has at least, it sounds like very Western European roots in terms of, like...

at least trying to emulsify oil into egg yolk. The concept of emulsification. Do you put mustard in your Caesar dressing? Is that in the classic Caesar? I don't think it's in the classic Caesar. What do you put in your Caesar dressing? You must make it at home. I always make it at home. What do I do? I take an egg yolk and then I use... I always use a stick blender, by the way. I take egg yolks and anchovies and lemons and then I stream in my olive... half olive oil, half regular oil. Ah, smart. I agree with that. Because I think the olive oil can be a little bit overpowering so I kind of want to mellow it out a little bit and then I add like a...

small, like literally half of a teaspoon of Dijon, just for good measure, salt and pepper. Lemon? Fresh lemon? I said lemon. You said lemon? I think I said lemon. Run the tape. No, I'm just kidding. I'm pretty sure I said lemon, but yeah, there's always lemon. Garlic? Do you do fresh grated? I do four cloves of garlic. Four cloves of garlic? That's a lot of garlic. It's a lot of garlic. I cheat. I cheat my Caesars. I start with pre-made mayonnaise.

And then I add an egg yolk and olive oil just to give it that homemade appeal. Yeah. And a little bit of flavor. And then Dijon grated like one clove, depends how much I make, but one clove of grated garlic, tons of fresh cracked pepper. And then I use straight fish sauce instead of anchovies. Anchovies weren't in the original recipe. They weren't? No. What did they use in the original recipe? Worcestershire.

No way. Worcestershire. And then Alex Cardini, Caesar's brother, he used whole anchovies and he claims that he actually invented it and he called it the aviator salad because they were like Navy pilots. And then Caesar won out over Alex's aviator salad. So it could have been called aviator salad dressing. Well, Worcestershire isn't that anchovy? Yeah, but there's like fermented anchovy in Worcestershire and that's why I just use fish sauce.

Because I don't want to deal with chopping up anchovies, whatever. Yeah. But anyways, it sounds like all of these things are somewhat Western European techniques. However...

Have you ever had enchiladas suizas? Yes, I have. You know what that means, right? Swiss enchiladas. Swiss enchiladas. I think it's because of the cheese they use, right? They use Swiss cheese. It's just cream. It's cream. It's dairy. And so the enchiladas suizas are in like a cream sauce, which dairy is not native to Mexico. Like same as flour that was brought over by Spaniards. There weren't cows in Mexico? I don't believe there were cows in Mexico. How do they make cheese? I think there were...

They didn't make cheese for a long, long time until I mean, it was colonized in, you know, 1490s. Right. And then 1500s. And so I don't believe there was cheese in Mexico before that. A lot of the native proteins were like Cabrito, which is goat. And then like Turkey, like Turkey is. Pavo. Pavo. Pavo. Turkey is straight up indigenous to like Mexico. And that's how it spread around the world. Yeah. And so like.

Even if you look at dishes like enchiladas suizas or like pescado veracruzano. Have you ever had that? Is it the half and half? No, no. Pescado veracruzano. So Veracruz is, I believe, in like the east, like near the Gulf of Mexico. But it has a bunch of olives in it. I'm looking at Mexico. It's like a fish with like a sauce of like tomatoes and olives, which reads very, could be Italian, could be Spanish, could be Greek.

but it is like very definitively Mexican because the Spaniards brought olives there. So like those dishes, despite having very European ingredients, those are like decidedly Mexican.

Right? Well, when we go to Mexican restaurants, do we see Caesar salad on the menu? We do because we're in L.A. No, no, no. But this is a funny thing you see on menus. What? You'll see a Mexican Caesar salad. That's true. With tortilla cheese. Which will have like red tortilla strips, tortilla cheese, sometimes like a pico equivalent with some like tomatoes or some sort of like, you know, jalapeno on there. Frick. Maybe a couple kernels of corn. Frick. Which I think is really funny. Yeah.

And so where do we end up with Caesar salad? I'm going to say Caesar salad is an Italian dish, period, point blank. Italian dish. Do you consider like chicken parmesan to be an Italian dish? I think it's Italian-American. I would consider Caesar salad to be…

like the Italian-American dish alongside things like spaghetti and meatballs, chicken parm, fettuccine alfredo, and that's another one. Do you consider, well, Mexico, do you consider Mexico to be like American? Do I consider Mexico to be American? Yeah, I mean, it's North America. It's North America. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anything, and it's like, yeah, from like Tierra del Fuego to the Yukon Territory, those are all just American. The Americas. The Americas. The Americas.

I think when you say American, we have to have a good faith reading that we're talking about United States of America. Okay, but you consider that a United States of America Italian dish? Yes. Caesar salad? Yes. I think they were vacationing. They were in Tijuana. They weren't vacationing. They were making money. They were vacationing, but I'm saying it was a short jaunt. They were going to stay there

because of prohibition. But also, if like any Mexican person wants to claim Caesar salad as being Mexican, if you take tremendous pride in that, do it, man. Whatever. There's a lot of great Mexican dishes to really latch onto, though, other than Caesar salad. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of ensalada de nopal, you know. Yeah, I think that our lovely Italian brothers that were hanging out in Tijuana just made a great salad.

But I don't think that it's a Mexican dish. Just because it was made in Mexico, because it was echo in Mexico, it doesn't mean that it is Mexican. Did you own one of those sweatshirts growing up? Yeah. You buy it at the Venice? Well, mine said made in Lake Tahoe. Nice, nice, nice.

Yeah. Even when you look at what is a Mexican dish and what isn't, you look at something like enchiladas suizas, right? Which enchiladas, like, literally date back thousands of years. Totally. Like, dipping tortillas, which are about 10,000 years old. Like, we're talking Aztec, Toltec, Olmec empires in some sort of Chile paste. Chiles were used a lot medicinally as well as in food. Literally for stuff like pain management. But, like...

That's thousands upon thousands of years old. And so that predates any like modern conception of what Mexico is. Yeah. You know, a lot of that is dating back to say like Oaxacan foods. Then to even consider enchiladas, suizas to be Mexican alongside dishes that are literally 10,000 years older than that. Even there's a fun gap in there to be explored. Well, just because something's been around for 100 years now at this point, that doesn't like negate the fact that it's...

from the place, right? But I don't know. Well, I'm making the claim that it is an Italian-American dish now. Yeah, it is. Does time have any factor in all of this? Because there's a lot of different... Correct, yeah. I think what we're skirting around is the A word, which I think everybody in food kind of hates. Authentic? I hate the word authentic.

I think it's a very tough line to go down. I don't know. I mean, the concept of authenticity in food is really tough, and I don't think we're going to solve it in this podcast, but we can definitely, like, dig through. Chicken parmesan predates carbonara.

And that's fine. That's the craziest thing. But how many people would say chicken parm is a quote-unquote inauthentic dish and carbonara is an authentic dish? Well, I don't think people dive that deep into food. I think we do because we enjoy it and it's our jobs and there's value in it. But I don't think people are like, hey, let's go get Italian food. They're going to be like, I want to eat…

authentic Italian food from Sicily, from Rome. From Sbarro. I don't think people like care that much. I want the strombol with the coppa. Yeah, give me that stuff. Like, again, you can't like constantly be like that particular about how you want to eat food, in my opinion. You kind of just need to just go with it. Yeah, I think it's fun to BS about though, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

But for me, I think Caesar salad's Italian-American, period. I think it's about once every two weeks, I will make a slightly healthier version. I do it in the oven because I don't need the oil. Chicken parm? Yeah, I'll do like a chicken parm and then a Caesar salad on the side. And that's like the greatest combination of foods to me, man. French fries and then a Diet Coke. And you got a good meal. What a time. If you ask me. What a time.

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I am

I am craving a big slice of pizza and an ice cold Pepsi for lunch today. Nicole, what if I told you you have the power to make that happen? I do? Yeah, and you know how I know that? Because you're real, real smart. That's one of the reasons. The other reason is that I had the same dream that you had, except this was a couple days ago. We basically live parallel lives, but I was craving an ice cold Pepsi and a big old slice of pizza, and I was at the airport, and I was coming back.

to LA. And so I really needed some food to get me through that last leg of the journey. And I was on the plane and I opened my pizza and the flight attendant came by and I got the free chips and I got an ice cold Pepsi Zero Sugar. And I will never forget this borderline spiritual experience of eating that spicy from the pepperoni, salty, chewy pizza, going to the crispy chips and then resetting my palate with ice cold, refreshing Pepsi Zero Sugar, that

perfect amount of acid to just cut through all that fat in your palate and then back to the chewy pizza, crispy chip, refreshing Pepsi, chewy pizza, crispy chip, refreshing Pepsi, and it made the flight so, so much better. My lunch was absolutely saved. I love story time with you, Josh. It's my favorite. But moral of the story is, Pepsi makes your food taste better. Everybody knows that. So grab a Pepsi Zero Sugar for your next meal as food deserves Pepsi. Carla only has the best tech. Can't connect to network. But she didn't have the best internet.

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Where does like popularity in terms of who does it best come into play with this? That's great. So there's this question of croissants. Croissants? So what is the name of all like laminated pastry? Even like in French. Is it Viennois? Viennoiserie. Viennoiserie. Viennoiserie means like stuff from Vienna. Austria. And so when you're talking about like croissants, go ahead. Austria. Was Austria hungry?

Would have been Austria-Hungary at the time, yeah. Okay, cool. I believe. The Habsburgs? What were they doing? Ask Keith. Dude, I... Ask Keith Habsburger. He probably knows. Fair point. I kind of smoke. I got a five on the AP European history test. I was not an AP. I was not an APush. I was not an APush. Bang, who was Catherine de' Medici? Oh, she was... Bang. The Bloody Lady? Bang, what is the dual papacy of Avignon? Oh, I don't know. Sorry.

Who are the Bourbons? I don't know any of this. I don't know any of this. I really don't. So like croissants, right, we would say are... French. Huh.

100%. They are French. 100%. But if you, like, go through the actual history, and there's a lot of weird myths about this, like people smuggling them through tunnels during, like, a Prussian war. Who had time to smuggle? Well, it was probably because they got it from the smuggling of matzah. You know what I mean? It's cool whenever you smuggle a piece of bread. Smuggle bread, people like that. And then there's this thing about the crescent shape was, like, a dig at the Ottoman Empire. Oh! You heard that myth? Yes, I did.

You know, there's a lot of this stuff. It's all probably not true, but like a lot of those origins go back to Vienna. But if you look at the actual recipe, and I've never been to Vienna to eat a croissant myself, and I'm sure… Have I been to Vienna? I went to the Austrian Tyrol. I've been to Austria, but I've never been to Vienna. Did you eat Viennoiserie there? I'm sure I did. It was a little bit of a blur. Okay.

I get that. A little bit of a blur. Yeah, it was a Contiki tour. I was with a bunch of, speaking of Australians, I was with a lot of Australians. Australians love Contiki tours. They really do. They do. So I don't really remember. I'm sure I had a croissant here or there, but nothing like legit or like insanely memorable, obviously. Yeah. The OG croissant recipe. I believe Max Miller actually made this on Tasting History, but it was not...

like the French croissant. Was it laminated? It was technically laminated. But a poor man's lamination. It's a poor man's lamination. It's like a crescent. It's more like a crescent roll. Crescent roll. You read a crescent roll and you're like, oh, that's 18% of the way to a croissant. Oh my God. Crescent rolls are the bomb diggity. It's great, but like a proper French croissant, right? Like you, when you bite into it and the

Flakes just explode and there's that perfect crispiness yielding to chew. Like the OG Austrian croissant was then perfected by the French and now the French are like, yo, this is our stuff, bro. Yeah. And a lot of that did happen because of cultural transference from people marrying each other and war and all that. Yeah. But like croissants, like French or Austrian.

French. French, right? They just did it so good. That they can claim it. They can claim it. Yeah, and I think they're close enough to each other where it's like, you know, you can give them the W. Give them the W. Give them the W. You know what I think is weird about the Olympics? No, what is it? So like, everyone's like, US won all these medals and all that and like, suck it France, you only won that many. It's a much closer comparison to compare US medals to like all of Europe medals.

Because they're much closer in size than the U.S. to any European country. Like all of Europe is equal to all of the United States? Yeah. In terms of shape and size? And like we have 50 different countries inside of our country. Yeah, yeah, we do. You know what I mean? Like they kind of got 50 countries inside their big country. Continent? I don't acknowledge continents as existing. Okay, what's wrong with you? Why is Europe and Asia two different continents? One, even if you count Asia. They should be called Eurasia. No, no, no. They should be nothing. Pangaea, Laos.

continents don't need to exist why why do they exist when you say Asia when people go like but Asian food there's over six like 60% of the world lives in Asia and there's like not that much are they talking about Kazakhstan food correct are they talking about Sri Lankan food you know but but

But anyways, that's what I think should happen in the Olympics. So, go ahead. The best croissant I've... Are you okay? Yeah. The best croissant I've ever had was at Aristocult Bakery in San Francisco. And I just need everybody to know that. If you're ever in San Francisco, go to Aristocult Bakery and just get their regular croissant and then also get their almond croissant because there's no food better than an almond croissant.

almond croissant. Yeah, almond croissant. I like it more than panna cioccolata. I do too. I'm just not a chocolate guy. Also the cold chocolate inside the croissant. I'm a chocolate girl but I don't care for chocolate in my panna. I don't care for croissants with chocolate. I have like a pistachio. I think pistachio is the best nut. Ever? I think it's the best nut ever. Ever? Is that a new podcast? What's the best nut?

We get this nut. Yeah, let's get this nut. No, I think pistachio is the best. I have the pistachio croissant with some rose petals on it from this Lebanese bakery. Tom Holland. Zendaya's boyfriend. Zendaya's boyfriend. Spider-Man? I just know him as Zendaya. He wasn't in Challengers, but I thought he could have been. Well, yeah. He's like rat hot. Tom Holland was in an interview where somebody asked him if British food is better than American food, and Tom Holland just goes like,

well, what's American food to you? And the guy's just like, uh, pizza? And Tom's like...

Italian. The guy's like, French fries? Well, no, I guess French fries aren't. He's like, yeah, it's actually Belgian, but also kind of French. Then the guy goes, hamburgers? And Tom just goes, mate, it's literally named after a city in Germany. There is no American food. Germany. I'm not doing a good Tom Holland impression, but I think this is a really good example of something that fully, fully belongs to America.

I think there has been enough epigenetic shift from the original Hamburg steak. They probably didn't say steak like I did. But there was like...

The Hamburg steak that it is named after, right, is so far divorced. The original recipes I think you're getting from, was it a Hannah Glass cookbook in the 1700s? Okay. For the original Hamburg steak that was like you mix ground pork with wine and warm spices and then stuff it into a bung and then smoke it over a fire. It's like a sausage. And press it out. It's a sausage, right? Yeah.

And so that like then comes to America and they're using beef instead of pork because a lot of German migrants started raising beef in Texas. That's part of the origin story of Texas barbecue. And so in Texas, they start raising beef. So they start making the Hamburg steak with beef and then they start adding less and less spices to it as people wanted more purity in their food with a good American product. And then I believe Delmonico's Steakhouse –

is the first one to serve a Hamburg steak on their menu, and then finally somebody puts it on a piece of toast. You know, Louis' lunch is credited for it. I think there were some predecessors. But the point is, like, the original Hamburg steak in Germany, which was already a very small, unimportant dish, came to America and was perfected and codified in a way that is then spread out through the entire world, making the hamburger uniquely American. So I think there has to be enough epigenetic shift to make it.

And enough popularity. I agree with you 100%. And I think France did it with the croissant. I think we did it with the hamburger. Yeah. I agree with you 100%. No notes. That was fantastic. No notes, Josh. I will not be pushing back on anything you said regarding the hamburger. That's a pretty clear-cut case. There's one more. There's one more. There's one more that I'm fascinated by. What? I'm fascinated by. Utterly fascinated. Chop suey. Not chop suey. A different Chinese dish.

Um, oh my god, let me think about it. Um, yakisoba. Is that Japanese? I don't know. Yaki's definitely a Japanese. Orange chicken, man. Orange chicken. Orange chicken's American. I think it's American Chinese.

Does that make it Chinese? Does that make it American? So chicken parmesan is to Italian Americans as orange chicken is to American Chinese. I think I would agree with that. I think orange chicken is probably more similar to...

I don't know if I'm going to regret this. I'm going to say orange chicken is more similar to... It's, I believe, based in a Hunanese dish called citrus peel chicken. Okay, yes. I think it's more similarly based to its original Chinese roots than chicken parmesan is...

To its Italian roots. But you're calling it an American dish, even though it's closely related to a Hunanese, is that what you're saying? Hunanese, yeah. Hunanese dish. And it was invented in Hawaii by, I believe, a Chinese-American dude. Okay. I think, yeah, Chinese-American is just a good descriptor for it.

But does that make it American or does that make it Chinese or neither? What do you mean? American Chinese people exist. I know American. I was not negating the existence of American Chinese people. I have at least one Chinese American friend. Yeah, yeah. Any more? Any more instances of you loving? Yeah, I got a lot of friends, you know? Well, I mean, yeah. I find orange chicken to be a Chinese American dish because it was made by a Chinese American person in America.

Because they got the dish from their Chinese roots. Spam musubi American? Yes. Yes, it is. What about poke? Is poke American? Yeah. It's Hawaiian. It's Hawaiian. That's tough to call poke American. What else would it be? Well, it depends on your viewpoint of like... So like poke really comes from very like indigenous...

cooking techniques for native Hawaiian people, right? Sure. It's like it was a method of preserving the fish. And then like America comes in and like, you know. Hello, you are part of us now. We own you now. Yeah. So you call that an American dish? That's wild. Isn't pokey related to Lomo Lomo?

Lomi Lomi? Lomi Lomi? Yeah, so poke means to cube and then lomi means to bash. Okay, so poke... Lomi means massage. But is the poke that we are eating now in 2024 the same poke that we were eating in... They were eating in 1951, was it?

Before we got it? Before we got him? We sort of like annexed it in like the 1800s with the gold plantations. Oh, really? Yeah, super messed up history behind it. Brutal. Yeah, I know. They just allowed a fruit dictator from America to rule. I did a project on Queen Lilo Kolani, actually. Yeah. I know a

No apush, but a little bit. So no, the poke we eat now that we would think of, right? You go to like a poke bowl shop and they're putting the sweet soy and the sriracha and the mayo on it, which is its own thing. Sure. No, that's actually influenced a lot by Japanese both fishing technique and culinary technique.

So the soy sauce being big, that's coming from Japan. Also a lot of Koreans and a lot of Filipinos. But I believe calling it shoyu even is from Japan. Got it. Using the long line caught ahi tuna, that is all Japanese. So you get like raw ahi tuna with shoyu and furikake and you would call that American? Hmm.

Would I? Well, again, so the name Poke is a Hawaiian name. Correct. Poke is a native Hawaiian word. But in 2024, going to a Poke Bowl shop, is that American?

I mean, there's a lot of white ladies, you know, in LA working the counter, you know, signing up new poke bowl and frozen yogurt shops. You ever go to that poke and frozen yogurt place? Yeah. Now that's American. You put it with fro-gurt, that then becomes very American. But let's like, do you consider something like a native Hawaiian dish, especially one…

That's pretty freaking American, right? I don't know. What's more American than annexing a country and annexing islands, taking their food, having another ethnic group come, make it good, and then put it in a strip mall? And then add a random accent over the E in the word. Is that not the most American thing you can think of? Yeah, it's tremendously American. It's incredibly depressing. Well, not depressing. It's messed up. Of course it's messed up. We can acknowledge that it's messed up.

From where it came and where it is now, the modern poke bowl that you get in 2024 in a strip mall, scooped by Bethany. Scooped by Bethany. Is quite owned by... Is this Bethany Frankel? Is she doing skinny girl poke? Owned by... So Bethany scooping it. Yeah, I would say that that got influences from Japanese cuisine, but its name and origin and predecessor is Hawaiian.

I think it's American at this point. And then you're mixing it with a Spanish emulsification in mayonnaise and then the Vietnamese American made with Mexican grown pepper sauce sriracha and putting that on every bite. Is sriracha American? I think sriracha is... I think it's Vietnamese.

The founder is Vietnamese, but he's using Mexican red jalapeno peppers named after a Thai island. The Thai island, they don't like sriracha. They don't like American sriracha. They like sriracha paneer, it's the Thai sriracha.

And so I don't know. I don't know. None of this matters. We all eat food. We all enjoy it. But I think knowing the history of it is really, really fun. And I think paying a certain homage to the history, I think it's nice to know it. Game recognized game. Real recognized real. Game recognized game. You ever see that episode of The Simpsons where Marge gets a... I don't. I've never seen an episode of The Simpsons all the way through. Can I just tell you about it real quick? Marge buys a Middle Eastern food truck. Oh, no way.

No way. And they're eating the food and she goes, hmm, what is it? Falafel? And the guy just goes, crispy balls. Oh, and what is tahini? Flavor sauce. And that has been burned in my mind. So we're all just out here trying to eat crispy balls and flavor sauce and knowing a little bit about where it came from.

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All right. Before we get into your opinions, you're like casseroles. We want to read your opinions about us. This is everybody's third favorite segment on the show. Reviewer reviewer, we try and goad you into reviewing us on Apple podcast reviews because we think it might help in some way. Oh, yeah. This is a review from H.T. Sparrow. They gave us five stars and said, a hot dog is an epiphany. It's a long boy. It's a long boy.

Pause.

I've seen the elephant seals in San Simeon. You have? Mating season? Oh, yeah. Bro, brutal. Disgusting. Sounds crazy. Where I learned the birds and the bees. It's awful. Sounds crazy. Back in. You look down and see that you're dangerously low on gas, so you pull over into the small town on the route back home so you don't get stranded.

After pumping, you decide to get dinner at a local Firestone Grill knockoff. This person's got to go. Pause. Pause. Go ahead. Never been to Firestone Grill. You never been? What is it? Super popular. It's in San Luis Obispo. They make tri-tip sandwiches and other barbecue adjacent things, Santa Maria style barbecue. But it's like a very Cal Poly San Luis Obispo haunt. And it's good. It's not like the most mind-blowing food in the world, but they do really good work. What's the comparison to here? Um.

No comparison because they do Santa Maria style. Have you ever go to Handy Market in Burbank? They do the weekend barbecues. No. You've never been to Handy Market? Yeah. I've been. I don't hang out in Burbank on the weekends. I'm here Monday through Friday. Burbank rips. I love this place. I'm on the west side. Well, Handy Market is a comparison. Continue. Your $9 grilled cheese. Disgusting. Self-service. Non-existent. The only piece of media downloaded on your device is...

Pause. Pause.

That's kind of what we talked about with this podcast that we just did, you know? You just like care about the food you eat a little bit more. It sort of opens up the world to you in certain ways. And there's no like moralism to it. It's just, it's very interesting. It might spark a little bit more joy next time you're eating some orange chicken. Unpause. Back in. I cannot recommend this show enough and I also cannot stress enough how bad that grilled cheese was. Why do places like that insist on making grilled cheeses with brown bread? Pause. I agree with that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brown, we're talking about like

pumpernickel rye situation yeah or maybe it's probably like a seven seed multi-green f that f that in the a i think if you're doing like a fig jam kind of sweet no no no you're being silly you're being silly then yeah back if it's a panini that's just italian for well multiple sandwiches panino is italian for a sandwich if it's a panini i'm down a panini a panini back in

Thanks so much for everything you do. That's five stars. This is great creative writing. If you don't make it in the marine biology field, God forbid. Some people say, you know, keep it light, keep it tight. Not me. Give me some long-winded imaginative storytelling. I could imagine myself eating that grilled cheese right now. How crazy. Descriptive...

I was in a creative writing class in like ninth grade, let me tell you. I had the time of my life and this kind of inspired me to get back into it, you know? Logos, Petos, Ethos, Athos, Portos, Tartanian, all of those, man. I'm naming my kids all of those. All of those. How many names was that, eight? That was great. Well, I'll tell you. Yeah, explain. You know what that means? It's time for Opinions Are Like Casserole's.

So logos, ethos, and pathos. Those are feelings. Those are the three tenets to good writing. I know what they are. Yeah. But then I said Athos, Porthos, which are two of the three musketeers. D'Artagnan? D'Artagnan wasn't a musketeer, but he was like their familiar. He was like their aide-de-camp. Familiar. Yeah. So that was six names? Yeah. There's another one. Athos, Porthos, Porthos.

Like Aragorn? Aragorn. Look up the Three Musketeers names, but play a thing, play an opinion.

Hello, people who rock on hot dog as a sandwich. This is Pam calling from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And something I just discovered, I've never been a string cheese eater, but I'm trying it for a low carb day. Wow. And I was biting it and one of my coworkers said I was eating it like a monster. You got to eat it like pull off the strings. Otherwise, it tastes too intense. And I totally agree with that. I'm not sure if that's something that, you know.

is known or you agree with or still don't like string cheese, but you know, definitely is way less assaulting the string form. Thanks. Love the pod. Bye. This is an age old debate. If you do not string your cheese, if you're a chomper on the string of cheese, does that make you a bad person? Are you a chomper or a stringer? What are you?

When's the last time you had a string cheese, huh? It's been a long time. I don't eat string cheese. I eat string cheese every day. I don't snack on... You eat string cheese every day. I eat string cheese almost every day. How... I don't have a lot of nails, and so it's tough for me to string it properly. It has nothing to do with your nails. You're making excuses for yourself. You can just use your thumb to just peel it.

You're being antagonistic about it. You're being a little silly. What's your string cheese method? Well, it depends. If it's a regular mozzarella cheese stick, I will be shred. I'm a shredder. Yeah. I'm a stringer. If it's a different kind, like say a cheddar or a... But you still consider that string cheese, a cheddar string cheese. A cheddar cheese, yes. That exists? I feel like that didn't exist in the time when I was eating string cheese. Of course. They had cheddar cheese sticks.

But a cheese stick does not string cheese make. Oh, really? I consider any sort of cheese that's in stick form to be string cheese. I don't believe that would be the case. Well, it is for me. Interesting. But do they market? Alternative facts. Go here. Okay, talk to the owner. Let me look stuff up.

So when it's something like a pepper jack or a Colby Jack or a cheddar cheese, you can't really string it. So I just bite it. Well, you could string it, but I don't think it would be efficient enough. So I just bite into those. But if it's a mozzarella cheese stick or a string cheese, I will be stringing it. I will be stringing it.

Do you want me to keep talking? This is fascinating. So I'm looking up the taxonomy of string cheese here. So, you know, Frigo Cheeseheads? Here, I'll show you the logo. Like, you recognize that. Of course. Do you remember when they put the sauce in the cheese? Remember when they put the sauce in the cheese? What? Google it, Google it. The sauce in the cheese. They literally put the sauce inside of the string cheese.

Anybody else remember this? Maggie, come on. No. Is there proof on the internet that this happened? Oh my God, they were called stuffsters.

They were called Sorrento Stuffed Stirs. I didn't make it up in my head. It's real. I've never heard of it. This is like when they came out with the peanut butter and the jelly in the same jar. Like this is the same. Goober. My mom never let me have those. I had just two different jars. Shella never let me live. Stringheads, which to me is the preeminent string cheese brand. Okay. Which when you say string cheese, we're talking about ultra low moisture mozzarella, which is what makes it good for a high protein snack because low fat, low moisture, a lot of protein in there. V.

They sell a variety pack of like cheddar marbled Colby Jack and mozzarella. But they call them strings, swirls, cheddar. So even the most...

dominant brand of string cheese does not consider a cheddar cheese steak to be string cheese. Because the stringiness is very unique to that type of cheese. You see it in ultra low moisture mozzarella. You see it in like Oaxaca, Queso Oaxaca. Queso Oaxaca, yeah, sure. It's the best string cheese. You ever see the braided one with the nigella seeds in there?

I love that string cheese. I think that's like Armenian or something. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's also stringy. That's also very stringy. If you just want to chomp it, I was eating something the other day. I can't remember what it was, but I likened it to a guinea pig chewing on a wooden bar to file their teeth down. Was it a pear? Was it an unripe pear? I remember what it was. No, there was a new candy that Spork put in the free thing that was called a mellow cream. And I was like, that sounds great, but it just tastes like hard candle wax.

So it was like if you had the worst candy corn you've ever had. And I love candy corn. Was it shaped like a pumpkin? No, it was shaped like maple leaves, I think. Or different leaves, but they were multicolored. The point is, if you're somebody that wants that hard, hard texture and a nice salty bite that you can chew through, great. If you want somebody that wants to increase the surface area and string it out and you like that texture. But I truly believe there's no right or wrong way to eat a string cheese. I think you can do whatever you want. It's a free country. I love mellow creams.

What? I love mellow creams. The hard candle wax ones? I love them so much. Well, there's a whole bucket of them over there. Oh my god, I'm so excited. I'm going to go eat afterwards. I'm excited for you, man. Yeah, boy! Next opinion, please. Hi, Josh. Hi, Nicole. Hi. My name is Devereaux. I'm from Indianapolis, Indiana. I just wanted to give you my opinion, my opinion.

Opinion is grilled cheese sandwiches are good with bacon and sweet Thai chili sauce. Yes. And my husband also likes to eat his buffalo or barbecue wings with cottage cheese. Oh. Thanks. Okay. With cottage cheese? Yeah. Oh, that's fun. I like both.

of these opinions. These are both good. These are both good. These are both very good. Very good opinions. You know what this is? This is going to be borderline offensive. Stay with me. Stay with me. I feel like these are us in opinions. A little bit. I'm saying, what was that movie? It may or may not have had Billy Bob Thornton in it, but like a farmer. Sling Blade?

No, not the bling bling. No, it was like Rocket Man, like a farmer builds a rocket. I never saw it. It was kind of this great example of somebody with a will to do something and a lot of intelligence, but didn't have the formal training to do it. I feel like that's what both of these are.

You know? What do you mean? These are both too very... I know, I said it's borderline offensive. I'm so sorry. Yeah, you're calling them farmers making rockets? No, no, no, no, no. Because hear me out, hear me out, hear me out. The sweet chili sauce and bacon in a grilled cheese, like I make my own like caramelized onion bacon, like caramelized onion chipotle bacon jam. That takes like

an hour to make, you know? So putting that in a grilled cheese lot. You're calling yourself a rocket scientist of food right now. Yes. No, I'm calling ourselves professionals who have spent, you know, over a decade now in this profession making things from scratch, all that. You're right. You're getting 80% of the way there with high sweet chili sauce and bacon. That's just as good. Sure. You know, similar with if you were to make some sort of like, I don't know, I guess whipped ricotta on a wing sounds weird, but like the cottage cheese makes a lot of sense on a wing for me.

Sure, me too. It's something very ranch or blue cheese adjacent, but you're getting a little bit of extra protein, a little bit of extra texture on that. Yeah. You know? Great. I think if Josh and I were two foods, he would be buffalo wings with cottage cheese and I would be grilled cheese with bacon and sweet chili sauce. So I see myself in you and I hope you can see yourselves in us.

Sorry I said a defensive thing that she kind of called you a farmer making a rocket. Was that perverted what I just said? But they made a movie about the farmer making a rocket. The Astronaut Farmer. It was called The Astronaut Farmer? Yes. Oh, well.

Rocket Man. What about the astronaut drillers? It's probably called Rocket Man in Nigeria. They have cool movie titles in different countries. Like Mission Impossible. Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging in the US. The original book was Angus Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging. Because I read all the books and I loved them so much. I loved best. Love it. Love it. Really, really framed the way that I...

thought about boys hi um my name is phoenix i got bullied a lot at school for this but i just like need it to be out there because it doesn't seem like a lot of people know about it but thank you for sharing your peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches yes don't just try it before don't hate it right away i do i gotta go i'm embarrassed

Phoenix, you're from Louisville, Kentucky. Wait, wait. Can I tell you something? My dream was always to name my firstborn child Phoenix. But that's not happening anymore because that's just not happening. But I love it. Is it a reference to Conchita Verst's 2015 Eurovision winning song? No, I know that you thought that that was where it was from. I just think it's a beautiful name. It is a beautiful name. Beautiful unisex name. That's a beautiful opinion. I would rather...

I would rather be in a room with every single girl that has ever bullied me instead of eat that sandwich. Tell you what, I'd rather be in a room with every single girl that's bullied you too. You know?

Every girl that's ever bullied me sounds like a better time than eating the sandwich. I'm sorry, Phoenix. I am knocking it before I try it. Okay, so I've had this before. This is a very Southern thing. I don't know where you're from, but high school girlfriend, family, Louisville, Kentucky, they made me this for the first time. But their sandwich was crunchy peanut butter, mayonnaise, and sliced banana. And that is a perfect combination because peanut butter, mayonnaise...

Both deceptively salty. Peanut butter is quite salty. It's not sweet. Some is still sweetened, but very salty. The banana to me is where it really ties in, but still peanut butter and mayonnaise is a good combination. I think you can one up it. Phoenix, try crunchy peanut butter, bananas, and mayonnaise, white bread. Let me know how you like it. That's a great opinion. I knew a guy who used to eat crunchy peanut butter, honey, and red onion sandwiches. Hi, Brandon. Yeah.

Well, on that note, thank you so much for stopping by a hot dog and a sandwich. We've got new audio episodes every Wednesday. Video comes out on Sunday. Yeah, if you want to be featured on Opinions or like Casseroles, hit us up at 833-DOGPOD1. The number again is don't, hold on. The number is 833-DOGPOD1. I heard your mouth open. Did my mouth open? Yeah, you went, you went, and I heard it. And I'm like, ah, not yet. And for more Mythical Kids, you can check out the other videos on Jeff's YouTube channel. We'll see you all next time. Bye.

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