Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster - Ep 66: Louis Theroux

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

Louis Theroux meets a genie and a maître d’ – now that’s a documentary we’d like to see. The filmmaker and author spends a weird weekend in the dream restaurant.Louis Theroux’s book ‘Gotta Get Theroux This’ is out now in paperback – buy it hereListen to Louis’s podcast, ‘Grounded with Louis Theroux’, on BBC Sounds, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcastsFollow Louis Theroux on Twitter @louistheroux and Instagram @officiallouistherouxRecorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive Productions.Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design) and Amy Browne (illustrations).Follow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial.And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show.Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, listeners of the Off Menu podcast. It is Ed Gamble here from the Off Menu podcast. I have a very exciting announcement. I have written my first ever book. I am absolutely over the moon to announce this. I'm very, very proud of it. Of course, what else could I write a book about? But food. My book is all about food. My life in food. How greedy I am. What a greedy little boy I was. What a greedy adult I am. I think it's very funny. I'm very proud of it. The book is called Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy. And it's coming out this October, but it is available to pre-order now, wherever you pre-order books from. And if you like my signature, I've done some signed copies,

which are exclusively available from Waterstones. But go and pre-order your copy of Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy now. Please? Ooh, look at the steam coming off that podcast. Give a little blow and crack on. Welcome to the Off Menu podcast. Oh, look at the steam coming off that podcast. James A. Caster here. That's Ed Gamble who said that first. Hello. Yes, it was me. It's true. Welcome to the Off Menu podcast where myself and James speak to a special guest. And what do we ask them, James? We ask them to name their favourite ever. Start a main course dessert, side dish and drink. And this week's guest is Louis Theroux. Yes, actual Louis Theroux.

Very exciting to have him in the dream restaurant. Slightly worried he's going to ask some difficult questions. Don't answer any of his questions, Ed. Oh, but he's so disarming. He's so disarming and he leaves gaps to answer. And then I'm going to tie myself up in knots and say something incriminating. Exactly. So just keep your mouth shut. Okay. Don't answer any of his questions. I guarantee to you, I will keep my mouth shut. Thank you, Ed. But listen, hey, if Louis Theroux picks a secret ingredient that we deem to be unacceptable, we will kick him out of the restaurant. That's the rules every single week. And this week, the secret ingredient is tarragon, tarragon, tarragon. Now, I don't

mind tarragon in some things. My mum makes a dish called chicken tarragon, which is very nice. But in other things, tarragon is unacceptable. I'd never eat raw tarragon, for example. It tastes too aniseed-y and I don't like aniseed. We've covered this before. Yes. And I don't know what it is. Okay, so it's tarragon. If Louis Theroux says tarragon, I think it's disgusting. James does not know what it is. He will be removed from the restaurant. But before we dive into the off-menu menu of Louis Theroux, James, we have some exciting news. Do we not? Uh, Ed, does the word merch mean anything to you? It sure does. How about undice? Yes, and put those together. And what do you get? Undice merch. And we are releasing our own line of

merchandise, of course. We're releasing t-shirts. We're releasing tote bags. We're releasing mugs. All with fantastic designs on them. We have asked four of our favourite designers to do designs for these t-shirts. And for the rest of the merch, we've got brilliant artists. Let's go through them, James, because I want to tell people what they can expect. So we've got four different brilliant t-shirts. Lucy Moore, who's a brilliant artist, has done you as a genie, and me as the major D of the restaurant. It's a wonderful design. There's a little lamp on there. I've got blue skin on right in the menu with my hands. I've got an orange apron on, and you have a very lovely jawline and an orange little bow tie. Yes, I do. So that's

available for purchase. Because I love heavy metal, one of my favourite artists in the world, Ian Sellar, has done a heavy metal design. He's done like the off-menu logo, but in a black metal style thing. I'm in a shroud. I'm sacrificing you on a cheeseboard. It's amazing. I absolutely love it. Open at the end of Hannibal, but it's fun doing my head. And you've got a cheese knife, and I'm on a sacrificial tablet, like a stone tablet. There's cheeses all over it, and there's two little gravestones on the side, to custard and to ice cream. I mean, I absolutely love it. Ian Sellar is such a good artist. I've let him put art onto my body forever. Oh, he's done three of my tattoos. Oh, tattoos. Okay, cool. Yeah. So I will wear

that t-shirt a lot, but not forever. Sure. No context off menu. Familiar with it? Oh, yeah. It's a Twitter account. We reached out to, we're going to keep their name a secret. No context off menu. No context. And they've done us a lovely t-shirt. The front of the t-shirt is the no context logo, which is the hand right in the order and the back. I don't know if this makes sense to anyone. There's a sign, the points to the River Thames. It says danger underneath it. And also on the lamppost, there's a little bit of graffiti saying Mash King was here. If you understand those references. It's in off menu orange. And finally, we have an official poppadoms or bread t-shirt done by Paul Gilby, who also did a lot of the original

off menu artwork. It's pictures of me and James in various poppadom or bread situations on the front and on the back just to really drive the point home. It says poppadoms or bread. Doesn't even say off menu on that t-shirt. That's for the hardcore fans to spot each other in a crowded room. So if you like the sound of that, we're also doing mugs with Lucy Moore's design on a tea towel with Lucy Moore's design on and a couple of tote bags with Paul and Lucy's designs on. So where you need to go to preorder this merch is off menu podcast.co.uk. The merch is up there now for preorder. Go on, see what you like by one by two. Buy it all. I would struggle not to buy them all if I listened to the podcast and got the references and knew what it was about.

It's a great podcast, James, I promise. So once you have bought that merch, you can sit there in your brand new merch listening to this episode that was recorded over the internet with the wonderful Louis Theroux. Welcome, Louis Theroux, to the Dream Restaurant. Thank you for having me. Nice to be here. Welcome, Louis Theroux, to the Dream Restaurant. We've been expecting you for some time. Now there's, see, we got your attention there, didn't we? The genie has arrived, the genie waiter. I'm sort of the more relaxed human side of the restaurant. I'd welcome people in initially and then the genie appears and really grabs people's attention. I like the sound effects.

Is James going to channel the genie? I am the genie and I'm channeling the genie, just like you are channeling Louis Theroux. Right, okay, I like it. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me, guys. I only get to speak to like one or two people a day. I'm still in lockdown. I'm trying to break out of lockdown, but I'm so used to it. It's like when you haven't moved from a single position and your joints stiffen up figuratively, I'm kind of just still in that crouch, that social crouch. And so when I do speak to people outside my bubble, it's very exciting. And then sometimes I get overexcited and I babble. So apologies if I'm babbling. Babbling's acceptable. Who is in your bubble? Your bubble bubble?

Mainly by the bubble bubble. Mainly in my bubble is my wife, my three children, chiefly. There's another family. I mean, basically there's a, you know when the government said you can have one other family you're in a bubble with? So there was a family who lived close to us and their kids are of similar ages. So they're in the bubble. And then I've got a director, Tom, who we've been working on an archive based show, four part archive series. I don't even know if it's officially announced. So I may have accidentally given you an exclusive. But, and there's four episodes in which I look back at my 25 years in TV, choosing highlights from the archive. And then I do little Zoom chats, very sparingly because the Zoom chats can get old quite quickly with people who I haven't

seen in 20 years to see how they fared in the subsequent time after I saw them. There was a long answer to your question, which was a straightforward question about who's in the bubble. So the director's in the bubble. He had to be in the bubble. Otherwise he couldn't film. How long do you think, how long do you think you'll stay in lockdown for? Do you, you know how they were lockdown deniers? Are you now like a normal life denier? Do you refuse to leave? I, I, that's a great question. I like to think that I contain multitudes in the sense of like, I have a little bit of, of, of COVID denier in me. I have a little bit of normal life denier. All these impulses are jostling inside me. Like, I often think that's why I'm, in so far as I'm

good at my job, if I am good, it's because I sort of see everyone I meet, like I see something in them that I can relate to. So right now, I guess I am more in the sort of normal life denier side, but I'm not really like, I've just get me out there. I was out like a week ago. We did one day in the office just to sort of remind ourselves what it was like. And actually to say goodbye to the office because we've had to let it go. We've got a pre little production company. And we had to sort of say, you know what, there's no need for this office now. And I cycled into work and had my bicycle stolen. I mean, have it stolen. That sounds like I wanted someone to steal it. Would you mind stealing it? No, it was stolen. And really annoyingly, like they just clipped through the

padlock. And the point of that is, that was my lifeline, you know, especially now in a world where it's complicated just to get on public transport, you know, and so I feel I've sort of been forced into an extended lockdown by lack of a bike. You're thinking, well, dude, get a grip, go buy a bike. Okay, you work in television. I think you can afford a bike. I can see you thinking that. Okay, here's what I'm going to say to that. I went down to the bike shop. It was full of bikes. I said, you know, how much do you sell any second hand ones? I was trying to be thrifty. He said, we don't sell any right now. I'm like, why not? He said, we've got no stock. There's no bikes have arrived in two months. They're on order. He had no bikes. There's no bikes to be had.

Yeah, this is COVID world. There's not a real crowd of bikes. Yeah, no bikes. No wonder my bike got stolen. Yeah, yeah. You've now got to go you've you've got to go and steal a bike now. That's how it works. Yeah. It's the circle of life. Do you think so? It's blood in blood out. You've actually got to the hunter must be the hunted must become the hunter. That's the cliche of action films, isn't it in the third act? I've got to go out and club a man. Well, and well, no one said no one said that. You've not no one bought that up. We said you had to steal a bike and now you've you've brought in clubbing a man up again. They used to imprison. They say lock in a sock. Lock in a sock is your device of choice.

Bike lock in a sock. Get out there. It would be very ironic if I killed the thief with the remains of the lock because the lock was left behind, right? Like a sad little, I don't know, like a sad little metal snake dead snipped there. You know, like have the decency to clear up after your burglary, right? You just left it there as if to say, yeah, I just snipped through your lock, took about five seconds, maybe not even took. So left it lying there like a signature, like a serial killer's calling card. So what I need to do is get the remains of the lock and put them in a sock and then beat him to death with it, right? Sure. Yeah, I think that's what you have to do. This is what happens when like someone's like, I don't think you'd find many

people who are like, you know, quite middle class, but because you've done documentaries, you could, you can start sentences by imprison. They have a saying lock in a sock. It's like you've got prison smarts doing documentaries. Do you think you've filmed so much in prisons that you could, you could last a long time? How long could you last in prison? Okay, great question. And don't think I haven't wondered that myself. It really does depend on the prison. In San Quentin, which is the one I made a program about, I think I could maybe, look, I'm going to sound totally ludicrous because I realized like, I don't fight. I'm going to feed public school educated South London middle class bookish man, right? I nearly said boy,

boy, man. I've done a lot of Joe Wicks. Okay, that's on that. I have done a lot of Joe Wicks in lockdown, right? So no, I'm not a weakling. No one's even saying that. Yeah, they are, but they're wrong. So it's not so much that I'm going to be able to man up and fight quite evidently. I think maybe with social skills and savvy, I could get by. It's a hard one to call, guys. I think I'd struggle. I think I would struggle. Well, this is not a prison podcast. So we should probably, but before we do that, Louie, you've brought us a gift to the Dream Restaurant. You've brought us a copy of your book. How apropos that you should say that when it's sitting right here on my desk. Gotta get through this. You've leaned into the pun. I

absolutely appreciate that. Love it. It's out in paperback. You just smelt it. You just smelt your own book. Smelt it. It didn't smell of anything. This one's been around too long. When they came out of the box, they all had a lovely new book smell. If you go deep enough in, it's still there. Yeah, you get your nose right in the crease. My nose is right in there. So yeah, it's out. Thank you for mentioning that. And I'm passing it to you now through the screen. Thank you so much. There you go. Enjoy. Basically, it is a book which is about, it's my life in strange times in television. I turned 50 this year and I was conscious, you know, in the last couple of years, I've been conscious of getting older. And I suppose,

you know, been in TV 25 years. And I just thought it was maybe time to open up. You know, I used to be precious in the early days about not showing too much of myself, like I thought that I used to really admire people like Chris Morris, the TV prankster and satirist. And later on, I suppose there were people like, well, Sasha Baron Cohen, of course, and Banksy, all of them who seemed sort of alluring and mysterious and very sort of, there's almost kind of an avant-garde aspect to what they did because they were so reluctant to embrace the celebrity machinery, right? And I thought, yeah, that's what I need to be. And then I don't think anyone really noticed that I was being mysterious. And I think people

just thought, oh, yeah, you're just not very successful. You make your TV programs, but no one really cares about you. And I think as time went on, I just thought, you know what, I need to just actually open up and talk more about the stories behind the stories, if that makes sense. And I think it was partly going on Adam Buxton's podcast that did it, was a feeling that people responded to those shows where I found myself unselfconsciously talking about family life, about my anxieties, about just sort of the random nonsense that preoccupies me. So that informed the fact that I felt comfortable talking about those parts of my life that you don't see in the TV shows. So it's basically how I make my programs with a large side order

of who Louis is at home. Does that make sense? I used a food metaphor for you. Lovely. Thank you. Yeah. And then we're straight back in. That's great. We're back in the dream restaurant. Still or sparkling water, Louis? I'm going to say, do you serve tap? Yeah. We can serve tap, absolutely. Do you want me to go and get you a glass of tap water, or do you want a tap at your table? Could you just get me a jug of filtered tap water with a slice of lemon in it? And I don't want any passive aggressive. I don't want you to look disappointed. There goes that bit of the margin in a very trying time for the hospitality industry. Thank you for chiseling at our margins. Our already diminished margins are further reduced

by the man ordering tap water, which he well knows we get no money from. It's an environmental thing. You seem to be quite worried that people think you're cheap, Louis. We've already had the discussion about the bike, and now there's the very defensive about your tap water order. I'm not worried about it. I think I am proud of it. Maybe I am a little defensive. It was just when I said tap, I saw James looking like, you know, I'm a genie and I could have produced a bottle from thin air, but now I have to go over and turn on a tap. And that's very, that's undignified for a genie to have. The look was because you said you wanted a whole jug of tap water with one slice of lemon in it. That was the actual look, because I was wondering

why the ratio of lemon to water was so... It's small for the aesthetics, isn't it? Can you put some chopped mint in there or something? Something that makes it feel like it's a bit anticlimactic when a jug arrives. Here's your tap water, and it's got nothing in it. No ice. I like to see something in the water. Like they do at Leon. Do you ever eat at Leon? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Leon of the fast food restaurants on offer. I would say that's up there, and that's a really good one. And you go and get your own little tap water thing and they've got it in a jug and there's mint. It doesn't really taste that different from normal water, but it's got vegetation in it, and that means something to me. It shows you've put a little

bit of attention in it. Well, this is the dream restaurant, Louis, so we can put whatever you like in that jug. It doesn't have to be conventional. It doesn't have to be mint. We could put goldfish in there. We could put something a bit showier. Jolly ranchers. I think the mint will be... If you can think of another herb like would lavender be nice in there, or lemon balm, or just something that feels it's taking it to the next level. Yeah. Well, I do like gazpacho. So maybe if, yeah, instead of water, I'd just like a jug of gazpacho, please. Perfect. That's what I mean. With olive oil. You know instead of ice cubes, you can do like oil cubes. Have you ever seen that? No. Frozen cubes of olive oil bobbing around

and a goldfish. Yeah. So instead of water, let's just get this right, you'd like a jug of gazpacho with olive oil cubes and a goldfish. Yeah. Perfect. Waiter, goldfish is struggling. Well, you did ask for it, sir. Yeah, but I thought it was going to like it, and it doesn't look like it likes it. The oil cubes have started to melt, and it's making things difficult for the goldfish. Would you like us to remove the goldfish, sir? I think probably you should. What would you like us to put it into when we remove it, though? Sparkling, please. This poor goldfish. The things that goldfish go through, we could do a whole separate episode on that. Do you remember, I don't know if they still do this, but the vision of goldfishes in plastic bags at the fairground. Yeah, I won

one once, yeah. And the mystery of how they managed to keep them alive, presumably traveling across country, jiggling around in their plastic bags, like as they go on bumpy roads and motorways and arriving, and they hang up the goldfish, and then you win it, and you take it home, and within eight hours it's dead. You know, almost like it's got a chip in its brain, and they just detonate it. Like, you know what I mean? Like, how is that? It seems quite strange, unless it was something we did. Yeah, or the goldfish just really loved living at the fair, and you took it from its home and its heart broke. We took it to the vet. It's funny, you should say that, because we took it to the vet just to do an autopsy, and the doctor examined

it for 15 minutes. He looked up to me and he said, this is extraordinary, but it honestly looks like it died of heartbreak. Which is not what you need to hear, is it? No, no, not at all. How do you test for that? This goldfish died of heartbreak, of a broken heart is the phrase. He died of a broken heart. Of a broken heart, not of heartbreak, of a broken heart. It's sad when they say that when it happens with old people, people almost love it when the second one dies of a broken heart. I know, the romance. People can't resist it. It's almost, what's the word, morbid? Is this a morbid desire to see so sad, died of a broken heart? When it's actually probably a gyna, right? People just want to believe it. Yeah, that's a broken heart, technically, isn't it? That's what they believe

in love. It's just nonsense, or is it? I shouldn't say, it may not be nonsense, but they can't test for that, can they? What did the autopsy say? It was confirmed. You know, James is making fun of it, but actually, when they did do the test, they opened up the heart and in the left ventricle was a single tear. And then you said, you read that in the autopsy, yeah. So you sure didn't say there was a single tear? Oh, yeah, maybe that's what it was. Papa Dom's all bread. Papa Dom's all bread, Louis. Papa Dom's all bread. Papa Dom's all bread. I think I'm going to go bread, but I don't think I'm going to touch the bread. Okay, interesting. I just want to at the table. I really don't approve. I'm quite some

puritanical about dining out, and I don't approve of filling up on bread. Would you like some bread that's very easy to resist that you're not really that fond of? Or would you like your favorite bread so you can feel pretty proud that you resisted it? Definitely that. And also, please, I've chosen a good restaurant and somewhere where they make that extra bit of effort. You know, in America, places like Red Lobster, that one in particular, I think that chain, if you know it, and they bring like these sweet little mini loaves and they're warm when they arrive and they're wrapped, they're in a little basket and they've got sort of kind of napkin over them. You know what I mean? Uh-huh. And it looks very appealing. So something like that,

and then I would proudly maybe have a nibble on one of them think, that's delicious, but I'm not going to have any more. And nor are you, by the way. No, I'm not going to. Surely the nibble is the kiss of death there. If you're nibbling the whole thing's going in. No. No, no, no. That's the whole strength. That's mind over matter. You can't be weak. You've got to have a nibble. It's not that you're not tempted, but you've got to have, you just have a little nibble and enough to just get the sense of the taste and then move it. What are you going to do? Eat the whole pile of loaves to get it? And then leave the restaurant and say, actually, do you know what? I don't need a meal now. I've changed my mind. The bread's done

the job. So you want temptation bread, basically? Yeah. You want the sweet loaves from Red Lobster? Yeah. Poppidoms are like, they're enormous crisps, really, aren't they? I mean, is that a fair character? I don't think they're made, they're not made of potato, are they? They're probably rice flour, are they? Or lentils, is it? I think you're right. Good knowledge. So you nibble on those, but again, it's like eating a packet of quavers before you start your meal. A poppidom you would have at home, though, right? Like, if you're not going to a restaurant, you're not going to sit down to a meal and then just pull a loaf of bread out of the cupboard, are you? No. That's a good point, which is a great, that's a great point, by the way. We don't do that at home, do we? No. Like,

here's a delicious meal that I've cooked. I've really gone to a lot of effort. Okay, I'm really looking forward to eat that. Just let me get halfway through this loaf of hovis, and then I'll try that. We come to your starter, Louis. Your dream starter. I thought a lot about this dream meal, and it's very eclectic, and you could say almost to the point of being inedible, but I wanted to draw in all the things that I love, and I love pizza, right? And I've been making homemade pizza in lockdown with a little wood-fired portable pizza oven. But anyway, there's a kind of pizza that they make in New York. There's a specific restaurant in Brooklyn called Grimaldi's, which is famous, although actually, funnily enough,

all pizza restaurants in New York say world famous, don't they? And almost as though by announcing that, that will make them famous, and you suspect they may be not world famous. But Grimaldi's, I think, is world famous, and the pizza is delicious. I have nostalgic associations with it due to having lived in New York, and I love pizza. I just really, I think I said that, and I'm going to probably say it too many times now. I just want a very small one, which they don't do at Grimaldi's, but this is the dream restaurant. I don't want to fill up on pizza because I want to save room for my main, but just enough to sort of feel like I've kind of ticked that box, that delicious pizza box. So that's interesting, because essentially, pizza

is bread with stuff on it, right? So no wonder you're rejecting the initial bread, because you know you've got a different form of bread coming up. Yeah. The bread kind of came through the back door, didn't it? And you could say, well, I'm contradicting myself, but I think this is the dream restaurant. So it's different, isn't it? I'm basically, my starter is a bread related product. So it is consistent. It's not a contradiction. I always think there's something very impressive watching people do cooking pizzas in those ovens, where they slide it off the thing, and then like slide it under and turn it around and then get the thing back out again. There's a nice sort of jabbing action where they are with a long, because mine obviously isn't that,

my pizza spatula, whatever it's probably got a name. Paddle. Yeah. My paddle's not that long. Listen, I feel like there's a dublon tondra hoving in the view, and I'm trying to avoid it. And so they do that thing where they move it around. And the whole thing, the other thing is the dough, the way they twist it and throw it, which clearly I'm not able to do. But there's a lot of, you know, when you become a proper, now I'm going to use this word, is it pizza, pizza olo? Pizza olo. There is a word, isn't there? I think there is. It's basically like a pizza guy in Italian. When you become a qualified pizza olo, I'm going to say it like that, you can do all of that. It probably takes years of training. And you said that you wanted a little pizza,

but you haven't said what the topping's going to be yet? Or I would like to know what your favorite topping is to do at home. Yeah, that's easy, because I would just go for a margarita. You're basic. If they want to throw some torn basil leaves on, fine. Very happy with that. Because with the pizza really, what you're just looking for is the dough being cooked at a very high heat. So you get the classic leopard spotting, which is the carbonization and the quality of the crust, the crispiness that's like on the edge of being burnt in places, and then a really good tomato sauce, and then the mozzarella. Fantastic. Maybe a little bit of pepper, what do they call it? Hot pepper sprinkled on it. And that's it. I would do that at home. But the whole week,

it's a few where we put some mushrooms on or put some pesto on, but that's all optional. I think that shows a real maturity when you finally grow out of over topping a pizza. Because I think now I'm more into the simple toppings on a pizza. I used to be all in double cheese, pepperoni, every meat feast, that sort of thing. But I think as you get older, you start to remove toppings. I think you do. I think you start to notice the sort of subtler dimensions to the pizza, as I say, like the quality of the crust and the sauce. If you're doing it right, you don't need much. The first ever pizza that I made, I made it in secondary school, in food class. We could do whatever we wanted. I chose

chocolate spread, then marshmallows on top of it, and then hundreds and thousands on top of that. I made a sweet bread, obviously, and bought it home, and my mother was uphauled. Was it delicious? Yeah, I loved it. I had the best day of my life. I was absolutely, absolutely delighted. But I was the only one who did that. Everyone else did savory ones. I felt like a math professor. I wonder if that is even technically a pizza. No disrespect. Because I think that savoriness is part of what makes a pizza pizza. Even when you just, if you remove the tomato sauce, you're still a pizza, but they call it a white pizza, I think. Right. So they're already qualifying. It's like, guys, it's a pizza. Well, it's a white pizza.

If you came out like, what pizza is it? And it's got chocolate spread? Yes. It's a brown pizza. It's the best. It might not even be a pizza. But then the hundreds and thousands add so many different colors to it. That's like the torn basil leaves. Because you know how the margarita is like the flag of Italy. I'd forgotten that, but that's right, isn't it? Because it's the same as the flag of Ireland, isn't it? Yes. Mine was... Which is weird, isn't it? Wait, sorry. Mine was the flag of... Was every flag? Yes, all the flags. It was all the flags of the world. Mine was like the UN of pizzas. Yours was the flag of Acaster. Yeah, exactly. Which is a... Which is a brown... It's a large brown flag.

With lots of little flecks of other colors in. Yeah. Representing the many shades of you. Yeah, exactly. All the shades of my personality. But mainly chocolate. Mainly chocolate. But mainly brown. Mainly dark brown. Yeah. Your main course. A big pizza? No. It's going to be a slow roast. Like a kind of southern slow roast. Do you know what I mean? Well, if you ever travel in... I know they do it in England or in the UK as well. But if you travel in the South places like Oklahoma and Texas, they have these barbecue shacks where they've got... And they look like they're big drums. Some of them might even be converted oil drums. And I guess they steam roast these... I guess hogs.

Well, maybe it's beef. I don't even know what kind of meat it is. And sometimes they go, that's been in there for 16 hours. Like this is very tender. That's been in there for 16 hours. But I can't... Presumably on quite a low heat. And we got wood chips in there, tobacco flakes, and some herbs and seasoning. Herbs, they say, don't they? I was like, what's the secret? Like, secret is love, Louis. Do they always say Louis or is that just when you're there? No, they don't always say Louis. I just put that in there. And then they... Secret is love. The secret ingredient is love. That should bring them in when someone dies of a broken heart.

Yeah, it should. Those barbecue guys could save some lives in the hospital. If you knew how many goldfish we've saved, you'd be amazed. We're getting calls all the time. And the time shirkers is in... When the fairground is in town, we're going to run off our face. Crazy. It's seeing those little choppers going. Sorry, Texan barbecue man. I just wondered how you save the goldfish when they bring the goldfish into you and they're on death's door. How do you save them? We just get a little... I think you know, we get itty bitty bits of barbecue beef or pork and we just drop them into the... You got to be careful. You put too much in. Fish can overeat. I don't

know if they knew that and they die. The commonest way for a fish to die is overconsumption of anything, not just barbecue. If you've put... Feed it. I've seen it my own fish, honest to God. This is me, Louis, now talking. It exploded. We had a fish explode on us once. Explode it? Yeah. Too much bread before it's made meal. Well, we only think that that's what happened. But we know that when we went on holiday, there were three fish and we tasked someone with feeding it every day and I think they overdid it. And when we came back, there were two fish and then tiny little bits of fish. Oh. It died of a broken heart. It exploded from a broken heart. It didn't. It exploded from eating too much. So you can't... Don't overfeed it, but just a little bit and then

it tastes the love and then it can turn it around like that. If you ever have a loved one who's lost his partner or her partner and helped meet soulmate, only prescription I know is one of my sandwiches. And then on the side also, that does come and then you've got your bread guilt-free, right? Then you've got your delicious bread without any worries because you're on your main now. You're in your sweet spot. This is where you're supposed to be at peak enjoyment. So you have all that shredded, slow-cooked pork and some pickle maybe and some coleslaw and then some... Oh, flowery white buns. And some beans, some barbecued beans. Barbecue beans. Whenever I watch anything... I mean, I watch a lot of TV shows about barbecue. I spend a lot of my day.

Whenever I see that, I think that's the only other job that I'd really like, is to be the guys who just get up really early and put a whole hog on a barbecue and then just spend all day checking the temperature. Yeah. And also that thing of like water and fire because they spray it sometimes, don't they? And then they open up, it's like opening up the hood of a car or like a vault in a bank and they kind of raise it up and then big gusts of steam come out and there it is. And it's sort of the alchemy of like changing, the chemical composition of the meat changing. I feel bad, you know, I aspire to be vegetarian and clearly I'm not because I eat meat, but so I had misgivings about recommending it, but it's my real weaknesses of really good slow.

I could care less about a Sunday roast, you know what I mean? Like just, you know, when people say, we've got lamb for our Sunday roast, I'm like, whatever. But I don't say that. But with a real, if they said about it, and I'm like, okay, but if they said it's been on since like nine o'clock last night, it's been cooking for 16 hours, I'd be like, okay, now you're talking. Yeah. Have you been spraying it with a little garden spray? Yes. Can you serve it to me with a weird bad Southern accent? Yes, I can, Louis. I can do that right now. And what was, did you go for pork in the end? I think it's pork. I feel like I do. Do you think one day they'd be able to make meat that tastes that good, but with vegetables? I like the vegetarian and vegan food

where they're not trying to replicate stuff and they just show you how incredible vegetables can be and non meat products can be to eat. And those are the ones that make me go, actually, I could do this more. And then I'll go through a longer patch of not eating meat when I'm really getting into the dishes that meat couldn't even replicate if it tried. Yeah, you're so right. I'd like to see a meat piece of meat try and be a portobello mushroom. Yeah, good luck. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Good luck with that. It would seem quite stubborn of the meat industry to now start investing money into making meat products that taste exactly like vegetables, right? It'd be worse than stubborn. It would be obtuse. Yeah. It would be perverse. It was like,

hey, guess what? Vegan food industry, you think you've got an impossible burger? We've got an impossible mushroom made entirely with pork. We've actually bred pigs and their left trotters have gills like a mushroom. And the pigs' lives are dreadful. They'd roll around on these mushroom feet. Such absorbent feet. Absorbent feet. The gills fill up with mud, but we think it's worth it because when you taste these meat mushrooms, you are never going back to normal. I was trying to think of another animal that you could make a vegetable out of, and then my first thought was going to be horse. And I was like, well, we don't eat that anyway. Well, they do in France, don't they? And in those lasagnas that time. Do you remember that

tremble for a while when that was the big story in England? If you remember, and I feel bad mentioning it, some of the meatballs were made from horse. Were they? Oh, so good. He knows he's eating horse. Run that past your legal team before you put that on there. Sure. You will get sued by a huge Scandinavian company. Who's this now? It's another character. He's a Swedish lawyer. I've spent many years building my brand only to have it trampled on by a podcast, making false allegations. Oh, jeez. We would like to ask you, Swedish lawyer, we'd like to ask you, what is in your meatballs then? If you claim there's no horse in these meatballs, you tell us what's in them. They're purely made of vegetables, but you should ask. We don't advertise it.

Oh, so I'm losing it. I'm losing it. I had it dialed in. He started going Irish. It was the, it was the, it advertised was the word that made you lose it there. You really slid off there. I was listening to Des Island Discs this morning and they had a Swedish guy on there. It was the head secretary general of NATO. He sounded a bit Irish, so maybe I'm all right. Des Island Discs guests are absolutely bonkers. Head secretary of NATO goes on and does it. Well, isn't he exactly the kind of guy who should be on it as opposed to well, you think they should be more up and coming comedians? Yeah, you know, maybe get round to the funny people first, the entertainers.

Don't know why they'd go on to NATO before they've actually, you know, Do you feel like, do you feel like we've been passed out? We've been passed over for NATO, James? Just a bit. When all this is over and the company club's open again, I won't be able to get a gig because the NATO guys are doing. That's what I'm worried about. Yeah, he was quite funny. He's Irish, something about his accent that went a bit Irish. It's highly amusing. So your side dish. The side dish, let's make the side dish doll. I love doll and it's so simple, isn't it? It's just not a garlic. Could be anything,

different kinds of doll, but it's simplest. It's just going to be some oil and some lentil, could maybe some tomato, but doesn't have to be. You can put some potato in there, but it feels like it's ticking several boxes. It's delicious. And one of my guilty pleasures, actually, it's not even a guilty pleasure. There's a chain of quite a budget Indian restaurants called Rasa. Have you ever come across those? No. They're around London and they're very basic. Can you go in? Sometimes it's Rasa Express. I hope they still exist. I haven't been in one in a while and you ask for a veg box and they come out and it's like a little tray with compartments, not unlike what you might find in the olden days on a plain food, right? This is where you're

putting nestles and this is where your rice is in this little section, so it's all pleasingly formatted. Or in prison, of course. I hate to take us back to prison, but it's like a prison tray. They very often will do it like that. Compartmentalize, which presumably is to sort of automate the process and guarantee consistent portion sizes, right? Or maybe, I don't know, maybe there's another reason. Maybe it makes them more stackable. Maybe there's 100 reasons, but the point is the food is delicious and you used to be able to get a veg box for about like £3.50 maybe and it was a complete meal and it included a little folded chapati. The chapati would be folded like a little handkerchief and one of the compartments was a delicious, maybe I should have just ordered

this at the beginning. We wouldn't have to worry about all the other things, but the rice pudding, there's a little rice pudding section that would have sultanas in it, but I'm just after the dal. So I think we've narrowed in on what I'm after. I'm after the dal that they do at Ross, that exact kind of dal. Would you like it in the tray, but every compartment is filled with dal? We could do that. That might end up being almost too much, but... Do you want it in the tray and all the other compartments are empty? Empty. Maybe that's better. Maybe it doesn't need to be in a tray. Let's not worry about the tray. Also, looking at your gazpacho, I've noticed the gold fish is flagging a bit. Do you want to transfer it to the dal? Do you think it would do better in that?

How hot is the dal? It's as hot as you want it. I mean, temperature-wise. Oh, it's piping. It's piping hot. What's your preferred spice? I would go for the dal. I'd go medium hot. It really varies. It's not as though there's a Beaufort scale for restaurants. Although they sometimes go like, you know you're with an Indian food connoisseur, or maybe just a pretentious chef, when my dad used to do this, because we used to go to an Indian restaurant every Sunday when I was growing up, and my dad would order a king prawn madras, but I'd like it vindaloo hotness. He's a man who knew his order. So he was hacking the menu. That's pretty special. So I think I would go for the dal, probably vindaloo hotness. Let's try that. So you're not putting a goldfish in that? You

can't put the goldfish in that. Well, you could try. If it's died from a broken heart, that might be the shock that it needs to bring it round. Yeah. Or did it die because it was choking on an olive oil cube? That's the thing, isn't it? That's what you've got to ask yourself. Is it that it's a broken heart, or is it the fact you've put it into some olive oil cube filled dispacho for the first two courses? If the magic pork hasn't brought it back round, the hot dal's not going to do it, is it? Yeah, if the Texan man didn't bring it back to life, then... There's a man outside the restaurant knocking on the window. He's wearing a 10 gallon hat and waving a tiny little shred of pork and pointing at the fish. I don't know who that is.

You know, can I confess something that I was thinking about before we started this, and on the way up the stairs, I was like, these are all like amazing foods and exciting sort of things. And sometimes like, you know, think about sushi and dal. And what I was recalling though is that we went, so we went to Indian restaurants every Sunday growing up when I was raised in South London. My family, my dad's American, my mom's British, they were quite well-travelled. In fact, they'd met in Africa. And so I think they prided themselves on having sort of cosmopolitan tastes. But I, and I sort of, I guess nowadays, I'm quite adventurous and white. There's almost, there's very few foods I wouldn't be interested in trying, and I'd give them a go because I sort

of think you owe it to yourself while you're alive to experiment. And you see people who are like averse to try new things. And I always think, well, that you're a bit square and boring, aren't you? Like live a little, you know? It's an elk's eye ball. How bad can it be? Right? But when I was small, like I didn't want to try any of those things. And the thing was, every time we went to an Indian restaurant on the Sunday, my dad would get his Vindaloo Hotness King prawn madrasa. I can't remember my mom's order. My brother always got a chicken biryani. And I would get fried chicken and chips. I didn't even want the rice. Like I just wanted whatever, what I considered to be, quote unquote, normal food. My parents ate a lot of rice. I thought rice

was weird. I was like, why can't we just have like chips or mashed potato or toast or something? Like, why do we have to have this weird thing that's in little bits? Right? Do you know what I mean? I don't know if that was typical of the 70s. Like I just wasn't used, like at school, you didn't get rice. You've got boiled potatoes, like normal things, like boiled potato. Like can't I just have like hoops, you know, spaghetti rings on toast, spaghetti hoops on toast? Like why can't I have like a normal thing, like a really sugary, weirdo pasta in like weird sugary sauce, like something normal like that on like really white bread. You know what I mean? But that to me was, and so, and then I remember when they whipped out these weird green, strange vegetable fruit

things, which were called avocados, right? And they would say like, and I was like, okay, what's this? I was about 10 years old and it had something in, they'd taken out the stone and it had like some weird sauce in the middle and it's avocado vinaigrette. And I was, and I was like, I don't think so. And my brother was always like, he was two years older and he'd like, he was like sort of perfect kind of like, oh yes, I'd love to try that. That looks delicious. And I'd think, you just don't get it. You're just showing off eating weirdo food that no one, like if you're on it, we all know that we don't want to eat this. Why are you pretending that you and oh, this is delicious, mom. This is delicious, dad. I love it. And I get a clue. Oh my God.

And then I went, so I know this does, I'm telling the story against myself, but it's just strange to imagine back to how a verse, there was a phase during which every time my parents brought a meal out and usually it was the weekend because by this time I was either, I was either at boarding school or we had a live-in au pair who would feed us and it would just be something kind of like quite boring, like a pork chop and chips or something. But when my parents cooked, it would be something a bit more adventurous and I would just say, sorry, I don't really like it. And I'd go and have a bowl of crunchy nut corn flakes and my parents, God bless them, would say, okay, that's fine, no problem. And I try and remember that because now

I have kids and I'm like, come on guys, just try a little bit of the melanzana ala pomejana, right? Why don't you just have three mouthfuls, come on. And then I remember like, do you know what, when I was their age, I was just even worse. So the point of that rather long anecdote, if it is an anecdote, is really just, we grow and we change, don't we? And sometimes it takes a while to embrace these other worlds and these other foods, these other cuisines, and I feel glad that I am where I'm at. Well, I mean, yeah, also the fact that you've got the career you've got where you're literally throwing yourself into unfamiliar and uncomfortable situations a lot of the time, putting yourself out of your comfort zone.

I never would have watched any of your shows and thought, I bet that guy didn't like Rice when he was little. I was very anxiety prone to an extent, I still am, I was always worried about things. And that's been a constant through my upbringing and through my life has been that fear of anything that I hadn't done before seemed massively intimidating. Do you think that's normal or do you think that's weird? I was like that. I was the only one in my cycling proficiency class who fell off their bike during cycling proficiency. And I knew it was going to happen before I even set off. We had to go down this hill. And before I even set off down the hill, I was like, I'm falling off because I was just, I was just like, I can't see this going well. I can't seem to get

into the bottom of this and everyone else who got to the bottom. And I fell off. I remember laying on the grass verge while the rest of the class were running towards me. And while I was lying there, I'm tying my left shoelace. And then when they got to me, I was like, oh, my shoelace got caught in the pedals, flip, flip me off. So not only did you fail your cycling proficiency, they also thought you couldn't tie your own shoes. Well, I would like to point out that I didn't fail it. I did pass it. But when they were giving out the certificates, they did say James A. Caster and then when I was on my way to get my certificate, they said still a bit wobbly. You passed your cycling proficiency even though you fell off your bike. Yep. Did you pass it? Or did you?

It's a class though, really. Or is it a test? I don't think you can fail it. Can you? I did. In other words, did you? I failed it. I literally got on my bike, started pedaling, I wobbled and they went get off. Really? Yeah, you failed it. Immediate fail. Get off, go home. I was way worse than that. And I passed it. Even when I was passing it, they told me I was wobbly. Yeah. Well, I failed my immediately. The qualification. I failed my driving test three times. Then passed the fourth. Once I failed it by default because I was late. Passed age 21, drove for about, you know, whatever 10 or 20 years. And then in America, I had to take another test and thought, well, this would be easy. You know, because for the US test, the US license, and I

drove off the DVLA driver's vehicle, whatever, property out onto the road. And the driver said, okay, take a right, take a right, take a right, take a right. And I'm like, hello, we've gone in a circle. And you know what my thought went to? Like, he can see how good I am. And he's like, I'm not going to waste your time. I'm not going to waste my time. You've got the skills. So let's just sign you off. So we came into the lot. So that was in my head. Like, oh, that was quick. I guess he's like, that's, you know, you've obviously been driving for 20 years. And he said, okay, I'm failing you. And I've abort, I'm failing you on the test with immediate effect. And I'm aborting the rest of the test. More or less, I don't know if he said

about due to fears of my own safety kind of thing. He said, as soon as we exited the parking lot, you veered into the lane of oncoming traffic, which is an automatic violation. And I felt, you know, can you imagine as like a 40 year old man being told like, not only have you failed, I don't even feel safe in the car with you. And you failed on the thing that everyone knows about, you know, like that. That's the main thing really. It's the main joke about British drivers and driving in England. It's the other side of the road. And you just instantly like you were in some sort of 90s Brendan Fraser film or something. I still don't, I still feel as though I got a bum rap with that. Like I feel as though I do. I don't think I did fear. I'm in denial possibly.

But I think he was running some kind of scam. And they were like, Hey, the more they come back, the more money we make. So keep on failing them. Yeah, you know, it's not impossible. That's the room that goes around, isn't it with a same as psyched in proficiency, of course, as Ed learned. Well, more for them. I didn't go back. We should ask you what your favorite drink is. I'm going to go for a delicious. This has been helping me in lockdown. An American bourbon probably bullet, although there's one called tin cup that I've also been drinking. And it's probably have it with maybe on its own, just to have a sip. Or maybe I should have a dirty martini.

Well, we'll stick with the honourable muncheon, the honourable, honourable drunken drink. Could go to a dirty martini, which would be like as I came into the restaurant, if this really were the dream restaurant, you wouldn't have to have just one drink. No disrespect. Like, come on, guys. Is it a dream restaurant or isn't it? What kind of genie are you? So a dirty martini as I come in, really cold, like really, really cold. And with they dirty means they put the, is it that they put a little bit of olive juice in it? Yeah, the brine, I think. Yeah. A bit of the brine. Oh, yeah. That gets the party started. Don't you think? Yeah, I agree. An empty stomach. You haven't even had anything to eat yet. Two of those. And you're like, you know

what, forget the meal. But the Pete, what about the pizza and the goldfish in the gas patch? You're like, no, I'm just going to stick to the martinis. That's all I want. But if I was sensible, I'd just have the one. And then I'd probably move on to the bourbon. I'm making myself sound like a bit of a lush, but it's a kind of dream scenario, isn't it? Yeah. When we handed you the cold martini, dirty martini, when you come into the restaurant, say you'd arrive with your wife or whoever you're eating with, would you turn to the member before you take your first sip? Would you say, let's get this party started? I think that, yeah, I think you know that I would. I think that's exact. I think I'd say that. And then I'd point at the DJ and I'd give him a little nod.

There's a DJ. And then Pink would come on, right? Yeah. And then I would, and then I would move into a dance routine that was sort of a little bit insouciant, insouciant, but also an effortless, but just pure suavte and without spilling a drop of my martini, I would be funky all over the floor. That's a good start to the party. I think that's too much of a start to the party of anything. It sounds like a whole party. Yeah. And then I'd stop dancing and then there'd be really awkward silence. And no one would quite, and we'd all be like, that was weird. And then it turns out you haven't paid Pink yet, so you need to get her bank details. Back's pink. Yeah, you have to back's pink. But you would like the bullet. Then the bullet, if I try not to, yeah,

I think the point of the bullet really is that like last night, I had, I think two bullets, two bullet Bourbons with orange juice, which is a, I think probably Bourbon purists, because I kind of, I don't think I invented it. I think I one night, there was nothing to drink, and I was like, I've been drinking sort of wine and gin and tonics. And I thought, well, there's this whiskey, but I really don't like whiskey. So I, I think I sent out a tweet that said, what can you put with whiskey that makes it not taste like whiskey? And orange juice was the answer. But it turns out with, especially with a Bourbon, where you haven't got a very delicate, that sort of delicate, woody flavor that you get with whiskey, it's a, it's a simpler flavor.

And with the orange juice, I think doesn't really adulterate it. To me, it tastes like a nice, it's just a nice drink. Yeah. Cause Bourbon's quite sweet anyway, right? So if you're quite sweet, it's just like a big old sweet cocktail. It's nice. Yeah. I love it. Or squeeze some, you know, Bourbon, as you write it, it's so sweet that you can just squeeze like a couple of a lime or a lemon into a, with some ice into a glass of Bourbon. And it's, it's delicious. Like the sweetness obviously counteracts the sourness of the lemon or lime. It's a very nice drink. Come for the crunch, you know, on there. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Sprinkle those into the drink. Old times sake. Drink it quickly before they get soggy. Yeah. Why not? I mean, what doesn't,

I used to think that there was nothing that didn't go well with toasted almonds. Right. Do you know what I mean? Like yogurt and honey and toasted almonds. Like a nice green leaf salad with like tomato, obviously lettuce and some avocado and some toasted almonds. A nice chicken korma toasted almonds big time. Obviously, like a bowl of muesli or a nice bowl of Cheerios toasted almonds. Yeah. The gaspacho with a goldfish toasted almonds. Yeah. A margarita pizza toasted almonds. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't not work. What does it not? There's nothing like this would be delicious, but the toasted almonds have ruined it. At the very least, it's going to be like, I don't think it needed the toasted almonds. The gaspacho was fine without the toasted almonds,

but it doesn't hurt. Lasagna. It would work. That works. Fine. This is kind of mind blowing, Louis. I've never thought of this. Toasted almonds goes on anything. Yeah, pretty much. What I'm trying to think now. I'm trying to break it. You're thinking like, what about my chocolate pizza? No. I'm saying 100% toasted almonds. That works on the air cast the flag. I did think that, but I knew that you would play that. I knew that you both would be like, that's a better pizza now. So you might say sushi. No, that works. It's all right. You would probably chop them up really small and roll it in the toasted almonds. Lovely. I'm so on board with this theory. I really want to think of something. It looks classy too. You know what's really nice

with toasted almonds? You know, sometimes I got this from Nigel Slater. It's a different way of doing green beans or French beans, I think is or fine beans. He's like steam them or boil them. Obviously not too much. So they're still crunchy then in a little butter and sprinkle with some toasted almonds. Very nice. Corjets with a little bit of lemon juice and parmesan and toasted pine nuts. But if you can't get pine nuts, toasted almonds. And I really can't think of anything because it's like sweet and savory. It works on. And it's texture. It's just texture, isn't it? It's crunch. I even like toasted almonds that much. But it's improving every dish I think of.

Where were we? We were talking about... Your whiskey. Your whiskey, yeah. The bourbon. The bourbon, the orange juice. That's going to be the weakest place for the toasted almonds, but it might be all right. I got absolutely... One night in Brighton after a gig, me and some friends went out and I went to a bar and I drank the bullet bourbon for the first time and had it all night. And at one point it was like a musical themed bar. There's loads of posters of musicals all around. And I was walking down the stairs to the toilet. So there were posters all the way down the stairs by your... They basically stretched from the ceiling to your feet. Massive posters. And there was one for Oliver and the lead in Oliver on the poster,

the person playing Fagan, was at the time my ex-girlfriend's new partner. And I saw this poster and because I was drunk and I'd had so much whiskey, for a laugh of what would be funny, I just kicked the poster. But it was like in a glass frame. So I kicked it and the whole thing came off the wall and smashed all over the stairs. And there's just loads of glass all over the stairs on this big Oliver poster. And then I just turned round and walked straight out the bar back to the hotel. And then the next morning I woke up and felt really bad about it. So I returned to the bar, it was the daytime now. And it's the same barman. And I went up to the bar and I said, um, I smashed a poster last night here. I'd like to pay for it if that's okay. And they just laughed

and they were saying, ah, people smash posters here all the time. It's fine. And then he started calling me the bullet guy and saying like, this is the bullet guy. You were fond of the bullet last night. He had so much bullet. And then they were calling me bullet guy. You don't want to be You do not want to be a guy named after a drink he likes. No, it was bad. And do you think that's put you off bullet? Yeah, because I love whiskey still and have different kinds of whiskey, but I've never had that one again because like it was just, it was all I drank the whole night because you were loving it. You were in the bullet zone. I was loving it. That was the best drink ever. Were you drinking it straight or with a mixer or

how are you drinking it straight? Which I didn't usually do because I've recently been told off by Ashlyn B's uncle for putting anything else with whiskey. He just said, you cannot do that. So I was trying to, I'm worried about, I'm inviting all kinds of judgment by, by, um, talking about mixing with whiskey. But this is your dream restaurant though, Louis. You can't Restaurant dessert. Okay. Honorable Munchen bread and butter pudding. Yeah. Yes. Poached pears. I want to say Clemfutis, but I don't know what that means. Is it Clefutis? What is that? Yeah. What is that? I don't know, but I know that's the word. I just like that.

Pear Clefutis. Do you ever see things on a menu where you're like, I don't even know what that is, but I want to get it because I like the sound of the words. Or the other thing is, do you ever see where they describe the thing and you're like, that sounds, you know, like they'll say delicious lettuce with shredded tomato, finely drizzled in olive oil and vinaigrette and shredded carrot. And you're like, oh, that sounds amazing. And then you look at it like, hang on, it's just lettuce, tomato and carrot. Do you know what I mean? You second, you check yourself. You're like, the words on the page look inviting. But if you think about what that is, you actually don't, and then it arrives and you're like, oh, wow,

that really is what it is. You know what, set that dish off. Yeah, well, we all know. Some toasted almonds. You don't even know how right you are because that would, sometimes something like that and a little bit of goat's cheese, maybe. Yeah. Little things like that make a big difference. Goat's cheese won't go on everything though. No, definitely not. It's one of those things. It's like, it's kind of delicious and disgusting at the same time. Is it? It's one of the things when you're a kid, you're like, this is horrible. And then you get older, you're like, it's horrible, but kind of okay. It's kind of delicious, but horrible. It is weird and horrible, but delicious. Maybe it's just me. Do you know those things that are somehow on the edge?

Yeah. If you have too much of it or you have it on the wrong day. The first taste I have of goat's cheese is still like, my face is changing from disgust to like, grudging kind of enjoyment. Because it hits you right on the back of the palate, which is exactly where you might feel like a bad burp or something. Yeah. Bad burp is still pretty good though. Yeah. Even the worst burps are the best. Everything about it. But I'm arriving at a delicious chocolate brownie with ice cream. I love a brownie. I love chocolate. I love chocolates. Is it my guilty pleasure? Is it my secret lover? Is it my kryptonite? Is it all of the above? I think it's allowed to be all those things. It's ambrosial, isn't it? I like that word. It is ambrosial. It's this mysterious

flavor that really indescribable. What does chocolate taste like? Well, like chocolate. It's a warm and rounded, almost fecal, if I can say that. In its sort of, you know, like, I think like a really good, no, I won't say it, shit. It's something about the, is it umami? It's anyway, it's the depth and warmth and the earthiness of a delicious chocolate. It was explained to me as well that one of the unique properties of chocolate is that because it hovers and melts around, obviously it's solid at room temperature, but at mouth temperature, it melts. I mean, this is self-evident. Hello, you know, I have seen Minstrel's adverts, it melts in your mouth, not in your hand. Well, that's quite literally the case. And that's why when you have a piece of

chocolate, toasted almonds can't do that. No, no, that's true. But they would go lovely on a brownie, though. They really would. It is hard to think of another thing that would melt in your mouth and not in your hand. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, because you would say, oh, well, come on, butter. No, butter melts in your hand. It does melt in your hand, James. Yeah. A candle melts in neither your hand nor in your mouth. No, no. That's my first two guesses, but I'm in a candle. Cheese, cheese doesn't melt in the mouth at all. It feels like it should. No, maybe Bree would melt, Bree would melt in both. Bree melts at room temperature. Yeah. Keep trying. I'm going to read your order back to you now, Louis. See how you feel about it.

For the water course, you wanted a jug of espacho with olive oil cubes and a goldfish in it, and you wanted the goldfish removed and put into sparkling water when it's struggling. Popped onto a bread, you chose sweet loaves from red lobster. You have a little nibble, but no more. Starter, very small Grimaldi's pizza, margarita, main course, slow roast barbecue pork, side dish of dahl from a dahl, Vindaloo hotness dahl from, where was it? Rasa. From Rasa. Drink, cold dirty martini when you enter the dream restaurant and a bullet bourbon later on. Dessert, chocolate brownie with ice cream. And just to check with you, would you like me to add toasted almonds to all of those dishes? Yes, please. Absolutely. Toasted almonds for all

of them. The genie will fly over with a crop duster at every course and just cover everything in toasted almonds. Oh, amazing. I want my life crusted in toasted almonds. That sounds amazing. When you read that back, I thought, wow, I really nailed it. That sounds amazing. It does sound really good. You did say at the start it would be inedible, but I think that makes sense. I really enjoyed that. It was really fun. Well, there we have it. What a great time we had in the dream restaurant with Louis Theroux. Very exciting to have him here, James. Absolutely. Great menu and a great cast of characters as well. So many characters this week. It's not often that we have so many visitors to the dream restaurant in one single week. We had a southern barbecue man. We

had Swedish lawyer. Yep. All sat around a table enjoying their toasted almonds together. Yes. It was a lovely episode. Great menu. Thank you very much for coming in, Louis. Remember, Louis's book is out in paperback now. Got to get Theroux this. So go and check that out. I know I will be. And also, Louis is busting onto our patch. He does a podcast now called Grounded with Louis Theroux where he interviews people. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before he has the head of NATO on. Oh, yeah. Head of NATO is going to be on there. I'll tell you what, we should get the head of NATO on this podcast actually, Ed. You should. And hopefully, just like Louis, he will not say Tarragon on its menu and we won't have to chuck him out the restaurant.

Do remember that we have merch available. You can go and pre-order it now on offmenupodcast.co.uk. There's brilliant t-shirts that we specifically had designed by our favorite artists. So go and check those out. There's tote bags. There's details. There's mugs. There's all sorts of things. Go and have a little look at our website for that. Hit up our socials when you've ordered the merch and let us know that you've ordered some at offmenufficial on Instagram and Twitter. And also, don't forget to review and subscribe to the podcast. Go on. Leave it five stars on Apple. Push us up those charts, baby. Push us up. Push us up. Thanks, James. James is a brilliant hype man, I don't know. He just repeats the last thing other people have

said in an enthusiastic manner. Enthusiastic manner. There we are. So thank you very much for listening. We will see you again next week with another brilliant guest. But for now, tuck that napkin in and bash your knives and forks on the table. It's dinner time. Hi, I'm Gina Martin, a campaigner and writer. And I'm Stevie Martin. I'm a comedian and writer and also we're sisters. We are sisters. And we're doing our new podcast, Mike Delete Later. It's a podcast about social media, about going back, looking at your embarrassing ones, things you like, things you don't like. And we're talking to all different types of people. So many different types of people. We've got writers. We've got comedians. Maybe we'll get

a politician. Maybe we'll get a dog. Maybe I'll talk to a plant. Deal with it. Who knows. It's like a little snapshot into people's social media lives. Yeah. And hopefully it will make you think more about how you use social media and how you feel about it. So do subscribe on all of the platforms that you usually get your podcasts on and visit at Mike Delete Later pod on Instagram because we're going to be putting up really fun videos and the things that you didn't see in the podcast episode. Oh, exciting. Thanks, dudes. Hello, it's me, Amy Glendale. You might remember me from the best ever episode of Off Menu, where I spoke to my mum and asked her about seaweed on mashed potato and our relationship's

never been the same since. And I am joined by me, Ian Smith. I would probably go bread. I'm not going to spoil it in case. Get him on James and Ed, but we're here sneaking in to your podcast experience to tell you about a new podcast that we're doing. It's called Northern News. It's about all the news stories that we've missed out from the North because look, we're two Northerners. Sure, but we've been living in London for a long time. The new stories are funny. Quite a lot of them crimes. It's all kicking off and that's a new podcast called Northern News. We'd love you to listen to. Maybe we'll get my mum on. Get Glendale's mum on every episode. That's Northern News. When's it out, Ian? It's already out now, Amy. Is it? Yeah, get listening. There's probably a backlog. You've

left it so late.