by Adam Carolla
Let me take you right through the menu. A guy who looks like a bi-curious waif model comes to your table and says, “Our soup of the day is pureed summer squash with a lemongrass reduction. There’s no dairy, no animal protein, no trans fats.” In other towns they tell you what’s in the soup. L.A. is the only town that tells you what’s not in the soup. It tastes like someone took baby food, put it in a sock, and dipped it in warm water.
If you went to Chicago and told them what’s not in the soup, they’d beat the shit out of you. They’ve got chunks of beef, a head of cabbage, russet potatoes, and a cow’s heart. I’m not vegan. I like the big chunks. That’s the fun part, when you hit an iceberg of animal floating around in a sea of broth.
Now, on to the salad. Who’s in the mood for lawn trimmings? If you hate beefsteak tomatoes or the crackle of iceberg lettuce between your teeth, then L.A. is the town for you. We have “greens,” which are essentially a pile of leaves covered with salad dressing so light and thin it looks like dew on a ficus tree. It’s “vinaigrette,” which is basically douche with a little olive oil mixed in. Here’s a quick tip when it comes to salad dressing: If light won’t pass through it, it’s good. Thousand Island, ranch, Roquefort. You could take a 120-watt lightbulb, dip it in Roquefort, screw it in, and finish developing your film. Salad in Los Angeles is more cud than salad. We all just sit there chewing like the cows we won’t eat.
Now on to the main course. If you like goat cheese, L.A. is perfect for you. We put goat cheese on our pizza, on our entrees, and all over our salads. I don’t know when this retarded vote went down but I wish I had been there to stand up and yell, “I hate goat cheese!” Have you ever had a slice of pizza and thought to yourself, “You know what’s missing from this experience? The pungent smell of goat as I inhale to take a bite.” Goat cheese smells like a goat. And the last time I checked, there were no goat-scented candles, air fresheners, or aftershave.
If you like Italian food, you’ve come to the wrong town. If you like gay Italian food, you’ll be in hog heaven. All you do is take the pasta, remove the meatballs and the red sauce, add pine nuts and attitude, and you’ve got L.A. Italian, my paisan. If you like authentic Italian food you can go to New York because L.A. doesn’t have a Little Italy. On the other hand, if you’ve got a hankering for some Ethiopian, we have a little one of them. How many other cities can boast they have a Little Ethiopia and no Little Italy? I don’t know how the “Little” sanctioning body works, but shouldn’t the big version of your “Little” have at least one building with a third story before you start franchising?
Who’d like a beverage? I don’t know about you, but one of my favorites is iced tea. Lots of caffeine, no calories, and the refills are free. L.A. used to serve iced tea; now we have passion-fruit iced tea. Passion-fruit iced tea tastes like someone boiled potpourri and stirred it with a scented candle. It doesn’t taste anything like iced tea. This is another vote I evidently missed in some sort of ill-conceived secret town-hall meeting L.A.’s been having. The insidious part of phasing out iced tea for passion-fruit tea is that regular iced tea is not even an option on the menu anymore.
I now make a point when ordering iced tea to ask if it’s real, regular iced tea. My wife, who’s typing this (Hi!!), will remember a trip to the Getty Museum for what was supposed to be a nice Sunday outing. We made reservations at the hilltop restaurant. As we were taking in the view of Los Angeles and I was pointing out the Crips’ territory versus the Bloods’ turf, the waiter asked if we wanted to order drinks. I ordered iced tea and then immediately asked if it was real iced tea. He assured me it was. Five minutes later I got a tumbler of something that tasted like a florist took a shit in it. I said to the waiter, “I thought you said you had real iced tea.” He said, “That is real iced tea.” It was at that moment I knew we’d turned the corner and lost the passion-fruit war.
Now I know a couple of you assholes are thinking, I like passion-fruit iced tea. That’s not the point. The point is it doesn’t taste like iced tea and I ordered iced tea. Iced tea is its own flavor, just like coffee is its own flavor. And if passion fruit is so great, how come there’s nothing else on the planet that’s passion-fruit flavored? Passion-fruit toothpaste? You ever see that on a store shelf? How about passion-fruit pie? How about passion-fruit yogurt? How about passion-fruit Jell-O? Obviously it sucks as a flavor if it couldn’t crack the Jell-O starting lineup. I know I sound insane, but I’m passionate about my hatred for passion fruit.
One more quick restaurant story. I was sitting in a restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard next door to the La Brea Tar Pits (reason 128 not to live in Los Angeles: We have a hole filled with used transmission fluid and we treat it like it’s fucking Mount Rushmore) and I was getting into my usual iced tea debate/argument with the waitress when she said, “You know, most people prefer the passion-fruit iced tea.” At that very moment a woman at a neighboring table who must have been eavesdropping, although to be fair I could be heard outside the restaurant, said to the waitress, “Oh, is it passion-fruit iced tea? I’ll cancel my order.” It was the proudest moment of my life, second only to the birth of one of my twins.
Now on to dessert. I know you’re wondering how L.A. can fuck up something as simple as dessert. I’ll explain. L.A. is a melting pot with culinary representatives that span the globe. Thai, Japanese, Mexican, Korean, Chinese, et cetera. All nations that do great dinners followed by some of the shittiest desserts ever devised. Anyone for deep-fried green-tea ice cream? Or flan? Let’s face it: The best dessert is American dessert. Warm apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. The problem is all these assholes have too much national pride to move over and let us handle the sweets. There’s nothing worse than going out and having a satisfying Mexican meal only to have it end with a churro. Hey Mexico, what’s up? You guys counting calories? Because I just ate a pillowcase of tortilla chips, two pitchers of margaritas, and a cow dipped in cheese. One of you dipshits can’t go on a pie run?
Now that your dining experience is over, it’s time to overtip your mattress (model/actress) and make sure you have some cash left over to tip the valet who undoubtedly moved your driver’s seat up so far it was on the other side of the steering wheel and stole the change and your roach out of the ashtray. Bon appétit!
P.S. One more thing about iced tea. The goddamn passion-fruit iced tea also fucked up the Arnold Palmer.
WATER
Every nutritionist for the last fifteen years has been extolling the virtues of H2O. You should drink at least eight full tumblers a day. That’s the key to weight loss. I’d love to see a chart from 1979 with average water consumption on one side and average weight on the other. I know as the water consumption goes up, so will the weight. We drink more water than ever, yet we’re fatter than ever. How can this be the key to nutrition and weight loss? And if another asshole gives me the speech about our bodies being 70 percent water, I’m going to make his face 100 percent fist. How much water do we really need to consume? I spent the better part of my youth running wind sprints on a football field in the San Fernando Valley during the dog days of summer in full gear with nary a bottle of water in sight. As a matter of fact, at that time they thought water was bad for you so they deprived us of it. And there wasn’t one fat kid on that football team. Except Higginstaller, but I think that was a thyroid problem.
Obviously it’s a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry that preys on our obsession with health, our children, and body image. And when did water become an expensive part of every dining experience? Nine dollars for a bottle of flat or carbonated water times two or three if you have enough people around the table? I’d love to build a time machine, go back to 1974, and explain to my dad that we just went out to dinner and spent thirty-two dollars on water. By the way, there’s a handful of people I’m friendly with—Sarah Silverman comes to mind—who won’t drink the carbonated water. I can’t stand going to eat with those people because the notion of spending nine dollars for a bottle of water is
mind-numbing enough, but when it tastes exactly the same as what came out of the hose bib in front of my mom’s house, it’s devastating. At least the carbonated stuff feels like I’m buying a beverage.
But here’s where the conspiracy part comes in. I’ve been out to dinner a hundred times with a table of eight or more when the waiter has come by and said, “Would you like to get started with some sparkling water, still, or just tap water?” And the person to my right says, “The regular flat water is fine.” Five minutes later the guy returns with four blue perfume bottles filled with the world’s most expensive flat water and starts pouring. I know he’s conveniently misunderstood the person’s request for tap water. And nobody is cheap enough, or bold enough, to pour it back into the bottle and say, “Take it back.” If the bar is where these restaurants make their money, isn’t this just a logical extension of that? I’ve gotten into loud, semi-embarrassing arguments with my wife when somebody at the table we’re out to dinner with says, “Flat water is fine,” meaning “free water from the tap.” But I see the dollar signs pop up in the eyes of the waiter, so as he begins to turn and head toward the kitchen, I say, “Excuse me, she was just asking for tap water. I know you think she ordered bottled water.” This then garners the groan from my wife: “How do you know what she ordered? Leave him alone. Why do you have to be up in everyone’s business?” Then I turn to the girl who ordered and say, “Did you mean still bottled water, or did you mean a glass of tap water?” That’s when my wife reenters the fray. To me: “Leave her alone. She’s not on trial.” To her: “You don’t have to answer that.” Now it’s on. I loudly announce this convenient misunderstanding is a multimillion-dollar industry. I know this is taking place in restaurants around the world every second of every day. It’s free versus more expensive than your average store-bought bottle of Merlot.
SPORTS DRINKS
At some point somebody realized kids were getting fat from drinking too much punch and soda. So we figured out another high-fructose-corn-syrup delivery system, which was sports drinks. Same calories, same coloring, same chemicals, but now everyone can suck them down with impunity because Michael Jordan and Derek Jeter drink them. This should be illegal. You shouldn’t be able to call something Vita-water and have it be calorically on the same par as fudge. If we don’t stop with all these health drinks, we’re going to explode. All these kids are walking around with neon-purple Gatorade. These colors don’t coordinate with anything in nature unless it’s on the chest of a hummingbird. And every sports drink needs to be EXTREME!!!!! The names of the flavors don’t even make sense. These are actual flavors of Gatorade: Glacier Freeze, Riptide Rush, and Arctic Rape. Okay, I made that last one up. What the fuck does a glacier or a riptide taste like anyway?
THE HOSPITAL
I went in to get hernia surgery a couple of years ago. It was the same procedure Dr. Drew underwent a couple of years before, and he promised me I would be in a lot of pain after the operation. I thought it would be physical pain—I didn’t know he meant emotional anguish after I woke up in the recovery room when I was handed the pack of saltines and a fruit-punch box. Twenty grand’s worth of surgery and you get forty cents’ worth of snack at the end, and it isn’t even good for you. I once heard a nutritionist say the worst food you could put into your body is a soda cracker. They’re just shortening, sodium, sugar, and white flour. When I was bitching about this to Dr. Drew, he said the reason they do that is that many patients’ stomachs are sensitive coming out of the anesthesia. I said, “I didn’t suggest we go out for Indian food. How about a fucking Wheat Thin and some OJ?”
I know it would be against hospital protocol, but Christ, if there was ever a time a guy could use a beer, it’s now. Plus, I’m sure a Sam Adams, from a purely nutritional standpoint, kicks the shit out of the grape punch and saltines. And I’m being driven home, so let’s party.
HONEY
A tablespoon of honey is probably the work of two hundred thousand bees and the pollen of a million flowers. The work that goes into it is astounding. Given the process of making honey, it should be a lot better for you. It should be a magical elixir. You should never age and it should make your dick grow. And it should cost like seventy dollars an ounce. Instead it’s just slightly better for you than sugar. If you replaced sugar with honey, instead of morbidly obese you would just be fat. And it should come in a squeeze bottle shaped like a bee, not a bear. We’ve decided bears love honey. But have you ever seen a bear eating honey? If bears could talk, they’d be pissed at this stereotype. There should be some sort of bear anti-defamation league.
SPECIAL K
Not too long ago, I realized that the K in Special K stood for “Kellogg.” How is it that it took me until halfway into my forty-fifth year to figure this out? Special K isn’t even really a cereal. It’s more a base for cereal. It’s a cereal substrate. You can’t eat it without slicing a banana or capsizing the sugar bowl on it. Maybe that’s what makes it special. Maybe they mean special like Special Olympics.
MOVIE-THEATER FOOD
The movie theater is brutal if you’re on a diet. Whenever I’m trying to lose weight, it seems like I go to the theater with someone who’s decided to pack on a few. My wife will get a Hebrew National hot dog, caramel corn, and some Goobers. How long can you sit next to a person, smelling their hot dog, hearing them suck on the Coke, and staring at their trash-can-sized tub of popcorn, without saying fuck it? Movie theaters should have an eating section and a dieting section. Also, a quick message to movie-theater owners—if you don’t want me to keister a Snickers into the theater, lower the goddamn prices.
GOOBERS VS. RAISINETS
Speaking of movie food. Raisinets outsell Goobers ten to one, but any sane person knows chocolate-covered peanuts taste better than chocolate-covered raisins. I think it’s the name. One is Raisinets, and the other is named after the semi-retarded mechanic from The Andy Griffith Show. This just goes to show you what Madison Avenue can do. They got behind an inferior product and manipulated everyone into thinking it was better. Also, I can’t believe George Washington Carver came up with 256 things to do with peanuts but didn’t think of Goobers.
MOUNDS VS. ALMOND JOY
Why would anyone get Mounds when there is Almond Joy? Could there be a worse name for a candy bar? Why not just call it Lumps or Piles? One has the word joy in it, and the other is something termites live in. Plus it’s confusing: Almond Joys have a mound of almond on top.
I’m not cheap but I have a poor person’s mentality because I was born among super-downtrodden people. I can’t turn something down if it is free. If I order a sandwich and the waitress says, “That comes with cat shit on it,” I would say, “Put it on the side.” It’s not like the Mounds is twelve cents cheaper or you get 10 percent more coconut. Even if I were allergic to almonds, I would still get the Almond Joy, pry them off, and put it on eBay. Essentially you’re offering the same product, minus the best part, and giving it an inferior name. This would be like offering a second Milky Way, without the nougat, and calling it Turds.
KETCHUP PACKETS
Life is a process of constant evolution. Just like computers, cars, and cell phones: By the time you get them home, the next model has already hit the showroom. Everything has evolved except the ketchup packet. Horseshoe crabs have evolved more than the ketchup packet. Someone signed off on them in 1956 and made the proclamation, “There’ll never be a better way to transport ketchup than this tiny, filthy, plastic, unopenable condom packet.” It’s absolutely insane how long this horrible design has hung on.
There’s no clear way to open it. No pull tab, no perforated stripe, no pop top. It’s like trying to give a hamster a reach-around. You have no choice but to place it in your mouth and use your teeth like a bench vise while your hand tears the packet away. This creates a diagonal rip that goes further down than it does across. The end result is ketchup all over your shirt and a filthy corner of plastic in your mouth.
This brings me to a bigger po
int. Why is it in the germophobic, Purell society we’ve built, in which we cover our hands with our sleeves to open bathroom doors and the time-honored handshake has been replaced by the Howie Mandel fist bump (call me old-fashioned, but I remember when one gent fisted another, it wasn’t up top), we happily shove these filthy packets, probably fresh off a container ship from China and dripping in melamine and roach feces, into our mouths?
The only thing that’s got more shit on it than that ketchup packet is the cardboard burger box we milk the ketchup onto. The one the high school dropout with SARS handed us at the drive-through window fresh off a pallet from the back of a stake-bed truck that came over from Arkansas. Here’s the bottom line. Not how many germs there are or how foolish we are. No. It’s how none of this shit matters. If you were gonna get sick, it would have been from the two thousand ketchup packets you put in your mouth that were from God knows where.
The day the first McNugget was sold in 1980 should have spelled the end of the ketchup packet. If they can figure out a way to get forty-five different flavors of sauce into those convenient dipping containers, why not ketchup?
And don’t get me started on soy sauce. That’s an even bigger abortion. It comes in the same packet as the ketchup, but soy sauce lacks the viscosity of ketchup, so when it tears open it goes airborne and quickly becomes weaponized. Nothing ruins a white dress shirt faster than a paintball shot of black soy sauce. What’s up? Do we not have other containers? Couldn’t it come in one of those little plastic airplane booze bottles or the keychain-sized Tabasco containers? How about you put the fucking soy sauce in that? Nope, we cannot improve it. I just spent eighty-seven dollars on take-out sushi, couldn’t you spend three cents on a functional container to hold the soy sauce?