The Appetizer

In our first episode we introduce ourselves and take your drink order . . . just kidding. Here is where we explain the meaning behind the question, "You Gonna Eat That?" We don't know what this podcast might ultimately become, but we do know we're looking forward to visiting different restaurants in central Ohio (and beyond) and talking about our experiences. Plus we're looking forward to the feedback and suggestions from our listeners. This is a great community of foodies and we hope to create a useful and entertaining resource on things to try and places to experience.

Transcript

Hey Mark.

Yes, Amir?

You gonna eat that?

Okay, let's hear it, Amir.

Well, hello there.

Welcome to our podcast, the very first edition of Gonna Eat That?

You Gonna Eat That?

We'll talk about what that means here pretty soon.

It's our maiden voyage.

We've talked about it for months.

We've been doing it for a long time. We've been doing it for a long time. We've been doing it for a long time.

We'll talk about what that means here pretty soon. It's our maiden voyage. We've talked about it for months.

Amir has put it out there, and there's already a following, I gather. If you want to call it that. People who put up with my rants and raves about food on social media out there, you know where you are. You know where you found me.

But I'm Amir, and I'm the foodie. foodie too, but maybe he tends to be a little grumpy sometimes.

I bring another perspective to this.

I'm not grouchy, I just... Okay.

Yeah.

We'll talk about a terminology that's evolved with Mark over the years soon.

Amir, let's tell the folks what this is all about. The show is called, You're Going to Eat That. Now, when you tell people that for the first time, they think, what does that mean?

Yeah, this is not fear factor, folks. We are not going to be eating bugs and trying to gross each other out with rancid fish or something like that. This really started about six months ago when Mark and I had one of our regular happy hours and had a couple beverages and we were talking about some of my recent food adventures and somebody who's with our group said you know you guys ought to start a blog or a show or something and we said and it sounded just like that it really did sound like that and and and we looked at each other and said podcast that'd be fun yeah I'll be something fun because well we like to eat. We like to talk.

And we like to talk about eating.

Sure.

You're going to eat that.

Yeah.

So that's what that means.

We're going to go visit restaurants. We enjoy the food experience. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the food. We're going to talk about the drink the the atmosphere the because for service Dining out like that is we we think of it as an event

It's an activity that you enjoy you enjoy with friends and family

So at the end we're going to talk about what our experience look you know dining is an experience. That's meant to be shared To me. It's an art form. I love, you know, a chef's culinary creations, but let's lay a few ground rules here. First of all, we're not out to destroy any restaurant's reputation. We are not out... We're gonna destroy our reputation. We'll destroy our reputation and that's fine, but we're not here to break any businesses. Hopefully we help make a few businesses along the way, but we just want to talk about our shared experiences and if you like sharing your experience, we want to hear about it too. And at the same time just let it be known we both live in central Ohio near Columbus Ohio. We're a couple of Hilliard boys from the Burbs in there but we're going to talk about everything from the best burger dive to some fine dining experiences throughout the city in here.

And at the end, at the very end, we're going to ask the question, are you going to eat that? We'll probably say yes most of the time.

Yeah. We may even come up with a rating system or something. Speaking of rating systems-

Now I'm going to be the grump, right?

You're going to expose me as the grump.

Now you're going to expose me as the grump. Let's talk about what the term is.

All right.

So, we're going to introduce you today to a term called DTM. DTM stands for? Dead to Mark. And why would something be dead to Mark? Well we went to a place and gave it multiple chances and never were expectations met or even approached. Yeah and you know we're like we're like baseball players three strikes and you're out. We're not right we're fair every any place can have a bad day or whatever. But at some point, Mark will declare you.

Dead to me.

But no, there is only, as many places we've gone, there is only one place that I have said is dead to me and I'm not going to name it.

Exactly. And in 20 plus years of friendship, I've only known Mark to really label that one place in there. Now, on the other hand, we've had a lot of many excellent experiences, a lot of fun outings. Service is a key, and you're going to find that as a common thread here. Maybe call me the foodie expert, call Mark the service expert.

I think we kind of both bring that edged angle to the table. Every place we've gone to over the years, servers tend to remember us because we do engage them. We like to know what makes them click. If we're not dining with our wives, we're often sitting at the bar eating.

There's nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's not about the booze. Sometimes it's about the booze. Wait, wait, let's not declare things. Exactly. It's about engaging with the staff.

It's engaging with those hospitality team members that are there taking care of us. We like to hear their stories as well. And they find out our stories whether they want to or not, quite often.

But let's get back to the, are you going to eat that? We're going to be maybe, I don't know how frequently we're going to do this. I mean timing is...

I travel 100 nights a year on the road and Mark lives a very busy schedule as well with all his careers. I run a market research company. Mark works for a significant PR agency in town, and so we're busy with our jobs. But we're going to try every few weeks to have a few outings. We'll probably get three or four episodes in the can every time we go. So we want to hit you at least once or twice a month.

And I think you said that this isn't just about fine dining. No. Because I can see us at some... I've been asked now since we put it out there that we're doing this, we've had recommendations already. Oh yeah.

And somebody said, oh yeah, you need to do a franchise episode. Go to your favorite franchise restaurants or go to your... What's your best wing place?

What's your secret dive that nobody knows about where you don't want to be spotted.

I appreciate a good hole in the wall.

Absolutely. So we're going to do it all. We're going to cover the gamut. It's going to be fun, but we need your help. We need some guidance. We need some direction.

We haven't scripted our format. We're working off a very, very loose outline, which is basically we walk into a restaurant, we set up our podcast episode, we talk to a couple people who work there, we eat, we talk about the experience. You know, maybe the chef will come out and talk to us in a place that has a chef. Maybe it's a line cook, maybe it's a server, maybe it's the manager.

We don't know what's going to happen. And sometimes, you know what, if you ping us with some good information or good banter, we'll have you on the show.

Be careful. Yeah, exactly.

We've got good contacts around Central High, rather than what we like about a restaurant, but I'd like to talk to people about what they like, what do they look for. So, we're going to, whatever recommendations you all have out there.

It's a show about real people eating real food in the places they like to go to. And that's what we want to do. We just want to have a little fun with it. So if you like the Mark and Amir banter, you'll get plenty of it, but at the same time, maybe you'll learn a little bit about what's in our backyard and maybe you'll be encouraged to open your culinary horizons a little bit.

Exactly. So, we've talked about what the show means, we've talked about what the show might look like, we've talked a little bit about how frequently we might do it based on our schedules. What else is there?

Why don't we tell a little bit about backgrounds and kind of without divulging too much of our personal lives, but you know, Mark, you and I have both, let's put it this way, our dining experiences for both of us, on kind of both ends of the spectrum, have become verbs and adjectives, right? Well, when you go out, you used to go out with your co-workers at work, didn't you? Something used to happen on a regular basis.

And maybe it's the grumpiest. That's where the grumpiness comes from. There was a period of time where things didn't, expectations weren't met. The food didn't come, the food was wrong. And that's, there's a philosophy in my office that through the course of the day you don't control much. You know the phone rings, the email comes in. What happens during a daily basis is sometimes out of your control. You might come into work with it with here's what my to-do list is and here's the seven, ten things I want to do today and you make a hell of an effort to get that done but anything can change that. One phone call, one email. The one thing you do control in your day is lunch. Where are you going to eat? What are you going to eat? When you're, you know, not necessarily when you're going to eat because that too could be out of your control, but making that decision. So how many times does this happen? That you find the place, you go get your lunch, you bring it back to your desk, because you're tied to your desk and you open the wrapper and it's not what you ordered. You want to go all Joe Pesci on it.

Yeah, that's where the term, oh, you got rickled. And for a solid couple years, that was the term in our office. And almost to a point, people didn't go to lunch with me because they knew the odds were someone was going to get rickled.

Oh no. Well, for me, it's kind of the other end of the spectrum. My job, I'm blessed to travel a lot of great places around the country and get together on the road with colleagues, friends, clients, etc. Because people know I'm a bit of a foodie and they ask me, oh, Amir, did you find a good place for us to eat tonight and so forth.

You don't have to ask you that question.

Well, yeah, of course.

Because if they look at your Instagram page or your Facebook page, the question's already there. Yeah. There's a five-course, a photo of five courses. And it was because, Amir, what happens when the server brings that first plate?

Well, you know, first of all, everybody oohs and aahs. And secondly, I pull out my iPhone and that picture happens. Yeah, if you want to know what I had for dinner last night, just look up my Facebook or Instagram the next morning. But it's gotten to the point where my dinners have an adjective. They're now known as Amir dinners.

And on Amir dinners, basically our friends sit down, we call over the server, and put myself in the chef's hands. We've prearranged something, we've made something happen and the food just kind of starts coming. So basically, folks only have to decide what they're going to have to drink with their meal that night.

But at the end of the day, we just both enjoy dining and we enjoy company and we enjoy life stories and you learn so much about people. Somebody once said it many years ago that you learn a lot about a person when you break bread with them. I think that's how Mark and I became good friends. We were co-workers in government many, many years ago and shared a wall. We used to yell at each other through the wall, but then we started going out.

We laughed.

We cried. We shed a tear. That's a whole other podcast. When we started going out, including our wives, that's when we really got to know each other. That's where the friendships come. We want to become friends with you all.

I don't know, that sounds very utopian.

Let's be friends.

Let's just gather together and break bread. We're going to become friends through the podcast, hopefully. And hopefully you haven't turned us off already, or you haven't gone, yeah, I don't want to hear episode two. Oh shoot, I haven't turned the mics on, right? Oh yeah, exactly.

But so this is, you know, episode one, we're just setting up the show. There's a Facebook page called You're Going to Eat That, the podcast. I encourage you to go up there and feel free to, if you listen to this episode, please, please, please give us some feedback. There's certain things like, Amir, shut up, or Mark, tell more jokes.

No, I don't have any yet. But the joke is this podcast. No, but yeah, just we're looking forward to the feedback, places where you enjoy, places where we might enjoy. Yeah, it's just sharing information to have others go out and experience them too.

But we have certain ground rules that we are going to stick to. As I said earlier, we're not out to destroy any restaurant's reputation. You're not going to hear us trash any place. We're not that podcast. But secondly, do not diss the Guardians. Don't diss the Browns.

Well, you probably can't diss the Browns.

You can't help it.

You can't help it, exactly. But beyond that, we don't have a lot of rules. So like I said, we don't know where this is going, where it's headed, but we're going to have fun along the way and hopefully you'll find this at least somewhat amusing. Until then, Mark, you going to eat that? Until then, Mark, you going to eat that?

Heck yeah.