Michael Ian Black Hates Ketchup—But Loves Anchovies On Toast

0:00Welcome to Snacks, the podcast where we talk to your favorite stars about their craziest food obsessions. Our guest today is Michael Ian Black, one of the funniest, driest, and most sarcastic food lovers out there. You'll also know him as the star of Wet Hot American Summer, The State, and his new CNN show, Have I Got News For You, where he and Amber Ruffin and Roy Wood Jr. talk about today's craziest news. We can't wait to get into what gets him going in the kitchen. We'll be right back after this. When you want your spring break to feel like. And your kids pool day to feel like. And your hotel bed to feel like.

0:48Oh, and room service to feel like. Because at Hilton, hospitality feels like.

0:55Michael Ian Black:Your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Book now at Hilton.com. Hilton for this day. Did they make you try the soup drops, the progressive soup drops? They didn't make me, they offered, and I foolishly accepted. And? That's among the worst things I've ever put in my mouth. And I put some atrocious things in my mouth. Name three atrocious things you put in your mouth. Various people's fingers. Okay, gross. That counts. That's up there. I also realized that we have dueling snacks podcasts. Yes. You and your friend. Tom Cavanaugh. Tom Cavanaugh have Mike and Tom eat snacks.

1:38That's right. And what do you do on that podcast? Well, we do three things. Okay. We pick a snack, eat a snack, and rate a snack. Okay. Known as the per system. We don't cut corners. Oh. If there's a snack to be had we will sample it and we will give you our honest opinion about it. What's your snack selection process? Well, it's a great question and thank you for asking it. This is the kind of hard-hitting journalism that I was expecting. I didn't know it would come so fast. I thought we would start with some softball questions. No, we're just getting right into it. Okay, well. We don't slow things down for snacks here.

2:16Do you understand? I get it. Wow. Okay. Barbara Walters. We're going to get intense. Of late, we're with this new producing company called Realm. And what they did is, because Tom and I live in different geographic locations, one of the producers went to the grocery store, which is the comedic pronunciation. Grocery. Grocery. Got it, of course. And sent us both like basically a big snack box care package. So we've been working our way through the snack box for a couple of months. Wow. And how did, what was the start of this? So were you and Mike? It's an adorable story. You and Tom. You're the Mike of the Tom.

2:56I do like that you have no idea who he is. I know who he is. No, it's okay. I like that you don't know who he is. Because he's more famous than I am. So I like that you don't know who he is. We met on a television show called Ed. This was on NBC back in the early aughts. And Tom played Ed and I didn't. But we remain friends and we thought, oh, it'd be fun to do something together. But it takes too long to pitch something. It takes too long to write something. I'm just doing a podcast. You were doing podcasts, to be fair, you were doing podcasts long before people were jumping on the podcast. Yeah, we started close to 20 years ago, I think.

3:32But then it's been on, it's been off, it's been on, it's been off. And we've never made a dime from it. Right. I mean, we don't have fancy sets like this. We don't have art direction. I mean, come on. We don't have a gorgeous, made-up post. We don't have anything with the flyaways. I got flyaways. We're siphoning the funds off. This isn't real investment. Do you know what I mean? We're hiding it from the parent company. Whatever you're doing, it looks great. Thank you. It's Ikea and duct tape. That's what it is. Don't look too close. Your snack budget's clearly high. We have a decent snack budget.

4:04Yeah, that's good. Well, but then you get the progressive soup drops, and then everything falls apart. Oh, my God. I don't have to tell you. I have to tell you that you are, you know. Among the most hands. Thank you. So nice. Most handsome, wittiest, sharpest, driest. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. These are all on the list of the intro I'm going to do for you when you're gone, after you've left. But also, I feel like you probably have some really good old food stories. Like, do you have strong associations to food growing up? Yeah. Doesn't everybody? I mean, I feel like everybody has that food, that snack, that meal that just brings you to such a specific time in your life.

4:45What's yours? Okay, so the one that I haven't been able to eat since childhood is macaroni and tuna salad. Wow. That's a rough one. We used to have that, I feel like we had that six nights a week in my house. Where did you grow up? In New Jersey. It was canned tuna, elbow macaroni, Yep. Mayonnaise. And I feel like nothing else. That was it. And we had that every night for what seemed like years. Yes. I have not been able to eat anything. Like I don't even feel like I can eat elbow macaroni anymore. Just on its own. Do you have any happy food? Like did you have a good food house do you feel like?

5:31Well, I had what you call a unhappy childhood. You know, as I think. Everybody. We all did. And that's the standard I think. Absolutely. So I don't have a lot of, like, great food memories. But you know what? My favorite, and we only, I feel like there was a season for these, Malamar cookies. It's an East Coast, I feel like, cookie. And it's a dome-shaped cookie, marshmallow on top, some sort of cookie on the bottom. A wafer. Dipped in chocolate. it and just this past year i saw them at the uh one of the delis here in new york city and that launched for me a months-long indulgence in malamars yes where every time i was at a malamars i was buying more malamars and i was consuming 12 to 15 malamars a day i want to say that's a lot for months yeah that's a lot yeah but look at I mean, you look amazing.

6:31I will tell you that I feel like Malamar did something recently, like in the last couple of years, where there was like the fake news that they were being discontinued. I'm so glad I didn't even, I wasn't even aware of that fake news because that would have been devastating for me. And then like, and so then the surge of people trying to get their hands, I actually think Delish might have covered it when it was being reported that they were, and then there was a huge, and I felt like, I don't know, when I went to the store, because my mom was a really big Malamar fan too. Went to the store. Where did you grow up?

7:02I grew up in New Jersey as well. Okay. And so, and she grew up in New Jersey. So she loved Malamars. And I remember like buying a lot of Malamars and going to the store being like, where are the Malamars? And they were like, right over there. Like there didn't seem to be any kind of concern. Nobody had gotten that same memo. And so I was like, did somebody do this? But do you agree with me that there's a Malamar season? I feel like they weren't produced all year round, but maybe that's just a miss, a miss memory of mine. I don't feel like that about Malamars. I do feel like that about lots of foods.

7:31In fact, at Delish, we also talk a lot about, like, when's the right time to talk about pretzels, which is obviously, do you know what the pretzel season is? There's a pretzel season? Yes. It's like October. I mean, Octoberfest? Yeah. It's like October. September, October, right? Sure. Or like, you know, what's. But you're talking about a very specific kind of pretzel. You're talking about a beer pretzel. I don't know. I could give you a season for pretty much any food. Okay Throw me a food. Well, I'll give you a season. I'll give you let me give you the month I might even give you a day. Okay, let's just I'll drill down pretty far.

8:07Yeah, okay Okay, let's go with March just March. Okay. Well for March for delish I mean and listen our our things are based on metrics of what we see rising in interest on our site So what tastes delicious? How about that? analytics data crunching instead of SRO.

8:31Michael Ian Black:What happened to old school palates? The smell, the sight, the sound of Rice Krispies crackling in a bowl. Oh, we should cover Rice Krispies because they're crackling in a bowl. Rice Krispies month. March is a good cereal month. We're coming out of the winter, right? I could see like... Rice Krispies treats in March. Rice Krispies treats, I think, is a perfect time of year. And then people start getting excited about strawberries you know because those are coming in season so a little bit of an increase and let me tell me ask you this Joe please do the wife I actually feel like maybe Michael should just take over this podcast he's been doing it for a long time am I being am I being over aggressive no I love it let me ask you this you've obviously you've obviously been abroad you've been to the continent or when you were in England yeah did you taste the strawberries or European strawberries in general yes actually I just I literally just came back from Europe like three days ago and I did have strawberries all this remarkable right I'm not remarkable why do we not have strawberries that taste like European strawberries here mass production agriculture I mean I think it has to do with the distance between how far the food has to travel from so we grow strawberries domestically we do but we're not going them now right right I don't necessarily mean like this moment I just meant start the general Well, also the size.

9:53Yes. Why do we have to make such gigantic strawberries? Like, why can't they be like, like the strawberries in France were like normal petite strawberries. We have like American, like. Right. We got balls on our strawberries. We have girthy. Girthy. Almost testicular strawberries. Yes. Whereas the European one, you're just popping in your mouth. They're delicious. Yeah. They're dainty. Yes. They're appropriate. They're the Progressive Soup Drop of fruit. That's right. Poor Progressive Soup Drops. I actually want to see what the flavor was that you tried. Tomato basil. Was it? Yeah. It lasted eight-tenths of a second.

10:40Is that something we're going to see on Tom and Mike Eat Snacks? Well, I'd never heard of the Progressive Soup Drop. In fact, I speculated that it might not be a real product, and then it was handed to me and and then it all fell apart it fell apart as soon as I found out it was a real product so tell me about we were talking a little bit about nostalgia and your dad yes I am a dad yeah are you do you have a good food house for your kids yeah well we were very we were very deliberate in our food providing if that makes sense we were once our kids were like six and four, we were like, all right, we're not making stupid separate meals for you.

11:23You eat what we eat or you just don't eat. So they ended up, I think, becoming like super good eaters and they have good palates and they're foodies. So it's really nice because now as a family, like we can eat whatever and go out and do whatever and they enjoy it. Do you have good snacks in the house? Sometimes. My snack vocabulary in the house, when I'm not eating critically for my podcast is somewhat limited. You know, you mentioned pretzels. By God, do I eat a pretzel. Really? By God. What's your brand? Rolled gold. Oh. What's your shape? Well, either tiny twist or sticks. Interesting. I don't like a rod.

12:07You don't like a rod. No, and I don't. Too dry. It's too dry. It's too bready. Yeah. And not a classic pretzel shape. Well, the tiny twist is the classic pretzel shape, but it's tiny. I thought the, I was thinking twist, a braid. That's what I was thinking. You're thinking a pretzel braid. No. And then I went through, did I go through a dots phase? Of course I did. Everybody, look, we all went through dots. We all were excited about dots. They go down easy. Very good. They're very good. But there's two problems with dots. One, when you open it up, it smells like seaweed. Oh. Two, after a while, it's just too much flavor.

12:45Yeah. You know, if you want to consume just three or four pretzels, dots all day long. But who wants to eat three or four pretzels? No, no, that's a lot. You want to get in there. That's a lot. So you have pretzels in your house at all times? I wouldn't say at all times, but often. But often. Oh, here's another one. A frequent, this is in the last couple years in my house, generic ice cream sandwiches. Generic? Generic. It has to be generic. Why? Because the generic ones taste better. The store brand ice cream sandwiches, unique among all generic food products, taste superior to any of the brand name ice cream sandwiches you're going to get.

13:23Because the brand name ice cream sandwiches, they make them good. I'm not interested in a good ice cream sandwich. Do you like the kind that they used to give out at like camp? Yes. Like back in the day. Or at an elementary school or something. The cheapest, most chemically infused. Like stuck to your finger. Yes, yes. Like the kind that gets on your, yeah. You're speaking my language. Yeah, they're good. Delicious. You have to try, have you ever made? I don't have to do anything. This is America, Joe. It is, it is, it is. This used to be America, Joe. But I highly suggest that you do an ice cream cake made out of those ice cream sandwiches.

13:58Have you ever done that? No, explain that to me. It's like basically you stack them up. Oh, I'm going to screw this up. hopefully someone is going to flash to this at some point, but you basically take a loaf pan and you stack the ice cream sandwiches, you know, in the loaf pan, you know, and then you can do like a whipped cream or something in between if you want. Stack, stack, stack, freeze. And then you can slice them into like basically like a cake slice, a cake loaf sort of situation. That kind of sounds delicious. I mean, what's not to love about it? Also, you could just eat an ice cream sandwich, which might just get you to the same end goal.

14:36But this is a little bit more fun. It's layered. Yeah, I like a layered loaf. It's a little bit more, you get more chocolate to vanilla. You know what I mean? But you don't. I guess you don't. If you do the math, you get the same exact amount of ratio. Math wasn't always my strong point. I've got to be honest. I'm just going to, definitely, math is definitely not my strong suit. I want to come back. I really wanted to agree with you, too. You were like, you get more chocolate to ice cream. And then as soon as I thought about it, I was like, you know, you don't. You don't. You really don't. It's all right.

15:05It's okay. Let's just pretend like, you know, nobody's paying attention. What a snack podcast. This isn't a science podcast. Nobody's going to be. Neil deGrasse Tyson isn't going to walk in here and be like. To do the math on the sandwiches. For sure not. You're fine. I want to come back to what's your guilty pleasure snack. Oh, I don't believe in guilty snacking. Oh, nice. If you're going to eat a snack, by golly, you eat that snack. Yeah. And you embrace it. What's yours? Do you have a guilty pleasure? I kind of. To me, it's less about what the thing is that I'm eating and more about, like, how often I eat it.

15:37Okay. I'm going through a little bit of a, I'm going through a special K with red berries phase right now, which means I'm eating a lot of it often, and I'm embarrassed of that. Is that like a nighttime thing? All day. Okay. All day. But special K with, I mean. It's not really guilty as a snack, but it's more just like, it's inappropriate how often I'm eating it. It's not healthy for me. More than three bowls a day? I'll say three bowls, but three bowls at like any given moment. Right, spread out. Any time. It could be night, it could be afternoon. Will you, when you think about, okay, I'm going to have some special cake, is that a meal substitute or an addition to?

16:14Sometimes both. Right. A little bit of both. Right. How did you turn this on me, though? You, what's your guilty pleasure? Because I'm. You're very trained. I'm interested in other people more than I'm interested in myself. But people are, but you're, of the two of us, you're the more interesting person here. Not at all. So you have to answer the question. All right. So my problem with snacking is, isn't what I eat, it's how much of it. This is. Because I will, I will consume far too much of anything in a given sitting because, as we've determined on our podcast, really serving size ultimately is whatever the container is a hundred percent whatever the container is that is your serving yes so a box of wheat thins that's a certain size that's a lot that might be a lot but but I feel like I could easily eat a box of wheat thins well it doesn't feel fair to me when things that are delivered to you in such a way that you're made to feel like it's one serving and it actually has three.

17:20For example, when you go to the movies, a lot of those like big bags of candy that they sell have like three servings. But that's not fair. That's a lie. We all know that's a lie. Yeah. And the movie theater knows it's a lie. The people who put the Twizzlers people know it's a lie. You and I, the consumer know it's a lie. It's a lie. It's a fiction we're living. But you have a problem where in that you can't really stop yourself from finishing. If I'm at the movies? Well, no, just in general. The bag of Twizzlers is gone if I'm at the movies. And plus your bag of Twizzlers is gone. Right. Yes.

17:53Oh, yeah. No, no. You're definitely not. Nobody's taking out. Nobody's taking leftovers. Nobody's saving the rest of the snow caps. No, no, no. And bringing them home. Nobody. 100%. So what is the thing you're eating a lot of? It's probably chips. Salty chips. Do you have a favorite flavor? It's. No. It's whatever's on hand becomes my favorite flavor in that moment. But there's certain things that I'll never have on hand. I will never have for example a barbecue potato chip in the house Because you'll eat the whole bag no because I don't like them. Oh, you don't like barbecue. I don't like a barbecue chip But you you but you know just the the barbecues next-door neighbor is salt and vinegar Yes, I'll eat a whole bag of salt and vinegar bag.

18:40Yeah, and then and then the roof of my mouth will be cut up Yeah, my tongue will be blistered My throat will be parched, and I will have regrets in that moment. But it will take until the bag is done for me to have that regret. Well, it's hard to walk away from those. It's so hard to walk away. What do you think is the superior flavor of chip? Well, okay, so now you're getting into a whole thing. Yeah, please. Because when you say superior flavor of chip, you have to ask yourself, how much of the chip are you planning on consuming? because while the salt and vinegar is delicious, because of the intensity of the flavor, sometimes you get into it and you're like, ah, geez, I got to take a break.

19:25My tongue's cut up, everything's stinging, my eyes are watering. Whereas with a traditional just salted potato chip, I'm going all night. You eat the whole thing. Yeah, that's a marathon session right there. So in short bursts, I prefer an intense flavor over a longer duration. if we're at the Super Bowl and I know I'm going to be eating for the duration of the game, I have to have a little more mellow flavor profile. Interesting. Dip or no dip? I can go either way, but I generally am a no dip guy. I want to dig in on the chip thing for one quick second, though, because I also feel like... Joe, can I interrupt you for a second?

20:05By all means. Because I think this is an important question. Please. Because we discussed this yesterday on our podcast. Okay. Chip, crisp, fry, chip, right? Okay. So we've got the American and the British. Yes. I think crisp is a far better name for chip than chip. But I think fry is a far better name for fries than chips. So in my ideal world, we would eliminate the word chip from our American vocabulary. And we start calling chips crisps and remain and keep calling fries fries Crisp just seems a little stuffy though doesn't it sounds fun chip? You don't think what's more fun than chip? Well chip, but crisp is more descriptive I think because crisp it's it's on them.

20:56It's onomatopoeia See the problem with crisp is because isn't isn't technically Pringle Considered a crisp don't they doesn't like hydrated potato product, right? That's technically that's what I that's What's that? It rolls right off the tongue. I get it. I get it. Yes, I understand the distinction you're making. You could make a distinction between chips and say, well, one is more of a crisp. Right. I wouldn't say. But I think the generic term crisp is just a superior. We'll be right back after this. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Introducing VirtuoUp, the latest in a long line of innovation from Nespresso.

21:35It's innovation you can touch, sense, and taste in every single cup. With a three-second start, easy open lever, and dedicated brew-over-ice button, it's even easier to enjoy your coffee your way. Sip for yourself. Shop Virtuo up exclusively at Nespresso.com. I actually find it annoying in London when they call fries crisps. They don't. They call fries chips. Chips. That's what I meant. Fries chips. Okay, so we at least agree on that. I don't like that. Okay, so we agree that chips for fries is terrible. Yes. Okay. Don't you? Because that's not, there's nothing about that experience. Fries should be called fries.

22:14Fries should be called fries. I agree. All right. Okay, back to the pressing question at hand. Yes. I understand what you're saying about the flavor of the chip determining how much you're going to eat. But what, if given any choice of any flavor, what are you going with? I'm actually still reeling from you not liking barbecue. Because that feels pretty intense. We're going to get a lot of letters about that. I'm sure. And I want to apologize because I feel like it's a little bit anti-American to not like a barbecue chip. Yes. Or a barbecue crisp. Barbecue crisp. But that's always going to be my last flavor.

23:00My first flavor historically used to be the Doritos taco flavor. Wow. Now, that's a historic chip that you don't find very often anymore. And I feel like several years ago, like I'm talking decades ago, they changed the flavor of that. It's not as good as it used to be. But as a kid, the taco-flavored Dorito will always have a very special place in my heart. Taco-flavored Dorito. Okay, here's my question, my follow-up question to this, which is when I was saying chips, I was thinking potato chips. Am I wrong to assume that chips really equals potato chips? Because you just pulled a Dorito out.

23:52Because to me, the chip is a generic term for all snack chips. Interesting. Except for pretzels, which is its own category. Well, pretzels are its own category. Right. Right. So, yeah, tortilla. Well, you call it a tortilla chip. Yeah, but I guess I would have maybe distinguished differently. Okay, but you didn't. But I didn't. No, you're totally, it's all me. It's my fault, 100%. I just am shocked. I feel like I'm made to be the asshole. No, no, no, no, no. You're doing all the right. You're doing the God's work here. I feel like I just showed up. You did a great job. You're doing great. You're being amazing.

24:27And I love, I just feel like I would have asked about Doritos if I want to know about Doritos. But, okay. Also, I have to tell you that I'm really working on my reaction faces because they were, in season one, they were horrible. What's a bad reaction face? Were you like? We had Tom Papa on. He talked about bread. bread he did talk about he doesn't stop talking about red but I made a face that was like oh like like that and then people were commenting like that girl's face like there's something wrong with that girl she's like or like or she's overdoing it like there was a lot of like okay girl sit down and stop reacting like that but I really was taken aback by something he had said but that was a very good taken-aback face I thought so but then I'm like and now I I feel like I have to do a little bit more of an Amy Poehler thing where it's just like you always look like she just has the perfect reaction face all the time.

25:24Well, that's why she won the Golden Globe. That's why she won the Golden Globe, 100%. I'm going to give you an opportunity to do a taken aback face. Okay. And let's see if you can do it a little more subtle than you do with Tom Poppano. I'll do my best. Yeah. I don't like a barbecue chip.

25:41No, I'm not an actress. I can't do it. This is why you're in the big movies. I'm really not. You are. Hot American Summer is still one of my all-time favorites, honestly. Let's talk a little bit about eating on set. Okay. Did you like, was craft services like the greatest thing ever? I mean, it remains the greatest thing ever. And the best thing about my job, any actor's job, is craft services. There aren't that many jobs, at least there didn't used to be. When I started out in this business, you know, like there weren't like Google cafeterias that are like fully stocked. Like acting was one of the only jobs where you show up and then there's just snacks laying around.

26:21There's food all the time. All the time. What was like the best stuff? Okay, so what people don't appreciate who aren't in show business is there are different levels of craft services depending not only on the level of production that you're on, but also geographically where you're at. Because L.A. has far superior craft services than New York. Interesting. And the reason is because obviously show business is sort of headquartered there, But there's also so much more competition among the craft services people so they got up their game where in New York It's just somebody's cousin, you know who has a pocket full of M &Ms that they throw down You know they throw in a little bowl and maybe you get some cheese it's right But but whatever they use it or M &Ms are all that I have and it's free.