This Pizza Might Kill Me (And I’d Still Eat It) with Sebastian Maniscalco

0:00Welcome back to Snacks. Today's guest is a comedy powerhouse who has turned his everyday moments into laugh out loud stories on stage. He's sold out arenas. He starred opposite Robert De Niro. He's built a career out of calling out all of ours and his quirks. But today we get to see a different side of him, his snacking side. Please welcome the one and only Sebastian Maniscalco. Good sleep is everything. That's why OLLI's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L-theanine for both kiddos and grownups. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help. Erasing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance.

0:38Find OLLI's sleep solutions for the whole family at OLLI.com. That's O-L-L-Y dot com.

0:50Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me here. I was excited when you agreed to be here because I feel like you have a lot of things to say about food. You've said a lot of things, but you've also come from a food family. Yeah, so growing up in an Italian family, food was kind of our conduit that brought us together at the kitchen table. And for me, I loved sitting around with my family talking. That was kind of my first stage was to kind of make my family laugh. And I remember literally going from the kitchen table to then going to, I don't know if this is a Midwest thing, but we would sit right outside the garage in like lawn chairs and just watch everybody in the neighborhood while we kind of had coffee or cake or dessert.

1:44So we kind of, we migrated to the driveway for dessert. This is like a normal family everyday occurrence or like when you had guests? In the northwest suburbs, yeah, it was like every, not every night, but like a lot of the nights were like, because it's summer, Chicago, summer's fleeting, so you want to enjoy the outside. And we hung out in the garage. Let's retire to the garage. So basically that's it. Let's go smell oil while we have cake. I don't know. Well, I guess that's what I was wondering, though. it's like because you have talked so much about coming to the table was but was your house a good snack house growing up like our Italian moms known for their snacking it's not like we had I saw this when I first walked in I was like oh this is kind of my kryptonite yeah this is peanut M &Ms there's all we got all of them in there it's a it's a peanut a pretzel almond like a caramel we mixed it up Wow but that thing is really cheap and it you will fight to to get some stuff out.

2:46I'm not gonna open it up. I just saw it. We didn't have this type of stuff laying around the house. We did have chips. And our snacking was more meal oriented, so it was like a snack meal. Like a sandwich in the mid-afternoon was a snack. Interesting. Wait, so you would have a full sandwich? Yes, sandwiches. But you'd come home from school. Yeah, my dad would make a beautiful, and this ain't one they're bread with bologna. This is like Italian bread, cheese, you know, provolone, cheese, prosciutto. It was an involved sandwich, oil, salt, pepper. It was like none of that. I joke about it in my act that like I went to school with a lunch bag that was like leaking.

3:39I mean, I truly feel that the smell of that must have been something really stounding. I ate alone. Yeah. But you say snack versus meal, which is something that we fight a lot about at Delish. That a sandwich is a snack. Is pizza a snack or a meal? I think pizza is like, it could be, it's so versatile. It could be anything because you have the pizza where it's leftover, right? That's a snack. That's a snack. But the pizza that you go out to have dinner or you make at home, I feel, is a meal. So pizza was a huge, huge part of my upbringing. Still is. I remember every Friday night we used to go to a place called Rosati's Pizza, which was like three blocks away.

4:25and then my grandmother used to make Sicilian pizza at the house in an oven, right? In just like a regular, she would just like in her regular kitchen oven. In her regular oven. Suburban oven. Now, we've all cooked pizza in an oven, right? And it gets up to tops, maybe 500 degrees. So when I make pizza at home, I have a pizza oven outside, but it's very labor intensive to get that thing going. Put the wood in, you gotta sit there and kind of tend to it and make sure it gets up to a high temperature. But with this stone-baked pizza oven that Frigidaire just put out, it gets up to 750 degrees and you could cook a pizza in two minutes.

5:12And what I like about it is if you're cooking it in a wood fire oven, you gotta manipulate the pizza, you gotta turn it, you gotta get in there. You got to send your hair off, right? Cooking pizza, I feel like at home, I always say, is like you're in this position the entire time. Well, with this, it's not the case. It cooks in two minutes, and especially we got a family. I got an 8-year-old and a 6-year-old, and I'm the cook in the family. If I don't cook, we don't eat. My wife is nowhere near the kitchen. What do you like? I like cooking pizza for the kids. We have a pizza night every Friday night, so that's kind of our go-to.

5:47And for them, you know when they're hungry, they're hungry. They want the food. They don't want to have daddy three hours With wood brace yourself. We're making pieces tonight. Yeah I also feel like you've talked a lot about your mother's cooking and how important it was to you You talk a lot about like ricotta cookies and things like that You have you know the Stella door a bit to me is is one of the best But like do you actually feel like was that how your mom communicated love to you was through food? was this like i'm i'm from a jewish family i get offended if you don't eat something i put out like this is something i've learned from years of jewish guilt was it like that in your house like your mother put something out you gotta eat it your father gives you like a 500 pound sandwich you gotta eat it yeah well this is the difference between eating back in the 80s when you were kids and eating now when you're kids i've noticed the kids now their palate all of a sudden is so sensitive to whatever they're eating.

6:49It's my own kids, too. My daughter will go, I don't like that. What is that, cumin? I go, how do you know about cumin at eight? Back then, whatever you were fed, you ate. And if you didn't eat it, you'd starve. There was no separate cooking. Today, a lot of these parents will cook one meal for the son, one meal for the daughter. Everybody had the same thing back then. A lot was communicated through food, not particularly my mother. It was my grandmother. When we went over to my grandmother's house, she was from Cefalu, Sicily. So she came with a ton of recipes when she immigrated here from Italy.

7:31So we went over there, and I saw food that I'd never seen before. My grandfather used to eat a whole fish and at the end suck out the eyeballs of the fish. and then he would ask, you want eyeballs? I'm like, I'm nine. I'm not eating eyeballs at nine. So yeah, it was a delicacy. I want to move on to, you just talked about your kids and I want to know what you are like as a food dad. Are you a cool food dad? Do you like cool stuff in your house? Do you feel like your kids' friends coming over and hanging out at your house because you got cool snacks? I feel parental insecurity about the snack level in my house.

8:14I have three kids and two teenage boys. Or like, I wanna be like, I got cool stuff here. I feel absolutely no pressure in providing junk food to kids. I'm very particular about snacking. Because if you have kids out there, especially kids that are six or eight, that's all they say is snack. Snack, kind of snack, that's all I hear, snack. So, and you got to be kind of cautious of what you give them because, you know, the sugar and what have you. So we try and have healthy snacks. I tried to implement beef jerky as a snack. How'd that work out? For the kids. And, I mean, how do you compete with this?

9:03I mean, this is like, you know. But if you change the culture, if you don't have this laying around, then the only thing to have is the beef jerky. I tried doing this for a snack. All right. And I know you guys are into like snacks. These are snacks. This is display. Nobody, where nobody here is. Nobody eats the cookies? How long has those cookies been in a jar? That's actually, those are recent. But like, I, yeah, there's maybe, yeah, we have a lot of snacks here. It's a delicious kitchen. I don't have to say. We all love snacking. Yeah. okay i'm not sitting here saying uh that we don't snack at the house however i try to put out like a a veggie tray yeah right and i just put it on the kitchen table carrots cucumbers celery and it's still sitting there so you know we have pop chips around the house we have kind of like granola bars.

9:59And I try to maintain a healthy environment, but with kids it's very difficult, especially when they go over to other kids' house and it's free reign. It's Oreo cookies, it's Snickers, it's this, that, and the other thing. And then when they come to my house, it's celery and hummus. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Alex's mom ran out and got us Klondike bars is what I heard the other day. And I was like, Alex's mom is awesome and I'm apparently not, but I also do feel like my house was terrible growing up. My mother had nothing around. I mean, I think that's part of the culture as well, and similarly growing up in the 80s.

10:38So I do feel a little bit of that stress. Do you insist on implementing any of your Italian heritage food-wise on your children? Yes, I am actively trying to give them foods that kind of center around the Italian culture, whether it be pizza or meatballs or pasta, eggplant, chicken cutlets. Are they sucking eyeballs? They are not sucking eyeballs yet. I haven't introduced that just yet. However. Too much cumin.

11:12Yeah, I mean, they do have, like I said, they do have a sensitive palate. So a lot of the stuff is, you know, I think my daughter is a little bit more adventurous in trying things than my son, although my son is carb heavy right now. He's eating bread, pastas and all that, which is fine. Growing boy. Yeah, because he's active and he needs the energy. But yeah, we went to Italy this year. We took them. This is the first time they've ever went. And, you know, the time. That's a food experience. That is. Italy is like. It was tremendous. I mean, my, here, here's one which I was stunned. we went to a restaurant we were actually in france first went to a restaurant and my daughter got mussels and she loved them so she was eating like mussels every every meal now i think the first time i ate a mussel was like 21 you know and there my daughter's age sucking on mussels out of a shell yeah but if you're gonna have them that's where that's where you have them yeah and artichoke it's another thing i mean we were eating artichoke in in italy and i was like wow they really really love the artichoke so nobody talks about the artichoke in rome like that's the thing to get there it's so good it's it's delicious it's not and we're live from the living room as doug eyes up the match day spread he's reaching for the buffalo wing perfect hang on what's this oh he's going for a can of pepsi too incredible what a finish sensational combination look at the delight Right on his face.

12:45There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Match days deserve Pepsi. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a pack of Pepsi Zero Sugar for today's match. It's poetry in motion. Delish.

13:02Okay, I want to turn the conversation over to your eating habits now, eating on the road, and what that's been like for you. I have a vision that in your line of work, hitting all those different cities, that maybe it's a sad food life, but is that a lie? Is it a good food life to get to go to all those places? It's a beautiful food life on the road because you do get the chance to try foods from the city that you're in. And I'm a lot more diligent on the road with my food intake than I am at home. when I'm at home there seems to be a propensity for snacking because you just wander into the kitchen oh what do we got here I mean doing doing you know this podcast here going there going there I'm not really eating right you know and then and then tonight I'll have a have a meal I actually love Greek over here it's a place called Milos oh yes it's great it's great yeah great great food So on the road, it's very, very easy for me to be healthier than when I'm at home because also when my kids eat and they don't finish the food, which is often, I tend to be a garbage disposal.

14:16And because I come from a family where my father used to go, you ain't eat that? And it's a sin. It's a sin. I'm like, what? and then he used to have like four plates because he used to finish everybody's meal because he couldn't get it through his head that this was going to go to waste. So I have that same mentality now where I even tend when I go out to eat with my kids, I don't have a full entree because I know I'm going to be knocking theirs down. Did your parents eat the bone? My mom would like eat the bone of whatever if we had a steak or we had a veal chop or a pork chop. My mom would be like, don't throw the bone away.

14:50I got to finish what's, you left a lot on the bone. Oh, yeah, no, the bone is a big, big deal. I mean, that's where a lot of the flavor is, too. I know. But, yeah, you gnaw. There's nothing like gnawing on a bone in public, right? I mean, you go to a restaurant, you take a nice T-bone and get into it. It's beautiful. That would be cool. That would be cool for someone to catch you doing and taking a cool photo of that. Yeah, go right ahead. I would be into that. Go right ahead. What about your rider? Do you have specific things you need? Are you willing to disclose what you need in the back in the green room?

15:23I am the antithesis of high maintenance. I don't need anything to operate. I'm actually uncomfortable that I have this many people with me today. I normally don't travel this deep. I just like to go to these things alone. How many people do you have with us today? What do you have? Three. I think we got about seven. Yeah. Which is a special event with the Frigidaire. I get it. Generally, though, I don't like a lot of people. And backstage, I got an avocado that I rarely eat. Avocado's an interesting ask. What's the thought about that? Slice it up, take out the pit, a little salt, and then you scoop it.

16:03You got a little energy for the show. Love that. But avocados are tough because it's like you got to get the right ripeness on that damn thing. If you're not picking your own avocado, too, that's like leaving that into the hands of someone else is like, that's a risky thing. I totally agree. Those of you that are out there that are having your avocados purchased by a third party, shame on you. No. That's not something you can Fresh Direct. This is honestly not a joke. Produce is a tricky one. Sorry, Fresh Direct. I agree. I do love Fresh Direct. What's Fresh Direct? The ones who do your food shopping for you.

16:37That's another thing. I've got a problem with anything delivered to the house by somebody else. No food delivery? Listen. This doesn't make any sense. I'm not saying I don't do it. There's a lot of food that's coming to our home and it's delivered. However, I don't know where that bag has been. All right? I live in Los Angeles. I know out here it's generally a motorcycle that shows up with some weird oven on the back. Yep. And they take it out. New York City, yes. In L.A., it's cars, right? Yes. I don't know if you've seen some of these cars that are delivering food. It's like your food gets there.

17:17It smells like cigarettes and laundry. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's like how many different smells are in these people's cars? I mean, I don't know about you. My car, the way I keep it, looks brand new. I can't agree with you more on that. I still have the, like, new air. I still have, like, the tag on it that says there's, like, an airbag in here that I won't let my kids take off because it still makes me feel like I have a new car. They're like, can we take it off? But in L.A., the last time I was there, they got those little robots that, like, deliver food. The little guys on the little boxes.

17:56Yeah, I've seen the robot don't come to my house, though. My house is off the robot grid. They can't make it off the driveway. I feel like you really made it when the delivery robot can't get to your house. I feel like that's the level of, that's here. That's, Sebastian's here. I'm telling you, no. I get it. Cars could barely make it to my home. Yeah, exactly. They can't climb up. I don't know why. I can't get the damn thing to come to my house. It's not on the... I can't get a Waymo or I can't get a robot to deliver food. I feel... And we haven't gotten to the place where you can ask for that.

18:28Please do not send the cigarette car. Send the robot. We don't really have to. Listen, I don't want to eat a sandwich that smells like, you know, cologne. I'm sorry. But do your kids... Do they door dash? Like, do they order their own food? Because my kids... Oh, your kids are young. You don't have teenagers yet. I'm not even for your kids doing this yet. I'm not, what are they, 12? No, my oldest is 19. My middle is 15. My youngest is 12. But my oldest and middle are like, well, my middle now is like, can I just like door dash something? And I'm like, when I was ordering my, I was like 29 when I was like ordering my own takeout.

19:06Like, you're too young to be ordering your own takeout. I agree. I don't think 15 years old is a little too young to be yet. at 15 years old, I was DoorDash. I was going to get, we ordered a pizza. My dad didn't want to pay the delivery, so he told me, go get it. And it'd be 35 below zero in January in Chicago. I'm like, what? The whole street is full of ice. Go get it. So it was like, it was nuts. Yeah, that's insane. You must be around a lot of weird eaters when you're out on the road. You know, I am on the road a lot, and I typically don't see a lot of people's rioters or what they're eating.

19:47I generally don't go backstage. You're not intermingling in the back and someone's got, like Beyonce's got all white candies and all white snacks, but you have an avocado. No, I hear these stories about these musicians coming in and they take over the backs and then they recreate the back room to make it look like their living room at home because they need to be comfortable, this and that. I go into my dressing room, and it's like the, you could still smell the sweat from the basketball team that was in there last night. There's no recreation of anything. There's an avocado. Here's another one I have, which is like, I don't even know if you call this a snack.

20:31I have Hall's Mentelyptus. Oh, my gosh. Just to suck on, just to cool my throat a little bit before I go on stage? I don't think that counts as a snack, but I'm intrigued by it. Maybe. I think if you have more than three, it qualifies as a snack. Fair enough. I think once you get to 15 calories, maybe it's a snack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, other things that I have, I have a fruit plate. I like fruit. Fruit's a nice little snack for me, particularly pineapple. That must be hard for you as a California resident. The fruit in California is great. You know what? I got a problem right now, and I don't know if this is happening in New York City or across the country for that matter.

21:12What is going on with green grapes? They have a brown hue to them that I've never seen before. And I don't know what's going on, whether or not they're merging. Are they intermingling? I don't know. I don't know what's happening with grapes. They look brown. And they used to be a beautiful green. And now I get them. And grapes is one of those things that sit in the refrigerator, and if they go too long, you've got to eat these damn things within three days. Or you start getting, like, that soggy grape that has that little brown dimple at the bottom of it, which is a little bit. That and raspberries, I noticed that they grow a mold really quickly on them.

21:55Yes, they do grow a mold. Well, because they're so moist in there. I hate that word. But they're so, like, in the container. They just, like, kind of, like, sitting in their own, like, sweat. I will tell you my hack is my snack hack is the best grapes on the planet I am not being paid to say this the best grapes on the planet are at Costco the best green grapes the best red grapes I like a crisp grape not to be whatever I'm not sponsored by the grape council although I will take it no one out there thinks grapes is paying you has a council I didn't even know how how would they find me grape council wolf connect if the grapes had a council they must California Raisins has a council I don't think grapes is going listen how the hell do we promote these damn things how do we get in front of more people nobody's eating us well now that they're brown I'm sure there is probably a weather reason why they're brown I think that's probably the thing maybe so you have some fruit what else do you have backstage?

23:04I have turkey. Oh, nice. Slice of turkey. And generally, that's it. You're healthy. I try to be. Yeah, I mean, listen, I'm 52. I got a six-year-old kid. So if you start doing the math, I could very well be in a wheelchair at this kid's wedding. So I need to be extremely healthy. I mean, do the math. I mean, he's six, right? I'll probably be 80 with a breathing tube at the wedding. Yeah, I hear you. But I'm also very impressed because you are setting a good example, I do believe that for you to have come from the kind of background and for you to have found a path where you're eating well but not crazy is pretty impressive.

23:48Well, I don't want to give the impression out here that my diet's clean and I don't eat this or that. I just wolfed down an Italian meal on Monday night with my wife with a bottle of wine. And that was, we had Mother Wolf, which is a restaurant in Los Angeles. Are you a sharer? Do you like to share at meals? Or do you like keep to yourself when you're out with your wife? I never used to do this, but my wife got me into this. And I don't even know if I agree with this. But, you know, once you get married, you really have no say in anything. But what happens now is my wife will go, why don't you get this and I get that?

24:25And, you know, but that's basically what she wants. there's two dishes that she wants but now I gotta suffer because she wants to do a sampling that's it that's the key and you don't go but come on do you you like a little what she orders or are you like well I really don't know you want that I find it I find it strange to eat off somebody else's plate because I I I don't know, there's something about getting a meal and just kind of, this is mine. I don't know how much to cut, what's a good share portion. So I just like to eat my own food. I don't really like to share, unless it's a family-style restaurant where you order a bunch of stuff for the table.

25:12Interesting. I take some issue with this, but I hear what you're saying. Are there things that you take from your childhood that you really either wish you could still eat now or that you still are eating that were a thing that you... Any guilty pleasures? Anything from the past that you're like... You know what I loved growing up? You know what my snack was? Golden Graham's cereal at midnight. I used to come home. This is when I used to go dancing, by the way. We used to dance. People our age used to dance. Do you dance? I'm just saying. Growing up in the 80s, that's all I was doing was dancing.

25:53And I used to go out to the nightclubs, come back to my house, and pour a bowl of Golden Grahams before I went to bed. Something about Golden Grahams for me was a comfort food. So, yeah, Golden Grahams was my go-to. I haven't had Golden Grahams since then, and I haven't been a cereal guy at all in my adult life. Not to be, this is going to sound really stupid and snobby, but, like, yeah, Golden Grahams has a flavor that is not, you can't find anywhere else. It is, like, a caramelized-y, sugary kind of flavor that is, like, that stands alone, honestly. It's total white trash. Also not. It's a white trash.

26:37It is. Maybe. Maybe. My weird snack is cottage cheese and ketchup. Okay, so when did that start? How did that combination come about? It started in, I'm embarrassed to say I think it started in college. I've always liked cottage cheese. I've always liked ricotta. And then I don't know, at some point I started putting ketchup in it. And I don't know, I don't really know. It kind of reminds me, I feel like I can say this to you. It kind of reminds me like when somebody makes a good baked ziti and like the ricotta and the tomato sauce Like kind of gets mixed together in the sauce outside the ziti Or is it still disgusting?

27:20Well, no, I mean I I don't know how many people are eating cottage cheese I've never I never ran across anybody. Well, I mean no one that I know has said oh my god Last night I had the best cottage cheese this is what my husband says he says the only reason cottage cheese is popular right now is because young people are buying it for their elderly relatives I don't know if I disagree with him because I you know I buy it but you're making his point yeah I don't know I don't know if you look around the room here is anyone here is anybody one hand two hand two not with ketchup though two Two hands out of five is pretty.

28:05Okay. Maybe I'm the oddball, so maybe I should start. Well, you're not lactose intolerant. We can't go down that road, but we could maybe find you an alternative. There you have it, people. That was it. You end on cottage cheese and ketchup. This thing's going to take off like wildfire. This is the viral moment. I don't know that it'll top. I love fish eyeballs. Thank you so much for coming. This has been fun. I really do appreciate it And I'm excited to see all the things you have coming forward. You've got Specials you are you writing another book? What else? What else do you have coming down the road?

28:47What else I have my own podcast called the Pete and Sebastian show I Have a Hulu special coming out in November, which I think you're really gonna enjoy Fantastic. I'm doing a bunch of stuff today with Frigidaire, promoting the Stone Baked Pizza Oven. Excited. Which my mom just got installed yesterday. Nice. Thank you for being there. Loves it so much that she can't wait to have us all over for dinner. Please put me on the invite list. We will have the cottage cheese and ketchup ready to go. And other than that, I just got a bunch of shows between now. I'm going to Atlantic City. I don't know when this is coming out.