Sebastian Maniscalco’s First Stage Was At The Dinner Table

Sebastian Maniscalco is one of the top-grossing comedians in America, beloved for his stories about the food-obsessed family he grew up in, and his constant irritation at just about everyone around him. And in 2021, he parlayed his love of food into a new Food Network show, Well Done. Sebastian talks with Dan about what it’s like going from a working-class upbringing — during which he torched hams to earn a little extra cash — to selling out Madison Square Garden many times over.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

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• 0:43Dan Pashman?

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• 1:05Dan Pashman?

  I just want to start off right here, Sebastian, like with the hard-hitting questions.

• 1:10Dan Pashman?

  You say your wife makes this popcorn. Tell me about this Boulder's popcorn, small kernels.

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got wind of this popcorn from her brother, who lives in Colorado now.

• 1:23Dan Pashman?

  Got it.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  And to be honest, prior to having this popcorn, I didn't really pay attention to the size of the actual popcorn. But this is, it pops small and simple, in a little canola oil, in this thing called the whirlipop. And then my wife pretty much makes the best popcorn I've ever tasted.

• 1:49Dan Pashman?

  And why are small kernels better?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  Something about it, the way it hits your mouth, it's not so chewy.

• 1:56Dan Pashman?

  So, most popcorn that people are eating, there's two types of kernels. There's butterfly kernels, that's like movie theater popcorn, they're kind of like misshapen, there's little jagged edges sticking out. Those will hold seasoning well. And then there's the mushroom kernels, those are like the balls, they look almost like a little mini Death Star.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Geez, you're really into the popcorn.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  I didn't know there was this different shapes to the kernels.

• 2:21Dan Pashman?

  No, this is, this is a whole thing. They also said these, these bolder popcorn kernels are hull-less, so like when the popcorn breaks, it goes into smaller pieces and it doesn't get stuck in your teeth.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Listen, I don't know how deep you went into this.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  I'm just going solely by the taste of it. I didn't take my wife and go, babe, there's no husks on the corn. It's amazing.

• 2:51Dan Pashman?

  This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. And before we get into it, I have a very exciting announcement. Get ready, Sporkful fans. We have your chance right now to attend an exclusive taping of the Sporkful with me and chef and cookbook author Casey Elsass at the Samsung Home Test Kitchen in New York City. We're gonna have food and drinks. Casey and I will chat. You'll get to see a live taping. Then he'll cook up some samples of a couple of dishes from his cookbook. What can I bring? You'll even get to taste some. If you'll be in the New York area on June 3rd, visit siriusxm.com/sporkfulnyc.

• 3:30Dan Pashman?

  That's siriusxm.com/sporkfulnyc. Before 8:00 PM Eastern on May 28th for your chance to attend. No purchase necessary to enter or win. Must be a US resident and at least 21 to enter. All right, let's get to the show. Sebastian Maniscalco is one of the world's most successful comics, and 2024 was a big year for him. He had one of the highest grossing comedy tours in the country, and he was the first comedian ever to sell out five consecutive nights at Madison Square Garden. Jerry Seinfeld has called Sebastian his favorite comedian. And in fact, onstage, Sebastian is kind of like an Italian Jerry Seinfeld. He zeroes in on a micro detail of human behavior, picks it apart, and points out the utter ridiculousness

• 4:13Dan Pashman?

  of it, often getting very agitated in the process, and with elaborate movements acting out a scene as he describes it. And a lot of the human behavior he dissects has to do with food and eating. Here's a bit from his stand-up special, What's Wrong With People.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Anything like a dinner or whatnot. When the bill comes, it gets weird.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Because what normally happens is the bill will travel around the table. People will then begin to pitch in what they think they owe.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  The problem with this is there's always somebody last to get the bill. A look of confusion and concern comes over their face. They're like, what?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Now, people see this and they're like, huh. Need a couple of extra dollars or something like that?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  And they're like, well, I'm $687 short.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  So the two bucks you're gonna pitch in ain't even gonna put a debt in this.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  So how about this? How about the bill take another lap? Do another lap?

• 5:30Dan Pashman?

  Sebastian's been practicing this style of comedy since he was a kid. He grew up in a food-obsessed family in Chicago. His dad's an Italian immigrant who works as a beautician. His mom was a school secretary. And for Sebastian, the kitchen table was his first stage.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  I would come home from school and I would talk to my family about kind of what I saw at school, what happened. And I had a funny twist on it, very observational. I was never the class clown at all. I actually despised the class clown when he got up and tried to make kids laugh. I was like, sit down, it's not funny.

• 6:03Dan Pashman?

  You're like, let me punch this up for you.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, the food at dinnertime definitely brought our family together and it still does. I mean, every time my dad comes to visit from Chicago to Los Angeles, you know, I make sure I get a nice charcuterie board with cheese and meat, have some wine, and, you know, we could sit there and talk for four or five hours. So food has always been really important in our family and it's kind of what's brought us together.

• 6:29Dan Pashman?

  And who were the primary cooks in your household growing up?

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Primarily my mother. My mother cooked. She was a state-owned mom for a little bit and she was in charge of kind of making breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then later on in life, my father got into cooking. It was very theatrical. He would come out with, you know, chef coat, chef hat. Uh, and not, not to be funny, it was to, I'm working.

• 6:54Dan Pashman?

  Right, right, right.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  It's like Superman coming out without his cape. My dad had to have the, the coat on and what have you.

• 7:00Dan Pashman?

  Whether or not he was cooking, Sebastian's father knew how to eat. In 2018, Sebastian wrote a memoir called Stay Hungry. Here's an excerpt from the audiobook.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  My father and I sit around, talk, eat, and justify the indulgence by reconfirming to each other how good the food is. In one sitting, we have Italian bread, meat, fruit, olives, olive oil, gelato, it doesn't stop. Tiger Woods' father, Earl, pushed him to become better at golf. My father pushed me to eat tripe. There's one major aspect of my life where I don't overindulge, fill up, or even let myself feel satisfied. My career. My recipe for success is to stay hungry. I never let myself bask in any glory. My father's voice is like a broken record constantly playing in my head saying, don't get comfortable.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  Nothing comes easy for the Maniscalcos. Get back to work.

• 7:57Dan Pashman?

  Now, speaking of working, you were working from a young age.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Work was always big in my family. You, you, there's no summer break. It's like you come home and you're working.

• 8:07Dan Pashman?

  I gather one of your very first jobs was at Olive Garden.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Yes, worked at the Olive Garden.

• 8:12Dan Pashman?

  You also, during holidays, you worked making honey baked hams.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, torching hams.

• 8:18Dan Pashman?

  How does that work? Tell me about the...

• 8:19Speaker 01

  That works where you basically get in a refrigerator, a large refrigerator, and you put on a, um, like a white suit with a, like a helmet. They give you a torch and you start torching ham and turkeys, uh, for the whole day.

• 8:37Dan Pashman?

  To like brown the outside?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  They put like, I don't know if it's like a sugar crust on it or some, something they put, I forget what it was.

• 8:44Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  And then you would scorch that. It was almost like a creme brulee type of

• 8:48Dan Pashman?

  Got it.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  torching you would do and you do that for 10 hours a day. I come home smelling like a, like a whole ham. And, uh, they would tell me, take your clothes off in the garage. And then come in because you're stinking up the whole house. But, yeah, anything from money back then, as far as work is concerned, nothing was below me or anything like that. I was just hustling.

• 9:12Dan Pashman?

  Right. And now, being Italian and being from the Chicago area, you obviously have spent some time eating Italian beef.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah.

• 9:20Dan Pashman?

  What's your favorite Italian beef place?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Johnny's Beef in Chicago is my favorite with some hot peppers. Sometimes I would put like this whiz cheese on it. They have like this cheddar cheese. But as I grow older, I just like a nice plain beef with some peppers and french fries. I mean, you go into a full coma after eating it. But for me, it's been, it's been one of my go-tos.

• 9:46Dan Pashman?

  And for folks who don't know, I mean, this is basically like a roast beef sandwich, but it comes with, you got the juice and you're gonna dunk that sandwich into the juice. My brother and sister-in-law had their rehearsal dinner at Portillo's, another esteemed Chicago beef place.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:59Dan Pashman?

  And we were dunking the hot dogs into the juice.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 10:02Dan Pashman?

  When you do, when you do a function there, they give you, it's not just like a little dipping cup of juice. They give you like a bucket. It's like a communal bucket of juice. More sandwiches should be dunked into juices.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think a juice dunk is a nice touch when it's, when it's a beef sandwich like that. I mean, a lot of people don't know what the sandwich is outside of Chicago. You know, I don't really see it anywhere else.

• 10:25Dan Pashman?

  But I should say, Portillo's actually had an IPO a few years ago. So I think it wouldn't surprise me if they go nationwide now.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I live in LA and they do have one somewhere not close to me. So you gotta travel like 45, 50 minutes.

• 10:38Dan Pashman?

  I gotta say, I have mixed feelings about a place like a classic Chicago Italian beef place going nationwide. Once everything is everywhere, then nothing is special.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it comes watered down, I guess. If you could only get a Portillo's hot dog in Chicago, it just has a different meaning. I know the guy is actually a guy, Mr. Portillo, that opened up Portillo's, really did a great job, not only with the food, but if you ever go to Portillo's, it should be a template. The way they take your order is so quick and the way they prepare the food is they got it. It's like an assembly line.

• 11:15Dan Pashman?

  I know you've gotten frustrated with other restaurants that attempt to have assembly lines and don't move quite as quickly.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, Chipotle being one of them where, you know, it's I mean, sometimes I just think they get bogged down with the way they're preparing the bowls or the burrito. And I don't blame it all on the employees. It's the people on the other side, too. I mean, I'm sitting behind a guy and he's putting literally every ingredient into the burrito. And the poor person can't even shut the burrito, right? I don't know if you've ever been to a Chipotle where the burrito actually splits, the tortilla splits because it's so big.

• 11:53Dan Pashman?

  And then they gotta go get another one.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  That's it, we gotta redo. You know, it's like, eh, there's another 13 minutes out of my day.

• 12:05Dan Pashman?

  Sebastian worked in food through much of high school and college, but he always knew he wanted to be a comic. There was never any other option. Once he had $10,000 saved, he picked up and moved to LA to pursue his dream. But he wasn't getting out of restaurant work just yet. He needed to pay the bills while he tried to get his stand-up career off the ground. So he continued waiting tables in LA, and he had a very specific system for deciding which places he'd work at.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  What I would do is I would go in, I would sit down at the restaurant and have a meal and kind of look at how things were working, how the server was, how the restaurant kind of operated, to see if I wanted to work there. I treated this like, you know, I had a choice.

• 12:46Dan Pashman?

  It's like you're making them interview for you.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like I'm interviewing them. And I didn't know how hard it was to get a... It's basically harder to get into the serving industry in LA than it is in the entertainment business because everybody's waiting tables. Of course, this is back then, I'm sure it's changed now where people are doing Uber and what have you, but back in 1998, you know, that was the thing you did to supplement your income. So I'm going to all these restaurants and then I would apply and the thing and...

• 13:18Dan Pashman?

  What were you looking for?

• 13:20Speaker 01

  First and foremost, I had to enjoy the food because if I was gonna be selling the food as a waiter, I'd have to enjoy what I was selling. And then number two, just seeing how the attitude of the staff was, if they were happy or miserable. Sometimes you go into these restaurants and there's a collective misery amongst the people that are working there. So, uh, cause you're in the, you're in the service business and it's not easy. You gotta, you know, I mean, it's toxic if someone is on the waitstaff constantly complaining and bitching. That kinda permeates throughout and it's not a good environment to work in.

• 13:56Dan Pashman?

  So you weren't one of those people?

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Oh, I, I, I bitched a lot. I'm not, it's, it's, uh...

• 14:03Dan Pashman?

  And then in terms of just dealing with the customers on a day-to-day basis?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  It's awful. It's terrible. The general public is just not, not good.

• 14:14Dan Pashman?

  But restaurants were what Sebastian knew. He landed a job serving drinks at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. Very fancy. Meanwhile, he was taking comedy workshops, doing as many sets as he could at open mics or wherever he could get a gig. Eventually, he started performing short sets at The Comedy Store, the famous LA club. He'd leave in the middle of a shift at the Four Seasons. He'd time it perfectly, so he'd clock out for a break, drive the eight minutes to the club, arrive just as it was his time to go onstage, do a set, and race back. Sometimes he didn't have time to change, so he'd perform in his uniform. The job at the Four Seasons gave Sebastian the flexibility he needed to pursue comedy. And since it tended to attract some very particular customers, it also gave him plenty of material.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Woman came in, ordered a glass of wine, and then called me over to the table. And even just the way people call you over to the table would set me off, you know? You'd get, you know, like, "Excuse me." You know, like, "Oh, here we go with the two fingers," you know? Right away, I knew it was gonna be a problem. And she thought the wine glass, the rim of the wine glass was too thick to rest on her lips. She wanted to know if we had a thinner wine glass because it was too heavy on her lips. And of course, you know, working at the Four Seasons, you have to internalize everything. It's not like, you know, you could say, you could tell them off or be sarcastic. Yeah, sure, absolutely.

• 15:37Dan Pashman?

  You're totally right. A lot of customers have this issue.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  You know, just very subservient. Yes, right away, ma'am. And then you go in the back and, you know, you put your fist through the wall. So there was a lot of those moments where these little things would kind of set me off and bother me. Just the behavior of people. It used to be a huge celebrity hangout. So you would have these looky-loos come in, sit at a table, taking a major real estate and order a chamomile tea and sit there for four hours. You'd be like, alright, there goes my rent. You know, I mean, we have appetizers, you know? You'd have people order like seven Nut Catties because they were too cheap to get an appetizer, so.

• 16:17Dan Pashman?

  It's just, it's funny to me to picture you waiting tables, knowing now that so much of your comedy is based on your frustration with people being annoying.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:29Dan Pashman?

  But like, were you aware at the time that you were waiting tables, like, oh, I have this... I am especially annoyed by these types of people and like...

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Oh, that's, that's, that's, annoyance is basically the root of my stand-up comedy.

• 16:48Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, Sebastian gets his big break. So big, in fact, that he can order a bottle of Jack Daniels for breakfast. But it's not what you might think. Plus, he shares his rules for being a good dinner party guest. Stick around.

• 17:08Speaker 02

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• 17:13Dan Pashman?

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• 17:55Dan Pashman?

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• 18:38Dan Pashman?

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• 18:43Dan Pashman?

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• 19:17Dan Pashman?

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• 19:51Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman. On last week's show, we teamed up with our friends at the podcast Decoder Ring to investigate a food mystery. Are jalapenos getting less spicy?

• 20:00Speaker 03

  And then I said, you know what we can do. And I pulled out my phone and I texted, I think, like four or five different chefs all at once. The first one was, yes, definitely. They're less hot than they used to be. The second one was, I tell my cooks, my hands must be too sweet because I can't make the salsa hot enough anymore.

• 20:18Dan Pashman?

  That's food critic Brian Reinhardt, speaking with Decoder Ring host Willa Paskin about what he learned when he talked to an expert on chili pepper genetics. So what's going on with the jalapeno? Check out last week's episode to find out. Now, back to Sebastian Maniscalco. One thing to know about him, he was not an overnight comedy success. He was in LA for four years before he got his first break. The legendary comedian Andrew Dice Clay asked Sebastian to open for him. Sebastian kept his job waiting tables at The Four Seasons, but instead of slipping out to the Comedy Store, he was squeezing in tour dates around the country with Dice. Now, to be clear, this big break wasn't a huge jump in salary. Sebastian was still hustling to pay his bills. But while he was on the road, he did get a per diem.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  They gave you a hundred bucks a day to eat food in the hotel. Well, I wasn't eating a hundred dollars' worth of food. So what I did was... I was looking at the room service menu and I saw bottle of Jack Daniels, forty dollars. So I would order bottles of alcohol with my meal and take the alcohol home to stock my bar at home. This is, this is, again, growing up the way I grew up, you didn't waste anything.

• 21:34Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  It's not like you're gonna get a hundred dollars and you're gonna spend fifty of it and leave the, you're gonna spend that fifty on something. So I decided to spend it on alcohol. So I would order like two eggs, toast, hash browns, and a bottle of Jack for breakfast. And the guy would come up going, geez, this guy's down in Jack Daniels at nine o'clock in the morning? And little did he know, I was just taking it home to stock my bar.

• 21:59Dan Pashman?

  Did you talk with your dad about any of these strategies?

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. He was totally for it. I mean, my dad is very frugal and, you know, just, I was even privy at a young age that my father really worked hard for his money. We come from a working, middle-class family. And when we went to say a place like McDonald's, I was conscious of not spending his money there. You know, like, I didn't get a Big Mac. I got a cheeseburger, small fry, and I didn't get a Coke because I didn't, I didn't feel like I wanna put that financial burden on my father. I was even annoyed if we brought out another, a friend of mine to McDonald's and that friend

• 22:43Speaker 01

  got a Big Mac, large fry, and a supersized drink. And I would go, really? You're gonna, you're gonna soak my father for, for the seven dollars instead of four dollars? You know, I don't know where that came from, but I was always conscious of even going out to dinner and I know somebody else is paying, I won't maybe get what I would normally get because I don't wanna like, I think it's rude to, to do that when somebody else is paying, you know what I'm saying?

• 23:13Dan Pashman?

  And if, if other, someone else knows you're paying and they order something really expensive, how do you feel about that?

• 23:19Speaker 01

  It's a turnoff. I got a bad taste in my mouth.

• 23:21Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Uh, I pay attention to all those things and maybe too much. You know, invite you over for Thanksgiving dinner, right? And you go, what could I bring? And I tell you, don't bring anything, just come. And if you just come with nothing, I get upset.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I don't know, I've been always that type of guy who kind of has a rule, like a rulebook of how you behave.

• 23:46Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  What's polite, what's unpolite, and I hold that against people, which maybe I don't think I should do so much.

• 23:53Dan Pashman?

  Well, the issue of what to bring, both as a host and a guest, what can I bring, what can I bring, what can I bring? That is so fraught. Everyone feels like they have to bring something, they want to bring something, they feel bad showing up empty-handed. So, in fact, everyone could bring something, but then it's like, well, you can't ask one person to bring like a hundred dollars worth of stuff and someone else to bring eight dollars worth of stuff. You can't assign one person to cook three things and one person to cook only one thing, because then it's like, oh, you like that person's cooking better than the other person's cooking? And as the guest, I'm kind of like, well, maybe I have certain things that I'm excited to make and other things that I don't want to make. You're gonna assign me something, which isn't really what I'm excited to bring, but I guess I just have to do it because you told me to.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  See, I don't even like where this is going. And I'll tell you why. If it's not a collective, okay, guys, I'm gonna host and you're gonna bring this, you're gonna bring that. If it's, if it's not like set from the get-go that this is a collective thing, I got a problem with you saying you're gonna host Thanksgiving and you start barking out assignments.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, I'm gonna host Thanksgiving, I want you to make mashed potatoes. I'm like, what the hell am I doing?

• 25:13Dan Pashman?

  So, I'm assigning people things that I know that they know how to make. But they're all saying to me, what can I bring, what can I bring, what can I bring?

• 25:21Speaker 01

  The what could I bring is a polite courtesy ask. If you're hosting, host the damn thing, have everything. If somebody asks, what could I bring? You say nothing. I don't even ask people, if I'm gonna come to your house, I know what I'm bringing. I'm gonna bring something that you love. Like, if I know you that well, I know you like to drink tequila, you like to drink wine, or you like a specific cigar. I am going to get a profile on you of what your likes are. So when I go over to your house, boom, and you're like, oh my, it's my favorite tequila.

• 26:01Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  That's why my wife loves me so much, because I listen. All right? I don't like when people come to my house with food they made at their house, you know, and they need to explain it to me. And, oh, it's a family recipe, da, da, da, da, da. And I'm like, oh, where should I put it? It's like, just by the garbage. It's, no, no one's gonna eat that. It don't go with what I got.

• 26:28Dan Pashman?

  All right, anyway, back to Sebastian's story. He continued to go between stints at The Four Seasons and more promising comedy opportunities. After a couple of years opening for Andrew Dice Clay, Sebastian joined a comedy tour headlined by Vince Vaughn. Then, back to The Four Seasons again. Finally, after eight years working there, Sebastian quit the job that had made his comedy career possible. He was making enough money in stand-up that he could stop refilling nutcaddies. A few years after going full-time with comedy, Sebastian filmed his first special. Now he was headlining shows, touring more widely, growing his audience. In 2017, he cracked Forbes's Top 10 Highest-Earning Stand-Up Comedians list. He started selling out arenas. And all along, food and family remained a huge part of his comedy.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  You have to understand something about the way I grew up. I grew up in a house that was food everywhere. Every two feet, you just bumped in.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  I had a grandmother who lived in the basement, just cranking out lasagna.

• 27:40Dan Pashman?

  Sebastian miming his grandmother frantically pulling lasagnas from the oven and throwing them up the stairs.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  It's like a lasagna factory in the basement. Food just kept coming up the stairs for no reason. There was meat hanging from the ceiling.

• 27:58Dan Pashman?

  Around the time Sebastian's career was really taking off, his relationship to food was changing too. It was partly because of his success, but also because of his wife. In 2013, he married the artist Lana Gomez, and as he writes in his memoir, she came from a different background. Her family had money. Her stepfather was known as the Grape Ape because of his obsession with fine wine. Sebastian always loved food, of course, but between Lana's family and his own increased earnings, he began experiencing the world of fancy food. In 2021, Sebastian combined the story of where he came from and where his life had taken him in a new show for Food Network called Well Done. Each episode tackles a topic like grilling or food photography, and Sebastian goes out and learns about it. With his salt-of-the-earth persona, he tells stories from his childhood and pokes fun

• 28:41Dan Pashman?

  at any hint of ridiculousness around him. But he also finds himself in some of LA's white tablecloth restaurants, drinking expensive wine and eating high-end cuisine, as he sometimes does in his own life today. The show kind of feels like a comedic version of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. I asked Sebastian, what are some of the annoying tropes of food TV shows that you wanted to avoid in your show?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  I wanted to educate people on food and also have a good time with it and have them laugh. I didn't want to do a lot of the bite-and-smile stuff you see on a lot of this stuff where they go, "Ooh, oh my god."

• 29:15Speaker 01

  I'm not saying that's not there, it's just, it's just minimal.

• 29:19Dan Pashman?

  The first episode of Well Done is about fish. Sebastian plans to go out on the Pacific with a fishing crew and a fancy chef. They'll catch fish, and the chef will show him how to prepare it. Right before they get on the boat, Sebastian says...

• 29:30Speaker 01

  So I'm ready to catch my dinner. Everything is riding on this moment. Well, not everything. Just my manhood. I'm surrounded by manly men who could break me in half with their pinky fingers.

• 29:43Dan Pashman?

  Almost immediately after they leave port, Sebastian gets really seasick, like staggering to the bathroom with help from the camera crew seasick. But he's a comedian, so he jokes through the misery.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Soon as we get a couple of fish on the line, bring them on the boat, let's get [BLEEP] out of here.

• 30:01Dan Pashman?

  Once they return to shore, Sebastian texts his dad a photo of himself laid out on the deck. His dad writes back, "It's embarrassing to the family." Ask Sebastian about that moment. That whole dynamic of kind of like you positioning yourself of like proving your manhood on the boat and then like reporting to your dad and him being embarrassed. Like I thought, I mean, first of all, this is all very funny. But it's also curious, like what, what ideas about sort of masculinity and food that you got from your dad?

• 30:28Speaker 01

  See, my dad was in the army and my dad always looked at me as like, you don't know how to do anything, you don't know how to build anything, you know, like I wasn't good with my hands. In my house, my father took care of, dishwasher's broke, I'll fix it. He never was even patient with me enough to even teach me stuff.

• 30:45Dan Pashman?

  It's interesting to me that your dad has gotten more into cooking and that your dad is this sort of like guy who went to the army who fixes things. And again, it's a, you know, changing of the generations. But it feels like from the way you portray him is that there's a certain attitude that like, that he thinks that he's more rough and tumble than you are and that there's like this sort of father-son dynamic there.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Well, my father's a beautician. This guy's doing dye jobs and highlights and blowouts during the day and he'll come home and he'll, he'll make a patio, you know? So it's like you got literally him, him holding a can of hairspray and then at night, you know, WD-40. So it's like hairstylist and the glam game is, you know, quote unquote, not. Manly, like going fishing or building a patio. He's he's at the best of both worlds. So this, I always like hire people. I'm like, oh, if I don't, if I don't know how to do it, I would hire people.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  And my dad's sense was, why hire somebody when you could do it yourself and save the money?

• 31:57Dan Pashman?

  And Sebastian's gotten more successful. He says he's gotten more comfortable spending money, especially on things he loves.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't mind going out. I mean, listen, I know the hard work and and all the stuff that I've done up until this point. Um, you know, if I want to go out and enjoy myself, I got no problem doing that.

• 32:14Dan Pashman?

  Have you taken your dad out for some expensive meals?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:17Dan Pashman?

  What does he think of that experience?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Uh, he enjoys it, maybe a little uncomfortable at first, you know? Uh, but I think now, you know, he really enjoys the experience. Of course, you know, he's a critic too, you know, he's.

• 32:30Dan Pashman?

  Shocking, Sebastian, I wouldn't have expected that.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Go out to a nice restaurant and he's always doubting whether or not the artichoke. He likes artichoke and it's like, are they fresh artichokes? And I'm like, Dad, it's fresh. And we're not, we're not eating at the the corner, the corner restaurant back home. Uh, but yeah, he's he he likes it. My mom specifically likes it. She likes to be wined and dined and she likes kind of fancy and going out and enjoying herself and has no qualms about ordering. Talk about no, she'll she'll order the lobster.

• 33:04Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  She don't, she don't hold back.

• 33:08Dan Pashman?

  Sebastian and his wife Lana have two kids. And while Sebastian and his parents are warming up to their new lifestyle, he worries his kids will get too used to it.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  My struggle for me is I have a specific way I was brought up. Like I said, working class, a family. We went on one vacation a year, nothing really fancy. And now my kids are growing up in a totally different way, growing up with more than what I had growing up. And you just got to work double hard to instill in the kids, you know, manners and and not everybody lives like this. And, you know, you might go to a house that's smaller than ours, that's okay. You know, it just, just trying to make them grounded people. That's, that's what I struggle with.

• 33:54Dan Pashman?

  How do you think that their relationship with food, growing up the way they're growing up, will be different from yours?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  They're always looking for snack. I mean, I can't believe the amount of snacks these kids eat. Snack, it wasn't really an option growing up. We, we had like our three square meals and, you know, maybe got like an ice cream cone at the end of the day, if you were good.

• 34:16Dan Pashman?

  Do you cook for them?

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, during the pandemic, it was, you know, breakfast, lunch and dinner. And I would be making like a beautiful, you know, Four Seasons-esque type brunch for these kids. I mean, it was multiple foods, just because they're so young and I didn't know what they were gonna eat. I would make pancakes, French toast, eggs and a bagel, just to kind of see what they would gravitate towards. And I would get up at five o'clock in the morn- I felt like I was running a hotel. Get up at 5:00 AM to make, uh, cause I knew they were getting up at seven. So I'd make this beautiful breakfast.

• 34:46Dan Pashman?

  You're doing prep?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I was doing prep. Like a sous chef.

• 34:51Dan Pashman?

  Now Sebastian is back on the road for work, so he misses a lot of family meals. But sometimes he brings the family with him.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  I did the Red Rock in Colorado, which was a beautiful outdoor venue. And they came to that and my daughter's four and a half and kinda gets what I do a little bit. My son, obviously two years old, he don't know what's going on. He just knows daddy's up on stage talking into a microphone.

• 35:15Dan Pashman?

  Sebastian says his kids haven't started doing comedy bits at the dinner table yet. But mealtime for him is still sacred.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  I'm trying to keep those traditions that we had as a family growing up and eating around the table alive. So when I'm home, I like to clear my schedule and kind of just spend time with the family.

• 35:45Dan Pashman?

  That's Sebastian Maniscalco. He's on tour now. You can find the dates at sebastianlive.com. Next week on the show, we look at the story behind the calachi. It's a pastry that's become a beloved specialty in Texas, but traces its roots to a wave of Czech immigrants who came to the state more than a century ago. That's next week. While you wait for that one, check out last week's episode, Has the Jalapeno Lost Its Heat? We investigate. That one's up now. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one.

• 36:28Dan Pashman?

  And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. This episode was produced by me along with managing producer-

• 36:39Speaker 04

  Emma Morgenstern.

• 36:40Dan Pashman?

  And senior producer-

• 36:41Speaker 05

  Andres O'Hara.

• 36:42Dan Pashman?

  Our editor is-

• 36:43Speaker 04

  Tracy Samuelson.

• 36:44Dan Pashman?

  Our engineer is- Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman. And I'm Fig in Chicago, Illinois, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 37:12Speaker 04

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• 37:41Speaker 01

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