Pod Insights The Sporkful Sebastian Maniscalco’s First Stage Was At The Dinner Table About this episode 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.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:05 Dan Pashman? I just want to start off right here, Sebastian, like with the hard-hitting questions.
1:10 Dan Pashman? You say your wife makes this popcorn. Tell me about this Boulder's popcorn, small kernels.
1:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, we got wind of this popcorn from her brother, who lives in Colorado now.
1:23 Dan Pashman? Got it.
1:23 Speaker 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.
1:49 Dan Pashman? And why are small kernels better?
1:52 Speaker 01 Something about it, the way it hits your mouth, it's not so chewy.
1:56 Dan 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.
2:13 Speaker 01 Geez, you're really into the popcorn.
2:16 Speaker 01 I didn't know there was this different shapes to the kernels.
2:21 Dan 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.
2:31 Speaker 01 Listen, I don't know how deep you went into this.
2:36 Speaker 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.
2:51 Dan 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.
3:30 Dan 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
4:13 Dan 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.
4:29 Speaker 01 Anything like a dinner or whatnot. When the bill comes, it gets weird.
4:36 Speaker 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.
4:48 Speaker 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?
5:03 Speaker 01 Now, people see this and they're like, huh. Need a couple of extra dollars or something like that?
5:11 Speaker 01 And they're like, well, I'm $687 short.
5:19 Speaker 01 So the two bucks you're gonna pitch in ain't even gonna put a debt in this.
5:24 Speaker 01 So how about this? How about the bill take another lap? Do another lap?
5:30 Dan 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.
5:43 Speaker 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.
6:03 Dan Pashman? You're like, let me punch this up for you.
6:05 Speaker 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.
6:29 Dan Pashman? And who were the primary cooks in your household growing up?
6:32 Speaker 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.
6:54 Dan Pashman? Right, right, right.
6:55 Speaker 01 It's like Superman coming out without his cape. My dad had to have the, the coat on and what have you.
7:00 Dan 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.
7:09 Speaker 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.
7:52 Speaker 01 Nothing comes easy for the Maniscalcos. Get back to work.
7:57 Dan Pashman? Now, speaking of working, you were working from a young age.
8:01 Speaker 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.
8:07 Dan Pashman? I gather one of your very first jobs was at Olive Garden.
8:10 Speaker 01 Yes, worked at the Olive Garden.
8:12 Dan Pashman? You also, during holidays, you worked making honey baked hams.
8:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, torching hams.
8:18 Dan Pashman? How does that work? Tell me about the...
8:19 Speaker 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.
8:37 Dan Pashman? To like brown the outside?
8:39 Speaker 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.
8:44 Dan Pashman? Right.
8:44 Speaker 01 And then you would scorch that. It was almost like a creme brulee type of
8:48 Dan Pashman? Got it.
8:49 Speaker 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.
9:12 Dan Pashman? Right. And now, being Italian and being from the Chicago area, you obviously have spent some time eating Italian beef.
9:19 Speaker 01 Hmm, yeah.
9:20 Dan Pashman? What's your favorite Italian beef place?
9:22 Speaker 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.
9:46 Dan 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.
9:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:59 Dan Pashman? And we were dunking the hot dogs into the juice.
10:01 Speaker 01 Wow.
10:02 Dan 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.
10:13 Speaker 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.
10:25 Dan 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.
10:31 Speaker 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.
10:38 Dan 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.
10:49 Speaker 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.
11:15 Dan Pashman? I know you've gotten frustrated with other restaurants that attempt to have assembly lines and don't move quite as quickly.
11:20 Speaker 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.
11:53 Dan Pashman? And then they gotta go get another one.
11:54 Speaker 01 That's it, we gotta redo. You know, it's like, eh, there's another 13 minutes out of my day.
12:05 Dan 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.
12:27 Speaker 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.
12:46 Dan Pashman? It's like you're making them interview for you.
12:49 Speaker 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...
13:18 Dan Pashman? What were you looking for?
13:20 Speaker 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.
13:56 Dan Pashman? So you weren't one of those people?
13:58 Speaker 01 Oh, I, I, I bitched a lot. I'm not, it's, it's, uh...
14:03 Dan Pashman? And then in terms of just dealing with the customers on a day-to-day basis?
14:08 Speaker 01 It's awful. It's terrible. The general public is just not, not good.
14:14 Dan 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.
14:56 Speaker 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.
15:37 Dan Pashman? You're totally right. A lot of customers have this issue.
15:40 Speaker 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.
16:17 Dan 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.
16:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:29 Dan 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...
16:37 Speaker 01 Oh, that's, that's, that's, annoyance is basically the root of my stand-up comedy.
16:48 Dan 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.
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19:51 Dan 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?
20:00 Speaker 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.
20:18 Dan 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.
21:00 Speaker 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.
21:34 Dan Pashman? Right.
21:34 Speaker 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.
21:59 Dan Pashman? Did you talk with your dad about any of these strategies?
22:01 Speaker 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
22:43 Speaker 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?
23:13 Dan Pashman? And if, if other, someone else knows you're paying and they order something really expensive, how do you feel about that?
23:19 Speaker 01 It's a turnoff. I got a bad taste in my mouth.
23:21 Dan Pashman? Right.
23:21 Speaker 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.
23:38 Speaker 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.
23:46 Dan Pashman? Right.
23:46 Speaker 01 What's polite, what's unpolite, and I hold that against people, which maybe I don't think I should do so much.
23:53 Dan 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.
24:37 Speaker 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.
25:07 Speaker 01 Like, yeah, I'm gonna host Thanksgiving, I want you to make mashed potatoes. I'm like, what the hell am I doing?
25:13 Dan 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?
25:21 Speaker 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.
26:01 Dan Pashman? Right.
26:02 Speaker 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.
26:28 Dan 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.
27:11 Speaker 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.
27:31 Speaker 01 I had a grandmother who lived in the basement, just cranking out lasagna.
27:40 Dan Pashman? Sebastian miming his grandmother frantically pulling lasagnas from the oven and throwing them up the stairs.
27:47 Speaker 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.
27:58 Dan 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
28:41 Dan 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?
29:02 Speaker 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."
29:15 Speaker 01 I'm not saying that's not there, it's just, it's just minimal.
29:19 Dan 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...
29:30 Speaker 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.
29:43 Dan 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.
29:53 Speaker 01 Soon as we get a couple of fish on the line, bring them on the boat, let's get [BLEEP] out of here.
30:01 Dan 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?
30:28 Speaker 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.
30:45 Dan 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.
31:09 Speaker 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.
31:49 Speaker 01 And my dad's sense was, why hire somebody when you could do it yourself and save the money?
31:57 Dan Pashman? And Sebastian's gotten more successful. He says he's gotten more comfortable spending money, especially on things he loves.
32:02 Speaker 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.
32:14 Dan Pashman? Have you taken your dad out for some expensive meals?
32:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:17 Dan Pashman? What does he think of that experience?
32:18 Speaker 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.
32:30 Dan Pashman? Shocking, Sebastian, I wouldn't have expected that.
32:34 Speaker 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.
33:04 Dan Pashman? Right.
33:05 Speaker 01 She don't, she don't hold back.
33:08 Dan 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.
33:17 Speaker 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.
33:54 Dan Pashman? How do you think that their relationship with food, growing up the way they're growing up, will be different from yours?
34:00 Speaker 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.
34:16 Dan Pashman? Do you cook for them?
34:17 Speaker 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.
34:46 Dan Pashman? You're doing prep?
34:47 Speaker 01 Uh, yeah, I was doing prep. Like a sous chef.
34:51 Dan 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.
34:58 Speaker 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.
35:15 Dan Pashman? Sebastian says his kids haven't started doing comedy bits at the dinner table yet. But mealtime for him is still sacred.
35:21 Speaker 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.
35:45 Dan 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.
36:28 Dan 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-
36:39 Speaker 04 Emma Morgenstern.
36:40 Dan Pashman? And senior producer-
36:41 Speaker 05 Andres O'Hara.
36:42 Dan Pashman? Our editor is-
36:43 Speaker 04 Tracy Samuelson.
36:44 Dan 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.
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