I’m Comedian Caleb Heron and I Eat Like That

Comedian Caleb Heron is probably my favorite person on Twitter . His frontal videos are fun and interesting, but there’s something special about the weird way he portrays social discomfort without showing anger. Having recently moved from Chicago to Los Angeles (in the midst of a pandemic), Caleb is getting used to the many changes, but was able to talk on the phone to discuss chicken wings, his secret chili ingredient, and his worst meal. he ever had.

How did you eat while traveling around the country in the midst of the pandemic?

Badly. The best food we ate was when we drove from Colorado to Utah in one day. We had a good Airbnb so we went through a bunch of places before we arrived. Then, once we got to this town in Utah, we went to a steak house, bought steak and pasta, took them back to our Airbnb, and ate on the terrace. It was really sweet.

The worst thing was in Utah – at least in the part we were in – the place was overcrowded . The patio was full, the dining room was full, although no one was wearing masks. Everyone went about their business as usual. And my mom said, “Do you want to eat here?” and I thought, “God, no.” And she said, “Great, me too.” I was so glad that we were on the same wavelength. No way, dude.

Have you cooked more at home or ordered more?

Cook more, but it wasn’t that high a bar. Before COVID, I played several concerts a week, sometimes more than one per night. When I walked out the door in the morning, I could grab a granola bar and go to my day job. Sometimes I would take groceries to work and cook something there, but often I would eat outside because it was a social event. I went to the restaurant in the evenings because I had shows and didn’t have time to go home. But I definitely cooked more at the beginning of the quarantine, and then when I started packing, I ordered meals from all of my favorite places in Chicago that I was about to skip. But that has changed a lot because I don’t stay until 2 or 3 in the morning doing concerts, and I get up at, for me, a decent time and get a decent breakfast. I’m just in no rush. One thing I do a lot – are you a Costco person? Are you a Costco fan?

I love Costco.

I like it. They have packages with three different types of salmon. They will have a row of dill, a row of cracked peppers, and a row of plain salmon sliced. I love getting this and the really filling whole grain seeded bread – really thick. Toast the bread, put some cream cheese on each slice, add a few different flavors of salmon, then make capers and eat it like toast for breakfast. Have an iced coffee. I always have cold coffee in the fridge. There is a vanilla-flavored silk and almond cream that is so good; I love making some cold coffee out of this.

I usually go pretty late in the day without lunch because I have a hearty breakfast. At about two or three o’clock I’ll say, “Oh shit, I need to eat something.” So I have salad or ramen. I’ll take a bag of ramen, add curry powder, soy sauce and some sriracha to it and it will work out well. I love peanut sauce. I’ll put it on any Asian noodles. Or if I order any kind of Thai noodles – like phat kee mao or something like that – I always get some peanut sauce. Especially if I’m trying a new place. I’m like, “If the noodles aren’t very good, at least I have peanut sauce to make them better.”

One thing that has changed a lot is my roommate who I moved to Los Angeles with, a vegetarian. So I ate a lot more vegetables. At Costco, I’ll get stickers for vegetable pots instead of meat pots, but in the end I still came back and got meat pots because I said, “Damn. I miss them “. Or she’ll make a vegetable roast and I’ll have it for dinner, because that’s what she made.

It’s kind of like a cop to me when I say, “Oh, I was too busy to eat healthy food before.” You can find time, but I’m less nervous because I don’t have to run everywhere, and I say, “Oh, I would like to eat well.” And that’s okay, right? This is what I could enjoy in my ordinary life. I think the reason I eat healthier foods while doing this is because I don’t feel like I’ve had a second in the past few months where I haven’t been thinking about health. Part of me thinks, “If you get COVID and eat vegetables, it will be better.” And this is unrealistic! Wrong! But I’m like, “If you eat vegetables, you won’t get anything.”

A couple of your videos emphasize awkward restaurant interactions. My favorite is the one when you take someone to a restaurant that they really didn’t want to go to. Are you that person?

This video was actually inspired – she’s going to be so mad at me – by one of my best friends in the world, Katie. A group of our friends went to St. Louis because two of our college friends were about to get married. Katie and I stayed because her family lives in St. Louis. Nothing else could have happened! She said, “I’ll take you guys to the most amazing, authentic, untouchable, undeniable Mexican restaurant you’ve ever been to in your life . This is the main product in my family. We don’t see each other without leaving. The people who work there may be family members … “We thought,” Okay, girl, we’ll go. ” Nobody even suggested doing anything else because she would die if we didn’t go.

We go – and I want to be honest – I think this is the ugliest restaurant I’ve ever seen in my life. We go to this restaurant and it’s so ugly and I thought, “You know what? Sometimes really good places are like that. The outside is probably ugly, but a real find! “We go in. Nobody makes us sit down. Nobody meets us. Finally, we sit down at our own table in the back. It’s dark, the lights are flickering. They bring water. Each has one melted ice cube. The whole experience from top to bottom is terrible. Two of our friends are vegetarians and they eat vegetarian tacos. The vegetarian tacos they bring are two hard-shell tacos with a cooked vegetable mixture that was clearly from a frozen bag. And it wasn’t fully cooked – just cauliflower in a taco shell. I’ve never eaten worse in my life. We couldn’t stop laughing. Our friend Katie – of course, we drag her through the whole meal – all the time, as long as she is just protecting. She’s like, “This is really weird! They could be the new owner! “And we never let it go. Poor girl. This is probably one of those things that her family always liked, and they know exactly what to get. We probably had a day off too, you know what I mean?

Another video that I love is where you are on a date having some fun with the server. Do you like the server?

I enjoy the server. I did go on a date with a guy who – he wasn’t charming as the story goes – but I got it right away. We had a very funny, nice server. She was the same age as my mom and clearly worked there forever. She was great; she knew the menu like the back of her hand. We were joking and wanted to have a good time. I love it when someone is having a good time at work, even if you don’t need it at all, because the job is time-consuming. I’m in awe of her, and this guy I’m on a date with – this is our first date – is just like, “Yeah. Diet cola. Thank you. “And then she leaves, and he doesn’t say anything, but he kind of rolls his eyes, as if it was a task to communicate with this funny server.

And I thought, “Oh, this will never work.” It’s so boring. Maybe I’m just an oversensitive liberal, but you feel classic when you say, “Wow, now I need help.” Is it really hard for you to smile at the waiter? What is wrong with you?

Do you like the Los Angeles culinary scene?

Well, not quite yet. We ordered from a Thai restaurant which was pretty good when we first came here. It was at Burbank. It was one of the few places that were open after curfew, which I consider illegal, but they did what they did. All I know about Burbank is that airplanes fly through the damn streets and no one talks about it. But let’s see. I found a cheap chicken wing in my area that is really substandard, but it does what I need it to do right now.

When I was in Los Angeles for concerts in January, I thought, “I want to rent a car one day. I want no work, no meetings, nothing. I just want to rent a car and drive along the coast. ” We drove along the Pacific Coast Highway and stopped in small places, looked at the water, got out and walked around, and climbed the mountains, and mostly listened to music. And then we accidentally stumbled upon this little restaurant right on the beach called Neptune’s Net. It was all on the street – everyone was sitting at picnic tables, and there were a bunch of bikers. I don’t know if this is a common place for bikers, but there were a lot of them. There was a surf spot just across the street, so a group of people dropped their surfboards and walked up to it. I thought, “This is the sweetest thing that has ever happened to me.” It feels like I was eating crab cakes. I had great seafood. This was the last LA food experience I had, even before I moved here.

Speaking of seafood, I noticed on your Twitter profile picture that you seem to be holding a bag of shrimp?

Aha! This is the Asian Cajun in Chicago. This is my favorite boiling place. They cook seafood, so I guess that’s what I usually eat, which is the “Everything” sauce, which is their taste, as well as shrimp, sausages and corn.

There is a seafood boiling place in Chicago that a lot of people love, called Low Country, and it’s great, but always so crowded. This is a special type of customer, it is expensive. And then there is the one that shows me on my profile – the Asian cajun – it’s a little further, but in the same area, cheaper, owned by a much cooler family, with a much more diverse clientele, a much more unusual space. … I love to find the place where I live . It’s so much fun living in a place long enough to think, “If you want this thing, I’ll tell you where to go and where not to go.”

I was thinking about what it would look like after COVID. Many people will lose their special place. Don’t completely overwhelm the tone of this conversation.

Not! This is perfectly true. My mom and my stepfather were very worried about the only restaurant in the city where they live. This is a small restaurant on the corner where everyone goes to eat, knows the owner, and everyone hangs out there. This restaurant can also be a community center. In fact, it’s not just food. This is where everyone goes when they leave work. People go there for a wedding or a funeral, whatever. Luckily, I think they are okay, they reopened and they are doing better. But people will miss these places. It sucks.

Do you have any strong opinions about this or that food product?

I am very attentive to chicken wings. I hate giant chicken wings. People are like, “The more the better!” When they are so large, it is a bad ratio because the sauce is only on the outside. This starts to spoil the ratio, and now you are just eating chicken. I like the smaller chicken wings and a lot of people complain that they are like, “Oh, too small.” Well, get some more . You can get more if needed.

Have you tried boiling quarantined chicken wings?

Over the years, I have perfected a chicken wings recipe that I really like and a process that I really like. But in quarantine, I didn’t do that much. I guess there is no particular reason other than that I was just afraid of meat because I heard a thing or two about meat processing plants during COVID. It’s not that I don’t trust people to be careful, but deep down I’m like, “Well, maybe I’m just not taking risks.”

But when I make the wings, I make a buffalo sugar and honey sauce. Every time I make a sauce other than Buffalo, I do the same. I make honey-soy-sriracha sauce when I cook shrimp or salmon. I love to mix honey and hot sauce to make a small situation. If not honey, then molasses. It just gives it a boost and thickness, and if you cook it long enough, it gets really sticky and starts to caramelize.

I am very attentive to the design of the ranch. I do it myself. My mom worked in a bar when I was growing up trying to finish college. She worked in a bar in our hometown where these wonderful chicken wings were sold. She started building a ranch. Nothing special. It’s not super unique. I don’t look like a cook. It’s a Hidden Valley Ranch pack, but instead of doing it the way they do – 16 ounces of sour cream and a bag – I make 16 ounces of sour cream, a bag, some salt, and a pinch of garlic powder. and then add 3/4 cup mayonnaise to make it thicker and better. If I want something from the restaurant that I need on the ranch, I have to make sure I have things that I can do on my own. So many ranches are so runny and bad and it drives me crazy! I hate this! I think it’s typical of the Midwest, at least that’s what I’m told, but I like pizza. The ranch and pizza are so good.

I love that too, and it terrifies people in the pizza-loving neighborhoods. There is something to be said to break free from the rules of pizza and allow yourself to enjoy new flavor combinations.

Right. Being from the Midwest – and maybe it’s not just about being from the Midwest, for sure some of them just grew up in poverty – but my favorite foods as a child were like taterto casseroles, that is, ground beef, potatoes and cream. mushroom; and Beanie Weenies, pork and beans, chopped hot dogs, and brown sugar. A truly awful meal.

Have you ever tried grape jelly cocktail sausages and Heinz sauce?

Yes. You should . And – this is the big secret of cooking – when I prepare chili, I always add grape jelly to it. You must, must, must add grape jelly to your chili. I love to cook any chili recipe using Heinz chili sauce, adding turkey instead of beef and adding one and a half or two cups of grape jelly. It’s so good.

Have you ever heard of pear salad? It’s like half a canned pear with a spoonful of mayonnaise and a sprinkle of grated cheddar cheese.

Oh, honestly.

I thought the mayonnaise was curd and I love mayonnaise, but the unexpected mayonnaise is not my favorite.

It’s like if you are driving somewhere and you think, “I always take Dr. Pepper out of here,” but for some reason you said the wrong thing, or they gave you the wrong thing, you take a big gulp, thinking that you are getting Dr. Pepper, and then unsweetened tea and your body just goes crazy. Your body is like “What’s going on? They poison me. ” And no, it’s not. Your brain just thought you got something else. It’s intuitive. It will just ruin me for five minutes. I don’t seem to have any idea what’s going on.