When it comes to the Long Island food scene, Tim Dillon knows best. The stand-up comedian and podcaster, who was born and raised in Island Park, New York, shared what he believes is the island’s greatest contribution to the American culinary scene while eating spicy wings on “Hot Ones.”
“I would say the bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. Two eggs over medium bacon, American cheese, salt, pepper and ketchup on a roll,” Dillon told host Sean Evans. “And you eat that in the morning about 1:30 PM. It coats your stomach and absorbs that anxiety that would either push you to the gym or to a job or into a good relationship or on a jog — that anxiety would push you to become a better person. You actually can absorb all of that with the sandwich and then go right back into bed.”
Dillon, whose latest Netflix special “I’m Your Mother” premiered on April 15, said Long Island has great food, but doesn’t really offer much more than that.
“Long Island is a place of comfort, like the suburbs, where people eat. If the food was bad, people would riot. There’s nothing else. There’s no culture,” he said. “There’s no real intelligence, nothing is really interesting. There’s no sense of history or community or family. There’s no real athletics. It’s not especially pretty. There’s no national or local meaning and feeling of purpose. It’s kind of a vacant landscape of nothing, a suburban emptiness that closets you until you finally fill yourself with bagels, gnocchi or fentanyl.”
Dillon’s second special for Netflix comes after “This Is Your Country,” an unscripted, Jerry Springer-style comedy special that delves into topics ranging from immigration and cryptocurrency to OnlyFans.
“You know who didn’t like it as much? Netflix. No, I’m kidding. They’re great people there, we love them but they don’t love talk formats and I think they were nervous about it.”
Dillon continued, “I think we all need daytime trash TV that’s not hyper-political or I think we need to all coalesce around realizing that we’re all garbage people and exploiting that. Nobody was talking about tariffs on ‘Ricki Lake.’ That’s what I remember was great about the 90s. People just wanted to do as much damage to each other as they could for entertainment value. And that’s what I was trying to do.”
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Elsewhere in his interview, Dillon defended whole milk, saying, “Whole milk, from America’s heartland dairy farmers, with whatever needs to be in it — whatever hormones are in [this] need to be in it. Hands off RFK! I’ll have my milk the way I like it: genetically engineered.”
He also shared what he thinks is the most influential fast food item: “The McGriddle because the McGriddle married the sweet and savory in a way that now everybody does it.”
Watch the full interview below, via YouTube:
