Italian Sunday Dinner, Betting, and Inappropriate Dinner Conversations With Cousin Sal

March 2, 2026·58 min·5 clips

Dave Chang cooks Italian-American classics for Cousin Sal while teasing a dive into sports betting and inappropriate dinner talk.

The meal starts modest. Dave calls the spread Italian-American classics and keeps circling back to the C-plus he gives himself, even as Cousin Sal seems happy enough to keep eating. The room stays loose. Cooking, tasting, and side chatter keep bumping into each other before anyone bothers with a clean transition. Betting gets in early. Dave wants Sal to explain how to bet, what to bet, and how a person might get a little more serious about sports betting without sounding ridiculous. Then football slides in beside the food. Bill Simmons, the Patriots, and the night of the Super Bowl end up sharing space with pasta, sandwiches, and whatever is still coming out of the pot. The food keeps pulling them back. Dave brings up the Chris Bianco Italian sandwich, praises the lack of mustard, and keeps moving brajol and big rigatoni across the table. Sal sounds impressed enough, but the best surprise is simpler: sesame breadsticks with butter. That sends them into a quick, funny inventory of foods that butter improves. Eggs, bread, pasta, lobster, popcorn, and corn all enter the case, with fake movie-theater butter getting treated like its own triumph. The conversation keeps wandering. Dave and Buster's, the Masters, Simmons, and Sal's trip back to the West Side sit right next to the actual eating. Nothing gets sanded down, which is the appeal. It feels like a working dinner where appetite decides the next subject. Near the end, Aunt Chippy screaming in one of those new rides leads Dave into a guess that more food will become a human-less transaction. Then it wraps fast. Sal says thanks, dinner ends early, and Dave closes by setting up their terrible ideas.

As heard by us

Dave Chang feeds Cousin Sal a red sauce dinner and lets the talk drift through betting, butter, Bill Simmons, and bad ideas.

Dave Chang turns an Italian Sunday dinner with Cousin Sal into a loose, red sauce hangout: brajol, big rigatoni, the Chris Bianco Italian sandwich, and enough side talk to make the meal feel half planned and half happily derailed. The food moments land best when they stay small.

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Why you'd press play

You want a messy, funny dinner-table hangout with Italian-American food and betting in the mix.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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