Plosive
20 episodes listed below
Dream meals, derailed beautifully.
Off Menu is a food-chat comedy show built around a fantasy restaurant, where guests choose courses and get pulled into tangents. The meals matter, but the real pleasure is the quick switch from sincere appetite to nonsense about butter bells, theme park water, Pokemon Go, and gravy logistics.
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Off Menu is a comedy interview show with a restaurant fantasy as its engine. Guests arrive to choose a dream meal, but the menu is really bait for stories, arguments, cravings, and extremely specific nonsense. The format sounds tidy. The execution is proudly untidy. Food memories can become family portraits, as with John Mulaney talking about raisin toast, butter bells, and children who would rather skip straight to lunch food. Travel can become absurd politics, as Regé-Jean Page’s memories of tiny Tuscan restaurants turn into riffing about olives, allotments, marrows, and the old confidence of pre-Brexit panel-show jokes. Actual culinary detail survives too. Ixta Belfrage talks tostadas, masa, bonito, and MasterChef, while the conversation keeps swerving toward misheard fish names and whether anyone has ever properly cooked one. Kojey Radical’s oxtail croquettes open a sharp, funny lane about gentrified comfort food, restaurant presentation, logs, roof tiles, and gravy ending up where gravy should not be. Ahir Shah brings a more reflective thread about British Indian restaurants and the odd comfort of familiar chains abroad. Amy Matthews steers the meal toward theme park water, candles, perfume, and the emotional power of artificial smells. Nikesh Patel’s episode wanders through Pokemon Go, group chats, and the impractical career demands of travelling to Barcelona for raids. The tasting menu with Fern Brady shows the podcast’s fondness for returning guests, in-jokes, disputed rice, and meals borrowed from previous appearances. The show’s comedy depends on speed. A stray phrase can become the room’s new toy within seconds. Regular listeners get recurring pleasures: the dream restaurant ritual, producer Benito as an occasional rulekeeper or target, elaborate food-metaphor openings, tour plugs, ad breaks, and closing beats that often collapse into one more bit. Newcomers may need a minute to adjust. The reward is a food show that treats appetite seriously enough to be evocative, then refuses to become tasteful for too long.
Made for: Best for comedy fans who like food talk as a launchpad for chaotic conversation, British banter, guest stories, and fast callbacks. It also suits listeners who enjoy guest interviews when they are loose, silly, and only partly about the official topic.
What sets it apart: The dream restaurant format gives every episode a reliable spine, while the hosts let tiny details become full comic detours. Few food interview shows move this quickly between sincere cravings, restaurant opinions, and ridiculous side arguments.
Comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster invite special guests into their magical restaurant to each choose their favourite starter, main course, side dish, dessert and drink. Ever wanted to eat your dream meal? It's time to order Off Menu. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Food choices become comic pressure points, revealing each guest through detailed memories, host chemistry and increasingly elaborate tangents.
A dream meal gives Ed Gamble and James Acaster a dependable route into each guest's tastes, habits and stories. The order supplies structure, while the conversation keeps finding comic detours.
A dream meal becomes your excuse to hear Ed Gamble and James Acaster interrogate every deliciously odd choice.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A brisk Off Menu chat that drifts from Monte Cristo enthusiasm to family breakfast habits and French onion soup.
This Off Menu outing with John Mulaney moves fast, from Monte Cristo enthusiasm to breakfast habits, family routines, and French onion soup, and it rarely sits still long enough to lose steam.
An easy, conversational listen that turns food talk into Bridgerton chatter, Tuscany riffs, and a porn-joke finish.
This episode gives Rege-Jean Page the usual Off Menu welcome: the ritual intro, the tour chatter, and a guest who stays in step as the conversation moves from Bridgerton to Tuscany and then into a porn joke.
Easter Belfridge gets a lively, food-heavy turn, with Off Menu banter that works best once the guest takes over.
This episode gives Easter Belfridge a strong showcase. The chat moves quickly into the prawn lasagna, the habanero prawn lasagna, and the MasterChef mystery-box story, and the food talk has enough detail to feel grounded without losing the show’s loose, sparring rhythm.
A brisk guest episode that turns oxtail croquettes, breadboards, and gravy into a proper laugh.
Koji Radical's Off Menu turn lands as a funny, food-heavy chat about taste, presentation, and the kind of restaurant nonsense that can leave everyone sounding mildly offended.
A food-led, digressive chat that turns restaurant nostalgia and travel into a sideways episode with real conversational spark.
Food becomes a lens for memory, travel, and the private rules people attach to restaurants. The episode works most cleanly when it stays with the gap between a name and a flavor, then moves through British Indian food, the comfort of familiar chains abroad, and the pull of…
A Dream Restaurant detour that turns boats, candles, and theme park water into the joke.
Amy Matthews drops into the Dream Restaurant, and the episode settles into the kind of daft side-questing this show does best. James Acaster and Ed Gamble keep the pace moving, while Amy gets enough space to play along rather than just be routed through the format.
A fast, loose Off Menu turn that keeps the dinner chaos moving.
Off Menu keeps the dinner premise wobbling, and that is part of the appeal here. The best stretches land on childhood meals, Pokemon Go nostalgia, and a dream main course that gets knocked around almost as soon as it is named.
A menu chat that finds its best rhythm in the rice talk.
Fern Brady comes across as an easy fan favourite: quick, food-loving, and happy to jump into the menu chat without fuss. Phil Wang gives the episode a steady shape, and once the eggy soup arrives, Off Menu settles into the lively back-and-forth it does best.
Deborah Frances-White interviews comedians and politicians live, from Hannah Gadsby to Zack Polanski.
Joe Rogan's marathon one-on-one talks, from UFC judging debates to Bob Lazar's UFO claims.
Bateman, Hayes, and Arnett riff, then talk shop with guests like Adam Sandler.
Peter Sagal leads NPR's live news quiz, pairing celebrity guests with listener call-in games.
Comedian Chris Gethard takes one anonymous call a week and can't hang up first.
John Mulaney enters the Dream Restaurant.
Regé-Jean Page enters the dream restaurant, and it does not stay polished for long.
Tour plugs crash the dream restaurant first.
Oxtail croquettes start the trouble.
Tour plugs and ads jam up the entrance.
Theme park water turns oddly convincing.
The intro means business for about a second, then goes sideways.
Fern Brady gets handed someone else's menu.
The actor gets sharp quickly.
Comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster interview actor-comedian John Early about his dream meal, covering topics like his film 'Eternity', childhood memories, and food preferences, all delivered with humorous banter and absurd tangents.
Fresh Hell plugs first.
Ad break soup, mostly.