428 episodes listed below
Dream meals, derailed beautifully.
Off Menu uses the fantasy of a restaurant menu as a loose frame for comedian-led interviews. The real pleasure is the quick detours: food loops, sandwich theology, tour plugs, acting stories, and jokes that keep swerving before the question lands.
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Off Menu is a comedy interview show where the restaurant fantasy matters, but the interruptions matter more. Each episode asks a guest to choose a dream starter, main course, side dish, dessert, and drink. That is the official shape. The actual show lives in the detours. Ed Gamble and James Acaster treat food choices like unstable evidence, poking at a guest’s logic until a simple answer turns into a riff, a correction, or a very specific argument about what belongs in a bowl. The pace is brisk. It likes a bit that gathers speed. A poke bowl can become a debate over edamame, tofu, fish, and the limits of personal knowledge. Saffron mash can turn into a quiz proposal. A Subway memory can open a surprisingly committed case about burgers, sandwiches, hot dogs, and bread geometry. Celebrity talk sits comfortably beside all of that. Brian Cox brings stories around Adaptation, Robert McKee, Nick Cage, Chris Cooper, and Spike Jonze. Nina Conti’s episode moves from ventriloquism and masks toward drama-school exercises, embarrassment, and the difference between comedians and actors. Greg James arrives with broadcaster polish and a book to promote, but the room still keeps its comic wobble. Ian Smith, Jen Brister, Rhys James, and Lucia Keskin fit into the same loose ritual: answer the menu, survive the tangents, accept the mock seriousness. The tone is affectionate and irreverent rather than mean. It can be noisy. It is rarely solemn. Food is the recurring engine, but the show’s real subject is how funny people explain themselves when a small preference gets treated like a major life decision.
Made for: For listeners who want celebrity interviews with quick comic friction, food obsession, and fewer polished talking points. It especially suits fans of comedy banter and guests being nudged into odd little arguments.
What sets it apart: The menu format gives every episode a reliable spine, while the hosts’ rapid sparring keeps it from becoming a standard questionnaire. It turns taste, habit, and tiny food opinions into comic character studies.
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 revealing comic arguments as Ed Gamble and James Acaster test each guest's tastes, memories and private rules.
A dream meal gives Ed Gamble and James Acaster a sturdy route into comic disorder. Each choice invites questions about taste, memory and personal rules, then the conversation follows whatever peculiar logic appears.
Ed Gamble and James Acaster turn a burger into a sandwich trial; your lunch opinions may need counsel.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Brian Cox brings backstage warmth while Gamble and Acaster turn professional admiration into amiable disorder.
Brian Cox's formidable career gives Ed Gamble and James Acaster plenty to admire, along with a trace of nerves. After distinguishing him from their previous guest of the same name, they move through Logan Roy, Hannibal Lecter and William Stryker, then settle into Cox's memories…
A poke bowl, tofu confusion, and dinner habits become a neat comic engine.
A simple dinner chat becomes a tidy little investigation into what happens when a familiar meal drops off the menu. The comedy comes from the mismatch between one speaker's firm food preferences and another's urge to test every definition.
Ian Smith's dream order turns into a saffron-led debate about quizzes, risotto, and how far a restaurant menu can bend.
Ian Smith comes to the dream restaurant chasing smoky flavour, saffron mash, and a herbs-and-spices quiz, and the pleasure of the episode sits in how quickly that order becomes a problem to solve.
A Harpenden Subway dispute turns into a playful argument over burgers, hot dogs, pizza, and sandwich logic.
Rhys James brings a neat local grievance to Off Menu: why Subway seemed acceptable to Harpenden parents when McDonald's had apparently been kept out over litter. The appeal is in the scale of the outrage.
Nina Conti makes the fear of looking silly feel like part of comedy's raw material.
Nina Conti's visit turns the Off Menu setup into a neat way of talking about performance, embarrassment, and the odd discipline of being funny. The menu format keeps opening into drama exercises, acting habits, and comedy's managed awkwardness.
A breakfast question turns into a warm, funny sketch of family eating.
A breakfast question becomes a compact family comedy, with one image nudging the talk toward home life before the food takes over. Seaweed paper, rice, diced peaches, and the open question of toast all get their moment, but the best beat is May holding a whole thing and tearing…
James Norton turns his fantasy meal into a precise, funny hunt for the best of everything.
James Norton's Off Menu visit settles into a comic portrait of a guest who treats the dream restaurant like a once-only chance to get everything exactly right.
Domestic chaos, argued into gratitude.
Marriage advice with comic whiplash.
Caller chaos, petty verdicts, real comfort.
Everyday awkwardness, thoroughly overthought.
Ed Gamble and James Acaster introduce their podcast Off Menu and guest Lucia Keskin, discussing cereal and her upcoming appearance.
Ed Gamble and James Acaster introduce comedian Mawaan Rizwan as their guest on the Off Menu Podcast, where they discuss his favourite meal and reminisce about his memorable Taskmaster moments.
Comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster welcome John Mulaney to their dream restaurant to choose his ideal meal.
Comedians Ed Gamble and James Acaster welcome actor James Norton to their dream restaurant podcast.
Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster hosts Brian Cox, who is introduced as the actor behind Logan Roy, Hannibal Lecter, and William Stryker and as the director of Glenrothan.
Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster turns Lucia Keskin's dream restaurant choices into a food-and-joke exchange about tiny objects, bread, pasta, and tinfoil.
["Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster brings on Ian Smith, and the opening hook is a secret ingredient of \"salt and pepper\" tied to Gould's salt-and-pepper pots.", "Smith plugs Northern News with Amy Gledhill, jokes that London searches for weird stories can return \"man stabbed in weird way,\" and frames Crushing around stress, romance, and a tank driving over a car with his hairdresser in Slovakia.", "He spends the middle of the chat on a paper diary with orange and yellow markings, Apple TV reminders, Phil Wang's party, and birthday stickers from the pocket in the back.", "The food answers settle on a Scottish buttery, a potato damper finished on hot coals, and a salmon-haggis-saffron risotto where haggis stands in for pepper."]
Ed Gamble introduces a tasting menu episode of the Off-Menu podcast featuring comedian Jen Brister, with a brief ad for his tour and a sponsor segment.
Ed Gamble and James Acaster introduce their podcast Off Menu and welcome guest Gillian Anderson to choose her dream meal.
Ed Gamble and James Acaster introduce Greg James as their guest on the Off Menu Podcast, where he will share his dream menu.
Rhys James talks to Ed Gamble and James Acaster about his book, “You’ll Like It When You Get There,” and his default state of “dread” before gigs and social plans.
Nina Conti explains why a pistachio tree, not a dish, is her dream starter.
Ed Gamble and James Acaster celebrate 300 episodes of Off Menu with a special guest genie AJ Odudu.
Ed Gamble and James Acaster introduce a bonus episode of Off Menu with actor James Norton, sponsored by Dexcom.