Vancouver restaurant the Eatery describes itself as "the funkiest place for Japanese food," and the Lonely Island have now revealed that the quirky Kitsilano sushi spot helped inspire their Digital Shorts with Paul Rudd.
"Everyone's a Critic" is a 2008 sketch in which Rudd and Andy Samberg paint nude portraits of each other, and the results are so horrible that anyone who sees one of their paintings dies. The audience never actually sees the painting that inspires such gruesome reactions, but on the latest episode of The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, they reveal what was on the painting — and how it was inspired by the Eatery.
On this week's podcast episode — which is actually the episode after the one about "Everyone's Critic" — Samberg revealed that the painting features either his or Rudd's nude body, but "the head is Hitler [and] the fingers are hot dogs" (interestingly pre-dating Everything Everywhere All at Once's hot dog fingers by 14 years).
"Hitler is saying in a dialogue bubble, 'miso horny,'" Samberg added, clarifying that "miso" is spelled like the Japanese seasoning. "Because there was a restaurant we went to in Vancouver when we were shooting Hot Rod, that their catchphrase was 'miso horny,' M-I-S-O. And they had all these famous figures from history saying 'miso horny' on the wall."
They Lonely Island never mentioned the Eatery by name, but it's almost certainly the place they're talking about. The extremely non-traditional sushi restaurant has been around since 1983, and it's known for its saucy slogans — also including "Who's your sushi pimp?" and "Sex, sushi & rock 'n' roll."
Looking at their website and social media pages, they seem to be downplaying the "miso horny" slogan these days — but their menu still says #MisoHungry on the front.