Is Joel McHale America’s Favorite Unexpected Foodie?

When describing actor-comedian-chef-dad-dog dad Joel McHale to my mother, I called him the Where’s Waldo of America’s food entertainment industry. When describing him to my husband, I went with America’s first true social media influencer, thanks to his 11-year run hosting The Soup on E!

But when I finally sat down with Joel to ask about his many multi-hyphenate forays into the food entertainment zeitgeist, his answers were surprisingly humble.

Foodbeast: Crime Scene Kitchen. Top Chef. Is It Cake? The Bear. You’ve done all of these incredible, food-centric shows in your life. Have there been any that have really stuck out to you that you’ve enjoyed the most?

McHale: Obviously, The Bear is a drama and Crime Scene Kitchen is a reality show, so they’re two totally different beasts. But getting to be on The Bear — that was a total fluke. I keep waiting for someone to pull the rug out from under me and tell me it was all a prank. I just got really lucky.

When we were filming, the director would just say, “Can you try making the scene actually happen?”—very laid-back. And getting to work with Jeremy [Allen White], who’s one of the greatest… I mean, he’s incredible. One of the best actors I’ve ever worked with. He kept telling me, “Yeah, just keep whispering more insults.” So it was really fun to play someone that awful—that mean.

Foodbeast: What about the other side of the coin, like with Crime Scene Kitchen?

McHale: Crime Scene Kitchen is really just a fun hang. It’s me, Curtis [Stone], and Yolanda [Gampp] messing around with the bakers and chefs. The whole thing takes about a month to film, and we’re still not sure if it’s coming back — but man, it’s such a good time. I actually learned a lot about baking, especially the art of desserts and cake making, which I knew nothing about going in.

McHale’s career has spanned over three decades, starting in small roles on Will & Grace, CSI: Miami, and Spider Man 2. But, before he was making us laugh on screen, he was making sure the good people of Washington got their caffeine fixes by working at a coffee cart in high school. Maybe it’s in his blood.

Foodbeast: So, a fun fact, I feel what a lot of people don’t know about you is that you weren’t actually born in Washington, let alone the US.

McHale: No sir!

Foodbeast: You were born in a subtle little town about 6,000 miles away known to many as Rome! Seems like coffee has always been in your DNA.

McHale: It’s true. My mom basically raised me on coffee—I joke that she swapped out breast milk for espresso. So yeah, I’ve always been a coffee guy. I can do like eight cups on a normal day.

While there truly aren’t too many “normal days” for Joel, his love of coffee and caffeination has now manifested with his latest partnership with Seattle’s Best Coffee.

Foodbeast: So, yap with me here… how did this partnership come about?

McHale: Well, my parents met in 1967 and got married pretty quickly after that. (Insert us laughing like schoolgirls.)

Anyway, this partnership with Seattle’s Best Coffee, it feels like a full circle moment. As you know, I yap about it all the time. I’m from Seattle, and I drink a lot of coffee. So when they asked me to work with them, I honestly thought it was a prank. I was waiting for someone to jump out and say, “Just kidding!”

But here we are. I actually worked at a coffee cart in high school on Mercer Island. I used to drag that thing out every morning, rain or shine. So yeah. it all kind of comes full circle.

The partnership goes even further with their XO Marshmallow collaborations and the launch of their limited-time Coffee Roast Mallows: a menagerie of different coffee-flavored marshmallows and a bonus s’mores-flavored mallow. Every week, they’re doing special limited drops of these delicious mallows (so delicious, I had to hide them from my husband because half of them were gone before I got home) on July 17th, July 24th, July 31st, and August 7th at 12pm EST.

McHale: I truly believe coffee and sweet are two of the greatest flavor profiles on the planet. So in the morning, when I wake up, I will—before I feed my dog Beanbag—get that coffee going and I will have a piece of chocolate or a mallow and now that they’re released, I can share them with the world. It’s a match made in heaven.

Joel is no stranger to matches made in heaven, having been with his lovely wife Sarah since 1996. Being Foodbeast, I had to dig deeper and ask if Joel picked up on any foodie skills during his times hosting and participating in food entertainment programming.

Foodbeast: So, is Joel McHale the chef of the house? I know Sarah loves to cook!

McHale: I am! I mean, my wife is a very good cook, but whenever I have the privilege of being home, I am definitely the chef.

Foodbeast: What’s a Joel McHale specialty? What’s on the menu these days at Casa McHale?

McHale: For the 4th of July, I smoked five tri-tips. I used a mustard binder, hit them with a bunch of spices, and then added this charcoal rub from a company called Hardcore Carnivore—it’s by a woman named Jess Pryles. The rub literally looks like charcoal, and it gives the meat this insane flavor.

I smoked the tri-tips for about an hour and a half, spraying them with a mix of bourbon and Worcestershire as they cooked. It’s actually on the easier side of smoking since the whole process takes around three hours. After 90 minutes, I wrap them tightly in foil so they keep cooking for another hour, and then… voilà. It turns out ridiculously good.

Before we wrapped, I had to ask Joel how growing up in the Pacific Northwest shaped his outlook.

Foodbeast: Outside of being an official Roman baby, you grew up on Mercer Island off the coast of Washington. How do you think that shaped you?

McHale: Oh, it shaped me completely. When we moved to Seattle, it was bleak. There were actual billboards that read, “Will the last person in Seattle please turn out the lights?” The economy was that bad. My dad told me once, he was driving through the city alone and literally said out loud, “The fun part of my life is over.”

But then, around 1987, everything flipped. Seattle became the coolest place on the planet. No one used to visit us—we were never on tour stops, and big concerts didn’t come through. But suddenly, all the stuff people used to make fun of became cool. There was this scrappy pride. Microsoft showed up. Then Amazon. Seattle’s Best. Boeing. All of a sudden, if you wanted to move around the world, you needed a Boeing plane. You wanted a computer? Microsoft. You wanted good coffee? We had it. We basically started running everyone’s lives.

The humble beginnings of Seattle seem to echo in Joel McHale’s life. No matter how many awards the man wins, no matter how many entertainment hosting gigs he lands, he will always practice humility and gratitude. From running a coffee cart in high school to partnering with Seattle’s Best, one of the world’s biggest coffee chains, McHale is helping the world stay entertained and caffeinated, one marshmallow at a time.