Chris Jericho on Fast Foodies Appearance, Wild Story Involving a Japanese KFC

Chris Jericho, All Elite Wrestling star and Fozzy frontman, will appear on this week’s edition of the truTV series Fast Foodies. The series centers around celebrities picking their favorite fast food dish and challenges a trio of chefs to recreate and remix that dish. Jericho spoke with ComicBook this week, confirming the dish he chose for the show would be Momma’s Pancake Breakfast from Cracker Barrel — a platter of three buttermilk pancakes which he combines with scrambled eggs, fried apples and turkey sausage. 

“At the time [when I was asked to do the show], I was really going through a Cracker Barrel phase where I was eating breakfast there pretty much on a weekly basis,” Jericho said. “And I always have what’s called Mama’s Pancake Breakfast, which is the Cracker Barrel pancakes, which if you know, you know. They’re amazing. And then I would combine that with some fried apples on top of it and then the scrambled eggs and then the turkey sausage. So that’s kind of what they had to start with and then make their own interpretations of those flavors and foods.”

Check out the full interview with Jericho below! His episode (which will also feature former NBA All-Star Baron Davis) of Fast Foodies airs at 10 p.m. eastern on Thursday night on truTV! 

Being on the road for so many years, I imagine fast food and restaurants have come in handy a few times. Do you have any favorite road stories that involve them?

When you’re on the road it’s not easy to eat right, especially when you are physically fit. And in wrestling, and even in music too, with Fozzy, you have to be in great shape because you’re putting on a show. Maybe even more so with Fozzy. You got a 90 minute set of running and jumping and singing and you got to really be in it. And in wrestling, 20 minutes, 30 minutes of high-impact physicality. So fast food when you’re a kid it’s the treat of all treats. When you grow up, you realize it really is … especially as an athlete, it really is just kind of empty carbs and the taste is fine and it fills your stomach, but it really doesn’t give you any nutrients or energy or any of those things.

So I think that you have to kind of really be cognizant of that and cognizant of what you’re eating. And you’re not just talking about fast food in the [United] States. It’s fast food in Mexico, where I spent a lot of time, or in Japan. And all of those things, they have their different versions of it, and you feel the same no matter what it is that you eat. And sometimes you get more than what you bargained for. 

I remember one time Dr. Luther from AEW and I were in Japan, probably about ’95, and we went to KFC. …And Luther, his name is Lenny, showed me his wing and he goes, “Does this look right?” And in the back of the wing, there was a brain. It was kind of a mutated chicken or something that had a brain in its wing. And we were like, “I don’t think that’s part of the meal.” So we took it back up to the front and showed them. And in classic Japanese tradition, all five of the workers came and they debated it, just trying to figure out what was going on. And they decided that they would give us a new piece of chicken. But the point was, it was like, I don’t think I really want chicken anymore.

You mentioned Japan and one place that wrestlers always bring up is Ribera Steakhouse in Tokyo. For the uninitiated, what’s the significance of that place?

Well Ribera was more, especially in the 90s, when you wanted to get a steak and it’s a certain style of steak, so there’s a taste to it that you use a lot of garlic and butter. So it tastes pretty good. But when you’re talking about quality, as you proceed up the ranks and go have some great yakiniku and eat Wagyu beef, which is a big thing now when you go to Nobu in Tokyo, the steaks are very, very different. Think of a Ribera steak as almost like a Waffle House steak in a lot of ways.

But it was more the vibe. It was a wrestling steakhouse. All of the pictures on the wall were of wrestlers from the 70s and 80s and 90s. And if you can get your picture on the wall, it kind of showed that you made it. And even more so, you would get this rayon silk jacket that was one of the most ugliest things you could ever look at. But at the time, you had to have one if you were a wrestler. And that’s what they used to joke Ribera in English means, “I’m a pro wrestler and I’ve been to Japan,” because everyone would wear one.

Like I remember Eddie Guerrero having one with his name on the back and Katakana characters, Japanese characters. And I always was like, “Oh man, I wish I had one with my name on my back.” And then you go … you make this pilgrimage to go there and then you go a few more times and then by the time you get there for the third or fourth time, you’re like, “Eh, I don’t need another rayon Ribera jacket.”