Jon Stewart Frees His Staff From the Tyranny of Kaiser Rolls

Tomorrow night, Jon Stewart will end his legendary run as host of The Daily Show. But before he bids his final adieu to the audience, Jon stops by The Daily Show Podcast, to talk about his biggest contribution to the program: changing the staff's breakfast sandwich order. Jon remembers the moment fondly:

A lot of the morning is fueled by a typically breakfast of coffee and bagels with some variety of spreads. But Wednesday is a special day — it's a day when we all come together as a show and as a team, and we get egg sandwiches in a variety of permutations. I think there's egg and cheese; egg, sausage, and cheese; egg, bacon, and cheese; egg white. But what always bothered me about it — and I was never able to articulate it — was the ratio between bread and egg of these sandwiches. They were on Kaiser rolls. And not metastasized Kaiser rolls. Gigantic, fluffy, overdone Kaiser rolls. And I could tell that there was a sadness; there was a deep, pervasive hurt in the room. And I made the decision on one Wednesday morning, an executive decision...I decided that we would no longer get the egg sandwiches on the Kaiser roll.

And obviously, I had to do some research. I remember asking [executive producer Jill Katz]: Do they have to make those on rolls? Or can we get them on English muffin? Well, obviously there were some phone calls that were made. It came back that we could get them on English muffin. It couldn't have been the same deli. That deli did not have the resources or the wherewithal, or, frankly, the know-how. We made the switch to English muffin.

And here's Stewart on his issue with those rolls:

The ratio is just wrong! There's too much bread-to-egg in a Kaiser roll. This is not in any way an indictment of the Kaiser roll or of the German people, who I believe created it in 1911...It used to have a spiky top and when you bite it, it would sometimes pierce through your palate into your brain. But you have to admit, the change to the English muffin was a positive change.

The entire podcast is actually devoted to memories of what the staff ate while working on the show. It turns out that Stewart is a big fan of Carmine's, and he despises Mooncake Foods. The host also apparently ingested an entire Fudgie the Whale cake from Carvel one night. Stewart quips: "Back in the day when we used to smoke, I used to go through two packs a day. And back in the day when we used to eat, I would go through two Fudgie the Whales."