Emily Heller has been in the stand-up game for over seven years, and has since then lived and performed in San Francisco, New York, and finally Los Angeles. In the last few years, she’s appeared as a cast member of the TV show Ground Floor, worked as a staff writer on Surviving Jack, and performed on Conan. She recently finished her first national stand-up tour, going from Austin to Denver, Madison to Charleston, and lots of cities in between. She was nice enough to sit down with Paste to talk about her eating experiences on the road, and even provided a few snapshots.
Paste: I heard you’re a vegetarian. Was that hard to deal with on your tour?
Emily Heller: I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 13. I grew up in the Bay Area, so it’s never been a difficult choice for me. The only time I really notice it is when I’m traveling, but the options are so much better now for vegetarians. People are eating healthier everywhere, and that used to just be a coastal, metropolitan thing. It’s a big shift since 10 or 15 years ago.
Paste: Do you ever eat at comedy clubs?
EH: It depends on if I’ve been traveling that day, and I usually try and check the menu of the club before I plan on eating there. But a lot of times, especially if you’re headlining, clubs will have menus for nearby restaurants and they’ll go get you stuff if you want them to, even if they have food. Everyone that works at a club thinks the food is terrible, because they’ve been eating it so much. It’s universal to all clubs, everyone is like “You really don’t have to eat the food here. We totally get it, here’s some nice Thai places nearby.”
Emily Heller
Paste: Was it easy to find good places nearby the venues?
EH: On this tour, I didn’t end up working at too many venues that were far away from other places to go eat, so I had good options. I’m not a super adventurous eater, but I’ll work to try and find the places that I should be eating at. Food is definitely my biggest splurge. Food and Amazon is where my money goes.
Paste: So, for you, food is something worth spending money on?
EH: Food has such a big effect on whether you have a good show, whether you have fun on the road, what kind of mood you’re in, what kind of energy you have. It’s also a way to feel like you’re not wasting your time in a new city. You don’t get to do a bunch of fun things, so food is your way in. It makes me feel like I’m experiencing something new.
Paste: Do you not get to do any fun touristy stuff?
EH: Usually when you go to places, people are like “You’ve got to go to the museum” or “You’ve got to go do this thing and do that thing.” But it’s just unrealistic as a comedian. I’m not going to go walk around a museum for a couple of hours and then stand on stage for two hours at two different shows. It’s not going to happen. And also I don’t care. I was an art history major, and I still don’t go to museums on tour. Don’t expect any other comedians to do it.
Paste: How do you figure out where to eat?
EH: Yelp has made it a lot easier to find stuff nearby. I should leave more Yelp reviews, I feel guilty. I benefit so greatly from them. But I did read a Yelp review of a restaurant where someone gave one star because they ordered a party platter, and they didn’t pick it up. They just completely forgot. And they gave the restaurant a one star review because they said they should have called them to remind them. So you have to investigate a little further beyond what the star rating is.
