*How I Met Your Mother’*s nine-season run may be over and fictional hangout MacLaren’s shuttered, but Jason Segel isn’t about to stop spending time in bars. The actor—whose latest projects include roles as David Foster Wallace (The End of the Tour) and Cameron Diaz’s husband (Sex Tape), not to mention releasing his first book in a trilogy for kids (Nightmares!)—loves dining alone at restaurant bars. Here are his thoughts on eating solo, downing way too many Hot Pockets, and so much more. **
One thing that set apart How I Met Your Mother from other sitcoms is the fact that it revolved around a bar—and not, say, a coffee shop, like Central Perk on Friends. Are you a big fan of bar food or eating in bars? That's a great question. I enjoy restaurant bars. And eating by yourself in a bar is a nice way to experience a place; you end up talking to strangers, which is one of my favorite things in the world.
Even now? Yeah, I love it. A lot of people feel weird about eating alone, as if it's somehow a sign of defeat [laughs]. I've never felt like that. I'm totally comfortable at a bar or restaurant, either with a book or just people-watching. You usually meet a bunch of interesting people anyway; it's like having dinner with someone you wouldn't have ordinarily met.
Do you have any tips for people who are afraid to dine out alone? Well, you can always bring along a book, because that's not quite alone; it's like alone-adjacent, and more like a choice. But really, it's all about having confidence in yourself. Being able to sit alone is an important thing in general, whether you're at a restaurant or at your house.
Do you try to talk to people who don't recognize you, or who do? I try not to make it weird in either direction. I don't try to pretend I'm not who I am and I don't feel any different or special because I am who I am. As I've gotten older, I've learned to look at [my fame] as me being a guy who's just good at his job, the same way someone who is a lawyer or a doctor might be good at their job.
Do strangers usually start talking to you first, or do you typically initiate the conversation? There's a couple things. One: With the people who work at the restaurant or bar, you're not the first person to eat there alone [laughs]. So they're ready to have a little conversation. The other thing you need to keep in mind is that the other person alone at the bar is just as alone as you are. You're in the same boat together.
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Do you have a favorite restaurant bar for this kind of setup? Connie & Ted's in Los Angeles is a sort of high-end seafood joint made to feel like a neighborhood crab shack. They have an open kitchen and it's really fun to watch them cook. A raw bar is a great version of a bar. It's cool and communal and everything in front of you is so fresh. In general, a food bar is less sloppy than a booze bar. You can have a real conversation and people actually remember what you talked about.
So this is what happens when you turn 34, right? Exactly. A good conversation is one of my favorite things in life. When you get people talking, especially a stranger, there's a filter that's removed because they know there isn't going to be any consequences to spilling their guts. You get to really hear the ins and outs of what's really been bothering them that day.
When you went out to bar-bars more before, did you find yourself eating at them as well? Oh man, I'm such a gigantic fan of bar food. And it excites me when I see it on a menu—jalapeño poppers, chicken wings, all that stuff. But talk about getting older; at some point, it hit me that me and my body are going to have to be friends for a long time, so I better start treating it like a friend.
Do you have a favorite bar food then? Nachos are, potentially, the most fun food ever invented. Every culture has their particular bread-and-cheese delivery system—whether it's pizza, nachos, or a good grilled cheese sandwich—but nachos are communal.
To bring things back to movies, do you have any favorite Hollywood food scenes? Like, I know you're a big Tim Burton fan, and the first thing I think of with him are those shrimp cocktails grabbing the faces of diners in Beetlejuice. Absolutely. In Indiana Jones—I think it's The Temple of Doom—when they have that crazy meal and the eyeball is in the soup. There's also that guy who goes, "Monkey brains!"
Didn't they eat snakes, too? Or hearts? Yes, yes! They pull off the tops of the fancy china and there are snakes in there. I can't remember if anyone eats any heart, but I do remember someone pulling a heart out of someone's chest.
Terrifying. Did seeing a movie like that as a kid make you want to travel? Yeah, and I'll tell you a good food-related travel story. When I was about 20 years old, I went to Thailand for a month. And Anthony Bourdain–style, I love finding the local street food. Well, there was this guy selling skewers on the street, by a barbecue. He had every kind of meat, so I said to the guy, "Hey, is that chicken?" He kinda made a noise at me, which I took as an affirmative. So I ate this thing, and almost instantly I was aware it was a meat I'd never tried before. And having tried every kind of meat, I was instantly terrified, because there were only a few meats left and I didn't want to eat any of them [laughs].
Did you figure out what it was? I believe it was a rat. It was that texture, for sure, plus a very soft, gelatinous, umami flavor.
Bad umami? Yeah, bad umami [laughs].
Were you an adventurous eater as a kid? Yeah, I'll eat pretty much anything. When I was youngish—like high school—I was playing a lot of basketball, so I could eat pretty much anything. And I would also get home really late, so I had three or four years where the staples of my diet were microwaved food—mostly Hot Pockets and chicken potpies. But something terrible happened recently: I had to gain a ton of weight for a movie in a very short period of time. So I put myself on a Hot Pocket diet: two Hot Pockets, every three hours, all day long. That's eight a day for three weeks.
That's worse than the Supersize Me diet. Oh, yeah. I started to feel horrible, and then I started to feel actively unwell. And about three weeks later, Hot Pockets were pulled off the shelves for diseased meat [Ed. note: Technically it was because of unsanitary conditions at the meat company].
Which you loaded up on. Right. I was surely the person eating the most Hot Pockets at that time.
Why Hot Pockets? Couldn't you have done a proper weight-gaining diet? I was running low on time and I knew I had to take drastic measures. I also knew no dietician would have the balls to put me on a Hot Pocket diet.
How did you keep it interesting? Just buy every flavor imaginable? There's quite a few flavors, yeah. And let me just say—Hot Pockets are delicious. They fall into that category of a bread-and-cheese delivery system, with some diseased meat thrown in. Is that going to get me sued by Hot Pockets?
Or it'll get you an endorsement deal. Okay, good.
Was the weight gain for the David Foster Wallace role? Yeah, I had gotten as fit as I could get for Sex Tape. It was a strict regiment of hard-boiled eggs for breakfast and then basically chicken and salad for lunch and dinner. But then I had to turn it all back around in a matter of months.
I'm curious—what would you do to mend things, at least for the night? Would you take the person you're with out to dinner, or would you make them dinner? I'm gonna throw you a curveball: I don't think there's a nicer expression in terms of food than making somebody breakfast. Eggs Florentine.
That's very specific. Yeah! I have an egg-poaching pan and a Vitamix. Between those two, I'm unstoppable.
What do you use the Vitamix for? I make smoothies, but I also do a beautiful Vitamix hollandaise sauce. To be honest, cooking became so much easier with the Internet. You can find videos of people showing you how to do things. I have a Google search tip: Put in anything you want—like "Vitamix hollandaise sauce"—and then add the words "in action" after it. [Laughs] Then you'll see a video.
We haven't talked much about these children's books you're writing. Do they feature food at all? Well, the kid's nightmares are about witches eating his toes, which was my standard nightmare growing up. Kinda tapas-style. And then his stepmother runs a lab, so she's always cooking up all sorts of green concoctions with that "hot new food"—kale. And he hates kale. Because kale is bullshit. [Laughs]
One last question: I know that when you were filming The Muppets, you were taught to treat them as if they were real, not puppets. So if you were to send Kermit and Missy Piggy on a date, where would you send them? Wow. I guess it'd be a vegan restaurant?
Or maybe the Swedish Chef could cook for them? Yeah! Although I gotta say, the Chef's meals usually turn out to be disastrous.