To this day Friends remains one of the best sitcoms of all time, and that's partly because each of the main six characters had their own uniquely hilarious personality traits. For Joey Tribbiani, who was portrayed by Matt LeBlanc, he was quite the ladies' man with his famous "How you doin'?" pickup line, but his love for food was also a big part of his character. Below are 32 of the funniest things Joey ever said about food.
"Pizza! We like pizza. Get out!"
Joey hired Carl, a fellow actor, to be his identical twin so he could take part in a medical trial for some extra cash. However, Carl continuously disappointed Joey by not being able to pull off his pickup line and then having the nerve to ask for cake, rather than one of Joey's favorite Italian delicacies.
"Remember when you were a kid and your mom would drop you off at the movies with a jar of jam and a little spoon?"
Who knew that Monica's jam-making hobby would strike such a personal chord with Joey? You can't blame Joey's mom, though. With eight kids to feed, I'd make them bring their own snacks to the movie theater too!
"Joey doesn't share food!"
It's bad enough that Joey wouldn't let his date steal a couple of french fries off of his plate, but to not let Ross and Rachel's daughter Emma eat one of his grapes? That's pretty intense.
"Two pizzas?!"
Several times throughout Friends, the gang refers to the "Joey Special," which is really just ordering two pizzas. When Monica, Chandler, and Joey traveled to London for Ross' wedding in Season 4, Joey got homesick when he learned that Phoebe and Rachel were back home ordering the Joey Special.
“Half the taste is in the smell. You’re sucking up all the taste units.”
In Season 5's "The One With the Ride Along," Joey's meatball sub smelled so good Chandler could taste it. But how dare Chandler waste all those good taste units by inhaling them into his nose? This was a sandwich so good Joey was willing to take a bullet for it. (He didn't have to, of course. He was just willing to.)
“Oh God, I want both! I want girls on bread.”
Joey's brain nearly broke in Season 10 when he was asked the hypothetical question of whether he'd rather give up women or food. He bounced back and forth before realizing it was just an impossible choice.
"So stupid ordering cheesecake, trying to be healthy."
Cheese = protein = nutrition, right? I love this logic because cheesecake does seem like it should be the healthier option on the dessert menu over a gooey chocolate cake. Too bad Joey didn't like the raspberry coulis on top, because the fruit adds a whole new food group!
“Is it my bologna sandwich?”
While it was funny enough that we learned in Season 4's "The One With the Fake Party" that Phoebe (a vegetarian) was craving meat while pregnant with her brother's triplets, it was even more hilarious to find out that Joey brought sandwiches with him into the shower. Wet bologna ... yum?
“Hang up. You get food poisoning just talking to that place. ... All right, I’ll have a sandwich.”
You don't have to ask him twice. The first time Monica accidentally dialed the deli rather than the couple she and Chandler had met on their honeymoon, Joey warned her not to eat from there. The second time the deli picked up, though, Joey couldn't resist the temptation.
"Great story, can I eat it?"
Hell hath no fury like a hungry Joey. After most of the gang was late for Phoebe's birthday dinner in one Season 9 episode, Joey couldn't have been less interested in hearing their excuses.
"All right, what are we having?"
In Season 7's "The One With All the Cheesecakes," Rachel and Chandler's obsession got so bad they were eventually eating cheesecake off the floor of the hallway. When Joey caught them, he did not react with judgment, but rather by pulling his own fork out of his pocket to see what all the fuss was about.
“Let me explain to you how the human body works. I have to warm up my stomach first. Eating chips is like stretching.”
After Monica warned Joey not to ruin his Thanksgiving appetite by eating chips before the big turkey, he gave her a little lesson in physiology.
"Here's where I win all my money back."
Las Vegas was apparently not very kind to Joey (just like it wasn't kind to Matt LeBlanc on the Friends stars' infamous trip to Sin City before the show premiered), but that's the beauty of an all-you-can-eat buffet, right? At least that seemed to be Joey's logic as he may have recouped all of his slot machine losses with scrambled eggs alone.
“All right, now, I'm gonna get back to my bucket. I'm only eating the skins, so the chicken's up for grabs.”
After Joey proved he was not guilty of the gross behavior that his friends had accused him of in Season 5's "The One With Ross' Sandwich," the man with the insatiable appetite proceeded to exhibit other disgusting habits, like eating just the skin off of the fried chicken and leaving the meat behind. I mean, I'm not saying that the skin's not delicious, but still.
“What’s not to like? Custard? Good. Jam? Good. Meat? Goooood.”
When the pages of the cookbook stuck together, leading Rachel to add beef sauteed with peas and onions to her traditional English trifle, most of the gang couldn't stomach the Thanksgiving dessert. Ross even said he thought it tasted like feet. Joey, however, found nothing to complain about.
“Where are you going? He said she wanted the shrew!”
Monica and Chandler’s argument wasn’t quite over when they showed up to the restaurant in “The One With Phoebe’s Birthday Dinner,” so when Monica angrily jested that her husband would order the smoked duck, Chandler countered by saying that she would have “the manipulative shrew.” The waiter offered to come back when they’d made real decisions, and Joey was clearly unaware that “shrew” wasn’t on the menu.
"You're wasting good pastrami!"
After Rachel made the humbling realization that she was turning into her father in the way she was teaching Joey how to sail, Joey experienced a similar moment when he shouted at Rachel for holding her sandwich in such a way that its contents were falling out. We all become our parents in some way, don't we?
“We're talking about whipped fish, Monica. I'm just happy I'm keeping it down.”
A rare instance of Joey talking not-so-positively about food came in Season 1, when Monica was preparing a tasting menu for a potential job and had her friends sample several different iterations of salmon mousse. When she expressed frustration that Joey couldn't tell her if "creamier" meant "better," he put it into perspective for her.
"You hung up on the pizza place? I don't hang up on your friends."
In Season 8's "The One With Ross' Step Forward," Rachel was really just calling the pizza place to see if the cute pizza delivery guy was working that night, so when Joey walked into the apartment, she quickly hung up. Maybe she should have lied about who she was talking to, because how dare she end the call without ordering a Joey Special?
"Mmm, noodle soup."
Sometimes it's astonishing that Joey Tribbiani makes his living as an actor. In Season 5 when he auditioned for a soup commercial, he was simply supposed to say, "Mmm, soup." However, when he was presented with noodle soup and not the tomato he'd rehearsed with, Joey was unable to keep himself from adding "noodle" to the line. Spoiler alert, he didn't get the job.
“Dinner for six for one. Well, you boys are about to see something really special.”
After waiting forever for everyone to get to the restaurant for Phoebe's birthday dinner, they all ended up leaving before their food arrived. All of them except Joey, that is, who seemed to relish the opportunity to eat all six meals. The servers and fellow diners seemed curious to see what happened next, as they stood around staring at the feast.
“Hey, no matter what happens with Ross and Emily, we still get cake, right?”
If the Internet was big enough to break back in 1998, Ross definitely did that in the Season 4 finale when he said Rachel's name at the altar instead of Emily's. Friends fans waited for nearly five excruciating months to find out what would happen with this wild love triangle in Season 5, and here is Joey, worried about the cake.
“Well, the fridge broke, so I had to eat everything.”
Never accuse Joey of being wasteful. When his refrigerator broke, rather than letting anything get thrown out, he saddled up and ate everything. We're talking cold cuts, ice cream, limes, and whatever abomination was in that brown jar.
“No, no. These are my Thanksgiving pants.”
Joey should have known better than to wear jeans to Thanksgiving. Denim has no give! Good thing Phoebe had given Rachel her old maternity pants. Now Joey can enjoy his turkey in comfort.
“Don’t you put words in people’s mouths. You put turkey in people’s mouths.”
Joey didn't take too kindly to Monica not wanting to cook Thanksgiving dinner in Season 10, especially when she used Chandler to deliver the message.
“Man, this is weird. You ever realize Cap’n Crunch’s eyebrows are actually on his hat?”
I have to admit, I never realized this until Joey pointed it out, and I have to disagree with Chandler that it's weirder that Cap'n Crunch is the captain of a cereal. His EYEBROWS are on his HAT!
“Hey, you’re having an affair. I’m chopping garlic. It’s a wacky world.”
After Joey found out his dad was cheating on his mom in Season 1, he took to the kitchen for a bit of therapeutic cooking. So when Joey Sr. asked his Italian son why he was chopping the garlic rather than crushing it, Joey Jr. had a pretty sarcastic response. This part of their exchange was cut for TV but aired in full on the Season 1 DVD collection.
"Here come the meat sweats."
I assume if you put down an entire 19-pound turkey in one sitting, you'd have the meat sweats too. This is actually really gross.
“Well, I mean, don’t waste it, it’s still food.”
Rachel didn't have to worry about spilling when she moved into Joey's place, but her new roommate definitely had no tolerance for wasting food. Even the forkful of spaghetti she dropped on the floor was worth saving, in Joey's eyes.
"I'm not even sorry."
Joey found himself in quite the pickle when his date turned his "no sharing food" policy back on him and wouldn't allow him to try her chocolate cake. When she excused herself to make a phone call, however, that cake didn't stand a chance, and apparently it was good enough that Joey had no regrets.
Peanut Butter Fingers
This isn't so much a quote from Joey as an action, but it's definitely one of his best food moments. He was supposed to be helping Monica narrow her wedding's appetizer menu down from 12 items to six. When Monica got the list back, he'd added three, and the bride-to-be foolishly asked, "What are peanut butter fingers?" Joey responded by pretending to dip his fingers into a jar of peanut butter.
“Just cut me a little sliver. A little bigger. Little bigger. What, you afraid you’re gonna run out? Cut me a real piece!”
Everybody knows dessert goes in a different part of your stomach than other food (that's some Joey logic right there if I've ever heard any), so even after eating so much turkey on Thanksgiving, Joey wasn't about to skip dessert. He thought he just wanted a little taste but changed his mind when he saw what Monica was slicing for him.
