Chefs need to kill Guy Fieri.
But not how you would possibly think. Previously a food-world punchline — Anthony Bourdain once described his shuttered Times Square restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen, as a “terror dome” — Fieri is now embraced by high-end dining’s biggest names, and “killed” is foodie-speak for chefs over-indulging favored customers.
His last dinner that turned figuratively fatal? “We were at Italian Graffiti in Salt Lake City,” Fieri told The Post. “You name it, chef Marc Marrone sent it out. Then, at meal’s end, got here the bone-in pork chop and rabbit tortellini. I asked them to stop. I used to be afraid I might not make it to the car parking zone.”
Marrone, previously of the Tao Group, was thrilled to do it. “The energy that Guy brings into any room, it’s incredible,” Marrone, who barely knew Fieri before that night, told The Post. “He toured the kitchen and took pictures with the crew. Not every chef does that. And I don’t know a chef who doesn’t respect what Guy has achieved.”
Fieri’s got 19 producer credits on IMDB, 4 shows currently airing on Food Network — “Tournament of Champions” his cooking competition, just began its fourth season — 92 restaurants world wide, a highly-rated cigar collaboration (the Knuckle Sandwich received a 92 in Cigar Aficionado), a tequila take care of Sammy Hagar and industry-wide gratitude for having raised $24.5 million to assist restaurant employees sidelined by the early days of the pandemic.
“I sent videos to top guys at 50 firms that earn essentially the most money from restaurants,” said Fieri of how he pulled off that last feat. “They profited, and I gave them a probability to settle up. Next day I got a call that Pepsi was on the phone. They gave $1 million. By the top of that first day, we raised $7 million.”
He’s generous, too, together with his pals.
Just a few years ago, Sylvester Stallone invited Fieri to his house to observe a boxing match on TV, with sandwiches on the menu. That may not stand with Fieri. He insisted on bringing wagyu steak, truffles, fresh pasta, and shrimp. Then he cooked for celeb guests who included Sugar Ray Leonard, David Blaine, and Al Pacino.
“Pacino takes a couple of bites of my pasta, I asked the way it was, he hesitated, took one other taste, pushed back on his chair, and said, ‘Hoo wah!’” recalled Fieri, still sounding excited. “I needed to go outside after that.”
But his was not all the time a lifetime of gourmet freebies and celebrity hangs. One afternoon this past week, in the brand new Gramercy Park test kitchen of the Food Network, Fieri acknowledged that he initially shocked gourmet sensibilities.
“People make judgments,” he said, putting the ending touches on a dish that is a component pizza and part quesadilla with dipping sauce. “They met me and saw tattoos, gold earrings, big chains, California. There’s all the time a option to misinterpret someone.”
Fieri grew up within the Northern California town of Ferndale, raised by a leather-worker father and a homemaker mom. Holding down restaurant jobs for the reason that age of 12 —- “I started off washing dishes at a Mexican restaurant” — he finagled his way right into a high-school foreign-exchange program in France, where fell in love with food. After graduating from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with a level in hotel management, Fieri opened his own place, Johnny Garlic’s, in 1996. “My parents mortgaged their home to lend me $50,000,” Fieri said.
By 2008, he had 4 places and a second chainlet, a sushi/barbecue concept called Tex Wasabi’s. Happening TV was the furthest thing from the hustling restaurateur’s mind in 2006 when “The Next Food Network Star” contest was announced.
“But two buddies pushed me to make the demo,” said Fieri. “I said, ‘Hi, I’m Guy Fieri. Today, I’m going to make a sausage and tofu stuffed terrine. And since we’re in wine country, I’ll make it on a bed of Grape Nuts.’ Then I said, ‘Hey, Food Network, I don’t know what is occurring. I’m about real food for real people.’ After that, I began riffing and did the cooking demo.”
Food Network executives loved it, Fieri won season 2, and the channel gave him his own show. “It was about kitchen gadgets. We shot the pilot, and it got picked up,” he said. “But it surely sucked and I turned it down. That pissed everybody off.”
Nevertheless, inside the subsequent six months, they got here to Fieri with “Guy’s Big Bite,” a cooking show that Fieri found more palatable. That got renewed for a second season, and things really blew up in 2007, when “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” premiered. “I’ll keep doing that show until the wheels fall off,” he said of this system, which remains to be going.
Along for the Fieri ride is his wife of 28 years, Lori, a homemaker, and their sons, Hunter, 25, and Ryder, 17. (The 2 also raised 23-year-old Jules, the son of Guy’s sister, after she died from cancer in 2011.) Hunter often appears on “Guy’s Grocery Games” and shot backstage footage on “Tournament of Champions.”
The family has multiple homes, including a Napa Valley ranch where the range-top hoedown “Guy’s Ranch Kitchen” is filmed — capturing the famous-chef equivalent of Traveling Wilburys jam sessions.
For some, it was easy to look askance at Fieri’s rapid rise. “There are individuals who resent success,” Marrone said. “They need to hate on individuals who win.”
After which there was that now-notorious Latest York Times review.
In 2012, critic Pete Wells eviscerated Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, describing the margarita as tasting like “radiator fluid” and asking, “Why did the toasted marshmallow taste like fish?”
Fieri insisted that he didn’t take it personally.
“I don’t know Pete Wells. I don’t know if he has ever run a restaurant or even when he’s a cook. All I do know is that I had been at my restaurant that night with the Latest York Times, doing a fund-raiser for hurricane [Sandy],” he said. “I got home, read the review, took my son to highschool, flew back to Latest York, and went on the ‘Today Show’ … I’m not going to take an entire beating, put my tail between my legs and run.”
He didn’t mind, either, when comedian Bobby Moynihan roasted him with a wildly manic impression on “Saturday Night Live.”
“Right after I did it, Guy contacted me and asked me to make videos for his son,” Moynihan, who recently wrote the youngsters’s book “Not All Sheep are Boring!” told The Post. “I believe he desired to be a comedian fairly than a chef. He said his dream was to be on ‘SNL.’”
Moynihan appeared on the debut of “Guy’s Ultimate Game Night” and had, he said, “a blast.”
And inside the restaurant world, Fieri has won the respect of among the biggest names within the business. “Tournament of Champions” contestants — who cook for a prize of $100,000 — have included James Beard Award winners Jet Tila, Jose Garces, and Nate Appleman. Among the many celebrated chef judges: Manhattanites Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin and Scott Conant of Scarpetta, and Nancy Silverton of the Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles.
In a TV genre where on-air food experts could be stiff and the format serious to the purpose of somnolence, Fieri’s competition resembles a high-energy athletic event. Chefs jog onto the set like fighters entering the ring, complete with their very own intro music.
The winner gets an enormous belt that Fieri made sure can be heavy-weight worthy. “First 12 months, the guy brings within the belt, and I said, ‘What’s this?’” Fieri recalled. “It looked like something from Toys-R-Us. I said, ‘Find who makes the championship belt for World Boxing Association.’ He said, ‘You wish a belt like that?’ I said, ‘Yes. Spend $5,000.’”
Chef Brooke Williamson, who won the way more austere “Top Chef” and co-owns Playa Provisions in LA, aced the primary season and got here back for 2 more.
“Two seasons ago, on ‘Tournament of Champions,’ every round we won, we received $10,000 to donate to an independent restaurant,” Williamson told The Post. “I helped several friends who were struggling. La Rina in Brooklyn used the cash to construct an out of doors patio. Guy is a real one who, when he gives you s–t and makes fun of you, it means he likes you.”
The unlikelihood of a bleached blonde, spiky-haired, goateed dude who likes to wear flames on his bowling shirts and his sunglasses on the back of his head rubbing elbows with the Riperts of the world isn’t lost on Fieri.
“Eric and I actually have a very great friendship,” said Fieri. “I used to be just texting him last night. I invited him and Daniel Boulud to return for dinner. Everybody looks at that and thinks it’s funny: the guy in a leather jacket with big gold rings hanging out with the number-one chef on the earth. Eric said, ‘We play different sorts of music but we play what we play. [Fieri’s] more like hard rock and I’m more like classical.’
“You’ll be able to’t get well respect than that.”
