Chefs want to kill Guy Fieri.
But not how you might 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, came the bone-in pork chop and rabbit tortellini. I asked them to stop. I was afraid I would not make it to the parking lot.”
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 does not respect what Guy has accomplished.”
Fieri’s got 19 producer credits on IMDB, four shows currently airing on Food Network — “Tournament of Champions” his cooking competition, just began its fourth season — 92 restaurants around the world, a highly-rated cigar collaboration (the Knuckle Sandwich received a 92 in Cigar Aficionado), a tequila deal with Sammy Hagar and industry-wide gratitude for having raised $24.5 million to help restaurant workers sidelined by the early days of the pandemic.
“I sent videos to top guys at 50 companies that earn the most money from restaurants,” said Fieri of how he pulled off that last feat. “They profited, and I gave them a chance to settle up. Next day I got a call that Pepsi was on the phone. They gave $1 million. By the end of that first day, we raised $7 million.”
He’s generous, too, with his pals.
A few years ago, Sylvester Stallone invited Fieri to his house to watch a boxing match on TV, with sandwiches on the menu. That would 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 few bites of my pasta, I asked how it was, he hesitated, took another taste, pushed back on his chair, and said, ‘Hoo wah!’” recalled Fieri, still sounding excited. “I had to go outside after that.”
But his was not always a life of gourmet freebies and celebrity hangs. One afternoon this past week, in the new Gramercy Park test kitchen of the Food Network, Fieri acknowledged that he initially shocked gourmet sensibilities.
“People make judgments,” he said, putting the finishing touches on a dish that is part pizza and part quesadilla with dipping sauce. “They met me and saw tattoos, gold earrings, big chains, California. There’s always a way to misinterpret somebody.”
Fieri grew up in the Northern California town of Ferndale, raised by a leather-worker father and a homemaker mom. Holding down restaurant jobs since the age of 12 —- “I started out washing dishes at a Mexican restaurant” — he finagled his way 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 degree 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 four places and a second chainlet, a sushi/barbecue concept called Tex Wasabi’s. Going on 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 am Guy Fieri. Today, I am going to make a sausage and tofu stuffed terrine. And because we are in wine country, I will make it on a bed of Grape Nuts.’ Then I said, ‘Hey, Food Network, I don’t know what is going on. I’m about real food for real people.’ After that, I started 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 sucked and I turned it down. That pissed everybody off.”
Nevertheless, within the next six months, they came 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 the program, which is still going.
Along for the Fieri ride is his wife of 28 years, Lori, a homemaker, and their sons, Hunter, 25, and Ryder, 17. (The two also raised 23-year-old Jules, the son of Guy’s sister, after she died from cancer in 2011.) Hunter regularly 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 people who resent success,” Marrone said. “They want to hate on people who win.”
And then there was that now-notorious New 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 did not take it personally.
“I don’t know Pete Wells. I don’t know if he has ever run a restaurant or even if he is a cook. All I know is that I had been at my restaurant that night with the New York Times, doing a fund-raiser for hurricane [Sandy],” he said. “I got home, read the review, took my son to school, flew back to New York, and went on the ‘Today Show’ … I am not going to take a complete 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 children’s book “Not All Sheep are Boring!” told The Post. “I think he wanted to be a comedian rather 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 within the restaurant world, Fieri has won the respect of some of the biggest names in 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 celebrated chef judges: Manhattanites Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin and Scott Conant of Mora Italian, and Nancy Silverton of the Michelin-starred Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles.
In a TV genre where on-air food experts can be stiff and the format serious to the point of somnolence, Fieri’s competition resembles a high-energy athletic event. Chefs jog onto the set like fighters entering the ring, complete with their own intro music.
The winner gets a giant belt that Fieri made sure would be heavy-weight worthy. “First year, the guy brings in 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 want a belt like that?’ I said, ‘Yes. Spend $5,000.’”
Chef Brooke Williamson, who won the much more austere “Top Chef” and co-owns Playa Provisions in LA, aced the first season and came back for two 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 money to build an outdoor patio. Guy is a genuine person 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 loves to wear flames on his bowling shirts and his sunglasses on the back of his head rubbing elbows with the Riperts of the world is not lost on Fieri.
“Eric and I have a really great friendship,” said Fieri. “I was just texting him last night. I invited him and Daniel Boulud to come 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 in the world. Eric said, ‘We play different kinds of music but we play what we play. [Fieri’s] more like hard rock and I am more like classical.’
“You can’t get better respect than that.”
