THE GUY FIERI FROM TV -- the gregarious one who pops up on The Food
Network seemingly every two hours to beam over decadent dishes or put the shama lama in the ding dong of his own recipes -- is the same Guy Fieri who answers the phone at his Santa Rosa home on a Tuesday, just a few hours before the big family dinner at his dad's next door.
"Game on, baby," he says. "Go for it."
Constantly on the road for charity events, sponsored dog-and-pony shows, and TV series shoots, and in possession of a signature look and gonzo personality, Fieri has been cast by food media types as a divisive figure. To some, he's a spiky-haired bro who "built a business empire on the very premise that he’s a human punch line" (Grub Street); to others, he's "the hero we need" (Playboy). But speaking to you over the phone from his California complex -- the same house he's lived in since opening Johnny Garlic's, his first pre-fame restaurant, in the mid-1990s -- Fieri is like your favorite uncle, an excitable mover-and-shaker who genuinely wants to be everyone's friend because maybe that'll make the world a little better, cultural impact be damned.
So which is it? Fieri insists he's still that chill California dude from the 2005 Food Network audition tape (only now, woke Katy Perry can impersonate him on Instagram) who embarked on an everlasting tour of US restaurants with the debut of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on April 23, 2007. While Fieri's critiques of dishes on "Triple D" remain uniquely inoffensive, so as to soothe viewers' minds (e.g., his assessments of sauce range from "wow" to "dynamite"), the America around the show, and Fieri's bravado, have changed drastically.
To find out what the second-season winner of The Next Food Network Star has learned after 10 years on the road about food, fans, and himself, I phoned him up intent on doing something few reporters have dared to do: take him seriously. https://www.thrillist.com/eat/nation/guy-fieri-diners-drive-ins-and-dives-interview/food-and-drink
