The Loss at the Heart of Guy Fieri’s Entertainment Empire
In 2007, in one of the first episodes of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Guy Fieri visited Patrick’s Roadhouse, a railway station turned restaurant in Santa Monica, California. The diner’s chef, Silvio Moreira, walked Fieri through the preparation of one of Patrick’s most notable dishes, the Rockefeller—a burger topped with mushrooms, sour cream, jack cheese, and … caviar. Fieri, looking playfully trepidatious, lifted the burger with both hands, said a fake prayer, and did what he would proceed to do thousands of times on the show: He took an enormous bite. And then he fell silent. “Wooow,” he commented, finally, shooting Moreira a what-have-you-done-to-me look.
“Different, huh?” Moreira said, grinning. “Yeah,” Fieri replied. The show’s camera discreetly cut away to the next scene.
The exchange would become a precedent on the long-running Food Network show fans know as Triple D: Fieri will simply not say anything negative about the food he eats on the air. Instead, his show elevates enthusiasm into an art form. Whether he is sampling burgers or enchiladas or barbecue or pizza or pho (or the pig’s head at Vida Cantina in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; or the grasshopper tacos at Taquiza in Miami Beach; or dinner-plate-size cinnamon rolls at Mountain Shadows in Colorado Springs, Colorado), his reaction to whatever he eats will be praise. Fieri is a host who is, definitionally, a guest. He visits restaurants to learn about them, and to learn from them. He insists that he’s not a food critic. Instead, “I’m a food highlighter. I’m bringing the greatest hits.”
I’ve been watching lately, in part because it’s one of those shows that always seems to be on, but also because it is a warm hug in television form. Pop culture may be the truism that sincerity sells, but has been serving up communal kindness for years. I love the show’s low-stakes, no-frills premise: a tour of some of the best diners—and food trucks, and seafood shacks, and taco stands—around the country. I love the dad-jokey banter Fieri gets into with cooks as they make their restaurant’s favorite dishes together on camera. (“Some people play the violin; you play the mandolin!” Fieri tells the chef of an Outer Banks seafood restaurant as he slices cucumbers that will become fried pickles.)
