I didn’t get a chance to post about this devastating review of Guy Fieri’s Times Square restaurant, but Guy has responded, defensively, to the review, claiming that the reviewer has “an agenda”. Well, if “an agenda” is code for “a desire to eat edible food”, that’s probably true. If you haven’t read the review, it’s worth a few minutes of your time, because it sounds like Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar puts out much worse food than the average local Applebees.
As someone who watches a fair amount of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, I’m not surprised that Fieri’s new restaurant sucks. That show has an excellent production team, because they find a lot of interesting, local restaurants despite Fieri’s obvious narrow taste in food and desire to wring every penny of profit from his operations. A good part of every episode consists of Fieri marveling that someone would actually work that hard, use that many good ingredients, and charge so little for the signature dishes that each restaurant serves. Somebody who’s regularly astonished by what it takes to make good food isn’t going to run great restaurants. His other places, called Johnny Garlic’s and Tex Wasabi’s, sound more like “concepts” to be marketed rather than places where you’re going to get a good meal.
It has to be exhausting to be air-dropped into a bunch of towns with your red Camaro so you can blather and shove food in your gaping, ignorant pie hole once the producers have done all the prep work. I think that a show devoted to local food created by independent, quality restaurants is worth watching without a bleach-blonde bro mouth farting over the top of the hard working chefs at these places. So maybe Food Network will give Guy a break so he can go fix what’s wrong at his New York food factory, and let someone who actually loves local food take over for a few months. That would be a real trip to flavor town.