How Guy Fieri Became the Mayor of Flavortown (2024)

On this episode

In his mind, Guy Fieri is still just 10 years old. He's the same kid whose parents received regular phone calls from the local bakery in Whittier, Calf., telling them their son had been hanging out all day convincing tourists to buy him cookies. He's the same kid who later got in trouble for selling Kool-Aid to those tourists. His dad wasn't mad about the entrepreneurial spirit of his son, but rather had spotted Fieri's purple-stained arm and got him to admit that he'd been using it to stir up the grape concoction. Undaunted, he started selling his toys at a stand, knowing full well that the softhearted customers would just give the Tonka truck back to his parents.

"My dad always told me to have money in my pocket," Fieri said on the debut episode of Food & Wine's Tinfoil Swans podcast, and he took it to heart. By age 14, he'd made $10,000 by selling pretzels at fairs and rodeos, so when — through a loop-de-loop of coincidences — a Frenchman with a friend who ran a high school ended up at his family's dinner table, Fieri knew what he had to do. He struck a deal with his parents that if as a high school sophom*ore he passed a junior college conversational French class with a B or better, they'd let him make his dream come true.

At age 16, he wrote back home to his parents from his perch abroad: "I'm gonna be a chef. I'm gonna own restaurants. I am eating food that is just blowing my mind." Guy Fieri was just getting started. On this episode, Guy Fieri and the Flying Mustard Jar, he shares his hilarious adventures as a flambé captain, how eating goat tongue in France changed his life, the most meaningful moment of his career to date, the celebrity chef encounter that knocked him for a loop, and how he wants to go out when it's all over.

Meet our guest

Guy Fieri became a household name as a restaurateur, cookbook author, and the host of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives (a.k.a. Triple D.), Guy's Grocery Games, Tournament of Champions, and more smash-hit shows on the Food Network. Fieri's on-stage cooking extravaganzas sell out venues across the country, he's behind 80+ from-scratch restaurants and 175 Flavortown Kitchen ghost kitchen outposts around the globe, and he co-founded Santo Tequila with rocker Sammy Hagar. He's such a cultural icon that people dress up like him for Halloween and bar crawls, and he even played himself in the film 80 for Brady.

In recent years, Fieri has become almost as well known for his philanthropy, helping raise tens of millions of dollars for first responders and hospitality workers in need, as well as supporting literacy and culinary education for kids and adults alike through the Guy Fieri Foundation. For these efforts, Fieri was named a in 2021.

Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine's podcast, and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing. She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Advice from the episode

Take action

"We can all do anything we wanna do. We can all make the world a better place. Pivot the paradigm, just take a little bit different perspective and just recognize your power. We can all make an improvement. We can make it financially, spiritually, emotionally, physically. Whenever someone says, 'Well, if I don't have any money to donate,' or 'I don't have any free time to donate,' I say, 'Then you know what? Go to your social media, go to your Facebook, go to whatever medium you use, and post positive things to people.'"

"Post positive reviews if you're going to a restaurant. Don't just talk about it, post it, you know, be involved. And that's so surprising for people sometimes. But once people start to really realize they can make a difference and they can change the paradigm, they can change perspective, it's like a light bulb going off in their head. And I just don't think that we teach enough critical thinking and about the ability that we have to manifest things into a different direction through our own power. Don't complain about it; do something about it. Be involved."

Ignore the haters

"I've never been a half-full person. I'm very optimistic. I like to look at the positive sides of things. When people say, "How do you handle criticism? How do you handle …?" Sometimes people's motives to give criticism aren't genuine, so I'd look at who's it coming from. Do I have feelings? Absolutely. Do I get my feelings hurt? Yeah, without question. Do I have trepidations? Yeah, yeah. But it doesn't rule me. I have to be the commander of my ship. That's just kind of the way my parents raised me: a lot of critical thinking, a lot of discussions, a lot of open table discussions sitting down and going through stuff."

Trust your taste

"Take pineapple on pizza. I've been to Naples. I've got wood fired ovens. I've worked with some of the greatest pizza chefs in the world. I don't care what you put on a pizza. I don't take an attitude. I'm not a truffle oil fan. It can be used in moderation and it serves a place. You tell me you don't like a truffle oil french fry, OK. Do I like real truffles? Absolutely. Do I think that you should be throwing truffle oil on everything that you do? If that's what you wanna do. But I don't have an attitude about it that makes me dislike you. As long as you don't hurt yourself, not hurt yourself or anybody else, you can do what you wanna do."

About the podcast

Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.

Each week, you'll hear from icons and innovators like Guy Fieri, Padma Lakshmi, David Chang, Mashama Bailey, Enrique Olvera, Maneet Chauhan, Shota Nakajima, Antoni Porowski, and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what's on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that'll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop every Tuesday starting June 13. Listen and Follow Now:Apple Podcasts,Google,Spotify,Stitcher,iHeart Radio,Amazon Music,TuneIn.

Editor’s Note: Please be mindful that this transcript does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.