(upbeat music)
- What's up, everybody? Michael here.
It's been nearly a decade
since the most infamous restaurant review of all time.
It included classic zingers,
like how the blue watermelon margarita
"tastes like some combination
of radiator fluid and formaldehyde."
And the one that asks: "Why is one of the few things
on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret
called a roasted pork banh mi when it resembles that item
about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?"
The review in question eviscerated
Guy's American Kitchen and Bar, owned by Guy Fieri.
The review-slash-assassination attempt was penned
by "New York Times" restaurant critic Pete Wells.
When it came out in 2012,
Fieri had already been a Food Network star for six years
with several seasons of "Guy's Big Bite"
and "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" under his belt.
He also owned four successful restaurants.
Today, "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" is in its 35th season.
- That's a great wing. Mmm!
- [Michael] "Guy's Grocery Games"
has enjoyed almost 30 seasons,
and Fieri's face has graced scores
of other Food Network shows.
And there are plenty of Fieri haters out there,
writing him off as all bombast and, in Wells's words,
"a representation of going insane."
And don't forget the time Anthony Bourdain wondered,
"How does Guy Fieri de-douche?"
But despite the haters, Fieri's star continues
to shine brighter than a kitchen grease fire.
Is this guy just the result of what happens
when a can of Red Bull and a jar of hot sauce make a baby?
Can this guy, yes, this Guy, actually teach us a lot
about the cultural function of food?
Let's find out in this "Wisecrack Edition":
"Guy Fieri: Deep or Dumb?"
It's no secret that Guy Fieri is a busy dude,
and as the title of his flagship show
"Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" suggests,
Fieri is a champion of food
that's generally considered lowbrow.
- It is seriously too legit to quit, though.
- And because he is genuinely psyched
to eat a jalapeno pepper popper sandwich
made by an unknown chef, it's easy for critics
to write him off as a bombastic goofball.
That puts him in stark contrast
with his fellow Food Network stars,
who posture as serious chefs or bastions of fine dining,
like the casual culinary queen of East Hampton, Ina Garten,
or the ginger master of the restaurant kitchen,
Mr. Robert William Flay.
But Fieri is a longtime restaurateur in his own right,
and his recipes have a consistent ethos,
firmly rooted in a lack of concern
over traditional food preparations
and a passion for inventive culinary fusion.
Aside from showing you the Fieri tattoo over my heart,
it is difficult to overstate what a singular presence he is
in the celebrity chef landscape.
But to truly understand the taste of Flavortown,
it's important to assess him in the context
of our national history of celebrity chefs.
America wasn't always obsessed
with watching people cook outrageous things on TV.
In fact, the act of eating
in mainstream, post-World War II America
was all about convenience and economy,
unless you were lucky enough to have a bomb-ass Italian nona
to serve you up some rigatoni.
As French chef Jacques Pepin described in his memoir,
in America, "food was sustenance, full stop."
That meant lots of cheap, highly processed eats.
But the arrival of French cooking in mainstream America
would conjure a new cultural preoccupation
with things like food quality, freshness, and seasonality.
The first big American celebrity chef was Julia Child,
who brought her training at Le Cordon Bleu back home
to teach her audience that French dishes tasted better
than cream-of-mushroom-soup-based casseroles.
Her act was revelatory,
showing that fancy cooking techniques
like mincing a mirepoix or deboning a duck
weren't just for the professionals.
Also, she invented shark repellent for the Navy.
Seriously, Google it.
After her show, "The French Chef," debuted in 1963,
public appetite for food TV mushroomed,
and from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s,
foodie culture became a mainstay of American life,
coinciding with the Reagan era and the yuppie boom.
This eventually led to the creation of the Food Network.
Founded in 1993, it boasted hosts like Emeril Lagasse,
Jacques Pepin, and Robin Leach.
And by the time the channel was popular enough
to host "The Next Food Network Star,"
its stable of celebrity chefs
represented something very specific.
Sure, they each had their own personality-
- Bam! Bam!
- [Michael] and areas of expertise.
But they were unified in a vibe that dominates the network
and celebrity chef culture to this day.
They were seasoned, experienced,
and focused on elevating the dishes they were making.
Sometimes, that means staying loyal
to the traditional preparation methods of a dish.
Sometimes, it means adding an unexpected fancy twist.
- I like to take something really traditional
and do it with a twist, and I thought,
"Wouldn't it be fun to take the croutons
and put it on the outside?"
- [Michael] Or, as "Spectacular Foodscapes" authors
Josee Johnson and Michael Goodman would put it,
"Food media frames and mediates what foodscapes could
and should be, how they could and should operate,
and for whom they could and should work.
They communicate specific food instructions via recipes,
but they also project powerful images
of what constitutes a good meal,
a worthy home cook, and a celebrated chef."
That is to say,
food influencers set the bar for home cooking,
and the rest of us just try to capture their vibes.
In this context of good meals and celebrated chefs,
it's no wonder that the discourse
around Guy Fieri has remained spicy.
We live in a culture that assigns moral value to food.
As a result, good food can mean anything
from healthy to fancy to healthy-fancy,
and this is where Fieri breaks the Jell-O mold.
The majority of the food he showcases is neither low
in cholesterol or high in its opinion of itself.
Truffle oil is supplanted by donkey sauce.
And we think that's a crucial part of his appeal.
His only criteria for a good meal are if it tastes...
- Aw, that's ridiculous!
- And, of course, as far as that celebrated-chef thing goes,
we have that infamous review, among many others,
to cast aspersion upon his credentials.
But the discourse around Fieri doesn't stop there.
Scholar Emily Contois noted
in her book "Diners, Dudes, and Diets"
that as of spring 2020,
the food site "Eater" had published more features
about Fieri than any other big-name chef,
be it Anthony Bourdain, David Chang, or anybody else,
and these posts generated more than twice
as many comments than any other chefs.
So why the disparity?
We think it comes down to the cultural context
Guy Fieri is operating within.
It's all fun and "Guy's Grocery Games" for the hoi polloi
who think Fieri is a cool, down-to-earth dude
they'd like to get a beer with.
But that's precisely why it's so easy
for critics to dunk on him.
He's easily defined as part
of what scholar Dwight Macdonald
would call the mass culture,
or its more sinister moniker, masscult.
That's essentially a commercialized
and totally artificial culture
popularized by the mass media.
Masscult exists in opposition
to what Macdonald calls high culture,
which he characterizes as more of the formal things
you learn about in school, like Shakespeare or the viola.
In the case of food,
that means high culture is culinary school,
whereas masscult is home cooking
or picking up skills in a diner kitchen.
And while both the masscult and high culture
can be wildly popular among the greater public,
Macdonald argued way back in 1960,
"in the United States, the demands of the audience,
which has changed from a small body of connoisseurs
into a large body of ignoramuses,
have become the chief criteria of success."
This was an exceedingly rude way
of saying that taste had been democratized
and thus was driven by the consumer demands of the masses.
That's how McDonald's, the restaurant, not the scholar,
has managed to serve hundreds of billions of Big Macs
without serving a McRatatouille even once.
And when applying this framework
to television food celebrity culture,
it explains why the Food Network airs so many hours
of Fieri content: he is exactly what the spectator wants.
In other words, Fieri has some big
"let people like what they like" energy.
However, the irony is that while Guy Fieri himself
might be a product of masscult,
he spends many of his on-screen hours
highlighting restaurants owned
not by millionaire celebrity chefs
or backed by groups of financiers,
but independent local spots owned by families
and food-obsessed non-celebrities.
The implicit message seems to be
even in parts of the country
dominated by chain restaurants and big-box stores,
there are still amazing, unique meals to be had
if you're willing to find them.
Yet, despite being an easy target,
Guy Fieri staunchly refuses
to be anything other than what he is:
someone who loves food, his family,
and the unassuming mom-and-pop joints
that, to him, are quintessentially American.
And when he tries their signature dishes,
whether it's a traditional take on a club sandwich
or a modern update on ramen, he's not trying
to change them or upgrade their fanciness
or make them ready for a photoshoot.
He takes them exactly as they are
and champions their specific flavors
and often their unique flavor profiles.
And while there are plenty of classic chili dogs
and homemade Twinkies to be had on "Triple D,"
it's, in a lot of ways, remarkably inclusive.
As far as the show is concerned,
any food made in America is quintessentially American,
especially when those cuisines originated
from other countries.
- [Guy] Greek favorites like hand-rolled,
beef-and-rice-filled grape leaves.
- [Michael] In recent years, you're more likely
to see an interesting take on Vietnamese,
Korean, or Mexican food on "Triple D"
than you are a new iteration of wings or burgers.
- A Greek family making tacos in Texas!
- [Michael] And bonus points for foods that are mashups
of different cultures, like pastrami tacos
or duck confit enchiladas.
That's a situation that Fieri loves to describe as...
- Ridiculous. Ridiculously good.
- [Michael] Fieri's staked his brand on an attitude
of "I'm no better than you; we just all love food.
Food is the greatest common denominator."
- Look at that meat.
Tender, flaky, pull-aparty,
super-hot-y, smolder-y, burny-mouth.
- [Michael] This is a crucial difference between him
and most other food celebrities.
On "Triple D," his expertise is held in reserve.
He doesn't make the rules,
and he's not here to correct anyone.
And while we might not think
of Fieri as overtly philosophical,
his sensibility towards food culture
shares something with Scottish philosopher
and legendary Edinburgh bar patron David Hume, who said,
"Indulge your passion for science,
but let your science be human
and such as may have a direct reference
to action and society.
Be a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy,
be still a man."
For Hume, this meant that deep
and speculative thought was important,
but so was experiencing life, being social, and having fun.
For him, philosophy was never meant
to be at the expense of relating to everyday life
and, more bluntly, being a good hang.
And part of the reason Fieri's approach works
is because he never gets distracted by the more conceptual
and intellectual aspects of modern food culture.
He's mostly there to chill and chow down.
Fieri's version of Hume's quote might be, "Be a chef,
but not at the expense of being a down-to-earth dude."
Sure, while he's there, he talks
about these supposedly lowbrow foods in a highbrow way,
and he makes it clear he knows his way around a kitchen
without acting like he owns the place.
And it's precisely this approach
that puts his culinary skills somewhat in the background
so the viewer can fully revel in the sensory experience
of eating a falafel waffle with him.
Fieri's restaurant experience
doesn't distract from the joy of eating.
He doesn't roll into these smaller businesses
to throw his ego around, unlike another chef we know.
- Holy (beep). Rubber, tasteless.
That's going straight to the trash.
- [Michael] And he's even hella humble.
- It's a great place.
You got great people.
This is the real diner feel, so congratulations.
- While he might get a lot of flack for his own brand,
most of what he's done on "Triple D"
is give a massive amount of promotion
to local spots he really believes in.
As far as Fieri is concerned,
everyone he meets is an expert
when it comes to making their signature dishes.
And he has to show deference to their recipes,
because Fieri himself has built a reputation
on creating his own unconventional menu items.
He's not a pretentious culinary scold.
He picked up most of his skills
working in actual restaurants.
He's positioned as a self-made man,
and this bolsters his public appeal
because Americans love a bootstrapping narrative.
All of these factors combined make us wonder
if Guy Fieri is the living, breathing embodiment
of the ideal American.
Indeed, Fieri's devotion to welcoming foods of all kinds
into his show's vision of America suggests
that he may be our true populist king.
As cook and author Julia Turshen wrote for "Lucky Peach,"
"When it comes to visibility and inclusiveness,
'Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives' succeeds.
Food allows the show to highlight inclusivity
without being about inclusivity."
And yet, for segments of American culture
that still would call Indian food exotic,
Fieri appeals nonetheless.
As Julia Moskin wrote in the "New York Times,"
"He has a Sarah Palin-like ability to reach Americans
who feel left behind by the nation's cultural,
or, in his case, culinary elite."
Except, of course,
Fieri has never claimed the ability to see a foreign nation
from outside of his Northern California home.
If most American celebrity chefs teach people how
to cook elevated food by, say, adding French techniques,
Fieri seeks to celebrate the American food
that chefs are already cooking.
Now, Fieri famously keeps mum about his political opinions,
though he'll do arguably political acts
like fundraising nearly $25 million
on behalf of unemployed restaurant workers or cooking meals
for volunteers fighting California wildfires.
As Matt Schimkowitz put it in "The A.V. Club,"
"Whether you read his actions as philanthropic
or socialist or the end of food culture as we know it,
Guy fits the bill.
He shows up, puts on a show, and leaves it to his audience
to define who he is to them."
And, indeed, Fieri's able to cash in on his keen insight
into the broader American psyche by being everything
and anything to everyone and anyone,
regardless of background, political affiliation,
or access to flame-printed shirts.
There's plenty of problems with America, but ultimately,
Fieri represents all the best parts
of what the country claims to value:
inclusivity, joy, and on-fire, out-of-bounds,
kicking, gangster, bomb flavor morsels.
And that, in our opinion, is actually, kinda, surprisingly,
we can't believe we're about to say this, deep.
- You hear what I'm saying?
- But what do you guys think?
Is Guy Fieri the ultimate embodiment of American ideals,
or is he just a burger-lovin' dude
who's single-handedly kept the hair bleach industry afloat?
Let us know in the comments.
Hit the subscribe button
like you're throwing too much sauce on the meat,
and don't forget to ring that bell.
Thanks to our patrons for all your support,
and be sure to check out our new exclusive perks on Patreon.
And as always, thanks for watching. Later.
(upbeat music)