Guy Fieri has been tooling around the country in his sweet sweet Camaro since 2007 for his
long-running Food Network favorite, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. That's 32 seasons of
everyone's favorite spiky-haired, backward-sunglasses-wearing host digging into an array of food trucks,
mom and pop shops, and burger stands throughout the 50 states — over 1,200 of them so far
and counting!
Yet somehow, he never seems to have a bad dining experience. How is that possible?
Firstly, for any given episode of Triple D, there's an extensive vetting process. Fans
of Fieri can submit their favorite eating spots to Diners, Drive-ins and Dives by email,
while producers reach out to local food writers and grill them about which hometown favorites
should be featured on the show. Using this method ensures the cream of any given restaurant
scene rises to the top.
Keeping Fieri's reviews purely positive is also a win-win for both the show and the restaurants
that are featured on Triple D. Cheat Sheet explains that the producers of Diners, Drive-ins
and Dives warn owners that their businesses will be forever changed, oftentimes upping
profits by 200 percent.
But given the sheer number of establishments visited combined with the innumerable dishes
sampled, it seems statistically impossible that Fieri hasn't come across a less than
wow-worthy dining experience in all of his years of culinary exploration.
As it turns out, Fieri is a fan of the old adage, "If you can't say something nice, don't
say anything at all " In an interview with The Sporkful, he told host Dan Pashman point-blank
that if a meal doesn't cut it for Fieri personally, the footage hits the cutting room floor and
is never aired on the show.
Still, some eagle-eyed fans believe there are tells that let viewers know what Fieri
really thinks of the food. According to some hardcore Reddit users who parse episodes for
body language and speech inflections, you can tell he likes something when he eats the
whole thing, and he's also not shy about telling the audience.
"Mother father, that's good."
And conversely, you can tell he doesn't love something when he doesn't eat much and just
gives the meal generic non-compliments, and on rare occasions, minor critiques.
"The turtle is a little chewy for me."
Of course, there's another factor: chefs are on their best behaviour when Fieri is filming,
as they want to make sure they get a good review. So as a result, Fieri is likely to
get their very best cooking effort, meaning he's more likely to enjoy his meal than you
might be if you ate at the same joint.
Still, occasionally Fieri gets a bad burger or some subpar sloppy joes. And though he
tries hard to disguise it with generic compliments, he has admitted publicly that sometimes, the
chefs can just tell that he didn't really dig their food.
In an interview on the podcast The Moment with Brian , Fieri opened up to the filmmaker
about that uncomfortable experience, saying,
"We'll go to commercial, and they'll go, 'Well, did you like that?' And I'm like, 'Yeah it
was good.'"
Fieri says that many chefs are upset he wasn't amazed by their dish, but that it's an unrealistic
expectation for him to be wowed by everything he eats. After all, taste is a subjective
thing, whether it's musical taste or actual, literal taste. He said,
"Don't be offended. I don't like every song that's on the Rolling Stones album."
Fieri added that he willingly gives advice to anyone looking to improve their dishes,
so even if you do notice some less-than-enthusiastic descriptions coming out of the star's mouth
or that Fieri only takes a bite before cutting to the next scene, it might not mean you need
to skip the dish on your next visit. The restaurant may have gotten some feedback from Fieri and
taken it to heart, creating a new version of the dish that is truly out of this world.
There's only one way to find out, of course. So who's up for a road trip?!
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