Bobby Flay has cooked up quite a reputation as a celebrity chef, but behind the scenes,
his personal life has been turning stomachs. Turn up the heat, we're digging into the double
life of Bobby Flay.
During a 2014 interview with CBS Sunday Morning, viewers learned that Flay failed out of several
schools before officially dropping out of high school altogether at the age of 17.
"Maybe I was bored. I mean, I guess I was, because I wasn't interested at all."
Flay echoed those sentiments back in 2011, telling The Wall Street Journal,
"I really had no interest in doing any school work whatsoever."
His scholarly father then laid down the law, telling him to get a job. But Flay didn't
have time to look, because his father took the matter into his own hands. Flay explained,
"Two days later, he called and said the busboy at a restaurant where he was a partner…needed
two weeks off to visit his sick grandmother. I was told to fill in."
When the busboy returned to work, Flay's life changed instantly. He remembered,
"I was literally walking out of the restaurant and the chef said, 'Do you want to work in
the kitchen?' And I said, 'Sure.' It was because I had nothing else to do that day."
Flay also admitted that the grunt kitchen work would lead him to the school he was born
to attend. He told CBS,
"I remember waking up in the morning, laying in my bed, staring at the ceiling and saying
to myself, 'I can't wait to go to work today.'"
Saying that was the moment he knew cooking was his passion, he added,
"It hit me. I was working with my hands, I was creating things, and I could actually
do it. I didn't have to open a book. I was learning in a practical manner."
Flay went on to graduate from New York's French Culinary Institute, now known as the International
Culinary Center, in 1984, and opened his first restaurant, Mesa Grill, at the age of 25.
He revealed that he essentially owes cooking for putting him on the right track, adding,
"I could have easily gone down a bad road, for sure. What was I going to do? How was
I going to make a living? What [were] my skills?…I took a different path."
"Cooking definitely saved my life."
But while he's since found massive success, some might say he's also abused his celebrity
power.
Chef Masaharu Morimoto was not stoked about Bobby Flay's behavior when they competed against
one another on Iron Chef Japan. Apparently, Flay committed quite the cultural snafu by
jumping on a cutting board after the timer ran out. He wasn't declared the winner, but
he certainly acted like that was the case. According to The Wire, Morimoto was highly
offended by the manner in which his fellow celeb chef treated the tools of their trade,
saying,
"He's no chef…He stood on the cutting board. In Japan, the cutting board is sacred."
While we can understand Flay's exuberance in the heat of the moment, his actions still
seem boneheaded and disrespectful. A chef of Flay's caliber should know the codes of
the kitchen. Though a simple fist pump would have sufficed, Flay allowed his life as a
celebrity to overshadow his life as a chef.
Throwdown with Bobby Flay was supposedly a head-to-head competition between Flay and
another chef, where they each made a variation on the challenger chef's signature dish. As
the show was presented, each challenge portrayed Flay taking a crack at making a dish with
which he was generally unfamiliar.
"I'm on the Food Network, baby"
But according to competitor Ben Sargent, he was the patsy in what became the pilot episode
for the then-brand-new show in 2006 after allegedly being duped by Flay and the Food
Network into thinking he was getting his own show. In an interview with SlashFood, Sargent
said he was under the impression that he was…
"[Taping] his own half hour Food Network TV show, all about him and chowder, his specialty."
That is, until Flay challenged him to a chowder cook-off.
Sargent quickly realized what was happening, especially when Flay's army of help showed
up. Sargeant remembered,
"He's got all his sous chefs. Two women working under him in their black chef's coats with
the little Food Network logo on them. They looked so intimidating. His stocks were prepared
in containers. He comes with 100 brand new glistening Japanese prep knives. He had his
automatic chowder mixer. I'm sitting there, mixing raw potatoes, dealing with our lack
of high flame…It wasn't fair."
But Flay's alleged cheating wasn't limited to the kitchen…
Flay split with his third wife, actress Stephanie March of Law & Order: SVU, in 2015. And it
was widely reported that Flay spent three years in an affair with Elyse Tirrell, an
aspiring singer and actress. Tirrell had worked her way up from her role as a hostess at Flay's
Bar Americain in New York City, to that of his assistant, according to Page Six. As cheating
rumors swirled, the chef issued a statement to Us Weekly, that read:
"This specific allegation was in a letter sent from one attorney in this case to another.
It was written and then leaked specifically to try to insert this story into the press…All
of this is being done in order to renegotiate a prenuptial agreement that was agreed to
over a decade ago."
It wasn't exactly a denial of infidelity on Flay's part. It sounded more like an ugly
chess move to lay blame at his ex's door.
Flay's marriage to Stephanie March ended in 2015, but according to a report by TMZ, it
had been breaking down, long before. This was evidenced in 2014, when Flay reportedly
opted out of visiting March in the hospital until the day after her emergency surgery
for a burst appendix. And once he did show up, he supposedly left early because he was
quote "busy with work."
To make matters worse, Flay also reportedly skipped out on their ten-year wedding anniversary
to attend a wine festival in Florida with a group of his assistants. But don't worry,
March is doing just fine these days. She discussed her emergency appendectomy and revealed that
she'd had surgery for endometriosis, telling Physique 57,
"I needed to give my body time to heal and be quiet. When I was ready to tackle regular
exercise again, I wanted to incorporate more toning, stretching, and core fitness into
my routine."
"When you want to fix something in your life, look to your heart."
With an estimated net worth of $60 million, you'd think Flay wouldn't be cheap or possibly
vindictive when dealing with his ex-wife. But according to a 2015 report by TMZ, Flay
canceled March's credit cards during their messy divorce, in a move her lawyer called
quote, "bullying through economic warfare."
March claimed she was using the cards only for household expenses, but Flay abided by
their prenup and sent March a check for $5,000 instead. March's lawyer returned the check
along with some blistering words for the famous chef in a letter to his attorney, writing:
"We regard the support provisions of the premarital agreement as unenforceable [not to mention
morally reprehensible.]"
Her lawyer also accused Flay of using this economic tactic in order to force March into
issuing a joint statement to lead people to believe their divorce was amicable.
When Mad Men actress January Jones was in a small car accident in 2010, she called Bobby
Flay for assistance, by all accounts suggesting that the two were, in the least, very close.
"This is a misunderstanding. I don't know this man."
But according to Flay, he met Jones for the first time that very evening. She asked him
for his number because she wanted his input on an interior designer to redo her kitchen.
He then claimed he had no clue why Jones phoned him to bail her out of her vehicular jam.
Regardless, he was a gentleman and came to her aid. But was it just an innocuous celeb
exchange? Not so fast.
Flay's then-wife, Stephanie, claimed Flay and Jones were lovers, according to The Daily
Beast. And there's more food for thought: Jones gave birth to son, Xander, in 2011.
For years, it was rumored that her former flame, actor Jason Sudeikis, was the baby
daddy, but Jones never confirmed the identity of Xander's father. Could Flay have put a
bun in that oven?
"You know what that's saying? Eat me."
Getting awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame should be a day to remember.
"To be the first chef to get a star is really truly an amazing milestone."
But unfortunately for Flay, that day was memorable for all the wrong reasons. During the 2015
ceremony, a plane flew overhead with a banner that read quote "CHEATER," according to Us
Weekly. Talk about a PR disaster.
This embarrassing incident occurred in the midst of Flay's public divorce with March.
Naturally, people speculated that his estranged wife might have been the culprit, but her
attorney shot it down, stating,
"Stephanie is absolutely not behind [this]."
But a mere two months before Flay's ceremony, March's friend, a fellow actor, Maia Madison,
spoke out about March learning about Flay's reported affair, telling Page Six,
"She came to my house and was sobbing uncontrollably. She said, 'I can't believe the last 10 years
of my life have been a lie.'"
Flay's divorce from March was anything but amicable. Much of the courtroom fighting had
to do with the couple's prenup, which Flay reportedly felt was fair and March allegedly
did not. This led to a number of messy headlines in the tabloids, including fights over what
really led March to get plastic surgery and even the couple's horse.
The divorce was finally settled in July 2015, but not without one last headline. According
to Page Six, as part of the settlement, March was forced to vacate the couple's Manhattan
home, where she had been taking care of her sick mother. An insider alleged,
"She has been staying there with her mother, who has been in poor health. It has been a
very difficult time for her. It is unclear what her future living arrangement will be
as she continues to care for her mother."
In happier news, March has since found love again by way of tech investor Dan Benton,
whom she married in 2017.
Flay's brash behavior is the key ingredient to his notoriety. There's no shortage of press
material about negative fan experiences, and how he appears to act similarly towards colleagues.
"Bobby could kick your ass anytime."
Canadian chef Chuck Hughes competed with Flay on Iron Chef America, but before the showdown,
Hughes presented his opponent with an official Montreal Canadiens hockey jersey. And in response
to the gesture, Hughes told the CBC that Flay said,
"Thank you so much, but it's not going to help."
Ouch! Hughes went on to defeat Flay with a plate of lobster poutine, so we assume Flay's
smack talk didn't rattle the chef at all.
According to Law360, in 2009, workers from Bobby Flay's Bar Americain, Mesa Grill, and
Bolo filed a lawsuit against him that alleged they…
"Had been cheated out of wages and tips and [sought] to recover minimum wages, overtime
compensation and allegedly misappropriated gratuities."
The workers' suit claimed they were not paid minimum wage or overtime, and that they had
to buy and launder their own uniforms without reimbursement. On top of that, the disgruntled
staff also alleged that tips were not being properly distributed, with even management
sometimes getting a cut.
Flay eventually agreed to pay an $800,000 settlement, although, according to DNA Info,
"[Flay] denied any wrongdoing, but in court documents said he would rather settle with
the workers than go to trial."
During a 2018 appearance on the podcast Beyond the Plate, Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis
recalled a story that caused her not to speak to Flay for months. They once teamed up on
an episode of Iron Chef and faced off against Rachael Ray and Mario Batali. They lost, and
while De Laurentiis was devastated, Flay didn't appear too bothered at all. Giada said,
"We lost, and he thought it was funny, he didn't think it was any big deal that we lost.
I did not talk to him for eight months. Eight months! Nothing."
Explaining that it wasn't the loss as much as how Flay reacted to it, that bugged her,
she added,
"It didn't seem to faze him that we lost. He didn't say, 'Hey, I'm sorry we lost,' or
'Hey, we'll do it again.' Nothing! [He] just…walked away. And I thought, you're a jerk, and I
never want to be around you again."
Of course, the feud eventually ended. The pair went on to co-host Food Network Star
together and now they maintain a good friendship. As Giada put it,
"I think that Bobby is one of those people that if you are his friend, he has your back
forever and he will stand up for you."
Flay shocked fans and producers alike when he pulled off his apron during a live 2017
taping of Iron Chef Showdown to show off a shirt, which read: "THIS IS MY LAST IRON CHEF
BATTLE EVER." According to sources for Vanity Fair, producers scrambled once the director
called cut and confronted Flay, telling him they wouldn't be able to edit that moment
out of the show. To that, he allegedly responded, quote, "I know. That's the point." The insiders
went on to claim that the stunt caused tension between Flay and Food Network, causing speculation
on his future with the channel. However, all that ended when Flay issued a statement that
October to People magazine claiming the move was merely an ill-conceived joke: He said,
"This past summer when I was in production on Iron Chef Showdown, I wore a T-shirt to
have a little fun during my last battle this season. In hindsight, it was probably not
the best decision because it's just creating confusion."
He went on to call Food Network his quote "family for over 20 years" and expressed his
excitement to get back to Kitchen Stadium whenever his schedule allowed. But just four
months later, Flay officially quit the show, citing the grueling schedule and stating,
via People magazine,
"At some point I was like, 'I've been doing this for a long time and I want to go out
on a high note.'"
"I'm probably not done yet, but I'm gonna look for the next spark"
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