Guy Fieri seems like the kind of person who can get along with anyone. But shockingly,
there’s one food host who rubbed him the wrong way.
Stay tuned as we review the sauciest celebrity chef feuds in history!
Paula Deen nearly tanked her career with a racism scandal in 2013. But just a year prior,
she caused a stir when she announced that she had Type 2 diabetes and would be partnering with
a pharmaceutical company to promote the drug Victoza. Many people balked at Deen benefiting
financially from a diabetes drug after she built her career off of decadent, buttery,
sugary dishes. One of her most vocal critics, the late Anthony Bourdain once told Eater,
"When your signature dish is hamburger in between a doughnut, and you've been cheerfully selling
this stuff knowing all along that you've got Type 2 diabetes…It's in bad taste if nothing else."
"Are you ready?"
"Yes." "Alright, open wide."
But this wasn't the first time that Bourdain
took a shot at Deen. In 2011, he trashed her in an interview with TV Guide, stating,
"[She's] the worst, most dangerous person to America. […] Her food sucks."
For her part, Deen refused to enter the fray, telling ABC News,
"I don't care what the haters and naysayers say. If they make jokes about me,
I'll laugh because they'll probably be funny." Perhaps no feud cuts deeper than a rupture between
close friends. And that's exactly what happened with Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay.
According to The Express, Marco Pierre White has been called "the first celebrity chef."
By the age of 32 he was already Britain's most critically-acclaimed restaurateur,
the first-ever in the country to earn three Michelin stars.
"I'm not here to be your friend."
Ramsay worked under White early in his career. And while the two famously butted heads quite
a few times, White told British GQ that the true breaking point with his former employee
was when Ramsay took a camera crew to White's wedding without asking for permission.
Ever since then, their relationship has been teetering on eggshells,
with White kicking Ramsay out of a restaurant and Ramsay falsely accusing White of theft.
Bobby Flay was one of Food Network's first big stars, beginning his career there in 1994.
He was involved with "Iron Chef America" for 17 years before dramatically resigning
in 2017, according to Vanity Fair. But although Flay became a fixture on the show,
his first taste of the franchise ended on a sour note.
In 2000, the original Japanese version of "Iron Chef" traveled to New York City to
film a battle between "Iron Chef Japan" star Morimoto, and Bobby Flay. After time ran out,
Flay jumped on his cutting board and raised his fists in the air. The brash move
horrified Morimoto, who took offense to Flay's disrespect for the tools of their profession,
"He stood on the cutting board. In Japan, the cutting board is sacred to us."
The controversy ultimately benefited both chefs, turning "Iron Chef" into a ratings bonanza and
making Flay and Morimoto household names. Gordon Ramsay is a prolific feud participant,
but the mild-mannered Jacques Pepin doesn't seem like the kind of guy who starts fights with other
chefs. Even so, Pepin took time off from his busy schedule to write a blog post criticizing
the type of competitive reality competition show Gordon Ramsay made famous. And Pepin's
complaint couldn't be more on-brand for the genial chef: He worried that Ramsay wasn't nice enough.
"Right now, I'm starting to get pissed."
In an interview with the Washingtonian,
Pepin singled out "Hell's Kitchen" as his least-favorite cooking show, saying,
"​​When I saw a show like that where everyone is yelling,
everyone gets terrorized, there is no way you can produce great food under that type of condition."
He later elaborated on the genre in a personal essay, writing,
"[These shows] portray the restaurant kitchen in a chaotic and negative light, and I believe
it is a disservice to our trade and to young people who want to go into this business."
For Pepin, cooking is an act of love, and a well-run restaurant kitchen
doesn't feature the aggression and chaos of the "Hell's Kitchen" formula. Of course,
Pepin later clarified on Twitter that he never meant to attack Ramsay personally,
instead aiming his criticisms squarely at reality TV producers.
Martha Stewart is the original queen of food and lifestyle content, and she doesn't take
challengers to her throne very lightly. Stewart threw out some shade in 2009, telling ABC News,
"[Rachel Ray] cannot bake. […] She just did a new cookbook which is just
a re-edit of a lot of her old recipes and that's not good enough for me."
Pre-interview, Stewart and Ray had recently guest-starred on each others' shows.
And Stewart tried to remain diplomatic while talking smack about her counterpart, adding,
"She's different, she's more of an entertainer with her bubbly
personality than she is a teacher, like me."
"Garlic, shallots, lemon” *Laughs*
Although Stewart's comments may have stung,
Ray knew better than to lash out at the domestic goddess. Instead, she told ABC,
"[Martha's] skill set is far beyond mine. She does have a better skill set than I do when it comes
to producing a beautiful, perfect, high quality meal. I'd rather eat Martha's than mine, too."
Ray conceded Martha's main points,
but argued that she was also doing important work in the TV food space.
"I have nothing but respect for Martha Stewart." Alton Brown loved torturing chefs on "Cutthroat
Kitchen," and his taste for combat didn't end when the cameras stopped rolling. In 2010,
Brown picked a fight with Adam Richman. Speaking on Richman's show "Man vs. Food," he told Zap2It,
"That show is about gluttony, and gluttony is wrong. It's wasteful. Think about people
that are starving to death and think about that show. I think it's an embarrassment."
"Just believe in yourself and the burger is not a problem.” *Kiss*
Brown himself is passionate about hunger issues, revealing to blogger Michael Rosen
that he supports Heifer International, a nonprofit that works to end global hunger.
But while Brown's criticisms may have come from a noble place, they stung Richman,
who had previously idolized the Food Network star. Richman aired his grievances on Twitter, posting,
"Alton Brown: ['Man vs. Food'] is about indulgence — NOT gluttony — & has brought
loads of biz to Mom-n-Pop places. You were my hero, sir. No more."
Richman later tried to clarify his stance with a statement claiming:
"My previous Tweet is not to start some foolish Twitter feud."
But — with respect to Richman — if it looks like a Twitter feud, it's probably a Twitter feud.
Although you kind of expect every fight that involves Gordon Ramsay to be his fault,
it was Jamie Oliver who fired the first shot in this U.K. celebrity chef spat.
Oliver took issue to some insulting comments Ramsay had made about an
Australian TV personality and waded into battle uninvited, telling the Sun,
"It's never good to criticize a woman, especially when they're
loved by their country and you do it on national television."
Once provoked, Ramsay was locked and loaded, mocking Oliver's cooking skills by calling him a,
quote, "one-pot wonder." Ramsay later doubled down on his insult,
complaining about a recent meal at one of Oliver's restaurants, according to TMZ.
The petty catfight between these two adult multi-millionaires continued for months,
with Oliver later revealing to The Mirror,
"If I was to choose between Gordon Ramsay's cookbook or Tana Ramsay's,
it would be Tana's every time. In my opinion, her books are a damn sight better than his."
This proved to be a killing blow, since responding to that comment would have
required Ramsay to publicly declare that he writes better cookbooks than his own wife.
This time, even he didn't take the bait.
"In my book, there's only one
thing worse than disappointing me. And that's disappointing my amazing wife."
Andrew Zimmern comes off as a pretty easy-going guy. So it was surprising when he launched an
unprovoked attack on fellow food personality Tyler Florence. Although the two previously
had no history together, Zimmern felt the need to comment on Florence's appearance on Ryan
Seacrest's reality show "Momma's Boys." Zimmern wrote in a since-deleted blog,
"Watching Florence wolf down the food, stare and ogle every a-- that strolled
by his cutting board and play the role of local TV stud was high comedy of
the highest order. […] [He's] the world's least talented TV chef."
Florence didn't take the insults lightly,
responding with a salty message on Facebook, posting,
"Andrew Zimmern, the guy who eats dried camel c--- for a living,
has decided to dis my life’s work. […] I guess it's hard to have a sense of humor when you're on
your 10th take of eating Yak testicles, smiling to the camera, wondering where your life went wrong."
"I've never held one in my hand, alive."
For the record, we think both parties came up with some pretty sick burns for this feud.
Martha Stewart once again earned her title as America's most vindictive lifestyle influencer
by taking a swipe at Gwyneth Paltrow. Although you might not think of Paltrow
as a celebrity chef, her lifestyle brand Goop features a lot of recipe content.
And that didn't sit well with Stewart. She told Porter Magazine in 2014,
"[Gwyneth] just needs to be quiet. She's a movie star. If she were confident in her acting,
she wouldn't be trying to be Martha Stewart."
"I should be fired from my own fake cooking show."
Martha then cranked the shadiness to an 11 and published a dessert feature called
"Conscious Couplings" in her self-titled magazine. The title,
of course, was a sarcastic nod to Paltrow's infamous description of
her divorce from Coldplay's Chris Martin as a "conscious uncoupling."
But Paltrow didn't sit back and take Stewart's attacks. She, in turn,
published a jailbird cake recipe for Goop, a move that could be seen as
a dig at Martha Stewart's prison stint for insider trading. It appears there's
room for only one rich blonde woman at the top of the luxury lifestyle content game.
Anthony Bourdain was a gossip rag's dream, always providing a spicy quote for any subject
he was asked about. Frequent cultural punching bag Guy Fieri was no exception,
and Bourdain didn't have many nice things to say about the mayor of Flavortown. Speaking on
Fieri's former Times Square restaurant, Guy's American Kitchen, Bourdain noted,
"[It's a] terror-dome. […] He single handedly turned the neighborhood
into the Ed Hardy district which I'm a little pissed off about."
"I mean, ya gotta be serious about it." “Yeah.”
Bourdain's disdain clearly got under Fieri's skin. In a profanity-strewn rant, Fieri told GQ,
"I don't like him making fun of people, and I don't like him talking s---."
Bourdain responded, telling E! Online,
"If you can't tell jokes about Guy Fieri, comedy as we know it is dead."
Post-2017, Mario Batali has certainly fallen far from grace. But his feud with Gordon Ramsay came
from a much sillier place: Ramsay made fun of his pants. Before Batali's name became
synonymous with overhauling toxic professional kitchens, he was famous for wearing bright
orange cargo shorts in public. Evidently Ramsay found Batali's fashion humorous,
and according to Delish, he often referred to the chef as, quote, "Fanta Pants."
"So are you shaking in your orange Crocs?" "Y'know, not yet."
Batali apparently had thinner skin than an onion and subsequently banned Ramsay from all of his
restaurants. But he did leave the door open for reconciliation when he reportedly said,
"[If Gordon] called me himself and said, 'Let's sit down for a drink.'
I'm sure it would be fine. We'd be cool."
Longtime "Food Network Star" co-hosts Giada De Laurentiis and Bobby Flay
are very close friends. So close, in fact, that they have been dogged by rumors that they're
romantically linked. But at the beginning of their relationship, Flay did something that pissed De
Laurentiis off so much that she didn't speak to him for over six months, according to People.
The incident occurred during a 2006 episode of "Iron Chef America" that
pitted Giada and Bobby against Mario Batali and Rachael Ray.
Team Batali-Ray went home victorious, and De Laurentiis blamed it on Flay
treating the competition too lightly. She said on the "Beyond the Plate" podcast,
"I felt like he sort of half-a--ed it. […] We lost and he thought it was funny."
"What, have you never played this game before?"
Reportedly, the duo didn't patch things up until eight months after the episode
was filmed. But these days, they get along like two peas in a pod.
"Wow. I like it."
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Mashed videos about your favorite celebrity chefs are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don’t miss a single one.