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TV Chef Guy Fieri ripped by NY Times, Bourdain over lazy excessive cuisine

By April MacIntyre Nov 14, 2012, 18:56 GMT

US television personality Guy Fieri EPA/LARRY W. SMITH

Guy Fieri is personable and engaging on his long running hit "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" which celebrates the best of the off-the-beaten path food joints in the USA, but he's an insufferable watch on any other TV application (NBC series Minute to Win it).

He also has been served by a painfully blunt restaurant critic and his fellow TV chef host personality, Anthony Bourdain, an M&C favorite on any channel.

Anthony Bourdain took the NorCal chef to task in a recent Houston appearance with Eric Ripert, according to Houstonculturemap.com

"Layover" star Bourdain joined friend Eric Ripert, esteemed French chef and restaurateur behind Le Bernardin, at Jones Hall on Saturday night. Ripert is a classically trained chef and Bourdain is also a chef, but more rock and roll with a side of absinthe in his quest for exotic food experiences.

Bourdain shared an anecdote about Thanksgivings spent at his grandmother’s house, and how he cared not for her cooking, but loved her so much, he asked for seconds happily.

“When I’m at grandma’s house, I will eat whatever grandma puts in fucking front of me,” Bourdain said, reported by Houstonculturemap.com.

More interesting details from his Houston confessions:

Paula Deen: Bourdain hated that she still promoted bad food even after a diabetes diagnosis.

Tom Colicchio: allegedly loves Gin and Tonics...

Alan Richman: “I still don’t like the son of a bitch.”

Martha Stewart: “She will shank a bitch.”

The best was saved for Fieri, a chef Bourdain has nothing but disdain for:

“If Ed Hardy fucked a juggalo,” the product would by Guy Fieri, said Bourdain.

“How is Fieri de-douched? Does he turn down the flames on his sleeves sloooowly?”

Nothing could have prepared the happy-go-lucky Fieri for a New York bitchslap courtesy of the NYTimes.com critic Pete Wells.

Some excerpts from the two page excoriating summation of Fieri's new joint in the Big Apple:

"Did panic grip your soul as you stared into the whirling hypno wheel of the menu, where adjectives and nouns spin in a crazy vortex? When you saw the burger described as “Guy’s Pat LaFrieda custom blend, all-natural Creekstone Farm Black Angus beef patty, LTOP (lettuce, tomato, onion + pickle), SMC (super-melty-cheese) and a slathering of Donkey Sauce on garlic-buttered brioche,” did your mind touch the void for a minute?"

"What exactly about a small salad with four or five miniature croutons makes Guy’s Famous Big Bite Caesar (a) big (b) famous or (c) Guy’s, in any meaningful sense?"

"Why is one of the few things on your menu that can be eaten without fear or regret — a lunch-only sandwich of chopped soy-glazed pork with coleslaw and cucumbers — called a Roasted Pork Bahn Mi, when it resembles that item about as much as you resemble Emily Dickinson?"

"Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?"

Fieri is an expanding entrepreneur with five Johnny Garlic’s restaurants and two Tex Wasabi restaurants in California. This NYC restaurant is his first jump east.

Wells did not care for the food obviously, and brought up the "Triple D" as an example of what people expect from Fieri, versus what he was served:

"Has anyone ever told you that your high-wattage passion for no-collar American food makes you television’s answer to Calvin Trillin, if Mr. Trillin bleached his hair, drove a Camaro and drank Boozy Creamsicles? When you cruise around the country for your show 'Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,' rasping out slangy odes to the unfancy places where Americans like to get down and greasy, do you really mean it?

Or is it all an act? Is that why the kind of cooking you celebrate on television is treated with so little respect at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar?"

Have you eaten at the NYC restaurant? How was your experience? Talk back and let us know if the NYTimes critic was overboard or right on: