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It’s early Wednesday afternoon, days before its scheduled opening, and Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar is three floors of hustle and hubbub. A swarm of worker bees buzzes throughout the sprawling space, setting tables, installing light fixtures, vacuuming floors and holding spot meetings to confer about logistics.
“Welcome 2 Flavor Town,” announces a sign up front, above a wall stocked with merchandise: T-shirts reading “Knuckle Sandwich” and “Kulinary Krew,” a $30 Guy Fieri travel thermos and mug set, and stacks of Fieri’s best-selling books.
Into the mix strides a barrel-chested, cowboy-booted figure all in black. His tattooed forearms are adorned with a chunky silver bracelet and a biker-style black-leather band, and a pair of sunglasses are pasted to the back of his bleached blond head.
PHOTOS: AN INSIDE LOOK AT GUY FIERI’S FIRST NYC RESTAURANT
“This is coming together,” he says approvingly as he eyes the swirl of activity.
This, of course, is Guy Fieri himself, food-TV phenomenon and all-around culinary Dude in Chief. The California native is here on 44th Street, off Broadway, because he’s adding a new item to his ever-swelling résumé: New York City restaurateur. As you might expect of a man who wears his enthusiasms on his bowling-shirted sleeve, he’s stoked.
“This is it, man — we’re launching a rocket,” he says.
How you feel about this development — whether it’s the most exciting culinary news since the invention of the gas stove or a reason to have your stomach stapled and move to Philadelphia — is in the eye of the beholder. And when it comes to Fieri, there are rabid partisans on both sides.
The fandom runs strong and deep. Since he was launched on the path to fame by a Food Network contest six years ago, Fieri has become perhaps the best-known food personality on Earth and the one who’s taken the chef-as-rock-star trope to its farthest extreme.
There are the hit Food Network series: “Guy’s Big Bite” and “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” where Fieri tools around in a vintage muscle car stuffing his face with burritos and barbecue, delivering pronouncements such as “off the hook,” “downtown” or, when he’s really excited, “money.” There’s Guy Fieri cookware, the Knuckle Sandwich cutlery line, Guy Fieri Barbecue Sauce — even a line of jewelry.
He hangs with Kid Rock, chats with Letterman, gets parodied on “Saturday Night Live.” He’s toured the country with the Guy Fieri Road Show, a spectacle complete with an onstage DJ and female fans throwing bras.
“His popularity crosses all kinds of boundaries,” says Jon Bloostein, owner of Heartland Brewery and Fieri’s partner in the restaurant. “I walk the streets with him, and every kid and every grandmother want their picture taken with Guy Fieri. Everyone loves him.”
Well, everybody except for those who wish he’d choke on a spare rib. That faction may be outnumbered by Fieri’s fans, but their passions run at least as strong.
To the haters, Fieri’s shtick — the spiky bleached-blond hair, the bling, the surfer-dude lingo, the greaser-meets-cabana-boy get-ups — goes down like a rancid buffalo wing.
They cringe at his riffing about “tickets to Flavor Town” and blanch at over-the-top recipes for dishes with names like the “Baltimore Beef Bad Boy” and “Mac-Daddi-Roni Salad.” They post blog screeds with titles such as “Nine Reasons Why I Loathe Guy Fieri,” and share their revulsion in forums like the Facebook page “I Hate Guy Fieri.”
“I look at [Fieri] and think what a lot of people think: ridiculous and painful — even insulting,” Anthony Bourdain, another chef and TV personality, has said. David Chang publicly scoffed at “those dumb f – – king sunglasses and that stupid f – – king armband.”
Fieri shrugs it off. “People are always putting you in check, and that’s what makes us play harder.”
The 44-year-old dad of two grew up with hippie parents in Humboldt County, Calif., studied hospitality at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and worked for a corporate restaurant group before opening a string of successful restaurants in Northern California, including Tex Wasabi’s, likely the world’s only sushi-and-barbecue restaurant.
He landed on TV after winning the second season of “The Next Food Network Star” in 2006. It was when he started spending time in New York City filming “Guy’s Big Bites” that Fieri first started thinking about owning a restaurant here.
“I’m walking down the street and there’s every type of food, with beautiful restaurants on every corner, and just these heavy hitters: Batali and Flay and Colicchio.”
It was only a thought in the back of his mind until his manager suggested he take a meeting with Bloostein. The two hit it off immediately, recognizing in each other a kindred intensity and what Bloostein calls a “disregard for conventional boundaries.”
The massive, 500-seat eatery, which opens Sunday, represents, he says, the most complete distillation of his tastes and his passions. That means bold-flavored, “no boundaries” food, of course — Tequila Turkey Fettucine, Root Beer Pork Ribs — but the Fieri mojo is broadcast in other ways: there’s a Fender Room decorated with guitars and vintage rock-star shots and images of Camaros and Corvettes.
“It’s very much a reflection of me,” says Fieri — who says the bling and bluster overshadow his sensitive, “simple” side.
“When people come to the restaurant, I think they’ll get a really good understanding as to what I am as a chef and as a person.”
Although he’s careful to be humble about opening an outpost in the country’s restaurant capital (“I come in with hat in hand,” he says), Fieri also says he’s got something to prove to those with “misconceptions about someone who’s on TV as a chef, and whether or not they can really cook.” He aims, he says, “to come and deliver the real deal and show folks what I can do.”
Of course, by opening a restaurant in Times Square, he’s clearly aiming at the tourist trade, rather than the city’s foodie set.
“I don’t think many New Yorkers will go other than for some kitschy appeal,” says Andrew Knowlton, restaurant editor of Bon Appetit. Although Fieri makes an “easy target,” Knowlton finds his TV presence “strangely appealing,” and says he’s likely to stop by and check it out. For one thing, he says, “I’m a sucker for a good plate of nachos.”
If that’s what brings them in, that’s just fine with Fieri, whose regular-guy bonhomie comes across as sincere and unforced in person — and who, whatever anyone faults him for, can’t be faulted for any pretense.
“Look, I’m not Mario Batali, I’m not Bobby Flay — there’s only one of those cats,” he says. “I’m not trying to be something that I’m not.”