26 things you probably didn't know about Guy Fieri
Rachel Murphy,Fiona Clair
- There's a lot fans might not know about Guy Fieri, including his real name and his hatred of eggs.
- He's been inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame, and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
His name hasn't always been Guy Fieri.
He was actually born under the legal name Guy Ramsey Ferry, according to Biography.com.
But he didn't just make the name up — Fieri is actually his grandfather's given family surname.
When his grandfather immigrated to the US from Italy, he changed the spelling to Ferry. As a nod to his grandfather, Guy changed his last name from Ferry to Fieri when he married his wife, Lori, in 1995.
Before Fieri made it big on Food Network, he had a different kind of TV job.
In 2001, five years before Fieri won "Food Network Star," he was working for a company called Flowmaster that specialized in mufflers and other car parts.
He was featured on a couple of commercials for the brand, but he's a more subdued version of the TV personality we know today.
He got his start on Food Network's "Food Network Star."
Fieri has always been at home in the kitchen, but he worked his way up the celebrity ladder just like any other chef.
He appeared on season two of the "Food Network Star" in 2006 and was crowned the winner.
He's known for not liking eggs.
If you've spent any amount of time watching "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives," you probably already know that Guy Fieri is not a fan of eggs.
In a 2017 interview with the Tampa Bay Times, he told a reporter that he eats "eggs every once in a while."
But he's so known for disliking the food that when he visits a restaurant on "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives," chefs will alter their recipes to avoid cooking eggs for Guy.
He started eating sushi when he was a kid.
Per a 2017 interview with the Tampa Bay Times, Fieri said that he was eating sushi as a young kid.
He attributes his adventurous taste buds to his parents, saying that, "My dad was the one who probably had the most influence on me cooking because he would always challenge me to try different things."
Guy Fieri said he thought up the idea of doing a kid's cooking show before it was popular.
Fieri said he was a proponent of children's cooking shows before they were a thing.
In 2017 he told Thrillist, "One of the biggest things is to see kids involved in cooking so much. When I got on [Food Network] 12 years ago, the first thing I said was, 'I want a kid's cooking show,' and they told me, 'Come on now,' I said, 'I am not kidding.'"
He continued, "I have kids. I said, 'I'm telling you, kids love to cook.' I run into these people, fans of 'Triple D,' and no one was really embracing that. Now look at major networks are doing it."
In 2012, he was inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame.
In 2012, Fieri had the distinct honor of being inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame.
And he's no stranger to barbecue greatness — he and a team of pitmaster friends won the American Royal World Series of Barbecue Open Contest and the 2012 Houston Livestock & Rodeo World Championship Bar-B-Que Contest, according to the Barbecue Hall of Fame.
He owns peacocks and goats.
In a December 2020 profile with Vulture, Fieri talked about owning peacocks to "help keep the rattlesnake population down."
At his California ranch, Fieri also has a large goat shed — he said the animals are smart and useful.
When he was in the sixth grade, Fieri's opened a lucrative mobile pretzel cart.
Today, the chef owns restaurants across the globe, but he opened his very first culinary operation when he was just 10 years old.
In 2020, Fieri told The Sporkful podcast that after a family vacation to Tahoe, he fell in love with soft pretzels. So when he returned home, he and his dad built a pretzel cart that he could mount to his bike.
The 10-year-old entrepreneur would ride around with The Awesome Pretzel Cart, selling the snack for $0.50 at fairs and events. And he eventually used those profits to fund his studies in France.
He moved to France as a teen for his culinary education.
At the age of 16, Fieri moved to Chantilly, France, to enhance his kitchen skills, according to the Food Network.
He spent six years selling pretzels and washing dishes to save up for his trip to the international food mecca.
His hair is most likely brown.
By now, you've probably caught onto the fact that Fieri's natural hair color isn't vibrant yellow.
Based on photos, it seems Fieri is actually a brunette once you take a peek underneath his frosted tips.
When he was a child, Fieri was seriously injured by a horse.
In 2015, the chef told GQ that he has a scar on his stomach from when he was 10 years old — a horse bucked him off and stomped on him.
The impact damaged his liver and heart and he had to get emergency surgery.
"I was fucked up," he told the publication. "My mom was devastated."
He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In May 2019, Fieri became the third chef to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, joining the likes of Bobby Flay and Wolfgang Puck.
At Fieri's Walk of Fame Ceremony, actor Matthew McConaughey, who is reportedly a long-time friend of the chef, gave a special speech.
The celebrity chef has released six cookbooks.
In 2008, when "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives" really started taking off, Fieri released his first cookbook, "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: An All-American Road Trip . . . With Recipes!"
Since then, he's released two more based on the show: "More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" and "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives: The Funky Finds in Flavortown."
He's also published, "Guy Fieri Food," "Guy on Fire," and "Guy Fieri Family Food."
He has his own Northern California winery named after his sons.
Some celebrities have wine labels, but when Fieri wanted to get in on the action, he bought a whole 5-acre vineyard.
"This isn't juice that somebody else made that we just put in a bottle and put my name on it, which a lot of people do," he told GQ in 2015.
Hunt and Ryde Winery is named after his sons, Hunter and Ryder Fieri, and the bottles range in price from around $16.99 to $100.
The chef inspired Melissa McCarthy's character in "Bridesmaids."
In 2011, Melissa McCarthy told Conan O'Brien that her character in the hit comedy was based on the Food Network star.
"Really, when I first read it, the first person that I thought of was Guy Fieri from the Food Network," she said on the late-night show, per Vulture. "… I tried for a long time to convince them to let me wear short, white, spiky hair, and they were like, 'You can't actually be Guy Fieri.'"
Fieri first met his wife after firing her friend from his restaurant.
The chef first met his wife, Lori Brisson, when he was running a restaurant in Long Beach, California. But they didn't meet under the best conditions.
Her friend had recently been fired from his restaurant, and when she showed up soon after, Fieri told her she shouldn't be there.
"I was talking to her friend and saying 'Hey, listen, wait a few weeks before you come in,' and standing behind her is this blue-eyed, blonde girl giving me this mean mug," he told Delish in 2017.
But Lori put up a fight, and the chef ultimately let them stay — in part because he wanted to get to know her.
"I knew as soon as I saw her," he said. "I just knew."
Fieri officiated 101 same-sex marriages in one day.
When Florida lifted the ban on same-sex marriage in January 2015, Fieri started planning an extravagant celebration during which he would officiate a huge wedding ceremony.
He and chef Art Smith invited 101 same-sex couples to join him for the free event in Miami, where they gathered other celebrity chefs, including Duff Goldman, to cater fried chicken, crab-stuffed avocados, and a seven-tiered wedding cake.
He reportedly did the event in honor of his late sister, according to USA Today.
He started the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund amid the coronavirus pandemic.
When the coronavirus pandemic started impacting restaurants across the US, Fieri didn't stand idly by. The chef created the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund, which has provided over 43,000 $500 grants to restaurant workers.
With the help of companies, organizations, and individual donors, Fieri raised $21.5 million to help keep the industry alive.
He also codirected and starred in a documentary that chronicled the restaurant industry in 2020.
"Restaurant Hustle 2020: All on the Line" premiered on December 27, 2020, and documented four restaurants across the US as they were forced to close or curtail operations amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The documentary focused on the innovative strategies the owners came up with to save their businesses, keep their workers employed, and serve their communities.
Fieri majored in hospitality management.
After spending six years studying the culinary arts in France, Fieri returned to the US and attended the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
There, the chef got his bachelor's degree in hospitality management.
Some of his tattoos hold significant meaning.
In 2012, Fieri told AOL the backstories behind a few of his iconic tattoos.
Among many others, he has separate ink of both Hunter and Ryder's initials, another featuring the eagle from the US presidential seal to commemorate the time he cooked at the White House, and one of Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" in honor of his late sister, Morgan.
Fieri also expressed his love for ink in his cookbook "Guy Fieri Food: Cookin' It, Livin' It, Lovin' It," which is filled with tattoo art.
Fieri's favorite "dining town" is Chicago.
During a 2020 interview with New York magazine's Grub Street, the chef said that of all the cities across the world that he's dined in, his favorite is Chicago.
He said he enjoys the city's variety of food options as well as its neighborly spirit.
The foodie isn't a huge breakfast fan, and he only eats it about twice a month.
Although Fieri has tried his fair share of breakfast dishes at diners across America, the chef told Insider in 2021 that he doesn't usually partake in the meal.
"I probably eat breakfast, maybe twice a month. I'm not a breakfast guy at all," he said.
But he added that when he does sit down for a big family breakfast, his "go-to" is grits.
"My mom is from North Carolina, so we grew up eating grits and ham, and red-eye gravy. And that's like this staple," the chef said.
Fieri also said he's a fan of yogurt and granola and "gnarly" fruit and vegetable juices with things like kale, beets, and spinach.
The chef said he grew up mostly vegetarian, and that he's a "veggie machine."
Fieri may be known for his barbecue and comfort foods, but he hasn't always had such a carnivorous diet.
The chef told Insider that he actually grew up eating mostly vegetarian.
"We ate a lot of vegetarian — we were vegetarian — and I hated it," he said. "But of course what do you do? You go back to your childhood, and now I'm a veggie machine."
Now, he said there isn't a vegetable that he and his family don't love.
There's a petition to rename Fieri's hometown of Columbus, Ohio, to Flavortown — and the chef is honored.
In 2020 Tyler Woodbridge started a Change.org petition to rename Columbus, Ohio, to Flavortown, and he quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of signatures.
In the description of the petition, Woodbridge said his reasoning for the name change was twofold: to detach the city from Christopher Columbus and honor a Columbus native, and to highlight "Central Ohio's proud heritage as a culinary crossroads" in America.
When asked what he thought of the petition, Fieri told Insider, "The residents of Flavortown definitely have some power, you know, they definitely are a motley crew. And I, of course, was honored."
But he continued, "There are so many amazing people in this country that would so much more deserve having something named after them than me or Flavortown."
Read More:
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- 17 things you probably didn't know about 'Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives'
- 11 celebrity chefs share the one food they really can't stand
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