A Word from Flavortown

Guy Fieri has always been a punchline - particularly after this odious, needlessly cruel review (wtf did this person think she was walking in to??!), so it's good to see him getting some love these days:

But in a world where everyone’s struggling through the quicksand of reality, Fieri is a king among slugs. During the height of #MeToo, he escaped unscathed. And now, the latest news coming in piping hot from Flavortown is that Fieri is doing a lot more for out-of-work restaurant employees than most people. Since the coronavirus outbreak, he’s raised more than $20 million for a relief fund for restaurant workers. You know who didn’t do that?? Any of your extremely chill, fashionable faves, probably wearing $350 chunky mustard mules, including every single one of the people on Instagram currently trying to convince me to make bread.

Fieri seems like a deeply non-awful human being. In 2015, he performed the weddings of 101 same-sex couples in Florida in honor of his late sister. In 2017, during that year’s California wildfires, Fieri and his team fed thousands of evacuees every day. He did it again in 2018 after the Carr fire. 

I do realize by even writing this, I’m effectively inviting some kind of compromising information on Fieri to be released, something that proves the opposite of what’s been proven thus far. Everyone has a past — even, perhaps, the Mayor of Flavortown. But for now, I don’t want to know, and I don’t need to know. The world is collapsing around us. Even on my best days, I feel weakened by how poorly people can treat each other, about the lack of empathy we’re showing one another, how fearful I am of every new day.

But for now, we have Guy Fieri. And I’m happy to ride the Guy High through this mess, straight into a vat of Donkey Sauce. Leave me alone. It’s dark in here. I’ve earned this.

Do I consider Fieri to be one of the world's great chefs? Of course not. But I bet if I chowed down at his restaurant I'd leave stuffed to the gills. And happy as a clam.