I love watching cooking shows and shows where people cook and then other people eat their food and they all talk about flavor and texture and contrast and all of the things that people didn’t talk about on TV when I was a kid. One of the great things that happened in the US was the globalization of our national cuisine and the growth of cable and streaming services. And so I became a fan of the show The Next Food Network Star.
My husband and I started watching it in its second season, which is the season that Guy Fieri won. We kind of disliked him, and were surprised at how popular he was with the public. Over the last 15 years he’s become an American icon, regardless of his cooking. I do find him annoying but Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives does highlight the aforementioned globalization of our national cuisine and the premises for some of the shows he’s hosted are good.
When he opened his first restaurant in Manhattan in 2012 the New York Times reviewed it in what has become a famous review. You can decide for yourself if it was an unfair dig by the reviewer to try to catapult his own career off of Fieri’s, but this is timeless:
How did nachos, one of the hardest dishes in the American canon to mess up, turn out so deeply unlovable?
I have asked that question in so many different contexts over the years, and definitely referencing Fieri. The weird thing about all of this is that ostensibly he has a positive resume of charity work, and supporting LGBTQ people. But there have been things he’s done that have seemed out of character.
Here’s one of them:
This was at a UFC fight in Las Vegas in 2023. Now Trump was out of office, but this was after the January 6 insurrection, after his disastrous presidency. This was after the E. Jean Carroll trial where it was made clear that he was a rapist. This was after he had been indicted for stealing federal documents.
This is how you make unlovable nachos.
Then from 2025:
While celebrating the Super Bowl in New Orleans at his Flavortown Tailgate 2025, Fieri reflected on the heightened security at the event attributed to both President Donald Trump and Taylor Swift’s presence in the city.
“I’ve been coming to New Orleans for a long time, I’ve got a lot of friends down here, met a lot of first responders last night, everybody’s on watch, everybody’s aware,” he told Fox News Digital.
He continued, “And now that our country’s made a gigantic pivotal change, we’re going to get back to doing what we do, and that is being the best country in the world, so everybody’s going to have a great time and a safe time.”
Fieri also speculated that President Trump is “probably coming to the tailgate.”
Hmmm.
Fieri also had this hot take during the pandemic:
But what about the people who make them possible? Fieri seems taken with the idea that workers aren’t coming back because they’re too cozy enjoying federal unemployment benefits, comparing their reluctance to return — driven by concerns over low wages, a lack of child care and sick leave, and there still being a risk of contracting COVID, particularly as the Delta variant spreads throughout the country — to a child refusing a healthy dinner after snacking on junk food all day: “Why would you go and eat broccoli if you just got to eat Doritos?,” says the man who built his empire on serving burgers topped with mac and cheese and fried cheese steak spring rolls.
In this analogy, unhealthy-but-desirable snacks are unemployment benefits, or perhaps specifically the federal pandemic unemployment programs put in place through the CARES Act as millions of workers lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Meanwhile, broccoli — good for you but unappealing — is getting back to work. When Swisher points out that, despite the pandemic, the restaurant industry is overwhelmingly offering workers the same low pay and negligible benefits as it did in 2019, Fieri counters that “the restaurant business is awesome” to work in, and anecdotally talks about a friend’s son who works at In-N-Out, notoriously an outlier in the fast food industry with regards to working conditions.
And then this week:
The Food Network star, 58, attended a UFC 327 fight at Kaseya Center in Miami on Saturday, April 11. There, he was seen shaking hands with Andrew, 39, and Tristan, 37, prompting a series of social media users to share their disappointment with the celebrity chef. President Donald Trump also attended the fight on Saturday, April 11.
And then he made this statement:
Fieri issued a statement on Tuesday, April 14, clarifying he does not know the Tate brothers. “I’m seeing all of your comments about the photo from Saturday’s UFC event and all I can say is that I’m devastated,” his X statement began.
“I was there to see the fights and when I was walking through the venue, the Tate brothers stood up and said hello and that’s when the exchanged happened. I did not know them or about them before that moment,” Fieri wrote.
He concluded his post reiterating he is not associated with the Tate brothers: “I’ll never pretend to be a perfect person, but let me be crystal clear, I do not know the Tate brothers nor do I support them in any way.”
I’d love to give him the benefit of the doubt. But he is at best someone who will champion anyone for a buck, and that’s not good enough.
Here’s the entire review of the unlovable nachos:
“How did nachos, one of the hardest dishes in the American canon to mess up, turn out so deeply unlovable? Why augment tortilla chips with fried lasagna noodles that taste like nothing except oil? Why not bury those chips under a properly hot and filling layer of melted cheese and jalapeños instead of dribbling them with thin needles of pepperoni and cold gray clots of ground turkey?”
Sounds like a recipe for Trumpism to me.
I’ll leave you with this: