Happy Birthday Guy Fieri

Happy 46th birthday Guy Fieri!

For those of you that haven't heard of him Guy Fieri is the host of Food Network's "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives." He is also the owner of several restaurants around the country.When the latest restaurant in Fieri's empire, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar opened in Times Square, the reviews were...well let's just say not so kind.

In fact, it spurned one of the most epic restaurant reviews in recent memory. In a November 2012 issue of the New York Times, Pete Wells phrased his review as a series of hysterical questions.

GUY FIERI, have you eaten at your new restaurant in Times Square? Have you pulled up one of the 500 seats at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar and ordered a meal? Did you eat the food? Did it live up to your expectations?

 

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?

 

Wells even touched on the decor.

When you hung that sign by the entrance that says, WELCOME TO FLAVOR TOWN!, were you just messing with our heads?

 

Does this make it sound as if everything at Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar is inedible? I didn’t say that, did I?

And the temperature of the food.

Somewhere within the yawning, three-level interior of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, is there a long refrigerated tunnel that servers have to pass through to make sure that the French fries, already limp and oil-sogged, are also served cold?

Even the dessert was a failure...

Is the entire restaurant a very expensive piece of conceptual art? Is the shapeless, structureless baked Alaska that droops and slumps and collapses while you eat it, or don’t eat it, supposed to be a representation in sugar and eggs of the experience of going insane?

Anyway, you can read the entire review here.

Fieri did respond to the scathing review on NBC's Today Show, saying,

"I thought it was ridiculous. I mean, I've read reviews — there's good and there's bad in the restaurant business, but that to me went so overboard, it really seemed like there was another agenda."

Anyway, the review doesn't seem to have really mattered as the restaurant is still doing a good business, and even getting some 3 and 4-star reviews on Yelp.