by Guy Fieri
FAVORITE ROAD STORY: We have a lot of fun in our travels, but one of the craziest things to happen was at Harry’s Roadhouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when out of the blue Gene Hackman stops in for lunch. I think Guy and he are working on a movie version of DDD tentatively titled The French Bread and Pulled Pork Connection.
BIGGEST TURN-ON: What doesn’t turn me on? The travel, the people I meet—and most of all I get to eat the best food across the nation. And, I suppose, sunsets, walks on the beach, and ponies.
MATT GIOVINETTI
Camera
NICKNAME: “Beaver”
FAVORITE “GUY MOMENT”: The crew loves it when Guy eats interesting things like rabbit, octopus, chicken gizzards, cow tongue, lamb tongue, pig ear, pig snout, and turtle because inevitably Guy’s on-camera antics and hilarity ensue. At Cattlemen Steakhouse in Oklahoma City, Chef David Egan cooked Guy one of the house specialties—brains and eggs. According to the patrons at Cattlemen and Chef Egan, brains are an acquired taste, and complicating matters, Guy really doesn’t like eggs. So after much torment and teasing, Guy finally put a forkful in his mouth, chewed maybe once, then frantically looked around for something, anything, to dull the taste of brains and eggs in his mouth. At arm’s reach on the serving line was a plate of tasty-looking fried nuggets. Thinking they were perhaps hush puppies or fritters, Guy grabbed one and took a bite, only to find that he just bit into another house specialty—lamb fries.
FAVORITE OVERALL LOCATION: It’s so hard to pick just one, but my top three are:
Dixie Quicks in Omaha because we were welcomed like family and Chef René is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, cooking some of the finest food I’ve ever eaten.
Panini Pete’s in Fairhope, Alabama, because Pete and his team were fantastically friendly and completely accommodating. Plus, you just gotta love paninis and beignets.
Vito and Nick’s in Chicago because Rose has the biggest heart and the thinnest crust pizza this side of anywhere. Rose loves to cook and made us a special meal off the menu after we wrapped. She even baked us a cake. It was just like going to Grandma’s house.
BIGGEST TURN-OFF: For me, beautiful lighting in every scene is the name of the game. My biggest turn-off is walking into a kitchen and seeing a mixed bag of fluorescent lights in the ceiling and no lights under the grill hood. Meltdown and Boy Band spend lots of time on ladders replacing lights so that the pictures you see on screen sizzle in HD.
BIGGEST TURN-ON: Making food look as great as it tastes is all about the backlight, highlights, and the proper mix of soft and hard light. I love lighting and shooting the magazine-style beauty shots of the tasty entrées we feature. It’s when I feel most like an artist.
WHAT YOU DON’T SEE IS THE COP CAR BEHIND ME, PULLING ME OVER FOR EATING AND DRIVING. (OF COURSE THE CREW SHOOTS IT.)
MARK FARRELL
Production Assistant
NICKNAME: “Meltdown”
FAVORITE “GUY MOMENT”: The crew was on Bourbon Street in New Orleans one evening. We came across a teenager playing acoustic guitar on a corner, trying to play loud enough to be heard over the rock and jazz coming out of the local bars and pubs. We listened to the kid for a bit and then Guy put some money in his open guitar case. The kid looks up and recognizes Guy and asks for a picture with him, which Guy gladly does. We stay and listen a bit more and as we do, people start coming up and asking Guy for autographs and pictures. To help the kid out, Guy will take pictures and give autographs if they tip the kid. Then people want Guy and the guitar player in the pictures with them. The kid made good money and became a mini-celebrity in his own right that night.
BIGGEST TURN-OFF: All my clothes, and thus my hotel room, smelling like grease and barbecue smoke for days.
BIGGEST TURN-ON: A cute chick in glasses.
MIKE MORRIS
Producer
NICKNAME: “Father Time”
FAVORITE “GUY MOMENT”: It’s a series of them, and Guy gets me every time. During the shoot, I’ll be watching the monitor with headphones on, and Guy will get everyone on the crew in on it. If we’re working with ground meat, he’ll lob over a ball of it. One time he slapped my notes with a huge slab of beef fat!
FAVORITE LOCATION: We enjoyed Voula’s in Seattle because the people who run it are some of the nicest people you’d ever want to meet. But they are spontaneous, and their sense of humor exactly fits Guy’s. We’ve become good friends with them all, and just being there was watching magic happen in front of a TV camera.
FAVORITE ROAD STORY: When we were at Harry’s Roadhouse in Sante Fe, New Mexico, we were just getting ready to send Guy over to the other crew when one of our crew came up behind me and said, “Gene Hackman is here having lunch.” I went over and introduced myself, and asked if we could have Guy interview him. He agreed, and he couldn’t have been nicer. Guy did a great interview with him, and he added so much to the story.
BIGGEST TURN-ON: The biggest pleasure I get is working with the crew on the road and then seeing the finished piece on TV. We’ve become good friends, and working with them is seamless. The Page staff in Minnesota works miracles. And I’ve made so many friends among the people who own the great restaurants we’ve featured on the show.
(LEFT TO RIGHT) DA KREW AT MOOCHIE’S MEATBALLS AND MORE: FATHER TIME, MELTDOWN, BEAVER, OWEN, AND ARNIE (ALL ALIASES, TO PROTECT THE INNOCENT).
ANTHONY RODRIGUEZ
Director of Photography
NICKNAME: “Chico”
FAVORITE “GUY MOMENT”: There are two…and they both involve something Guy doesn’t like. We’ve seen him eat a lot of odd foods. We get to laugh while Guy snacks on things like calf fries, tongue, menudo, and pig ear…but the first was at a diner in Kansas, where Guy had to eat the one thing he hates more than anything else: liver. He couldn’t even be near the grill while it cooked, the smell made him so sick. We had to go wait in a hall laughing and shooting most of that segment from the back door. The second was the Duane Purvis Peanut Butter Burger at the Triple XXX in West Lafayette, Indiana. Guy took a bite, couldn’t even swallow it, stood there, food in mouth, and asked for his mommy…a classic, classic moment.
FAVORITE OVERALL LOCATION: A tough one—there are many, for many different reasons: Matt’s Big Breakfast in Phoenix, now some of my good friends and the best breakfast anywhere; Franks Diner in Kenosha, Wisconsin, an awesome joint; Victor’s 1959 Café in Minneapolis, my hometown local joint. But if I had to pick one, it’d have to be the Bayway Diner in Linden, New Jersey. Not only is the food ridiculous and the owner, Mikey Giunta, an awesome dude, but it was the first place we ever shot. It was the place where Guy got out of the car and Page, Big Bunny, and I looked at each other and went, “Oh no,” and then minutes later, we were like old friends. It just clicked—it all clicked—and we knew we had something special.
FAVORITE ROAD STORY: All of us on the crew spend upward of two hundred days a year on the road together, so I have whole books’ worth of stories from the show: driving through the Rocky Mountains in a snowstorm, baseball games any time we can catch them around the country, dinners with the whole gang, concerts, the times we stop shooting ’cause we just can’t stop laughing, and simply hanging around with the crew. We spend so much time on the road, away from our friends and family, but the fact that we’re all a family out here on the road is the real story. We all love what we do, and we get to do it with friends; can’t beat that.
BIGGEST TURN-OFF: A midsummer kitchen, somewhere in the middle of the country where there’s not a lot of wind, in an old building with no ventilation, no air conditioner in the kitchen, and temps hitting up to 130-plus degrees…add in the DDD crew and all our gear, and I guess that’s the sauna in Flavortown.
BIGGEST TURN-ON: Thin-crust pizza, a good bark on a brisket, baseball, being on the road shooting DDD, then going home to my girls when it’s all over.
KATE GIBSON
Producer/Director
NICKNAME: “Ask Kate”
FAVORITE
“GUY MOMENT”: Guy is an amazing talent and a perfect match for DDD. He’s not only a good interviewer, but he’s also a good listener. It was always a joy for me to hear him coax people’s personal stories out of them. He’s very good at it, so that was always a high point in my day.
However, if I had to pick just one moment, it would probably be when Guy coerced our PA Mark into sticking his whole head into a batch of blue corn pancake batter. I can’t recall, however, if any money changed hands. I think he just wanted to see if Mark would do it. Mark was bald at the time, which added nicely to the effect (it was just a blue gooey sphere emerging from the bowl), as did the makeshift garbage bag jacket he wore when he was dunking.
FAVORITE LOCATION: I really have two…
The first is Hillbilly Hot Dogs, the almost hidden West Virginia joint that consisted of two school buses (for customer seating) backed up to a hot dog stand. Sonny and Cherie, the owners, were wonderfully warm hosts. Their sense of humor was everywhere in this place and it made it fun to shoot. They let people write on the walls of their school buses, they had a huge hot dog called a home wrecker, and they made a hamburger the size of a hubcap. Their hot dog stand even had its own original theme song. It was a great shoot, and they couldn’t have been more fun to work with. Kitschy, fun people + great location = fabulous TV.
The second location I loved was Mike’s Chili—but only because it was my first real shoot. From the second I came to DDD, I fell in love with the hardworking crew (you can’t make these guys take a break, seriously!). I fell in love with our executive producer, David Page, who was exacting, but only because he wants the best show possible (and it shows). I fell in love with Guy, who has the gift of connecting with almost everyone. That shoot has real meaning for me, as it launched so much in my career and in my life.
FAVORITE FOOD: We shot a place in Arizona called Joe’s Farm Grill, and most of their ingredients—from herbs to fruit—were grown on the premises. The sandwiches and burgers all had a fresh crunch; their fries were terrific—it was always a pleasure to eat there. Although it was often tough to decide what you wanted to eat. My favorite item on their menu was baked potato fries. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m a terrible eater—fat, fried, and bacon laden, that’s how I like my food. So when you come up with a dish that covers fries in cheese, bacon, chives, and sour cream, you’re talking about my heaven.
FAVORITE ROAD STORY: On DDD I met my boyfriend, David, or as they call him, Big Bunny. And thank God, my life has never been the same. So at the risk of sounding schmaltzy, my love story will always be my favorite DDD story.
CRAIG ALRECK
Sound Tech
NICKNAME: “Arnie” (The Terminator! Ya)
FAVORITE “GUY MOMENT”: Watching Guy repeatedly take time out of a hectic day to sit down and interact with people and kids on a real level. Guy is never so full of himself that he won’t enjoy “regular people time.”
FAVORITE OVERALL LOCATION: Matt’s Big Breakfast—loved the people (Matt, Ernie, Christopher, and staff) almost as much as the pesto pork chops! Crazy-good food! Das good, ya.
BEST THING YOU’VE EATEN: Smoque Barbecue—hands down, one of the best I’ve had anywhere…. Please ship to Arnie, ya.
FAVORITE ROAD STORY: Chillin’ with Guy and crew at the Hank Williams Jr. concert in Pittsburgh, then after the concert wrestling a Pittsburgh Steeler (big lad). Held my own, ya, thank you very much.
BIGGEST TURN-OFF: Overhead music, kitchen fans, honking horns during stand-ups, camera mikes, loud refrigerators, other miscellaneous noises.
BIGGEST TURN-ON: Kickin’ it with Guy makes every day a great day to be at work. Not every job gets to be that much fun. (Well, maybe NFL and MLB stories…)
SIDE NOTE: After working with countless talents for what feels like forever, I can tell you that Guy Fieri is the real deal. He’s one of the most genuine hosts. He’s as real off camera as he is on.
DD&D PRANKS: HALL OF FAME
We spend a lot of time together. These crews are on the road six to ten days at a time. It’s a twenty-hour day, and we work hard and need to unwind. Boy, do we laugh. These are my brothers and sisters, and I couldn’t do it without them. Being away from my wife and kids is hard, but these guys are my friends, and let’s just say we get creative when we blow off steam.
GUY’S TOP FIVE
1. Feeding the Bunny This is the longest ongoing prank we’ve pulled. Here’s how you know the prank’s coming: I’m interviewing the owner, and I say, “Blah, blah, blah—by the way, do you have any pets?” The Bunny will start to back up, ’cause he knows maybe we’ve got a two-foot-long chili dog coming at him from Hillbilly Hot Dogs in Lesage, West Virginia, or a huge piece of apple pie with whipped cream. We ask the owner if he’d like to feed the Bunny, and while he’s doing that we sneak up alongside and squirt vinegar or hot sauce into his mouth.
I’M A FRIEND TO ALL ANIMALS. HERE I AM GENTLY FEEDING “DA BUNNY.”
2. Scaring the Pirate Whenever the Pirate is putting on my makeup, she’ll be looking at me intently, and at least once an episode I’ll startle her while she’s making me up. So we run the camera and she’ll jump and look at me, always like, “I knew you were going to do that”—but she still jumps.
3. Hide ’n’ Seek with Foreign Meat Everybody loves to get in on this one—hiding a meat item in somebody’s stuff. We were shooting somewhere, maybe Jamaica Kitchen in Miami, hiding the pig tails in each other’s gear, bags, cameras, and mixing equipment. I said, “Listen, don’t you go and hide it in my luggage.” So Kleetus, one of my best friends, is keeping an eye on it, but it turned out later that they’d stuffed one in the pocket of his bag—it smelled to high heaven.
4. Stealth Food Fights If anybody’s not paying attention to what’s going on, we take a piece of fat or a pickle and whack them with it. I’m not kidding you, it’s the funniest thing in the world.
5. The Terminations At the end of every one of their shoots for a year and a half, Arnie (a strong guy), Meltdown, and Chico would take a series of photos of Meltdown being terminated by Arnie…
Meltdown doing something jovial, with a clowny face.
Arnie standing behind him, arms crossed, hat and sunglasses on.
Arnie grabbing Meltdown from behind.
TERMINATIONS BY CHICO
Every location had a unique something—smoked meat or whatever—so every ending would have Meltdown being put into the barbecue, or what have you. We would sit on the edge of our seats, and if we shot late and they didn’t do the Termination, everybody, even in the home office, would be upset—where is it!?
MORe FOND PRANK MeMORIeS
FROM THe ROAD KReW
THE PIRATE: Since I don’t pull pranks, I’ll have to tell tales on myself. I’m in New Hampshire, in the lobby of our hotel, waiting to meet Guy and go to our location, a great diner called the Red Arrow. He’s late, so I call him and he says, “Where are you? I’m waiting for you in the lobby.” My stomach drops, and I run over to the front desk to see if there’s more than one lobby. There isn’t. This is back when we used to drive not only from town to town, but from state to state every day. Guy eventually says, “You’re in New Hampshire? I’m still in Maine; I thought we were driving down this morning.” I completely panic and of course think it’s my fault (I’m the producer, so anything that goes wrong is my fault; that’s the nature of the job). I don’t know what to do, but I go to the location and hope that Guy’s going to make the four-hour trip in two hours—not inconceivable. As I’m pulling into the parking lot, there’s Guy doing a live television interview with local TV. Of course I open the window and start yelling at him, I make an obscene gesture, and he’s laughing so hard he’s doubled over—both of us oblivious to the fact that the local crew is still rolling. I’m gullible. But I had it easy the rest of the day: Guy was so pleased to have completely fooled me that he would have overlooked anything I might have actually messed up that day.
SILENT BOB: We’re at Sonny’s Famous
Steak Hogies (sic) in Florida and it’s my first shoot for Triple D. During a shoot, I have my notebook with me at all times, so I can take copious notes on the details of the shoot. Well, it seems that every time I set my notebook down, Anthony would add little notes of his own to my long list of things. Notes like, “Tell the owner he’s sexy…very sexy,” and things of that nature. Well, I set my notebook down to go wrestle with a Hobart mixer, and when I turn around I see John Nigro, the owner of Sonny’s, peering over my notebook. My mind raced to think of what page I left it open to, but all I could think about was the gentle John Nigro reading Anthony’s scribbled sabotage and then misinterpreting everything I said or did from that point on as some sort of sexual advance. I jumped from the mixer, in what felt like slow motion, and yelled, “Noooooooooo!” before slapping my hand down, safely slamming the notebook closed. This was greeted with cackles from the crew.
CHICO: The classic and consistently funny prank—well, funny to everybody but Bryna—is when Guy refuses to shoot something unless she speaks or does something in “pirate.” But my favorite prank (it’s hard to pick just one) was at a barbecue place. KareBear came out to tell Guy we were ready to start shooting in the kitchen. He said to her, “Are you sure?” She said, “Yes, we’re all set.” And Guy responded, “If I make it into the kitchen and you’re not there and ready to shoot, you have to chug barbecue sauce.” KareBear took the challenge: “You’re on.” Guy stood up, stretched, KareBear looked away for a split second…and Guy took off, running like Carl Lewis for the kitchen, hurdling over the counter. Kari came running up the other side as fast as she could. It was a close race, but Guy got there first, so he grabbed a bottle of BBQ sauce and filled her mouth with it. The moral of the story: don’t bet against Guy.
