NEW YORK — Following The New York Times’ merciless takedown of celebrity chef Guy Fieri’s new Times Square mega-restaurant, “Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar,” in which food critic Pete Wells asks the celebrity chef a series of increasingly condescending rhetorical questions (“Were you struck by how far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Tenders are?”) Fieri has fired back, penning a surprisingly coherent op-ed on the decline of modern print journalism.
Fieri, whose credits include hosting Food Network’s “Diners Drive-Ins and Dives,” looking generally douchey, and inexplicably co-authoring a cookbook with ’90s buzz rockers Smash Mouth and former Pittsburg Steelers running back Jerome Bettis, calls out the Times for what he perceives to be a “slip in standards from a newspaper once viewed as a bastion of journalistic integrity.”
Fieri goes on to write, “Wells’ review reeks of a desperate attempt to remain relevant in a media landscape increasingly dominated by infotainment websites such as Buzzfeed and Gawker.” Later Fieri adds, “And anyway, Pete Wells couldn’t find Flavor Town if I gave him a map and double-kicked him in the right direction, Donkey-Sauce style! Did he even try our Sweet & Sticky Ain’t No Thing Butta Chicken Wings? I say no way, brosay!”
1 comment
Thank God you had the GUTS to fight back!!!!! It was obvious that guy had some kind of hidden agenda as a simple not impressed would have sufficed. Maybe he was jealous of your notoriety or that you probably make more and get to enjoy your job more than he does. Anyway KUDOS to you for standing up to someone who was a complete jerk (would like to call him worse but this may be read by children).