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Food Network star Guy Fieri explodes with dude food and attitudeJun 28, 2011 (Tampa Tribune - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Food Network superstar Guy Fieri is standing in the casino at the Caesar's Windsor resort in Ontario. He's there to do a live cooking demonstration for hundreds of fans, a "food-a-palooza," as he calls it. Wait. Let him tell the story. He does it better. "We were getting ready to do the gig, and a guy came up to me and screams, 'Dude, what is up? What's goin' on?' My managers are there with me, and they're looking at my reaction. I just threw my arms around him and said, 'Nothin', dude. What's happening?' And they said, 'Did you know that guy?" And I said, "I don't know anybody here.'" This is what it's like to be the mayor of a place Fieri calls "Flavortown, USA." With his hair colored with peroxide and teased into a pointy pineapple; his herd of tattoos, rings and earrings; and his wraparound shades that for everyone else would scream "1 o'clock hangover," Fieri is the food world's biggest, brashest star of the moment. What Savannah food maven Paula Deen is for fluffy southern belles, Fieri is for, well, everyone else. The man is a walking high-five. If you haven't noticed him, you haven't been conscious since 2006, when he broke out after winning the second season of The Next Food Network Star, a reality show that lets cooks compete for a Food Network show. Since then, he's gone on to host the series "Guy's Big Bite" on the network as well as the hugely successful travel show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives." In commercials, he's flipped burgers with the Aflac duck, delivered Ritz crackers by tractor-trailer and given dating and dining advice for T.G.I. Friday's. He's the name behind a line of Knuckle Sandwich knives and, soon, everything from sauces to sausages. And in the ultimate confirmation of crossover appeal, NBC turned him into a game show host last year on the show "Minute to Win It." Archie Comic Books recently created a Fieri-like character named "Dude Ferrari" for a storyline about a cooking competition. Susie Fogelson, the head of marketing for the Food Network, explained his appeal last year to The New York Times: "I haven't seen anyone connect to this range of people since Emeril," she said, citing the chef who first put the network on the map. In February, Fieri set off a minor storm among local food fans when he cruised through the Tampa Bay area filming segments for his 'Diners" show, exposing the world to such Tampa restaurants as Taco Bus, Love's Artifacts and California Tacos to Go. But wait, there's more. Fieri just published a new book, "Guy Fieri Food; Cookin' It, Livin' It, Lovin' It" ($29, William Morrow) that reads like The World According to Guy. In addition to recipes from his five California-based Johnny Garlic's and Tex Wasabi restaurants, the tattoo-laden book is something of a Guysonian of all things Fieri. See young Guy as a steakhouse flambe' captain. See Guy sell roadside pretzels. There's even an exact census of everything in his kitchen drawers at home. The over-sharing was by design. "The whole attitude was, you might not get another shot. Might as well put anything in it that I can," he said recently by phone before his show at Caesar's Windsor. "Lucikly I have publishers who believe in me. We went way over on amount of pages and way over on the number of recipes. I didn't want this thing stuck on some shelf with a bunch of other cookbooks. I want this thing to survive on the coffee table roster." Not everyone is jumping on the Fieri train. His level of popularity invariably attracts backlash, much like Rachael Ray's white-hot rise spawned the blog "Rachael Ray Sucks" in the mid-2000s. In November 2009, FoodNetworkHumor.com swiped at him, saying, "Somewhere along the line, Fieri morphed into an overbearing, sweatband-wielding caricature of himself. He has an 8-year-old's vocabulary and a 14-year-old's wardrobe, and yet he walks around town thinking he's a rock star." The criticism appears to roll off Fieri as he jumps from project to project. During a recent phone interview, he discussed how his new book came together. When we got to the point in the book when you were telling everything that was in your kitchen drawers, I knew this was going to be a comprehensive guide. [laughs] So we stand there in the kitchen and I hadn't been in some of those drawers in probably six months, eight months. My wife walks in and goes, "What in the hell has happened here?" All the drawers are open. All my stuff is on the counter. My assistant is writing it down as fast as I can say it. When the list came in, I said, "People are going to think I'm a hoarder." The other shock was seeing you in the book rocking the mullet without the bleached hair. [laughs] You know what? That's my mom selling me out. I can't believe that woman. When the galleys started coming in and I get a look, I was, like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Where did you get this stuff?" My parents live next door, so I go scooting over there. I go, "Mom! What are you doing?" She said, "They needed pictures of you cooking as a child." I said, "You didn't have to give them that one of me with my shirt off!" I hope everyone understands that as much fun as people see me having on Triple D. I love to poke fun at myself. Nothing better than letting everyone see, "Here's Fieri back in the day!" That's how we roll with the rocker mullet. You've gotta love it. The book title pares it down well: "Guy Fieri Food." It was my 14-year-old son, Hunter, who said, "Why don't you call it, 'Guy Fieri Food.'" I said, "Oooookay." He said, "Nobody can really explain who Guy Fieri is, and your food is so different." I don't really have a set style. It's not Asian American, it's not just barbecue. It's not Italian. I've had this very blessed opportunity to play in all different types of forms. It's like playing in all different types of music. I think you invented a new category: Attention Deficit Food. If you don't rush off to GoDaddy and get that domain name, I'm going to. I told everyone in the audience at a show in North Carolina that I'm a little ADD. Never diagnosed, but I know that I can't focus. That's exactly what that food is. I'll make dinner and my wife will say, "I'm sorry, what are we having?" I make something in the book called Pork-Oulet, which is one of her favorite dishes I make. And it's cassoulet, but my style. She says, "And we're going to have Sashimi Juan Tacos to start it off? Where's the correlation of those things?" I said, "Um, delicious? There's your correlation." There are some people, including you and Rachael Ray, for whom the fame and the opportunities all mushroom. I wonder if you worry about doing too much. That's such an interesting statement for you to see it that way. When would you have too much of a good thing? It's a very difficult topic for me. If I didn't have a family and kids and a wife, yeah, maybe I would be on the road 300 days of the year. I spend more time focusing on dialing it back than I do anything being very decisive about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to do it. I think people just get that I'm not pretentious. I hope that's what they get. I'm just Guy Fieri. I'm trippin' on it just like everybody else is. What were your thoughts about Tampa from when you were shooting Triple D? It's funky. It's ethnic. It's beautiful. It's relaxed. It's entertaining. I just can't say enough about it. I've never been there for the bad season, but it's everything I love. It's water. It's cool people. Such an eclectic mix of food. You go to Ted Peters' Smoked Fish and tell me you don't dig that joint. There's a whole bunch of places. I love that it's still quaint enough that when you go back, you can remember where you are. Like the Taco Bus. You don't find that anywhere else. You guys stake the claim on fantastic right there. A lot of cities have great restaurants that aren't considered food destinations. You guys have something. I think the connection of the sun and the food and the people that can take you guys over the top. I say, "Amen" to it. Watch out. You may see me there. Pork-Oulet Makes 8 to 10 servings \ pound thick cut bacon, cut into {-inch pieces 3 pounds pork butt, cut into 2-inch by 3-inch pieces 4 bone-in chicken thighs, skin discarded 2 teaspoons salt 3 teaspoons freshly cracked black pepper 1 cup peeled and quartered cipollini onions 1 cup (\-inch) diced carrots { cup (\-inch) diced celery \ cup roughly chopped garlic 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 3 cups low-sodium chicken stock 2 bay leaves 1 teaspoon dried thyme { teaspoon dried sage 4 (15-ounce) cans cannellini beans, drained \ cup sherry wine vinegar, for garnish \ cup chopped Italian parsley leaves, for garnish In a cast iron Dutch oven, over medium-high heat, add the bacon and cook until just crisp. Remove from the pot and set aside on a paper towel lined plate. Season the pork and the chicken with salt and pepper. Add the pork pieces to the bacon fat and brown on all sides. Remove from pot and set aside on a large plate. Add the chicken thighs to the pan and brown evenly, then remove and add to the plate with the pork. Add the cipollini onions, carrots and celery into the pot and cook for three to five minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for one minute more. Whisk in the flour and cook for two minutes, then add in the stock, bay leaves, thyme and sage and combine well. Put the pork and chicken pieces into the sauce and cover. Reduce the heat and simmer until the meat is fork tender, about two hours. Add in the cannellini beans and cover and simmer for 25 minutes. Transfer to a serving platter and serve hot with a drizzle of the sherry wine vinegar and a sprinkle of the parsley. Source: "Guy Fieri Food" To see more of the Tampa Tribune or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.tampatrib.com. Copyright (c) 2011, Tampa Tribune, Fla. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. 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