Guy Fieri has sampled thousands of dishes on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” But are all of them as “money” or “killer” as we may have been led to believe?
Not so, according to some longtime viewers of the show.
Fans on social media seem to think Fieri has a few “tells” when he’s not completely gaga over the grub, with most pointing to the language he uses to describe what he’s eating.
“His tell is that he’ll describe each component in detail and doesn’t use his typical ‘out of bounds!’ or other similar catchphrases,” one viewer theorized on Reddit years ago, with dozens of others echoing the same sentiments. “It’s one of those things that if you watch enough ‘DDD’ that eventually you’ll pick up on.”
"Triple D" superfan Bill Grella, who has dined at 1,000 of the restaurants featured on the show (and counting), subscribes to this theory as well. But he doesn’t believe Fieri would ever showcase a diner, or a dish, that he outright dislikes.
“I think that I can tell if he really really likes something or if he just likes it,” Grella told Nexstar. “This is only my opinion … but if he starts using his crazy words, he really likes it. If he starts describing [what he’s eating] … I think [the food’s] great but not as great as when he pounds his fist or something.”
Grella said he had once also stumbled across evidence that Fieri and his crew have nixed at least one complete segment, but he couldn’t confirm why.
On a trip to visit some of Fieri’s stops in Florida years ago, Grella said he went to a Jacksonville restaurant after seeing it listed as a filming location by the show’s then-production company. The segment hadn’t yet aired — and it never would, unbeknownst to Grella — so he attempted to strike up a conversation with the operators about Fieri’s recent visit.
“They didn’t want to talk about it at all,” Grella remembered. “I don’t remember the name of the place, but … that could have been [a bad experience].”
If indeed the segment was canned, it probably wouldn’t come as a surprise to Fieri’s longtime fans. Fieri himself has admitted that he won't feature dishes that he didn’t enjoy.
“I don’t like the food, you won’t see it on my shows,” Fieri told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021.
What's more, Fieri said on a 2018 podcast episode of "The Moment With Brian Koppelman" that some of the chefs featured on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" can tell he's not loving their food by his reaction — and usually because he's not responding with his usual catchphrases.
"We’ll go to commercial and they’ll go, 'Um, so did you like that?' And I’m like, 'It was good.' And they’ll go, 'You didn’t, like, go, 'This is off the hook.'' And I’m like, ‘Well, it was good,'" he told Koppelman. "And I’m like, 'Don’t be offended! … I don’t like every song that’s on the Rolling Stones album. There’s ones that you like.'"
Grella, meanwhile, said he has rarely been disappointed by the eateries he's dined at so far. After visiting 1,000 of the restaurants featured on the show — and documenting his travels on Facebook and his personal blog — Grella estimated that “99% of them are definitely worth going to.”
“There’s only been a couple that I can say I really didn’t care for,” Grella said.