Cigar Aficionado

Guy Fieri doesn’t go anywhere without cigars—a lot of cigars. “Check it out,” he says, opening the back hatch of the black SUV that’s moving him around New York City on a typical whirlwind day. He’s fresh from a Tequila presentation in Chelsea, but his mind is on cigars. He reaches inside for a rigid, black case about the size of a desktop humidor. He opens it up, revealing a box of cigars cradled in foam in a case that looks like it’s built for the military. This is cigar storage that’s ready for the zombie apocalypse. 

He’s a man on the move, even when those moves are unorthodox—like when he nearly spoiled his big shot to become a Food Network mainstay even before his career took off.

He entered the foodie spotlight in the spring of 2006 when he won the second season of “The Next Food Network Star,” an elimination-style competition meant to find upcoming talent. His friends pushed him to do the show and he ended up winning. He seemed tailor made for the spotlight: big personality, tons of charm, the unforgettable look of frosted blonde hair, huge jewelry and his signature, casual air that makes him seem like one of the guys. Combine that with a lifelong passion for food and a nonstop attitude, and he seemed born for the channel.

But he also had a talent for saying no when he felt a move wasn’t right.

“I had turned down a couple of shows, which was not the right thing to do,” says Fieri, relaxing on a Manhattan rooftop after firing up a big cigar. “They gave me a show I shot a pilot for called ‘Gotta Get It.’ ” It was about kitchen gadgets, such as a ball that could be filled with cream, sugar and spices and kicked around to make ice cream. Fieri hated the concept. “I’m doing this thing, and I’m like, ‘This is bullshit, I don’t do this shit.’ ” The show got picked up and they wanted Fieri to host for a full season, 13 episodes. He turned down the offer. “Oh, it pissed everybody off,” he says. “I mean it went all the way to the president of the network. I’m brand new. And I’m turning down a primetime show. I said, ‘Listen, I’m just not going to lie to you, I can’t do it if I don’t believe in it.’ ” Executives from the channel pushed him to take it, warning that there was no guarantee of having another show. Fieri stuck to his guns.

Four months later, he got a call for another pilot. “They said it’s about going to mom-and-pop restaurants and highlighting what they do. I’m like, ‘I can do that, I’m a mom-and-pop restaurant myself.’ I say, ‘What’s the name of it?’ They say, ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.’ ”

This was more Fieri’s style: “You can’t fake authenticity. And that’s probably what the through line in my career has been, not trying to be a chef that I’m not, not trying to be a TV host that I’m not, not a food critic. Doing the best I can. I’ll admit when I don’t do it right.”

Authenticity worked. Triple D, as he calls the show, became a hit and Fieri became a phenomenon. The show debuted in 2007, and is still going strong after more than 400 episodes. Between that show and several others, Fieri’s programs on Food Network reach well over 100 million people a year, 33.6 million people per quarter, according to the network. Forbes calls him the highest-paid chef on cable television. He reportedly signed a three-year-deal with Food Network for $80 million in 2021.

“You walk around with this guy and everybody and their dog recognizes him. People stop him on the street,” says rock star Sammy Hagar, who has been friends with Fieri since the 1990s, long before the Food Network days. Fieri made an unforgettable impression, serving the rocker a platter of sushi on top of a red guitar. Fieri got in front of Hagar by winning a contest for Cabo Wabo, a Tequila brand Hagar owned at the time.

“There was a contest for whoever sold the most Cabo Wabo could come backstage and meet me,” says Hagar. Fieri, who owned a single restaurant in those days, made the premium-priced Cabo Wabo his well Tequila, pouring a spirit that sold for about four times the price of a typical well bottle. “So, of course, he wins, he just blows through it,” says Hagar with a chuckle. “We ate sushi and drank Tequila and just cracked up and had the time of our lives. We’ve been friends ever since.” Today, the two are the owners of Santo Tequila.

“Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” features Fieri as he visits one interesting restaurant after another, focusing on family-run establishments. Fieri, who collects cars, drives up in his red vintage Camaro, gives an energetic intro, then takes the viewer inside as he shows what makes each place distinctive. Over the past 15 years, it has profiled restaurants in nearly 1,500 locations, where Fieri energetically chomps down on all manner of comfort food. There even was an episode in Cuba, visiting a few paladares. Fieri makes eating fun. While a viewer can certainly figure out a new recipe or two, his shows are less about learning how to cook and more about sharing the stories of hard-working people who give their all behind the grill or stove—“the heroes of the industry,” in his words.

One of the many millions who ate up the show was actor Matthew McConaughey. “I came across this show ‘Diners Drive-Ins and Dives,’ and it quickly became my favorite,” said McConaughey during a speech honoring Fieri as the chef was welcomed into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. McConaughey was living on the road at the time, driving around the United States in an Airstream. After getting Fieri’s number, he began calling on the host for pointers on where to eat during his travels.

“I said listen, I’m gonna be in Spokane, Washington, tomorrow night—where should I eat? I started sharing with Guy all of my road maps, and he would map out the must go-to restaurants along the way.” They later had dinner. “This is when I met more than the Guy who was on my favorite TV show. This is when I met a conscientious Guy Fieri, a guy who cared about family, who cared about faith,” he said.

“Guy is a true force in the culinary world,” says star chef Emeril Lagasse. “He is a great friend and a humble man, and his commitment to philanthropy and showcasing small family businesses is incredibly respectable.”

“I think people see a little bit of themselves in Guy,” says Kathleen Finch, chairman and chief content officer for U.S. Networks Group, Warner Bros. Discovery, owners of the Food Network. “There is only one Guy Fieri.”

He has the look of a rocker, with his ever-present sunglasses and big rings. His appearance and his fast rise to stardom have made him a target of critics. Pete Wells of The New York Times attacked Fieri’s now-closed Times Square restaurant with a particularly savage review, giving it zero stars (a score Wells also gave to the legendary Peter Luger steakhouse). The late Anthony Bourdain took shots at Fieri, once calling one of his restaurants a “Terrordome.” Fieri has taken such criticism in stride.

“I don’t have time for that,” he told People magazine. “Anybody that pays attention to hate is really wasting their time.”

Spend five minutes with Fieri and you quickly understand why people love him. Spend an hour with him and you realize there’s greater depth to the man than his look suggests, and far more going on than the critics would believe. He’s a study in contrasts. While he’s famous for being the champion of comfort-food joints that dish up massive burgers, decadent grilled cheese and succulent meatballs, he was raised by parents who avoided meat and kept sweets out of the house. “We were vegetarian for a while. We ate very clean and healthy,” he says. “No processed foods, no snacks in the cupboards, no cookies.”

His blinged-out look belies the fact that he’s a family man who gives massive credit to his supportive parents for his success. Guy is his real first name, but he changed his last name from Ferry to Fieri, going back to his Italian roots to honor his grandfather, whose name was Americanized upon emigrating from Italy. (He rolls the R when he pronounces his last name, making it almost sound like a D.) He seems brash on camera, but he has a soft spot and is a philanthropist. When restaurants were clobbered by the early days of Covid, he was at the forefront helping raise more than $20 million for restaurant workers in distress. (Wine Spectator, which like Cigar Aficionado is owned by M. Shanken Communications Inc., was also involved in the charity.)

And the man who makes a living sampling food in diners hates the foundation to every diner menu: eggs.

Fieri was born in 1968 in Columbus, Ohio, but raised in the tiny northern California town of Ferndale, population 1,400. “I attribute a tremendous amount of the way I am to growing up in that town,” he says. “Everybody supported sports, everybody gathered together if something needed to be done, a lot of philanthropy. Just a really great place to grow up.” Raised by parents he happily dubs hippies (“not dope-smoking hippies,” he says), he loved food from a very early age. “I used to fake being sick so I could stay home and cook,” he says. He worked with a copy of The Joy of Cooking and focused on meat—not that he loved it so much, but because his parents rarely cooked it.

“We ate a lot of salmon. We ate a lot of steamed vegetables. My parents were into macrobiotic cooking for quite a while,” he says. “My parents were both great cooks, we had great tomato sauce, great granola, that kind of stuff.” Food was a big part of the household, although it proved too adventurous for some palates. “Some of my friends wouldn’t stay the night at my house because we’d eat sushi. So, 1976 and we were eating sushi. Raw fish? Wait ’til all your friends in school find out about that.”

A family ski trip to Lake Tahoe further fueled his love of food and led to his first business. He was in the fifth grade and fell in love with a snack at the resort. “Soft, steamed pretzels. The salt stuck to ’em perfectly—God, I loved them,” he says, the taste of those pretzels from four decades ago still making him happy. “I spent all my lunch money when I was skiing.” Instead of scolding him for the carbo load, his dad suggested monetizing the passion. “He said, ‘If you love those pretzels so much, why don’t you open a pretzel business?’’ Back home, he created The Amazing Pretzel Cart. “Here’s a business where I get to eat as many pretzels as I can shove in my face. And I can make some money.” He began saving his money from the pretzel cart, money that came in handy later when he wanted to expand his culinary horizons and do a year as an exchange student in France. He went to college at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he studied hospitality management—and smoked cigars.

His maternal grandfather, Henry Ellis Price, got him into cigars. “My Grandpa—we called him gramps—he smoked cigars. Tiparillos and White Owls. And gramps had that smell. Gramps smelled like a cigar. I always loved it.”

Fieri started with the cheap stuff before moving to premiums. “I went through my good, bad and ugly era of cigars in college, but always enjoyed them,” he says. Then he took a puff of a Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur Maduro. “I remember the time I had a really good cigar. I tasted it and I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. Now I understand.’ I still have two or three boxes in my humidor.” His second cigar epiphany was his first Cuban, a Hoyo de Monterrey Double Corona. “I’ve gone through the gamut, an Avo fan, always a Fuente fan, Short Story was one of my all-time faves.”

Back in Fieri’s early cigar days, after falling in love with the pursuit, he was off and running. The fire was lit. He bought an unfinished humidor, sanded it, stained it, then started collecting more as he filled it. When he started work, managing a restaurant called Parker’s Lighthouse in Long Beach, California, cigars became an important part of his relaxation ritual.

“I don’t know anybody in this town. And I work crazy hours in the restaurant business,” he says. “So, on my day off I would ride my mountain bike about a mile away to this place called Churchills.” He describes the cigar shop in the city’s Naples neighborhood: “They had old barber chairs, everybody would sit around, and I was raised listening to old timers tell stories. There’s a lot you can learn listening to people talk. You’d meet everybody there—it was a melting pot of people. And it wasn’t a drinking thing, you could sit outside and smoke, you could sit inside and smoke, and I was just thirsty for knowledge.”

Mike, who owned the place, befriended Fieri. “I would go in and every time Mike would say, ‘OK, you have to try something new today.’ So, he would explain it to me, walk me through it, and I’d get a chance to sit there and enjoy it. And I would learn.”

He was learning first-hand about restaurants, too, with the desire to have one of his own. In 1996, he found a spot for his own restaurant. His partner had raised $50,000, but Fieri, who had been married just a year, was short on funding. “I had to come up with 50 grand—and I didn’t have no 50 grand . . . I had about $5,000 to my name and a pregnant wife. So I call my dad . . . My parents had never made more than $40,000 a year in their life,” Fieri says. He told his father what he needed, his dad spoke to his mom and immediately said OK. “He says, ‘Alright, mom said it’s cool, I’m going to go down to the bank right now. I’ll get a loan.’ So, they mortgaged the house.”

Fieri used the cash to open Johnny Garlic’s in Santa Rosa, which was a success. “I paid him back in six months,” he says.

Cigars quickly became a part of the restaurant. With a big glass case he bought at a yard sale, he made a humidor of sorts, selling cigars at the restaurant, which had a cigar-friendly patio. “I would hold cigar dinners. There was a big cigar painted on the wall, that said cigar patio. And we caught some smack for it. Some people said it stinks. I didn’t really care. It was more about having something that I really enjoyed.”

That big case needed to be filled, and Fieri bought his cigars from Linda Squires, of Squire Cigars. “You could tell that the guy was destined for something—he was just so energetic and had so many ideas,” says Squires, who has worked in the cigar business for nearly 50 years. “He’s got a big personality, he’s just somebody you notice, but he has a humble side, and that side jumps in and helps,” she says, pointing to Fieri’s continued efforts in helping the local community in times of need, including cooking meals for firefighters battling wildfires.

People who know him well all echo the same sentiment about Fieri—he’s the same guy he was before everyone knew his name. “He’s exactly like he was before he made it,” says Hagar. “He’s never changed,” says his buddy Jay Glazer of “Fox NFL Sunday.” Adds McConaughey: “He always remained exactly who he was.”

One of his early loves was business, something he’s only expanded over the years. He now owns several restaurants, has interests in a winery and is co-owner of a Tequila brand called Santo, on which he is partners with Hagar. But one big item was missing on his resume: a cigar brand of his own.

“I had asked my management and my agents to hook me up with a cigar company,” he says. Not wanting an association with smoke, they kept saying no. But when he got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he brought it up again, and they finally gave up fighting him. A friend connected him with Erik Espinosa, owner of Espinosa Cigars. They met in South Beach. Fieri was instantly impressed with the cigarmaker. “If . . . you don’t think ‘Cigar Godfather’ when you meet the guy then you’re not really in the cigar game,” he says. “I think he probably went from having a pacifier in his mouth to having a cigar in his mouth.”

Espinosa gave him a cigar and tossed him a cutter and a lighter. “So, I catch the cutter and I throw the cutter back at him. I said, ‘I don’t cut. I said I just nibble off the end.’ He says, ‘You passed the first test.’ ”

Fieri told Espinosa he wanted input in the blend, didn’t want to just pick a smoke that was already made. And for a year or so Espinosa would send cigars, to which Fieri would give his feedback. Finally, they narrowed it down to four samples and they agreed on the one they liked best. Fieri says it was all done via a handshake deal.

The cigar hit the market in early 2022, named Knuckle Sandwich, after Fieri’s holding company. “I said I don’t want to call it Guy Fieri, the name’s not even on the box,” he says. “I don’t want any part of that. The last thing I want is for people to think this is a brand-stamped celebrity thing. Last thing I want.”

So far, the handshake is paying off: the cigar is off to a solid start, receiving scores of 87 to 92 points in blind tastings in this magazine. The Espinosa Knuckle Sandwich Habano Corona Gorda R, which scored 92 points, was named No. 23 cigar of 2022 by Cigar Aficionado.

Fieri still appears to have plenty of moves left in his particular food story. “We’re on our 16th year, almost our 1,500th location, a couple of spinoffs,” he says. He hopes to add Nicaragua to his long list of locations, filming an episode while furthering his cigar education with Espinosa.

“Food for me will be a never-ending lesson, and it’s so exciting,” he says, flashing his multimillion-dollar smile. “It’s like I hate when a movie ends, or “Yellowstone” ends, you know? I’m pissed—I don’t want it to end. Where’s the next chapter?”

Another puff, a final sip of Tequila, fist bumps, handshakes and hugs all around. Then Fieri is back in the car, ready for the next meeting, preparing for the next adventure.