Food Network’s high energy and over-the-top Emmy-award-winning chef  Guy Fieri is back on the boulevard, bringing another outpost of  The Chicken Guy to Los Angeles, steps from his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  The guy’s passion for food blossomed at the age of ten, when he started  selling soft pretzels from a three-wheeled bicycle cart he built with his dad, which he  called “The Awesome Pretzel Cart.”   In 2006 he won the Food Network Competition show, Next Food Network Star and went on to score his own series, the Emmy-nominated Guy’s Big Bite.  Since then Fieri has crossed the country in his red 1968 Camaro sampling dishes from more than 1700 mom-and-pop restaurants in Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives, and hosted Guy’s Grocery Games, Tournament of Champions, and  Guy’s Ranch Kitchen. He and his team at Knuckle Sandwich, LLC, have created a thriving food and beverage empire, which includes the Chicken Guy restaurant chain across the country,  Flavortown Kitchen, a 175-location virtual brand to complement his 80-plus scratch kitchen restaurant concepts worldwide as well as product lines in mega-retailers like Walmart. The Big Blat (Courtesy Chicken Guy) “It’s been almost 20 years but feels like 45,” the spiked platinum blond chef tells L.A. Weekly from his home in Santa Rosa.   “It’s not really something that was in my sights. When I graduated from the University of Nevada in  Las Vegas,   all I wanted to do was start a restaurant.  I had already managed restaurants in Los Angeles.  I just wanted to get as much education as I could, learn and cook as much as I could and just get as immersed in it as I could.  “So I was doing pretty well with that and the Food Network opportunity was just kind of a fluke,” he says.  “I never really watched the Food Network because I was cooking all day.   Did I have my sights set on this?  No.  Has it been mind-blowing? Absolutely.  Did I just open a Chicken Guy on Hollywood Boulevard, steps away from my star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?  If you had ever told me that we would be having this conversation, I’d say go buy a lottery ticket because you’d have a better chance at winning Powerball than having all this happen. Having it all come together like this, did I see it?  No.  Am I appreciative?   Overwhelmed and super thankful.” His boundless energy,  bold attitude, and sense of humor are part of the stuff that made him take on the crowded landscape of fried chicken in L.A.  Guy Fieri interviews patrons at Mutiny BBQ Company in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, season 40. (Courtesy Food Network) “I think I’m a guy who has had more than enough samples of fried chicken around the country than just about anybody,” says Fieri. “ I’ve seen chicken in just about any form you can imagine.  I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.  What I wanted to do is take what I believe is great chicken, moist chicken, chicken that is tender, has a tremendous amount of flavor, has a really great crunch but isn’t all batter, and a little chicken matter.  We hand batter it ourselves.  This breading that we put on it and the brine we put it through, the crunch stays with it.  My kids were the test kitchen for years while I was making chicken tenders.” And if you’ve got great chicken, you’ve got to back it up with dynamite sauces, says Fieri, who managed Parker’s Lighthouse in Long Beach after he graduated college.  All the restaurants scratch their sauces and batter.   There are out-of-bounds adventurous versions as well as  the “common-I’ve-seen-’em before sauces.”   In addition to sandwiches, salads, and milkshakes, there are a minimum of ten sauces on the menu, including his signature and most popular, Donkey Sauce. “Well, that started on our burgers on the Carnival cruise lines, ” he says in his trademark familial style. “It’s basically  a super fortified aioli loaded up with roasted garlic,  Worcestershire and lemon.  When I was making it I told the chefs they had to put this sauce on every burger, no choices.  They asked me what the name of the sauce was and off the top of my head said it was Donkey Sauce.  There are like 30 chefs standing there looking at me befuddled at the name and asking me where I came up with that name.  I told them, ‘Because you’re a bunch of jackasses if you don’t put it on every single burger that comes out of the kitchen.’” In its 40th season, his show  Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives has a huge cult following and the criteria are extremely high to secure a segment, but it’s perhaps the closest endeavor to Fieri’s heart.  “I started with my first restaurant up here in the wine country in 1996 and back then to get any kind of coverage or exposure you had to buy an ad in the Yellow Pages,” says Fieri.  “ Now with social media, there’s a lot of opportunities for people to get their name out there.  There are a lot of great concepts and chefs.  I can’t hit all of them.  We’ve done more than 1700.   I get quite a few letters and emails with proposals and signed petitions from people trying to get on the show.  Some people have actually opened restaurants because they were Triple D  fans.  I really believe in supporting my brothers and sisters in the business and I know how hard it is.  There will be 20 locations that we’ll look at  and it will get narrowed down to six.” Loaded Fries (Courtesy Chicken Guy) With any luck, Fieri’s son Hunter, who has regularly helped cook on  Guy’s Ranch Kitchen and displays his father’s passion for creating recipes, will one day take over the family empire.  “Being on set with Guy has all the same vibes we love about a busy night of service in a restaurant,” chef and good friend  Michael Voltaggio, who has appeared on Fieri’s shows, tells L.A. Weekly.  “It’s chaotic, fun, fast-paced, and you never know what to expect. His energy is contagious and whether you’re in front of the camera or behind it, he makes it feel like he’s hosting a party and we’re all his guests. I always walk away thinking ‘I feel lucky that I get to call this work’.”   Upcoming show highlights include: “Triple D Nation: Risotto, Rellenos and Red Snapper” premiers on  Friday, Oct.  25, when   Fieri eats his way through risotto, relleno, and red snapper in a renovated mansion in Atlanta with rabbit sausage cavatelli and out-of-bounds oyster mushroom risotto. Then, a roadside Mexican joint in Anthem, Arizona is dishing out scratch-made carnitas and rellenos, while in Arlington, Texas, he samples jerk chicken and a succulent snapper. Then on  Friday, Nov.  1 he goes from   “From Vietnamese to Vegan” at a Minneapolis Southeast Asian spot cookin’ up Balinese chicken thighs and Vietnamese pork belly crepes. A Jersey Shore joint is smokin’ up  BBQ stacked into Reuben and chicken sandwiches. And a husband-and-wife duo in Missoula, Montana., is baking plant-based, gluten-free favorites, like artisan avocado on scratch-made multigrain, plus lemon-glazed doughnuts. In  Guy’s Grocery Games premiering Wednesday, Oct.  23  it’s “Bad to the Bacon”, when  Fieri invites four chefs with a passion for pork to smoke the competition with sizzling bacon dishes. First, they must prepare their signature bacon dish using only the ingredients they can buy with the meager funds in their piggy banks. The chefs then prove they can do “swine dining” by preparing a high-end bacon dish that features the fruit they won in a game of Piggleball. The winning chef brings home the bacon,  up to $20,000. Guy Fieri cooks with Chef Yia Vang at Union Hmong Kitchen (Courtesy Food Network)         The post Chef Guy Fieri Is A Star On The Hollywood Walk of Fame appeared first on LA Weekly.