Guy Fieri Biography

American restaurateur and television personality Guy Fieri was born in 1968 in Columbus, Ohio. Today, Fieri is best known as the owner of multiple high-end restaurants in California and for his appearances on various shows on the Food Network, but long before he rose to prominence in the culinary world, Guy Fieri grew up in a rural area of Humboldt County.

As a child, Fieri always harbored a love of food; he sold pretzels from a food cart while still a student in high school, and in his later studies he enrolled as a foreign exchange student in France, which planted the seed for his love of the culinary arts. After coming back to California, he first began work at a local restaurant before beginning his studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Guy graduated in 1990 with a B.S. in Hotel Management, and after graduation began working for the Stouffer’s company in southern California.

After Stouffer’s, Fieri started to manage various locations for the restaurant chain Louise’s Trattoria, until in the mid 1990’s, he opened his first restaurant alongside partner Steve Gruber. Johnny Garlic’s first location was in Santa Rosa, but by the late 2000’s Fieri and Gruber had also opened locations in Windsor, Petaluma, Roseville, and Arden-Arcade; the chain’s sixth location opened in Dublin in 2011.

Around the same time that Johnny Garlic’s was expanding, Guy Fieri appeared as a competitor on the Food Network’s reality series, The Next Food Network Star. After winning the competition, he was given his own six-episode series, Guy’s Big Bite. The show was an enormous success and continues to air to this day; it had since led to the shows Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives; Ultimate Recipe Showdown; Guy’s Grocery Games; and Guy Off the Hook. Guy Fieri also makes regular appearances on the network’s programs Dinner: Impossible, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, Paula’s Party, Rachel vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off; and Ace of Cakes.

In addition to his television appearances and restaurants, Guy Fieri has authored or co-authored four New York Times best-selling books. The most recent, Guy on Fire: 130 Recipes for Adventures in Outdoor Cooking, was released in 2014, the same year that he opened Guy Fieri’s Vegas Kitchen and Bar in Las Vegas, Nevada.