Guy Fieri on His Favorite Food Destinations—and the Surprising Restaurant He Says Is Always Worth a Detour: Exclusive
'My mouth waters just thinking about it,' the restaurateur and host of Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives since 2007 told Travel + Leisure at a Waterloo Sparkling Water event in New York City earlier this month. 'If I'm anytime within distance of it, we divert. We will go and get a dozen of these dogs, no problem.'
Mileage is a non-factor when it comes to scouring the world for the most flavorful eats. 'It's funny because on Triple D [the show's nickname], all the time, I'll take a bite of something and say that it's worth an hour drive to come get this meal,' he said.
Now the 57-year-old has taken his flavor-driven love of travel to the next level by launching a trio of sparkling water flavors with Waterloo, each capturing a destination dear to his heart.
The Columbus, Ohio-born, Northern California-raised television personality has spent an abundance of time throughout his life in the Mexican town of Colima, which he says is best known for its 'big volcano.'
In his 20s, his mom, who is a retired dental hygienist, and his dad would head there with a huge shipping container full of dental equipment. 'They were going and working at an orphanage that had 500 kids,' he explained. 'They would bring down their dentist friends and do free dental work on these orphans.'
While helping the local community, the family started to explore the Mexican coastal cities in the states of Colima and Jalisco, vacationing on their beaches and eventually getting a home in the area. 'We spent a lot of time in Mexico—love it there!' he said.
On one visit nearly two decades ago, his son Hunter, now 28, came back with a cup of mixed fruit, which Fieri was absolutely taken by. 'He's got pineapple, watermelon, mango, and gosh, you can taste the difference in the fruit in Mexico,' the food expert said.But then the key ingredient came out when Hunter revealed a little container of Tajin, a Mexican seasoning powder made of chili peppers, lime, and sea salt.
'I was like, 'What are you doing? Don't put seasoned salt on that.' He remembered of his shock, 'I take a bite and am like, 'Whoa! You've got to be kidding me!' It accentuates it!'
Likening it to adding salt to a flat cream sauce, he couldn't believe what a difference a sprinkle of the Tajin made. 'That little bit of that seasoned spice mixture on top of the fruit brings it up to the next level,' he said.
That core memory sparked the idea for one of his three sparkling water flavors, with a version of that kicked-up fruit sensation in Spiced Mango Sorbet.Window or aisle?Window.Best destination for cheap eats?Mexico.Best destination for fine dining? Italy.Most underrated food city?I'm a big Chicago food city fan.Favorite restaurant there?La Scarola. It's a great little Italian restaurant. It feels like you're walking into a mob movie.Another flavor was sparked by his wife growing up not far from his beloved hot dog joint in North Providence. 'If you ever have a chance to go down to Narragansett Beach, it's just an amazing place,' he said. 'Coming from the West Coast, I'd never seen the East Coast beaches, so we'd go there, and Del's Lemonade is the big thing that everybody has.'
His goal was to capture that throwback feeling of aimless summer days strolling down the boardwalk with the frozen snack in hand in his Lemon Italian Ice flavor. To do so, he honed in on the most flavorful part of the fruit, 'the peel of the lemon where the essence of the oil of the lemon comes from,' to create a sensation so 'far beyond what anybody has ever done with citrus-enhanced soda water.'
For the final flavor in the Waterloo line, it was less about a single place, and more about chasing a particular tarty taste. 'As a chef, you go to regions that have huckleberry, and you can find huckleberry everywhere, but then you go around the rest of the country, you're not going to find it as prolifically,' Fieri admitted.
He thinks he first came across the berry in West Virginia, where his dad is from. 'It just reminds me of every time I would come back to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the whole Appalachian area,' he said, adding that he often stumbled upon them during his travels through Amish Country, where they grow the best. 'It's one of those things that when it's available, you find it everywhere—huckleberry jam in huckleberry restaurants that have it on their huckleberry pies.'
With that idea, he started thinking about the best way to enjoy the tart berry, and came up with the Huckleberry Cobbler flavor. 'The whole reason that Waterloo is dominating is because they have a really big imagination, and they were able to take it and figure it out,' the host said.
All three flavors bring up happy travel memories, but Fieri admits if he had to choose a favorite, it would be the Spiced Mango Sorbet because of how he learned to spice the tropical fruit for his family.
With the 51st season of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives airing now—and its season finale scheduled for May 23—Fieri is still searching for the best eats around the U.S. But when he's back in his NorCal home in Santa Rosa, he's quick to say his favorite place to eat is 'my house!'
While he doesn't eat out often back home, he says one of his favorites is Tomi Thai in nearby Windsor. 'That's what I had last night,' he said during our April 10 interview. 'A great family runs it, and they're busy as can be. We couldn't even get them on Triple D!'
Despite scouring the world for the best eats, there are still places Fieri has yet to flavor-hunt through, with Turkey at the top of his list.
But anywhere he goes in the world, he has the right chef pal to show him the way. 'If I was going to go to Thailand, it would be Jet Tila,' he said. 'If I was going to go to China, it would be Ming Tsai. If I was going to go to Japan, it would be Shota Nakajima. If I was going to go to Italy, it would probably be Antonio La Fauci. I could take you around the world!'
No matter where he goes, a good meal leaves a deep impression. When I commented that his face is painted all over the mural at one of my favorites in my hometown of San Jose, California, he beats me to the punch, enthusiastically shouting: 'Falafel's Drive In!' and adding that 'it was one of the neatest falafel joints I'd ever been to!'
Related: Chef Emeril Lagasse on His Favorite Food City—and What He Never Eats on a Plane: Exclusive
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If you're hiking or camping in the arid Southwest and West in the next few months, get ready for what could be the experience – or fright – of a lifetime. Across the United States, in California, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas, tens of thousands of tarantulas will being crawling out of their burrows in search of females – making for a fascinating, if a little creepy – display of the wonders of nature. It's tarantula mating season. 'If you're lucky enough you can sometimes see them in hordes crossing the roads at certain times of the year,' said Dan McCamish, a senior environmental scientist with California State Parks. His advice? Leave them alone. "It's a wild animal – it doesn't want to be picked up and loved and hugged,' he said. 'In general the species is very docile, but if you were to handle one they could bite you.' While the idea of thousands of hairy, baseball-sized spiders picking their way through parks and campgrounds might give many people the heebie-jeebies, in general these misunderstood, wandering arachnids are simply young males in search of love. And if they wander into your tent, they didn't mean to. 'In truth they're gentle, ecologically valuable animals,' said McCamish. 'Mostly they're interested in escaping from confrontations – especially with something they know could squish them.' Here's what to know about tarantulas during their mating season. Where in the US do tarantulas live? Tarantulas prefer dry climates and primarily live in Western and Southwestern states with arid and semi-arid habitats. They are prevalent in Arizona, California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oregon and Washington. But they're in other places as well. South Florida has the Mexican red rump and the Texas brown can be found in Oklahoma and Missouri. There are 29 described individual species of tarantulas in the United States. Common species include the desert blonde tarantula and the Texas brown (though Texas has 14 tarantula species). In Arizona, there's even a variety with a fiery-red abdomen. When are you likely to see tarantulas in the wild? Tarantulas live in these areas year-round, but they mostly keep to themselves and their nests in the ground, so hikers and campers don't see a lot of them. 'As with most things that live in the desert in the summer, they're generally nocturnal,' McCamish said. 'So unless you're out in the middle of the night, which I don't recommend for safety purposes, you likely won't see them.' Then in fall, September, October, November, the weather starts to shift. 'They generally wait for the first fall seasonal rain – they really respond to the late summer warmth and the increase in moisture,' he said. 'They're typically out from late evening into early dawn,' he said. 'That's when visitors tend to see them,' said McCamish. 'The males are the ones you'll see crawling around. If you come upon a tarantula out in the wild and it's wandering about, it's likely a male. If you come upon one that's sitting in its burrow or on top of a hole, it's likely a female waiting for males to mate with,' he said. Why don't we see tarantulas at other times of the year? Both males and females retreat to their burrows in the winter, where they enter a kind of torpor that isn't true hibernation. In the spring they begin hunting again, though not far from their shelters. The arachnids build webs nears their burrows where they capture insects, beetles, grasshoppers and smaller spiders for food. 'They're ambush hunters. The females weave a web around the hole to their burrow that's sensitive to the touch. If an insect comes across it, the spider pounces and kills it with their fangs,' he said. The males also go out to hunt on foot. However, this tends to happen late at night when the desert comes alive – and humans aren't typically out, which is why most desert visitors never see them. The short, harsh reality of a male tarantula's life Male and female tarantulas live very different lives. Females stay near their burrows, hunting, feeding and growing and can live for up to 20 to 25 years. Males, not so much. Once they're hatched, they create burrows and spend a few years, generally no more than five, slowly growing, molting several times as they do. When they are ready to go out to find a mate in the cool fall, they leave their burrows and begin wandering, sniffing the air for female pheromones. The females come out of their burrows at night, staying nearby as they wait for the males. If the male finds a female, and she accepts him, they will mate. But it's a brief moment of happiness for the male. 'The harsh reality is that generally after the male breeds, it passes away,' McCamish said. Often, the female will eat her mate, though not always. It depends on whether she fed before mating or has an ample food supply. If the male doesn't find a mate, it can potentially burrow back in for another year, but this depends on its molting schedule - if the male spider needs to molt again after it becomes sexually viable, it may die because it cannot molt a second time. "Generally, once the male has emerged, if it is unsuccessful in finding a mate during the season, it will likely die due to exhaustion," he said. Here's why you shouldn't kill tarantulas If you see a tarantula, leave it alone. It plays an important part in nature. These large, hairy spiders contribute to ecological balance, acting as insect control – they are slow, patient ambush predators that regulate biodiversity. Their burrows improve soil aeration and water filtration, especially in the desert during flooding events. And after they abandon their burrows, they become refuges for other animals including lizards, insects and other small mammals, McCamish said. They're also an excellent midlevel ecological stabilizer that tells biologists at a glance if an ecosystem is healthy. 'If there are tarantulas living somewhere, you can generally assume the habitat is functioning,' McCamish said. What eats tarantulas? Tarantulas may look terrifying as they make their leggy way across the landscape, but they're nowhere near the top of the food chain. They can be food for foxes, coyotes, snakes, owls and skunks – one reason they lay low except when the mating imperative sends them out into a dangerous world. There's also a rather gruesome fate that can await them – an encounter with a tarantula hawk wasp. These are large wasps, an inch or two long, that have bright orange wings and sound like a Cessna airplane engine if they fly by your ear, said McCamish. 'Their sting has been compared to ... the second or third worst sting of any insect in the world,' he said. The sting isn't the worst of it for tarantulas. 'They land on their back and then bite the tarantula to paralyze it. Then they lay their eggs inside it, turning the spider's body into a living food source once the larva hatch,' McCamish said. Are tarantulas dangerous? Tarantulas don't want to interact with humans any more than most humans want to interact with them. 'No native tarantulas in the United States pose a serious threat to humans,' McCamish said. The only caveat is if someone has had serious reactions to spider bites in the past. In reality, the danger only comes when people try to pick them up or play with them, or if they get in the way of a male and female mating. Because they're naturally timid, observing them from a few feet away is fine. 'If it starts coming towards you, give it some space. It might be defending its eggs, or you might have interrupted a mating ritual between a male and female,' he said. Touching a tarantula can be painful because they have tiny barbed hairs on their abdomen called urticating hairs. 'They can actually flick those hairs off their back feet like darts,' he said. If they get on your skin – or worse your eye if you picked it up to look more closely – it could cause irritation. How do you convince a tarantula to go away? During mating season, it's not uncommon for a tarantula to wander into campsites or tents, McCamish said. To gently and safely encourage it to be on its way, the best method is to find a stick and give it a 'light tickle' on its abdomen to get it to move away. 'Just give it a light boop on the base of its abdomen and generally they'll move in that direction,' he said. If the tarantula has come into contact with your clothing, bedding or a pillow, it's not a bad idea to wipe it down or even take duct tape and dab it on the surface to remove any of the irritating hairs that might have stuck. Tarantulas can jump as much as two feet There is one thing to be aware of – these spiders can jump as much as a foot or two, and they can get into trees. 'They're ambush predators, after all,' McCamish said. 'Just because they're ground dwelling creatures that doesn't mean they don't climb bushes or trees.' This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Tarantula mating season is coming. Brace for 'hordes' of them. Solve the daily Crossword
