9 Foods You’ll Never See Guy Fieri Eat

With a big personality and bold gastronomical attitude, chef and T.V. host Guy Fieri leads his hit show, “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” (known as Triple D by diehard fans) with a pioneering attitude to showcase the nation’s underrated culinary gems. The Food Network star earned a name for himself going up and down the country sampling mostly greasy-spoon Americana digs but also ethnic eateries stirring up dishes that are equally worth a bite. While the bites are typically standard, they sometimes venture into strange territory that even positive and magnetic Fieri can’t seem to stomach.

The picky eaters of the world stick to their bland but trusty chicken tenders, cheeseburgers, and mac ‘n cheese. Objectively, Guy Fieri does not fall into that category. The man has next-to-no limits in what he’ll ingest, easily chowing down on societal anomalies like pig’s feet on-screen without a flinch. Fieri’s biggest cult followers might struggle to recall the adventurous chef dissing a dish. There’s a methodical reason why Fieri rarely puckers his face at a chef’s meal. In a podcast episode of The Moment with Brian Koppelman, he confessed he’s “staunchly opposed to including footage of himself criticizing the food that he doesn’t like.”

Despite Guy’s chivalrous attempts at helping restaurants save face, he sometimes can’t help but flash his emotions on his own as the regret rises before he can gulp down eats that are far from Fieri’s favorite food. But despite his attempted discrepancy, the Mayor of Flavortown has been vocal about his boundaries when it comes to trying a few foods twice. Some are reasonable, others you’ve likely never heard of, and one or two are downright shocking.

How could it be that the seemingly invincible taste buds of a man who’s tried a biscuits and gravy burrito can’t stomach this common favorite breakfast food? The answer is simple — a traumatic childhood memory. Celebrities are people, too, and Guy Fieri makes this glaringly evident with his aversion to eggs seared into his brain after several awful incidents.

In an interview with Extra Crispy, Fieri broke down the reason why, claiming he “used to eat fried egg sandwiches like they were going out of style,” (via Distractify). But things went steeply downhill after the award-winning chef cracked open an egg at the tender age of 10, only to find a dead baby chick inside. And though eye-opening, he explained that’s not even what sealed the deal. The final nail in the clucking coffin was a bad experience with a hard-boiled egg whose yolk tasted chalky.

Fieri has never been shy about vocalizing his distaste for the versatile white-and-yellow food. But you can see the chef’s unease for yourself in a Food Network video as a woman cracks two jiggling eggs over a pizza. He took a courageous bite as the yellow yolks ran down, admitting it wasn’t all that bad. Likely because he can still stomach the food in dressings, though sunny-side up, over easy, or scrambled are a hard pass, as stated in an exchange with People Magazine.

What you can count on Fieri grabbing for a first meal is ham and grits or fruit and juice. Admittedly, the T.V. star full of life believably claims he wakes up energized with little need for breakfast to fuel him in the early hours of the day. And, honestly, in this economy? It’s not the worst food to hate.

You’ll never find liver on Guy Fieri’s fork. You either love or hate the polarizing organ meat that’s mineral-dense and earthy-flavored, and Fieri fiercely falls into the latter category, vocalizing his disdain for the unconventional protein source in various interviews. In the pro-chef’s words, “liver is nasty,” per People.

Records show that Guy’s not the only person who regurgitates at the thought of consuming the bitter and metallic-tasting organ. It tops the list of America’s most hated foods, notes Forbes. But considering the off-putting plate packs enough protein to help you reach your fitness goals, is full of healthy nutrients, and is easy on the wallet, it’s fair to say it doesn’t deserve its bad reputation. If everyone, Guy included, could look past the funky flavor, they’d all be a little bit healthier.

To power through the controversial dish better, Chef Nate Allen recommends mixing the food with other strong flavors to avoid an overpowering smell and taste of liver that reminds you with every bite that you’re eating organs. One popular veggie people have been pairing with the meat since the Roman Empire is onions, which, when caramelized, provides a palatable texture contrast and balances the bitterness of the liver with its sweet flavor profile. However, the lethal combo is “kryptonite” to the T.V. chef, as was revealed in an interview with The Daily Beast. Without shame, he stated that he “can’t even be in the same room” as the pairing and that “you could hide keys to a free Ferrari under liver and onions and I wouldn’t be driving it.” Considering the overpowering odor, you can’t blame him.

If someone asked you to name popular Mexican dishes, you’d likely utter food like tacos, enchiladas, and tamales without a stutter. But the country’s cultural cuisine extends beyond the mainstream bites you’d find in the U.S. Among the top common eats are menudo and pozole, two hearty, typically homemade soups that are meant to be enjoyed on weekends (mainly because they’re best shared in the company of friends and family, but also partially because they’re a killer hangover cure). While there’s no documented proof (and no justification) Guy Fieri hates pozole, menudo is instead on his blacklist, and for one reason only — it includes tripe.

Menudo’s most controversial ingredient is quite literally the stomach lining of an animal, typically a cow. Tripe comes in four cuts of meat, each from a different stomach compartment, and while it features a potent smell, its taste is rather mild. If you can look past the unfavorable and unconventional part of the body it comes from, it’s not all that bad. The spongy honeycomb texture of the meat allows it to soak up the other flavors in the bowl. So, when thrown into a bowl of menudo, it lets the taste of oregano, onions, lime, and chili sauce shine while adding a chewy consistency.

Mild flavor or not, the man who’s tried gator burgers downright cannot look past the fact that the Mexican soup contains organic meat. In the “Like Mama Made” episode of “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives,” you can see a visibly distraught Fieri taking a long pause before bravely gulping down a spoonful of menudo at a Phoenix-based Mexican restaurant. Needless to say, we’ll place our bets that he’ll order pozole next time.

In Guy Fieri’s self-proclaimed Flavortown, spicy food gets the green flag. While the Emmy-award-winning chef doesn’t always indulge in the thrill of a painfully pleasurable meal that makes your eyes water and your forehead drip in sweat, he still admits our food in America should have a bit more kick to it. This is what makes it so ironic that the man who calls himself the Mayor of Spicy Wings, per an interview on “Hot Ones,” can’t stomach some ghost peppers.

As the eighth hottest pepper in the world, ghost peppers are not for the weak. Also known as the Bhut Jolokia, it’s cultivated in India and features about one million Scoville heat units, which is enough to make the toughest culinary soldiers fall to their knees — and Guy is no exception to the rule. In a “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” episode featuring honey ghost wings, the T.V. host claimed he didn’t even want to glance at the food because “the ghost peppers are gonna eat my soul.”

Meanwhile, in the Triple D episode “Dynamic Dishes,” Fieri jets off to the Rainbow State to sample some underrepresented ethnic cuisine. But his stop at a Jamaican-Hawaiian fusion restaurant (or “Jawaiian” as they dubbed it) got heated as the hellish blend of Hawaiian chili, ghost peppers, and scotch bonnet, the chef called “fire in your wire” hot sauce, hit his lips. The Food Network clip posted by Daily Motion displays in real-time as the spices kick in. Attempting to stay positive through the pain, Fieri muttered “That’s fantastic” before biting into a whole pineapple for some sweet relief.

If imagining gulping down cow brains gives you a jump scare, you’re not alone. While the controversial food is commonplace in many cultures, most of the U.S. population — Guy Fieri included — wouldn’t touch it with a stick. However, for good television’s sake, Guy pushed his limits past his comfort zone in a season 7 episode of “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” when he hesitatingly gave the questionable organ meat a try.

The anxiety-riddled moment of truth, which you can catch on a Food Network clip posted on YouTube, includes a double-whammy of beef brains and Fieri’s other most-hated food (eggs). Sampling the food that “looked like a hot dog,” according to the cameraman, went just as expected, with the T.V. host nearly regurgitating and promptly grabbing the nearest edible item at arm’s length to counter the taste. Unfortunately, that just so happened to be lamb testicles, which are arguably even worse.

The day wasn’t a total loss for Fieri, though. If you consider the robust nutritional content of beef brains and its power-packed protein, especially when mixed with eggs, his body will have definitely thanked him, even though his taste buds didn’t.

Guy Fieri is typically a fiend for a juicy cut of pork. In a clip of “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives,” the Flavortown commander is presented with a dish of jiggling soy sauce-glazed pork belly that he devours in the blink of an eye. Fieri also didn’t gate-keep his tangy and hearty pork chile verde recipe, which can be made in a seamless instant with a pressure cooker. But his appetite for the protein has its limits because there’s one pig-derived plate that gives the spiky-haired chef a visceral reaction (and you might have never heard of it).

If you’re not from the mid-Atlantic, you might be wondering what scrapple is. Essentially, the meaty meal is exactly what it sounds like — a concoction of pork scraps gathered from every leftover part of a pig, mixed together with flour and cornmeal. It’s native to Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the southern part of New York and features a crunchy crust with a mushy interior meant to be eaten with sandwich bread, eggs, pancakes, and other foods associated with the most important meal of the day. Of course, as a common substitute for breakfast sausage, it’s already off to a bad start for breakfast-avoidant Fieri.

In a Triple D segment posted on YouTube, you can spot Guy’s confused face as he picks up the questionable fare cooked at Philly’s locale, The Dining Cart, asking, “Is this meat?” And while the restaurant regulars sang the mystery meat praises, all Fieri had to say was, “That’s funkadelic, man.” Considering Guy’s reputation for not insulting an establishment outright, ‘funkadelic’ was probably the nicest description that came to mind.

There’s a pattern to what the normally adventurous professional T.V. host and taste tester, Guy Fieri, steers clear of. On his do-not-eat list is every type of organ meat in existence, which is why you can expect hell to freeze over before the pop culture chef consumes an entire plate of Haggis. The plate that is Scotland’s national dish is also banned in the U.S. for containing livestock lungs, but the horrors don’t stop there. To complete the meal, you’ll need liver, heart, oatmeal, beef fat, onions, and spices, all stuffed into a pig’s stomach before being served to you like you just time-traveled two centuries back.

There are many foods Fieri won’t eat, but few that he won’t try, and the laundry list of bodily ingredients found in the Scottish staple didn’t stop the gastronomical icon from popping a bite on DDD. The scene went down at Mac’s Fish & Chips shop in Santa Barbara, where a British-born chef brought authentic U.K. cuisine to the Golden State. While other staples like golden crispy cod, gravy-drenched bangers and mash, and “light and fluffy” Yorkshire pudding all passed Fieri’s vibe check, he admitted he was “on the fence” about trying the controversial food. However, his culinary competitor, Bourdain, had a vastly different opinion on the dish, stating, “There is no more unfairly reviled food on Earth than the Haggis,” per CNN.

Peanut butter hamburgers are not quite the wildest burgers you’ll find in America (unless it’s the Peanut Butter and Jellousy Burger at Slater’s 50/50). Still, they’re enough to scare gastronomical titan Guy Fieri into a frenzy. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the food rockstar assured, “I do not critique. If I don’t like the food, you won’t see it on my shows.”

It’s an honorable gesture that Triple XXX of West Lafayette, Indiana, didn’t get graced with on a cutthroat episode of Triple D. In a clip of the culinary show uploaded to Youtube, the network television host outright proclaims “I absolutely don’t enjoy that at all… I wanna go home” after attempting a bite of the restaurant’s Duane Purvis burger complete with a slice of cheese, a beef patty, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, white onion, and a generous slab of PB to which Guy blurted out, “that much?!”

Some seasons later, Guy gave peanut butter burgers another go while in Bakersfield, California, which you can see on YouTube. After taking a long, anxiety-filled pause, he took a hefty mouthful of peanut butter burger number two before admittedly stating, “I never thought it would happen… nicely done, my friend.” The trick? Adding way more ingredients than your classic cheeseburger.

Chances are that growing up, you played the game where you chose all your favorite foods to eat for your supposed final supper. Thanks to a Triple D episode that exposed one of the chef-turned-T.V. icon’s most hated fare, chitlins, we know what wouldn’t be included in Fieri’s hypothetical last meal (along with all the other variations of organ meat, of course). In an interview with Philly Voice, he surprisingly revealed that he wouldn’t go back to any of the restaurants on “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.” Instead, he’d indulge in Mexican food cooked by the gastronomical star himself.

Back to chitlins, also known as chitterlings, it’s clear why Guy Fieri won’t allow the gut-esque food anywhere near him unless it’s on a paid televised segment. Most offal dishes that extract every last part of an animal’s body are found abroad, but chitlins boast a proud all-American heritage. With pig intestines that are boiled or fried with onions and spices and served with hot sauce and apple cider vinegar, the plate is as Southern as they come.

Fieri went face to face with his edible nemesis, chitterlings, during a visit to Cora Faye’s Cafe in Denver, Colorado, while filming DDD. The restaurant owner assured that despite the overbearing stench of intestines, the meal was so in-demand that it sold out every week. Considering Guy had to mask the taste with an unholy amount of hot sauce, we doubt he’ll try it twice.