Greetings from Flavortown USA

Favorite Boston spot

J.T. Farnum’s
88 Eastern Ave.
South Essex
978-768-6643

 

 

Fieri serves up diner picks in his book and show. 

 

Food Network star Guy Fieri isn’t the mayor of Flavortown, but he is one of the founding fathers. As the winner of the second season of “The Next Food Network Star,” Fieri has quickly earned a following, and so has his favorite fictional town, which he references with regularity.

“If something is all-American, it comes from the United States. My ongoing joke is if something has great flavor, then it’s from Flavortown,” Fieri says. With his show and book, both titled “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” Fieri finds bits of Flavortown scattered across the country in small mom and pop restaurants.         

Always in search of a new hidden gem, Fieri scopes out the independent restaurants wherever he goes, much to his wife’s chagrin. “It drives her nuts,” he says. “I’ll look at 10 locations before I’ll stop somewhere. When people come out, I ask them what was good.”

It’s with this time-tested approach that Fieri has uncovered some of the finest small-town food that the country has to offer. Of the diners, drive-ins and dives, he tends to find the dives to be the most interesting. “In our show, ‘dive’ embodies the place where the food and service speak on their own and people enjoy the environment or tolerate it because [the other stuff is] that good,” says Fieri.

Despite being a TGI Friday’s spokesman, Fieri is effusive about his passion for independent eats across the country. “I get a chance to shine a spotlight on these culinary heroes,” he says. “This is the food that built this country.”