Guy Fieri - Guy Fieri Food: Cookin It, Livin It, Lovin It

I cant play the guitar, but I can rock the pizza peel!

In 1970, when I was two and a half, my mom walked into the kitchen to find her friend Gary leaning down toward me growling, Rah rah muck! and then Id scream, Rah rah muck! back to him, and hed say it back to me, and Id scream it again, back and forth.

M OM : Gary what are you doing?

G ARY : I dont know! Your kid comes in here and screams, Rah rah muck!

M OM : Hed like some rah rah (crackers) and muck (milk).

My first words were always about food, and I seriously considered titling this book Rah Rah Muck .

This book tells my storythe best way I know howthrough photos and stories of my family, my great friends and mentors, and of course, the awesome food along the way.

I grew up in Northern Californiacamping, riding horses, raising pigs, and cooking (and performing) at family reunions. I had my own pretzel cart business as a kid and carted myself off to France (and a year of great food) in high school. At every step and stage, there have been key dishes that keep the memories alive, like the Cherries Jubilee and Caesar Salad I mastered while working as a teen flamb captain or the Tequila Turkey Fettuccine Alfredo that was my ace-in-the-hole on The Next Food Network Star.

These dishes and many more tell the story of my life, but I challenge you to make them your own; I want you to! The other day a valet told me hed added bacon to my recipe for jalapeno muffins, and I said, Yes, thats it, dude! Go for it!

People often ask me, How did this happen for you? And beyond the path Ill tell you about in this book, in the end I know its not luck. All along the way, from opening restaurants to hosting Triple D and Guys Big Bite, one of the most important things Ive had going for me was the support and belief of my family. If were measured by our families, then I am a giant. But Ive also had great business partners and team members and producersthe list goes on and on.

My first manager, Jack Levar, once taught me an important lesson: Surround yourself with good peoplesuccessful peoplewho merit honor and respect. It comes down to whether you want to plant a seed in the sand or in fertile soil. So, Ive felt like a quarterback with a great front line. Yes, Ive had energy and enthusiasm for the things Ive done, but quite honestly, just as Superman had Lois Lane and the Karate Kid had Mr. Miyagi, its the people who have believed in me that have been my biggest blessing.

Now lets get cookin!

In May 1996, my business partner, Steve Gruber, and I moved to Santa Rosa, California, and began one of the most intense periods of my career. Id gotten to know Steve in Southern California when we were both working for Louises Trattoria. Pretty soon wed divided and conquered, and we each managed half the restaurants in that region, growing a small chain of seven to seventeen locations. Steve describes the next stage like this:

One day after many, many monthly manager meetings in our very corporate restaurant world, Guy and I were sitting in his old monster Chevy, and he asked if I ever wanted to open a restaurant on my own. So I patted Guy down to see if he was wearing a wire, then we drove up into the hills over Los Angeles and started working on concepts. One day I called Guy and told him I was going in and giving my notice that day. I dont know if he believed I was ever really going to leave, but that was the first step. So I gathered my wife and newborn and moved to Lake Tahoe to scout it out.

Cutting the ribbon at Johnny Garlics in Santa Rosa. The small boy on the left is Steves son, Jonathan (Johnny), and the baby on the right is my son Hunter.

After Steve had checked out Tahoe and decided that the slow season was just way too slow, he moved his family to Santa Rosa, where my wife, Lori, and I were living. When I was a kid, Santa Rosa was the first big city you came to when driving south four hours from my tiny Northern California town of Ferndale. There was a big mall where wed all go school shopping. (If youd been to the mall at Coddingtown, youd seen it all; this was the big-time!) It was also where people would come after graduating from high school to get jobs. By this time, Lori was pregnant and I cooked, waited tables, and bartended in order to network and get to know the community.

For everything we did, we were low on money and long on planning. Wed do our recipe testing in our garage for the menu every nightand if we were testing garlic soup (which we perfected), then thats what our wives were eating that night for dinner. We already knew that my Cajun Chicken al Fredo (see Cajun Chicken Alfredo) was going to be the first thing on the menu, and we had very strong ideas about how we were going to break out of the norm with a made-from-scratch focus to all our food.

In looking for a place to open, we came across a man named Big John Pavelka, who owned the building that used to be the Big Johns Chicken and currently was a failing Italian restaurant. Here we were, two twenty-five-year-old guys, and here comes Big John, pulling up in his big blue Cadillac and checking us out. In the end, he decided hed give us a shot and carry part of the purchase price of the business. It was a big risk, but he had the swagger of John Wayne and the heart of a lion. The funny thing was, Id been turned down for a job in that very restaurant when Id gotten into town, because the manager wanted to date a girl who was also applying! That was a funny conversation after I became the leader

Thanks to Grubers mom and my parents (who, to my surprise, mortgaged their house to help), we had just enough scraped together to open Johnny Garlics. Steve had come up with Johnny because ever since his kid had been born Id insisted on calling him Johnny instead of Jonathan. And we added the Garlics because our bold, flavorful, eclectic food gave a lot of love to the bodacious garlic bulb, which is used the world over. By October, six months after arriving in town, we were about to open with about twenty-five thousand bucks in operating capital.

Wed done all these models about how wed stay open if we didnt get any traffic. Well, that didnt happen. We had a three-hour wait the first night and every night for the first three years. It was one of the loudest restaurants people had ever visited, with an open-theater kitchen and great music, and it was packed like a subway station. Everyone left jacked up on fun. The Sizzler next door had to send guards out to keep people from parking in their driveway. People were tailgating outside while they waited for a table, on lawn chairs, playing music and drinking beers!