Few things go together like football and Guy Fieri, so it’s no surprise that the Mayor of Flavortown will be making an appearance on your television screen on Super Bowl Sunday. What might be a little more shocking is how he does it.
When the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dive host shared a clip of himself without his signature goatee and spiky ice-blonde hair for his birthday last week, viewers were understandably rattled. In the video, Fieri declares that after so many years of celebrating his birthday as “Guy,” this year he’s decided to be “Just a Guy,” sporting a checkered button-down shirt and sleek brunette hair.
Now, we have a little more insight into why Fieri decided to forgo his famous look. Home appliance brand Bosch revealed in a teaser today that it’s teaming up with Fieri on its ad for the Big Game. And based on the glimpse of the ad we have so far, which features someone holding a pair of electric clippers as they approach Fieri, it looks like “Just a Guy” might be the real star of the spot.
We’ll have to wait a little bit longer before Bosch reveals what really happens — does Guy Fieri change his iconic look? — but in the meantime, we had the opportunity to sit down with the Food Network star himself to chat about everything from why he partnered with this brand to how he uses appliances in his own home.
Even before working with Bosch on its Super Bowl promotion this year, Fieri was an advocate for the brand, telling Food & Wine, “I was already a fan of Bosch, and I have a lot of Bosch tools and a Bosch dishwasher.” We’ve learned a lot about the famous chef’s cooking — and what he looks for in restaurants across the country — over the years, but we wanted a little more insight into his kitchen routines at home. And any mention of a dishwasher inevitably raises a controversial household question: How do you load your dirty dishes?
We’ve asked our own staff this question before, and it proved controversial. You might think Fieri runs the kitchen in his house, but according to the television star, even he adheres to the “formal instructions of loading the dishwasher per my wife Lori’s expectations.”
Courtesy of Bosch
Deciding how to load the dishwasher might be one of the most common spousal debates, and like so many other home cooks, Fieri is following his wife’s specific method for placing plates, bowls, glasses, and silverware in the appliance. As he tells Food & Wine, “I would be lying to you if I said that I did not take a picture of loading the dishwasher — of how I did it — just to get the sign-off that I had done it correctly.”
The Mayor of Flavortown emphasizes that “if you let the dishwasher do its work, it does a fantastic job, but you gotta give it the chance to do it. You can’t put a big bowl in the bottom of the dishwasher and then expect the glasses above it to get all the attention that they need.”
This philosophy is especially important when washing crystal glasses or other items you don’t want to get water spots on. Fieri notes that he loves the Crystal Dry technology in his own Bosch dishwasher, but says, “you gotta let the thing do its work and let it do its drying.” So please don’t pull your dishes out before the appliance has finished its full cycle.
To settle perhaps the most divisive part of loading the dishwasher, the Tournament of Champions host confirms that when putting utensils in the dishwasher basket, “I’m handles down, because I was told to [put the] handle down.” After you’ve watched the Super Bowl this year and kept an eye out for Fieri’s full transformation on-screen, at least you won’t have to argue about how to load the dishwasher.
