Guy Fieri’s key catchphrase was purely accidental.
The Tournament of Champions host told Stephen Colbert about the fortuitous creation of “Flavortown” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on Wednesday, Feb. 26.
“‘Flavortown’ was this mythical place that [I’d go] every time I’d try something really great,” he said, explaining that he first used the phrase when talking bout a huge pizza.. “[I] said, ‘Look at this thing! It’s like the steering wheel on the bus going to Flavortown.’ That’s all I said!”
“I said it a couple of other times about ‘a manhole cover in Flavortown,’ and then people started walking up in airports, going, ‘Hey! Flavortown!’ And then, someone yelled at me, ‘It’s the Mayor of Flavortown!’” he recalled. Fieri said he had to ask his film crew for clarity on what was going on and they told him, “You keep repeating this Flavortown thing.”
“Flavortown” blossomed beyond a catchphrase fans associate with the Food Network star. It is also the name of his cookware and sauce lines and some of his restaurants.
“I became the mayor but somebody appointed my son as ‘The Prince of Flavortown,’” Fieri added with a laugh.
Several parts of Fieri’s iconic look were serendipitous. In March 2023, the restaurant owner told WSJ. Magazine that bowling shirts are not his usual wardrobe.
“I don’t think I even own one [bowling shirt],” the father of two said at the time. “I’m pretty much a T-shirt and jeans guy. Shorts. Flip-flops. I’m not a real fashion icon.”
Fieri’s now-iconic bowling shirt came about nearly 20 years ago. Fieri was wearing the look in his audition tape for The Next Food Network Star (which he won in 2006).
Then when “I get a call to do Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives … they said, ‘Bring a short-sleeved collared shirt’,” added Fieri, who wore a gray Dickies work shirt with a dark gray panel in the center for the shoot. “When the show got picked up, that’s what I had worn in the pilot. They go, ‘That’s the wardrobe.'”
Similarly, his bleached spiky hairstyle was also another accidental hit.
During the same interview, Fieri explained, “A friend of mine is a hairdresser, and I had long hair and she would give me a hard time forever about it and one day I said, ‘Fine, do whatever you want.’ She goes, ‘Whatever I want?'”
Fieri said his first instinct at the time was to hide his newly bleached hair with a beanie but he has come to embrace the ‘do.
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