The Celebrity Chef Anthony Bourdain Had An Ongoing Feud With

In the pantheon of Food Network personalities, few figures are as visually iconic as Guy Fieri. With his flame shirts, frosted tips, bleached soul patch, and sunglasses perched oh-so-casually backwards on his head, Fieri is a walking caricature of late-2000s food culture. For years, he was also a favorite punching bag of the late Anthony Bourdain. The "feud" between the two celebrity chefs (if it can even be called that) was less a rivalry and more like a long-running monologue of roast comedy. So why did Bourdain, the former chef turned globe-trotting culinary raconteur, have it out for Guy Fieri, the unofficial mayor of Flavortown? The answer lies somewhere between aesthetics, ethics, and ego.

Bourdain's disdain for Fieri was never exactly subtle. During interviews, as well as his nationwide standup tour, he openly mocked Fieri's wardrobe, his spiky bleached hair, his unhealthy food, and his restaurant empire. During his own 2012 charity roast for the New York City Wine & Food Festival, Bourdain famously asked Fieri, "When will you start to de-douche? Are we going to gradually segue to more age-appropriate attire?"

Truthfully told, this wasn't just about personality, although Fieri's over-the-top vibe did clash with Bourdain's brooding cool. It was also about ideology. Bourdain saw himself as a self-aware truth-teller, someone who championed culinary authenticity and cultural respect in an increasingly commercialized food landscape. To him, Fieri represented the opposite: a vapid version of food television, all spectacle and donkey sauce, devoid of any depth.

It's arguable that the core of the clash was a class tension that Anthony Bourdain often critiqued, even if he embodied it himself. He was a former chain-smoking line cook turned literary darling, with a refined, yet worldly palate for both Vietnamese street food and Parisian fine dining. Guy Fieri, on the other hand, drove neon muscle cars and celebrated populist comfort food at America's best-loved greasy spoons.

Fieri's tackiness hit its peak with the 2012 opening of Guy's American Kitchen & Bar in Times Square, where Bourdain couldn't help but spew some hilarious one-liners. Interestingly, Fieri didn't take the bait, wisely choosing to stay in his lane. "It's actually disappointing," Fieri told GQ in 2015. "I don't like him making fun of people, and I don't like him talking s***." Fieri even suggested that the critiques stemmed from jealousy or confusion about his appeal. And he may have been right.

In later years, Bourdain's disdain about Fieri faded. Other well-respected chefs gave Fieri props for his charitable work, particularly during natural disasters. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Fieri helped raise more than $20 million for laid-off restaurant workers. These actions actually lined up with Bourdain's own ethics. In the end, the so-called feud might say more about the ever-changing food media landscape than the men themselves. Bourdain was the poet laureate of subversive food culture; Fieri was (some) people's champion. Both, in their own ways, celebrated food not as status, but as storytelling.