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Boston Flavortown shrinking: Guy Fieri eatery at the Garden to be replaced with something that doesn't involve frosted tips
By adamg on Wed, 11/15/2023 - 10:37am
The operators of Guy Fieri's Tequila Cocina at the Hub on Causeway plan to recast the 185-seatspace to focus on American food and games patrons can play, under the name Play.
Big Night Live attorney Kristen Scanlon the Boston Licensing Board today that the operators felt something like that would fit in better with the sports-focused environment surrounding the Garden. The board formally decides whether to approve the name change tomorrow. Nobody spoke against the proposal.
Fieri fans can still eat at Guy Fieri's Boston at Tremont and Boylston streets.
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Comments
A fine food-TV personality, a lousy
restaurateur. I got the shittiest, wateriest margarita in a plastic cup for $20 at that TD Garden spot. Shame on your money-grubbin' ways there, Guy.
He's done good by some worthy mom 'n pops with Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives -- I steered his producers to Rino's Place in Eastie, which except by me had gone unreviewed in the local press and largely ignored -- but woe to the fans gullible enough not to know his restaurants have always been mediocre to awful.
Professional critics generally hate to write pans, but they make gleeful exceptions when greed combines with ineptitude at places like this.
Fuck food-TV celebrity chefs. Support your local indies!
Is the food worse than his on-camera presence?
Whenever I'm in a hotel I hate-watch his show on FoodTV for a few minutes. His shows airs 10+ hours a day. (Seriously! Check the schedule! His 30 min show airs 32 times in a row this Friday.)
On camera he's a jerk. On his "Diners..." show he goes to independent restaurants and tell them what they are doing wrong or lavishes them with mindless praise. He's condescending and pompous.
Maybe he's awesome in person but I can't see why anyone would enjoy watching his show. I've never once read a good review of his restaurants, although I have read some awesome burns.
I have a very low tolerance for food TV in
general, and I find Fieri's onscreen persona painful -- the same crass, goofy shtick over and over and over again -- but he obviously pulls ratings or he wouldn't be on for hours every day. I have friends who are fans.
You couldn't pay me to watch the competition shows, but as I said earlier, at least DDD brings attention to some worthy small operators.
As a rule, if the restaurant or bar's marquee name comes from food TV or social media, it's going to be overpriced and not good. See Salt Bae, Fieri, Ramsay (who actually used to be a great restaurateur), Taffer (the worst), etc.
The Manchurian TV Host
Do his shows even get good ratings? I figure it's a scheme where FoodTV plasters everything with his likeness so people assume other people must like the dude so they should too.
You wonder how many can't stand his personality but don't want to say anything since they assume other people must think he's great. (That's how I feel about Star Wars.)
His contract is probably such he makes no per-airing residuals so once they've recouped the relative small production costs, they don't need good ratings to make money. And as much as I hate his show, at least it's not cable news. It's some of the least offensive programming on linear TV. How depressing is that?
What say you about Star Wars?
What is wrong with a fantasy that is veneered with space opera where story is simplistic, reaching for the LCD of entertainment? What about the westerns of Star Wars? Don't they have any redeeming value?
Star Wars was fine for its moment when a soon to be senile actor played the role of chief executive in the nation. Star Wars hit the sweet spot of resurrecting the fantasy of a 1950s US where we're saints in the grubby world of politics and everyone else is at best compromised or at worst downright evil!
It is understandable however that Disney Inc. would buy the Star Wars franchise. They are executors par excellence of sensory fantasy. As opposed to the mental fantasies of religion.
It is one of the ironies though of political zeitgeist that a major producer of American cultural product would wind up on the opposite side of major religions centered in the same geographical region (i.e., the South) in the zeitgeist of culture war.
see the rules
You can only say "zeitgeist" once per comment
How "Star Wars" became popular
I am the only person still alive who remembers when the original "Star Wars" movie made it's appearance in 1977. For months, and I mean MONTHS beforehand we were deluged with ads. In the newspapers (which were a thing back then), on TV, on radio (which was a thing back then), I mean everywhere. By the time it hit theaters every person on the planet had heard of it and was basically hypnotized or beaten down into seeing it. That accounted for it's popularity. And things kind of grew from there. That type of scorched earth ad campaign might be commonplace now, but believe me it was new back then and it worked.
Jimmy Carter was president
Jimmy Carter was president when Star Wars was released.
Keep in mind that Fieri is just the name on the door.
A few years ago there was a big sexual harassment/ assault case at a "Guy Fieri's" in NY. He explained then that he licenses his name to these places, and has nothing to do with running the place: They pay him for naming rights, he supposedly helps w the menu, shows up at the grand opening and never has anything else to do with the place again. Shortly after that story we got the announcement that a "Guy Fieri's" would open at North Station.
This is not support for Guy, who I view as a bag of Doritos that somehow came to life.
"I just license my name" is not a
get-out-of-jail free card. If you are profiting from the business, you had better make sure it lives up to your own legal, ethical and professional standards. (Never mind Fieri's own allegations of harassment and homophobia, or his scum-of-the-earth friends like that Barstool walking turd.)
Holy moly, Stromboli!
Holy moly, Stromboli!
Have you seen the pre-show commercial for his other property?
It runs on some screens at the AMC theater just down the block. I'm always amused by how he tries to establish his Boston cred by mentioning his proximity to the "Commons" and including a clip of his Barstool Sports buddy.
The dystopia of North Station
That whole North Station area is one big mess. Between the shiny, new, yet somehow unattractive looking pseudo-upscale places, the broken down buildings on the other side of the street, the hordes of Mini-Methadone-Mile denizens that populate the sidewalks in both semi-upright and reclining positions, all of them smoking, and the tourists taking pictures of the Bobby Orr statue and the Boston Garden electronic marquee (go figure), it adds up to something very unappealing.
North Station
All you say is true (I once reported the same pool of blood to 311 because the city workers couldn't find it after the first report.). The one thing I find attractive about the new North Station is the Star. Prices are not great, but it is huge for the city and I go there to supplement my trips to Market Basket in Chelsea.