Guy Fieri on His Favorite Food Destinations—and the Surprising Restaurant He Says Is Always Worth a Detour: Exclusive

Even when the cameras aren’t rolling, Guy Fieri will go the distance for a good meal. Whether he’s in the Boston area for work or stopping by his Connecticut restaurant at Foxwoods, he prioritizes a visit to Olneyville NY System in Providence, Rhode Island, for its hot dogs topped with meat sauce, onions, and celery salt.

“My mouth waters just thinking about it,” the restaurateur and host of Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives since 2007 told Travel + Leisure at a Waterloo Sparkling Water event in New York City earlier this month. “If I’m anytime within distance of it, we divert. We will go and get a dozen of these dogs, no problem.”

Mileage is a non-factor when it comes to scouring the world for the most flavorful eats. “It’s funny because on Triple D [the show’s nickname], all the time, I’ll take a bite of something and say that it’s worth an hour drive to come get this meal,” he said.

Now the 57-year-old has taken his flavor-driven love of travel to the next level by launching a trio of sparkling water flavors with Waterloo, each capturing a destination dear to his heart.

The Columbus, Ohio-born, Northern California-raised television personality has spent an abundance of time throughout his life in the Mexican town of Colima, which he says is best known for its “big volcano.”

In his 20s, his mom, who is a retired dental hygienist, and his dad would head there with a huge shipping container full of dental equipment. “They were going and working at an orphanage that had 500 kids,” he explained. “They would bring down their dentist friends and do free dental work on these orphans.”

While helping the local community, the family started to explore the Mexican coastal cities in the states of Colima and Jalisco, vacationing on their beaches and eventually getting a home in the area. “We spent a lot of time in Mexico—love it there!” he said.

On one visit nearly two decades ago, his son Hunter, now 28, came back with a cup of mixed fruit, which Fieri was absolutely taken by. “He’s got pineapple, watermelon, mango, and gosh, you can taste the difference in the fruit in Mexico,” the food expert said.

But then the key ingredient came out when Hunter revealed a little container of Tajin, a Mexican seasoning powder made of chili peppers, lime, and sea salt.

“I was like, ‘What are you doing? Don’t put seasoned salt on that.” He remembered of his shock, “I take a bite and am like, ‘Whoa! You’ve got to be kidding me!’ It accentuates it!”

Likening it to adding salt to a flat cream sauce, he couldn’t believe what a difference a sprinkle of the Tajin made. “That little bit of that seasoned spice mixture on top of the fruit brings it up to the next level,” he said.

That core memory sparked the idea for one of his three sparkling water flavors, with a version of that kicked-up fruit sensation in Spiced Mango Sorbet.

Another flavor was sparked by his wife growing up not far from his beloved hot dog joint in North Providence. “If you ever have a chance to go down to Narragansett Beach, it’s just an amazing place,” he said. “Coming from the West Coast, I’d never seen the East Coast beaches, so we’d go there, and Del’s Lemonade is the big thing that everybody has.”

His goal was to capture that throwback feeling of aimless summer days strolling down the boardwalk with the frozen snack in hand in his Lemon Italian Ice flavor. To do so, he honed in on the most flavorful part of the fruit, “the peel of the lemon where the essence of the oil of the lemon comes from,” to create a sensation so “far beyond what anybody has ever done with citrus-enhanced soda water.” 

For the final flavor in the Waterloo line, it was less about a single place, and more about chasing a particular tarty taste. “As a chef, you go to regions that have huckleberry, and you can find huckleberry everywhere, but then you go around the rest of the country, you’re not going to find it as prolifically,” Fieri admitted. 

He thinks he first came across the berry in West Virginia, where his dad is from. “It just reminds me of every time I would come back to West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and the whole Appalachian area,” he said, adding that he often stumbled upon them during his travels through Amish Country, where they grow the best. “It’s one of those things that when it’s available, you find it everywhere—huckleberry jam in huckleberry restaurants that have it on their huckleberry pies.”

With that idea, he started thinking about the best way to enjoy the tart berry, and came up with the Huckleberry Cobbler flavor. “The whole reason that Waterloo is dominating is because they have a really big imagination, and they were able to take it and figure it out,” the host said.

All three flavors bring up happy travel memories, but Fieri admits if he had to choose a favorite, it would be the Spiced Mango Sorbet because of how he learned to spice the tropical fruit for his family. 

With the 51st season of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives airing now—and its season finale scheduled for May 23—Fieri is still searching for the best eats around the U.S. But when he’s back in his NorCal home in Santa Rosa, he’s quick to say his favorite place to eat is “my house!”

While he doesn’t eat out often back home, he says one of his favorites is Tomi Thai in nearby Windsor. “That’s what I had last night,” he said during our April 10 interview. “A great family runs it, and they’re busy as can be. We couldn’t even get them on Triple D!”

Despite scouring the world for the best eats, there are still places Fieri has yet to flavor-hunt through, with Turkey at the top of his list.

But anywhere he goes in the world, he has the right chef pal to show him the way. “If I was going to go to Thailand, it would be Jet Tila,” he said. “If I was going to go to China, it would be Ming Tsai. If I was going to go to Japan, it would be Shota Nakajima. If I was going to go to Italy, it would probably be Antonio La Fauci. I could take you around the world!”

No matter where he goes, a good meal leaves a deep impression. When I commented that his face is painted all over the mural at one of my favorites in my hometown of San Jose, California, he beats me to the punch, enthusiastically shouting: “Falafel’s Drive In!” and adding that “it was one of the neatest falafel joints I’d ever been to!”