Five years following its entrance into the spectrum of culinary offerings in Times Square, Guy Fieri’s Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar is shutting its doors on New Year’s Eve. While employees at the restaurant and a statement from Fieri’s spokesman confirmed the restaurant’s closure to Eater, there is no still official reason for the end of Fieri’s popular pit stop:
Fieri did not shed light on the reason for the closure, but noted he is “proud” of serving millions of people throughout the years and thanked his team.
The restaurant became quite the focal point in Times Square for a few different reasons, including the arrival of FieriCon to the location — the second annual gathering just happened in November — and a scathing zero-star New York Times review that featured barbs like the following:
Were you struck by how very far from awesome the Awesome Pretzel Chicken Tenders are? If you hadn’t come up with the recipe yourself, would you ever guess that the shiny tissue of breading that exudes grease onto the plate contains either pretzels or smoked almonds? Did you discern any buttermilk or brine in the white meat, or did you think it tasted like chewy air?
Hey, did you try that blue drink, the one that glows like nuclear waste? The watermelon margarita? Any idea why it tastes like some combination of radiator fluid and formaldehyde?
And when we hear the words Donkey Sauce, which part of the donkey are we supposed to think about?
One person who seems tore up over the loss of the restaurant is Chrissy Teigen, fresh from her flight to nowhere and ready to tweet about the loss of a place she claims she stepped foot into as a joke:
I’ll swear on anything that I really liked this restaurant. Went as a joke, came out covered in ribs and nacho hybrids https://t.co/7j1nKdc3Rq
— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) December 28, 2017
RIP Guy’s American :( https://t.co/6JN0ctWu6X
— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) December 28, 2017
This doesn’t mean Fieri is out of the restaurant business. He still has many other locations around the globe to satisfy any dare or deep-fried desire you may stumble into. He’s not about to go back to selling mufflers at any point in the near future — but we do hope he goes back to his old hairstyle.
(Via Eater / New York Times)
