Guy Fieri puts South Florida restaurants under the ‘Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives’ spotlight

UPDATED March 11: A previous version of this story left out Hellenic Republic, a Coral Springs restaurant that will be featured on the March 24 episode of “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives.”

Jeffrey Lemmerman had to do something special when he heard Guy Fieri wanted to spotlight his hamburger hub on wheels, Cheffrey Eats, on the new season of “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives.”

So he had his brother slap a permanent tribute to the Food Network TV star on the side of his Cheffrey Eats food truck: An anthropomorphized cartoon of Fieri as a frosty-tipped potato spud, garbed in flannel and signature VonZipper sunglasses.

“Producers wanted him to film in the food truck, but he loved that spud,” Lemmerman recalls with a laugh. “He was like, ‘No, let’s do the interview over there with my fat-f--- VeggieTale self.”

Yes, it’s true: South Florida restaurants are once again in Fieri’s culinary crosshairs, and he’s spotlighting five Broward and Palm Beach County eateries on “Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives,” which kicked off its newest season on March 3. They are:

Homey Italian trattoria Rose’s Daughter in Delray Beach (March 3)Whole-animal butchery and sandwich shop The Butcher and the Bar in Boynton Beach (March 17)Cult-favorite, hamburger-and-fries food truck Cheffrey Eats (March 17)Puerto Rican restaurant La Cosinita Latina in West Palm Beach (March 24)Greek and Mediterranean restaurant Hellenic Republic in Coral Springs (March 24)Suburban Greek bistro-slash-Caribbean restaurant Taverna Evia in Coral Springs (March 24)

Fieri’s long-running travelogue series — which has saluted the comfort-food ingenuity of beloved pit-stops across the United States for almost two decades — lately seems to be stuck on the Sunshine State. And South Florida may be his favorite Flavortown: In 2022, he bought a house in Lake Worth Beach, and for the past two years has staged a live all-stars version of “Diners” at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. One “Diners” episode last season visited Rebel House in Boca Raton, chef Eric Baker’s eclectic comfort-food kitchen, and Fieri also featured three other eateries in 2020.

Filming for this season’s “Diners” segments at the five South Florida restaurants took place in December.

Lemmerman, for one, welcomes the “Diners” publicity bump for Cheffrey Eats, which serves award-winning burgers from the parking lot of Barrel of Monks Brewing in Boca Raton. The food truck landed on Fieri’s radar after Cheffrey Eats fans tipped off Food Network producers, he says.

“Producers were like, ‘You had a whole bunch of people telling us about your truck,’” says Lemmerman, who plans to throw a “Diners” watch party at 9 p.m. March 17 at Barrel of Monks. “It definitely made me stand out.”

He says he won’t spoil what happens during the episode, but Fieri sampled two Cheffrey Eats creations: The Barnyard Burger, a tenderized, butterflied and battered chicken breast atop an Angus chuck blend burger, plus candied bacon and cheddar on a Cusano’s kaiser roll. The second: Brownie-batter cheesecake in a mason jar.

“Most of our burgers are pretty simple, but this one’s over the top even though it’s only four components on the burger,” says Lemmerman, who bought his first food truck with his life savings in 2016, without a business plan or a food concept.

Did Fieri have any advice for Cheffrey Eats?

“He told me to be prepared to consolidate my menu to three burgers if I expand, and figure out shipping for the cheesecakes,” he says. “He’s the man. I have a lot of respect for what he does. He has an amazing talent.”

More than Guy Fieri complimenting her short-rib pappardelle, more than describing her black truffle paste as “dangerous,” what Suzanne Perrotto remembers best about her appearance on “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives” (which aired March 3) is that her mother was there to experience it.

Rose’s Daughter — neither drive-in, diner nor dive — is Perrotto’s Italian comfort-food trattoria, which opened in 2019 two blocks north of Delray Beach’s buzzworthy Atlantic Avenue. Perrotto’s mother, Linda Rose Kaufman, is the soul and namesake of the eatery, where all the pastas are handmade. Many of the recipes are an homage to her mother’s home cooking and globetrotting career as a chef. (Kaufman’s chef’s jacket sits in a shadowbox in the kitchen.)

To prepare short-rib pappardelle, Perrotto slow-roasts her short rib for 18 hours and makes pasta with a combination of Semolina fine and Caputo 00 flours. Pasta is served “with an al dente elasticity to it,” she says, topped with English peas, housemade bechamel (mom’s recipe adds cognac, shallots and heavy cream) and black truffle paste.

Of Fieri, she says, “I think in his heart he really understood the meaning of chefs who make everything by hand, who have food in their souls.”

After Fieri filmed the segment, Perrotto recounts, her mother leaned over and said to her, “I just want you to know I’m so proud of what you’ve become, my darling daughter.” Then “she touched me on the side of my face and kissed my cheek.”

The next day, Perrotto’s mother went into the hospital for open-heart surgery.

“She’s not 100 percent yet, but she’s mostly recovered now,” Perrotto says. “It was just an amazing miracle the way everything has turned out.”

After taking a bite from an all-beef hot dog from The Butcher and the Bar in Boynton Beach, co-owner Eric Anderson says Fieri did something he’s never seen on television: He polished off the whole thing.

“A producer pulled me aside afterward and said, ‘He always takes two bites but never finishes the whole meal,’” Anderson recalls. “It was gratifying to see that.”

At his sandwich shop and whole-animal butchery, everything is scratch-made. Even the New York-style dogs, made with chuck that chef Logan Gates butchers from the cow, stuffs into a casing and douses in mustard and sauerkraut on a soft split-top bun from Old School Bakery in Delray Beach.

Fieri’s segment featured the eatery’s porchetta sandwich, made with pork saddles that Gates rubs with lemon zest, parsley, shaved fennel and garlic before binding it with twine. After roasting for four hours, the porchetta is served on ciabatta smeared with gremolata and lemon vinaigrette, with leftover pork skin “so you get the tasty crunch on top,” Anderson says.

Anderson says Fieri pulled him aside during filming and told him, “‘Your chef’s so talented.’ He said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t lose this kid.’”

Once a Greek bistro for four years, Taverna Evia in Coral Springs quietly rebranded in September into a Greek-Caribbean restaurant under new chef and co-owner Aretha “Tasha” Walker, who previously ran Fins and Things Seafood Bar and Grill in Sunrise. Now half the menu consists of oxtail, goat, curried lamb, conch oyster and brown stew chicken, all inspired by her upbringing in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood and the cuisine from her father’s restaurant in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Fieri had no idea Taverna Evia also served Caribbean fare when he showed up to the restaurant craving Greek flavors, Walker says. The TV personality sampled Taverna’s lamb burger, seasoned with basil, oregano, thyme, bay leaves, lemon pepper and parsley, and topped with a scotch bonnet pepper-spiked ketchup.

He also sampled shrimp and scallop youvetsi, a Greek stew made with orzo, garlic butter, celery, scallion and Walker’s housemade alfredo sauce.

“He told me the food tasted like his mom’s home cooking,” Walker recalls. “That was the biggest hit, whoomp. He was like, ‘You got blessed hands.’ And that was the best compliment ever.”