Guy Fieri’s Doing a Web Series About Restaurants in a Small NorCal Town

Guy Fieri’s doing a web series called Meals With The Mayor(s).

Windsor, California, is a town just north of Santa Rosa with a population of around 26,800 (for the sake of comparison, the student body of SF State clocked in at 29,600 as of 2017). The city’s mayor is named Dominic Foppoli, but last August, another mayor moved to town: Flavortown Mayor Guy Fieri, Sonoma Magazine reports.

Fieri isn’t in Windsor right now, as he’s reportedly chosen to wait out the coronavirus crisis from his 290 acre Napa ranch, which he shares with his family and 400 goats. While sequestered, he’s managed to generate millions in relief funds for food and restaurant workers (albeit, as part of a reportedly troubling organization), launch a GoProed version of his Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins, And Dives — and now he’s participating a web series for the city of Windsor called Meals With The Mayor(s).

The show started simply as Meals With The Mayor (singular), an effort by city leadership to highlight local restaurants during the crisis. About two weeks ago, Fieri hopped aboard, one mayor became two, and now both Foppoli and Fieri (each in their own locations) interview local restaurateurs about how they’re managing the current dining room shutdown, ABC 7 reports. (All the videos in the series can be found here.)

Though Foppoli is now arguably eclipsed by his blonder, donkey-sauced counterpart, he doesn’t seem mad about it — in fact, he suggests other cities follow suit. “Find whoever the most famous local celebrity in your town is,” he suggests, and rope them into a similar effort. If promoting local restaurants helps keep bored famous people from singing Beatles covers, that seems like a worthwhile endeavor, indeed.

And in other news...

• Culinary award granters the James Beard Foundation announced its semifinalist list in February, but the pandemic put pause on the endeavor. Now the org says that it’ll announce its finalists on a May 4 livestream. [Eater]
• Anticipated Oakland bar Friends and Family has opened for delivery of bottled cocktails and slices of cake. [SF Chronicle]
• If you’re trying to figure out which Bay Area food and grocery delivery apps and companies offer the best health and safety policies, this chart will help. [KQED]
• Petaluma dairy company Clover Sonoma says it can only fill about 60 percent of the egg and butter orders it gets from stores because “hens lay only one egg a day and demand for cream has gone through roof.” [SF Business Times]
• Problems getting money from GoFundMe continue to plague local bars and restaurants like Berkeley’s Albatross Pub, Corso, and Rivoli. [Berkeleyside]
• The owner of teeny-tiny Outer Richmond restaurant Pizzetta 211 doesn’t see how the spot can turn a profit with social distancing in the dining room. [NBC Bay Area]
• Vacaville is reopening its farmers market. [Bay City News]
• A $310 billion refill of the Paycheck Protection Program that took effect Monday could help keep more restaurants and bars in business. [Eater]
• In the wake of the coronavirus crisis — and the dining room closures that resulted — SF Chronicle food critic Soleil Ho says “I’m not super relevant right now, I’m doing other stuff, I’m writing movie reviews.” [The Dyke Kitchen]
• Instacart is reportedly profitable for the first time, ever. It lost about $300 million last year, but expects to be up about $10 million for the month of April. [Forbes]