WILMINGTON — Local chef Josh Petty will once again join food celebrity Guy Fieri on television after a successful episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives first aired last spring.
The Cast Iron Kitchen chef and his father — a partner in the restaurant — will be featured as contestants on Guy’s Grocery Games airing next week on Wednesday, Jan. 9, at 9 p.m. on the Food Network.
When the show’s producers originally asked who would he’d partner with on the game show, Petty said it was a no-brainer.
“My dad and I have played a lot of competition golf in the past,” Petty said, with apologies to his wife and mother. “We’re good with each other; he calms me down.”
That was important for Petty, who said it was mildly stressful to run through a large grocery store-style television set, gather and prep the right ingredients, then plate a dish within 30 minutes – all while listening to judges critique his performance beneath lights and cameras.
“My main concern was having too much to think about. You go into this huge soundstage, and it’s basically the biggest grocery store you’ll ever go in. It’s like Whole Foods plus Publix plus everything else, and every single item in there is real,” Petty said.
A cult following
Last April, when Petty and his dad arrived at the show’s set in Sonoma, California, Fieri told the contestants to pack up and leave if they were only there for the $20,000 prize.
“He told us, ‘This is about meeting other people who’ve been through the Triple-D effect, because when you soak it all in, your business automatically grows,'” Petty recalled of Fieri’s welcome speech.
Petty said his restaurant, which opened in May 2016, saw two major spikes in sales last year: the week after Dines, Drive-Ins and Dives was filmed in late January (which he attributes to rumors swirling after producers obtained a film permit) and again after it aired in the spring. He estimated a 30-percent increase in sales after that week.
Later, on certain days when the restaurant was unnaturally packed, Petty would be told it was because the show re-aired the night before. Over the holidays, he said he met “Triple-D fans” coming in from all over the country.
“It was like a cult following,” Petty said.
Although he has welcomed the attention, it has also forced a preemptive investment in additional kitchen equipment to handle days of higher traffic, and has pushed his staff to re-think the order-cook-plate process during busier times.
A down-to-earth superstar
It was the culinary advice from Fieri and other chefs like Robert Irvine that Petty treasures the most from his television experiences – along with the surprise that Fieri was a down-to-earth, helpful guy.
“The thing is, he actually remembers you. During the hurricane they all contacted me,” Petty said. “A lot of people don’t do that sort of thing, especially when they get to that superstar status.”
The upcoming game show will feature six other teams, according to Petty, all selected because of popular feedback from appearances on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. He also said they filmed another episode during their time in California, which will air sometime this spring.
Although Petty couldn’t reveal any details of how the father-son duo fared on the show, he gave one subtle clue.
“I was proud of how we performed, I’ll say,” Petty remarked.
Mark Darrough can be reached at Mark@Localvoicemedia.com
