seven venues

He screams across the country, arriving in a red ragtop, hungry for food and the stories behind it. Guy Fieri and his television crew have been around here before, sampling the fare at Doumar's in Norfolk and Captain Chuck-a-Muck's in Rescue.

The spike-haired celebrity chef rolls back into Norfolk on Friday. This time, he's in a tour bus, not a convertible, and he's not looking for barbecue or biscuits and gravy.

He's hitting town with The Guy Fieri Roadshow - expect a two-hour "food-a-palooza" featuring flair bartending, a yet-to-be announced local chef, cooking, storytelling and the unscripted antics of Mr. "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" himself.

A few days back, we dialed up Guy at the New York City hotel where he was chilling between media appearances to promote his new book, "More Diners, Drive-ins and Dives: Another Drop-Top Culinary Cruise Through America's Finest and Funkiest Joints."

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Q. Let's start with the good stuff: the food. We poked into your past, and it seems to me that your career is in protest to your parents' California culinary inclinations. True?

 A. My parents were making what they liked when I was a kid, macrobiotic food like steamed fish and bulghur (cracked wheat grains). I looked forward to taco night. My mom said that if I didn't like the way she cooked, I could cook. If I did cook, my sister had to do the dishes, so I said, "I'm in!"

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Q. So then you started in the food business, selling soft pretzels from your bike. You traveled to France as a foreign exchange student. Fell in love with food. Earned a degree in hospitality management. Landed a corporate restaurant management gig in Vegas. Opened a couple of restaurants with a pal in California. Then became the second-season winner of "The Next Food Network Star." Now that you get to eat for a living, what's one dish you can count on to be good no matter where you go? Or not so good?

A. Usually, I would say that the pizza is good.

I'm not a dessert guy. Chocolate tastes like burnt dirt to me. I like salty, crunchy, spicy, chunky, which covers everything on the other side of chocolate. I see people enjoy chocolate, and I wish I could know what that is like.

What I won't eat is crappy food. I mean, you only get a certain amount of food periods in this life. Eating crappy food is like wasting a timeout.

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Q. What's the most common problem at all these diners, dives and drive-ins?

A. It's that the food is served too hot - temperature hot. I don't eat before I do a show. And then I watch the food being made. I'm a food junkie. I'm hungry. Then you are going to serve it to me hot? And no, I'm not going to wait to eat it.

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Q. Can you recall a time when your "road krew" had to pry the food from your hands because you just couldn't stop eating?

A. That happened really bad one time in Pescadero, Calif., a one-building town on the coast, at a place called Duarte's Tavern. They make cioppino, an Italian bouillabaisse with tomato sauce, red wine and Dungeness crab. My mouth is filling with saliva just talking about it. I just started to eat and eat and eat. I ate the whole bowl, cioppino for like two people.

Then I went into a full-on food coma and had to sleep in the production van for like two hours. The whole show was held up while I slept.

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Q. You've entertained the troops overseas. What did you cook for them?

A. I went to Bahrain in the Middle East two years back and raided the storeroom and fortified the chili. In Guantanamo Bay, we had a steak cookout. We were going to do a challenge with MREs, but never did.

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Q. We have hundreds of students attending culinary arts schools in this region. What's your advice to them?

A. I know people want to be where I'm at, where Emeril is at, where Bobby (Flay) is at, but you've got to learn to play football before you play in the NFL.

The restaurant business is the toughest business I think there is. It takes endurance, problem solving, the ability to handle a big workload and stress. Work with people you admire, and don't lie to yourself and say this is going to be an easy road.

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Q. So 21 cities in 33 days for your food-a-palooza. Will you have time to be diving, driving and dining while here? Should people hang out at Doumar's or the Grill at Great Bridge to get a glimpse of you?

A. I don't know how long we'll be around. But I do have it written into the contract that when we pull out of town, we'll have three types of food from the city we are in with us.