The Great Hall swelled with the aroma of donkey sauce. Guy watched with bated breath as King James I, grand unifier of the English crown, dabbed a bejeweled pinky into the little plastic dipping cup.
“It’s made with fresh aioli,” Guy added. “M’lord.”
The king brought the finger to his lips, hesitating.
From his tenure hosting Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Guy knew the importance of meeting people where they were at. He lifted the hem of his flame-lined tunic and did a practiced curtsy. “But the real secret,” he added, “is a splash of turmeric.”
At this, the king lowered his pinky back into the cup. “Turmeric?”
Guy had been preparing his royal highness’s donkey sauce for almost a month now, quickly ingratiating himself as a confidant and war-time advisor. He figured he could afford to share a few culinary tricks. “The turmeric counterbalances the cardamom,” he added, referring to yet another spice the realm had never heard of.
The king at last obliged. His rheumy, syphilitic eyes lit up.
Guy threw up finger guns. “Welcome to Flavortown!” he cried.
In the corner, under the royal arms of England, the chamber quartet launched into another round of “Greensleeves.”
The king cleared his rheumy, syphilitic throat, a sound echoing throughout the hall. “Flamebringer,” he grunted–this was his name for Guy–“what is this sorcery? You speak of ‘tumeric’ and ‘cardamom,’ ingredients of which I know not. What is the provenance of these bewitching flavors?”
“Well, I usually go with McCormick, but store-brand works.”
The king nodded. His crown and countless baubles gleamed in the low candlelight. “And this McCormick fellow… from where does he replenish these fabled stores?”
From his tenure hosting Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Guy knew the importance of making himself useful, enlightening those in search of truth. “Well,” he said, “I guess that would be somewhere like India, or the Near East. I think that’s where a lot of those spices grow.”
The king threw back the rest of the donkey sauce like one of Guy’s famous jalapeño-popper jello shooters. He crumpled the cup in a bedazzled fist. “Is that the ‘Flavortown’ of which you speak?”
Guy panicked. All the time travel had burned off his eyebrows, and he felt in their stead a sobering nakedness. “Well, m’lord, you see,” he began, “Flavortown is more of a concept than an actual place. I mean, I like to think there’s a little bit of Flavortown in all of us, you know?”
The king, accustomed as he was to the vernacular of Early Modern English, understood little of this. He did a thing where he uncrumpled the cup and ran his pinky around the inside of it and then proceeded to rub the pinky over his gums.
The executioner, meanwhile, eyed Guy hungrily.
Guy massaged his not-burned-off-by-the-time-travel goatee and let out a shaking, “I mean, yes. It’s Flavortown over there. Mhm.”
“Very well,” the king said, rising. “We shall send our finest fleets to India and the Near East, and we shall find this Flavortown, and in God’s name, we shall colonize their shores! May the donkey sauce flow like wine!”
This was bad. Guy didn’t need a storied tenure hosting Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives to know this was bad.
After all, just last night, the official policy of England had been live and let live–a staunch embrace of multiculturalism and international respect, communicated to Guy over several rounds of Trash Can Nachos.
“While we’re at it,” the king added, thrusting an even more bejeweled finger into the air, “let’s colonize the rest of the world, too! See what else they got goin’ on!”
If there was one thing Guy had learned from his time at Juilliard, it was to seize the moment. He unsheathed his broadsword and with a mighty swoosh cleaved his royal highness’s head from his rhinestoned shoulders.
In the damp and ringing silence, he recalled the wizard’s prayer, that grave warning to not alter the established course of history–a fear counterbalanced by his tenure hosting Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and the show’s incumbent understanding of imperial conflict. After all, had he not just averted centuries of oppression? Perhaps, like his famous smashburgers, true justice relied on an element of chaos.
As the royal guard closed in, Guy Fieri kissed the amulet of Gnar’flangul and soon found himself in some sort of primordial bog.
I know he chopped the king's head off but I still think we can 100% blame Guy Fieri for colonizers. I'm glad to have the info.
My husband said: “Next time on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives, Guy will teach the cavemen to make fried Mac n cheese balls.” 🤣🤣🤣