Embattled hedge-fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen, whose SAC Capital Advisors is charged with insider trading, paid spiky-haired chef Guy Fieri $100,000 “to be his friend for a day,” a new book reveals.
Cohen paid Fieri to drive around Connecticut with him to reenact a fantasy episode of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” reveals Allen Salkin in his book, “From Scratch: Inside the Food Network.”
But after “Cohen paid Guy Fieri $100,000 to be his friend for a day,” Salkin writes the odd couple became so close that the chef’s top-rated show even featured Cohen’s favorite hot-dog spot, the (perhaps appropriately titled) Super Duper Weenie. The popular joint in Fairfield, Conn., offers hot dogs at $3.75 a pop, guaranteed to get any hedge funder through hard times.
Salkin’s book also reveals during a trip for a food show in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2004, Rachael Ray and Marc Summers went to a strip club at Mario Batali’s urging. “When they arrived . . . it was closing in 15 minutes, Mario ordered 25 shots and sent over lap dances to Marc and Rachael,” who protested “as the strippers sank down onto their laps and began gyrating,” he writes. Salkin adds that Ray was so hung-over the following day she “forgot to explain details of her recipes.”
Other dish from the book: Ina Garten shot a pilot for Martha Stewart Living only to have Stewart kill it when she thought the plates were too similar to her own. “I don’t want this shown. I want the tapes of this whole series destroyed,” Stewart reportedly screamed.
Salkin tells us he and Food Network execs cooperated on the book “for three years,” but their relationship eventually soured over the direction the tome was taking. A rep for the Food Network declined to comment.
A longtime rep for Cohen — who faces paying a record penalty reportedly exceeding $1 billion to settle the insider-trading case — insisted the story about him “is false,” but admitted Cohen and Fieri do know each other.