Who Is Guy Fieri's Son Hunter? 11 Facts About The Prince Of Flavortown

When your dad is Guy Fieri, you inherit much more than a groovy sunglasses collection and a seemingly unlimited supply of hair bleach. The Food Network legend has two sons, Hunter and Ryder, and Hunter is becoming increasingly well-known for his skills in the kitchen, just like his father before him. Over the past few years, Hunter and Guy have become a familiar duo on the celebrity chef scene, with Hunter even earning the honorary title of the "Prince of Flavortown." (Jealous? Yep, so are we).

But, of course, Hunter Fieri is much more than just Guy Fieri Jr. Like the Mayor of Flavortown before him, he's made it pretty clear that he's determined to pave his own path to TV success. While he may not have hit "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" levels of iconic just yet, it's clear that he is already treading the same steps his father took en route to opening restaurants worldwide and being inducted into the Barbecue Hall of Fame. Curious about the Prince of Flavortown? From his burgeoning TV career to his upcoming nuptials, here's everything you need to know about Hunter Fieri.

Hunter Fieri hasn't jumped into the foodie world totally untrained. Just like his father, he's a "Rebel" — by which we mean a graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Fieri studied hospitality management, which he previously explained was down to more than the fact that it was also his father's major. "UNLV is known for having a great hospitality program," Fieri said (via UNLV). "And that's what I'm interested in, so coming here was [a] smart choice for me — not to mention the fact that Las Vegas offers endless opportunities to learn, gain experience, and succeed in the industry."

Like a lot of hospitality students, Fieri undertook a placement during his studies, spending time interning for Caesars Entertainment. Unlike most hospitality students, he also managed to negotiate an opportunity to train with Gordon Ramsay in London — an offer that his father stressed he secured totally without any nepotistic intervention. The idea was that he would experience life in fine dining, balancing out the lessons he'd learned working in the fast-casual environment of Guy Fieri-branded restaurants. However, this ultimately fell through due to a complication with his study abroad program credits. While the offer still stood post-graduation, Fieri is yet to hop across the pond to learn from the famously loud-mouthed chef.

Even once he was finished at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Hunter Fieri wasn't done with education. In February 2024, Guy Fieri revealed that his eldest son was in the middle of a master's degree at the University of Miami.

While he didn't say what his son was studying, he did make it pretty clear why he's back in college a few years after graduating. As per Fieri Sr., both of his sons and his nephew, Jules (who the family took in after the death of his mother, Fieri's sister, in 2011) have been told that if they want to inherit the Flavortown fortune, they need to work for it. "I told them the same thing my dad told me: 'When I die, you can expect that I'm gonna die broke, and you're gonna be paying for the funeral,'" Fieri told Fox News. "And I told my boys, 'None of this that I've been building are you gonna get unless you come and take it from me.'"

These comments caused quite a wave, so Fieri later clarified what he meant by this seemingly harsh stance. Speaking to Entertainment Tonight, he explained that "two post-grad and then they can go after it." While his kids, Hunter included, have expressed doubt that their father will ever actually retire, there are definitely much worse ways to motivate your kids to pursue higher education.

"Flavortown" has been one of Guy Fieri's catchphrases for many, many years. Today, it's much more than a verbal signifier that Fieri's given a dish a chef's kiss, with the term stamped on a handful of restaurants, sauces, and cookbooks, and playing a key role in Hunter Fieri's own personal love story. Fieri met his now-partner, Tara Bernstein, at the Super Bowl in February 2023 where he was helping his father host the record-breaking Guy Fieri's Flavortown Tailgate outside Glendale's State Farm Stadium.

With over 10,000 people in attendance, the two first met when Tara started dancing onstage and asked a random person behind her to film a video capturing her having fun. This person ended up being Fieri. While the two didn't exchange numbers, they both happened to hit up the concession stand once the game had started. The two recognized each other, started talking, and just didn't stop. "Next thing we know, the game's over," Fieri recalled to People. "We missed the half time."

A week and a half later, the two were boyfriend and girlfriend — and they have the magic of Flavortown to thank for their blossoming romance. The key takeaway here is that if you're looking for love, you may want to consider future Flavortown Tailgates before downloading Tinder. As Guy Fieri previously joked to People, "Come to Guy's Flavortown Tailgate and meet your life partner! It's Hunter's love story!" Now that's one heck of a marketing strategy.

The instant connection between Hunter Fieri and Tara Bernstein was no flash in the pan. Nine months after meeting at the Super Bowl, the pair revealed that they were engaged when Hunter popped the question on Thanksgiving. While the nuptials aren't set to take place until June 14, 2025, the happy couple hosted an engagement celebration in June 2024, roughly one year before the big day.

With a cake from iconic celebrity baker Buddy Valastro and all of their friends and family in attendance, Hunter's father unsurprisingly had something to say at the event. The Fieri patriarch gave a speech celebrating the pair's relationship and praising both the party and his future daughter-in-law. "You dream things up," he told Bernstein (via People). "And we love to think big, but I haven't met too many people who think bigger than us."

The chef had previously also revealed that the wedding will take place on the Fieri family ranch in Northern California — and that Hunter wants him to officiate the wedding. This wouldn't be Fieri's first time marrying a couple; he famously officiated 101 weddings on Miami Beach in 2015 to celebrate Florida's legalization of gay marriage. However, his role is still up for debate, with Hunter stressing that he wants his father to be able to relax and enjoy the day. One thing's for sure — the catering is sure to be top-tier.

While Hunter Fieri was at the Super Bowl for food, Tara Bernstein was there for the sports. Fieri's girlfriend is a professional pickleball player and content creator sponsored by Franklin Sports, and they were the ones who invited her to State Farm Stadium on the day that she met Fieri. "It's such a beautiful, all-inclusive sport that anyone could play," Bernstein raved about the sport to People. "It's my passion."

He may not be going pro any time soon, but this passion has definitely rubbed off on Fieri since the pair started dating. A quick scroll through his Instagram will turn up nearly as much pickleball content as food. Fieri and Bernstein have hosted a handful of pickleball tournaments, including a celebrity chef tournament at 2024's South Beach Wine & Food Festival — the ultimate blend of the couple's interests. The duo even held a pickleball-themed engagement party in New York's Central Park, complete with custom-made rackets emblazoned with "Game. Set. Match. Forever After" and "Tara & Hunter Teammates for Life."

The Fieri brand isn't exactly synonymous with health food, which is what makes it so surprising that Hunter Fieri is an ambassador for the plant-based, gluten-free pasta brand ZENB. This sees him sharing tips for small ways to make your life more sustainable and whipping up easy recipes for making tasty, meat-free dishes — something he claims isn't totally uncommon in the Fieri household, with Fieri's father getting more into plant-based foods thanks to his sister, who was vegetarian.  

When he first partnered with ZENB back in 2021, he also filmed a 12-minute documentary with the brand. Fieri visited a farm in North Dakota to explore how eating more plant-based foods is good for us and for the planet. "I was stoked to collaborate and help tell their story," Fieri gushed to Green Matters at the time. "I want to raise awareness of the vital, yet simple, way our planet provides everything we need to fuel our bodies."

While the final documentary was an insightful look at the perks of plant-based cooking, it also played a pretty important role in kickstarting Hunter Fieri's professional career as the Prince of Flavortown. This marked his first official solo project, and managed to both demonstrate his chops as an onscreen personality, and add a new, greener dimension to the Fieri name.

Guy Fieri is well known for his philanthropic work, having founded his own charity, the Guy Fieri Foundation. "I was raised, that you always help your community and you always help people that need help, and you participate," Fieri is quoted as saying on the Guy Fieri Foundation website. "You got to be an active member." This is an ethos that he's passed on to his kids, with Hunter Fieri praising his father's work to People in 2022. "Seeing how much he cares and how, even though he is so busy all the time, he focuses a lot of effort on doing fundraisers ... it's eye-opening to me," he said.

Unsurprisingly, you can often find him and his younger brother, Ryder, by their father's side at charitable events. For example, back in 2018, Hunter and Guy Fieri were on hand to feed both firefighters and victims during a savage spate of wildfires. The eldest Fieri son has chipped in to provide meals for athletes and volunteers at a Special Olympics event at Ryder's school, as well as to feed first responders and raise money for communities in need. Most memorably, Hunter and Guy Fieri went head to head with actor Bill Murray and his son in a virtual nacho-making competition in 2020 to generate funds for the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund, created by Fieri Sr. to support the food industry during the pandemic. (In case you were wondering, yes, Team Fieri took home the gold).

In case you couldn't already tell, Hunter and Guy Fieri have a lot in common. Beyond cooking and charitable causes, Hunter has made no secret of the fact that he loves spending time with his father. "He's a great father," Hunter told People. "He's taught me so much and he continues to teach me every day. He doesn't act like a celebrity. He's just a family man."

The duo share a love for fishing and hiking. They can do both aplenty at the Fieri family's ranch in Northern California but have also been known to look further afield for their next catch, traveling all the way to Pybus Bay, Alaska, to fish for Hunter's birthday in 2019. Father and son also share a more daring side. A year before their Alaskan adventure, they visited the Bahamas to film the Shark Week special, "Guy Fieri's Feeding Frenzy." There, they learned to dive and performed a 6,000-foot dive into shark-infested waters, bait in hand and no cage in sight.

The Fieri family has lived in Northern California's Sonoma County since 1996 (the year Hunter Fieri was born) so it seemed inevitable that one day they would dip into the celebrity wine business. That day came in 2015 when Guy Fieri launched his own wine label, Hunt & Ryde, which took inspiration from the names of his two sons.

In recent years, Hunter's role has expanded from namesake to a walking, talking ambassador for the brand. While multiple restaurants connected to Fieri have offered the wine in the past, additional non-affiliated restaurants and stores have introduced Hunt & Ryde to their menus and promoted doing so via meet and greets and tastings featuring cameos from Hunter.

This is more than just a picture-and-autograph kind of setup. Hunter Fieri has his own strong opinions on Hunt & Ryde's offerings and, most importantly, seems to genuinely love the brand. As he previously told The Business Journal, he's a big fan of their chardonnay despite not being a big chardonnay drinker himself. "It's not super buttery, and not very oaky," he explained. "It's a little less viscous. It's crisp; it's fruity; it's light. There's a little hint of oak in there." He's equally big on the 2020 red blend, which "goes great with everything, and [is] a great daily drinker."

If people can recognize your surname before your first name, the cries of "nepo baby" usually aren't too far behind. Having appeared in several of his father's shows — such as "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives," "Guy's Grocery Games," and "Tournament of Champions," where he served as a backstage correspondent — Hunter Fieri has undeniably had a leg-up into showbiz, with some claiming it would never have happened if he wasn't part of the Fieri clan.

His stint on "Tournament of Champions" was the trigger point for most accusations of nepotism, which is surprisingly common in the foodie corner of pop culture. Several viewers took to social media to complain that Fieri wasn't a natural TV star. "He clearly lacks confidence, charisma, and many other needed qualities to pull off a basic interview," said one unimpressed Reddit user, while another claimed, "I love Guy, but his kids definitely didn't inherit his personality or his charisma."

But not everyone has been quite so damning. As one Reddit user put it, "Most hosts on the Food Network fine tune their on-screen personality for years before stepping foot on a Food Network set. Hunter is definitely stiff. Maybe he gets there." Others have pointed out that even Guy Fieri grew a lot after first appearing on television and that his grounded, calm nature is the perfect foil to his father's more outgoing (or, as some say, obnoxious) TV persona.

Hunter Fieri is well and truly primed to take over the Fieri empire. He's been open about the fact that he hopes to one day front his own TV show and that the steps he's taken so far — such as his college degree, his YouTube documentary, and his stints on his dad's shows — are part of a bigger plan to make it in the big leagues, just like his father. "I really want to start doing my own TV," he told People in 2022. "I want to get into that realm of walking outside of my dad's shadow. We're working our way towards that."

Ultimately, that's the goal here. While Hunter will always be a Fieri — and it'll be impossible to ever totally separate the Prince of Flavortown from its Mayor — he hopes to be known as more than just Guy Fieri's son. But in the meantime, he's just making the most of the lessons and opportunities that come with the connection. As he told Mashed, "He's bringing me into all these different aspects of his business to learn and to one day take it over ... I'm trying to really involve myself in all the projects that I can be in."