C oming up on 20 years of hosting Food Network’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives is crazy for me to say. It seems like yesterday that I was getting off a plane in New Jersey in my shorts and flip-flops to shoot the very first episode. I didn’t know what I was getting into. The title seemed cool enough. But I wasn’t really familiar with diners as they were really more of an East Coast thing when I was a kid. I suppose I knew my way around a dive pretty well by the time I was in my thirties. But what really captured me in the title was drive-ins. Going to the drive-in is a core memory of mine and most certainly a piece of Americana that I hope will live on forever. This connection to the subject matter was a big part of what inspired me to go on to shoot over 1,800 locations of mom-and-pop joints around this great country, celebrating our great American spirit all along the way.
Growing up in the small Northern California town of Ferndale — the most western town in the continental U.S. — was the perfect backdrop for an amazing childhood. With a population of less than 1,500 people, this little Victorian village was the kind of place where I could ride my horse to school and eat my way up and down Main Street without my parents worrying about me.
But as a kid, you naturally dream about the “big city” and the outside world for adventure and excitement. On top of that, my parents were kinda hippie-ish (my mom, Penny, always makes me clarify, “not the dope-smoking kind”), so we ate a lot of macrobiotic food, sushi (in the Seventies!), and other non-kid-friendly dishes. That meant very high up on my adventure list were things like burgers, shakes, and fries — I wanted it all.
So, a couple times a year, my dad, Jim, would load up my sister, Morgan, and me into the family truckster and drive us 20 miles up the road to the “big city” of Eureka (population: 24,000), home to the only drive-in around: A&W. Talk about heaven! Not a bowl of bulgar wheat or sliver of raw fish to be found! Bacon cheeseburgers, hot dogs, creamy shakes, root beer floats, fries… you name it, we got it. It was the ultimate treat and the best kind of family time. I looked forward to it then and I’ll never forget it now.
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