The Trouble With Guy Fieri; Tasting The McFloat

The other day, someone asked me why I didn't like Guy Fieri. By all accounts, Guy Fieri seems like a nice person. He's a TV celebrity and has a lot of money, but he goes to Coachella with his son just like you. Some take issue with his hair or his dress or his overly boisterous nature. But he seeks out unheralded diners, drive-ins, and dives across America and leaves a stamp of approval at each one, boosting each business and cheering on the women and men that keep America's independent restaurant culture alive. This side of Fieri is great.

But then he slaps his name on restaurants where the food is either grotesquely composed or completely inedible. I know this because I've been to some of these restaurants. And these establishments look nothing like the diners or dives Fieri likes to champion — these are massive, multi-story theme-park style monstrosities, where every dude cliché is played out to death, where Donkey Sauce flows freely, and where the reality of Fieri breaks down: He may be nice, he may be hard working, but he is not serving good food. And this, at the end of the day, is the real problem with Fieri: He takes no pride in the food he puts his name on, and it's that side of the equation I just won't buy.

In today's food news:

— McDonald's has served an ice cream float at locations outside of the U.S. for years, but now the creation has hit the Golden Arches stateside. Business Insider got a first taste. TL;DR: It's a soda float (the standard is made with Dr. Pepper, but you can request Coca Cola) and it's not bad.

Watch: Reasons McDonald's Is on the Brink of Failure

— What makes a neighborhood restaurant truly great?

"A Great Neighborhood Restaurant is a feeling when you walk in the door," JoAnn Clevenger, the septuagenarian owner of a Garden District GNR in New Orleans called Upperline, says. "It's the feeling that you'll be taken care of." Clevenger achieves this by alighting from table to table, bending her magnificent crown of gray hair down and making you feel as if you're the only one in the restaurant. It's not the turtle soup that keeps people going back since 1983. It's the woman who serves it.

— Chef Gavin Kaysen, who left the go-go restaurant world of New York City for Minneapolis in 2014 to open (the now critically acclaimed) Spoon and Stable, is opening a second restaurant in the Twin Cities: This one will be a French bistro, as Eater Minneapolis reports, and will begin serving sometime in 2017.

— This is horrible:

— The Secret Struggles of the Reclusive Family Behind America's Most Famous Burger

— On the next episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld picks up award-winning director Judd Apatow. The two do more than get coffee: They get burgers, too. Check out the preview, below: