WORTHINGTON, Ohio (WCMH) — Guy Fieri, the celebrity chef who opened a central Ohio eatery this summer, is featuring another Columbus eatery this week on his show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”
Joya’s at 657 High St. in Worthington will make an appearance on Fieri’s Food Network show on Friday, the Asian-inspired café announced on social media. The cafe’s spotlight will mark the fifth time this season a central Ohio eatery has been featured on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.”
“It also looks like you’ll be seeing us on our small screen debut soon as we embark on our inaugural bullet train expedition to (Flavortown) with (Fieri),” the eatery said on social media, with a photo of Fieri’s iconic red 1968 Camaro. “Tune in to see our secrets revealed.”
The café is run by chef Avishar Barua, who also competed on Bravo’s “Top Chef” in 2021 and previously appeared on the Food Network in May 2023. winning two rounds on “Beat Bobby Flay.” Barua also owns Agni, a Bengali-American restaurant in the Brewery District neighborhood, that opened last year.
Joya’s Food Network spotlight comes after Fieri also featured Grandview Heights’ High Bank Distillery on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” Earlier in the season, Tommy’s Diner in Franklinton, King Gyros Greek Restaurant in Whitehall, and Katalina’s in Harrison West all appeared on the show.
Fieri, an Ohio-born restaurateur, launched a new Italian concept in June named “Guy Fieri’s Trattoria” inside Scioto Downs, which features “an old-school Italian feel polished with textured glass screens, rustic wood finishes, an open pizza and pasta prep station and gallery walls.”
The opening of the trattoria could’ve coincided with the inaugural Flavortown Festival, a weekend-long Columbus event spearheaded by Fieri, but the festival was canceled earlier this year due to “unforeseen circumstances.” The festival promised a fusion of food and funk, with rock band Greta Van Fleet and country star Kane Brown as headline performers.
Fieri said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the trattoria that the festival “still will happen, we’ve just got to make sure we’ve got the right people in the right positions making this fly.”
The celebrity chef also recently launched new t-shirts with Columbus-based Homage called the “MLB x Flavortown collection,” a collaboration with all 30 Major League Baseball teams that celebrates each team’s fan-favorite ballpark bites. The eats featured on the T-shirts include Skyline Chili nachos for the Cincinnati Reds, slider dogs for the Cleveland Guardians and pastrami for the New York Mets.
