LIGHTS, CAMERA, CUP

Boulder City eatery to be highlighted on Food Network series

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Shortly after the Easter Bunny makes his appearance on April 8, the world-famous Coffee Cup restaurant will hop right up to living up to what its moniker claims, world-famous.

That's when the Food Network's Guy Fieri will air a segment of his new cooking series, "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives," and Coffee Cup co-owner Al "Big Al" Stevens will be right there in the thick of it.

Last Wednesday, Fieri, host of "Guy's Big Bites" on Sunday mornings, wrapped up shooting in the Coffee Cup's kitchen with Stevens and Fieri swapping stories about their days in the meat business before taking the foil off a 22-pound inside round of beef that had been cooking all night at 160 degrees.

"We put the roast in the pan, added some liquid, added some spicing ... last night ... and cooked it at 160 degrees all night, for 13 hours," Stevens told Fieri while giving ample credit to cook Joe Herman. "Low and slow, baby. That's the way we do it. We couldn't make it without Joe. He's the key man."

The Page Productions three-man crew, anchored by executive producer David Page, started with 14 hours' worth of shooting on Feb. 3 and followed it up with last Wednesday's final day of taping, which lasted the better part of six hours.

During the interim, Fieri and the crew visited the Four Kegs in Las Vegas for some of its famous stromboli, but it wasn't the original haunt on Maryland Parkway that Fieri, who graduated from UNLV in 1990 with a degree in hospitality management, was familiar with.

"When I went to college, we'd walk across the street to the Four Kegs and get the stromboli," said Fieri. "The stromboli was so big we'd eat two pieces and take the rest of it back to our room and live on it out of the refrigerator for a week."

While in the West, Fieri and the crew also were visiting the Mad Greek restaurant located just a few grape leaves away from the world's tallest thermometer in Baker, Calif.

So, the question now is of all the places in Las Vegas and the Southwest to pick as a diner, drive-in or dive, how is it that Boulder City's Coffee Cup was chosen?

"I like to do anything that has a story behind it," Fieri explained. "I make a recommendation to Dave and we talk about it. Dave does a tremendous amount of research and has an understanding of the story and what makes it work. We like to show people making real food and who have an integrity for making the food. Here, they make great homemade food, they're a family with choppers, you've got the history of Hoover Dam and this location feeding the workers and a place that's well-known in town. Now, that's a real story."

For Stevens, the publicity will be priceless.

"Sure it gives us a lot of exposure," he said before taping, "and it will be good for the city as well. It should bring in a lot of business not just to the Coffee Cup, but Boulder City."

The "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" show, said Fieri, is the result of a one-hour special that aired in September 2006 and was followed by a pilot show that aired in November, which he said got rave reviews.

The 10-part series that starts in late April on Cox Cable Channel 42 features 30 restaurants across the country.

Fieri, who lives in Santa Rosa, in the heart of California's wine country, is no stranger to food despite his youthful, even Billy Idol-like appearance.

While going to UNLV, he was a plant supervisor for Schulman Meats in Las Vegas and after graduation ventured off to Long Beach, Calif., where he operated some restaurants.

Then, in 1996, he opened a restaurant in Santa Rosa. He now has three restaurants there -- two Johnny Garlic's California Pasta Grill restaurants and a Tex Wasabi's restaurant -- and another Tex Wasabi's in Sacramento.

Last year, the Food Network picked him up for his "Guy's Big Bites" show.

John Zerfoss, a member of the Coffee Cup's morning chat group called "The Circle of Knowledge," or as Stevens jokingly calls it, "The Circle of Little Knowledge," thinks the Food Network exposure is great.

"It's nice to see Boulder City on TV," he said. "This is a reality place for cooking. This is not some made-up fancy place for cooking."

After Boulder City, Fieri and the crew will take some time off before moving on to locations in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Fieri said he loves Boulder City, but admitted that this was his first venture into Stevens' restaurant.

"I'm familiar with Boulder City, I've been through here a hundred times, but this is my first time in (the Coffee Cup)," he said. "Now I wished I would have stopped here years ago."