How much would you pay to have celebrity chef Guy Fieri be your friend for a day?
Allen Salkin's book "From Scratch: Inside the Food Network" claims hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen plunked down $100,000 to the chef and game show host to be his "friend for a day."
According to the New York Post's Page Six, the pair spent a day driving around Connecticut. Salkin reportedly wrote the pair's friendship had become so close that Fieri even featured Cohen's favorite hot-dog spot, Super Duper Weenie, on one of his episode of "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives."
When Cohen's rep was asked to comment, he told the New York Post that the claim Cohen paid Fieri $100,000 "is false." However, the rep did confirm Cohen and Fieri are acquainted.
The founder of SAC Capital Advisors, Cohen is currently facing civil charges filed by the SEC that he failed to prevent insider trading by two of his employees and, according to Forbes, may be close to settling the case by paying a record $1 billion penalty.
Other juicy bits from Salkin's book include Ina Garten shooting a pilot for Martha Stewart Living only to have Stewart kill it when she thought the plates were too similar to her own.
"I don't want this shown," Stewart reportedly screamed. "I want the tapes of this whole series destroyed,"
Salkin, a former staff reporter at The New York Times, also wrote about a 2004 trip food Network stars Rachel Ray and Marc Summers took with Mario Batali to a strip club in Cleveland while in town to attend a food show. The duo ordered 25 shots and received lap dances. Ray was reportedly so hungover the next day she "forgot to explain details of her recipes."
According to the Post Salkin and Food Network execs cooperated on the book "for three years," but their relationship eventually soured over the direction and the tone the book was taking.
