FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Chef-owner Jimmy Everett is on the palm-shaded patio of his restaurant Driftwood talking about Happy Meals at McDonald’s, the weeklong prep time for pork jowl fried rice and the recent surge of reservations when a UPS driver pulls up, hollering excitedly.

“Hey, I’m gonna watch you on ‘Triple D’!” he says, waving, as Everett thanks him and blushes.

“Triple D” is, of course, shorthand for Guy Fieri’s long-running TV travelogue series “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” which dropped by the Boynton Beach gastropub in late February for a whirlwind day of filming that culminated with a May 8 appearance on the popular program. Everett says Food Network recently let him promote it on social media, which resulted in 100 new bookings — all from diners hoping to “beat the Food Network rush,” he speculates.

“We have to be ready,” Everett says. “I’m freaking out that when we get slammed, we can produce the experience they deserve. We don’t want to be a place people visit once because they saw us on TV.”

Such is the big business boost of being under the “Triple D” spotlight — and Driftwood isn’t alone. Everett’s restaurant is one of six Palm Beach County stops on this season of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” which kicked off April 10.

The lineup and schedule:

—Alaina’s Café & Bake Shoppe, a neighborhood bistro in Palm Beach Gardens with housemade breads, sauces and comfort-food classics (aired April 10)

—Nevs Barbecue, a Texas-style BBQ restaurant in Palm Beach Gardens (April 24)

—Driftwood, a laid-back American spot in Boynton Beach with local ingredients and daily menus (May 8)

—Tropical Smokehouse, a Florida-meets-Caribbean barbecue spot in West Palm Beach with brisket and gator sausage (airing May 22)

—Don Ramon Restaurante Cubano, a 36-year-old community hub in West Palm Beach serving Cuban cuisine (May 29)

—Wok by the Beach, an Asian fusion sit-down in Riviera Beach with sushi and Thai staples (June 12)

As of May 8, these were the six Palm Beach County restaurants announced on Food Network’s TV schedule, but airdates are subject to change at their discretion. Food Network did not respond to emails seeking confirmation.

‘Are you offending me right now?’

It’s no secret that South Florida is a fixture in Guy Fieri’s orbit, his local adventures so well-documented — Singer Island resident, South Beach Burger Bash host, tequila salesman and fried-chicken tycoon — that it’s little wonder the region has turned up again on his hit roadshow.

Filming for this season’s segments at the six restaurants all took place in February, with Fieri visiting each spot with his son and fellow Food Network personality, Hunter. Among them was Tropical Smokehouse, where co-owner Jason Lakow is a longtime fan of “Diners.” (“I’ve probably seen it a thousand times.”) The restaurant prepared gator sausage, according to the Food Network website. Meanwhile, at Don Ramon Restaurante Cubano, the kitchen prepared Cuban oxtail stew, imperial rice and tostones rellenos with garlic shrimp for the May 29 episode, but owner Dina Rubio did not respond to the Sun Sentinel’s requests for comment.

For Everett, the offer to appear on the “Diners” series, which celebrates comfort-food glory at cross-country spots, felt validating and surreal. Validating because, even after working 90 hours a week for eight years at his down-to-earth gastropub with farm vegetables, local seafood and cocktails, he feels Driftwood “sometimes doesn’t get noticed.”

The Food Network producer’s email came so unexpectedly, in fact, that Everett briefly misread the invite as an insult.

“I was like, ‘Are you offending me right now?’ I’m not a diner, drive-in or dive,” Everett recalls with a laugh. “To be fair, I hadn’t watched the show in like 10 years. Apparently, they go to higher-end places that make ingredients in-house. It felt so nice to be recognized.”

Everett’s globetrotting resume spans Hong Kong to California, with stints in between at New York’s Eleven Madison Park and Fort Lauderdale’s late Valentino Cucina Italiana. Fieri sampled two dishes for the show: smoked pork jowl fried rice and crispy chicken oysters with fried potatoes.

Everett says chicken oysters are juicy and tender dark-meat morsels found near the chicken’s spine. He serves them with two dipping sauces: sweet potato honey mustard and huancaina Peruvian spicy-cheese.

“Visually, it’s a bag of fried potatoes and chicken nuggets,” Everett says. “I want it to be nostalgic like a Happy Meal. Nostalgia triggers memories, and I love dabbling with memories because when it gets someone, it gets them good.”

‘I felt like I was cooking with my buddy’

When Tommy Nevill saw the cherry-red 1968 Chevrolet Camaro SS convertible pull up in front of Nevs Barbecue in Palm Beach Gardens, the realization hit him: “Oh, this is really happening. ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’ is happening right now.”

Even so, he didn’t believe his “Triple D” luck was real until Guy and Hunter Fieri greeted him and his wife, co-owner Kelsey, with camera crews in tow.

The Orlando-raised pitmaster debuted his namesake Texas-style barbecue in 2022 after a 15-year career opening corporate steakhouses from Dubai to Dallas, where hallowed barbecue spots abounded “like Starbucks — they’re on every corner,” Nevill says. This allowed him to hone his brisket bona fides.

Nevill’s J&R Manufacturing Oyler, which he calls “the Cadillac of wood-burning smokers,” turns out 1,000 pounds of smoked meats at one time, from 16-hour prime brisket and pulled pork to cheddar-jalapeño sausage to turkey. His shop has one policy: Stay open until the meat runs out.

On camera, Nevill made two specialties: brisket burnt-end sloppy joes with 11 ingredients; and Nevs chili, a beanless Texas-style fusion of brisket, sausage, pulled pork, San Marzano tomatoes, poblano peppers and chili powder, thickened with cornbread mix and crowned with cornbread croutons — which Fieri on the show called “cornbread nuggies.”

“It’s a little sweeter than I would think of Texas chili,” Fieri said during the April 24 episode, popping a crouton into his mouth. “The amount of meat in here is ridiculous.”

“Even with all the cameras there, I felt like I was cooking with my buddy, Guy,” Neville says. “We were just throwing down and swapping banter. What he does has such a great impact for the community, highlighting restaurants that are doing things the right way.”

‘When he picked me, I felt accepted’

Owner Kris Limpanuwat says Fieri stopped by his Thai-sushi spot, Wok by the Beach in Riviera Beach, twice as a random customer before he got the invitation to appear on “Diners.”

Fieri, who lives down the street on Singer Island, had a go-to order — basil shrimp — which Limpanuwat gratefully made for the upcoming June 12 episode, “Cajun, Asian, and ‘Cue.”

If the Thailand-born chef-owner looks awestruck on camera, Limpanuwat says it’s because, until Fieri arrived in the red Camaro that morning, he had dismissed Food Network’s invitation as a “scam.”

“It’s too big for me to understand,” says Limpanuwat, who immigrated to Miami in 2003 and worked odd jobs until he learned to make Thai cuisine with what he calls “Miami-style wow presentation.”

“I am a second-class citizen here because I wasn’t born here. And then Guy shows up,” he said. “When he picked me, I felt accepted.”

Along with basil shrimp, he prepared wok-fried combo fried rice with chicken breast, New York strip loin and jumbo shrimp and a monster lobster roll, built with fried fresh lobster tail, cucumber, avocado, spicy crab and eel sauce.

‘It would make any Nonna happy’

Alaina’s Café & Bake Shoppe in Palm Beach Gardens was open just four hours a day for lunch, serving cupcakes, soup and sandwiches, until chef-owner Daniel Vallone took over ownership in January 2023, channelling his fine-dining chops (New York’s Le Bernardin and Per Se; The Loxahatchee Club in Jupiter) into casual comforts.

Now, just about everything on the Detroit-raised chef’s menu is “made from scratch but the ketchup,” Vallone says, from almond milk to breads. Vallone first added breakfast to the 2,600-square-foot bistro, then dinner in 2025, and says he now serves 300 to 400 customers daily.

One of those regulars happened to be one of Fieri’s bodyguards, who flagged Alaina’s to the Food Network star — or so Fieri told him, Vallone says.

Vallone closed down for a day of filming with Fieri, who picked two dishes: a roast beef sandwich made with house-baked onion focaccia, fresh-grated horseradish sauce and slow-roasted top round; and rigatoni Bolognese with wine-soaked pork, ground beef and pancetta, topped with housemade ricotta and a chiffonade of basil.

“That’s how you do Bolognese,” Fieri said during the April 10 episode between bites of ricotta. “It’s creamy, it’s luscious. My favorite of all of this: the kiss of red wine. It would make any Nonna happy.”

Vallone says his favorite moment happened off-camera with Hunter Fieri, with whom he bonded over California wineries: “He was like, ‘Dad, try a lamb rib!’ and Guy yelled, ‘I can’t! I’m so stuffed from the Bolognese, I can’t eat another bite!’ How’s that for an endorsement?”

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