Celebrity Chef Guy Fieri Spotted At The TA Ranch In Buffalo, Wyoming

Food Network Superstar Chef Guy Fieri was back in Wyoming, spotted this time at the TA Ranch in Buffalo, Wyoming.

Wayland The Band of Nashville posted Monday on Facebook that it had been to “@flavortownusa with @guyfieri for a third time this weekend in Buffalo, Wyoming for another episode of Guy’s All American Road Trip.”

The stamp showed “Wayland is at TA Ranch,” suggesting the visit was likely this past weekend.

Fieri has eaten Wyoming in Laramie and Jackson in years past. Generally, when he’s filming in a community, he makes several stops, but it’s not known where else Fieri may have visited this time around.

A Food Network spokeswoman said on background that for the safety of the show, and to prevent readers from being disappointed, she could not confirm or deny whether Fieri was in Wyoming, nor whether TA Ranch would be on an upcoming episode of one of his many shows on the Food Network.

The TA Ranch in Wyoming is an historic 1800s homestead on the National Registry of Historic Places. If it does appear on one of Fieri’s shows, it won’t be the first time it’s been in the national spotlight. It was featured on Bob Vila’s six-season “Restore America.”

Today, the multi-generation ranch offers guests authentic experiences on a working cattle ranch, as well as The Cookhouse, a from-scratch kitchen using locally sourced ingredients that is open to the general public. The latter doesn’t require a stay at the ranch to experience.

“We just thought that we were going to do kind of a line dancing thing out here, some swing dancing,” Kay Giles with TA Ranch told Cowboy State Daily. “And you know, it turned out to be a little more than that. We were able to kind of showcase our restaurant out here and our other activities and the history. It was a lot of fun.”

Giles doesn’t know if the TA Ranch will be featured in an upcoming show.

“It’s all no guarantee,” Giles said. “But I think it was an extreme kindness for them to come, like I said, and I think when he came to our place, I don’t know if he was inspired, or whatever it was, but I think he thought we had more to offer than what they originally thought. And so, he, you know, expanded their program, and he gave a lot of his time to kind of look at everything.”

The Menu

Of course, wherever celebrity chef and restaurateur Guy Fieri is, there’s going to be amazing food on the menu, and the experience prepared for him at TA Ranch was no different.

“We made several Wyoming-specific items and items that are really specific to our family,” Giles said.

That includes the TA Ranch’s famous signature smoked brisket, as well as its brick chicken, and the lamb burger. They also made a perhaps lesser-known dish that comes from the family’s Korean heritage, budae jjigae, pronounced “buddha jeekay.”

“It’s this combination, it’s a poor man’s dish,” Giles said. “During the war, Korea had no food or substance to keep themselves fed. And so basically, this has Spam, it has kimchi, it has a bunch of items that were shelf stable and that they can eat.”

The Giles’ family recipe includes pineapple and chicken, as well as the more traditional Spam, kimchi, and baked beans.

“We were able to showcase that, and we were able to tell the history about TA Ranch and the Johnson County War,” Giles said. “And that was a lot of fun. We also do horse training demonstrations out here, and we were able to kind of show how we train colts.”

The evening ended with s’mores at fire pits near the roadhouse, as well as outdoor games and line dancing. 

“Guy actually brought out a band from Nashville, and they were absolutely amazing,” Giles said. 

Giles added she had tried to line up a Wyoming band, but there were some tight time constraints, so that is why Fieri ended up bringing a band with him.

The band was Michigan-based Wayland, which posted photos of the band with Fieri in Buffalo on its Facebook page on Monday.

Intimidation Factor

Fieri’s name is not pronounced the same way it looks. It’s actually Fee-yeti, and that’s a particular that the famous “Mayor of Flavortown” is known to be very insistent about.

There are actually videos of him chastising people who have gotten the pronunciation wrong, and so the Fieri team worked with Giles and her family ahead of time to ensure they could pronounce the name correctly before Fieri arrived.

Given that, and Fieri’s fame, Giles said the family felt a bit intimidated at first.

“But, he is probably the nicest person you’ve ever met,” Giles added. “He just makes you feel right at home. He helps you kind of navigate the whole process. They made us feel at home. They felt like our family, essentially, so we had a great time.”

Fieri brought his dog with him.

“He has the cutest dog in the world,” Giles added. 

And he also brought some amazing tequila with him.

“The only advice he gave, the one thing he did was, as I was riding a colt, I kind of flew off and hit the fence,” Giles said. “And he gave me tequila shots right after. He said, ‘Here, it looks like you need this.’”

The tequila, called Santo, is from a company Fieri founded with Sammy Hagar.

“It was so delicious,” Giles said. “It was amazing.”

Authentic Wyoming Experience

Horses are something that Giles is particularly passionate about at the TA Ranch, which is still a working cattle ranch and offers an authentic experience to guests.

“The way we train them is called natural horsemanship,” she said. “And they asked us about horse psychology and what we do.”

Fieri was also interested in learning more about the history of the ranch, which was established in 1882 by Dr. William Harris of Laramie. It is also the site of the historic Johnson County War, and some of the bullet holes from the shootout can still be seen at the barn. 

“My grandparents bought the ranch 30 years ago,” Giles recalled. “And my grandma has a degree in restoration and interior design. So, when my grandpa bought the ranch, she said, ‘We have to restore this ranch. It’s a piece of Wyoming history.’ So that is their legacy, preserving this piece of history.”

The guest experiences at the ranch, in fact, evolved out of that effort.

“They would invite friends to come and see it,” Giles said. “We had so many friends coming up, it rolled into who else should we invite? And it just kept expanding.”

Getting the chance to tell someone like Fieri all about TA Ranch and its history in Wyoming and its amazing food was fabulous, Giles added.

“It was so exciting to showcase this authentic piece of Wyoming, about how we train horses and how we do things here,” she said, adding that regardless of whether the ranch ends up on one of Fieri’s shows, it was still the experience of a lifetime.

“It’s one of those experiences you never forget,” she said. “At the end of the day, it was all about having fun with good people. When there are such good vibes and everyone is getting along, that makes the experience worth it. So, if we never end up on television, we’re not upset at all, it was just a great experience all the way around.”