Guy Fieri supports two San Diego small restaurants— with $25,000 each

Guy Fieri poses at Guy Fieri's Vegas Kitchen & Bar at The Quad Resort & Casino on April 4, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada

June 20, 2021 6:17 AM PT

Two San Diego small restaurant owners received $25,000 grants last week from chef and TV host Guy Fieri, during Fieri’s online June 12 special “Guy’s Restaurant Reboot by LendingTree.” The livestreamed show was created to help restaurateurs get back on their feet following the pandemic. Fieri raised $300,000 in grants from donors like LendingTree and Twisted Tea.

The two local recipients were Avonte Hartsfield of Rollin Roots vegan food truck and Gustavo Tonella of Doggos Gus Mexican Hotdogs in Imperial Beach. In 2019, Hartsfield started Rollin Roots at one San Diego farmers market. By March 2020, he was at 15. When the farmers markets closed, he rented a food truck in July and has been serving customers on a “pay what you can” basis. Tonella discovered a passion for bacon-wrapped hot dogs in Mexico and spent months developing his own recipes before launching his first stand in 2010. For details on the show, visit guysrestaurantreboot.com.

Kragen writes about restaurants for the San Diego Union-Tribune. Email her at pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com.

Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.