Fieri and Cohen: They probably deserve each other. (Photo: Getty Images (left), EPA)

As reported in last week’s New York Post, Steven A. Cohen, the erstwhile ringleader of insider trading emporium SAC Capital, was in Los Angeles recently and made a brief appearance on Guy Fieri’s Food Network Show. The article also revealed that Fieri, shameless huckster of a disgraceful concoction called Donkey Sauce, and Cohen have been friends ever since the latter paid the frantic “food personality” (it’s not clear that he can be called a chef) $100,000 to drive around with him in Connecticut and provide a private version of Fieri’s puzzlingly popular TV show, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.

According to sources associated with the Food Netowrk, it was only while the fatuous foodie Fieri was basking in the sordid afterglow of Cohen’s visit that the former realized that he’d been played for a fool as badly as that octogenerian neurologist who was corrupted and hoodwinked by one of Cohen’s underlings. A production assistant who asked to remain nameless told Bud Fox News:

After the taping was over and Cohen had taken off, we were all standing around having some “Salted Whiskey Caramel Fool” [BFN: supposedly one of Fieri’s signature dishes, it’s an alimentary-canal-affronting hodgepodge of sea salt whiskey caramel sauce, macerated strawberries, toasted house made pound cake, fresh whipped cream and hazelnut brittle], when it hit Guy like a ton of bricks: Cohen had stolen all his secret recipes for his upcoming restaurant chain. It was like that scene in The Usual Suspects when Chazz Palminteri drops the coffee cup and realizes that Kevin Spacey is Keyser Soze.

When asked for comment, DeFred Goo Folts, Professor of Public Policy at the Newark (Delaware) State Normal School of Liberal Arts, Director of the Nixonian Institute for Business Ethics, and author of the soon-to-be published Trump: Hair We Go Again, told Bud Fox News:

Well, this should put to rest cockamamie theories that Cohen didn’t know what his lackeys were doing. And just like Keyser Soze, Cohen will never get caught. You can bet on it. But how weird was blowing $100,000 to hang out with Fieri? What’s he going to do for an encore…throw a Minecraft party? He should stick to buying fake sharks in tanks of formaldehyde disguised as modern art.

In an suspicious coincidence, Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management issued a press release yesterday indicating that Cohen will look to use his financial expertise to become an owner of companies, moving his family office away from mere stock picker (read: inside trader) to more of a private equity operator. According to the release, Point72’s initial foray into outright ownership will be its opening of The Insiders’ Cafe, a chain of restaurants in the greater Connecticut area that will offer “a cutting edge yet accessible bill of fare created by Cohen’s team of world class chefs.” The team listed in the release, a line-up of the usual TV food-preparer suspects, did not include the duped Fieri.