Driftwood Gastropub appeared on Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on May 8, the result of a late-February shoot at the Boynton Beach restaurant that placed chef-owner Jimmy Everett at the kitchen pass cooking pork-jowl fried rice and fried chicken oysters for the Food Network camera. CBS 12's local coverage documented the broader Palm Beach County roster on the episode; Boca Burger Battle's account notes that the restaurant booked 100 new reservations within the first week after Food Network cleared Everett to promote the appearance.
The episode's title — "From Bunny Chow to Chicken Oysters" — pulls from two of Driftwood's better-known menu items. The chicken oyster is the small, dark, tender piece of meat that sits behind the thigh joint, the cut that most kitchens trim and discard. Driftwood's version arrives fried in a tempura-style batter with a chili-honey glaze and is the menu item that converted Driftwood's DDD pitch from "another gastropub" to "an obvious episode hit" once the production team tasted it during the location scout.
"Driftwood is not a traditional diner, drive-in, or dive," the local coverage noted in the lead — a reading that reflects how DDD has broadened its format over the past five years to cover the chef-driven small-format restaurants that operate at price points above the show's original spec. The shift has been good for the South Florida restaurants that the show covers; the Boynton episode joins recent features on Driftwood-adjacent Palm Beach County concepts that wouldn't have qualified for the original 2007 version of the show.
Everett, Gonzalez, and the Operating Theory Behind Driftwood
Driftwood opened in 2018 as a husband-and-wife operation. Everett and Ilia Gonzalez built the concept around bold-flavor comfort food at a price point that worked for the Federal Highway / Ocean Avenue corridor in Boynton — neither downtown Delray prices nor the strip-mall casual prices on the western edge of Palm Beach County. The menu has stayed consistent over the seven years since opening: short, ingredient-driven, with a few dishes that read like signature plates and the rest cycled seasonally through what's available at the Driftwood team's small list of farm and seafood suppliers.
The pork-jowl fried rice and the chicken oysters are both Everett-original. The chicken oyster preparation is built around the cut's natural tenderness; the tempura batter and the honey-chili glaze are designed to keep the cut from drying out at line-cook speeds. The pork-jowl fried rice is a riff on the Chinese-American comfort format that takes the often-overlooked jowl cut, braises it down, and folds it into day-old rice with green onion, soy, and a soft-boiled egg.
The bunny chow on the episode title is the third Driftwood signature — a South African-rooted curry served inside a hollowed bread loaf. Everett's version uses a slow-braised lamb curry inside a sourdough boule; the dish is meant to be torn open and shared between two diners. The bunny chow is the menu item that draws the most repeat customers from the Boynton-Delray dining radius, and it's the dish that anchors the bulk of the comfort-food positioning that Driftwood has built its reputation on.
What the DDD Bookings Have Looked Like in Practice
The 100-new-booking number that the restaurant cited refers to the first week after Food Network cleared the social promotion. The actual phone traffic and walk-in increase ran higher: the DDD episode placed Driftwood on the network's repeat-airing cycle, which generates a slow-build trail of bookings over the months following the original broadcast as the episode cycles through Food Network and HGTV airings.
The pattern is consistent across DDD-featured restaurants. The first week is the spike; the next four weeks consolidate into a 20-to-30-percent lift over the restaurant's pre-episode baseline; the following six months hold the lift at 10 to 15 percent above baseline as the episode reruns. Driftwood's reservation system, accessible via the restaurant's website, has been adjusted to accommodate the longer booking windows that the episode traffic introduces.
The restaurant is open Tuesday through Sunday for dinner. The chicken-oyster and pork-jowl fried-rice specials run through summer as the post-episode menu pull continues; the bunny chow remains a permanent menu fixture. The episode reruns on Food Network's broadcast schedule throughout the year; Driftwood's next big calendar event is the seasonal menu reset that traditionally lands in the second week of September.
