Santa Rosa resident celebrity chef Guy Fieri stopped in at the Veterans Memorial Building in Santa Rosa yesterday to cook up some warm meals for the victims of the fires plaguing California wine country.

The Sacramento Bee reports that Fieri brought a wood-fired oven and barbecue smoker to cook lunch and dinner for thousands of people in partnership with the Salvation Army.

“We started planning this on Monday night,” Fieri said in a Salvation Army YouTube video. “We just served maybe 1,200 people pulled pork, mac ‘n’ cheese, coleslaw and garlic bread.”

KQED reports that Fieri and his family also had to evacuate their Santa Rosa home at 2 a.m. on Monday. Despite living a block away from the neighborhood of Coffey Park, which was almost completely destroyed, Fieri’s home was reportedly unharmed.

“The smoke was really bad,” Fieri told KQED. “We had to evacuate at two in the morning, and we grabbed what we could, taking pictures off the wall as fast as we could. Jumped in the truck, loaded in the dogs, and away we went.”

File photo of Guy Fieri. | Andrew Goff.

Following the scare, Fieri reached out to the Salvation Army to donate time and resources to helping victims.

Despite his best efforts, Fieri — who is a frequent target for media critics — was questioned about his choice of bringing wood-fired smokers to cook for people whose homes burnt down days earlier.

“I don’t even have anything to say about that,” Fieri is quoted as saying in the KQED article. “That’s a ridiculous question. And that’s a ridiculous statement. I mean, come on. What do you want me to do?”

Fieri and his team will reportedly be feeding between 3,500 and 5,500 people lunch and dinner throughout the weekend.