Restaurant Review The TV Chef Rocco DiSpirito Returns, With a Quieter Touch The chef at Standard Grill looks familiar, but he’s cooking in a new way. By PETE WELLS
From Out of the Past, a New Chef at Standard Grill First a critics’ darling, then a reality star, then out of the restaurant business for more than a decade, Rocco DiSpirito is back with nuanced cooking and an interest in nutrient-rich “superfoods.”
Well A Chef Workout (and Meal) From Rocco DiSpirito The author of “Cook Your Butt Off!” discusses his personal health turnaround and how he has spread the message. By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
The Workout with Rocco DiSpirito Chef Rocco DiSpirito turns his Chinatown kitchen into a gym. Jessica Naudziunas and Poh Si Teng
Taking Heat for Not Cooking Rocco DiSpirito has, for a segment of the gastronomic elite, come to embody the talented chef who squanders his gifts in the scattershot pursuit of fame and fortune.
DiSpirito Goes Off The Air A LITTLE more than a year after the chef Rocco DiSpirito became the host of ''Food Talk'' on WOR radio, he and the station have parted company. ''There were some issues, and we couldn't come to an agreement,'' Bob Bruno, the vice president and general manager of the station, said yesterday. Mr. DiSpirito's final broadcast on WOR (710 AM) was Thursday. Guest hosts have been filling in on the call-in program, which runs from 11 a.m. to noon Monday to Friday.
24 Restaurants And Still Hungry EVEN with his 24 restaurants in nine cities from London to Los Angeles, even with his four homes, his private jet and his television appearances -- even though he can rightfully claim the title of being the Donald Trump of the restaurant world -- Jeffrey Chodorow does not seem a very happy man. That became abundantly clear over lunch the other day at China Grill, his gaudy flagship in Midtown, as Mr. Chodorow talked about what the world thought of him at the end of a two-month sprint on which he had swelled his culinary empire with six new restaurants.
Boldface BOLDFACE The Buzz Lightyear Ride. Tell Us About That, Too We absolutely knew. I mean, W.MARK FELT. How could one not know?
FOOD STUFF OFF THE MENU SCOTT CONANT has not yet filled his plate. Mr. Conant, the chef and an owner of L'Impero, just opened BAR TONNO , 17 Cleveland Place (Spring Street), a spot for Italian seafood, some raw. In the spring he and his partners plan to open ALTO , 540 Madison Avenue (53rd Street), named for Alto Adige, the Northern Italian province. The chef ROCCO DiSPIRITO has traded the stove for the mike. Mr. DiSpirito, who no longer runs the kitchens at Union Pacific and Rocco's, has replaced ARTHUR SCHWARTZ as host of ''Food Talk'' on WOR-AM (710), weekdays at 11 a.m.
Rocco DiSpirito's Out at Union Pacific ROCCO DiSPIRITO famously opened his namesake restaurant in a reality show last summer and was famously thrown out by his partners in July. Now he has been removed from a second restaurant, Union Pacific, once the jewel in his crown, which will close at the end of the year. Starting next week Mr. DiSpirito will no longer be the executive chef at Union Pacific, where he first made his mark when the restaurant opened in 1997. Main Street Restaurant Partners, his partners in Union Pacific, said yesterday that it would close on Christmas Eve, and until then Laurent Tourondel, the chef at BLT Steak, would act as a consultant. That leaves Mr. DiSpirito without a kitchen to cook in.
Dash of Reality: Restaurateur Files Response in Civil Suit They changed the locks on the restaurant that bears his name and refused to give him a key. They were slow to pay his 79-year-old mother who toiled in the restaurant day after day making meatballs. And, much to his chagrin, they replaced fresh pasta with the frozen kind.
PUBLIC LIVES When Food and Business Meet in the Spotlight WOW, the recipe for his caviar omelet sounds seductive, but first, a word from our glib but glum chef du jour: ''I'm putting myself through the college of life, and it's pretty expensive,'' he says. ''I'm getting beat up pretty bad. I don't even know why I'm in this predicament.'' Blessed with a baby face and gel-infused Botticelli tendrils, but cursed, for the moment, by his beautiful people persona, celebrity chef platform, and virtual ubiquity in the news media, Rocco DiSpirito, who is being sued by one business partner and stands accused of sending out subpar edibles from the kitchens of both New York City restaurants he runs, is strumming the blues on a vintage Martin guitar. It's out of tune, perfect for a flavor maestro like him: the sour blues.
RESTAURANTS Rocco's (Not the Spaghetti Place) SOMEWHERE around 9:40 p.m., our waiter at Union Pacific presented us with a large piece of steak covered in the ashes of burnt hay. It was nestled in a bed of hay in a copper casserole. We were all excited. It signaled the arrival of our main courses, one hour and 40 minutes after we had been seated. Unfortunately, the steak was returned to the kitchen to await the other main courses, which finally made their way to the table at 10.
Partners Sue Rocco, the TV Restaurateur Rocco DiSpirito, the engaging chef of ''The Restaurant'' reality television show, is being sued by his restaurant partners, who claim he has failed to provide food and service of sufficient quality. The restaurant, called Rocco's 22nd Street, won national fame last summer when it became the setting for the reality television show, which focused on Mr. DiSpirito's struggles to open his new business. The lawsuit claims that the restaurant has foundered while Mr. DiSpirito has benefited from the limelight.
FOOD STUFF Off the Menu FENG SHUI , a Chinese cafe and takeout counter, has opened in the lower level dining concourse of Grand Central Terminal, replacing Nem. It is owned by SUSHIL MALHOTRA , who also owns the Cafe Spice Indian restaurants. The chef, BEN LEE , who was previously at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Shanghai, is preparing popular dishes like General Tso's chicken, shrimp with lobster sauce and vegetable lo mein. Mr. Malhotra has also opened another branch of CAFE SPICE at 54 West 55th Street. UNION PACIFIC has reopened after renovations and has been upholstered in a brighter palette. ROCCO DISPIRITO is still in charge of the kitchen. His new chef de cuisine, DAVID COLEMAN , formerly at Cafe Atlas, maintains the restaurant's Asian-accented cooking.
RESTAURANTS The Reality, With the Reality Show Gone ROCCO'S on 22nd is New York's first meta-restaurant. Diners know the place, and clamor for a table in it, not because they are desperate to eat linguine with clam sauce in the Flatiron district but because they want to step into the world of ''The Restaurant,'' the six-part reality soap opera that recently ran on NBC and made a star of Rocco DiSpirito, its chef.
TELEVISION Cash. Fame. Pressure. And Garlic. FIFTY years ago, the finest restaurant in New York was Le Pavillon, and diners knew precisely three things about it: It was French, it was expensive, and the owner was Henri Soulé. It so happened that the restaurant employed some top-notch French chefs, notably Pierre Franey, who in turn hired a young fellow named Jacques Pépin. But in the 1950's, no one cared about chefs. They toiled anonymously below deck, like the stokers on a cruise line. The inner workings of Le Pavillon, for that matter, were of no more interest to the public than the goings-on at a pet shop or a tannery. ''The Restaurant,'' a six-episode reality series that begins tonight at 10 on NBC, accurately measures the distance that American diners have traveled in a couple of generations. It follows Rocco DiSpirito, a well-known New York chef, as he creates a new restaurant bearing his name in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. The project takes for granted that the average television viewer will find the very idea of a Manhattan restaurant fascinating and glamorous. It assumes an interest in the minutiae of food-service work, from the placement of forks on the table to the mechanics of running a kitchen. Finally, and quite accurately, it assumes that a restaurant has dramatic potential. Throw several dozen young people in close quarters, force them to work cooperatively at warp speed, and you get the full Shakespearean range of emotions: competitiveness, jealousy, anger, love and hate.
TELEVISION REVIEW Chef Special Is Product Placement On ''The Restaurant,'' a reality show about a celebrity chef struggling to open his own place in Manhattan, Rocco DiSpirito spends a lot more time in his car than in his kitchen. We see Mr. DiSpirito drive his Mitsubishi S.U.V. to his mother's house in Jamaica, Queens. We watch him argue with his publicist while refueling it at a gas station. The camera does not linger on the penne or Mama's meatballs, but we witness his S.U.V. being towed from in front of his restaurant, Rocco's on 22nd Street.
'Hi, I'm Your Waiter, and This Is Reality' THE fear factor wasn't as high as the desperation factor. But then, on this reality show, nobody was going to have to eat bugs. On a pleasant Tuesday recently, a thousand souls hungry for something more complicated than lunch were lined up outside Commune, the defunct restaurant on East 22nd Street. They were there to be interviewed for jobs at a new place that would open in June and be featured in July on a reality show on NBC called ''The Restaurant.'' They came bearing résumés, glossies, candy and recommendations from chefs. Some had been waiting for hours. ''This basically uses everything I do,'' said Jennifer Krater, a Radio City Rockette who also works as a waitress and was among the applicants.
OFF THE MENU An Elfin Enclave Emanuele Simeoni is taking his passion for the food of his native Friuli in northeastern Italy -- polenta, frico, bean dishes and tortellini -- to Barbalùc, the restaurant he will open next month at 135 East 65th Street. The chef, Christian Fantoni, had been banquet chef at Le Cirque 2000. Barbalùc is an elf in Italian folklore. Chefs on the Move: Don Pintabona, who has been the executive chef at Tribeca Grill since it opened 12 years ago, is leaving to pursue other ventures. His replacement, Stephen Lewandowski, was the chef de cuisine.
Restaurant Review The TV Chef Rocco DiSpirito Returns, With a Quieter Touch The chef at Standard Grill looks familiar, but he’s cooking in a new way. By PETE WELLS
From Out of the Past, a New Chef at Standard Grill First a critics’ darling, then a reality star, then out of the restaurant business for more than a decade, Rocco DiSpirito is back with nuanced cooking and an interest in nutrient-rich “superfoods.”
Well A Chef Workout (and Meal) From Rocco DiSpirito The author of “Cook Your Butt Off!” discusses his personal health turnaround and how he has spread the message. By ANAHAD O'CONNOR
The Workout with Rocco DiSpirito Chef Rocco DiSpirito turns his Chinatown kitchen into a gym. Jessica Naudziunas and Poh Si Teng
Taking Heat for Not Cooking Rocco DiSpirito has, for a segment of the gastronomic elite, come to embody the talented chef who squanders his gifts in the scattershot pursuit of fame and fortune.
DiSpirito Goes Off The Air A LITTLE more than a year after the chef Rocco DiSpirito became the host of ''Food Talk'' on WOR radio, he and the station have parted company. ''There were some issues, and we couldn't come to an agreement,'' Bob Bruno, the vice president and general manager of the station, said yesterday. Mr. DiSpirito's final broadcast on WOR (710 AM) was Thursday. Guest hosts have been filling in on the call-in program, which runs from 11 a.m. to noon Monday to Friday.
24 Restaurants And Still Hungry EVEN with his 24 restaurants in nine cities from London to Los Angeles, even with his four homes, his private jet and his television appearances -- even though he can rightfully claim the title of being the Donald Trump of the restaurant world -- Jeffrey Chodorow does not seem a very happy man. That became abundantly clear over lunch the other day at China Grill, his gaudy flagship in Midtown, as Mr. Chodorow talked about what the world thought of him at the end of a two-month sprint on which he had swelled his culinary empire with six new restaurants.
Boldface BOLDFACE The Buzz Lightyear Ride. Tell Us About That, Too We absolutely knew. I mean, W.MARK FELT. How could one not know?
FOOD STUFF OFF THE MENU SCOTT CONANT has not yet filled his plate. Mr. Conant, the chef and an owner of L'Impero, just opened BAR TONNO , 17 Cleveland Place (Spring Street), a spot for Italian seafood, some raw. In the spring he and his partners plan to open ALTO , 540 Madison Avenue (53rd Street), named for Alto Adige, the Northern Italian province. The chef ROCCO DiSPIRITO has traded the stove for the mike. Mr. DiSpirito, who no longer runs the kitchens at Union Pacific and Rocco's, has replaced ARTHUR SCHWARTZ as host of ''Food Talk'' on WOR-AM (710), weekdays at 11 a.m.
Rocco DiSpirito's Out at Union Pacific ROCCO DiSPIRITO famously opened his namesake restaurant in a reality show last summer and was famously thrown out by his partners in July. Now he has been removed from a second restaurant, Union Pacific, once the jewel in his crown, which will close at the end of the year. Starting next week Mr. DiSpirito will no longer be the executive chef at Union Pacific, where he first made his mark when the restaurant opened in 1997. Main Street Restaurant Partners, his partners in Union Pacific, said yesterday that it would close on Christmas Eve, and until then Laurent Tourondel, the chef at BLT Steak, would act as a consultant. That leaves Mr. DiSpirito without a kitchen to cook in.
Dash of Reality: Restaurateur Files Response in Civil Suit They changed the locks on the restaurant that bears his name and refused to give him a key. They were slow to pay his 79-year-old mother who toiled in the restaurant day after day making meatballs. And, much to his chagrin, they replaced fresh pasta with the frozen kind.
PUBLIC LIVES When Food and Business Meet in the Spotlight WOW, the recipe for his caviar omelet sounds seductive, but first, a word from our glib but glum chef du jour: ''I'm putting myself through the college of life, and it's pretty expensive,'' he says. ''I'm getting beat up pretty bad. I don't even know why I'm in this predicament.'' Blessed with a baby face and gel-infused Botticelli tendrils, but cursed, for the moment, by his beautiful people persona, celebrity chef platform, and virtual ubiquity in the news media, Rocco DiSpirito, who is being sued by one business partner and stands accused of sending out subpar edibles from the kitchens of both New York City restaurants he runs, is strumming the blues on a vintage Martin guitar. It's out of tune, perfect for a flavor maestro like him: the sour blues.
RESTAURANTS Rocco's (Not the Spaghetti Place) SOMEWHERE around 9:40 p.m., our waiter at Union Pacific presented us with a large piece of steak covered in the ashes of burnt hay. It was nestled in a bed of hay in a copper casserole. We were all excited. It signaled the arrival of our main courses, one hour and 40 minutes after we had been seated. Unfortunately, the steak was returned to the kitchen to await the other main courses, which finally made their way to the table at 10.
Partners Sue Rocco, the TV Restaurateur Rocco DiSpirito, the engaging chef of ''The Restaurant'' reality television show, is being sued by his restaurant partners, who claim he has failed to provide food and service of sufficient quality. The restaurant, called Rocco's 22nd Street, won national fame last summer when it became the setting for the reality television show, which focused on Mr. DiSpirito's struggles to open his new business. The lawsuit claims that the restaurant has foundered while Mr. DiSpirito has benefited from the limelight.
FOOD STUFF Off the Menu FENG SHUI , a Chinese cafe and takeout counter, has opened in the lower level dining concourse of Grand Central Terminal, replacing Nem. It is owned by SUSHIL MALHOTRA , who also owns the Cafe Spice Indian restaurants. The chef, BEN LEE , who was previously at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Shanghai, is preparing popular dishes like General Tso's chicken, shrimp with lobster sauce and vegetable lo mein. Mr. Malhotra has also opened another branch of CAFE SPICE at 54 West 55th Street. UNION PACIFIC has reopened after renovations and has been upholstered in a brighter palette. ROCCO DISPIRITO is still in charge of the kitchen. His new chef de cuisine, DAVID COLEMAN , formerly at Cafe Atlas, maintains the restaurant's Asian-accented cooking.
RESTAURANTS The Reality, With the Reality Show Gone ROCCO'S on 22nd is New York's first meta-restaurant. Diners know the place, and clamor for a table in it, not because they are desperate to eat linguine with clam sauce in the Flatiron district but because they want to step into the world of ''The Restaurant,'' the six-part reality soap opera that recently ran on NBC and made a star of Rocco DiSpirito, its chef.
TELEVISION Cash. Fame. Pressure. And Garlic. FIFTY years ago, the finest restaurant in New York was Le Pavillon, and diners knew precisely three things about it: It was French, it was expensive, and the owner was Henri Soulé. It so happened that the restaurant employed some top-notch French chefs, notably Pierre Franey, who in turn hired a young fellow named Jacques Pépin. But in the 1950's, no one cared about chefs. They toiled anonymously below deck, like the stokers on a cruise line. The inner workings of Le Pavillon, for that matter, were of no more interest to the public than the goings-on at a pet shop or a tannery. ''The Restaurant,'' a six-episode reality series that begins tonight at 10 on NBC, accurately measures the distance that American diners have traveled in a couple of generations. It follows Rocco DiSpirito, a well-known New York chef, as he creates a new restaurant bearing his name in the Flatiron district of Manhattan. The project takes for granted that the average television viewer will find the very idea of a Manhattan restaurant fascinating and glamorous. It assumes an interest in the minutiae of food-service work, from the placement of forks on the table to the mechanics of running a kitchen. Finally, and quite accurately, it assumes that a restaurant has dramatic potential. Throw several dozen young people in close quarters, force them to work cooperatively at warp speed, and you get the full Shakespearean range of emotions: competitiveness, jealousy, anger, love and hate.
TELEVISION REVIEW Chef Special Is Product Placement On ''The Restaurant,'' a reality show about a celebrity chef struggling to open his own place in Manhattan, Rocco DiSpirito spends a lot more time in his car than in his kitchen. We see Mr. DiSpirito drive his Mitsubishi S.U.V. to his mother's house in Jamaica, Queens. We watch him argue with his publicist while refueling it at a gas station. The camera does not linger on the penne or Mama's meatballs, but we witness his S.U.V. being towed from in front of his restaurant, Rocco's on 22nd Street.
'Hi, I'm Your Waiter, and This Is Reality' THE fear factor wasn't as high as the desperation factor. But then, on this reality show, nobody was going to have to eat bugs. On a pleasant Tuesday recently, a thousand souls hungry for something more complicated than lunch were lined up outside Commune, the defunct restaurant on East 22nd Street. They were there to be interviewed for jobs at a new place that would open in June and be featured in July on a reality show on NBC called ''The Restaurant.'' They came bearing résumés, glossies, candy and recommendations from chefs. Some had been waiting for hours. ''This basically uses everything I do,'' said Jennifer Krater, a Radio City Rockette who also works as a waitress and was among the applicants.
OFF THE MENU An Elfin Enclave Emanuele Simeoni is taking his passion for the food of his native Friuli in northeastern Italy -- polenta, frico, bean dishes and tortellini -- to Barbalùc, the restaurant he will open next month at 135 East 65th Street. The chef, Christian Fantoni, had been banquet chef at Le Cirque 2000. Barbalùc is an elf in Italian folklore. Chefs on the Move: Don Pintabona, who has been the executive chef at Tribeca Grill since it opened 12 years ago, is leaving to pursue other ventures. His replacement, Stephen Lewandowski, was the chef de cuisine.
