New York: Rocco's on 22nd Street is like a hot man...

but one that your friends has seen in the bathroom and told you that he has a small *ahem*. How so? Well, everyone warned you about it, but you don't really believe it's that bad, and so you have to see it with your own eyes. So after the fact, you are torn between telling people you have slept with him (and suffer the I-told-you-sos) or not admit that you did (But he is so hot)...

Sigh... Well... I know everyone has warned me about the food at this restaurant. And I approached this meal with low expectations. We arrived at an empty restaurant. Waiter kept pushing us to order drinks, so we did. Disappointing...

We had the fried calamari, the watercress salad to start. Tasteless calamari and salty watercress salad. On to entrees, pasta cabonara for her, and spaghetti with meatballs for me. Her pasta was so nasty that she could only eat 2 bites. We almost finished off the spaghetti not because it was good, but because we were starving. The meatballs were ok, but the appetizer portion of 2 golf ball sized meatballs was $8!!! Kinda tasted like spam too... way too salty...

Decided to have dessert. Sorbet for her, fried bananas for me. The gelato that came with the bananas left this film on the spoon... nasty...

Dinner came up to $90... Service was dismal, waiter did not even go over the menus with us, and there were no specials. Manager (the one on TV with the ponytail) kept filrting with the table of teenage girls instead of chatting with guests, and sadly, no Mama to be seen...

Very disappointing

I ate at the place while in New York back in March. It was comparable to Sbarro in quality.

Wow... Sbarro... Given the $90 bill, it sounds like Sbarro would have been a better, i.e. less painful, choice.

I take it the Rocco in question is Rocco Di Spirito, of television 'fame'. I saw him a number of times on Food TV a few years back and, with regard to his knowledge of Italian food, he showed himself to be remarkably ignorant for a chef and restaurateur, especially given that his parents are from Campania (unless that was made up for one of the shows)... Apparently, things haven't changed.

A disgrace to the proud culinary tradition of Campania Felix. Pfui to him.

A

Rocco's simply violates Mike G's Law of Restaurant Dining: "If there's any reason other than the food for a restaurant to draw customers, the food's no good."

It was as true of Elaine's back in the day when people actually cared about seeing Woody Allen in public as it is true of Rocco's today, and as it is true of the Rainforest Cafe at the Mall of America.

Sadly, Antonius, Rocco's Mama is the source of those salty meatballs refernced in CrazyC's post. At one time, she was making them in the kitchen herself.

As for Disprito, he is the poster boy for the types of bright smiling culinary grads that saavy investors snatch out of culinary schools to front their restaurants. The sad thing is that sometimes, they hype goes to the young chef's head.

At least Bobby Flay knows to keep his mouth shut and keep smiling.

Hmmm... Salty MeatBalls... One could take that the wrong way.. hehehe... Time to get my mind out of the gutter... Rumors are that Rocco is no longer allowed into the restaurant, and we did ask about Mama and were told that she come in later. The waiter did say that she comes in early in the morning and comes back at night to mingle with guests, but she was no where to be found.

Though one must wonder, if your son was "banned" from a restaurant that bears his name, will you still continue to work there?

Char

Will:

Well, I suppose this might be one of those cases where Mama was a bad cook, which perhaps could be taken as a mitigating factor in the judgement we bestow upon her feckless figlio. But rather than learning anything at school or in his professional gigs, he seems to have only been interested in being a celebrity rather than a chef. Well, I guess he's found the American dream in a way...

But there is a certain measure of fraud involved in offering up the sort of meal described by CracyC, who would have been better off dining on the Jerseyside, perhaps at Jerry's*... Mike G's Law obtains.


A

Full disclosure: Jerry's is owned by relatives of mine. I am not a shill.

NEW YORK (July 28) - A New York judge on Tuesday barred TV chef Rocco DiSpirito from the site of his reality TV show "The Restaurant," and told his financial backer he could walk away because the place was operating at a loss.

"I don't think you are obligated to run a restaurant that's losing money," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ira Gammerman told DiSpirito's partner, Jeffrey Chodorow.

At the end of a two-day hearing, the judge also issued the preliminary injunction barring DiSpirito from entering Rocco's on 22nd Street, where the show was filmed before being taken off the NBC broadcast network and moved to cable TV.

Mike G wrote:Rocco's simply violates Mike G's Law of Restaurant Dining: "If there's any reason other than the food for a restaurant to draw customers, the food's no good."

It was as true of Elaine's back in the day when people actually cared about seeing Woody Allen in public as it is true of Rocco's today, and as it is true of the Rainforest Cafe at the Mall of America.

FYI: Elaine's will close after 47 years.

The closing will be a blow to the regulars, to the past customers, to the neighborhood on the way upper East Side. But restaurants so identified with their owners never survive for long without them. Toots Shor’s is a case in point. The ’21 Club’ goes on, but no one is really identified with it anymore. For the next week, Elaine’s will be like another sitting shivah– Elaine died on December 3rd.

Reading this golden, classic thread after seven years reminds us just how Crazy C got her reputation. Bravo, and thank you Cathy for recovering this.

CrazyC is just before my time, but man! what I missed! Are there any other classic CC threads that I might read, just for the sheer pleasure of it??

Geo

Oh jeez... When Cathy2 ressurected this thread I hoped nobody would comment so it could be banished again into the archives...

Oy...

Well then. For an eagerly incipient fan CC, lead me to the thread you'd most like me to read!!

Yee hah!

Geo