Rocco: Trapped in Reality TV's Twilight Zone?

By JULIETTE ROSSANT As NBC's The Restaurant finished its second, inglorious season, co-owner Jeffrey Chodorow pronounced that Rocco's on 22nd had finally made a profit -- and that Rocco DiSpirito would either have to buy him out or sell out. Since then, matters have only deteriorated. Chodorow sued Rocco for damages and seized operating control of the restaurant. Rocco countersued for $6 Million and restoration of 50% control. On June 8, Chodorow had Rocco barred from Rocco's on 22nd for a publicity shoot, then filed to have him permanently banned. The court decided Rocco could do the shoot but thereafter would need court permission to enter his namesake restaurant until such time as Chodorow's suit against him and his against Chodorow are resolved. Not to be upstaged by the TV-hungry Rocco, Chodorow stooped to a new low by suing QVC for $25,000 damages and $12,000 F&B, for diverting assets away from Rocco on 22nd for a QVC luncheon in May. Perhaps the show could begin a third season as Kill the Restaurant and star some TV wrestlers, who seem much more adept at sticking to script when fighting than these amateurs. Having shared a "Super Chefs" panel, albeit briefly, with Rocco during The Los Angeles Times bookfest on April 24, I saw two sides to his personality shine through. First to manifest was the Mr. Hyde/Rocco, the rocker-dressed, late-arriving, mike-hogging star. Had it not been for the self-confidence of host Leslie Brenner, the whole panel might have become another episode of the Rocco show. Second and more interesting, however, was the mature, intelligent, business-savvy Mr. Rocco who won over Dr. Jeckyll once caged by us two lionesses. Though he said that he had not read Super Chef, he obviously had thought long and hard about many of the issues I dealt with in the book and replied as if he had indeed read it. Suddenly, I believed that he had earned an MBA and that he was seriously bidding to jump straight into superchefdom without going through the restaurant expansion phase via The Restaurant. We talked about this possibility during the panel and about my reconsidering the definition of a super chef (in which I include restaurant empire). Unfortunately, though Dr. Jeckyll seems to have been consciously chasing superchefdom with The Restaurant, Mr. Hyde seems to emerge with the cameras -- and I doubt there have been any lionesses on hand to restrain Rocco on camera.