Chef Rocco DiSpirito: All Is Forgiven

[Pink Freud]

So many actors and writers love to trash the dining biz in their roles and writings, as revenge against the terrible jobs they had to work in NY and LA until their gilded coach finally arrived. They must have loved Rocco DiSpirito's NBC series "The Restaurant", in a schadenfreudian way, seeing all the misery they endured evenings while doing auditions and pitch meetings daytimes.

I used to cringe at seeing the name Rocco DiSpirito, all because of "The Restaurant", which purported to reveal the inner workings of an upscale Manhattan startup run by Chef DiSpirito, financed by Jeffrey Chodorow.

Restaurant industry pros rolled their eyes at seeing DiSpirito hittIng on hot women diners and drinkers while his kitchen melted down. They did face-plants as he desperately tried to hang on to his fed-up best employees by buying them Vespa scooters. They threw rocks at the TV screen every time diva uber-queen Topher, his super high maintenance male server, whined yet again about nothing- burgers and that not so fresh feeling . And they reveled over his nonstop spats with money man Chodorow, just waiting for Jeffrey to pull the plug and put that debacle out of its misery.

Now, Rocco, all is forgiven.

The Heroes & Icons Network, home of weekend reruns of "Batman" and "Superman", airs his healthy-cooking series "Now Eat THIS!" on Sunday mornings, in which he compares popular high-fat, high cost restaurant dishes with easy, delicious, home-cooking copycats with just a fraction of the fat, calories, sodium, and cost, prepared on-site by a different family each week.

Well worth a watch! Www.handitv.com