Rocco DiSpirito: Rocco's Dinner Party — Reservations Confirmed

Rocco DiSpirito said it plainly: "This is probably the best hosting job on television. I get to host six friends for dinner, other people do the cooking, …" — and Premier Guide Miami was in the room when it happened.

Rocco DiSpirito has made Bravo his new home, hosting private dinner parties for celebrity guests including Raven-Symoné, Cat Deeley, Liza Minnelli, Marvin Hamlisch, Sandra Bernhard, Alan Cumming, and others. The idea for Rocco's Dinner Party came from Rocco's real life — in 2005 he got out of the professional restaurant business and became a home cook who hosts many intimate parties. Premier Guide Miami recently confirmed a reservation with the celebrity chef, who dished on his celebrity guests, memorable moments, entertaining tips, and more. Rocco's Dinner Party premiered on Bravo June 15 at 11:00 PM and moved to Wednesday nights at 10:00 PM on June 22.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Your cookbooks hit the New York Times Best Seller list — do you anticipate doing another?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: Two number ones in a row. I have another one coming out in September — 100 Tips on How to Save 100 Calories Home and Away, out September 27. And then I'm working on Now Eat This Italian. I'm actually traveling to Italy and learning the origins of our favorite Italian-American dishes, and then transforming them into healthy versions of their former selves.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: You've said "healthy and delicious are no longer mutually exclusive" — how does that reflect in your cooking?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: My cooking embodies that notion. That's actually from Page 3 of my book The Now Eat This Diet — that's the signature page, where I sign the book. My cooking for about five years now has been looking at how to make foods we love — fried chicken, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, steak — make those healthy. And I've figured it out. I've written two books about it. It comes from a real place in my life where I was training for triathlons and I had to eat a lot of food to keep up with the training, and it had to be good food. I didn't want to eat diet food because it tastes like diet food, so I figured out how to make everyday food taste good and be healthy.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Do you enjoy having dinner parties?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: I love to entertain. I love cooking for people. To this day, one of my favorite things to do is take out a cutting board, chop some onions, talk to my friends, put something together, bring it to the table, and enjoy that moment — that really human, wonderful connection you get when you sit at a table and eat and drink. There's something about the intimacy of a table that breaks down barriers. People let their guard down, they talk, they open up, and you can really connect. I'd love to pretend that my friends are as fabulous as the guests we have on the show every week, but I live a little more of a simple life than that. But many of the guests are friends and people I've cooked for in the past.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Give us some tips on throwing a great dinner party.

ROCCO DISPIRITO: Never run out of food and booze — simple one. Number two, it's okay to cheat at a dinner party. I'm talking about cheating in the kitchen — it's the only room in the house you can get away with it. If there's too much pressure to get everything together, I wholly recommend going to the Whole Foods hot bar buffet and picking up your favorite Indian and serving that, if that's what you need to do to get dinner on the table and friends gathered. You don't have to be a purist about it because the point is to get people together. And three, make sure you understand the point of a dinner party is to have fun — not to be miserable, not to feel judged, not to be concerned about what people think of your outfit or your culinary choices. This is not the time to show off your new cookware or your new wine room. This is a time to connect on a deep human level with people you don't get a chance to see a lot. Eating is one of the last things we refuse to do alone. Eating alone is miserable. We do everything else alone — we work alone, we sit in front of a computer all day. You've got to really take advantage of those moments you give yourself to share with other people. Essentially it boils down to: give people permission to have fun.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: How did it feel to do a show without being in the kitchen cooking?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: It's a little weird — I can be completely candid with you and say it's a little weird. But definitely good for me to take a little off my plate. It's hard enough to host a party, and the fact that the way the show worked out I didn't have to do all the cooking works out just perfectly. I am in the kitchen a lot, talking with the chefs and checking on their food and progress, because after all it's a dinner party — if it doesn't go off well it's still on my back. It's still my dinner party and I do have to make sure my guests have a great time. I fiercely protect their right to have fun. The chefs and I talk about the menus, the foods, the techniques. Some want more advice, some want less, but there's a lot of collaboration going on. Chefs love to learn — chefs are lifelong students of cuisine, and we all recognize there's something to learn from everyone else in the profession.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Did you enjoy the role of judge on the show?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: Being a judge is a little tough, I have to admit. You have to offer criticism, which is not fun to do. I do feel that since I have such a strong point of view about what the purpose of a dinner party is — which is to make people happy, to get together and have fun — all of my criticism had a birthplace. There was a reason for it and a point of view. If we know what our goal is, the criticism serves as a pass to get to that goal. It's never personal. It's never arbitrary. So that helped lessen the load, if you will, of being a judge on a TV show.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: How is this show different from other cooking shows currently out there?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: It couldn't be more different from every other cooking show out there. It is the only one on television that celebrates why we cook, not just how we cook. What most culinary competitions do is focus on the how — the technique, the ingredients, the passion of the chefs. This show is entirely focused on why we get together and cook. And the reason we cook is because we want people to know we care for them, we love them, they matter to us, and we want to celebrate and have real human moments with them around the dinner table. The show is interesting because it's not always the best chef who wins — it's the person who understands most that this show is about making guests happy. When you invite someone into your home there's an implicit contract that you're going to make them happy. No one goes to a dinner party looking forward to being miserable all night long. Chefs have a lot of power — everything they decide to do with the menu, the décor, the ambiance, the service, the beverages can affect a guest's happiness. It's really about balancing their desire to impress people with their skills versus their ability to make people happy. Those are two very different skillsets, and this is the only show that focuses on both.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Who are some of the celebrities appearing on the show?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: In the first episode there's Bryan Batt from Mad Men, Michael Kenneth Williams from Boardwalk Empire, Christine Ebersole, Bill McCuddy the movie reviewer for Forbes.com, Marcus Samuelsson who won Top Chef Masters Season 2, and Kelly Choi who hosted Top Chef Masters. And then it goes on to include Raven-Symoné, Cat Deeley, Liza Minnelli, Marvin Hamlisch, Sandra Bernhard, Alan Cumming, and about four to five other people. It's really an amazing group. We were looking for people who are fun, who love food and wine — people who represented different worlds and different places in our culture. Not just people who are famous, but people who were experts in something. We have a great furniture maker, we have a writer, we have artists.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Alan Cumming is an interesting guy...

ROCCO DISPIRITO: He's brilliant. He's playing Salvador Dalí in a movie and he does this impression of Dalí that is really, really funny. And then Liza tells this great story about having lunch with Salvador Dalí in Paris — how Dalí was with a "woman," and only to find out it wasn't actually a woman. And her response was, "Really?" He said, "I was a little unsophisticated at the time." That's great. But that's the kind of thing you get in a setting like this. People were talking for hours. There are a lot of revelations and a lot of genuine moments.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Any great episodes we can expect throughout the season?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: In the first episode there's a great Kelly Choi comment about sucking it — you'll just have to watch to see what she's talking about. There are a lot of wonderful moments. By the time we're into the second or third course of the first dinner party, my guests have really let their guard down and opened up and we just get to hear a lot of wonderful things about their lives. There's one great moment in the Now Eat This episode where Chazz Palminteri talks about how A Bronx Tale happened — how he had $20 in the bank and refused $1 million for his script. He wrote A Bronx Tale, and his only request was that he play Sonny, because it was really important for him that the character be developed properly. No one would let him do it. They said, "You're an unknown actor. We want to give it to a De Niro or someone really big." And even though he had $20 in the bank he refused the $1 million and just continued to do the show as a one-man show off Broadway. And then he talks about the night Robert De Niro comes in, watches the show, finds him backstage, and just tells him, "I love it. I'm going to produce this. I'm going to play your father. You're going to play Sonny. It's going to be great." And then he finishes the story with the time he met Don Rickles, whose first comment to him was, "You'd be nothing without De Niro. Hello, nice to meet you." Dozens and dozens of moments like that in every episode.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Which was your favorite dinner party on the show?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: It's like picking favorite children, so you have to forgive me. There's no question that the Liza Minnelli dinner party is sort of otherworldly. Picture me — a chef — sitting at a table with Marvin Hamlisch, Liza Minnelli, Sandra Bernhard, some of the greatest entertainers of our time, hearing stories like, "My godfather was Ira Gershwin and he told me a story." It was just one moment like that after another. And watching Liza spontaneously sing and dance, and her best friend Sam Harris compose and perform a song about our dinner party on the spot. Sitting at a table with people with that kind of talent was definitely very memorable — I had to pinch myself a few times. She revealed a lot about her father and talked a lot about her life. And watching this woman celebrating her sixty-fifth birthday, who has more energy than I do, feel so thrilled about what was happening that she had to sing and get up and dance — it was just a really wonderful night. Yeah, it was kind of otherworldly. There's no other way to describe it.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Are the guests allowed to choose the menu they want to eat from?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: The guests go from one dinner party to the next — consecutive competing dinner parties. The menu is decided beforehand; the chefs and I consult on the menu, and then they go shopping. By the time they're ready to serve, the guests arrive and usually the chefs meet one or two of the guests. There are often a couple of dietary restrictions or last-minute requests that need to be accommodated. All six guests go from one dinner party to the next, and at the end of the night they help me decide who the winner is. But it's always pretty clear to me because I'm just looking for where my guests had more fun.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Will your family be involved this time, as they've been in many of your past shows?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: Yeah, we were really hoping to get my mom involved — it just wasn't possible for this season. Hopefully it will be next season. She's just a wonderful source of light and entertainment and so genuine. There are very few people like her out there, so it would have been great, but it just wasn't possible this time.

PREMIER GUIDE MIAMI: Will there be a Season 2?

ROCCO DISPIRITO: I would do it again. I'm looking forward to doing a Season 2 and with any luck we'll have one. This is probably the best hosting job on television. I get to host six friends for dinner, other people do the cooking, and there's no check at the end — so I'm pretty happy with it.

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