Rocco DiSpirito: Rocco’s Dinner Party-Reservations Confirmed
By: Judith Wallace
Rocco DiSpirito has made Bravo his new home and he is hosting private dinner parties for his celebrity guests like Raven Dee Symone, Cat Deeley, Liza Minnelli, Marvin Hamlisch, Sandra Bernhard, Alan Cumming and others.
“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,” says Rocco DiSpirito.
The idea of hosting dinner parties at home for Rocco’s Dinner Party came from Rocco’s real life. In 2005, Rocco got out of the professional restaurant business and is now a home cook where he hosts many intimate parties. He enjoys entertaining and the intimate human connection you get when you sit at a table to eat or drink which breaks down the barriers.
Rocco’s Dinner Party is not just another cooking show its format is different from the others. This self-contained competition series gives three highly skilled chefs a shot at crafting the perfect evening for DiSpirito and his handpicked celebrity guests.The competing chefs hail from all walks of lives – from restaurateurs to caterers to self-taught foodies – and the winner of each episode will take home a prize of $20,000.
Each week, three new chefs have one shot at impressing Dispirito by cooking their signature dish. The two strongest will advance to the next round, where they are challenged to develop a full menu in competing dinner parties’ for Dispirito’s high-profile guests.
Premier Guide Media recently confirmed a reservation with celebrity chef, Rocco DiSpirito who dished on his celebrity guests, memorable moments to look forward to on the series, entertaining tips and more.
Rocco’s Dinner Party premieres on Bravo June 15 at 11:00 pm and moves to Wednesday nights at 10:00 pm on June 22.
Your cookbooks hit the New York Times Best Seller list, do you anticipate doing another?
Rocco DiSpirito: Two number one’s in a row. I have another one coming out in September. It’s 100 Tips on How To Save 100 Calories Home and Away. September 27 that’s coming out, 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.
I read where you said, healthy and delicious are no longer mutually exclusive, how does 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. That’s where I sign the book and I want people to understand that that’s what the book’s all about. My cooking for about five years now has been looking how to make foods we love, foods we’ve grown to love over the course of our lives, like fried chicken, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, steak smoothies, ice cream, pops, make those healthy, and I’ve figured it out. I’ve written two books about it and it comes from a real place in my life where I was training for triathlons and I had to eat a lot of food and to keep up with the training and it had to be good food, but 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.
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 to 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 that you get when you sit at a table and you eat and drink, because there’s something about the intimacy of a table that breaks down barriers. And people let their guard down, they talk, they open up, and you can really connect. And 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 bit more of a simple life than that. But, many of the guests are friends and people that I’ve cooked for in the past.
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, and I’m talking about cheating in the kitchen. It’s the only room in the house you can get away with it. And I’m talking assembling if you feel there’s too much pressure to get everything you need to get together for a dinner party, and there’s a lot to do, right, we know getting a table set, inviting people, last minute phone calls for directions, cooking, opening bottles of wine, creating a punch all of that. It’s a lot of work. I wholly recommend going to the Whole Foods hotline 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 that because the point is to get people together. And then 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 what your dining and culinary choices are; how much you know about food. This is not the time to show off your new set of cookware, your new wine room, this is a time to connect on a deep human level with other people that 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 computer all day long, we play by gaming in front of a television, and you’ve got to really take advantage of those moments that you give yourself to share with other people. So, I know it was convoluted, but I guess essentially it boils down to give people permission to have fun.
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, you know, the fact that the way the show worked out I didn’t have to do all the cooking. It works out just perfectly. I am in the kitchen a lot talking with the chefs and checking on their food and checking on their progress, because after all it’s a dinner party. If it doesn’t go off well it is still on my back. It’s still my dinner party and I do have to make sure my guests have a great time, and I fiercely protect their right to have fun. So, I am in the kitchen and you’ll see me in the kitchen in the show checking in on the chefs and making sure things are well and going well, and we collaborate a lot as well. You know, the chefs and I talk about the menus, talk about the foods, the techniques. Some want more advice, some want less advice, but there’s a lot of collaboration going on. And like I said earlier, it feels a lot like what – it feels like in the professional kitchen when chefs are collaborating. There’s a comradery. Chefs love to learn, chefs are life-long students of cuisine, and we all recognize that there’s something to learn from everyone else in the profession. So, we’re all pretty eager students of cuisine.
Did you enjoy the role of a 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 that all of my criticism had a birth place. There was a reason for the criticism and a point of view, so if I criticize someone’s use of a raw fish in dish, being a giant fan of raw fish, it would sound odd. But, if I know that my guests are coming – wouldn’t be comfortable with that then my criticism served as instruction to make guests happy, and then I think it’s okay. If we know what our goal is, the criticism serves as a way 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.
How is this show different from other cooking shows that’s 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 how, the culinary part of cooking, the technique, the ingredients, the passion of the chefs, and 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 we want to have real human moments with them around the dinner table. And 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 or into your restaurant 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, so that means you don’t judge them, you give them permission to have fun, you don’t question their preferences, you never make a guest feel uncomfortable, and chefs have a lot of power. Everything they decide to do with the menu, and this show with the décor and the ambiance and the service and the beverages can affect a guest’s happiness. If they make the table setting too fancy it can make people uncomfortable. If they use ingredients that are too esoteric it can make people uncomfortable. So, it’s really about balancing their desire to impress people with their skills versus their ability to make people happy, their ability to make decisions that produce a great time. And those are two very different skillsets and this is the only show that focuses on both. And a big thing for Bravo is that it’s close ended, so there’s a winner at the end of the show and they win a check for $20,000, which isn’t a bad pay for a night’s work, so that’s a big, big difference for Bravo.
Any chance you’ll become a head judge on Top Chef?
Rocco DiSpirito: I loved being on Top Chef. They do such a good job of balancing and honoring the craft of cooking while making great entertainment for television, which is not easy to do, as I know personally. And it felt like a real privilege to be able to sit there with Tom Colicchio and all the other judges and talk to those guys, talk to the contestants about the food, and offer them insight. And it always feels like the comradery you feel in a kitchen or a professional kitchen when chefs get around and talk about food, so it’s fun. And yes, Bravo and I have been looking for a project that we could work on together and the idea does come from my real fondness for entertaining at home, and the fact that I entertain at home all the time now. I got out of the professional restaurant business in 2005 and I’m a home cook now, so the idea does come from part of what’s true in my real life.
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. We first met in the movie, I think, Amadeus, and then has done a lot of great stuff on Broadway. Bill McCuddy is the movie reviewer for Forbes.com, Marcus Samuelsson, of course, who won Top Chef Masters, Season 2, and Kelly Choi who hosted Top Chef Masters, that’s just the first episode. And then, it goes on to include Raven Dee Symone, Cat Deeley, Liza Minnelli, Marvin Hamlisch, Sandra Bernhard, Alan Cumming, and about four to five other people. It’s really an amazing group of people. And what’s really interesting is that we’re looking for people who are fun people who love food and wine, people who didn’t necessarily know about food and wine and represented different worlds, different places in our culture, so 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, face makers.
Was it hard to get them on?
Rocco DiSpirito: I think the secret in show business is that casting is always the hardest thing. So there’s was a really great casting department at Bravo, and between me reaching out to everyone I ever met in my life and all my friends and them we were able to put together these 60 wonderful and very generous people who came to the set and spent a lot of time working through both meals, because you do have to sit down for two meals consecutively, so it’s a long day.
Alan Cumming is an interesting guy….
Rocco DiSpirito: He’s brilliant. I don’t know if it made it into the episode, but he’s doing Salvador Dali. He’s playing Salvador Dali in a movie and he does this impression of Salvador Dali and it’s really, really funny. And then, Liza tells this great story about having lunch with Salvador Dali in Paris and how Salvador 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 that you get in a setting like this and people were talking for hours. There’s a lot of revelations and a lot of genuine moments.
Will there be a strong focus on healthy eating and good nutrition?
Rocco DiSpirito: The focus of the show is on entertaining and the nutrition does come up every once in a while, and there is one show that is entirely focused on it where I challenge the chefs to come up with healthy versions of the menus that they’re planning. And it’s a pretty big challenge because to be able to cut, you know, 70% or 80% of calories out of delicious indulgent food is no easy task, and that is an episode that is a summer beach party episode and I give them principles from Now Eat This to work with, and it’s interest – it’s a – that’s a show with a very interesting result. But, the show is not entirely focused on, you know, the concept of healthy and delicious; nothing mutually exclusive. It’s really about the art of the dinner party and entertaining at home.
Will your family going to be involved this time as they’ve been very much so 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, you know, a wonderful source of light and entertainment and so genuine. There are very people like her out there, so it would have been great, but it just wasn’t possible this time.
Who are the cheftestants on the show?
Rocco DiSpirito: We have everything from professional chefs who are currently running restaurants in big cities in America to assistant chefs, you know, chefs who are just starting out, people who are running catering businesses out of their home. One person who’s a food blogger by night and a trader by day. So, it’s kind of a broad spectrum. It’s not limited in too many ways.
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, and you’ll just have to watch what happens to see what she’s talking about. There are a lot of wonderful moments. Like I said, we’re sitting at the table for hours eating one dinner party after another and by the time we’re into the third course or second course of the first dinner party my guests have really sort of let their guard down, let their hair 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 the Bronx Tale happened, or A Bronx Tale happened, and how he had $20 in the bank and refused $1 million for his script. He wrote the script A Bronx Tale, and his only request was that he play Sonny, because it was really important for him that Sonny, the character Sonny be developed properly for people to understand it, and 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 for the script and just continued to do the show as a one-man show off Broadway like he’d been doing for years. And then, he talks about the night that Robert De Niro comes in and watches the show, finds him backstage, and just tells him, “I love it. I love it. I love – 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.” So dozens and dozens of moments like that in every episode. Hopefully they’ll make it to the air. Yeah, they do have a lot of opportunities to talk about themselves and their projects and what they’re working on. It’s not all food talk. We do get to hear a lot and I imagine if it doesn’t make it into the show it’ll be online, I think Bravotv.com is going to have a lot of that extra material online.
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, so it’s consecutive competing dinner parties. The menu is decided beforehand, the chefs and I consult on the menu, and then they go shopping. And by the time they get back and they’re ready to serve, the guests arrive and usually the chefs meet one or two of the guests. There’s often a couple of dietary restrictions or little last minute requests that need to be accommodated, and then the guests – 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.
Which party was your favorite dinner party on the show?
Rocco DiSpirito: It’s like picking favorite children though, so you have to forgive me. There’s no question that the Liza Minnelli dinner party is sort of other worldly. Picture me a chef sitting at a table with Marvin Hamlisch, Liza Minnelli, Sandra some of the greatest entertainers of our time and 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 and 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 who’s 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, and it was just a really wonderful night. Yeah, it was kind of other worldly. There’s no other way to describe it.
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.