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April 20, 2004

Rocco, You Sucko (Up The Money That Is)

Michael and I watched the first season of NBC’s The Restaurant when it aired. So when the second season premiere aired last night, we decided to tune in. It had been advertised for a few weeks as a fight between Rocco and his evil investor/co-owner of Rocco’s 22nd Street, so it looked exciting enough.

After watching last night’s episode, I have no respect for Rocco, and instead of supporting Rocco against his “evil” financer who wants to “take” the restaurant, I have ended up supporting Jeffrey Chodorow, the co-owner and financer of the restaurant.

Frankly, I’m baffled how he can even be portrayed as the bad guy. Here’s a guy who has put up millions of dollars for Rocco’s vision. He’s given him months to get the restaurant up and running. He’s invested his own money and let Rocco basically run everything up until now. And Rocco, being more interested in schmoozing with his fans and signing his book for women he can flirt with, has ended up with a restaurant that is always busy, always full, yet always in the red when it comes to profits. All this Jeffrey guy wants is to have a restaurant THAT MAKES MONEY! What’s so wrong with that?

It sounds like Jeffrey has been very tolerant of Rocco thus far. Much more tolerant than I would be. Ordering 5000 business cards for $9000? Demanding he get paid a salary, despite the fact that he doesn’t do anything? Responding to all of Jeffrey’s concerns with “no comment”? You know, Jeffrey actually came to him to discuss what they could do to turn the restaurant’s profit around. He didn’t just barge in and take over the restaurant. He actually went to Rocco and had what sounded like an extremely frustrating time getting no response.

I respect Rocco’s passion for food. I love watching him cook (when he did that one time…) and I respect his vision for his restaurant. I can even understand why he would resent someone coming in and taking over. But if he didn’t want it to come to that, why all the blatantly irresponsible choices? Why didn’t he engage Jeffrey in an actual conversation? Why doesn’t he attempt to work with Jeffrey to actually make a successful restaurant?

Sorry, but I have no sympathy for a guy who is more interested in cashing in on his celebrity that he doesn’t even care he’s wasting other people’s time and money for no apparent reason other than he’s being arrogant and stubborn. Make your restaurant profitable, Rocco, make your staff happy with you, actually put some real work into it, instead of having your 79 year old mother run things, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll deserve to run Rocco’s on 22nd Street.

Posted by December at April 20, 2004 12:00 PM

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