Okay, let's forget that the restaurant was started on a foundation of television appeal fostered by network people who didn't know that basic restaurant culture provides MORE than enough drama without contrived camera shots and dramatic set ups. I worked in restaurants in NY, NJ, and CA for about ten years and I am here to tell you that you needed contrive any situation to contrive drama. Hiring people with zero or little experience was stupid on a business sense and it had no impact on dramatic situations. The notion of acting like Rocco as if he should be the best closest friend to all in the kitchen or on the floor is ridiculous. In a small town it's expected that you get into an incestuous seeking approval relationship with the owner but in a big city joint you are lucky if the owner chef acknowledges you. if they do it's cause you have made a mark through good or impressive moves. The complete retards featured in "The Restaurant" seemed to have been born into reality tv culture and devoid of real restaurant culture or for that matter survival priorities. For all those who freaked cause they weren't getting paid, they all should've quit. For all those who sat by and gossiped and enjoyed camera time, you should've been serving your tables and making your customers happy. Your tips are your money. ANy server with any serious frontline experience wouldn't divide importance between kitchen and server staff, but would instead try to win the favor of the nightly head chefs. Don't you want your food to come out when you need it? Don't you want a rapport with the chefs? Haven't you done stints as a runner or bussed tables? Are you all such princesses that you think duties are actually designated and structured so that you are incapable of doing anything other than griping about the system and not doing anything other than you're 'supposed' to do? As great a chef as Rocco is supposed to be, where were his brains when he failed to install heat tables and lamps in a cellar station kitchen? Where was Rocco's gritty experience when formulating this show with NBC? Didn't he realize that you don't need to tweak, alter, recreate or accelorate a damn thing to create Elizabethan drama by just existing to exist? On the show I heard Rocco say, "this is not a two hour dining experience...customer is acknowledged within 5 minutes, drinks within 3 minutes, apps and specials and orders and etc in time..." but he did nothing to structure a service system that would make that applicable. Has he not heard of The Hamburger Hamlet? Where such rules are spelled out to the umpteenth degree? Where new hires have to pass a written test on menu items and service issues? Is he such a total neophyte that he failed to consider basic service issues so that they coudl get out of the way of the very thing that his name sits on? His reputation as a chef? Imagine this: A restaurant reality show: a well known chef opens a new joint in a hot spot in one of the hottest restaurant spots in the world. He devises a restaurant and leaves off the most basic structural situations to logic and experience because as a master chef he supposedly has such knowledge. After that life takes over. I was totally unimpressed with the staged garbage that NBC pushed...that Rocco signed off on. I was totally disgusted with Rocco's seeming ignorance created on a service front. I had no sympathy with regards to issues with hiring kitchen and floor staff who had no experience. What a crock. You can hire the greatest staff in town and drama will happen and what will happen is guaranteed more stirring and intense than the kindergarten preventable, avoidable antics depicted on NBC for the benefit of Mitsubichi, Vespa, Coors, Amex and the like. For children who are not of working age, it is not a given that you have a personal relationship with your chef/owner. You are not owed a personal relationship or investment. You are there to work and serve and make your way. Customers came last in this show and they are surely an afterthought at Rocco's which can only brag about "mamma's meatballs" I can make meatballs. I don't want meatballs. When I go out I want to show up, sit down, be acknowledged, be served in a timely psychic manner and be given an experience that makes me want to return. In terms of bullshit this show and this restaurant seem to have no connection to the food service industry. Real actual restaurantuers who have a reputation and real money invested would hardly put up with the crap that dragged on as this show depicted. While the insiders and outsiders declared this a 'chef driven' restaurant they are sorely wrong. This was a tv driven restaurant. Yeah, it's true that Rocco is right to exploit what he can to make his name and make a place that suits his name, Rocco has nonetheless used this format along with what little his name means in the biz to crap on any authority he might have in the future. Maybe Rocco thinks it's great to have a show but he's better off having a real restaurant. His three best chefs had no real loyalty from the get go and they were half fuck ups to begin with and they wanted to quit hoping he'd beg them back thinking tv would magically erase reality. Then Rocco comes on saying, "I gave you a chance to tell the truth....you think you're not good enough for us? rethink that? Don't darken this door again." What door, Rocco? A door where customers come in and are ignored and not acknowled for ages? A door where they hope to see you or your famed "mamma" and see neither cause the cameras are gone? A door where food comes cold and isn't all that great and isn't infused or enjoined in a tight ideal of menu or style? A door that has a staff without a streamlined communication system? A door that doesn't get it? You hired people that had no experience cause it suited NBC. You hired kitchen staff with almost equal disregard to basic reality. You had no menu and no architecture on par. The design of your space took precidence over your menu. You obviously didn't taste or test many items on your menu. You clearly had never sat down and had a great eating experience and relied on your rep as a great chef based on what you came up with. Dear Rocco, A year from now you'll come clean with all the things you made concessions on but in the long run you failed to have a passion for the main thing. In the end you were about advancing your name. A good restaurant is about a good experience and you were about having massive tv coverage, massive product placement. While your staff went without pay for three weeks for whatever construed reasons you no doubt lived in luxury. While your momma made meatballs from morning till night your food still overall sucked. Your service sucked. Your kitchen had no serious captain or mentor. You ignored logic and experience and enjoyed the drama of mishap rather than making it work to the best of your abilities. The only difference between working for Rocco on TV for NBC and working for a new upstart on Melrose AVenue is that Rocco has NBC working for him wanting him to go on. If you're a skilled chef with a love of food and love of food service you'd not let your outing in this manner deteriorate into a lab experiment where customers are the non control rats who have to take the tumors and diseases. We all know in your fantasy that the rats have a great time and love the meatballs but the reality is people come in and they sit at their tables forever and half the menu is crap and the majority of the waitstaff are looking for a big break in show biz over working for tips. They don't care that the kitchen is cellar level and you haven't got heat lamps for all food and that plate covers aren't necessary when service and food is good. Your restaurant is a commercial for you and everyone else pays. You've provided nothing. It 's more satisfying to go to a local diner and get sloppy fries and gravy. Your TV wanna be staff are deluded and self absorbed dysfunctional children who haven't got a clue as to what it's like to really work in a real restaurant. They don't even know that failing to have an intimate relationshipo with super Rocco means nothing. they percieve a relationship with the great Rocco as being a given, like going to the bathroom in themorning. Give me a break. Give me a local family mainstay restaurant. Give me even a local Burger King. "The Restaurant" provides only bare nibbles of what it's like to really live in a restaurant. It's otherwise total bullshit. A good restaurant is about good food and food service. Those two things can be an infusion of many things but they never lack solid organization and rule. they have nothing to do with manufactured drama and major tv network fluff. Contrivance is totally not existent with acutal restaurant life. It's garbage. I'd have way more respect for Rocco if he opened a small place in a small place with a great plan and solid idea and everything went wrong. This show is total crap and dishonors kitchen staff everywhere who can analyze all the shortcomings of the restaurants' failings from afar on an edited TV screen. Anthony Bourdain was graceful in only saying that he felt uncomfortable about his participation in the event and I was glad to hear him say that the squid totally blew. He is and was right that good food is not necessarily enough but he would be right in saying that you've got to get the basics right. The Rocco experience was and is crass and phoney and totally LA showbiz. It dishonors everyone who's ever worked hard at a real working restaurant.
