The Restaurant

Not being into reality television, The Restaurant was a surprise for me.

It follows the culinary (and sometimes obviously staged) adventures of Chef Rocco DiSpirito as he attempts to open an Italian American restaurant in the Flatiron section of Manhattan in the early 2000s.

There's some great cameos featured in the series, among them legendary chef and author Anthony Bourdain who lays down the law in one episode how great food is not enough for chefs these days.

Chef Massimiliano "Red" Bartoli makes an appearance as well as Rocco's possible replacement when he proves he truly can cook Southern Italian cuisine.

The cast are a colorful collection of characters, aspiring comedian Pete Giovine, Gideon Horowitz, Lonn Coward and Topher Goodman being among some favorites. There was a sweet romance that blossomed between a waitress, Heather Kristen, and a line cook, Perry, that could have been further explored in the series.

If there's a reality series (so-called) that deserves a reboot it's The Restaurant! Though one of the reasons the restaurant didn't succeed is Rocco seemed more focused on being a celebrity chef than being an actual chef.

Reboot The Restaurant Hollywood! Huzzah!

Given I have never opened a restaurant, nor have I led the kitchen of one. But I have seen both in action and worked along side the action. The latest in the barrage of reality drivel, NBC throws one out that makes sense and keeps you interested. Not relying as much on melodramatic cat fights and pitting cast against one another.

What confrontations were shown (and they showed really only two hints of some)were realistic if not too familiar to anyone who works in the industry.

Paced and timed well with enough sensationalism and editing that it will gather all sorts of audience, not just the ones on the inside.

Network: NBC; Genre: Reality; Average Rating: TV-PG (for language); Classification: Contemporary (Star Range: 1 - 4);

Season Reviewed: Complete Series (2 seasons)

Somewhere along the winding road of TV network execu-logic, the term 'reality show' was hi-jacked and was redefined into dating game shows where would-be actors send in head shots and studio producers pick them out and masquerade them as real people with 'real' problems that most people would kill for. The modern granddaddy of the reality fad is, of course, Mark Burnett, which makes Burnett's 'The Restaurant' all the more a delightful surprise. From the intro forward, 'Restaurant' is a high concept series that puts class and high entertainment into reality TV. A documentary-style series that follows the high pressure ups and downs of opening and maintaining a restaurant in the middle of New York City. We follow waiters, team leaders, bar tenders, hostesses, the cooks and the management during high volume nights, interoffice scuffles and, ultimately, a battle between for the fate of the business.

The show's anchor is celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito who spends less time in the kitchen and more time out on the floor schmoozing with guests and the nightly table of cute girls in a way that would make Richard Dawson cringe. There is high stress and conflict around every corner as food gets served cold, the customers get restless, and that a**hole head cook treats everyone like garbage. Anti-hero Rocco is the quintessential out-of-touch-with-his-staff boss, implements radical plans, deals with scathing reviews, literal uprisings by the staff and tries to keep his best people from quitting and, ultimately, keeping his co-owner Jeffrey Chodorow from taking things over. Just not hard enough to show up to any of the meetings.

The show puts us right down in the middle of the chaos. The nearly suffocating onslaught of stress works, and the show does give us trapdoors. It's all pretty simple stuff too, made up of the daily minutia off everyday jobs. As a documentary series the creative control in the directing and editing and the packaging is superb. Unlike most, this show's crew seems to respect its material.

But the show goes off the rails in season 2. NBC is, mistakenly, not confident that simply following the nightly action would make a compelling series. When Rocco gets in a bloody turf war with part-owner Chodorow over the business not making money (Rocco is spending a fortune on monogrammed ladles) the dramatic tension is made the soul focus of the show's 2nd half. Also mistakenly, NBC poised babe-magnet DeSpirito as if he is actually the hero of this increasingly sordid story. In season 1 'The Restaurant' was a rich ensemble. In season 2 it becomes all about Rocco who whines and complains constantly that Chodorow is "stealing his dream" but can't bring himself to attend the simplest meeting. DeSpirito is a whining, self-absorbed, shameless and an aloof, if resoundingly incompetent, restaurant manager hated by much of his staff The guilty pleasure highlight of the series actually becomes DeSpirito's schmoozing with the beautiful women who show up to his book signing.

The whole affair becomes just overwhelmingly silly. The two managers bicker like divorcing parents while the staff is caught in the middle like kids being used for leverage and shuttled between them - meanwhile Rocco's 90 year old mother is left in charge of the store. We get vats of sauce being dumped on people and daring raids into a cook's locker while he's being fired.

This is all fine as a single storyline, but 'The Restaurant' is best served when it is about the restaurant, the employees and customers. The players are likable enough or interesting enough to carry the show. There is a budding romance between a put-upon grill cook and a waitress. The occasional marriage proposal that brings the restaurant to a dramatic standstill. Best of all, is a tangentially related bit following a waiter who bombs on stage at a comedy club.

The initial fun of it was just allowing the nightly drama inside the restaurant to unfold before our eyes. Season 2 goes all out to titillate the reality-series audience by artificially amping up the drama. That is exactly the opposite of what was so classy and so much fun about the show in the first place. It was a pure documentary, that doesn't rely on artificial conflict between people grabbing their 15 minutes of fame. I appreciate that there are no studio contrived twists or that nobody gets "kicked out of " the restaurant. Burnett (fresh off his 'The Apprentice' success) could have worked with or around DeSpirito's legal battles and make the show still enjoyable. Even with its sillier moments, 'The Restaurant' was a breath of fresh air in a landscape of dead reality TV. Reality shows before and after this one have been game shows, or dating contests which, in retrospect, makes 'The Restaurant' all the more unique.

* * * / 4

When I first heard about "The Restaurant" I starting thinking, "OK How interesting can this show be??" But I watched it and now I am so completely hooked. What the networks are calling reality TV today is horrible and wrong. Reality is not living on an island and trying to get a million bucks. But "The Restaurant" is awesome.

It makes you think about how much work and money goes into starting a restaurant, or any other business for that matter. Also, there is the drama of how the staff is being treated, how two-faced the customers can be, and even Rocco himself. I still love him, but he's a little past rude sometimes. Watch the show, I am sure you can relate. Someone will always bitch at you about whatever they can. There is the reality of how it relates to everyone.

I just saw this for the first time, and I think I might be hooked. I, for the most part, absolutely hate the mess of reality television that is being shoveled down our throats these days, but this is different. "The Restaurant" isn't about people trying to win a million dollars, people sleeping with complete strangers, or people trying to marry off their parents. This is reality TV that is actually "real". Just about everyone has worked, at some point in their lives, in a restaurant or something else involving public service. Just about everyone has had to deal with the everyday hassles of rude customers, bossy managers, and fellow employees who don't do their part. That is real, as opposed to the degenerative wackiness that takes place in other reality programming, which 99.9999% of the population has not experienced, nor will ever experience. Everybody's flipped a burger, but not everybody has had America cast a vote deciding their spouse.

And that's what makes "The Restaurant" special. Add to that the fact that is a highly engrossing and entertaining program, and you've got something here. When I first heard that a new reality show was going to focus on the daily operations of a restaurant, I thought NBC must be insane. But this show succeeds, and if reality television has to stick around, this is the form it should be in.