Rocco DiSpirito Believes Restaurants Are a Public Service

On this episode

In 1999, when Food & Wine named Rocco DiSpirito as one of its Best New Chefs, he was only in his early 30s, but he'd already been in the industry for a couple decades. At 10 years old, Rocco started working at a local pizzeria — a natural fit for a kid whose Italian American family grew most of their own food and started talking about lunch before breakfast was over. His innovative cuisine at Union Pacific made him a darling of both industry peers and jaded New York diners, but it was his cookbooks and stints in front of the camera that made him a household name. In this episode of Tinfoil Swans, DiSpirito opens up about the pressures of being a public figure, what's changed in the restaurant world since he started, the dream restaurant he'd like to own, and what he'd tell that younger version of himself.

Meet our guest

Chef Rocco DiSpirito is a 1986 graduate of The Culinary Institute of America, the 2004 James Beard Award winner for his book Flavor, a five-time nominee for Best Chef: New York, and in 1999, Food & Wine named DiSpirito one of America's Best New Chefs. His 13th book, Everyday Delicious, will be published in March 2024. DiSpirito can frequently be seen as a guest judge on Tournament of Champions and Guy's Grocery Games, as well as cooking on shows like Good Morning America and Outchef'd. DiSpirito's career was the subject of a 2019 Food & Wine profile.

Meet our host

Kat Kinsman is executive features editor at Food & Wine, author of Hi, Anxiety: Life With a Bad Case of Nerves, host of Food & Wine's podcast, and founder of Chefs With Issues. Previously, she was the senior food & drinks editor at Extra Crispy, editor-in-chief and editor at large at Tasting Table, and the founding editor of CNN Eatocracy. She won a 2020 IACP Award for Personal Essay/Memoir and has had work included in the 2020 and 2016 editions of The Best American Food Writing. She was nominated for a James Beard Broadcast Award in 2013, won a 2011 EPPY Award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors, and was a finalist in 2012 and 2013. She is a sought-after international keynote speaker and moderator on food culture and mental health in the hospitality industry, and is the former vice chair of the James Beard Journalism Committee.

Advice from the episode

Lessons learned

 A lot of chefs were very naturally able to become entertainers, and for some other chefs it was more difficult. I remember there was a lot of talk about media training. Food Network would provide training and ask you to do a lot of practice runs in front of a camera. We thought it was a lot back then. It's really a lot now. Obviously, Emeril was a massive character and was really funny in real life, and so it was very easy for him to turn on the BAM! kind of charm for TV. For me, it was always very difficult. To this day I have a hard time understanding how a cooking show needs to be entertaining. I think it needs to be educational. I watch shows to learn how to do new things and interesting techniques. To this day I still look at videos. I'm a huge consumer of food videos, and beverage videos, and cooking videos. I love them still, to this day, and if they're not teaching me something in the first three seconds, I'm on to the next. 

But seriously

I was raised in a very serious chef world. It was all the old guard from Europe, and those guys were serious as heck about what we did. There was no time to mess around, there was no time for joking. Now, some of those guys have become very loose and easy, like Daniel Boulud, who was serious as a heart attack for the first 20 years of his career, who now appears like this charismatic, fun-loving guy. I can assure you, in the kitchen, he's very serious, and he used to be much more serious. Big changes happened.

Only human

You couldn't Google any of this stuff back then so you had to learn it all in real life. You had to pay your dues, learn how to use a sous vide machine, and what circulation was, and what spherification was. It's all these little tricks and tips that we take for granted now that we can learn by watching endless amounts of videos — you had to learn from another human being back then. 

Cost analysis

A restaurant is a labor of love more often than not, and it's always subsidized by somebody or something. Always, the owner is doing more than they should — more than is healthy, more than is psychologically sound, to keep it running and make sure customers are happy. 

At your service

I don't know that there's enough formulas in a spreadsheet, enough mechanization, enough robotics to completely remove the humanity from the restaurant business. We are a borderline public service. I often wonder if we shouldn't be thought of as nonprofit public service. 

About the podcast

Food & Wine has led the conversation around food, drinks, and hospitality in America and around the world since 1978. Tinfoil Swans continues that legacy with a new series of intimate, informative, surprising, and uplifting interviews with the biggest names in the culinary industry, sharing never-before-heard stories about the successes, struggles, and fork-in-the-road moments that made these personalities who they are today.

Each week, you'll hear from icons and innovators like Guy Fieri, Padma Lakshmi, David Chang, Mashama Bailey, Enrique Olvera, Maneet Chauhan, Shota Nakajima, Antoni Porowski, and other special guests going deep with host Kat Kinsman on their formative experiences; the dishes and meals that made them; their joys, doubts and dreams; and what's on the menu in the future. Tune in for a feast that'll feed your brain and soul — and plenty of wisdom and quotable morsels to savor.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen and follow on: Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, TuneIn.

These interview excerpts have been edited for clarity.

Editor’s Note: The transcript for download does not go through our standard editorial process and may contain inaccuracies and grammatical errors.