By the time Rocco DiSpirito was a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars,” in 2008, it had been so long since he’d worked as a chef that it wasn’t clear whether the job description still applied. He’d come to prominence in the late nineties as one of the most promising young culinary talents in New York City—but quickly became one of the first celebrity chefs, spending more time on TV shows (including his own ill-fated NBC reality series, “The Restaurant”) and hawking products (Bertolli’s frozen food, a line of cookware on QVC) than actually cooking.
And then he sort of disappeared. It isn’t clear whether, after a decade spent mostly out of the limelight, he’s still a celebrity. This may explain why, last fall, DiSpirito decided to become a chef again, not just overseeing but actually working the line at the Standard Grill, the restaurant at the Standard, High Line hotel, in the meatpacking district. If he’s been humbled, there are few signs of it here. Despite the fact that the newly renovated dining room hasn’t quite been filling up in recent weeks, menus that look like high-end wedding invitations—on heavy-stock, gold-embossed paper—are printed daily, each bearing an inspirational quote, such as the hopeful “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
I can’t speak to DiSpirito’s food at Lespinasse, in the early nineties, under his mentor Gray Kunz, or later at Union Pacific, the place that cemented his fame, when Ruth Reichl awarded it three stars in the Times, in 1998; his heyday was before my time. At the Standard Grill, he seems to be tripped up by his desire to pay homage to his early career—and to a style of cooking based on fairly outdated ideas of luxury—while also playing catch-up on some of the trends he missed.
And so you’ll find sous-vide short rib (both a technique and a cut of beef that he helped popularize) finished with cold applewood smoke (the kind that figured prominently at cocktail bars in the early two-thousands), but also an appetizer of beet tartare and a selection of “lovingly cooked organic vegetables,” including charred Brussels sprouts in cashew sauce. The vegetables are grown as locally as the Hudson Valley, but a recent special pasta was made with king crab flown in from Finland.
A dish revived from Union Pacific—raw Peconic Bay scallops and uni, served on the half shell in sweet tomato water and a hint of sharp mustard oil—is delicious, but DiSpirito’s claim, in a recent interview in New York, that when he débuted it, in the nineties, it was “a new idea” to combine “sour, sweet, salty, bitter” sounds woefully out of touch; entire countries might beg to differ. Tiny skewers—French white asparagus, bluefin toro, wagyu beef—charred over Japanese charcoal arrive tableside on miniature grills, but, given that they’re already cooked, the spectacle falls flat.
DiSpirito still has the chops of a great chef. His tender, kidney-shaped Italian-parsley fregola, made with water-chestnut and chickpea flours and served in a bowl of garlicky steamed Manila clams, is delightful. I loved a dessert of poached Bartlett pears, fanned over creamy coconut mousse and coconut sorbet and ringed with warm cinnamon maple syrup. These, and nearly every dish on the menu, are both dairy- and gluten-free, in another embrace of latter-day fads.
But hasn’t DiSpirito heard that bread is back? Across town at Narcissa, at the Standard, East Village, there’s a new chef, too: the young Max Blachman-Gentile. His rustic sourdough—which he calls Glenn the Redeemer, and which you can buy by the loaf—is among the best I’ve found in New York City, and I’m still thinking about a bowl of Hakurei turnips I had there a couple of weeks ago. Some were al dente, some softened until silky, all bathed in a luscious green sauce and topped with crunchy chorizo-fat bread crumbs and tart coins of rhubarb. Spring had almost sprung, and the kitchen was ready. (Entrées $29-$139.) ♦
