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The only suspense facing chef Rocco DiSpirito and the other managers of The Restaurant, the NBC series that had a very unsoft opening Sunday, should be which waiter to fire first.
That should be followed by the agonizing realization that they can't eighty-six the entire wait staff and half the rest of the crew.
I've never had much stomach for reality TV. It puts less meat and more froufrou on the plate than the most nouvelle chef, and the artificiality leaves me with a bad aftertaste. Still, I nearly choked on The Restaurant: too cold, canned and processed for me.
The chaotic opening of a restaurant seems a perfect place for us to watch the shallow and the beautiful be tested in a "reality" stunt. American fascination with food and chefs fills one network and many hours on other channels. In real life we spend much of our food dollar, and earn many of our paychecks, in restaurants, so the appeal is either a delicious backstage voyeurism or the gratification of seeing your work and business star on television.
Besides, critics have declared restaurants the new theater (or theme park). Most of us have figured out, however, that theater alone doesn't make a good restaurant. Judging by The Restaurant, television may make an insufferable one.
The only revelation that emerges from The Restaurant is that having unemployed actors as waiters is not as bad as when the waiters get to be actors at the same time.
The center of the show, however, is a talent in the kitchen and on camera, DiSpirito, a chef with a name and rosy cheeks that casting directors couldn't improve on. He already has a respectable TV career (on Letterman as well as the Food Network) and a serious reputation as one of America's new chef prodigies, at least until now.
DiSpirito, who has succeeded at Union Pacific, seems sadly winded and bewildered in what is supposed to be the show's drama, an inside look at a valiant startup in a business known for failures.
Right. The cutest celebrity chef on TV opens a restaurant in prime real estate that will produce a mini TV series in which the diners get to be on camera. And he's got a $4-million budget?
The only real risk is to DiSpirito's credibility. As for Rocco's the restaurant, it will be a mess at first and then rise to successful mediocrity as the most heavily televised restaurant on network TV in America.
Opening a restaurant could make a great documentary. And anyone watching the crews of fresh-faced kids hustle around a Romano's Macaroni Grill or a Cheesecake Factory anywhere in America can see a fetching youth-oriented sitcom.
The Restaurant is something else. As with Survivor (Mark Burnett is the man behind both), its edge comes from the artificial constraints imposed by the creators.
The first is the unexplained seven-week deadline, a tough construction chore anywhere, more so in Manhattan, where getting a phone installed in an apartment can take longer. Doing it while accommodating camera crews leaves no time for training and logistics.
The bigger one is hiring 100 employees with telegenic cuteness and attitude who are unencumbered by experience or competence. The potential for Gideon, Topher, Caroline the ex-samba teacher and the rest to fail, flail and fight is too high.
The other candidates to add tension are only-in-New York heavies who browbeat DiSpirito with limousine aloofness and cell-phone shouting.
Investor Jeffrey, who has the presence of Elliott Gould gone to seed, is the one who sets the seven-week deadline for no apparent reason except to show that $4-million calls whatever tune it wants.
Pretentious publicist Matt gets away with brutalizing our hero, as if pitching a superstar chef with a casting call to be on TV is a toughie. And get this triumph: He gets NBC's Today show to air the call for a show that will be on . . . NBC.
Lastly, Edwin, the cashmere-coated building manager whines about rats, fumes and smoke to the mockery of the Pink Panther theme. What, there are no building or health inspectors in New York? Maybe Rocco's could open in seven days.
Customers will present other challenges, although many were "cast" and screened to bring celebrity, controversy or other drama to the dining room. Although it won't take a grumbly New Yorker to get huffy about a place as poorly run as this.
The permanent loyal opposition that will emerge to challenge the glam and sham crew in the dining room will be the cooks and kitchen crew. They'll stoke and fight the fires in the subbasement, the true pressure cooker of a busy restaurant; think Iron Chef cooking for 240.
Though they may have aspirations of 15 minutes of fame, they are still dishwashers and line cooks, more skilled and less pretty, prone to bandanas and tattoos, and are more often brown or black. They come out of the real world, or at least the burned and scarred legends of Tony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.
John, the bald, goateed kitchen manager in a Death Before Dishonor black tee, will function as their pirate captain, probably eager to fillet the amateurs upstairs - that is, unless Laurent, the steely European supervisor of the dining room, and Matt, his beefy maitre d', do it first, eating their young out of professional embarrassment.
I'll root for the cooks. They are the only ones who have a passing acquaintance with actual food. Even DiSpirito tells only us that he's been a gourmet French cook but really loves Mama's meatballs.
That's sweet of him and her (she'll be on hand to crank out 600 a day), but it's a story line, not a menu. In the world of TV, and perhaps New York, figuring recipes and sourcing ingredients is less interesting than video of a radio interview. I'd rather see Rocco with a Fulton Street fishmonger than Katie Couric.
Unintentionally, The Restaurant also gives a shameless look at the media, such as paid prominence for sponsors' products. American Express logos shown are subtle, but the constant insertion of Coors beer in a red-sauce Italian restaurant should upset anyone's indigestion.
Yet The Restaurant tells some truths. We've all eaten in restaurants that were monstrously disorganized, or where the theme and looks of staff and decor trumped food and service. It may be fun to see how bad a recipe this is without having to eat the food or pick up the check.
I'm sure the script calls for Rocco's to work out some kinks (and fire the others) by the end of the series. The restaurant, which opened seven weeks ahead of the broadcast, will be further polished.
The would-be waiters and cooks will be taking meetings with their agents and more experienced waiters and cooks will have taken their places. Rocco's will be a tolerable restaurant, a post-millennial Mama Leone's where the staff wears cool soccer uniforms and everyone gets a TV dinner.