JANUARY 2020 33
Bourdain famously created the Golden Clog Awards, with one
called the Rocco Award for worst career move by a talented chef.
(DiSpirito gamely showed up in person to present it.)
For the past 15 years, an image of him had been fixed in
my head, swaggering across Page Six, babe du jour in tow, or
being named one of People’s Sexiest Men Alive, but never in a
restaurant kitchen.
And then out of nowhere, he was back, talking through the
evening’s specials at The Standard Grill in New York City where,
improbably and joyfully, he was once again an executive chef
after a nearly decade-and-a-half absence. Until, suddenly, he
wasn’t again. This past fall, the news broke that Rocco and The
Standard had parted ways, and once again, he’s a chef without
a restaurant to call home.
But this time, he hasn’t disappeared. This time, when his fans
ask, “Where’d you go, Rocco DiSpirito?” there is an answer. It
begins with where he went the last time he stepped away, 15
years ago.
THE GLITZ AND SWAGGER THAT MADE DISPIRITO a media and
dining room darling did not come naturally, I learned, as he
and I hunkered in a banquette at The Standard Grill this past
summer. As his team prepped for service—he’d join them on the
line later, alongside his former Union Pacific colleague Daniel
Parilla (known more commonly by a single name: Chino)—the
now-53-year-old chef quietly laughed when I marveled at the
seeming ease he’d displayed with diners both back in the day
and maybe a bit more cautiously now. Starting in second grade,
he’d been pulled out of class to work with a therapist, and by the
time he opened Union Pacific, his social anxiety was so paralyz-
ing that he worked with an acting coach for several months to
script and rehearse interactions with his guests.
“You would think going out and saying ‘Hello, how was your
food? I’m Rocco,’ would be so
easy, but not for freaks like me,”
he said. “I was always insecure,
paranoid, and terrified that
everyone hated everything. I am
basically mostly still that guy, 20
years of therapy later.”
While the nightly floor show
didn’t come naturally then or
now, it did become routine for
DiSpirito and increasing num-
bers of his peers. No matter the
beauty of the dining room or sub-
limity of the food, it was a knife
fight to get customers through
the door in the late ’90s. He and
his partners knew that—and it
didn’t hurt that he was easy on
the eyes. So even if it was tough
on his psyche, he stepped out of
the kitchen and onto the stage.
There was a tension—one he’s
trying to reconcile to this day.
“How do you balance being the
thing and promoting the thing
that you are trying to be? You
have to market more than master. In our industry, that tension
is the source of many, many problems and Xanax prescriptions.”
Still, he made a fragile peace with that part of it, even con-
vinced himself that he was having fun with it for a while, maybe
got lost in it. And then that was all he had. With the closure of
his restaurants (he actually made money from the sale of Union
Pacific, a rare thing in the industry) and the end of his TV show
in 2004, DiSpirito no longer had the safe backstage of a kitchen
to retreat to when the spotlight started to burn.
He couldn’t quite remember when it all began to break down.
There was a kick-in-the-gut “you’re going to die young” talk
from his doctor that spurred him to train for triathlons, over-
haul the way he was eating and cooking, and get into the best
shape of his life. Then his mother, Nicolina, who shared the
screen with him on The Restaurant, suffered a near-fatal heart
attack in 2005.
“I watched her [nearly] die in the emergency room, and they
asked me to sign a proxy. My mom goes from making 3,000
meatballs a day to incapacitated in a rehab center, needing
24-hour care.” DiSpirito slowly realized that the caregiver was
going to have to be him. Not solely—there were home health
care workers. But as anyone who’s had a loved one slip into a
long-term decline knows painfully well, the logistics, finances,
physicality, and unrelenting worry can threaten to drown you
alongside them—no matter how fiercely you love them or what
resources you have. Family can be complicated at the best of
times, but add illness, grief, and
finances into the cauldron, and it
can roil into a toxic brew. Sprin-
kle some celebrity into the mix,
and suddenly everyone gets to
have an opinion. DiSpirito’s was
this: Keep moving. He relocated
Nicolina from above the restau-
rant to a home next door to his
so he could easily visit, take her
to appointments, make sure the
home health aides were present,
and hold on to his other sources
of income.
“I wasn’t able to even think
about a restaurant anymore ...
that was not even remotely pos-
sible,” DiSpirito told me. “That’s
probably where the reputation
of me as a person who loves the
limelight versus the kitchen got
solidified.” And yes, despite his
better judgment, he read the
press, and yes, of course it hurt,
and deeply, especially because
he still very much thought of
himself as a chef. “That’s what I
am. I’ll never be anything but. I
felt that the research I was doing
with the books and eventually
developing this home delivery
service, I thought it was still
cooking all the time. But I guess
A vegan Coconut-
Creamed Swiss Chard
and Beet-and-Horse-
radish Tartare (recipes
p. 35). opposite: Rocco
DiSpirito at The Stan-
dard Grill in NYC.
FOOD STYLING: TORIE COX; PROP STYLING: CHRISTINE KEELY
photography by VICTOR PROTASIO
