Rocco DiSpirito: Technique, Media, and the Modern Chef

Happy Thursday

This week, we chop it up with celebrity chef and media personality Rocco DiSpirito.

I met Rocco DiSpirito 26 years ago.  He judged a contest I somehow won, alongside 3 other judges: Marcus Samuelsson, Eric Ripert, and Rick Moonen, which, it turns out, he barely remembers.  Very understandable given how much he has done over the last 3 decades.  At the time, Rocco had a restaurant called Union Pacific that made it very clear to the culinary world that he was an indelible talent.  He was also the first chef to do a reality food TV show called The Restaurant.

He got a lot of heat for this early on.  Especially from Anthony Bourdain, who went as far as to create a golden clog award called the "Rocco award" for worst career move.  But Bourdain always made it clear that Rocco was a truly rare talent.  Looking back now, it would seem, much like Rocco's food at the time, that he knew something that many others did not about the importance of media.  

Rocco went to the CIA at age 16, worked in France for Dominique Cécillon at Le Jardin des Cygnes, then at Hôtel Prince de Galles.  Then back to NYC and Boston before eventually joining the opening team for Gray Kunz at Lespinasse.  At age 31, he opened Union Pacific, getting 3 stars from Ruth Reichl in the NY Times.  Many other awards, TV shows, and 15 cookbooks followed.  

We filmed at Bar Rocco, which he opened in March, in partnership with Apicci Hospitality.  We ate pappardelle with smoked short rib ragu while we talked.

He and Apicci have been meez advocates for many years now, and it was so nice to hear him share how essential it's been to the operation and a system that they cannot live without.

Now my shameless transition to keep plugging meez...we talked about some upcoming features like automated server cards among many others. And now live and available to everyone is meez Intelligence.

I have been spending time with dozens of our customers over the past 8 weeks hearing how we can help increase profits, reduce errors, and save even more time with this new data- and AI-driven intelligence platform powered by all of your recipe IP. We have spent so much time and resources ensuring all of your recipe, ingredient, and menu data is dialed in, yield-adjusted, enriched with nutrition and allergen detail, and indexed with usage detail; now it's time to take advantage of all that data. Surfacing the insights you need, when you need them, so you can make informed decisions that drive revenue quickly.

Simply reply to this email or see below to learn more.

‍

🎙️ The meez Podcast

Rocco DiSpirito on technique, content creation, and the path of the modern chef

Rocco went to the CIA at 16, cooked in Europe with no money and no language, ran Union Pacific, and then put a restaurant on network television before anyone else had tried it. Fifteen cookbooks later, nine of them health and wellness, he argues that learning to cook from videos is completely legitimate and that most of us overvalue the years we spent getting yelled at.

We recorded at Bar Rocco, which opened in March.

• Why the old path to becoming a chef is gone
• Perfect or promote, and the partner who forced the issue
• How to not screw up black truffles
• Chefs, IP, and why he stopped fighting for the trademark
• Ownership vs licensing vs a management deal
• The KISS album that got him his first kitchen job

👉 Watch the episode

‍

🤔🌶️ Hot Take

Perfect or Promote

How much time should you spend telling your story compared to the time you spend perfecting your craft? What should the split be? Has that changed with social media?

Can you even exist as a business or a professional if you are not spending enough time promoting yourself or your biz? Does it matter more today to get your story out and promote what you do, versus becoming the greatest at the craft behind what you're promoting?

As chefs, we make this mistake often. I know I have. We figure as long as the food is exceptional, we'll make it. Clearly that is not enough.

As a founder of a tech company, you learn very early that great distribution and good product beat great product and poor distribution every time. (Having both is the goal).

Rocco had a partner, Steve Scher, who spent years pushing him into the dining room. Rocco was so shy he wouldn't go out and talk to guests at the end of the night. His instinct was perfect, perfect, perfect: never promote. "I thought you could just be great and put out great product, and the people who enjoyed your product would promote you for you." He says that isn't true, and he doesn't think word of mouth alone is enough anymore.

👉 Chime in on  Instagram or LinkedIn

‍

📔 Chef Notes

How to not $%#^ up truffles

White truffles take much less effort. They play really well with butter and starch, and it mostly comes down to waiting to shave the truffle as close to when it goes in your guest's mouth as possible.

The black truffle never gets enough love. Simply shaving it doesn't do much, and it fades a lot faster than the white truffle once it's shaved. Black truffles, especially Périgord truffles, love heat applied to them, but the way in which it's done matters.

You can spend a lot more time extracting their flavor by reducing liquids with them. Fortified wine, veal or chicken jus, and cream all work great. Crashing multiple times is very effective. Sweat the truffles in butter, add madeira and/or port and reduce to sec, then add chicken stock and reduce to a jus, then add cream and reduce by a third or so to get the right consistency.

If you want to go really hardcore, take your extra truffles and preserve them in fortified wine and salt, then take that truffle jus and finish the sauce with it. Never boil it.

Shaving the truffle tableside is totally fine, but it doesn't do much for smacking truffle flavor in your face. And if you don't add some flaky salt after, you're losing half the battle anyway.

And truffle oil... I'll keep that for another time.

Rocco is a master with truffles. Not only from spending so much time with them, but from time spent with our mentor, the late, great Gray Kunz, who, to me, is hands down the greatest truffle magician there has ever been.

👉 Chime in on  Instagram or LinkedIn

‍

Recipe:

Fresh Egg Pasta Dough

Rocco also mentioned he worked at Bouley.  Fun fact: we had zero recipes at Bouley.  It was all word of mouth, and you had to write down what someone told you.  Always hopeful that the game of telephone never ended up with some 'lost in translation' recipe casualties.  It was a big influence on why I decided to start meez.

This was a recipe I picked up at Bouley.  It's really simple. I tried to be clearer and more precise with the quantities.  And you can most definitely apply what you learned about truffles with this dough.  If you want some more details on that, just let me know.

👉 Get the recipe

‍

📆 meez Intelligence is launching!!!!!!!!

👉 Find some time with our team here to learn more, or just reply to this email

💬 Want to Be a Guest on The meez Podcast?

If you’re building at scale, or wrestling with hard zero-to-one problems worth talking about, I’d love to hear from you.

Apply to be a guest or nominate someone we should talk to.

‍