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Amazon.com
Celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito is best known for his short-lived reality TV show The Restaurant, which chronicled the start-up (and disintegration) of DiSpirito's Manhattan dining spot, Rocco's 22nd Street, whose menu was partially devised by his mother Nicolina. Rocco's Italian American offers 150-plus recipes--restaurant-connected dishes like Nicolina's much praised meatballs plus her Eggplant Rollatini and Pizza Fritta, among others. Worthy versions of old favorites include Spaghetti Carbonara, Linguini with Clams, and Stuffed Artichokes. Requiring fewer than ten ingredients, the recipes are as tempting as they are approachable.

But recipes are only part of the package. Following the introduction (a bumpy start, as DiSpirito writes that "every American has in common... one émigré in his family who started it all by coming to America," a statement that Native Americans, among others, will find objectionable) the book offers "Nicolina’s Story" and "Rocco’s Story," 60-odd pages of detailed reminiscence that some readers will welcome and others find excessive. Photos throughout illustrate the dishes; the chef and his clan (this reader stopped counting shots of DiSpirito at 22); and, unaccountably, portraits of common ingredients like lemons, walnuts, and red pepper flakes, among others. This lavish "editorializing" means recipe squeezing, resulting in the use of a very small font that makes reading the methods, especially at "cooking distance," difficult. There are other problems as well, including the "loss" of recipes promised on the flyleaf and in the seafood section intro.

These objections aside, the book promises much good eating--including "dolce" like Elena's Ricotta Grain Cake and Chocolate Walnut Budino--and for DiSpirito fans, another chance to learn from, and gaze at, the master. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
DiSpirito, who lent his name and career to Rocco's, the restaurant that was the subject of the NBC reality show The Restaurant, offers utterly familiar Italian-American recipes. On television, DiSpirito hired his mother as top meatball maker; here he provides Mama's Meatballs and a host of other dishes he ate while growing up. The most interesting reading is actually DiSpirito's mother's autobiographical essay, which includes the story of how she came to move to Queens from Italy when she was 24, in the late 1940s. In his own essay, DiSpirito repeats some of the same information. (His mother "had overcome monumental challenges for us.") DiSpirito's writing is clunky, with obvious statements such as "Soup is, hands down, the most comforting, restorative food a person can eat, as far as I am concerned." Recipes, which include active time and total time required, tend to the mundane, such as Shrimp Scampi and Linguine with Clams. Some chapters are oddly short, such as a Parmigiana chapter with only three recipes, and one on eggs, which also consists of just three dishes. A master recipe for homemade pasta would be difficult for a novice to follow, and Baked Sausage and Nutella Panini is simply misguided. This is a disappointing follow-up to DiSpirito's far superior Flavor. Photos.
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