Like a Jedi knight with an offset spatula, pastry chef Jehangir Mehta switched over to the savory side last September when he opened his first restaurant Graffiti in the East Village. Armed with a few induction burners and assorted kitchen gadgets, Graffiti’s 4-person staff prepares and serves Mehta’s eclectic food out of a pint-sized kitchen. Before Graffiti, Mehta worked with Jean Georges Vongerichten, Rocco DiSpirito, and lots of other chefs. He was most recently pastry......

What’s worth watching on food-related TV this week? The third season of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations premieres tonight at 10pm on the Travel Channel. The first episode features his trip to Shanghai. Fox has Episode 9 of Hell's Kitchen, also on tonight at 9pm. Both Julia and Josh were kicked to the curb last week (but in a random act of kindness, Ramsay promised to send Julia to culinary school). Now three contestants remain. Read......

What's worth watching, food-wise, on TV this week? Fox has Episode 8 of Hell's Kitchen on Monday at 9pm. Brad surprisingly got the boot last week; now five contestants remain. Read the latest episode roundup on EW’s TV Watch. This week on Top Chef: Rocco DiSpirito is appearing as a judge! And—allegedly—looking a little more plastic than he used to. Also, check out the proposed rules for next season in the Village Voice: we’re right......

-Food and Wine magazine released its Best New Chefs 2007 list earlier this week. April Bloomfield, the 32 year-old chef and co-owner of West Village gastropub The Spotted Pig, is among the ten honorees to be featured in the magazine’s July issue. Eater attended Wednesday night’s announcement party at 7 World Trade Center and watched “everyone who has ever been on an episode of Top Chef” party like it was 1999, the not-so-distant year that......

We were fascinated by today's Salon article, "Bad Taste," in which prominent food writers chronicle their absolute worst meals ever. Jane and Michael Stern, Regina Schrambling, Steven Rinella, Julie Powell, Michael Ruhlman and Robert Sietsema all chime in with stories of "washcloth steak," "embryonic duckling boiled alive in its shell, one week before birth," (apparently a Filipino delicacy), and "mealy" skate with "low-tide nasty" lobster foam, prepared by Rocco DiSpirito. After reading, we tried to......

January 12: Restaurants from the Inside Out Hear about what makes a restaurant a hit or a flop from three experts who know, some from personal experience, like Rocco DiSpirito. He joins author Calvin Trillin and egullet.com founder Steven Shaw at this panel, moderated by WNYC's Leonard Lopate. For more information call 212-415-5500. $25 tickets available online. 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave at 92nd St., 8pm. January 12: Whym Opens The folks behind Eatery......

May 14th & 15th: The Ninth Avenue International Food Festival This annual even, currently in its 32nd year, gives you the opportunity to sample over thirty different international cuisines -- like the United Nations, but much tastier. Ninth Avenue from 37th to 57th Street, from 9:00 am to 6:30 pm. Call 212-581-7029 for more information. May 16th: Save CBGB: Eat More Chocolate This benefit, touted as an "an all-chocolate, rock-and-roll experience," is raising funds to......

Flavor, by Rocco DiSpirito (Hyperion, 2003) We understand that Mr. DiSpirito has been the target of much derision lately, from the apparent "trainwreck" of his reality-tv show (we never saw it) to his ouster from his kitchen at Union Pacific. But here at Gothamist Cooks (Kind Of) By the Book, we care only about one thing: recipes. Are the recipes worth their while? Do they make sense? Do they result in making suprisingly good food......

When Gothamist first heard that the reality-TV-based infamy that was Rocco's (a.k.a. NBC's "The Restaurant") would be replaced by a Brazilian-themed "Brasserio," we chuckled. Seemed like quite a random departure from the previous incarnation of upscale-yet-kitschy Italian Americana. But then again, wasn't that the point? To try to make people forget the unforgettable bickering and lawsuits that led chef Rocco DiSpirito and restauranteur vet Jeffrey Chodorow to split? Chodorow's long, successful history in the unvelievably......

The other shoe has finally dropped for Rocco DiSpirito. The celebrity chef who sold his soul for the NBC reality series "The Restaurant" has now lost not only the restaurant that bears his name, but the restaurant that made it. The Times reports that Union Pacific, where Rocco burst onto the New York restaurant scene to great acclaim in 1997, is closing down at the end of this year, and that Rocco himself is no......

Could the secret ingredient to the meatballs from Nicolina DiSpirito actually have been tears?!? In videotaped testimony yesterday, Rocco DiSpirito's former manager Lon Rosen said that Jeffrey Chodorow, the owner, would make Mrs. DiSpirito cry, "She'd break down crying that Jeffrey was saying terrible things about her son." The lawsuit stems over a fight for control over Rocco's, the subject of the NBC reality show, 'The Restaurant". DiSpirito says he owns half of the restaurant......

Laurie Woolever, Cook/Food Writer...

So, Gothamist was wrong when we thought that lisping British hipster chef Jamie Oliver was slightly better than Rocco DiSpirito, because what the Oliver has in values, he lacks in total common sense, even more so than Rocco. After reading about Oliver burning his penis when trying to cook a Valentine's meal for his wife in the nude (yes, we've just developed an instant case of vomiting too!), Gothamist waves the white flag at celebrity......

Biting the hand that fed him, Rocco DiSpirito, humiliated last month when business partner Jeffrey Chodorow sued him because Rocco's (the 22nd realitys show AND restaurant) was not a critical or financial success, filed a civil lawsuit against Chodorow's company, China Grill Management. The Times reports that within the 38 page civil suit, the offenses to DiSpirito included changing the locks on the restaurant and not giving him a key and not paying 79 year-old......

Gothamist doesn't think news of angry investors of Rocco DiSpirito's restaurant, Rocco's on 22nd, is surprising. What's surprising is that it took them so long to figure it out. Jeffrey Chodorow and his China Grill Management group filed a law suit against DiSpirito, stating, "The Restaurant, under DiSpirito's management, has not been the financial or critical success that the CG parties expected. The quality of the food and service has been widely criticized." Additionally, Rocco's......

Until the documentary about Village institution, Shopsin's, I Like Killing Flies (low culture has a nice look at the film) comes out, New York foodies' film appetites will have to be whetted by Eat This New York, a doc about the struggle of opening a restaurant when you're not Rocco DiSpirito. Cameos from various NY food personalities are in the film: Keith McNally, Jean-Georges, Sirio Maccioni, Daniel Boulud, Ruth Reichl and as Manhattan User's Guide......

The Post tallies up the city's most eligible bachelors (and, yes, the usual suspects are there, like Derek Jeter, Rocco DiSpirito and Adrien Brody as well as some not so usual, like Billy Crudup – who knew the dump the soon to be mother of my child type which is hot to Page Six and homophobe Jeremy Shockey; Gothamist, though, is thrilled with the inclusion of chef Marcus Samuelsson, sigh). The Post also adds what......

Last night, Rocco DiSpirito's reality show, The Restaurant, premiered and the Times' food critic William Grimes reviewed the show in the weekend's Arts & Leisure section. (Gothamist is curious if one of the TV critics Alessandra Stanley or Julie Salomon or even Caryn James - who we haven't seen much of lately - will be reviewing Rocco's On 22nd Street, the restaurant, as a restaurant then?) Biff loves the "thrilling" glimpse into what goes......

The Post rustles up a food critic and sends Steve Cuozzo the Lower East Side and WD-50 and loves Wylie Dufresne's food. In fact, he writes, "Its brand of modern-American cooking is witty but not wacky." Later on, he says that pastry chef Sam Mason's desserts are "kooky without being kinky." Gothamist would like further details if in fact Dufresne is witty but not wacky and if Sam Mason is kooky without being kinky......

The Daily News says there are operational issues with Rocco's reality restaurant. Like no one could see that one coming. Gothamist is still excited about the Southern Italian restaurant, Rocco, since it involves TV and food, two of our most favorite things. If Sam Waterston played the manager, we'd be living there. We just suggest that there's an inverse relationship between hotness of restaurant staff and actually getting a meal. In other restaurant news, restaurateurs......

Gothamist cannot wait to go to "Restaurant," the new restaurant/reality series from Rocco DiSpirito (Union Pacific), Mark Burnett (Survivor), and NBC (Channel 4 here in NY). There's nothing we like more than food and a little insanity. The Times Styles section looks what seems to be a hilarious casting/hiring process, as employees need to be competent but cute. But in a city of actors who work as watiers, Gothamist has to hand it to the......