Chodorow taps hot Chicago district with China Grill export

Nation's Restaurant News, Nov 8, 2004 by Carolyn Walkup

Chodorow already is on the lookout for additional Chicago locations, he said. Meanwhile, he has four more openings of various concepts planned for before the end of 2004, in New York; Atlantic City, N.J.; and Las Vegas

No reality television shows are included among Chodorow's immediate plans, although producers have approached him about that possibility. He won a bitter lawsuit against chef Rocco DiSpirito earlier this year over alleged mismanagement and financial losses at Rocco's.

"I would only do a show now where the message could be a positive one of helping people fix broken restaurants--and where they would listen to me," he said.

Saying he does not harbor bitterness toward the production company that filmed "The Restaurant," Chodorow remarked: "I don't know what footage they had; I don't want to say they only emphasized the bad stuff. The negative is more dramatic than the positive."

However, "I think it's a shame what happened. I think there was a real opportunity to do something great, and it got off track. The more I tried to push it back on track, the more it got off track. I put a lot of energy into it, and I wanted it to work. The fact that it didn't work makes me sad."

Strangers sometimes stop Chodorow on the street, even in cities as far away as Tokyo and Barcelona, he said, and tell him they agreed with what he did on the show. "In the end my reputation was enhanced because people saw that I made a real effort," he said. "I kept a pretty even keel."