Guest Chef Rocco DiSpirito Lands at Sag Harbor Kitchen for October

Don’t call it a comeback, but TV personality and cookbook author Rocco DiSpirito is temporarily putting a chef’s uniform back on – he’s popping up at Sag Harbor Kitchen through the rest of this month in a deal brokered through a mutual friend.

“We’re just planning for October right now,” said DiSpirito of the guest chef position at Sag Harbor Kitchen, which shares waterfront space with the American Legion on Bay Street. 

Less than two weeks in, he said his seafood-forward menu – with dishes like seafood pot pie, grilled lobster and swordfish, and a Lafrieda strip steak – has been a hit since he started rattling pots and pans in the space’s open-format kitchen, going “the extra mile” to make sure the seafood is “super fresh.”  

Along with local NYC purveyors, DiSpirito said he’s been sourcing fish locally from Gosman’s and steamers from Multi Aquaculture, also known as the Fish Farm, in Amagansett. 

“It’s been really fun to cook for what I believe is – as a person who’s lived here and NYC for gotta be close to thirty years – a community that yearns for great seafood,” DiSpirito said of Sag Harbor, “and it gets more and more difficult every year to find really fresh great seafood.”

Though he made his name as executive chef of popular NYC eatery Union Pacific in the late 90s, he has been mostly absent from the business of being a restaurant chef for the last decade-plus, save a brief turn as head chef at the Standard Grill in the Meatpacking District in 2018.

DiSpirito told us he’s been working on creating more signature cookbooks and making appearances on multiple reality TV shows. “I’m as busy as I’ve ever been in my life,” he said. 

For now, at least, he said his return to restaurant work is inspired by Sag Harbor’s local, year-round community, as well as the waterfront just outside the door that’s so central to year-round village life. 

“I’ve really appreciated how locals and frequent visitors have embraced the food and the food quality,” said DiSpirito. “They’ve been very complementary, and I think very happy, about this little push toward a new level of quality in terms of food and overall experience.”

The Queens-born chef also plugged a brand new cookbook dropping in 2024 called “Everyday Delicious,” which he called his “Covid book” and said will feature comfort recipes that kept him busy while stuck indoors during the pandemic. 

His brief return to the kitchen , where he became a New York City restaurant darling, has been greeted with nothing but positive energy.

“It’s been one big warm embrace,” he said. “Very warm, very welcoming, people are very happy to see me, the push in food and hospitality in general, I couldn’t ask for a better reception.”

Sag Harbor Kitchen is located at 26 Bay Street, Sag Harbor. For more information, go to sagharbor.kitchen