New York - May 26, 2000

A Piece of the Roc

Roc Restaurant

Listening to Rocco Cadolini, the former maitre d’ at Elio’s, working the phone at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday night is a hoot.

“You are taking a cab? Tell him Church Street. Yes, yes, then take a right. Duane and Greenwich Street. By the river. West. Don’t take the FDR.”

Always punctuated with that Italian-accented coo, “Ok, baby. Ciao, baby.”

In other words, he and his partner, Elio, are the latest restaurant duo to be shepherding the masses downtown.

Destination: Roc, an airy, minimalist 65-seat restaurant, impeccably designed with Brazilian-cherrywood floors, mahogany fixtures, and arched windows. The space is killer. (Don’t even get us started on the food.)

But that’s not what’s packing them in. “Gywneth…” he smiles. “I know what she likes. She used to have to go uptown so we could make her chicken parmigiana. Now she doesn’t have to go uptown.”

(Miss Paltrow confirmed that she indeed is an avid patron.)

So Roc has been a decently kept secret until, um, right about now. But Rocco promises that DailyCandy subscribers who mention the (oooooh) secret password “LadyRock” (the joint’s signature drink: cranberry, grapefruit, peach schnapps, and vodka) will be made to “feel special.”

Whatever that means.

And the winners are…

(And by the way: You drove us to the poorhouse. The skirt, from Scoop, costs precisely $276.03, including tax. Scoop generously donated one skirt to the competition. The closest guess was $275, and in all fairness, there were six of you. So if you see a scrawny little thing sucking on a Twizzler begging for some money, that’s one of the two DailyCandy girls.)

Pema Shakabpa

Laura Kronen

Mary Curtis Williams

Kathleen Pierce

Sue Ling Mark

Andrea L. Werner

Congratulations! For those of you who did not win, click here to check out the Scoop store on Bestselections.com.