Chef Brian Roland is having a very good day.
Hot off of last night’s airing of the CNBC reality show Restaurant Startup, the founder of Crave Culinaire has gotten an investment offer worth more than the $500,000 he and colleague Richie Wilim had requested of Startup hosts Joe Bastianich and Tim Love. On Friday, Roland will meet with a local entrepreneur who intends to lay out an “an opportunity that can be monumental for Crave’s future.” Specifics on both are hush-hush for now.
“I think the show helped get us out there and gave us some credibility,” says Roland, whose phone has been “ringing off the hook” all day. Crave, a 2-year-old personal chef concierge and event company that uses ultramodern culinary techniques, hosted a viewing party last night at the Naples Performing Arts Center.
And, technically speaking, Roland didn’t even “win.”
Restaurant Startup pits two teams of restaurateurs against each other for the opportunity to receive $7,500 to open a “pop up” restaurant and try out their concept. If Love and Bastianich like what they see, they will back the venture.
In last night’s season-finale episode, the hosts decided to advance the Denver-based “Inventing Room,” which had taken food preparation to something akin to a science lab, to the “pop up” round. But not before heaping praise on Roland’s sample dishes: a salad of organic beets, compressed apples, blood orange and petit greens topped with goat cheese semifreddo, which is prepared using an anti-griddle, a cooktop that freezes foods rather than heating them; and a pecan-smoked duck breast that featured a maple-cider broth created using a hot infusion siphon.
“I like every component of this dish,” Bastianich said. Viewers liked what they saw, too; 73 percent of them favored Crave’s pitch.
Stay tuned—Crave’s kitchen is just heating up.
