You don’t have to be a foodie to be a guest on WTTW’s Check, Please! In fact, your chances might be better if you’re not. David Manilow, creator and executive producer of the weekly show, which features ordinary people discussing their favorite local restaurants, doesn’t care nearly as much about expertise as he does about personality and diversity. Funny is good, as is having an underrepresented profession. “I got enough lawyers,” he says.
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One of the first things to catch Manilow’s eye is an interesting restaurant pick–a place where, he says, “there’s things to talk about besides the service and the quality of the food,” such as history, decor, or unusual amenities. (Restaurants aren’t featured twice. There’s a list of already-featured restaurants on the Check, Please! Web site.) Manilow also has to be confident that the guest will feel comfortable on camera. If he’s intrigued by someone’s application, he calls for an interview. “If they’re nervous talking to me, they’re going to be really nervous on the show,” he says. And, last, Manilow looks for personality: “If you make me laugh, that always helps.”
Once in a while someone just gets lucky. “So I’m scouting a restaurant called the Raw Bar in Wrigleyville,” Manilow says. He routinely scopes out restaurants that might be on the show. “I go there one night at 11 o’clock and have a couple martinis, and somebody says, ‘My friend wants to be on the show, and she’s right over here. She’s a belly dancer’–this tattooed, pierced, beautiful belly dancer. I looked at her and I went, ‘Oh, you’re on the show. I’ll call you tomorrow.’” The dancer ended up talking restaurants with a car salesman and a theology student (she chose Raw Bar, the salesman chose the Millrose Brewing Company in Barrington, and the student picked Siam Noodle & Rice in Uptown).
On the morning of the last taping of the current season, Manilow sits in the WTTW studio’s greenroom, chatting with the guests–Kevin Coval, a writing teacher and hip-hop performance poet from Pilsen; Brenda Machalk, a realtor and deli-counter clerk from Somonauk, a small town west of Aurora; and Luis Ortega, a television producer from Lakeview. It’s the first time they’ve met, and they’re not allowed to talk about the restaurants before taping starts. Manilow wants all that energy saved for the show. Instead they fill out a detailed questionnaire about their restaurant experiences and talk to Singh one-on-one, so she knows how to guide the on-air chat. “We look for layers of conversation,” Manilow says. “We don’t want Alpana to do ‘How was your experience? Oh. And how was your experience?’”
The mood eases up during the second segment, when everyone considers Machalk’s pick, Bobak’s Sausage Company in Burr Ridge. She loves the chicken consomme there. “It’s like Jell-O with meat, but it’s not sweet,” she tells the others. “You have to be a real strong person to take that first bite.” Machalk and Coval are enthusiastic about Ortega’s choice, Andersonville’s Tomboy, though there’s some discussion about the chef’s affinity for goat cheese.
