Man of the Month: David Manilow

Creator and Executive Producer, Check, Please!

Check, Please! airs on WTTW-11.

I like being informed. I’ll read a lot of papers, a lot of magazines, watch news-oriented programs. I watch Chris Matthews, Meet the Press. I don’t read much about restaurants in Chicago. I don’t want to be influenced to put a restaurant in the show because I saw it somewhere or didn’t see it somewhere.

What happened with Check, Please! is people began understanding what a Check, Please! restaurant is. It’s different than those places we might go on Friday night. It’s interesting layers of conversation, maybe it’s visual or some place nobody knows about.

Chicago has a lot of good food neighborhoods. Randolph. Andersonville – they have a lot of interesting restaurants. Hopleaf is good, M.Henry’s is good, Anteprima is good, especially in summer. My favorite food travel destinations? I was in Thailand. Thailand is good. You can do Thailand any way you want – as cheap as you want, you can do it pretty luxurious. The service there, in general, is beyond compare.

My most memorable meals are at my house. Either with my wife and family – my wife’s a great cook – or friends. I do a little cooking, but I’m mostly the grill guy.

What would I be doing if I hadn’t started Check, Please? I wouldn’t be as happy. As well fed. I may have done another type of television show that’s diverse and hopefully interesting and entertaining.

The thing of which I’m most proud is we’ve featured a lot of American dream places, that have now been allowed to send their kids to college, or have a better life, because of the impact of the show, the amount of people it’s driven to the restaurant.

If I have spare time, I really like to explore. I have four kids [ages 5, 15, 17 and 19]. They take up a fair amount of my time. It’s just how I like to spend my time. My wife and I like to go to theater and we spend time with friends. I spend a lot of time on my bike.

I think American Idol is the single best family show in the history of American television.

If I could have any talent over my lifetime, I’d like to have a strong enough throwing arm where I could have played some serious organized baseball.

You have to understand. I’d be the happiest guy to have a meatball sandwich, or go to Avenues or MK and have the fanciest meal in town. I don’t distinguish between, one is this wonderful thing, and one is of less quality. The reason I think the show is so successful is whatever people are doing, quality is quality. And I appreciate the whole thing.

I look at it (Check, Please! Chicago) as much about diversity and exploring and loving your city. I think we do that more than the other (Check, Please!) shows. The other shows probably are a little more food- and wine-centric. Not to say they don’t go all over the place, but I think we emphasize it a little bit more.

I don’t know if you could know certain stuff at 21 that you know now. Hopefully experience allows you to make wiser decision and be more confident about your decisions. I think that’s the most important thing over time that I’ve gained and I think a lot of people gain; they become more comfortable in who they are.

On guilty pleasures: Listen, if Dancing in the Dark or Brandy comes on the radio, I’m like, “Everyone stop.” Are they guilty pleasures or are they just great songs?

Facebook, I think it’s genius; it’s just not how I’m wired. Other than connecting with a few old friends, it was a lot of PR hitting me.

If you signed up to be a guest (on Check, Please!), and you picked four to five restaurants that I knew intimately well and I thought that they were really interesting, quality restaurants, and you picked a sixth restaurant that was some little hole in the wall that I didn’t know, I might say, “Okay, this person really knows what they’re talking about. I’m going to go check this place out.”