Bobby Flay cooks up "America's Next Great Restaurant"

Food Network

If you haven't had your fill of Bobby Flay, the Food Network TV personality who recently agreed to throw down a whopping $800,000 to staffers who accused the Iron Chef of cheating them out of wages and tips while working in his Manhattan restaurants, then here's your opportunity to actually work with the dude.

Seems that Flay has hooked up with NBC to bring the new TV series America's Next Great Restaurant to viewers sometime next fall. And you know what that means: cattle casting calls!

Here's the basic premise: Flay, along with four more restaurant bigwigs and business blowhards, will choose an entrepreneur and/or chef to open a new restaurant, with Flay as an investor. Flay will also serve as a judge, as well as an adviser to starry-eyed chefstruck contestants.

If you're interested in taking part in the shitshow smackdown, log onto nbc.com/casting to pre-register for the open casting call in Denver on Thursday, April 1 at Chipotle, 2760 South Colorado Boulevard. Auditions will take place between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., and you're asked to bring a completed application, a photo-ID and whatever else you think will convince the casting chiefs that your restaurant concept is the Next Big Thing.

Just keep this in mind before your show up in your edible undies: The Restaurant, which was NBC's first restaurant reality show featuring former celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito getting his ass kicked, was a craptastic failure. As a matter of fact, the last time I saw DiSpirito, he was at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic signing copies of a cookbook...in an empty art gallery.