We’re first introduced to Alessandro’s Restaurant in episode nine of season four, “The One Where They’re Going to a Party.” After Monica gets a gig as a food critic, she eats a “grossly incompetent” meal at Alessandro’s Italian restaurant, a swanky spot in Midtown Manhattan. It’s the kind of place Ross would wear leather pants to. Monica’s ruthless restaurant review calls Alessandro’s food “inedible swill,” particularly the marinara sauce that tastes like tomato juice.
It turns out that Alessandro himself isn’t Italian but Lebanese and in dire need of help from a real Italian food expert like Monica to take the reins. He hires her as his new head chef so she can put her foodie attitude to use. This results in a brief mutiny from the rest of Alessandro’s kitchen staff and plenty of pranks, from burning her chef’s coat to writing down fake specials to even locking her in a freezer! This seemed funny in the moment but in hindsight, yikes!
Thankfully, the restaurant is not a real place. It’s a complete fabrication created to act as backdrop to Monica’s head chef ambitions, which Rachel says she has had “forever.” This restaurant is the first one Monica gets to run by herself but also the one where she is treated the worst. We wouldn’t go there even if it were real.
