Dinner Rush is a 2000 American independent feature film, written by Brian S. Kalata and Rick Shaughnessy, and directed by Bob Giraldi. It stars Danny Aiello as a restaurateur-bookmaker in New York City's Tribeca neighborhood and Edoardo Ballerini as his son, the restaurant's star chef. The film deals with converging pressures from the son and his gambling sous-chef who work in the kitchen, as well as organized crime. Aside from one sequence before the opening credits, it adheres to two of the three classical unities: time and space. All of the events after the opening credits occur during one evening at the restaurant or just outside.

Characters

Critical reception

Dinner Rush has a 91% positive rating from Rotten Tomatoes, and is included in Leonard Maltin's book 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen. Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times described it as "a mouth-watering display of talent, technique, and patience" with "more intrigues here than in the court of the Medicis." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote "Dinner Rush piles on the complications to the point of overdoing it, only to reveal at the climactic moment that this is but a ploy––that in the wholly unpredictable way everything plays out, the picture makes perfect sense."