Mario Batali
Mario Batali
Mario Francesco Batali is an American chef, writer, restaurateur, and media personality. In addition to his classical culinary training, he is an expert on the history and culture of Italian cuisine, including regional and local variations. Batali co-owns restaurants in New York City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Singapore, Hong Kong, Westport, Connecticut and New Haven, Connecticut Batali's signature clothing style includes a fleece vest, shorts and orange Crocs. He is also known as "Molto Mario"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth19 September 1960
CitySeattle, WA
CountryUnited States of America
My intention is to make sure that we think about it without becoming too intellectual about it. There are pockets of restaurateurs throughout our country right now and in Italy, France, and Spain, who spend all their days figuring out how to confound the customer.
My father stopped speaking Italian because his father so badly wanted to be an American.
Twenty years ago if you were going to be a cook, it was because you didn't make it in the army. It was the last stop before you were on the street.
To get to New York, I was actually on my way to Brazil to help someone open a restaurant and stopped in Florida and met an old college buddy of mine who had a restaurant called Rocco. I came up to open that and I've been in New York for 11 years.
There are all kinds of myths going on in the Italian culture, and the way they celebrate is through their food. It's the tradition of the table where the Italians celebrate most of their triumphs and successes.
The reason that I developed the style of talking about the historical use of these ingredients is because after I've cut an onion 10 times, I can't tell you to cut an onion again.
The objective... is to achieve a comfort level between the cook/artist/performer and the customer/viewer/diner. And if we can achieve that, and the customers are happy and the cooks are happy, then we have a great experience.
It's more interesting to talk about the whole lily family and say, did you know that lily bulbs are also part of the onion family? It's like the stream-of-consciousness way I think about food when I'm just cooking it.
It was early in the morning, and I had it up to 140 miles an hour on 10th Ave.. But I've got no speeding tickets, not even a moving violation.
It used to be that you would go out to the theater and get a bite or you would go to the game and get a bite or go to the concert and get a bite. At this point in our society, the bite is often the main event.
It will certainly be controversial for a couple of weeks, ... With that few restaurants in the two-star category, people will not take it seriously.
I travel around and instead of my showing someone how to cook, I walk in with a completely hands-off approach, and they show me their dishes.
The proximity to the Mediterranean... it's been a calming influence or just a generally good thing.
When I got to college age, my parents suggested, why don't you go to cooking school instead of going to a traditional college? I said that's not for me. That's ridiculous.