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
People were tired of eating things they could easily make at home.
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.
A lot of these people I'm traveling around the country and meeting speak Italian at the house. Third- or fourth-generation, and they're still speaking Italian.
As far as TV, I have a new show... It's me traveling around to Italian-American families and enclaves throughout the States and learning about the dishes and ingredients that these people love.
Think of American food. In my generation, growing up in the '60s and '70s, Banquet Fried Chicken and TV dinners were the thing. Now people are back into roasting their own chickens, and TV dinners are a point of kitsch. It will be interesting to see what survives another hundred years.
I think Italian food is easier to like and love and less intimidating than most. So people overestimate my contribution, not in a bad way or a good way. It's just that my food is simpler than a lot of other chefs' food, and that makes it more accessible, and possibly easier to eat.
I think that the rise of a group of people called the slow food movement is doing a lot to try to protect and preserve traditions.
There's a pretty equitable distribution in the restaurant industry of how money gets paid, except for in the kitchen. The kitchen is the lowest-paid group of people.
Day-old bread? Sadly, in America a lot of day-old bread just becomes nasty. Italian day-old bread, not having any preservatives in it, just becomes harder and it doesn't taste old. What I would warn people about is getting bread that's loaded with other things in it, because it starts to taste old.
I don't think fine dining is dying, but I think those rare occasions when you really want the fanciness are diminishing ... I think a lot of people are going to find simpler, more casual ways to enjoy an experience.
In New York, a lot of people come into the restaurant and it's not that they don't want what's on the menu, they just want to flex a little bit. They want to control the situation.
When I talk about a great dish, I often get goose bumps. I'm like, whoa, I'll never forget that one. The Italians are just like that. It's not all about food. It's part of the memory.
I started to train in economics, and I hated it. I never really entered that world, and went to a cooking school in London. Since then I've been cooking in great places all over the world: mostly California, Italy, and a little bit of France.
The whole thing of the risotto as a side dish with pasta: If no one is ever going to ask for risotto on the side of their spaghetti again, we have won something. We've turned them around.