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
This is what we think is missing in New York City. A luxurious and comfortable Italian restaurant expressing everything we know about Italian culture in a slightly rarefied atmosphere. The food is to be elegant and simple without losing the essential heart of the Italian purity. As a gastronomic experience it's everything I have to offer.
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 love simple food. I like to serve the entire animal, not only because it somehow provokes a customer to think about it, but also because to honor of the animal that has been killed for us to eat, you have to eat the whole thing. It would be silly to just eat the chops and throw everything else away.
In growing up in Seattle, I don't know a single family that didn't barbecue or cook on the weekends and make its own kind of simple, pared-down, what I call Pacific Northwest cooking.
Any simple but delicious dish that celebrates the season and locality is what I want to be known for.
Food, like most things, is best when left to its own simple beauty.
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.
Cooking in France and Italy has a particular high resonance, and it's hard to say how or why it developed other than that they've been smarter and there longer.
English food in the last 30 years has come to grips with English products, their dairy culture and their cheeses and their creams and their seafood.
Every region has its own specialties, and whether it was Christmas Eve and the seafood dinner and the seven courses, whichever family you were from, it's a visceral part of your life.
At this point in my career it's very hard for me to turn down opportunities that I think are auspicious.
There's not a speck of fruit by the time March or April rolls around. Citrus is gone, and there's not a berry in sight. You're stuck with passion fruits and pineapples. Which isn't bad, but it's a tough time of the year, and chefs need to know how to work through it.