Joe Bastianich
Joe Bastianich
Joseph "Joe" Bastianichis an American restaurateur, winemaker, author, and television personality. He, along with partners Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali, owns thirty restaurants worldwide, including Babboand Del Posto in New York, Carnevino in Las Vegas, and in 2010, expanded the LA eateries Pizzeria and Osteria Mozza to Singapore. Earlier that same year, the trio teamed up with Italian retail businessman Oscar Farinetti to bring Eataly, an artisanal food and wine market to New York, with the Chicago outpost following in...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth17 September 1968
CountryUnited States of America
He brought a sensibility and a hard-edged reasonableness to operating restaurants that had a lasting impact on me and still affects how I run all our restaurants today. The passing of 'Restaurant Man' - the original gangsta 'Restaurant Man,' my father - was the passing of an era. No one can replace him.
Being a cook doesn't necessarily mean you are a competitor.
I have a Madonna portrait done in the style of a Russian icon. My mother, the chef Lidia Bastianich, and I bought it together. It reminds me of her.
I was raised in restaurants. My parents opened their first restaurant, Buonavia, in Queens when I was just 3. This business has always been my way of life. As a kid, home was reserved only for sleeping. After school, you could find my sister and I helping out at the family restaurant.
When I stopped looking at food as a reward or a celebration and began looking at food as energy to fuel my athletic ambitions, that really kind of changed the whole world for me. That was the real 'aha!' moment.
Take the time to shop for yourself and cook. All of this is an investment in yourself, and if you're not going to invest time and money in what you put in your body, then what are you going to spend money on? It's kind of the most important thing.
Selling wine is all about sizing people up, and it takes a certain amount of chutzpah. The tableside bottle sell is a very funny thing - you take a look at the guy's blazer, what kind of shoes he's wearing, what kind of broad he's with. Is he trying to be a hero?
Maitre d's are at the financial spigot of the restaurant, meaning they control who gets in and who doesn't, but aside from that, they don't do anything. And yet they get paid as much as the highest-paid people in the place.
I was brought up to believe I could achieve anything. My mother instilled in me the belief that there was always something great coming. For example, even though I'm afraid of flying, I always think the plane can't crash because there are so many better things still to come.
Every time I open a new restaurant, I wake up in the middle of the night moaning about bread and water. I dream I am in the middle of the dining room, and I am panicked.
New York is the best food city in the world.
The best pastas are cut with bronze dies that give them a rough texture and allow the sauce to cling.
It's one thing to execute dishes on your own time for family and friends, but quite another to perform and be judged in a competition. And that's what cooking in a high profile restaurant is. It's a competition. You're up against every other three-star restaurant in your city, and if you want to stay in business, you'd better deliver.
After World War II, a lot of people moved to the cities for work and abandoned the old vineyards. Then in the 1950s and 1960s, wineries were paid to produce volume at a cheap price. That's when the Lambruscos and bad Chianti were popular.