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
Classics can be phenomenal when done right. A simple roast chicken dish could be the best thing you ever eat.
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.
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.
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.
My grandparents in Istria had a frasca, which is about the most basic kind of grocery/restaurant. They sold wine from their own vineyard. I took control of the vineyard, hired a local winemaker, and bought another winery in 1996. We had our first commercial vintage in 1998.
'MasterChef' is the search for America's culinary amateur talent, so this is a search for the best home cook in America, and it's our job to figure out who that is.
Restaurant Man is kind of the story, an unabridged story of what happened in my life, the good bad and ugly. Some people might glean some life lessons. It is honest, not written as a press release.
The stories of wine lords who trade wine on intimidation or food critics who trade free meals for reviews those are the stories of my life. I am telling the stories of my life in a true way.
I'm a baritone. Baritones don't mature until late.
Essentially, wines are fermented grape juice, so I'm trying to make the point that the wine world is about scores and marketing and kind of creating a scarce resource where they don't really exist.
At Babbo, each dish grew out of a conversation, trying to put something forth that was new and different. It was a combination of culinary adventurism and the dining-room experience with respect for the classic but with an eye toward innovation. And it was about eating locally, whether produce or fish or meat.
Being a cook doesn't necessarily mean you are a competitor.
No matter what it is you are cooking, buy the best ingredients you can afford. I don't care if it's a simple salad or Beef Wellington. A quality product stands alone and won't need any dressing up.