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
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.
The Four Seasons wanted me to become the chef, and I didn't feel that at age 28 I was ready to become the chef.
The Food Network is getting a little more entertaining than I would have thought a couple years back. They're in 80 million homes now. This is no longer a niche market.
The food at my restaurants is mostly the food of Italy's grandmothers.
The English have been burning everything for so long, and no one paid attention to them. But now there are guys like Marco Pierre White, Jamie Oliver, and Gordon Ramsey. The London restaurant scene is as vibrant as anywhere in the world-London, Paris, New York.
The ideas come from classic Italian cooking, or any European culture, for that matter. As far as something like the offal menu, Europeans would definitely not throw anything away, and the use of the head or the liver or the kidneys is part of their quotidian experience.
The lighting and the buzz and everything in addition to the food have an impact on what the customer feels.
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.
It is important to get the zucchini crisp when you cook it; the trick is to move it very little when it first goes into the pan and to work in small batches.
If you approach cooking as a trade school, then you may not have as many interesting things to think about or do later on in life.
I'm not gonna tell anybody but of course I'm worried. I'm working every hour of every day. This is my main event.
From a great restaurant to a B-minus player can happen in six weeks.
French and Italian cooking have been elevated to a really high art form.
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.