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.
Some things are being destroyed, because the Italians are just as tired of their basic food as the Americans and French were 20 years ago. So they're reinventing to avoid palate exhaustion.
My father stopped speaking Italian because his father so badly wanted to be an American.
I like things that are fun, and I look to do them a lot, and that I have the opportunities to do them makes me a lucky guy.
The food at my restaurants is mostly the food of Italy's grandmothers.
I lived in San Francisco from '84 to '88.
I really enjoyed writing the first book. And since then it's been great. I've written every word of all my books.
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.
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.
D.C. is a complicated market that I don't understand very well. The restaurant business is a slippery slope, and it gathers speed very quickly when it's going downhill.
Nothing that would be as artistic as any of the four restaurants I have in the city. If I was to do anything in Las Vegas, for instance, it would have to be... idiot-proof. And I still haven't decided if I'm capable of that.
The whole concept of the supremacy of the family unit in the Italian culture... That's all based on the relation of the mom and the children and the bambino.
It used to be that you would go out to the theater and get a bite or you would go to the game and get a bite or go to the concert and get a bite. At this point in our society, the bite is often the main event.
At this point in my career it's very hard for me to turn down opportunities that I think are auspicious.