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
My partner, Joe, spends a lot of his time in Italy and has grown up in an Italian family, but it's more about what we don't put on the plate to make it feel more Italian.
My intention is to make sure that we think about it without becoming too intellectual about it. There are pockets of restaurateurs throughout our country right now and in Italy, France, and Spain, who spend all their days figuring out how to confound the customer.
The minimum time spent in any one restaurant should be a year, no matter what. You may feel that you're done earlier, but it's truly in a year that you learn the discipline and technical things you need to know about a particular restaurant.
Think of the cooking of the Southwest: Arizona, anything on the border of Mexico, the rich chili culture, the unbelievable stews.
I can chill without having to watch my Ps and Qs.
It's more interesting to talk about the whole lily family and say, did you know that lily bulbs are also part of the onion family? It's like the stream-of-consciousness way I think about food when I'm just cooking it.
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.
As far as TV, I have a new show... It's me traveling around to Italian-American families and enclaves throughout the States and learning about the dishes and ingredients that these people love.
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.
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.
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.
People were tired of eating things they could easily make at home.
In New York, a lot of people come into the restaurant and it's not that they don't want what's on the menu, they just want to flex a little bit. They want to control the situation.
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.