Mario Batali Quotes
-
What I like to do when I go out is enjoy my friends and the food around it. If we have to stop and give five minutes to the chef, then I'm down with that. But if the chef has to interrupt every course to tell us how important this new revolution that's happening is, then I'm not so much interested in that.
→ -
I like cast iron coated with enamel for longevity and forgiveness if I happen to take my eyes off the prize while pouring Chianti.
→ -
The way the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed, and taken most of it into their own hands, is as good as Stalin or Hitler.
→ -
You have to be generous if you want to spend your time making someone else dinner. Even if you're charging, you're still giving.
→ -
In case you're wondering why Guy Fieri is here, he won a contest.
→ -
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.
→ -
In America, I would say New York and New Orleans are the two most interesting food towns. In New Orleans, they don't have a bad deli. There's no mediocrity accepted.
→ -
Just because you eat doesn't mean you eat smart. It's hard to beat a $1.99 wing pack of three at a fast-food restaurant - it's so cheap - but that wing pack isn't feeding anyone, it's just pushing hunger back an hour.
→ -
It's fascinating to travel around Italy and realize just how many different ways they make spaghetti.
→ -
There's a pretty equitable distribution in the restaurant industry of how money gets paid, except for in the kitchen. The kitchen is the lowest-paid group of people.
→ -
If you could learn how to make a perfect lemon tart then you got a story. If you don't feel like that, make a perfect chocolate chip cookie, but have five go-to dishes like that and you can move them around, change them up just a little bit, and always have something in the can.
→ -
Italy itself has 21 different micro-regions. You go within each of those regions, there's even super-micro-regions; and the beauty is that when you go from place to place, although there's a common thread of pasta and joie de vivre - in the way that they approach their meals and the simplicity of cooking, celebrating more the product than the chef - there's still so much variety that as you go, it's always an exciting moment.
→ -
Close your eyes and place your finger on a map. Wherever it lands, that's the theme of the evening. So many times we settle for routine dishes. This forces you to try new cuisines.
→ -
Chefs don't actually say 'That's a spicy meat-a-ball,' except to indicate that there's a bomb threat in the restaurant without alarming the customers. Terrorism is the spiciest meatball there is.
→ -
I like thick or middle (spaghetti). Thin for me is always overcooked by the time I'm eating it.
→ -
Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.
→ -
My family makes these vinegars - out of everything from grapes to peaches and cherries. We go through the whole process with the giant vat and drainer, label them, and give them as Christmas presents.
→ -
Finishing food is about the tiny touches. In the last seconds you can change everything.
→ -
Any simple but delicious dish that celebrates the season and locality is what I want to be known for.
→ -
When I was a child, our whole family cooked. All my cousins cooked. All my aunts and uncles cooked. It was part of our heritage.
→ -
When you use Tabasco in the marinade, it kind of infuses everything.
→ -
My favorite thing is always a nice, inexpensive draft beer, but if someone wants something a little more complicated than that, then I'd like a Michelada, which is where I take beer and a little bit of either a spicy or not-so-spicy Bloody Mary, mix it like six to one [ratio], so it's kind of a red beer.
→ -
I think in times of bizarre strangeness, what you can and should do is spend time with your family eating lunch or dinner. And if you can do that, you will restore us to the peace.
→ -
I like anchovies, and I don't tell everybody about them. Almost every time, they don't even notice.
→ -
Jimmy Fallon and I play regularly at the Bayonne Golf Club in Jersey. He's eighteen holes of fun. Any time we play he has moments of brilliance, but also moments of utter catastrophe.
→ -
I would challenge any American cook, regardless of what they've learned from their mom, to operate a restaurant and not have spent any real time in Italy.
→ -
Every Super Bowl, I do different food each quarter from each of the hometowns of the teams competing. So I’m always hoping for cities with a gastronomic soul—not so much Indianapolis or Denver, right? For halftime we have New York hot dogs from Papaya Dog. And at the end of the game I’ve chosen a dessert based on who I think is going to win.
→ -
We need to figure out a 'harvest system' to collect the produce that stores don't put out for customers to buy because it's not perfect looking. Frankly, the stuff left to rot in the storeroom is more beautiful to me than the perfect carrot. I'm a gnarly carrot kind of guy.
→ -
I got some media coverage for using the tail, the ear, the oink.
→ -
Look at cookbooks with your kids and ask them what sounds good.
→
Related Authors
-
Joe Bastianich Restaurateur -
Daniel Boulud Chef -
Anthony Bourdain Chef -
Giada De Laurentiis Chef -
Gwyneth Paltrow Actress -
Guy Fieri Television Personality -
Alton Brown Television Personality -
Rocco DiSpirito Chef -
Daphne Oz Author -
Anne Burrell Chef -
Clinton Kelly Fashion Consultant -
Lidia Bastianich Chef -
Masaharu Morimoto Chef -
Carla Hall Chef -
Bobby Flay Chef -
Emeril Lagasse Chef -
Eric Ripert Chef -
Michael Symon Chef -
Rachael Ray Television Personality -
Gordon Ramsay Chef