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Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants, but they are dumbed down, and I hate it when they dumb them down.

Mario Batali

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Mario Batali
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 19
Chef
Cook
Media Personality
Restaurateur
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Mario Francesco Batali
Dumb
Food
Looking
Baroque
Hate
Cookbook
Become
Chefs
Done
Predictable
Different
Chef
Something
Restaurants

More quotes by Mario Batali

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What will always remain is love, passion and family time.
Mario Batali
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Once you become an elaborate and well-developed culture, anything from Rome or the Etruscans, for that matter, the food starts to become a representation of what the culture is. When the food can transcend being just fuel, that's when you start to see these different permutations.
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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.
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Find something you love, because if you love what you do, you'll never spend a day at work.
Mario Batali
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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.
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The Chinese five-spice works really well in the quantity that I used. It makes it almost imperceptibly just a little bit sweeter without making it really sweet or really even that Asian flavored.
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You have to live life to its full chorizo.
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If you want your kids to listen to you, don't yell at them. Whisper. Make them lean in. My kids taught me that. And I do it with adults now.
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The Hamptons are usually filled with what I had hoped to leave behind in New York City.
Mario Batali
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When you cut that eggplant up and you roast it in the oven and you make the tomato sauce and you put it on top, your soul is in that food, and there's something about that that can never be made by a company that has three million employees.
Mario Batali
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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.
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The kitchen really is the castle itself. This is where we spend our happiest moments and where we find the joy of being a family.
Mario Batali
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When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.
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My wife Susi and my kids quite simply are the most fun of all my friends.
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I can tell in two minutes if I should hire someone in the kitchen. Two minutes. It's his desire. It's that open-eyed, attentive expression. If he doesn't have it ... I mean, I can teach a chimp how to cook dinner. But I cannot teach a chimp how to love it.
Mario Batali
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Passion is what adds so much value to life. And if you think about the things that you do, there's so much juice potential for them if you do it.
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The tradition of Italian cooking is that of the matriarch. This is the cooking of grandma. She didn't waste time thinking too much about the celery. She got the best celery she could and then she dealt with it.
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I am happiest when I am with my wife, Susi, and our two boys exploring and loving something for the first time.
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In growing up in Seattle, I don't know a single family that didn't barbecue or cook on the weekends and make its own kind of simple, pared-down, what I call Pacific Northwest cooking.
Mario Batali
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Food, like most things, is best when left to its own simple beauty.
Mario Batali