Quote

I obsess everyday about everything. Not only about what we do well but what we can do better... In the end, the only reason I am motivated to do what I do is for the hedonistic pleasures of the table.

Mario Batali

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Mario Batali
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 19
Chef
Cook
Media Personality
Restaurateur
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Mario Francesco Batali
Everything
Table
Well
Tables
Everyday
Pleasure
Ends
Hedonistic
Reason
Obsess
Better
Pleasures
Wells
Motivated

More quotes by Mario Batali

Image
The American Dream is ownership … a house, a car, a vacation home and, even better, your own business
Mario Batali
Image
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
Image
Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.
Mario Batali
Image
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.
Mario Batali
Image
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
Image
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.
Mario Batali
Image
Any simple but delicious dish that celebrates the season and locality is what I want to be known for.
Mario Batali
Image
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.
Mario Batali
Image
Protein has been intensely over-represented on the plate. Now, the garden should be the main drag for main courses.
Mario Batali
Image
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.
Mario Batali
Image
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
Image
The very common error of young or unconfident cooks is to keep putting more of their own personal ideology into a plate until there's so much noise that you really can't even hear a tune. You can say more in an empty space than you can in a crowded one.
Mario Batali
Image
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.
Mario Batali
Image
Indianapolis versus Denver would not be a great one gastronomically.
Mario Batali
Image
Look at cookbooks with your kids and ask them what sounds good.
Mario Batali
Image
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.
Mario Batali
Image
Find something you love, because if you love what you do, you'll never spend a day at work.
Mario Batali
Image
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
Image
When you add just a little bit [of Tabasco] at the end, what you taste is the spectrum between the cooked chile flavor and the kind of nearly raw, just kind of fermented chile flavor at the end.
Mario Batali
Image
Food is everyday-it has to be, or we would not survive for long. But food is never just something to eat. It is something to find or hunt or cultivate first of all.
Mario Batali