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There are pockets of great food in Spain, but there are also pockets of very mediocre food in Spain, and the same in Morocco and the same in Croatia and the same in Germany and the same in Austria.

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
Spain
Mediocre
Pockets
Germany
Food
Also
Croatia
Great
Morocco
Austria

More quotes by Mario Batali

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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
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Shop often, shop hard, and spend for the best stuff available - logic dictates that you can make delicious food only with delicious ingredients.
Mario Batali
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Look at cookbooks with your kids and ask them what sounds good.
Mario Batali
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Even though you'll see gnocchi or linguine everywhere in some of the regions of Italy, each of those chefs has their own expression of that which expresses more about the place they were exactly born than it does about trying to be a part of the greater mass. And that's the Italian culture.
Mario Batali
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Michigan is my antidote to Manhattan. This is where I come to relax.
Mario Batali
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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
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I really want to be a rock star.
Mario Batali
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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.
Mario Batali
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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.
Mario Batali
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I think that there is philanthropy and there is publicity. If you can marry the two to do something good, then I think it's great. Some of the other guys go around and slag people as a profession. That's not so interesting to me, because it's easy to take down, it's harder to build.
Mario Batali
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One of the most important leadership lessons is realizing you're not the most important or the most intelligent person in the room at all times.
Mario Batali
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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
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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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I got some media coverage for using the tail, the ear, the oink.
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.
Mario Batali
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My last meal? The food would be much less significant than the company.
Mario Batali
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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
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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.
Mario Batali
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There are two activities in life in which we can lovingly and carefully put something inside of someone we love. Cooking is the one we can do three times a day for the rest of our lives, without pills. In both activities, practice makes perfect.
Mario Batali
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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.
Mario Batali