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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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Mario Batali
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: September 19
Chef
Cook
Media Personality
Restaurateur
Writer
Seattle
Washington
Mario Francesco Batali
Real
Restaurants
Would
Cooks
Time
Mom
Spent
Italy
Challenge
Operate
Learned
Restaurant
Challenges
Cook
American
Regardless

More quotes by 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 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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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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You know, when you get your first asparagus, or your first acorn squash, or your first really good tomato of the season, those are the moments that define the cook's year. I get more excited by that than anything else.
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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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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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
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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.
Mario Batali
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Look at cookbooks with your kids and ask them what sounds good.
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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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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The American Dream is ownership … a house, a car, a vacation home and, even better, your own business
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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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 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
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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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The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.
Mario Batali
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Food, like most things, is best when left to its own simple beauty.
Mario Batali
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You have to live life to its full chorizo.
Mario Batali