Quotes By Mario Batali

Michigan is my antidote to Manhattan. This is where I come to relax.

There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat.

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.

I am happiest when I am with my wife, Susi, and our two boys exploring and loving something for the first time.

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.

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.

Unlike curing cancer or heart disease, we already know how to beat hunger: food.

The difference between 'Molto Italiano' and 'The Babbo Cookbook' is that the ingredient lists in 'Molto' are about half or even a third the size. In 'Babbo,' they are very long, they are very real. That's exactly how we make them in the restaurant.

Spaghetti is love.

As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.

You have to live life to its full chorizo.

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.

Keep in mind that in 1975, when you became a cook, it was because you were between two things: you were between getting out of the military and... going to jail. Anybody could be a cook, just like anybody could mow the lawn.

We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day.

As far away as you can get from the process of mechanisms and machinery, the more likely your food's going to taste good. And that - that is probably the largest thing I can hand to anybody is let your hands touch it. Let them make it.

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.

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.

I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

I just signed to do my next book with Ecco Press, a new primer or encyclopedia. This will be my take on what classic Italian cooking is.

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.

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.

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.

My last meal? The food would be much less significant than the company.

Shop often, shop hard, and spend for the best stuff available - logic dictates that you can make delicious food only with delicious ingredients.

When you taste things in the right order, sometimes they taste so much different than if you taste them out of order. Not that there's a right order, like by rule, but just like in a thoughtful way that makes sense.

I really want to be a rock star.

Protein has been intensely over-represented on the plate. Now, the garden should be the main drag for main courses.

The Hamptons are usually filled with what I had hoped to leave behind in New York City.

Twelve-piece cookware sets for ninety-nine bucks are routinely hawked on late-night TV - often by friends of mine. But with a mere five pieces, you can do whatever you like - slay the dragon and then cook its tenderloin in the style of the duke of Wellington, if you want to.

I like cast iron coated with enamel for longevity and forgiveness if I happen to take my eyes off the prize while pouring Chianti.