Mario Batali

hey js i am not skedded for anymore ball park shows but am up for more iron chef, probably on air in november as far as the city by the bay my faves include bizou for the loretta keller's take on the best country food in the city, swann oyster depot for crab and beer, yuet lee for late nite steamed whole halibut with black beans ginger and scallions, la taqueria and el faro for best head or tongue tacos and la cumbre for fat boy burritos, jackson fillmore for honest trattoria food boulevard for upscale yet perfect and thoughtful food from the genius of nancy oakes chez panisse upstairs for bell tone clarity and fun and whatever laurent gras is makin right now, i'd want to eat it and find bruce the riddler at bix and ask him about love mb

without a doubt a plate of perfectly al dente linguine with clams or scampi, consumed on the deck at a place called da zaccaria just outside of amalfi if possible... the perfect mouthfeel of the exquisitely ccoked noodles matched with the briny simplicity of telline clams, hot chils and parsley with a few cherry tomatoes squeezed in at the last minute combine for heaven in the mouth... something i will never tire of no matter what atkins freaks say mb

the draconian washington state liquor laws make beheading seem modern it is not a tolerable climate for me to operate in... but you have many fine wines from the eastern part of the state, come to ny state when you can to drink great italian, but drink locally out there in zillah mb

fret not you will know when you find the goods, da vero olive oil, vella jack sheese, grateful palette bacon, florida grouper, maryland crab, montauk lobster... etc the trick is not to look for substitutes for the italian products, but to identify the great and emerging domestic ones and support them there is no better gorgonzola than the italian, because that is what it is... wisconsin blue is good and even great but is not a sub for gorgonzola, it is a new category great us products some things like dry pasta and prosciutto di parma will not be improved upon... suck it up and buy them when you can and when it makes a dif mb

i love the intellectual component of cooking and the provocative style of this completely spanish madman is fascinating as it is challenging, my question is... is he making a statement, or is he making dinner??? sometimes i want to be on the edge, and sometimes i want to eat a bowl of spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino... on the latter days i will eat at home mb

my grandma always put the carrots into the sauce to sweeten what she considered the less than ideal tomatoes she was buying in seattle markets in the 70's... i just stuck with it and love the earthy sweetness it adds even to great san marzano tomatoes mb

hey my kitchen clogs are calzuro an italian hospital shoe maker, but i have recently discovered crocs from canada... they rock my socks off keep it orange mb

haute cuisine is a french term for well developed and concieved food, served in an appropriate atmosphere that unfortunately translates to wearing ties and jackets in a fancy looking place and overpaying for food... i am far more interested in a perfect plate of curry, or soup dumplings or penne puttanesca than the room it is served in, or even the way the people sitting next to me have been educated or are dressed if someone likes that fancy stuff let them have it, i for one, care less for it... some people like cupcakes better!!!!!!! haute cuisine is not the ultimate objective or expression of any great regional cuisine, it is merely one interpretation mb

i love the simple seafood places like mccormick et al for the unapologetic way of cooking and presenting the local bounty at fair prices, but of course salumi is the one for me... i do not have the opportunity to explore so much, ask my sister gina or bro in law brian, or my mom or dad they are all atr salumi and are pickier than i am mb

the only limitation i have in life is time constraints... i am commited to doing good things that are fun so i am pretty freeee i am now working on wine making in maremma, but am also working on a couple of ideas for larger scale salumi making and the inevitable sourcing of the pigs a otherwise i am always open to opening new restaurants with great cooks already on my team, as they move up and on it is good to offer them chance to own their own place in a sense that is the best thing i can do my fave things to cook are simple pasta dishes with hard pasta, they are relentlessly good when done right and unforgivingly wrong when not mb

my pet peeve is lazy work... i do not mean lying around and doing nothing, i mean doing something half ass or unconsidered that could be great mb

i am equally inspired by a box of luscious looking peppers at the green market as by the new wilco album... i can find a muse in anythingthat moves, breathes and somethimes things of beauty that are just sleeping with a little snore... my two kids.... anything that can string me into emotion can inspire a new dish a new thought right now i am listening to the new songs of REM and hearing a lot of great raw ingredients mb

hey bg my fave thing to cook is breakfast for my 2 boys, (often teddy bear pancakes, but just as likely eggs and dunkers with crispy prosciutto on the side....) aged 6 and 8 mostly because they think i am the greatest, but also because they ask questions like... what would we do without strawberries daddy?? mb

lardo is truly delish i love it on pizza, but the best way in the whole world is to go to hostaria giusti in modena and have nano and laura rip you a new lunch and beg them to make gnocco fritto with lardo on it it will change your shining trembling lips forever.. my fave stuff right now is morcilla, a spanish blood saussage that we serve with tripe and ceci at casa mono swoonmaster make me cry!!!! mb

hey char heavy is simple not the word in either northern or southern cooking... my lusty preference is now for the slightly less tamed cooking of the southern part (ie campania and below) but it all depends where and when you are there... nothing compares to a plate of plum filled potato gnocchi in udine in the late summer... but alici marinati or braciolona in the city of napoli will fill my tub as well heavy southern food is a result of years of change in american southern italian family kitchens in italy it is substantially lighter... sicily on the other hand, is closer to tunisia, both geographically and in a flavor comparison, than to milano so it does not fit into north or south, but is its own delightful universe mb

we are not trying to change the world, rather we are just sharing some of our faves withthe rest of the us.... i am tired of the cabernization of both cali and ital vineyards and am pleased to make and represent regional indigenous varietals as the expression of the natural terroir... this said we are now producing a morellino di scansano doc in our new property in maremma under our fattoria la mozza label... but we will also produce a hybrid using granacha and tempranillo (neither indigenous to maremma) that will begin a new phase for the words super tuscan proving that i am also slightly full of it!!! (the morellino) mb

as of last month i am not producing any more molto shows for the food net and am working on the new iron chef starting in late sept.... any comments??? write those crazy food net execs they listen to you , not to me mb

i am hungry for something i cannot make, something with love, but purity and simplicity, something different everywhere i go, something beyond reproach something to go with my wine or my beer, something divine and androgenous... not bowie!!! a dozen stinging cold oysters /.... shucked by somebody else....... ahhhhhhh mb

this from giuliano hazan, son of marcella in the nytimes this week wow this is some savvy info from a svvy guy from a savvy family "Ultimately, it's not the carbohydrates - or the next unsuspecting food group that will come under attack - that will make us overweight. It's our relationship with food and our lifestyle. In other words, how we eat is just as important - if not more so - than what we eat." -- You Are How You Eat, by Giuliano Hazan, The New York Times, July 6, 2004 Moderator Note: click link for full text of this op-ed piece.

hey md go to the babbonyc.com website and read thru all of the travel pages i have written and then try and decide, suffice to say that the 18th century grand tour venezia, firenze, roma is not a bad place to start the best time to travel is june and late sept, but there are no bad days in italy mb Moderator Note: Here's a link to Babbo's Travel page.

i actually worked with marco pierre white when he was at a place called the six bells a renovated old guy pub on kings road in chelsea... he was a genius and an evil one last we spoke he had launched a hot pan of risotto at my chest in service, i look forward to speaking with him this year as bill buford has contacted him for some juicy bits in bill's new book heat mb

hey russ great to hear from you as long as i have been in nyc, now 12 years.. as i run across exceptionally bright or talented people, i have told them, stick with me and one day we will be partners...from babbo the sous chef mark ladner and ex mgr of po jason denton came together and we started lupa, my old pal dave pasternack, whose wife donna worked at po, and still does , came to me in a dream and we went to italy and then opened esca, andy nusser origianl exec chef at babbo and i took a trip to spain and casa mono and bar jamo were born and so it will go... i donot own all of these restaurants, i (and my business partner joe bastianich) own from half to about 3/4s of each of these joints with the intention of watering down our equity as time goes on and we are slowly bought down to a certain number... i look at it as enabling my great employees to become my partners, and greedily sharing in the up side... so as long as there are motivated line cooks and dishwashers with an intensity of spirit and the sense of short term sacrifice it takes to become an equity partner, i do not see any implosion in the future... keep in mind the last place we opened is a 42 seater in grammmercy.. we are not building warships here, merely good places to eat and have a good time... see you in nyc russ mb

parmigiano reggiano is the indisputed king of cheeses and perhaps my fave for a minute on any given day, but the habit of putting parm on all pastas, even in the most heinous form, over delicate seafood pastas, is a strictly american phenomenon and one i am not down with some pastas need no cheese or suffer malicious misemphasis on the wrong nuance, or the lack thereof under the lactic vesuvius i have seen in many restaurants and on many plates of innocent noodles... there are hundreds of great cheeses out there, the birth region of the pasta on plate should be the birth region of the cheese over the top of it and easy on the blizzard mb

and i hallucinated a lot in that time mb

hey db i went to college at rutgers from 78-82 graduated with spanish theater and economics degrees and worked for 3 years at stuff yer face, my first big break mb