Mario Batali: 'Molto Mario' carves a niche in the kitchen and on TV

Nation's Restaurant News, Sept 6, 1999 by Andy Battaglia

Just last year Mario Batali opened Babbo in New York to rave reviews. The critics mused deliriously about the restaurant, observing that eating there left them feeling "stupid with happiness." Since then the restaurant received this year Best New Restaurant Award from the James Beard Foundation, and Batali took center stage as the star of the "Molto Mario " show on the TV Food Network. With his two restaurants -- Babbo and its predecessor, Po --- and his work on television, Batali is a busy man. However, he isn't too busy to stop and appreciate the serene simplicity of his beloved Italian cuisine.

Title: chef-partner, Po and Babbo, New York City

Birth date: Sept. 19, 1960

Hometown: Seattle

Education: Bachelor's degree, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.

Who taught you how to cook?

Career highlights: working in Italy for three and one-half years; opening Po; receiving the James Beard Foundation's Best New Restaurant of 1999 Award for Babbo

I learned to cook from my grandma, mom, dad, uncles, aunts and cousins. They all make their own tomato sauce, cure their own ducks, make their own sausage. I wouldn't say my family was food-obsessed; it was just part of the European tradition the family came from. And being from Washington state, there was bounty everywhere. When blackberries were in season, we would go out in our yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick for seven or eight hours and then come home and make jam and pies. We'd freeze enough to last a whole year. I didn't perceive this as being either special or not special; it was just something we always did.

What wisdom did those experiences impart?

The sensibility that using whatever is in season around you is the hallmark of great Italian cooking or great cooking anywhere. My favorite dessert to this day is plain vanilla ice cream with blackberries, because I remember that with such great joy. Even the berry fights. There is nothing like a fully ripe blackberry exploding on your brother's forehead when you throw it. Great joy.

You dropped out of cooking school, citing "lack of interest"?

I went to Le Cordon Bleu, and it just wasn't as intensive as I would have liked. Every day we would make a classic French dish or two with a partner; that was all. So from there I worked in some great restaurants in London; then I went to Florida, California and Italy. My culinary education came from working. If someone were to ask me about going to cooking school, in my opinion I would be more likely to hire someone who had just spent a year working for free at a great restaurant in Italy or France than someone who spent two years at the CIA and has no real experience in a kitchen. Restaurant cooking is not just about cooking; it's about understanding the limitations of time and space that happen in the real world.

What did you learn in Italy that you couldn't have learned elsewhere?

What I learned more than anything was what not to put on the plate. Italian food is about two or three textures or flavors coming together, and that's all. I always think of a pasta I saw on a menu in San Francisco that had smoked squab, grilled eggplant, sun-dried tomatoes, roasted pine nuts, two kinds of basil and rosemary mascarpone on top. Then I think of the pasta I had in Italy, which would be pappardelle ... with peas. And that's what Italian food is about: not putting together a symphony of nine very strange ingredients, but two or three separate things and allowing them to sing. Italian cooking is more about the shopping than laborious, intensive technique.

Did you dabble with excess before learning to pare down like this?

I was living in California when California cuisine was defining itself When I was sous chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in San Francisco, I did stuff I wouldn't do now but it was all part of the learning process. It's all essential.

Is it a challenge to convince Americans that simplicity really is the answer?

I think Americans want it. We haven't had that much reluctance on the part of the New York City diner toward the authenticity of our food. What Americans want at this point is the most authentic sampling. The problem with that is that you can't truly make a Tuscan dish because you can't get everything they have there. But what you can do is take that inspiration and, hopefully, understand it as an inspiration to use something local. I'm not buying ingredients from Tuscany; I'm buying from the Hudson Valley, the Mid-Atlantic or the Long Island shellfish guys. Italians have some of the best ingredients around. That's how they can get away with just putting peas in there. lithe peas are perfect, they don't need anything else.

How do you maintain your restaurants with such a full plate?

I'm back and forth between the restaurants every day. I have an incredible team in both [places]. The people that work with me have worked with me for a long time. And the flavors that we've developed together are intuitive. I'm not a screaming chef There's no screaming allowed in my kitchens.