Mario Batali Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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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 -
“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 -
“Close your eyes and place your finger on a map. Wherever it lands, that's the theme of the evening. So many times we settle for routine dishes. This forces you to try new cuisines.”
-- Mario Batali -
“It's fascinating to travel around Italy and realize just how many different ways they make spaghetti.”
-- Mario Batali -
“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 -
“There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat.”
-- Mario Batali -
“The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.”
-- Mario Batali -
“Once you become an elaborate and well-developed culture, anything from Rome or the Etruscans, for that matter, the food starts to become a representation of what the culture is. When the food can transcend being just fuel, that's when you start to see these different permutations.”
-- Mario Batali -
“Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.”
-- Mario Batali -
“The Italians were eating with forks when the French were still eating each other.”
-- Mario Batali -
“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.”
-- Mario Batali -
“Reading is a key feature in the life of every single successful person I have ever met.”
-- Mario Batali -
“The kitchen really is the castle itself. This is where we spend our happiest moments and where we find the joy of being a family.”
-- Mario Batali -
“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 -
“I can teach a chimp how to make linguini and clams. I can't teach a chimp to dream about it and think about how great it is.”
-- Mario Batali -
“Recipes are just descriptions of one person’s take on one moment in time. They’re not rules.”
-- Mario Batali -
“The tradition of Italian cooking is that of the matriarch. This is the cooking of grandma. She didn't waste time thinking too much about the celery. She got the best celery she could and then she dealt with it.”
-- Mario Batali -
“I put hibiscus flower in every cup of tea I have. It's sweet, sexy, and cleansing.”
-- Mario Batali -
“In case you're wondering why Guy Fieri is here, he won a contest.”
-- Mario Batali -
“The hardest part of anything is making a dish consistently great - you order it seven years later, if it's still on the menu, and it's still as good as what you remember.”
-- Mario Batali -
“I am happiest when I am with my wife, Susi, and our two boys exploring and loving something for the first time.”
-- Mario Batali -
“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 -
“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.”
-- Mario Batali -
“When you cut that eggplant up and you roast it in the oven and you make the tomato sauce and you put it on top, your soul is in that food, and there's something about that that can never be made by a company that has three million employees.”
-- Mario Batali -
“My wife Susi and my kids quite simply are the most fun of all my friends.”
-- Mario Batali -
“Chefs don't actually say 'That's a spicy meat-a-ball,' except to indicate that there's a bomb threat in the restaurant without alarming the customers. Terrorism is the spiciest meatball there is.”
-- Mario Batali -
“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 -
“I can tell in two minutes if I should hire someone in the kitchen. Two minutes. It's his desire. It's that open-eyed, attentive expression. If he doesn't have it ... I mean, I can teach a chimp how to cook dinner. But I cannot teach a chimp how to love it.”
-- Mario Batali -
“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
