Word: batali
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Batali the mogul is an emerging figure, but Batali the chef is captured in an incisive, cracklingly funny book scheduled for release May 30. Actually, as you can guess from the title--Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher (Alfred A. Knopf; 325 pages)--the book is mostly about the author, Bill Buford, a former New Yorker editor and freakishly dedicated foodie. Buford went to work as a cook at Babbo, one of seven Batali-Bastianich restaurants in Manhattan. But Batali is the book's most memorable, entertaining...
...that the inevitable Falstaff comparison seems inadequate. All that saffron in the soup--that's where he's showing weakness, I decided. So busy being a star that he's sloppy in the kitchen. To test the theory, back in Chicago I had sneaked into the prep area after Batali had left the crowd standing in applause. I found a cook named Kirsten West who had prepped the ingredients for the demo. "How's the soup?" I asked...
This is Mario Batali's moment. Often it's difficult to pinpoint the instant a man becomes a brand. Typically you can identify that moment in retrospect--for instance, if you look at the other stars in the food universe, you could argue that Lagasse became something larger, an uberversion of himself, nearly a decade ago, when his management team literally trademarked his expressions "BAM!" and "Kick it up a notch." You can also predict a branding; with her new magazine Every Day with Rachael Ray, the unnaturally perky Ray--who plays a flibbertigibbet on her show 30 Minute Meals...
...Batali is becoming a brand virtually as you read this. This week he will make the rounds of morning talk shows to promote his new role as the official chef of NASCAR and his new cookbook, Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style. And just as he prepares for cooking demos and book signings at six NASCAR races this season, Batali and business partner Joseph Bastianich, 37, have begun construction on two restaurants in Las Vegas and another site in Los Angeles to be called Mozza that will house both a restaurant and a pizzeria. In July, Batali will launch 78 new items...
...those who know Batali only as the host of how-to cooking shows where he prepares uncommon Italian dishes--Paduan gnocchi, quail with peas, something called lamb squazetto and literally thousands of others--the NASCAR partnership will come as a surprise. (As will some of the dishes in the new cookbook, which include mudslide pie made with Oreos and graham crackers.) But Batali's visits to NASCAR events to research the book revealed--not least to him--that his appeal transcends foodies or Italophiles. Last June, just before he threw the green flag at the NASCAR event at Pocono Raceway...