Word: batali
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...Volta, which is now defunct, Batali learned the basics--handmade pastas; slowly cooked Bolognese sauce; wild mushrooms, greens and berries foraged from the forest floor and served nearly unadorned the same day. In 1993, when Batali helped launch his first restaurant, Pò, he brought that unaffected Italian sensibility to downtown Manhattan. (He also needlessly added an accent mark to the name of Italy's Po River.) "He was doing some things so simple--things like affogato, which is gelato [Italian ice cream] with a shot of espresso in it. It's a classic in Italian restaurants, but I had never...
...Drawn to Batali's downtown image, the Food Network came calling two years after Pò opened. TV gave Batali a bully pulpit for the new-old Italian cooking--less spaghetti buried in red sauce, more pumpkin ravioli--which has spread across the U.S. in the last few years. "There has been a revolutionary improvement in Italian food," says Tim Zagat, a co-founder of the restaurant guides that bear his name. Zagat doesn't credit Batali entirely for that improvement--in fact a much earlier pioneer was Lidia Bastianich, who was cooking in the authentic Italian vernacular...
...relatively inexpensive--its six-course tasting menu was $29--and Batali was soon feeding downtown artists, actors and, crucially, reporters. He became the most charismatic of the young New York City chefs--fun, funny, a little crude. There was something brash about his willingness to serve a just-picked strawberry drizzled with sweet balsamic vinegar rather than do something more complex and chef-ish like extruding a berry-vinegar solution into a foam. Great California chefs like Jeremiah Tower (for whom Batali briefly worked) and Alice Waters launched the American culinary revolution in the 1970s by trumpeting fresh ingredients above...
...Batali turned out to be an incredibly productive TV cook, able to shoot as many as eight back-to-back episodes of Molto Mario. "As soon as the camera was off, I'd say [to the crew], 'Nine minutes, m_____f_____s!'" says Batali. "They hated me initially, but they loved me eventually." Because of his speed, Batali was able to deliver 517 episodes of the show in just six seasons of shooting. (The show went out of production in 2003, but it still airs in reruns...
...simultaneously opening new restaurants: after Pò (which he no longer co-owns) came seven others--plus a bar and a wine shop--that have all succeeded, with one exception. Batali routinely mocks the fustian techniques of French cooking, so it seemed quite a leap last year for him and Bastianich to launch Bistro du Vent, a French restaurant on 42nd Street. The food isn't quite French and isn't quite Batali. Struggling for an identity, Bistro du Vent is the first Batali-Bastianich venture where you can easily get a seat. Both men seem to sigh heavily whenever...