Mario Batali
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"Mario Francesco Batali" is an American chef, writer, restaurateur and media personality. In addition to his classical culinary training, he is an expert on the history and culture of Italian cuisine, including regional and local variations. Batali co-owns restaurants in New York City, Las Vegas, Nevada/Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Singapore, Hong Kong and Westport, Connecticut. Batali's signature clothing style includes shorts and orange Crocs. He is also known as "Molto Mario".

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The food at my restaurants is mostly the food of Italy's grandmothers.

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.

It's fascinating to travel around Italy and realize just how many different ways they make spaghetti.

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.

The whole thing of the risotto as a side dish with pasta: If no one is ever going to ask for risotto on the side of their spaghetti again, we have won something. We've turned them around.

The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.

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.

When I was a child, our whole family cooked. All my cousins cooked. All my aunts and uncles cooked. It was part of our heritage.

The whole concept of the supremacy of the family unit in the Italian culture... That's all based on the relation of the mom and the children and the bambino.