Mario Batali | The New York Observer

Senate Sanitation Hawk Picks On Batali's Del Posto

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:43:49 -0400

Celebrity chef Mario Batali's critically acclaimed Del Posto restaurant earned a more dubious distinction on Sunday, when state Senator Jeff Klein set up outside to announce his second annual round-up of New York City's dirtiest restaurants.

Mr. Batali's three-star eatery on 10th Avenue flunked a city health inspection this past June, racking up a total of 44 violation points for pest problems and spoiled food -- "proving that even world class kitchens cannot afford to...

Mario Batali Would Look Like Gwyneth if He Worked Out

Thu, 29 May 2008 12:18:39 -0400

Mario Batali, who likes to be photographed wearing sausage links as a scarf and holding piglets, says that Gwyneth Paltrow looks the way she does due to her three-hour-workout-a-day regimen.

"I think she works out three hours a day - which is one of the keys to success," Mr. Batali told US Weekly. "If we all did that, we’d all look like Gwyneth Paltrow," he said. "Or at least closer."

Ms....

Clark Kent in the Kitchen

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:54:31 -0400

At 4:30 on a recent Friday afternoon, Del Posto, the 10th Avenue behemoth of a restaurant owned by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, had a bustling and vaguely portentous feel. Servers in black and white scurried up and down the two grand staircases in the main dining room, which, multi-tiered and blandly opulent, has been compared to a hotel lobby. An imperious maître d’ in a suit and tie manned the phones from a...

Batali's 'Pigsty' Falls Short On Filth Scale

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 11:25:11 -0400

Friday's New York Post takes an unsanitary swipe at Mario Batali's Spotted Pig, citing the eatery's failing health inspection score of 34 back in May -- perhaps in retaliation for Mr. Batali's earlier dig on the Post's "hapless" food writer Braden Keil?

(The restaurant's score was actually 33, according to the Health Department's Web site, but who's counting? A score of 28 or higher is failing.)

How bad is it at Mr. Batali's purported...

George and Hilly

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:00:00 -0500

DR. SELMAN: How have you been? GEORGE: We had a prior commitment this evening. We just went to a party at Erica Jong’s. HILLY: We have to admit we had a few drinks. GEORGE: I had one. Hilly had three. HILLY: I didn’t have three! I had two large glasses of wine. [GEORGE holds up three fingers.] DR. SELMAN: Here we go again. GEORGE: I didn’t think it’d be right to show up here...

George and Hilly

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:00:00 -0500

George and Hilly

Sun, 19 Nov 2006 19:00:00 -0500

Big Boys in the Kitchen Cooking Up a Gutsy Meal

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 20:00:00 -0400

“More feminine than masculine” is how the famous chef-proprietor Mario Batali describes his Greenwich Village flagship, Babbo, in the beginning of former New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford’s new book. “People should think there are grandmothers in the back preparing their dinner.”

With all due respect to Mr. Batali, not to mention legions of grandmothers, this remark seems a trifle disingenuous. As opposed to the effete high temple Jean-Georges, say, or the tutti-frutti...

Big Boys in the Kitchen Cooking Up a Gutsy Meal

Sun, 04 Jun 2006 20:00:00 -0400

“More feminine than masculine” is how the famous chef-proprietor Mario Batali describes his Greenwich Village flagship, Babbo, in the beginning of former New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford’s new book. “People should think there are grandmothers in the back preparing their dinner.” With all due respect to Mr. Batali, not to mention legions of grandmothers, this remark seems a trifle disingenuous. As opposed to the effete high temple Jean-Georges, say, or the tutti-frutti nouveau-society...

Batali To Sell Bistro

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 05:05:00 -0400

Mario Batali. It's already been a difficult year for Food Network mainstay Mario Batali, who has been involved in a much-publicized battle with his landlord over at Del Posto, his newest restaurant. Now, the New York Post reports that Mr. Batali is putting Bistro du Vent on the market. The 42nd Street eatery has only been open for about 15 months. - Michael...

Batali's On Boil With Landlord Of Restaurant

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 19:00:00 -0500

The chef Mario Batali was seated before a small table covered in white linen, speaking face-forward to a television camera, one afternoon this past winter.

“We’re shooting to make Del Posto a four-star restaurant in New York City,” he said in the deliberate, teacherly tone he has perfected as a television chef, preparing the footage that would serve as an introduction to Mario, Full Boil, a documentary special for the Food Network about his...

Batali’s On Boil With Landlord Of Restaurant

Sun, 05 Mar 2006 19:00:00 -0500

The chef Mario Batali was seated before a small table covered in white linen, speaking face-forward to a television camera, one afternoon this past winter. “We’re shooting to make Del Posto a four-star restaurant in New York City,” he said in the deliberate, teacherly tone he has perfected as a television chef, preparing the footage that would serve as an introduction to Mario, Full Boil, a documentary special for the Food Network about...

A Trattoria Supplies the Goods To Chefs and Food Lovers Alike

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 20:00:00 -0400

“Try these,” our beautiful, dark-haired Albanian waitress said as she set down a bowl of hard, peppery biscuits on the table. They looked like miniature pretzels. “Aren’t they good?” she asked. They were. Called taralli, they come from Sicily and go nicely with a glass of wine and some of the green Nocellara olives, also from Sicily, that were heaped in a giant glass bowl on the counter behind me. A few minutes later,...

Wallace Hopper Rowe

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 20:00:00 -0400

July 11, 2005 5:30 am 7 pounds, 1 ounce New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center Babbo-ing baby! As Derek Rowe, 30, a sous-chef at Mario Batali’s flagship restaurant on Waverly Place, was coaching his wife of three years through her first childbirth, the doctors and nurses were pondering the chance of getting a reservation. “Deliver the baby and we’ll talk,” barked the new mom, Kamille Adamany, 36, the general manager of American Girl Café in midtown. While the...

Rocker Billy Corgan Finally Unloads Soho Lair for $3.81 M.- Dark-Room Intact! Ted Zagat Rates a $1.6 M. Tribeca Condo

Sun, 01 May 2005 20:00:00 -0400

Rocker Billy Corgan has finally unloaded his luxurious Soho spread for $3.81 million, according to deed-transfer records. The 4,000-square-foot apartment had lingered on the market for over one and a half years before finding a buyer in late March.

Mr. Corgan still maintains his permanent residence in Chicago, where the Smashing Pumpkins, his immensely successful alternative rock band, first took off on the local scene in 1988. He's come a long way since then: In...

Beyond the Buzz, Bistro du Vent Serves Middling French Cuisine

Sun, 06 Mar 2005 19:00:00 -0500

Bistro du Vent was packed with food people the other night. Hardly surprising, since the restaurant is the latest project of Mario Batali and Joseph Bastianich and their partner, David Pasternack, the chef at Esca. With a team like this, expectations were high.

While we waited for our dinner, the staff scurried around a nearby table, where a food writer had been recognized. As plates went back and forth next-door, we waited. And waited. Forty...

Is That Ham Fat on My Cherry? Inside Ferran Adrià's Food Lab

Sun, 23 Jan 2005 19:00:00 -0500

Last Thursday evening, eight of New York's leading chefs were AWOL from their kitchens. They went to the movies.

The invitation-only event was the screening of a documentary about Ferran Adrià, the Spanish culinary alchemist who in recent years has enjoyed more press than a rich man's suit. Just last month, the 42-year-old's boyish face graced the cover of The Wine Spectator magazine carrying the headline "World's Best Chef?", and in the current issue of...

Food Fight

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 19:00:00 -0500

The cutthroat competition between New York’s celebrity chefs sometimes spills out of the kitchen. On Saturday, Oct. 23, the F-bombs were flying as the boisterous duo of Mario Batali (Babbo, Esca, Lupa, Otto) and fellow chef and writer Anthony Bourdain (Les Halles, Kitchen Confidential, A Cook’s Tour) took to the stage in the Condé Nast building’s fourth-floor auditorium to fricassee their foes at the "Bad Boys in the Kitchen" panel at Gourmet magazine’s Gourmet...

Dining With Moira Hodgson

Sun, 01 Aug 2004 20:00:00 -0400

Fit for a Thai King (or Queen):

Sumptuous and Divine Kittichai, at 60 Thompson Hotel in Soho, is one of the most remarkable restaurants I've been to in a long time. Chef Ian Cholermkittichai calls his cuisine "authentic modern Thai." But it's more than that: It's the sort of food you'd imagine being served if you were at a banquet in the imperial palace of Thailand's royal family. Even though this restaurant had been open...

Power Punk: April Bloomfield

Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:00:00 -0500

Gastro-pub Girl comes to town; backed by Ken Friedman, Mario Batali-and maybe Bono-a British chef is ready to change the way New York thinks of the words 'Spotted Pig.'

Red-striped watch cap pulled low over her eyes, 29-year-old April Bloomfield was moving fast through the frosty air of lower Sixth Avenue when I asked her if her new job had given her a sense of power. "That's a strange question," said the Birmingham, England, native...

Dining out with Moira Hodgson

Sun, 09 Feb 2003 19:00:00 -0500

Going Back to His Roots,

Batali Slings Pizza, 5th Ave.–Style If you come for dinner at Otto, Mario Batali's new pizzeria and wine bar in Greenwich Village, expect to wait at least an hour for your table, maybe even two. Two hours for a pizza? Only a superstar chef on the top rung of superstardom, with his own TV show, best-selling cookbook and recipes in the Dining In/Out section (and who is co-owner, with Joseph...

Sopranos in Manhattan, Without Reservations

Sun, 18 Mar 2001 19:00:00 -0500

Even die-hard New Jerseyans (and we're betting that's a pretty small group) covet New York's culinary scene, and–no disrespect to Artie Bucco– The Sopranos don't seem to be any different. Now that the oldest Soprano child, Meadow, has landed at Columbia University, the HBO series' writers seem to be taking advantage of the situation to drop the names of a few popular Manhattan joints, where even New Yorkers have a hard time getting a...

Acid Reflux, Chic Gastric Ailment, Replaces the Ulcer-Ask Gandolfini

Sun, 11 Mar 2001 19:00:00 -0500

The thing about the men in gray flannel suits, who came home

from World War II and got married and bought a house in Great Neck with its very own fallout shelter, who lunched on Dagwoods and napped all weekend, who feared only the boss and the communists: They all had ulcers. Ah, the great American ulcer-"the little man living in my stomach," said Edward G. Robinson as the cigar-chomping insurance investigator in Billy Wilder's1944film, Double Indemnity . Ulcers were...

Bold and Brazen Italian, Not to Mention the Food

Sun, 01 Oct 2000 20:00:00 -0400

"Just when you think you've mastered the Italian menu, along comes one like this," said my companion, reading down the list of dishes. "Bitter greens with sapa, elicoidali with cauliflower, tuna belly with guanciale.…"

"It's Roman food from 2 A.D.," said our waiter. "There's a glossary on the back of the menu." The glossary takes up an entire page. For Lupa (named for the she-wolf who's the symbol of Rome) is not just another Italian...

Can't Get in Tonight? Get Over It! Babbo Is Worth the Wait

Sun, 03 Oct 1999 20:00:00 -0400

After months of trying, I finally managed to get into Babbo on the night of Hurricane Floyd. It was raining pretty heavily, but the restaurant was far from empty. Neither Floyd nor Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who had been issuing dire warnings from his waterproof command post all day long, was going to deter Babbo's most fanatical patrons from their evening bowl of pasta. There had been a cancellation when I'd called in the afternoon,...