Batali, Mario

Mario Batali (1960–) is a chef, restaurateur, and media personality based in New York City. Batali’s signature cooking style can be defined as a contemporary reinterpretation of regional Italian cuisine, borrowing heavily from its local techniques and ingredients, but with a knack of revisiting it in an original fashion. Even the Italianate terminology with which he names dishes and ingredients in his menus and cookbooks is part of this work of reinvention and popularization.

Born in Seattle of an Italian American father and a French Canadian mother, Batali spent his high-school years in Spain, returning to the United States to graduate from Rutgers University. Responding to the passion for cooking his family passed on to him, Batali attended the Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in London. After having worked as a sous chef in London, Paris, Provence, and California, in 1989Batali went on to the defining experience of spending three years of hands-on culinary training in Borgo Capanne, a village in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. In 1993, Batali put his experience to use by opening the upscale Italian restaurant Po (a restaurant he no longer owns) in New York City, followed in 1998 by Babbo. Babbo received three stars from The New York Times critic Ruth Reichl and The Best New Restaurant of 1998 award from the James Beard Foundation, marking a turning point in Batali’s career.