Batali comes by his theatricality naturally. A native of Seattle, Batali attended high school in Madrid, Spain, and studied the golden age of Spanish theater at Rutgers University. Following graduation, he briefly attended the famed Le Cordon Bleu in London, hated it, and instead embarked on an apprenticeship that included the Four Seasons in San Francisco and three years of intensive study in the tiny Italian village of Borgo Capanne under legendary chef Marco Pierre White.
Passionate about pasta, Batali returned to New York City and turned up the heat on the foodie circuit by opening a string of wildly successful restaurants -- including his Greenwich Village flagship Babbo -- Po, Lupa, Esca and his new baby, Del Posto.
The Food Network was quick to tap Batali, whose larger-than-life persona is matched only by his dedication to the history and science of great cuisine. Where other TV chefs strive to entertain, Batali seeks to educate his audience; little wonder many of his fans are chefs themselves.
Batali's star continues to rise. Last year, the James Beard Society named him "Best Chef in America." This year, he's expanding his $65 million restaurant empire beyond the boroughs with the opening of Del Latte on Los Angeles' chic Melrose Avenue and two eateries at The Venetian in Las Vegas. When he's home, he helps wife Susi Cahn of Coach Dairy Goat Farm raise their two sons Benno and Leo.
Hard to believe this superchef once had his heart set on a career in banking. That's just one of the surprises Batali shared with Bankrate.
Bankrate: Did you start out in restaurant work in high school?
Batali: No, my first job was in college. I went to high school in Madrid, Spain, so there was no opportunity for employment, which was nice. I got my college degree in Spanish theater.
Bankrate: Did you envision a life in the arts or academics?
Batali: What I really wanted was to be a wealthy banker based in Spain. I had fallen in love with the expat lifestyle because my father worked for Boeing and we moved over there. I thought I could go into banking and go back to Spain and live for a long time, that was kind of the angle I was going to use.
Bankrate: So you were a money guy, interested in working in money?
Batali: Yeah, I was! I also got a degree in business administration, portfolio theory.
Bankrate: Were you even remotely interested in cooking at the time?
Batali: Not a chance. I was really excited about returning to America and going to a full-on four-year university, and I'm really glad I did. Even for cooks, to this day when people ask me what to do, I say get yourself an excellent liberal arts education and then learn how to cook and you'll be a much better person for it.
Bankrate: The business background must have helped you put together your restaurants and media career.
Batali: Oh, absolutely. But I would say there is very little in my macroeconomics classes that I apply to anything that I do in real life. I've never found a marginal revenue curve in any of my operations!
Bankrate: So how did the cooking factor in?
Batali: Well, it's something that's really fun to do and it's also immediately satisfying. There are no long-term projects -- other than curing your own meats and making wine. You know, within about an hour, whether the customer or person you were feeding was particularly appreciative of it or not.
Bankrate: And you can at least feed yourself during the so-called salad years.
Batali: Exactly. It beats all the other jobs because you're always going to eat something good. The family meals are always pretty darn tasty.
Bankrate: Were you immediately drawn to Italian cuisine because of your heritage?
Batali: Absolutely. My grandma, my uncles, my aunts, we all ate either Italian or West Coast food all of my life. Everybody that I knew growing up, my parents, my brother, my sister, was interested and involved in cooking every day.
Bankrate: You actually spent a few years cooking in an Italian village, right?
Batali: Yes. It was the best experience of my life. I was 28. I'd already been the highest paid sous-chef for the Four Seasons at that time in California. I worked at The Clift in San Francisco and The Biltmore in Santa Barbara, two great properties.
Bankrate: Did you have your sights set on becoming a celebrity chef?
Batali: Never. I kind of fell into it. There had been Graham Kerr, Julia Child, Jacques Pepin and Martin Yan, and then The Food Network kind of invented itself in the early 1990s and Emeril Lagasse became the king and everyone else kind of followed the lead and now there's a lot. It's pretty crazy. Bankrate: Did they seek you out?
Batali: Yeah, I met some kid at a party with a bow tie on and he said, "How would you like to be on TV?" and I'm like yeah, right, get out of my face. And he said, "No, really. Let's have lunch." I met with him and Reese Schoenfeld, who was the original president and developer of The Food Network, and six weeks later I was on the air.
Bankrate: What was that like?
Batali: Ayiii! If you look back at the old shows, I'm not as seasoned as I am now. I looked pretty goofy, but I was passionate about it and I stuck with it.
Bankrate: Between TV, writing books and running your restaurants, where do you find the time?
Batali: I book myself pretty aggressively, but if you get up every morning and set yourself out a day where you compartmentalize a couple of the things, you can get a lot done. I'm a good producer.
Bankrate: Do you still find time to work the hot line?
Batali: Yeah, I was there for the last five months as we opened Del Posto. This is the first week that I'm not on the line.
Bankrate: What did winning the prestigious James Beard award mean to you?
Batali: It's nice, you know. That's the one award that's really chosen by your peers and the journalists who appreciate you and judge you. I was very proud. As I said in my acceptance speech, I'm really the spokesperson at this point for a team of great players, so I accept it on their behalf.
Bankrate: Teamwork is essential for success in your business.
Batali: Exactly. There's a lot of stress everyday in the restaurant business and a lot of little quirky things can happen that can divide the team or fragment the team or cause the team to think less of each other, and you've got to get in there and keep them happy. When I'm in the restaurant, everyone is always happy because I've always got a light way of looking at things and a good way of keeping people smiling, happy and doing what they like to do. Bankrate: What is it like to compete on "Iron Chef?"
Batali: It's real! (laughs) You really do not want to lose, you really don't know the secret ingredient and you really could lose at any given minute. But it's fun. I love it. The audience demographic is much different than my traditional cooking show. At this point now, I see a lot of 14- to 20-year-old kids who come up to me and give me kind of a half-bow at the waist and say, "Iron Chef Batali." It's pretty funny.
Bankrate: Do the other chefs intimidate you?
Batali: Oh, every one of those guys is as good a cook if not better than me. I'm a fan of most of the people I compete with. When I'm working, I'm not really thinking about what they're doing at all. I'm just focusing on trying to get the food done. I have no idea what's happening on the other side.
Bankrate: How have you managed your money?
Batali: Most of the money I make we reinvest into our restaurants. I started with Po in 1993 which we opened for $45,000 and the last one we opened was Del Posto, which cost $10 million. So you buy and you reinvest and you take the profits and you invest them. I don't have a huge portfolio of holdings other than the investments in the restaurants I've made and property I've bought along the way. We bought 150 acres in Tuscany, a vacation house in Michigan, and we try to own as much of our restaurant real estate as we can get our hands on. We haven't yet harvested anything. We're still planting.
Bankrate: Will you continue with your Food Network shows?
Batali: I'm not sure. Right now, I'm just doing "Iron Chef." I'm not sure if The Food Network and I are necessarily eye-to-eye on what I can do. They have become far more interested in the entertainment value of their programming, and that's not something that intrigues me. I like the study and understanding of basic cooking, and tradition and family and the reasons that people do get together to eat.
Bankrate: Where would you like to be 20 years from now? Sitting in a villa in Tuscany sipping wine from your own vineyard?
Batali: I hope so. I like the idea of having four houses for four seasons, and you travel to each one and bring all your friends and family and have a really nice time. Enjoy the summer in Michigan, the autumn in Tuscany and so on. |
