By Foster Kamer 5/30/12 8:00am

Babbo's Big Boy

Joe Bastianich

Joe Bastianich and The Gospel of Restaurant Man

Joseph Bastianich isn’t content being a mere Restaurant Man, as he’d have it. Or even a haute grocer.

“Hopefully, we’re going to change the way people consume,” he said, sitting at a table in Eataly, the Flatiron grocery store he opened in August 2010 in a partnership with Mario Batali, his mother, Lidia, and Italian businessman Oscar Farinetti. Before him was a plate of lentils and a glass of red wine. Asked about the rising price of food, he quickly fired off his reply in his distinctly outer-borough-bred baritone: “We’re going to change the balance of the plate. Less proteins, more carbs, more legumes, more rice, more barley. The era of cheap, abundant food is gone.” Read More

By Tom Acitelli 6/03/11 6:00pm

The Transom

Batali and Mama Lidia, High on Fifth

A beshorted Mario Batali, purple socks tucked into orange Crocs, barreled toward a makeshift podium in a corner of Birreria, the new Eataly brewpub 15 stories above the Flatiron, on its invitation-only opening night Thursday.

He grabbed an orange from a huge tub on the way and placed it on the podium.  

“This is Read More

By Meredith Bryan 12/02/09 12:14am

Who Knew Del Posto, Purveyor of Lardo, Was So Eco?

Del Posto, the three-star Italian restaurant co-owned by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, has a green side—and we’re not talkin’ about all the dough they’re raking in from the $28 spaghetti!

The 2002 Ford Excursion in which Mr. Bastianich commutes every morning from Greenwich, Conn., has a converted diesel engine. He fills up not Read More

By Meredith Bryan 4/08/08 4:54pm

Clark Kent in the Kitchen

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 Read More

By Moira Hodgson 6/07/04 12:00am

Dining With Moira Hodgson

Pub Grub Not So Grubby

At the Spotted Pig

I’ve just come back from England, where the restaurant of the moment is the Fat Duck. It’s a village pub in Berkshire that serves, among other oddities, sardine-on-toast sorbet, snail porridge and smoked-bacon-and-egg ice cream. It has three Michelin stars. The cuisine served at the Read More