Mario Batali

“Passion is what adds so much value to life. And if you think about the things that you do, there's so much juice potential for them if you do it.”

“Look at cookbooks with your kids and ask them what sounds good.”

“Just because you eat doesn't mean you eat smart. It's hard to beat a $1.99 wing pack of three at a fast-food restaurant - it's so cheap - but that wing pack isn't feeding anyone, it's just pushing hunger back an hour.”

“My last meal? The food would be much less significant than the company.”

“Are we Darwinists - where we live and let live? Or are we nurturing as a society? There has to be a standard of living that we decide to support.”

“As they say in Italy, Italians were eating with a knife and fork when the French were still eating each other. The Medici family had to bring their Tuscan cooks up there so they could make something edible.”

“I put hibiscus flower in every cup of tea I have. It's sweet, sexy, and cleansing.”

“Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.”

“To eat the boiled head of a pig sliced like salami is very strange. It may seem cutting edge, but it's actually a lot older than any of the other traditional salami.”

“My kids and I make pasta three days a week now. It's not even so much about the eating of it; they just like the process. Benno is the stuffer, and Leo is the catcher. They've got their jobs down.”

“There are pockets of great food in Spain, but there are also pockets of very mediocre food in Spain, and the same in Morocco and the same in Croatia and the same in Germany and the same in Austria.”

“If you're going to buy pasta, you should buy dry pasta. If you're going to make it you can make the real thing, but you shouldn't buy fresh pasta.”

“Spaghetti is love.”

“Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.”

“There's a battle between what the cook thinks is high art and what the customer just wants to eat.”

“In America, I would say New York and New Orleans are the two most interesting food towns. In New Orleans, they don't have a bad deli. There's no mediocrity accepted.”

“I am happiest when I am with my wife, Susi, and our two boys exploring and loving something for the first time.”

“When you taste things in the right order, sometimes they taste so much different than if you taste them out of order. Not that there's a right order, like by rule, but just like in a thoughtful way that makes sense.”