Cooking, Eating, and the Gulf Oil Spill: Chef Mario Batali (Interview)

With fifteen restaurants, eight cookbooks and a host of television shows, including the ever-popular Iron Chef America, Mario Batali is arguably one of the most recognized and respected chefs working in America today. This, combined with his larger-than-life personality is the reason that he has received accolades like GQ Magazine’s Man of the Year and the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef.

Mario and his business partner Joe Bastianich own fifteen restaurants across the country including their flagship New York City restaurant Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca, as well as two restaurants in Los Angeles and three in Las Vegas. The duo’s latest venture is Eataly, a 50,000 square foot marketplace located in New York City.

Mario is also the author of eight cookbooks including the James Beard Award Winning, Molto Italiano: 327 Simple Italian Recipes (Ecco 2005) and the New York Times Bestseller Mario Batali Italian Grill (Ecco 2007). Mario’s newest New York Times Best Seller, Spain…A Culinary Road Trip (Ecco 2008) is the companion book to his prime-time PBS series Spain…On The Road Again. His new highly anticipated eighth cookbook, Molto Gusto (Ecco 2010), based on the classic and celebrated dishes of Otto Enoteca Pizzeria, hit shelves this spring.

Mario started the Mario Batali Foundation in May of 2008. The mission of the Mario Batali Foundation is to feed, protect, educate, empower children. To learn more Mario’s mission, visit www.mariobatalifoundation.org.

Mario splits his time between New York City’s Greenwich Village and northern Michigan with his wife and their two sons. He found time among his many ventures to chat with Planet Green about his reaction to the Gulf oil spill.

Planet Green: What is your personal connection with the Gulf region and how has the oil spill affected you?

Mario Batali: I have many friends both in the food industry and outside of it who make their living on the Gulf Coast and it has drastically changed everything they do. I also buy a lot of the most delicious and unique seafood on the planet from the Gulf and it is all under deep public scrutiny and thus not ordered even if I can find the good stuff untouched. The PR sear has created an inhospitable feel to the products in the entire Gulf.

PG: What do you think the future of seafood from this region will be?

MB: We will eventually clean it up and it will come back, albeit altered, as the planet always has, but the less is to stop stretching it before we eventually do break it beyond repair.

PG: What do you see the role of restaurants being in educating the public on food concerns?

MB: The potential is massive but the restaurateur must always concentrate on the fundamental components of hospitality to avoid becoming a cliche or reality show while retaining an intelligent point of view within our fields of expertise.

PG: What can people order and eat to support the people of this region?

MB: I think the best way to support the region is to travel down there to support local businesses and ask them what to eat.

PG: Do you think that big ecological and environmental changes -- like those we'll see with the oil spill -- will affect the way people think about food? Will it affect their eating habits? How about yours?

MB: Big changes always initially frighten both chefs and consumers. We will certainly all think very differently about BP and the concept of offshore drilling. I think we should complete ban the idea and, for that matter, create a moratorium on fossil fuel extraction in less than a decade. It is simply and obviously inevitable that we will have to move away from non-sustainable energy resources as we use them up. Why wait 'til they're gone? The writing is on the wall and we are simply mindless idiots not to read it. Sadly, big businesses find it easier to continue with the status quo even in the face of such clear information. I imagine the non-fossil fuel heating, cooling, and transport technology will be introduced the day we admit there is no more oil.

PG: There's a lot of concern that seafood from the Gulf will take years, or maybe decades, to recover. What do you tell people who are concerned that Gulf seafood classics like oysters, shrimp, and catfish might be off the menu for a long time?

MB: Times they are a-changing. We will find a way to create these products in a less delicious way in a farming environment but nothing will ever replace these wild products as they were before the spill. At best we will find mutations or other vestiges of surviving species. We will soon search out sea cucumbers and new delicacies and develop new dishes from the new catch.

PG: The Gulf region has such a rich and diverse food culture and history, and, as a chef, you're obviously very close to that every day when you go to work. How has the spill affected you? Has it changed the way you think about food? Or the connection between food and the environment?

MB: In my world I will continue to revere and support the people of the Gulf and their spectacular culture of music, food, fishing, and hunting, and will spend a lot of time this fall traveling back and forth to New Orleans and Apilachicola trying to help in any way I can, spending my own stimulus package on their businesses. The incredibly deep ties between the environment, the food culture, commerce and the people of the our worlds are increasingly and more obviously very connected, but I have no doubt that while the spill has created a mindblowing disaster of immeasurable damage, I can count -- nay, we can count -- on the people of the region to rise to this and eventually overcome this handicap. We can also count on hard-working Americans to find a way to participate in the reconstruction of their fragile economy and business climate.

For more information on Mario and his many projects visit www.mariobatali.com.

Article courtesy of PlanetGreen