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Pride and Prejudice
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet
Of Mice and Men
Frankenstein

Joe Bastianich Quotes

The menu should be part of the entertainment, part of the dining experience. It’s kind of like reading the ‘Playbill’ when you go to the theater. It should be an alluring and interactive document. Does it have burn marks on it from the candle? If you ever get a greasy menu with food stains on it, it’s time to run like hell.

– Joe Bastianich

Finding specialty food items was a bit of a challenge in Asia in the early days of getting the Mozza’s up and running. Everything is built on relationships, and when you start somewhere new, it takes time to develop that. Staffing can also present challenges.

– Joe Bastianich

There are many things I’m looking forward to in 2013, both personally and professionally. Plans for new restaurants in the U.S., including Eataly Chicago, are underway, and I’m gearing up for the 2013 Ironman world championships in Hawaii – if I’m lucky enough to get a spot!

– Joe Bastianich

My wife and I battle over home decor. My style goes from Gothic to Baroque. Hers is minimalist.

– Joe Bastianich

Cooking for my family is always a pleasure when I’m able to do it. My favorite thing to make is really whatever my kids ask for on any given day. It’s more about being with them and doing something together.

– Joe Bastianich

Essentially, wines are fermented grape juice, so I’m trying to make the point that the wine world is about scores and marketing and kind of creating a scarce resource where they don’t really exist.

– Joe Bastianich

Working in a restaurant means being part of a family, albeit usually a slightly dysfunctional one. Nothing is accomplished independently.

– Joe Bastianich

New York is the best food city in the world.

– Joe Bastianich

At home, I make a large batch of tomato sauce and freeze it in meal-size portions in freezer bags.

– Joe Bastianich

After World War II, a lot of people moved to the cities for work and abandoned the old vineyards. Then in the 1950s and 1960s, wineries were paid to produce volume at a cheap price. That’s when the Lambruscos and bad Chianti were popular.

– Joe Bastianich

I’m a baritone. Baritones don’t mature until late.

– Joe Bastianich

Being a cook doesn’t necessarily mean you are a competitor.

– Joe Bastianich

I have a Madonna portrait done in the style of a Russian icon. My mother, the chef Lidia Bastianich, and I bought it together. It reminds me of her.

– Joe Bastianich

The general manager is kind of like the step into darkness when you reach the top of the league. As GM, you’re responsible for everything, including the maitre d’s and the sommeliers – all these people who have their own agendas. But you probably make less than the maitre d’ and have a lot more work and a lot more headaches.

– Joe Bastianich

America has been conditioned to think of pasta as the never-ending pasta bowl and Olive Garden.

– Joe Bastianich

You can enjoy a $15 bottle of wine as much as you can enjoy a $100 bottle of wine.

– Joe Bastianich

Most people who open restaurants will fail, because they lack the fundamental understanding of restaurant math. Either they think they’re superstar cooks or they think they’re superstar hosts.

– Joe Bastianich

He brought a sensibility and a hard-edged reasonableness to operating restaurants that had a lasting impact on me and still affects how I run all our restaurants today. The passing of ‘Restaurant Man’ – the original gangsta ‘Restaurant Man,’ my father – was the passing of an era. No one can replace him.

– Joe Bastianich

I definitely invented the everything bagel. There’s no doubt. It’s undeniable truth. It’s one of those things that’s 100% true, 50% of the time.

– Joe Bastianich

It’s kind of like a midlife crisis kind of thing. When you turn 40, you have to run the marathon, while all the parts still work properly.

– Joe Bastianich

I was brought up to believe I could achieve anything. My mother instilled in me the belief that there was always something great coming. For example, even though I’m afraid of flying, I always think the plane can’t crash because there are so many better things still to come.

– Joe Bastianich

Classics can be phenomenal when done right. A simple roast chicken dish could be the best thing you ever eat.

– Joe Bastianich

When I stopped looking at food as a reward or a celebration and began looking at food as energy to fuel my athletic ambitions, that really kind of changed the whole world for me. That was the real ‘aha!’ moment.

– Joe Bastianich

Maitre d’s are at the financial spigot of the restaurant, meaning they control who gets in and who doesn’t, but aside from that, they don’t do anything. And yet they get paid as much as the highest-paid people in the place.

– Joe Bastianich

Babbo’s menu is only four pages, but it’s overwhelming – there are 20 different pastas in there, a lot of stuff. There is nothing I hate more than a useless, lazy menu with only three appetizers and four entrees.

– Joe Bastianich

I think that, by comparison with $2,000 bottles of grand cru Burgundies, first-rate barolos, which sell for under $100, are undervalued ten-fold.

– Joe Bastianich

Every time I open a new restaurant, I wake up in the middle of the night moaning about bread and water. I dream I am in the middle of the dining room, and I am panicked.

– Joe Bastianich

At Babbo, each dish grew out of a conversation, trying to put something forth that was new and different. It was a combination of culinary adventurism and the dining-room experience with respect for the classic but with an eye toward innovation. And it was about eating locally, whether produce or fish or meat.

– Joe Bastianich

With four-appetizer, four-entree menus, it’s like, give me a break. That’s not a restaurant, that’s a dinner party.

– Joe Bastianich

Being frugal, conscious of making money, is not a negative thing. That sensibility of creating value and finding value and reinvesting in those customers is what separates great restaurants from the average ones.

– Joe Bastianich

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