My Breakfast With Mario Batali
Image by Getty Images
Yesterday morning, I spent my breakfast time with Mario Batali.
Okay, no, we didn’t actually speak. But there he was in all of his orange Crocs, shorts-in-February, scrunchied-ponytail glory. And I had just finished a latte. So that counts, right?
I was attending a taping of , ABC’s food-focused daytime talk show. (A family friend visiting from out-of-town generously offered me a last-minute ticket.) During the show, Batali and his fellow hosts — Michael Symon, Carla Hall, Daphne Oz and Clinton Kelly — cooked and kibitzed to the delight of 100-plus audience members. Symon whipped up his mother’s ricotta-stuffed shells in the set’s envy-inducing kitchen. Batali flash-prepared a calamari appetizer in 60 seconds, as a timer ticked down behind him. A brash — and quite funny — comedian served as the audience handler, poking fun at people’s clothing choices between segments and queuing us to clap, murmur approval and laugh in all the right places. (Without question, he was the hardest-working man in the room.)
Spending the morning watching superstar chefs and food personalities in their element was a wonderful break from the typical workday. But to be fully honest, I felt a little conflicted about being there. I am certainly no expert when it comes to television production, but as a food writer I know enough about the behind-the-scenes goings on of food media not to fall for the magic. As I watched, all I could see were the hours of prep that went into making each segment come together so seamlessly — from pre-chopping vegetables to making sure a pan was perfectly preheated at just the right moment.
Image by Courtesy of Leah Koenig
Our intrepid breakfast correspondent inside The Chew’s studio on New York’s Upper West Side.
And I couldn’t help but give the side eye to Batali’s calamari. Not because it was hopelessly not kosher, but because I know that only a professional-grade stove with a professional-grade venting system and an impossibly hot flame under an impossibly hot pan could cook calamari through in a minute. It didn’t seem quite fair to represent the dish as something that any home-cook could recreate in 60 seconds.
Of course, not every venture at the stove should require the care and patience of babka (or bolognese, in Batali’s case). But as a network daytime show, The Chew, by definition, caters to America’s tastebuds. Somehow, the act of cooking — something our bubbes either loved or hated, but understood intimately — has become so gimmicky that the former lowest-common-denominator, the 30 minute meal, has been deemed 29 minutes too long.
I’m coming off sounding like a grump, I know. Forgive me. I had eaten my actual breakfast around 6:30 a.m. with my toddler before taking the hour-long subway ride from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side to join my friends in line by 10:15 for a noon taping. The reserve granola bar in my tote didn’t quite cut it. There were many moments when I got swept up in the spectacle and fun of clapping along with the group. But as we emerged from the faux-daylight of the studio onto 67th street, I felt a little hungry.
Leah Koenig is a contributing editor at the Forward and author of “Modern Jewish Cooking: Recipes & Customs for Today’s Kitchen,” Chronicle Books (2015).
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