<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Mario Batali, Chef Joe Bastianich, Restaurateur Italian food in America would be a lot different had Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich not come onto the scene in 1998 with the opening of Babbo, in New York. The Seattle-raised Batali had found the religion of cucina italiana casalinga in 1989, cooking at a small restaurant named La Volta, in Italy. Six years after his return, he partnered with Bastianich, a former bond trader and the son of everybody&amp;#039;s Italian grandmother, Lidia Bastianich, to open Babbo to wide acclaim \u2014 The New York Times called the food a &amp;quot;radical departure with sure footing.&amp;quot; They were bold from the start \u2014 if people didn&amp;#039;t want tripe, lamb&amp;#039;s tongue, squab livers, and sweetbreads, that was their problem. Babbo was both the most successful and influential restaurant of the late 1990s. Batali and Bastianich went on to open a slew of successes. Their big gamble was Del Posto, a $12 million space with the tiered look of an Italian ocean liner&amp;#039;s dining salons. The elegant food, Bastianich said, evoked grand dining rather than the gutsy casalinga style. The Batali-Bastianich partnership was golden. In August 2010, the duo unveiled a fifty-thousand-square-foot grocery called Eataly, complete with a steakhouse and a wineshop where you can find bottles bearing the Bastianich label.  Batali became a celebrity chef but has insisted he&amp;#039;s not betraying what he learned at La Volta just because he&amp;#039;s not at the stove. In fact, the opposite might be true. He and Bastianich want to show as many people as possible what they know better than most: that the joys of real Italian food and drink are some of the fullest a man can experience while eating and drinking. Their shared mission drives everything they do, and it&amp;#039;s why they do everything big. As a team they&amp;#039;ve brought a reexamination of Italian food so powerful and complete that their effect on New York, America \u2014 even Italy \u2014 has been unprecedented. Batali-Bastianich Productions (A Partial List): B&amp;amp;amp;B Ristorante, Las Vegas Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca, NYC Casa Mono, NYC Del Posto, NYC Eataly, NYC Esca, NYC Lupa, NYC Osteria Mozza, Los Angeles The Spotted Pig, NYC Tarry Lodge, Port Chester, NY Read About Last Year&amp;#039;s Inaugural Hall of Fame Inductees &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/restaurants/reviews/a8692/mario-batali-and-joe-bastianich-1110/>