This Little Piggy Met Batali, Chang & Meehan

If you love food, and particularly restaurants in NYC, you really missed out last night if you didn't make it to The Strand to see Mario Batali, David Chang and Peter Meehan converse about life, food, and their NY outposts.  It was truly awesome and made me remember why I am so happy I moved to this city.  The event started at 7 pm and when we arrived at 6:30, it was unsurprisingly packed.  Luckily, my friend scored some great seats right in the front that had somehow been overlooked by others, and I quickly grabbed a signed copy of Babbo and dove right in while we awaited our hosts. 

Before we knew it, in rolled Batali, orange crocs and all, followed by Chang and Meehan.  The conversation was incredible.  They spoke very briefly about their new books, the Momofuku cookbook (Chang and Meehan) and Spain...A Culinary Road Trip (Batali), but mainly focused on questions raised by Meehan and the audiance.  Chang relished on his younger years, before he was voted JBF Best New Chef: NYC (2007) among others, emphasizing the wonderful inspriation and mentor that Batali had been, and continues to be (Mario frequented Momofuku for lunch in its early years on a weekly basis).  They discussed what they each look for in a cook at their restaurants and Batali said he can tell within 30 seconds of sitting down with someone whether or not they will be a stellar chef by "the kindness in their eyes".  They both elaborated on the change in the priorities of chefs over the years, touching on the new battle between passion and star chefdom.  Additionally, they spoke about the concept of authenticity.  Batali explained that for him, authenticity deals more with the ingredients than anything else, stating "We're using American ingredients with an Italian thought process," when describing his Italian restaurants, while Chang answered the million dollar question, "what type of genre would you classify the Momofuku Restaurants?" using "fusion". 

Ultimately, it was a delightful, rainy evening in New York.  Batali was hilarious and Chang had an unexpected degree of sincerity in his responses.  Peter Meehan didn't say much. I left after meeting Batali, Chang and Meehan, with a personalized copy of Babbo for my collection (I already have the one on Spain) and an even greater excitement to discover Ma Peche the following day.