"We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day"
About this Quote
The yellow Cutlass Supreme does more work here than a whole paragraph of nostalgia. It’s a bright, specific prop that pins the memory to a real, slightly tacky Americana: a family car big enough for kids, buckets, and the unglamorous labor of gathering. Batali isn’t describing “farm-to-table” as a lifestyle brand; he’s painting a pre-brand world where seasonality is enforced by reality, not by a menu’s typography.
The repetition - “blackberry season... spring onion season” - is the line’s quiet engine. It turns time into a set of recurring rituals, implying a household calibrated to the calendar and the land, not to convenience. That’s the subtext: food isn’t entertainment, it’s structure. “Part of the fabric of our day” borrows domestic language (fabric, stitching, routine) to make eating and gathering feel like the same category as chores, errands, and family bonding. The romance comes from the ordinariness.
Context matters because Batali’s public persona, and later controversies, complicate any pastoral self-portrait. Read now, the quote functions as origin myth: a way to claim authenticity and moral authority through childhood proximity to “real” ingredients. It’s effective because it’s not bragging about sophistication; it’s bragging about attention. The memory sells a worldview: the best food culture isn’t imported from somewhere else - it’s built in the passenger seat on the way to wherever the berries are.
The repetition - “blackberry season... spring onion season” - is the line’s quiet engine. It turns time into a set of recurring rituals, implying a household calibrated to the calendar and the land, not to convenience. That’s the subtext: food isn’t entertainment, it’s structure. “Part of the fabric of our day” borrows domestic language (fabric, stitching, routine) to make eating and gathering feel like the same category as chores, errands, and family bonding. The romance comes from the ordinariness.
Context matters because Batali’s public persona, and later controversies, complicate any pastoral self-portrait. Read now, the quote functions as origin myth: a way to claim authenticity and moral authority through childhood proximity to “real” ingredients. It’s effective because it’s not bragging about sophistication; it’s bragging about attention. The memory sells a worldview: the best food culture isn’t imported from somewhere else - it’s built in the passenger seat on the way to wherever the berries are.
Quote Details
| Topic | Food |
|---|
More Quotes by Mario
Add to List
