"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 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 |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Batali, Mario. (2026, January 16). 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. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-would-load-up-the-yellow-cutlass-supreme-125864/
Chicago Style
Batali, Mario. "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." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-would-load-up-the-yellow-cutlass-supreme-125864/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"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." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/we-would-load-up-the-yellow-cutlass-supreme-125864/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.









