"eataly" news and stories

Artist Jennifer Rubell was ticking off a list of influences -- Duchamp, Ambramovic -- when a septuagenarian clutching a bag of baby Brussels sprouts approached, asking, "Can I take these on a plane?" Unfazed, Rubell talked over the finer points of traveling with produce. "You get all kinds of questions here," she said after the woman with the Brussels sprouts went in search of the checkout line.

It was another day at Eataly, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianch's 40,000-square foot temple to Italian food in New York, where Rubell is the vegetable butcher. The idea for the job came during a conversation over dinner with her friend Batali at his restaurant Del Posto shortly before the store's opening earlier this month. He was recalling the women who work at the vegetable market in Campo de Fiori in Rome, the way they would trim artichokes by hand and toss the peels into the fountain, how it helped create a sense of place. "Somehow over the course of the night, the idea of a vegetable butcher crystallized," Rubell said.

Mario Batali has sure been busy lately. Not only has Eataly been a huge success (Batali told Slashfood that 10,000 people were visiting the story every day in its first week), he's also launched the inaugural issue of his new magazine Viaggio and is working on a new online cookbook project with Julianne Moore and Barilla pasta. If that wasn't enough, Batali launched his new app for iPhone and iPod touch called MarioCooks! Wednesday.

His app, which draws from his cookbooks, just may be the most comprehensive Italian cooking application on the market to date. According to a press release, features include:

• 85 video segments and 63 recipe demos
• Browse recipes by region, course, prep-time, season, category of food or kid-friendliness
• Still images that accompany every recipe step
• Wine pairings with Mario's notes on varietals and a wine list describing each wine
• One-click shopping lists that users can check off at the grocery store
• Facebook integration so users can share cooking stories via the web

We spoke to Mario about his latest endeavor and what some of his favorite features are.

Mario Batali has been busy lately.

In recent weeks he opened his Italian food emporium Eataly in Manhattan and launched the inaugural issue of his new promotional magazine Viaggio. He's also working on a new online cookbook project, The Celebrity Pasta Lovers Cookbook, created with actress Julianne Moore and sponsored by Barilla pasta (through it's Share the Table project, featuring pasta recipes from film and television stars like Jimmy Fallon and Meryl Streep).

So we felt very lucky (and knew we had to talk fast) when Batali took the time to sit down with Slashfood in New York City to chat about pasta, pizza and all things Italian.

Related: Mario Batali's Eataly Opens Next Week

Remember when we sat down with Mario Batali last month? Among candid talk of his many, many projects, he gave us a little insight into the much-awaited, many-times-delayed Eataly, which is now set to officially open August 31.

This is the first U.S. outpost of the gargantuan flagship market in Turin, Italy, which combines the feel of an outdoor market with the finest restaurants in the country. Batali -- along with partners Joe Bastianich, Lidia Bastianich and Oscar Farinetti (the franchise's founder) -- gave the New York press a sneak preview of the 50,000-square-foot, bi-level mecca on Tuesday.

Time Out New York calls it a "gastro-playground" and advises food nerds to start their engines; the New York Post describes it as "ambitious, sprawling"; while the Gothamist imagines it's a "haven for Italian ex-pats."

"This is the Italy of Vespas and stilettos," the Gothamist says, while Batali tells them: "It could be the cornerstone of Italian gastronomic culture."