This story contains mentions of sexual assault.
Mario Batali races around his kitchen as he explains the difference between pecorino and parmesan. Two stockpots boil away on his stovetop while he constructs the sauces for tonight’s cacio e pepe and amatriciana. He keeps up a constant flow of cooking instruction and colorful commentary. “To start with, cacio e pepe, make sure that you understand you need only two ingredients: cacio, which is a sheep’s milk cheese,” teasing the word out with an exaggerated Italian accent, and the other ingredient, “which is black pepper.”
You’d be forgiven for assuming this was a classic scene from Batali’s long-running Food Network show Molto Mario, but you’d be wrong. This cooking class played out on December 1 in Batali’s home kitchen, as he broadcast to a virtual audience over Zoom. This was the launch of a new series he’s calling Molto a Casa—his first real foray back into the public eye after he dropped off the map five years ago following a slew of wide-ranging sexual misconduct allegations.
The first Molto a Casa began at 5 p.m. sharp, with Batali looking comfortable in his kitchen at home in Michigan, where he’s decamped since his downfall. “There are no mistakes in the kitchen,” Batali began, before animatedly diving into explanations of the dishes we’d be cooking and the ingredients he would use. After years of relative silence, Batali made no mention of his past wrongdoings as the show began. Speaking directly to the camera as if it were a studio audience, he didn’t miss a beat during the class, which lasted approximately an hour. Multiple cameras caught every angle, including overhead shots of the busy cooktop, and the audience asked questions in the chat that Batali would answer as he cooked. Throughout the event, Batali barely hinted at his extremely troubled past. Nevertheless, a kind of tension seemed to hang in the air, particularly when it was time for the Q&A.
It’s hard to overstate how popular and influential Batali was at the height of his career. Molto Mario, Batali’s popular Italian-centric cooking show, was one of the Food Network’s original hits and ran from 1996 through 2004. He released cookbooks, debuted a jarred pasta sauce, headlined a wildly successful chain of Italian food emporiums, and was close friends with food-world darlings like Anthony Bourdain and David Chang. At the height of his 20-year partnership with restaurateur Joe Bastianich, the pair ran dozens of restaurants and businesses around the world. The flagship of their restaurant empire, Babbo, became a celebrity hotspot, and Del Posto, which they opened in 2005, received four stars from the New York Times in 2010—the first Italian restaurant to do so since 1974.
In December 2017, Eater released a bombshell report detailing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against Batali spanning several years. Almost immediately, Batali stepped away from daily operations of his restaurants, and was suspended from The Chew, the daytime chat show he’d co-hosted on ABC since 2011. Days later, Batali was implicated in allegations of sexual harassment at Ken Friedman’s The Spotted Pig, where he had reportedly been seen drunkenly kissing and groping a woman who appeared to be unconscious in the restaurant’s third-floor VIP area, referred to as “the rape room” by some employees.
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