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Confidence is a requirement of someone who works with flame, but Batali sometimes slips into an overconfident caricature, the boor at the center of the room. Later that night he will tell Lagasse about a poorly attended cooking demo he did at last year's housewares show for a distracted crowd. It had been a running joke this weekend that few people had come last year, but now Batali let loose: "I'm like, 'Do you know how much people in New York would pay to f______ stand where you're standing?'" Batali was giggling, and everyone doubled over as his voice lifted a couple of comedic octaves. "I'm in the middle of talking, and they're like, 'Got any samples?'" Playing along, someone cackled and added, "Let me go through my pockets for you, stupid a__hole." I think to myself that the Food Network would be a lot more fun if it showed these guys in real life.
Back in the product meeting, someone suggests selling a Batali apron "at a stand in your restaurants." Finally, Batali draws the line at marketing himself.
"That's a great idea!" he says with mock enthusiasm. "Just past the bar, next to the piano player. You too can buy throwaway aprons in the gift shop. Have your picture taken with the likeness of Mario Batali!"
Batali's cookware has sold well since it was launched last year. The 2005 products were anchored around three cast-iron pieces--a 6-qt. pot, a grill press and a lasagna pan large enough to bathe an infant in. "It was the most successful launch of cast iron I've had in my career," says Marjorie Daugherty, the cookware buyer for Crate & Barrel. "We sold 6,000 pieces in the fall, and it was out for January and February." She also believes "Mario's are the best wooden tools on the market."
Her enthusiasm isn't unique. At a dinner with Sur La Table executives that evening, I mentioned to Kerin Seeger, the company's vice president of merchandising, that at my local Sur La Table store, Batali's cookware was crammed onto a lower side shelf. Seeger looked horrified. On the spot, she unleashed her cell phone and left a pointed message for an underling to call her back. It was a theatrical gesture, but she didn't seem to be doing it for Batali, who was well out of earshot. "We love this product," Seeger told me emphatically. (In the end, Sur La Table did order the risotto pan for its stores this year.)
Actually, not all of Batali's cookware looks great--his new plastic cutting boards feel as flimsy as Frisbees--but all of it looks different. That's because Batali's design team includes Sam and John Farber, the legendary father-son duo that founded OXO International, which makes those chunky, black Good Grips products that are some of the best-selling kitchen tools in history.
The Farbers come from cookware royalty--Sam's uncle S.W. Farber launched Farberware with a percolator in 1930--and their collaboration with Batali is unusual. Typically, a celebrity chef's logo will be stamped onto a conventional-looking cooking vessel, and it will stay on the market only a couple of seasons. (Emerilware is a notable exception.) By contrast, Sam Farber, 81, sees Batali's line becoming a stand-alone design company. Like the Good Grips line, which appeared in 1990, the Batali products--with their autumnal colors, arm-breaking size and flattened wooden handles (a simple innovation that lends comfort to big hands)--feel like something new.