Top 60 Lidia Bastianich Quotes

When we’re filming, I sometimes look into the camera and wonder who’s out there, who will be watching.

I had my first child at 21, my first restaurant at 24.

If we don’t focus on when we eat – like, let’s say we watch television or something – you eat much more. If you focus on the food – you smell it, you cook it – you’re enjoying it already.

Cooking is about the ingredients and responding, but risotto, specifically, is about the technique.

When I say, ‘Everybody to the table and eat,’ I mean it. That is the glue, the center that holds the family, that gives security. Good food brings everybody to the table.

Italian food is seasonal. It is simple. It is nutritionally sound. It is flavorful. It is colorful. It’s all the things that make for a good eating experience, and it’s good for you.

Food feeds our souls. It is the single great unifier across all cultures. The table offers a sanctuary and a place to come together for unity and understanding.

I attended classes and taught classes, in Food Anthropology at Pace University, with an anthropology professor. You can trace history by the architecture and food of a place. Food is one of those things that transcends and stays in the culture.

It’s in the nature of Italians to live life with a positive tone and to celebrate the invitations that come along in life. Italian food is so conducive to all of that.

Food is the common language for all of us.

I cherish my beautiful Italian heritage.

I just love engaging a live audience – I love that.

I love that I’ve become a mentor, almost like a mother, to all the people out there that love Italian, that love cooking. I seem to make them comfortable.

Telling my grandchildren stories of my growing up is some of our favorite times spent together. They want to know what it was like and what I did as a child. They seem to be especially interested in the organic and simplistic setting I grew up in.

When you sit down to eat at a table, you are ready to take in nourishment – we all need to eat to live. Even in primal tribes, people ate together. It’s the opening for friendship.

I cooked for the two Popes that were here. Pope Francis I cooked for and Pope Benedict before him. Pope Benedict is German. And I did a little research – his mother was a chef.

Match the right food to the right occasion. Think about what you are celebrating. If you are honoring people, what are their favorite foods? If it is a holiday, what is the food for it? When you give an identity to the party, people appreciate that.

There is a history to Italian food that goes back thousands of years, and there’s a basic value of respecting food. America is young and doesn’t have that.

I was an immigrant. I came here at 12. We were caught behind the Iron Curtain until I was 10.

When I first came here, Italian food wasn’t anything I recognized. I didn’t know what Italian American food was; we never ate it at home. It was the food of immigrants who came here and made use of the ingredients they had.

There’s a great need to convene at the table with family and friends. People are feeling it and wanting it. For me to be a minor player in helping with that, it makes me so happy.

If you’re like me, food is a medium for communication. It’s an expression of love and affection.

I found great rewards in cooking a dish and feeding it to someone. It was a means of communicating. I was giving part of my talent or my gift and sharing it with somebody, making somebody happy. And it gave a lot back to me, and I wanted to do more and more.

I started in the restaurant industry when I was 22, so I’ve had quite a long tenure, if you will.

We had our wheat. We made our own olive oil. We made our wine. We had chickens, ducks; we had sheep, cows, milk. So I was raised in a very simple situation but understanding really food from the ground… the essence of food and the flavors. And those memories I took with me, and I think that they lingered on.

I love making apple strudel.

I’m not an entertainer – that’s not what I do. I want to teach viewers; I want to show them. I want to share my culture.

When you are the host, you have to take the party into your hands like a conductor.

Italy is so influenced by others: couscous in the south, cinnamon in the north because of the Venetian spice trade – I just want to divulge as much information as I can.

Make your refrigerator or freezer like a treasure chest.

Holidays – any holiday – are such a great opportunity to focus on bringing the family together.

Chemistry was my college interest. Cooking is about chemistry.

My evolution came not as a plan but as opportunities came. People offer them when they see you’re doing something well. It’s up to you to recognize them, take them, and then dedicate yourself to them.

I was born in Allied-controlled Pola. At the end of World War II, the victorious wartime Allied powers negotiated the details of peace treaties and borders with Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Finland. The Paris Treaty was signed on February 10, 1947. I was born a few days later.

By cooking with your kids, you can help them understand that food is a powerful tool in connecting human beings.

I see how people connect with me on different level through my show, how they want to transport what I cook into their home kitchens for their own families. It’s my responsibility to always make sure that is quality.

My grandmother was the genesis of my connection and passion to food.

What I do is my life, but it’s not like I spend 18 hours a day, seven days a week in the restaurants.

Physically, women have some challenges in the kitchen, like lifting heavy pots on and off the stove. You learn to adapt; you learn to find a way. But the biggest challenge for women in this industry is how to balance a family with such a demanding career.

Kids today are really so alienated from the source of food. If they are going to nourish themselves properly, if they are going to safeguard this environment we have and the economy that goes with it and world hunger that goes with it, they need to know about food.

That’s the beauty of risotto. You can make it any flavor you want. It’s a great carrier.

I’m simple in my approach and straightforward. I connect with the average person that is interested in food.

Younger generations, they ask more questions, like on a recipe. But they ask them online. If my staff doesn’t know how to answer it, I will answer.

What really makes your business is your workers – their commitment, their knowledge, how you train them, how you treat them. They have to make the entity a winning entity.

Don’t accept what a grocery store has for you. Tell the store to get you want you want. If you want honey from a local farmer, organic honey, you tell them. We are in control. It’s up to us as the consumer to get what we want.

I love telling stories. You know why I love it? Because people love listening.

The Caprese salad perfectly represents the colors of the Italian flag. While I am not so sure that the colors of the flag stem from the cuisine, there is no denying that those colors do evoke a typical Italian plate.

Make gifts meaningful by putting the time in creating them, whether baking and cooking, or in making arts and craft. It will all have more meaning for the giver and receiver.

My success is that I have these two great cultures behind me. One is Italian. I’ve continued to nurture that. But I also feel very American.

I develop trust, and I think it’s the most important to my growth. If my restaurants are always full and my books sell, it’s this trust.

In 1981, we opened Felidia, and the newspapers, the city papers, the big timers came, and I got invited on the ‘Today Show’ and so on. A lot of food luminaries would come to Felidia – Julia Child, James Beard, they all came.

I am the perfect example that if you give somebody a chance, especially here in the United States, one can find the way.

You should just feel comfortable with food and your own culinary culture, whatever your mother and grandmother know.

Julia Child came to my house and wanted a lesson in making risotto.

I think a ricotta cheesecake is very easy to make.

Food is kind of my entry card into everything. Food kind of opens the doors… because food is peace. It’s good; it’s positive.

For me, it’s the ultimate to be able to nurture and nourish someone. They trust you. It’s a basic form of intimacy in a community.

Traditions are our roots and a profile of who we are as individuals and who we are as a family. They are our roots, which give us stability and a sense of belonging – they ground us.

Food is culture. Food is an identity, a footprint of who you are.

Italian food really reflects the people. It reflects like a prism that fragments into regions.