restaurateur has stepped into the spotlight recently. Since 2010 he’s made a name for himself as a judge on Fox’s
Master Chef
. He’s a partner in the hugely successful Eataly, Manhattan’s Disneyland for foodies. And he’s published
Grandi Vini: An Opinionated Tour of Italy’s 89 Finest Wines
. Bastianich has, in fact, created one of the most influential restaurant empires in America, but wine is his great passion, the subject that really gets his juices flowing.
He was born, as it were, into the business. His parents, refugees from Istria, an Italian province annexed by Yugoslavia, had worked in several restaurants in Queens before opening Buona-via in Forest Hills in 1970. “It was a blue-collar thing,” Joe says of those days. Chefs weren’t stars, and young Bastianich fils saw little glamour in the family biz. In 1979, though, they crossed the river to Manhattan, opening Felidia on East Fifty-Eighth Street. Drawing inspiration from Istria and Trieste, Lidia Bastianich’s food was a hit almost from the beginning, highlighting a regional cuisine that was miles, literally and figuratively, from chicken parmigiana and spaghetti and meatballs. God knows I’d never tasted anything like it when my publisher took me there for lunch in 1984, nor had I ever drunk anything like the Barolo he ordered.
Lidia’s son tried to trade restaurant row for Wall Street, spendingthree years at Merrill Lynch and Lehman before embarking on a pilgrimage to his ancestral home in 1990, drawn specifically by his passion for wine. “Ninety was a real turning point for Italy, not only a great vintage, but a transition, and I tasted all these great wines in barrel. I worked as a cellar rat from Friuli to Sicily.” In Piedmont he apprenticed with two of the best producers of Barolo (known in Italy as “the king of wines and the wine of kings”), Bruno Ceretto and Luciano Sandrone; in Montalcino he apprenticed with Andrea Costanti.
Friuli, in the northeast, the region from which his parents hailed, is arguably the source of the greatest Italian whites. As Joe puts it in
Grandi Vini
, “In Friuli … the gently rolling foothills of the Julian Alps meet the warm, brackish lagoon of the Northern Adriatic … and the magical mixture of the respective cool and warm breezes—along with the
terroir
—create the climatic magic necessary to make long-lived, structured yet aromatic white wines.” While there he worked with Livio Felluga, one of the best local producers. Before the end of the decade Bastianich would buy one of the area’s historic wine estates, but in the meantime he returned to New York.
“I got into restaurants as a way to get back to wine,” he says, sipping a glass of Barolo at his newest restaurant, Manzo, an Italian steakhouse set in the middle of bustling Eataly. He opened his first restaurant in partnership with his mother. Becco, in the theater district, featured an extensive Italian wine list with all selections priced at $15 (now $25). “But I realized at some point I couldn’t work with my mom.” It was Lidia who introduced him to his future business partner Mario Batali at the James Beard Foundation Awards in 1993. “We used to go out after work, hang out, eat, and drink,” he recalls. They would become the Larry Page and Sergey Brin of the postmillennial Manhattan restaurant scene. Or maybe the Simpson and Bruckheimer, with Bastianich playing the Bruckheimer role—the focused, steady partner. “Joe hasa cool head,” Batali says. “I sometimes get too passionate.” (That, his friends and colleagues would agree, is an understatement.)
In 1997, Joe purchased land in Collio, Friuli, including sixty-year-old Tocai vines planted in a beautiful south-facing bowl that looks like a natural amphitheater, along with an imposing, turreted thirteenth-century structure in the town of Butrio to serve as his winery. The following year he and the winemaker Emilio Del Medico produced his first vintage of Tocai
Master Chef
. He’s a partner in the hugely successful Eataly, Manhattan’s Disneyland for foodies. And he’s published
Grandi Vini: An Opinionated Tour of Italy’s 89 Finest Wines
. Bastianich has, in fact, created one of the most influential restaurant empires in America, but wine is his great passion, the subject that really gets his juices flowing.
He was born, as it were, into the business. His parents, refugees from Istria, an Italian province annexed by Yugoslavia, had worked in several restaurants in Queens before opening Buona-via in Forest Hills in 1970. “It was a blue-collar thing,” Joe says of those days. Chefs weren’t stars, and young Bastianich fils saw little glamour in the family biz. In 1979, though, they crossed the river to Manhattan, opening Felidia on East Fifty-Eighth Street. Drawing inspiration from Istria and Trieste, Lidia Bastianich’s food was a hit almost from the beginning, highlighting a regional cuisine that was miles, literally and figuratively, from chicken parmigiana and spaghetti and meatballs. God knows I’d never tasted anything like it when my publisher took me there for lunch in 1984, nor had I ever drunk anything like the Barolo he ordered.
Lidia’s son tried to trade restaurant row for Wall Street, spendingthree years at Merrill Lynch and Lehman before embarking on a pilgrimage to his ancestral home in 1990, drawn specifically by his passion for wine. “Ninety was a real turning point for Italy, not only a great vintage, but a transition, and I tasted all these great wines in barrel. I worked as a cellar rat from Friuli to Sicily.” In Piedmont he apprenticed with two of the best producers of Barolo (known in Italy as “the king of wines and the wine of kings”), Bruno Ceretto and Luciano Sandrone; in Montalcino he apprenticed with Andrea Costanti.
Friuli, in the northeast, the region from which his parents hailed, is arguably the source of the greatest Italian whites. As Joe puts it in
Grandi Vini
, “In Friuli … the gently rolling foothills of the Julian Alps meet the warm, brackish lagoon of the Northern Adriatic … and the magical mixture of the respective cool and warm breezes—along with the
terroir
—create the climatic magic necessary to make long-lived, structured yet aromatic white wines.” While there he worked with Livio Felluga, one of the best local producers. Before the end of the decade Bastianich would buy one of the area’s historic wine estates, but in the meantime he returned to New York.
“I got into restaurants as a way to get back to wine,” he says, sipping a glass of Barolo at his newest restaurant, Manzo, an Italian steakhouse set in the middle of bustling Eataly. He opened his first restaurant in partnership with his mother. Becco, in the theater district, featured an extensive Italian wine list with all selections priced at $15 (now $25). “But I realized at some point I couldn’t work with my mom.” It was Lidia who introduced him to his future business partner Mario Batali at the James Beard Foundation Awards in 1993. “We used to go out after work, hang out, eat, and drink,” he recalls. They would become the Larry Page and Sergey Brin of the postmillennial Manhattan restaurant scene. Or maybe the Simpson and Bruckheimer, with Bastianich playing the Bruckheimer role—the focused, steady partner. “Joe hasa cool head,” Batali says. “I sometimes get too passionate.” (That, his friends and colleagues would agree, is an understatement.)
In 1997, Joe purchased land in Collio, Friuli, including sixty-year-old Tocai vines planted in a beautiful south-facing bowl that looks like a natural amphitheater, along with an imposing, turreted thirteenth-century structure in the town of Butrio to serve as his winery. The following year he and the winemaker Emilio Del Medico produced his first vintage of Tocai
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