Mario Batali:
Pasta, basta!
Among other things, the Italians are known for their Roman Catholicism and their heavenly pasta, including their paradisiac pasta sauces. I know that. None knows more than me than Mario Batali, the Renaissance man of pasta in New York - he has 3 successful Italian restaurants there; I'm reading 'America's Pasta Pusher' by Julie Scelfo (Newsweek Sept 2002). The photo you see is from vegans Mary & Frank Hoffman (visit them at all-creatures.org); it's a double-boiler pasta pot (lid included), I am told. You are supposed to boil the pasta with the lid OFF, so that the water will NOT boil out between the inner and outer pot.

Enough of that. This piece is not about vegetarians like Mary & Frank and not about cooking pasta but about Batali when he's not in his kitchen, and about my hero Jose Rizal when he is out there in the US of A traveling mostly by train from coast (California) to coast (New York). It’s all mostly business, not pleasure. He saw American prejudice against foreigners, when all the passengers of his ship, the steamer Belgic, were forced to remain aboard ship in quarantine for 1 week on the ground that there was a cholera epidemic in the Far East. After that, all first-class passengers were allowed to disembark, including Rizal; but the Japanese and Chinese passengers were left behind for more days at quarantine. Rizal knew that there was no cholera epidemic in the Far East at that time; along with others, he protested the quarantine, but the American health authorities were not listening to reason but only to themselves. They did not welcome the invaders from other lands.

Not the Americans of today. Now they welcome immigrants, which is actually importing culture that hopefully will enrich their own, including their taste buds.

Julie asks how come the Americans are ‘so interested in Italian culture?’ Mario says:

Italians have made it their business to export Italian culture, from spaghetti, to design, to poster art, to wine and soft drinks. If you open a bar in the US, an Italian coffee company will give you the coffee machine. They’ll give you the coffee cups with the logo; they’ll give you the tray to carry the coffee on. They’re really good at marketing themselves and creating brand recognition.

How about us, Filipinos? We are very good too at exporting our culture, often the positive side, but too many times including the negative side in the culture – and especially via journalism in print, radio, TV and the Internet. All that, from journalists who profess objectivity, who profess to be friends of the people and who are dedicated to truth, beauty and goodness. We are our own worst friends!

Newsweek’s Batali reminds me of Rizal when he was traveling across the United States. On his way back to Europe, from 28 April to 16 May 1888, Rizal traveled from San Francisco to New York (Gregorio F Zaide, Jose Rizal, 2003: 122-126), wanting to see for himself how the other half of the world lives. To be able to tell off friends when he gets back to Spain that he has visited Paradise? He was taking notes. He wanted to learn what he could of the American way of life and think about those parts that could be emulated in the islands. He wanted to learn from a superior race. He did not feel inferior. He wanted to import American ideas like the Americans want to import Italian pasta. Like the Americans in the eyes of Batali, Rizal was not afraid of the globalization of ideas.

I say the way Batali describes how the Italians make business out of their culture outside Italy can be exported to the Philippine Islands. Read his book The E-Myth Revisited (2001), or visit e-myth.com, and you will see that Michael Gerber recognizes it as the McDonald way: franchising. It is more than brand recognition: it is assurance of quality that comes with the brand. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where the Filipino’s weakness in marketing lies: keeping faith high with the customer by keeping product quality high. And we don’t need to attend and pass a total quality management course to learn that. In fact, we don’t need marketing – quality will sell itself.