Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis has recalled chef Mario Batali making inappropriate comments about her appearance in the foreword to her cookbook.
The Italian chef, 54, reflected on her experience with Batali during a recent appearance on Samah Dada’s YouTube show, On The Menu. She said that when she was writing her 2005 cookbook, Everyday Italian, she asked the former restaurateur to write the foreword for it.
“He’s really the main guy I’d worked with, and a legend in the Italian space,” she said about Batali, whom she worked with on Molto Mario and various other Food Network projects in the early 2000s.
“I felt like his stamp of approval [at the time] would have been huge for me.”
However, when she read what Batali wrote for the foreword, she found it extremely upsetting.
“When I read it, I cried,” the host of Giada in Italy explained. “Because I realized, oh he’s basically saying that I’ve gotten to where I’ve gotten and had this little bit of success that I had because I had big boobs. And that if he had boobs, he would even be much further.”
When Dada asked if Batali — who also appeared on Food Network shows, including Iron Chef America — really wrote that foreword, De Laurentiis said: “He did.”
“Because I’m like a joke, right?” the chef added. “Like, to him, it was like a little bit of a joke.”
De Laurentiis then called her editor while she “was in tears.” She told them she clearly couldn’t use Batali’s foreword and wasn’t sure what to do.
“[My editor] was like, ‘We’ll rewrite it, and I’ll send it to him just for approval,” she added. “So we did, and he said sure. So we rewrote it.”
The foreword that De Laurentiis used in her 2005 book is very different from what Batali allegedly wrote.
“It turns out that Giada is smart, Italian-speaking, and family-oriented — the three qualities my grandma hoped I’d find in a girl to marry. (Too late for that.) She’s also a great cook, highly knowledgeable about food, and a huge amount of fun to be around — the three qualities I’d hope to find in a television partner,” the foreword reads, according to Yahoo Entertainment.
The Independent has contacted a representative for Batali for comment.
Batali faced multiple allegations of inappropriate behavior in 2017 at the height of the #MeToo movement. At the time, four women said he “touched them inappropriately in a pattern of behaviour that appears to span at least two decades.”
In May of 2018, 60 Minutes reported new allegations against Batali as various municipalities opened criminal investigations into his behavior. He stepped away from his restaurant empire following the allegations, left his ABC cooking show The Chow, and apologized for his conduct.
“I have made many mistakes and I am so very sorry that I have disappointed my friends, my family, my fans and my team,” Mr Batali wrote in an email newsletter after the first allegations were publicised. “My behavior was wrong and there are no excuses. I take full responsibility.”
In 2019, he was charged with indecent assault and battery after he was accused of groping a fan, Natali Tene, while taking a selfie with her. He was found not guilty of these criminal charges in May 2022.
In August 2022, Batali also settled lawsuits filed by two separate women — Tene and Alexandra Brown — who claimed the celebrity chef sexually assaulted them in Boston. Lawyers for Brown and Tene said in a statement at the time that “the matters have been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties.”
Celebrity chef Mario Batali settles lawsuits from two women who accused him of sexual assault
Food Network star Paula Deen abruptly shutters Georgia restaurant
Belinda Carlisle says sexualisation of ‘young women’ in the music industry is ‘embarrassing’
That does impress her much: Shania Twain partners with McDonald’s for new menu items
Nearly a third of parents let their kids miss school due to anxiety: new survey
Who is Chloe Malle? The Vogue frontrunner who could take over for Anna Wintour
