In New York there are numerous schools (or should I say spheres of influence) of Italian cooking. There's the Lidia Bastianich northern Italian school, with both Istrian and Italian-American influences. Mario Batali teamed up with Lidia's son Joe to open Babbo, and that's when Batali's bold, ballsy, resolutely-Italian-meets-contemporary-New York cooking style flowered and spawned numerous imitators and acolytes both in New York and across the country.

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