Food legend Mario Batali has hosted seven shows on the Food Network, but he wishes his first television appearance in 1996 wasn't so well-documented. "It was at the very beginning of the Food Network," he recalls. "There was a show called Chef du Jour and I looked exactly like someone who hadn't been in front of a camera for a long time!"

A lot has changed since those early days for Mario, who now has nine cookbooks and 16 restaurants under his belt, including the popular Eataly pavilion in New York City. "At the end of the day, what cooks really like is giving pleasure to somebody else," Mario explains. "It's that exchange that makes it twice as good as when you know you've made it good; it's when someone else says, 'Wow, that is really delicious.'" Get Mario's recipe for his favorite dish of all time, Linguine with Clams!

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