Chef Mario Batali has opened up about the life-threatening brain aneurysm he suffered on the opening night of his Thompson Street restaurant Lupa.
“I was . . . trying to make sure the dishwasher was going to run,” Batali recalled of the moment in 1999 when he lost hearing, then “felt something like a tube of water going somewhere” in his head. “I thought it was the dishwasher. [Then] I’m thinking, acid flashback? I’ve seen 150 Grateful Dead shows,” the toque reveals to Brian Koppelman on his new Grantland podcast “The Moment.”
At a nearby hospital, a doctor told Batali he’d need to “operate on you in the next two hours” to save his life. “I said, ‘I think I should call my wife,’ ” Batali recalls replying.