Strippers, groping and being made to eat and drink to excess : Mario Batalis assistant reveals all

On her first day working as Mario Batali’s assistant in 1999, Laurie Woolever, then 25, got in a cab with the famous chef to go to a TV shoot.“Slide those thighs on over,” he told her.Woolever was taken aback.

“Had he really expected me to f–king cuddle with him in the first five minutes of my first day on the job,” she writes in her new memoir, “Care and Feeding” (Ecco, out Tuesday).“It was a power flex, he was testing my boundaries.”Batali would test Woolever’s boundaries again and again in the years she spent working for him as his star rose and his flagship restaurant, Babbo, became one of the hottest tables in New York City.Early in her tenure working for Batali, he asked her to accompany him to Atlantic City where he was doing cooking demos and signing books at Resorts World.When they arrived at the hotel, Woolever writes, Batali put his arms around her and her friend and declared, “These are my prostitutes, Dottie and Matilda.”During dinner that night at the hotel restaurant with Batali, Woolever said she was full from lunch and might just order a salad.“Absolutely f–king not, Woolie, no f–king way are you getting ‘just a spinach salad,'” Batali told her, she recall in the book..

“When you’re out with me, you will order a cocktail, an appetizer, a mid-course pasta, an entree, a dessert, a cheese course, and an amaro or a grappa, and will drink a shit-ton of expensive wine.”Then, she writes, at one point during the decadent meal, Batali leaned into Woolever’s friend and told her, “You know, I’ve got a Coke can d–k.There’s a a jacuzzi in my suite.

I’m gonna hold you by your ankles and dangle you over it.”Batali, she writes, soon proceeded to hand their waiter several $20 bills and ask “Where’s the best strippers?”They ended up at a strip club called Bare Exposure.More drinking, lap dances, karaoke and blackjack back at the casino followed.“Big free dinner, all that booze … a titty bar, two re...