Price Check in Produce for the Guy in Funny Shorts

I don't know which of us started complaining first.

It must have been me. I tend to grumble a lot. Mario Batali does not.

I was interviewing him about pasta when he suddenly said to me, "I went to the store. Onions were $1.50 a pound. I'm thinking, 'What's going on?' I was mortified."

The store he was talking about was Whole Foods Market. Now, everybody knows Whole Foods isn't cheap. And even when you find something there that doesn't cost more than it does anywhere else, which can happen, there's always something to tempt you that's a little fancier and more expensive than what you went into the store to buy. In onions, for example, you might be able to find Maui, Vidalia, and Walla Walla, to name only the ones you know.

Batali says it was none of those. Nor was he shopping for lampascione, a wild onion from Italy you often see on the menu at Del Posto, the most elegant of his restaurants.

"I'm talking red onions. Not organic onions. Plain red onions," he said.

That got my attention. Cheap non-organic onions, regardless of color, are the kind I buy. (Actually, I prefer those small yellow onions that aren't particularly sweet, the kind my mother used in her recipes.)

"Two onions. Three bucks," he added.

I guess it's nice to know onion growers are doing well. It's also a pleasure to know that fabulous folks like Batali suffer at the grocery store, just like us.