→ October 30, 2013
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Middlemarch.

This week’s Behind the Dish podcast reunited me with my old Baseball Today co-host Eric Karabell. And you all thought I died when I went over that waterfall with Bias Cat, didn’t you?

George Eliot’s Middlemarch appears on the Bloomsbury 100 and ranks 9th on Daniel Burt’s Novel 100, but after my intense dislike of her novel Mill on the Floss*, I expected a similarly arduous read, with slow prose and distant, even odious characters. Middlemarch feels like the work of a different author, however, less bleak and moralistic, with stronger, better-rounded characters (and a few jerks), and every bit as pointed a perspective on the restrictive nature of Victorian society, especially regarding the rights of women.

* Not to be confused with Millon de Floss, one of the great biographer-stalkers of his time.

Middlemarch weaves several related stories together, all centered in the fictional English town of the title, revolving around idealistic young characters whose desires go beyond the traditional spouse-seeking of English literature prior to the 1860s. It begins with Dorothea Brooke, destined to be the semi-tragic heroine of the novel’s first major plot, as she rejects a suitor nearer her age and emotional temperament to marry the dour, chauvinistic theologian Edward Casaubon, a blowhard who is the first of the novel’s many comic side characters. Dorothea’s other suitor, Sir James Chettam, marries Dorothea’s sister in what becomes a far happier marriage. Edward refuses to induct Dorothea into his intellectual life, perhaps because it is nearly bankrupt, leaving her bored and unhappy until his early death, at which point an absurd codicil to his will forbids her to take up with Edward’s distant cousin, Will Ladislaw, who is a far better emotional match for Dorothea.

Middlemarch is also home to the Vincy siblings, Rosamund and Fred, a financially irresponsible pair who have very different aims in romance: Fred wants to marry Mary Garth, with whom he’s been in love for years, while Rosamund sinks her claws into the young doctor Tertius Lydgate, because she sees him as a path to upward mobility. Fred’s ability to marry is hampered by his dissolution, which leads him to bankrupt himself and nearly do the same to Mary’s father, while Rosamund manipulates the idealistic Lydgate, who doesn’t plan on marrying because it would interfere with his professional endeavors, into a betrothal he didn’t desire.

Eliot takes the usual themes of marriage and inheritance as the starting point for deeper explorations of character and societal mores than contemporary novels typically explored, helping usher in an era of fiction where independent women were increasingly found as central characters and where their lower standing in a male-dominated culture was fodder for entire novels. Dorothea begins as a high-minded, emotionally immature woman who reaches for some ill-defined goal in marrying the old pedant Casaubon, only to realize she’s grasped at a cloud and lost her independence without any intellectual gain. Fred has to be shamed into a life of industry and diligence, in a career that seemed beneath him, to have any chance to marry the woman he loves. Lydgate’s match with Rosamund turns out to be disastrous, as her extravagance nearly bankrupts him, his researches grind to a halt, and he’s caught up in a scandal involving the local squire Bulstrode, who makes ill use of the doctor to try to hide his own mistakes. While some characters face consequences for their own sins, others find their lives constrained by the need to keep up appearances, or by the effects of gossip about untoward appearances. Even in the epilogue, Eliot grants most of her characters middling outcomes, where financial success and happiness are mutually exclusive; Dorothea may at least fare the best, as she can find happiness even in an imperfect situation, telling Ladislaw that “if we had lost our own chief good, other people’s good would remain, and that is worth trying for,” marking why she stands above the rest as the novel’s real protagonist and most empathetic character.

As much as Dorothea stands at Middlemarch‘s moral center, Lydgate struck me as the most fascinating character because of the small window he provides into Eliot’s own views on the rise of science and research in English society and culture. Lydgate arrives in Middlemarch intending to work as a doctor to fund his researches, bringing ideas for reform and for greater service to those unable to afford proper medical care to a small town with decidedly staid ideas on what a doctor should do and say. The obstacles he encounters from the town’s aged, established medics slow his practice significantly, even when he has some success in treating difficult cases, but it is the marriage to the dim-witted, materialistic Rosamund that destroys his intellectual curiosity, because he can no longer devote time to research or volunteer work because he has to pay the debts she has accumulated. Coming from a male author, this might read as misogynistic, but Eliot imbues all of her characters, male and female, with strengths and defects, so even the venal Rosamund is multi-dimensional, while the reader cannot exonerate Lydgate of blame in his own downfall. (It’s also hard to accuse Eliot of anti-feminism when she has Mary say, “Husbands are an inferior class of men, who require keeping in order.”

Middlemarch might be the most-praised novel ever written in the English language. Virginia Woolf referred to it as “the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.” A.S. Byatt used that quote in her 2007 review, saying it was possible to argue – seriously, can you get more wishy-washy? – that Middlemarch is “the greatest English novel.” Daniel Burt’s top 100 only lists two English-language novels ahead of it – the abysmal Moby Dick and the abstruse Ulysses, the latter by an author who’d abandon English entirely in his next novel, Finnegan’s Wake. Eliot’s prose is far more pleasant to read than Melville’s and easier to digest than Joyce’s, with incisive wit (as in the “husbands” comment above) or profound renditions of human emotions:

When the commonplace “We must all die” transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness “I must die – and soon,” then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first.

Writers who craft realistic characters typically exhibit this understanding of emotion and thought, whether the feelings depicted are negative (fear of mortality) or positive. Eliot can drift from compassion to disdain – Mary, the novel’s most insightful speaker, points out that “selfish people always think their own discomfort of more importance than anything in the world,” which is undeniable – over the course of a few pages, but there is always the sense that she reveres character, even if she doesn’t always revere her specific characters. I don’t share Woolf’s and Byatt’s veneration of Middlemarch, as the Lydgate/Rosamund thread tended to meander and Rosamund was the least compelling character in the book, but it is a marvelous novel, a broad study of many brilliantly rendered characters, and a lesson in integrating multiple storylines into a single narrative.

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→ October 25, 2013
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The Wounded and the Slain.

American author David Goodis’ work has largely been out of print since his death at age 49 in 1967, but the author of pulp novels and short stories in the noir and crime-fiction genres has seen a modest resurgence in popularity in the last decade as a few of his works have been republished. The Library of America has printed five of his novels in a single collection, including Dark Passage, which may have been the inspiration for the TV series “The Fugitive.” (A lawsuit was settled out of court after Goodis’ death.) Hard Case Crime brought The Wounded and the Slain back in 2007, part of their ongoing effort to revive those once-scorned pulp novels by introducing them to a modern audience – and I, as a fan of noir in general but a reader unfamiliar with Goodis’ work, can add my recommendation to theirs.

Wounded isn’t really a crime novel, earning its noir designation from its themes and setting rather than from its plot, even though there is a crime within the story. James Bevan is the drunk at the novel’s center, on a disastrous vacation with his wife, Cora, as their marriage threatens to dissolve in a highball glass of gin. James can’t stand to be sober, yet his self-destructive tendencies increase exponentially when he’s under the influence, which leads him to wander the slums of Kingston at night, eventually putting him in a bar where a riot breaks out and he’s drawn into the melee even though he’s too drunk to comprehend what’s happening around him. Cora shows vast patience with James, blaming herself for much of his licentiousness, but ultimately drifts into a flirtation with another guest at the posh resort where they’re staying. The novel concentrates more on James’ death spiral – and his reluctance to resist it – until Cora is forced to decide between fighting for her husband or pursuing her own happiness elsewhere.

Goodis paints one grim picture after another, both in scenery and in mood. The Kingston of this novel is filthy, poverty-stricken, drug-riddled, a den of thieves waiting to pick any errant tourist clean of all but his skin should he leave the safety of his hotel. The handful of sailors on shore leave we encounter don’t come off a whole lot better. James wanders into this world in an alcoholic stupor, trapped in a mind full of catastrophic thoughts, grappling with questions of suicide until he finds himself about to die – twice – and has to choose to live, only to see that the life he’s returning to isn’t worth that much. That these experiences prove disillusive for James underscores the stark existential nature of Goodis’ writing here, a prime example of noir without a hard-boiled detective.

Where Wounded lost me a little was the denouement, where Cora’s and James’s stories intersect in somewhat unlikely fashion, although Goodis saved himself with an ambiguous resolution that avoids tying anything up too neatly, which would have de-noired the book. I didn’t like how James ended up in that specific situation, as it seemed too far-fetched for a novel that often danced at the edge of the mundane in its realism. In James, Goodis has even created a compelling character who is miserable and whose mimesis is limited to the less palatable aspects of the human character, whose treatment of his wife should repulse us yet whose Appointment in Samarra-esque hurtle towards destruction will not let us turn away.

Many of the details about Goodis come from his entry in Wikipedia, and we know Wikipedia is never wrong.

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→ October 24, 2013
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Top Chef, S11E04.

Today’s Klawchat transcript is up, as is my joint ranking of the top 30 prospects for the 2014 draft, done with Chris Crawford. Enjoy.

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This week’s guest judge is Eddie Huang, author of Fresh Off the Boat and a fast-rising star in the culinary world who only opened his first restaurant, BaoHaus, in 2009. Huang was born in the United States and is of Hunanese descent, but the challenge in this episode revolves around Vietnamese cuisine, celebrating the major contributions of Vietnamese immigrants to New Orleans and the surrounding region, notably to its shrimp industry.

* No quickfire this week – just an elimination challenge where three teams of five chefs apiece must create a Vietnamese menu, with at least one dish highlighting shrimp, and serve it to local Vietnamese diners.

* Travis is talking a big game about his knowledge of Vietnamese food, as he’s spent a lot of time there and his boyfriend is Vietnamese. All of this footage this early in the show means he’s going to end up with pho all over his phace.

* Carlos is extremely nervous and says he’s never eaten Vietnamese food, something he has in common with several other chefs in the house. I have no idea how that is even possible: Vietnamese food isn’t unusual or exotic, and any chef in any major city in the United States has access to dozens of Vietnamese restaurants, serving pho (the signature Vietnamese soup), bun (grilled meats over thin rice noodles), or banh mi (pressed sandwiches on crusty French bread). You’d have to go out of your way to avoid eating Vietnamese food. Wouldn’t any chef, especially a young one, want to explore new cuisines, just to extend his/her palate? Is this some residual anger over the fall of Saigon that I’m not aware of? Jane Fonda won’t be waiting on your table, I promise.

* Emeril and Eddie are taking the chefs on a three-stop “crash course” in Vietnamese cuisine, which Travis says he should be giving. I’m now imagining him drowning in a giant bowl of steamed rice noodles.

* First stop: Dong Phuong, the “best bakery in town,” per Michael. Eddie says it’s the best banh mi in New Orleans, with French bread so good restaurants order from the bakery. We see dumplings, meat turnovers (their versions of Cornish pasties or empanadas?), and xá xíu, the Vietnamese version of the Chinese barbecued pork dish char siu. The bakery is located east of downtown New Orleans, so it’s in the opposite direction from where I’m usually headed (such as to Baton Rouge).

* Nina thinks Michael has no talent is “faker than Pamela Anderson’s breasts.” Dated reference aside – when was the last time Anderson was culturally relevant – was I the only one surprised to see Nina dropping some trash talk?

* Second stop: The shrimp docks. Shirley immediately starts grilling (pun intended) the shrimpers’ wives on their favorite recipes, and they’re all talking about using butter. Either that’s the French colonial influence or these women have adapted very quickly to American modes of cooking (fry it or drown it in butter).

* Janine volunteered on an elephant reserve in Thailand because she wants to prove that not only is she prettier than everyone else, she’s also a better person.

* Ho Travis is pushing a tomato-based sauce he claims is common in central Vietnam; Janine says she’s never seen a tomato-based sauce in Vietnamese food, and for what it’s worth, I found a few articles on central Vietnamese cuisine and none mentioned tomatoes at all. Why wouldn’t he push something clearly authentic that still had a wow factor, like the crispy pancakes called bánh xèo, which are folded and stuffed with pork and shrimp like glorious Vietnamese tacos of goodness?

* Last stop: Kim Anh’s noodle house in Harahan, Louisiana. Owner of a 96% rating on Urbanspoon – whatever you think of Urbanspoon’s users, 96% means it hasn’t had a lot of angry trolls trying to slash its rating – Kim Anh is just west of downtown and south of Metairie, a strip-mall noodle shop known for its noodles, pho, and banh mi, the holy trinity of Vietnamese cuisine (or at least of Vietnamese cuisine as it exists here in the U.S.).

* Brian is Korean, cooks Peruvian, and doesn’t know Vietnamese that well. I seem to recall a controversy a few years ago about one chef who only cooked “Asian”…

* Sara is also not impressed by Ho Travis’s knowledge of Vietnamese cuisine. This becomes important at the grocery store, when she starts rearranging the team’s ingredient purchases, putting a bunch of items back and swapping them out for other items that will work better … but possibly leaving one key ingredient behind: lemongrass, an essential flavor in Vietnamese (and Thai) cuisine. So, if Sara took it out, no one noticed? Were all four other team members checking Twitter while she overhauled the shopping list? Five people were responsible for that cart and no one realized it was gone. You all fail.

* Meanwhile, Justin realizes he bought way too much lemongrass, but the green team never asks if anyone else has extra. Ho Travis then tells Eddie that they don’t have lemongrass, which, as Sara correctly forecasts, is all the judges are going to notice when they eat the green team’s food. Meanwhile, Travis says Eddie is “kind of a douchebag” for mocking him for deprecating the importance of lemongrass in Vietnamese dishes.

* Steph’s allergic to shrimp, which is kind of relevant in this challenge. She ends up cooking a dessert, but no one seems to point out that she can’t taste most of the dishes going out of this kitchen, so cooking any item containing shrimp or other shellfish-derived ingredients (like oyster sauce) is out of the question for her. No one seems terribly concerned about this, and the judges are either unaware of it or forgot about it when looking at her dish.

* Justin totally hacks up a Napoleon quote, claiming the little guy said, “Brilliance is winning, but also not telling your opponent when they’re losing.” The diminutive dictator’s actual line was the much more concise and forceful, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Brevity … wit.

* To the food … the orange team serves Nicholas’ black pepper squid with cabbage and peanuts (which the judges said was bland), Brian’s gulf shrimp and pork belly spring roll, Carlos’ fish head soup with pineapple and tomato (which was also bland and lacked acid), Louis’ beef broth pho with raw eye round and oxtail (also bland, lacking aromatics and herbs). So orange is the new bland. Tom cracked that the meal made him want to go out and have actual Vietnamese food. I think Tom’s snark increases when he has a partner in crime in the house, like Huang, who appears to hold nothing back.

* The red team offers Nina and Carrie’s raw beef salad with pickled vegetables, which looked like cat food with slaw on the screen; Shirley’s Vietnamese take on BBQ shrimp, with creole butter and lots of it; Justin’s beef pho with rice noodles and beef belly; and Carrie’s lemon custard with caramelized banh mi (which looks like it’s just the bread). Shirley emphasizes that Patty helped with every dish, although no specific dish was hers. Justin and Shirley come out on top here, while no one liked the texture of the raw beef plate, and Carrie’s dessert flops on presentation. Mostly this was Justin’s broth versus Shirley’s giant pool of butter. I know where my money is.

* The green team starts with Ho Travis’ grilled pork sausage wraps with pineapple and shrimp paste, Sara and Stephanie’s oxtail rice wrap and pork shrimp rice wrap; Bene and Janine’s fried gulf shrimp with a Vietnamese tomato-ginger sauce; and Stephanie’s coconut macaroon with Vietnamese coffee-caramel. Travis’ sausage gets good marks, but the sauce has no balance and “smacks you in the face,” which leads to Padma saying she’s “happy to be smacked in the face by something” and Gail saying what probably everyone was thinking but really only the other woman at the table had any right to say. The shrimp is a disaster, soggy from being sauced before serving, while the tomato sauce is too reduced and reminds everyone of an Italian tomato sauce. The rice with the shrimp is “atrocious” as well, which we saw briefly in the kitchen but probably could have used more attention in the editing room. (It sounds like the rice cooker didn’t work correctly, but we barely got any of that footage.) The dessert was the best course, although there’s an element of “by default” in those comments.

* The chefs have a plank-off in the stew room. I really have nothing for this.

* Eddie’s comments on the stew room monitor, where he says “a few people did get it right,” imply that most of them didn’t. The main praise goes to Justin for nailing the flavors in his two-hour pho and Shirley for the flavors of her shrimp, and for butter. The green team disappointed across the board except for the macaroon, and even that didn’t blow Tom away. Their shrimp was “hammered.” The rice was “shattered,” like baby food. These are not words you want to hear in descriptions of your food.

* The red team is on top, and Shirley wins. Beyond just, well, butter, she may also have earned points for incorporating Creole elements into a Vietnamese dish (or perhaps Vietnamese elements into a Creole dish), and also because she had the dish that highlighted the episode’s central ingredient. Brian hugs Shirley in the stew room and picks her up, saying, “My Asian sister.” But if he’s Korean, and she’s Chinese … forget it, I’m only digging my own grave here.

* The green team is on the bottom, of course. Sara starts crying straight off in front of the judges. Tom breaks out the flamethrower to go after the tomato sauce, and he’s clearly hunting for big blame. Ho Travis takes responsibility and says he’s “had it three times” in central Vietnam, but Tom just lights into him more with a McDonald’s analogy that should have left Travis a smoldering pile of ashes. Eddie makes the more salient point – even if it’s authentic, is that the dish or the flavor you want to highlight? Then Tom turns the flame on the shrimp, and Janine owns up to frying it twice and then saucing it before service. And then the questions on the rice start, but when Sara tries to take responsibility, Janine jumps in to acknowledge that she had a hand in it, and Tom just withers the team with a “Why serve it?” Eddie says the macaroon is akin to “janky ratchet Asian desserts.” Then, after the chefs leave, Emeril calls the tomato sauce like something from “Mama Baloney’s.” I’m getting the sense here that they didn’t like the green team’s food.

* Janine’s eliminated, but doesn’t seem shocked, saying, “Any fry cook at Hooters can cook shrimp,” although it sounded better when she said it. She can console herself with her upcoming restaurant in New York City. Meanwhile …

* LCK: Janine squares off against Jason, Aaron, Ramon, and Bret in the first episode of Last Chance Kitchen, where the chefs have 30 minutes to make whatever they want. Unsurprisingly, Aaron, Ramon, and Bret all fall short, and Tom chooses between Janine’s fried oyster (which photographed beautifully) and Jason’s raw fish with white chocolate and other stuff but what the hell is the white chocolate doing on a fish dish? I don’t like white chocolate that much to begin with, but Jason covered the plate like he was grating pecorino romano or something. Janine wins. Jason seems awfully slow to exit the kitchen. Don’t stare directly at an angry Tom, Jason. He’s better with a knife than you are.

* Top three prediction: Carrie, Shirley, Justin, followed by Stephanie, Brian, and Sara. Bottom three are Bene, Louis, and Patty.

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→ October 23, 2013
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The Return of the Native.

I was assigned two books in my Lit class in my senior year of high school on which I bailed after 20 or 25 pages, reading the Cliffs’ Notes for one and watching the movie for the other. I eventually read both books in full as an adult, as both are on the Novel 100 and, to be honest, it bugged me that I’d never made a more serious attempt to finish them. One of them was Theodore Dry … er, Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, which amounted to 200 pages of shit in an 800-page novel. The other was Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, which is one of my favorite novels ever written, a tragedy as well but a work of consummate beauty in prose and characterization, as well as the best example I have encountered of the use of irony in a serious novel.

The Bloomsbury 100 includes a second Hardy title, The Return of the Native, which doesn’t quite hit the heights of Tess but also doesn’t inspire the same frustrated outrage that that other novel does. Native instead focuses on the interconnections between a number of flawed characters in a tiny English hamlet, and how tiny choices create avalanches of consequences for all of them, with an ending that, in veritable Hardy-esque style, leaves no one truly happy.

The native of the book’s title is Clym Yeobright, a former resident who has found success in the Parisian diamond trade, but finds the work unfulfilling and has returned to Egdon Heath to embark on a scheme to educate the children of the poor. By the time Clym enters the scene, we have already met the other characters and seen their entanglements: Thomasin Yeobright, Clym’s cousin, is betrothed to the unstable Damon Wildeve, who himself is still in love with the local maiden Eustacia Vye, who had had an affair with Wildeve but generally disdains all of the local residents as beneath her. Thomasin returns home to Egdon Heath from a marriage ceremony with Damon that didn’t come off, as Wildeve lacked the proper license, by way of the reddleman (a traveling seller of the pigment red ochre) Diggory Venn, who also carries a torch for Thomasin. When Wildeve and Thomasin do marry, Eustacia throws herself at Clym, hoping he’ll enable her escape from Egdon Heath when he returns to Paris, unaware that he has no plans to do so. When Wildeve and Eustacia both find themselves in unhappy marriages, their liaison is rekindled, leading the four down a path into tragedy.

For a man somewhat estranged from his church, Hardy reflects a strongly moralistic worldview in his writing, more so here than in Tess, where he directs more of his ire at the chauvinistic Victorian environment that condemns his title character to a life of misery. Native takes more of a balanced approach to its subject, combining a frank look at sexual politics and the essence of human emotions with a plot where nature dooms the least morally sound characters over the more innocent ones. Hardy’s language makes it clear that Eustacia is the wicked seductress and Wildeve the feckless lover and husband, with Thomasin in particular receiving treatment as the victim of their maneuvers.

Basde on a small sample of two novels, Hardy might be my favorite writer of prose after the incomparable F. Scott Fitzgerald, as Hardy’s poet self pops up repeatedly in the text of his novels. He refers to the “black fraternization” of the “obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land” to describe the desolate scene off the moors near Egdon Heath, and describes Eustacia examining her own dismal situation by thinking “what a sport for Heaven this woman Eustacia was.” Clym, after the last of his tragedies in the novel, declines to appear at an event for fear he “might be too much like the skull at the banquet,” which is a hell of a lot better than referring to something in a punchbowl. Eustacia says “I’d give the wrinkled half of my life!” to live in a cosmopolitan place where she could live like a lady, a throwaway phrase that becomes more meaningful when her life is in danger later in the book.

Hardy, always full of sunshine, has time to refer to Clym’s loss of innocence as

the stage in a youngman’s life when the grimness of the general human situation first becomes clear; and the realization of this causes ambition to halt awhile.

And he mirrors my own thoughts on the rising tide of darkness as autumn closes:

Moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness aganist that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery, and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.

Of course, I doubt Hardy meant I should light my Weber kettle grill in response to the shortened days, but that’s the best I’ve got.

Two final side notes on The Return of the Native:

* A 1994 TV movie adaptation starred two then-unknown actors as Damon and Eustacia: Clive Owen and Catherine Zeta-Jones. I think it’d be worth seeing on that basis alone.

* I can’t hear the name of this novel without thinking of this sketch.

Next up: I’ve been lax at writing up books lately, but I’ve gotten through Middlemarch and Anthony Trollope’s The Warden, as well as David Goodis’ noir novel The Wounded and the Slain, and am now on the non-fiction The Land That Never Was: Sir Gregor Macgregor And The Most Audacious Fraud In History by David Sinclair. If anyone has a particular interest in either of those classic novels, drop a line in the comments.

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→ October 22, 2013
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Pizzeria Vetri and Barbuzzo (Philly eats, part one).

Today’s Behind the Dish podcast featured physics professor Alan Nathan plus my thoughts on the World Series and the two Cuban free agents who just signed.

I’ve now had two meals at Pizzeria Vetri, the latest outpost of the Vetri family empire of Philly restaurants (including Vetri and Osteria), and am thoroughly impressed by their authentic Neapolitan-style pizzas and commitment to simple recipes with a handful of fresh ingredients. The pizzas come with the appropriate char on the exterior, moderate air bubbles in the exterior crust, and enough interior crust to hold together but not enough to support the weight of the toppings (which is correct, oddly enough). That exterior crust was softer than some other authentic Neapolitan pizzerias I’ve tried, but it was a net positive as it didn’t become tough once it cooled.

The margherita is dominated by the bright, sweet flavor of San Marzano tomoates, with huge basil leaves and a few dollops of fresh mozzarella, light enough that my daughter, age 7, could eat five of the six slices and still have room for dessert. I preferred the crudo, with prosciutto crudo, mozzarella di bufala, and shaved Parmiggiano-Reggiano, which had better balance across all the flavors with a slightly salty profile from the meat and the hard cheese, but the crusts on both were very good and cooked perfectly from char to center.

Vetri also offers a rotating special of Silician-style pizza (thicker crust, cooked in a sheet pan), which often reflects the chef’s caprices on that particular day. For our last visit, the “pizza al taglio” (pizza by the slice) special was roasted quince that had been cooked with red wine, along with fresh herbs including rosemary, and mozzarella and shaved pecorino romano. It was peculiar, a little like a wine-and-cheese course on top of a thick pizza crust, but the sharp crunch of the crust was the main selling point of the slice, with a little dose of olive oil like the underside of a good focaccia (which is pretty much Sicilian pizza dough cooked without toppings).

Vetri’s non-pizza offerings are limited, but they do include a Caesar salad and a “wood-fired” salad, the latter coming with roasted corn, green beans, and chanterelles, along with a generous portion of sliced prosciutto cotto and some Microplaned ricotta salata. With a drizzle of olive oil and a hint of vinegar, it’s an earthy mixture bound by the powerful umami notes of the roasted chanterelles and sweetness of the corn, and far more satisfying than I’d expect an item in the salad section of the menu to be. Vetri also offers a few dessert items and my daughter would like you to know that the fior di latte (sweet cream) soft-serve ice cream is the best soft-serve she’s ever had, although I warn you her affections can be fickle.

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My daughter also accompanied me to Barbuzzo earlier this month, a restaurant I’d wanted to visit since coming across their salted caramel budino recipe in Bon Appetit several years ago; I’ve made them four or five times and wanted to compare my results to the real thing. Aside from a small lapse in service, the entire experience was superb, with some huge highlights from the savory part of the menu.

The kale salad was the surprise hit of the meal for me, featuring thinly sliced ribbons of dino kale (a.k.a. Cavolo nero or Tuscan kale or lacinato, it’s all the same damn leaf) tossed in a pistachio pesto dressing, served over a few slices of roasted red and yellow beets with soft goat cheese. I find kale an incredibly versatile ingredient, pairing up well with other flavors from across the spectrum, from bacon to nuts to cranberries or pomegranate arils, so I wasn’t shocked that it played well with pistachio, but was shocked by how much body the pistachios gave to the entire salad; kale can be a little tough, and a little bitter, but the broad coating of the dressing reduced the feeling that this was just a pile of leaves. The only problem with the dish is that the menu refers to it as a roasted beet salad when that is maybe the third or fourth ingredient on the list; this is a kale salad, plus some beets and goat cheese.

Although the various pizzas on the menu were hard to ignore with the wood-fired oven right in my line of sight, I went with the server’s suggestion of the pan-seared gnocchi with bacon, mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes, with no sauce but the slight glaze of the bacon fat. The gnocchi were the lightest I’ve ever eaten, strong enough to hold a brown crust from the searing but light enough that an entire plateful was more like an appetizer than a full entree (so it’s a good thing I was full of kale salad by that point). They were powerful bacon-infused pockets that crushed all other comers, the rare example of a plate delivering a bacon punch without delivering a similar blow to your gut. My daughter was satisfied with the burrata plate with several kinds of fresh tomatoes, nut-free pesto, and sliced onions along with a serving of grilled country bread (an add-on for $2), all of which was fresh across the board, even the tomatoes, which surprised me with their sweetness given the time of year.

The dessert … well, the salted caramel budino didn’t quite live up to expectations; the recipe may have changed, but there’s nothing tangy in the version I make at home, whereas something in the mason jar I received at Barbuzzo was, possibly due to the incorporation of crème fraiche somewhere along the line. I can’t say mine is better, since it’s their recipe, but I prefer it without that sour note. My daughter ordered the apple raisin bread pudding with bourbon sauce and malted buttermilk gelato, which tasted strongly of bourbon and, not surprisingly, which she loved. The only real complaint I had about the meal was the 15-minute lag between when we ordered dessert and when it arrived; to a seven-year-old, or her anxious father, that’s a long time. The bread pudding had clearly just come out of the oven, though – it was practically in flames when it reached the table – and their expediter was otherwise on the ball as everything reached the table quickly and at the right temperature. I’d love to go back and sample other parts of the menu, including the pizzas, the other house-made pastas, and the wild mushroom bruschetta and sheep’s milk ricotta starters.

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→ October 18, 2013
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Rebuild iOS app.

My Jose Abreu signing analysis is up for Insiders, and yesterday’s Klawchat transcript is up as well.

Rebuild, which is on sale this month for just $0.99, is a city-builder game with a couple of twists, a Sim City-inspired game with RPG elements and a zombie theme where your nascent city comes under increasingly frequent and intense attacks from marauding zombie hordes. After a game or two of getting my clock cleaned while I learned aspects of the game that the tutorial didn’t cover, I found it very addictive with sufficient challenge on the third level (of five) or higher.

In Rebuild, you begin with a four-block territory within a larger city that has been decimated by zombies, and your goal is to retake thirty or more city blocks and form a new government of non-zombie types, a process that involves balancing resources across multiple simultaneous demands. (There are other story-based victory conditions as well, but they’re not made explicit at the start.) You must add recruits from survivors hiding out in unclaimed blocks, feed your people, keep them happy (with churches, bars, or the occasional find of whiskey or chocolate), clear out nearby blocks by sending in soldiers, and defend your home territory from regular zombie attacks. Choosing which city blocks to claim can depend on your needs at the time – you need at least one hospital to treat injured or diseased citizens, a school to increase citizens’ skills, sufficient housing for everyone, farms for a regular food source, a laboratory or two to research new technologies, and more.

The role-playing element comes within your specific citizens, each of whom has a name and ratings across up to five separate skills: combat, leadership, building, scavenging, and science, up to a maximum of 10 in each. You can increase a citizen’s skills by arming him/her with a weapon or tool (or, occasionally, a dog), and skills increase with experience in the field. The upshot is that you must choose the right citizens for each task, including which ones to leave at home on “guard duty” for the semi-unpredictable attacks from outside zombie hordes, and which ones to put on indefinite tasks like farming, bartending, or preaching, or on long-range tasks like lab research.

Rebuild’s main twist, which wasn’t clear until I’d played it a few times on the “challenging” (moderate) difficulty level, is that the risks associated with those zombie attacks increase as the game goes on: They become more frequent, as often as every other turn, and the “danger” (risk of injury, death, or loss of city blocks) increases as you go further into the game. There are some ways to compensate, such as researching and building watchtowers, bunkers, and turrets to use around your city’s borders, but you have to start working on those much earlier in the game. Once the attacks speed up, keeping your people happy becomes more difficult as well, even if you’ve kept them fed and are using bars and churches. Striking the right balance across workers isn’t complicated, but you’re making fresh decisions every turn or two on who to send to which job.

The in-game information is solid once you know what you’re being told. I found that keeping the Danger rating, which updates with every worker assignment, at or under 25% was enough to keep my city growing without incurring much risk of loss of life or territory. The top info bar also tells you how much food you’re saving or losing in each round and your citizens’ happiness, which you’ll need to keep above 50% to finish the main goal of drafting a new constitution. Rebuild also allows you to take five citizens from one victorious game into another game at a higher level, which I think is probably critical to winning the most difficult (“Impossible”) level, because it lets you hit the ground running and train new recruits more quickly.

There are three other ways to win Rebuild, plus one win-by-losing storyline, but that’s more along the RPG lines and involves somewhat less of the city-building aspect that I most enjoyed about the game. The graphics are outstanding and the app ran smoothly most of the time, although I did experience two crashes, so I recommend using the manual save feature on top of the autosave feature to ensure you don’t lose any hard-won progress. For a buck, it’s a no-brainer.

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→ October 17, 2013
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Top Chef, S11E03.

Klawchat today at 1 pm EDT.

* We start in the stew room just after Jason’s elimination. Bret starts making excuses, and Nicholas shuts him down quickly. Seemed to me like Bret was trying to convince himself, not anyone else.

* Louis talks about having a family as if it’s not very compatible with chef life. The few chefs I know well have all said that it’s hard to find work/life balance when work is so all-consuming – six or seven days a week, often twelve-hour (or more) days, and that’s just running one successful restaurant.

* This week’s Quickfire is an elimination challenge. Dana Cowan, the Editor-in-Chief of Food and Wine, is the guest judge and may have created the challenge. We get way too much of her on this show. The magazine isn’t that great – it has always seemed dated to me, like it’s still geared toward the dinner-party era of the 1970s, and there’s too little emphasis on cooking (as opposed to dining out) in it. I far prefer Fine Cooking and Bon Appetit in that same genre. Anyway, the challenge is to reinvent a popular food trend that Dana believes is, like heroin, so passé: eggs over everything, bacon, smoked foods, and kale. She says kale only appears as kale salad or kale chips. I ate a kale salad last night at Barbuzzo. It was really fucking good. Also, the best salad I’ve ever had was at Caulfield’s in Beverly Hills and had kale, hard-boiled egg, and applewood-smoked bacon, for the superfecta. So, you know, shut it, Dana.

* Janine wants to smoke scallops, but they get ripped out of the fridge before she can grab them. Scallops would make my list of foods that are overused on Top Chef – and I’d include bacon there, as well as anything truffle, and foie. That’d be a much more interesting challenge: Make a dish that excludes all of those items (and maybe one or two more.) Janine goes for bone-in pork loin instead, but hot-smoking that fully would take an hour or more, not the 30 minutes they have for this challenge.

* Michael goes all Uncle Gus on his oysters. We’re about to see Padma eating a smoked oyster plate, with third-degree burns.

* Odd choices: Stephanie is making a pasta dish with candied bacon, using the bacon fat to coat the pasta. That’s delicious, but not inventive at all. It’s at least been part of northern and central Italian cuisine for a century or more. … Bret is a bad listener and gets a timeout for making a kale salad after Dana specifically said not to make a kale salad. … Aaron deep-fries the kale, which is going to produce something very much like a kale chip. He then overseasons it, which has to be among the top three reasons Top Chef contestants get eliminated (along with under/overcooking a protein and failing to follow explicit directions).

* With about six minutes left, we see Janine panicking because, shocker, the pork isn’t cooked. I assumed at the time she’d sear it off, both to finish cooking it (it can stay rare or medium-rare in the center) and to get some color and flavor on the outside, but we don’t see that step.

* Carrie’s dish looked the best on the screen – soft-boiled egg, hand chopped and mixed into a dressing with chili flakes and lemon zest, served over green beans. It looked and sounded amazing, and I could see putting that dressing on asparagus or even tossing it with wilted bitter greens. Still waiting for the recipe on that one.

* The judges’ favorites: Nina (Scotch quail egg, confit potatoes, leek and potato puré) Shirley (rice congee with a “perfect” shirred egg, sesame oil, and soy sauce), and the visibly nervous Stephanie (fresh pasta with candied bacon and flash-fried sweet potatoes). Winner: Shirley, who I believe called it her “get of the jail free card,” which is a delightful expression and not exactly inaccurate given the history of Top Chef immunity.

* Their least favorites: Bret, for not listening. Aaron, whose kale was totally overdressed and too salty. Louis, in whose dish the judges could barely taste the smokiness of the trout. Aaron is eliminated, saying “one mistake will send you home.” It is maybe the most common mistake of all, though: Season lightly, taste, season again. He seasoned heavily, then tasted, and couldn’t hit Undo. Bret knows he “dodged a bit of a bullet” but doesn’t seem to realize there is a bazooka aimed at his face at this point.

* Elimination challenge: Recreate one of four classic items from the menu at Commander’s Palace, located in New Orleans’ Garden District. It’s legendary for its food and for its history of churning out great chefs, including Emeril and Paul Prud’homme, both of whom will be at the dinner table along with Executive Chef Tory McPhail. No pressure here, just replicate a dish and serve it to the guy who invented it.

* Did Shirley whisper “Commander’s Palace” right before Padma announced it? Was that some kind of subliminal move? Creepy.

* The dishes: Shrimp and tasso Henican (recipe, if you’re curious). Black skillet seared (what we’d call “blackened” outside of Louisiana) trout, a Paul Prud’homme dish. Emeril’s veal chop Tchoupitoulas, with red potatoes, and Brussels sprouts. And a strawberry trio – a petite shortcake, a strawberry blood and sand cocktail, and a strawberry beignet. The cocktail is a variation on a dated but classic drink from the 1920s that included Scotch, blood orange juice, vermouth, and a Danish liqueur called Cherry Heering.

* The first thing I noticed when the chefs entered the kitchen: it’s huge. Usually we see the chefs fighting for square footage or dealing with old equipment, but this is big, spacious, and looks state of the art. I look forward to inevitable complaints about space anyway.

* Give Louis points for at least saying he read up online on Cajun and Creole foods, although given what comes next, it sounds like he might not have retained what he read.

* Stephanie, the Queen of Self-Psychouts, says she’s struggling with the biscuits. She knows it’s a 3:2:1 flour:liquid:fat ratio, but she doesn’t really understand how it works. Really, Steph? Don’t they teach basic pastry dough techniques in culinary school? Can I send you a copy of Ruhlman’s Ratio? It’s on me.

* Bret doesn’t want to fight for grill space, so he decides to grill his chops to order, after the others have vacated the grill. This feels like elimination foreshadowing.

* Mini-drama in the kitchen: First, Nina grabbed Michael’s plates by mistake, even though they had the chefs’ names on them. Michael reclaims his plates but throws her okra on the cooking table. I’m actually shocked that Nina didn’t blow up at him in the kitchen; Michael Voltaggio would have torn the guy’s head off, dumped habanero juice down his throat, and put his head back on backwards, just to make a point.

* The shrimp and tasso dishes come out first. Commander’s Palace’s current head chef Jason is also cooking each of the dishes so the judges can compare. Hugh says Michael overcooked his shrimp, while Travis didn’t cook it enough. Nina whiffed on presentation (although we know why), yet her shrimp was impeccably cooked. Bene’s sauce and Michael’s presentation were the best in those areas.

* Bret, grilling to order, is in the way as the chefs assigned the trout are plating. I don’t know if he’s just a fish out of water after some time outside of a restaurant kitchen, or editing made him look that way, but they are setting him up for a fall.

* The trout comes out and everything is underseasoned, for reasons to be fully explained later. Janine’s was the best according to Hugh, which generates moderate agreement around the table, even from the diners who don’t know what she looks like. Nicholas’ was bland and unevenly cooked. Louis’ was overcooked and dried with no taste because of no salt. Tom says they’re so paranoid about getting it right that they’re getting it wrong. Were they also panicked after seeing Aaron go home for oversalting his kale?

* More drama: Shirley’s yellow beets are gone. Thank God she has immunity or she might lose her mind. Turns out Patty took them by accident and everything’s copacetic. Pea purée this isn’t.

* Bret’s pork chops don’t have grill marks, so the meat looks boiled or steamed. Brian’s is close but his Brussels sprouts are raw. Patty’s plate has the best presentation and her veal is nicely cooked; this was a big episode for her after two down weeks to start the season. Most of Shirley’s pork chops are overcooked. Bret’s sauce is closest to the real thing, but with no sear on the meat and a messy plate, Emeril says his dishes have “no love.” Hugh starts baiting Emeril, trying to get him to go back to the kitchen with him to show them how it’s supposed to be done. This is why we love Hugh.

* The dessert course turned out to be the best of the four, with only Sara falling short of the mark as her beignet wasn’t good and her shortcake tops fell apart.” Carrie nailed the biscuit (shortcake is just a biscuit with cream as the liquid) and her cocktail. Justin’s was very good across the board; Lally Brennan, of the family that owns Commander’s Palace, says, “I’m thinkin that boy might’ve made a beignet before.” Steph’s cocktail and biscuit were good; Hugh says it’s a better biscuit than the original, which flusters Chef McPhail slightly. Everyone says the chefs nailed this course, which is nice to hear so early in the season when the emphasis is (justifiably) on mistakes.

* Dana says she is a “whipped cream whore.” Moving right along…

* Tom’s summary of the worst dishes: The chefs made “basic cooking mistakes.” Justin nailed the beignet. Steph’s beignets weren’t great, but the biscuits were “awesome” (Hugh). The shrimp dishes where largely too acidic for a plate that demanded balance across sweet, sour, salty, and savory. The biggest strugglers: Bret, whose pork was overcooked without grill marks and who served sloppy plates; Louis’ underseasoned trout; and Carlos’ overblackened, underseasoned trout.

* Top three: Justin, Stephanie, and Nina, so two from the dessert course and just one from the three mains. Justin wins, probably for having the fewest mistakes? The camera shows Stephanie smiling for him, but Nina on the edge of a scowl. I’m hoping the win gets Stephanie a boost of confidence, as her pedigree should make her one of the best chefs on the show, but she just comes off as a chronic worrier.

* Bottom three: Louis, Carlos, and Bret. Louis made the spice mix for the whole group, then didn’t retaste his own food. But didn’t anyone in the group taste their food and notice it had no salt? You can’t miss that. Carlos knows he had the skillet too hot but had no recourse. Bret didn’t get the meat on the grill early enough and, to his credit, acknowledging all of his mistakes here. He sounds like a man who knows it’s time.

* Bret is indeed eliminated. Louis’ mistake this time might have been bigger, but Bret’s errors had been compounding over three episodes. Tom said there were “too many mistakes on that plate” and Emeril says he showed “poor time management.” Bret goes into the stew room, says they made the right call and he understands why. I can’t snark a guy who goes out with dignity like that.

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→ October 16, 2013
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Top Chef, S11E02.

Sorry this is so delayed, but I had no free time in Arizona to watch the show and write it up. Anyway, I posted two more Fall League columns, players who exceeded expectations and players who fell short. I also have a column up explaining my disdain for the term “clutch”, and I had Dirk Hayhurst as a guest on this week’s Behind the Dish podcast.

On to the show…

* The show starts with a Quickfire that begins right after Ramon’s elimination: Prepare a gumbo, based on your heritage, and begin that same night at the house using a slow cooker. The chefs get 15 minutes the following day to finish, and the winner gets immunity. The judge is Leah Chase, the 90-year-old “Queen of Creole Cuisine” and owner of Dooky Chase restaurant in New Orleans, which has been open since 1941.

* Michael, one of the two local chefs on the show, says in New Orleans, “if you don’t have gumbo on your menu you’re going out of business.” I believe that, but I’ve also had some very mediocre gumbo down there, so it’s important to have it on the menu but not as important that it be good.

* Aaron asks another chef, “is gumbo like a velouté base?” It’s not – velout´, one of the five mother sauces in French cuisine, involves a very light roux, while gumbo requires a dark roux for its characteristic flavor. I don’t know how a professional, US-born chef could be ignorant of this. It’s not an obscure dish.

* I clearly couldn’t host the Top Chef contestants in my house because there aren’t enough outlets.

* Carrie is going for an Iowa/Trinidad blend, reflecting her mixed roots, but the result looks more like broccoli soup. Jason, who lost his Polish-born mother when he was just three years old (and yeah, now I feel bad for the guy), makes one with cabbage, pork shanks, beets, and potatoes as the thickener.

* Michael hates his gumbo so he dumps it out and starts over. Pretty ballsy to do that even though the lost cooking time is significant. It’s a sunk cost, though – you can’t get that time back, so continuing with a crappy dish just because you’ve spent a lot of time on it is a bad strategy.

* At judging, Aaron misses the opportunity of a lifetime when Padma picks up a shrimp from his dish and says, “Did you want me to put the whole head in my mouth?” The correct response was, “No, Padma, just the tip.”

* The bottom three dishes belonged to Jason, primarily for the dried beets; Michael, whose revised drunken-chicken with dirty rice didn’t seem to be gumbo at all; and Patty, whose mofongo-style dish with plantains aslo seemed to be not-gumbo. Then we get Jason calling it “bullshit” in the confessional and I’m reminded of why I didn’t like the guy in the first place. I knew it wasn’t just the douchey hair.

* The top three were Carrie’s green gumbo (coconut, green mango, and buttery corn crumble), Aaron’s shrimp heads, and Shirley’s with braised pork belly. Carrie wins, despite her concerns about the color, when Leah says it reminds her of the gumbo z’herbes she makes for Holy Thursday. Carrie gets immunity from cruci … er, elimination.

* Elimination challenge: Food trucks! Susan Spicer of Bayona restaurant is the guest judge. I don’t know who she is and her pants look ridiculous. Other than that, great to have you here, Susan. She can’t measure up to Leah, who says “the Pope quit” but after Katrina “I had to keep going.” I’m surprised the chefs didn’t fight over who got to take her home. Anyway, the chefs are cooking for Habitat for Humanity volunteers who appear to be working in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was the hardest-hit area during Katrina, probably because the whole area is four feet below sea level (and the levees didn’t hold).

* Padma splits the chefs up into five teams. The yellow team does a taco truck with ceviche and some kind of fried food, all very smart and traditional for a truck. The blue team does a “surf truck” and Jason is talking some health-food nonsense about giving the volunteers “sustained energy throughout the course of the day” as if what they really want is a Clif Bar and a Red Bull. The green team is going Mediterranean; the three women all volunteer Louis for service duty because of his smile, which I guess is dreamy or something. The red team is going for a Miami-Caribbean theme and four of the chefs are completely ignoring Bene.

* Patty recalls when Hurricane George hit Puerto Rico in 1997 and she didn’t have electricity for six months. If you thought the response in Louisana was slow, think about the second-class status of a U.S. commonwealth or territory.

* Bene has been relegated to sous chef and it’s not clear why the others chefs have no respect for him at all. I don’t know if it’s because he’s goofy (he is) or if he said something off camera that convinced them that he’s not that good, but he has to stand up for himself and make sure there’s an item that he can claim as his own.

* Carrie wants to make empanadas but can’t find a rolling pin at Whole Foods, so she buys a giant bottle of wine and chills it for a makeshift, very cold rolling pin that will keep the fat in the dough from melting while she’s working with it. That’s pretty clever.

* Nicholas and Jason are trying to make sure that Patty/Bret don’t “overthink the dishes.” I’m just going to say that they should have spent more time thinking about their own dishes instead, as Jason’s salmon rolls, which he rolls up ahead of time so he can spend more time chatting up the volunteers, are going to get very soggy as they sit.

* To the food … The yellow team serves a dorado (mahi-mahi) and shrimp ceviche with tomato from Travis and Brian, a beef and pork curry empanada with mangos from Carrie and Aaron, and tilapia tacos with chipotle aioli and cabbage from Carlos and Aaron. Everything seems to be a hit, including the volunteer’s comment “whatever this yellow stuff is, it’s good,” which sounds far worse without context.

* We need to chip in and buy Tom a better hat.

* The blue team serves Jason’s salmon hand roll with quinoa and a honey mustard miso; Nick’s spiced shrimp with a watermelon/tomato sauce; Bret’s coconut ceviche with snapper and scallop as well as hot plantain chips; and Patty’s tuna slider with crispy pancetta, avocado, and tomato. The negatives start early here – Jason’s rolls are soggy and soft, Bret’s plantains are way too hot and the dish isn’t well seasoned, Patty’s tuna isn’t well-seasoned and the tomatoes were somehow off.

* Janine, in response to a question about doing construction work: “I’m pretty good with my hands.” Is this whole season just going to be “male chefs giggling at anything Janine says that might have a double meaning?”

* The red team serves Janine’s cold gazpacho with pickled shrimp; Justin’s lobster and crab fritter with corn puree and bacon jam, which Tom comps to a funnel cake and is the item I most wanted to reach into my television and grab; Nina and Bene’s jerk chicken sandwich with mango and crispy plantains; and Michael’s ricotta with burnt honey, stone fruit, and toasted coconut. The judges seem mixed on Janine using ginger in the gazpacho. Michael’s dessert gets raves, and it was the only dessert anyone served, which is often a plus for the chef.

* The green team offers Steph’s crispy chickpeas (falafel) with watercress and radish salad, Sara’s tuna burger with watermelon rind pickles, Shirley’s spicy grilled lamb salad, and Louis’ “amuse” … which was just a rectangular block of watermelon on a lemongrass stick? Is that really all he did? I mean, I don’t want Louis to strain himself or anything, but that seems a little basic.

* Judges’ table: The yellow team wins, and blue is on the bottom, no surprise either way. Green team was the runner-up. The judges describe the red and blue teams’ plates as “strange choices” that weren’t “as well thought-through.” That doesn’t line up with the comments we saw about the red team, though; the only real criticism was directed against the blue team and it seemed like the guests and judges liked several red team plates.

* It’s clear right away the the empanadas were the winning dish, although the judges liked everything the yellow team offered. Making the dough on the truck was the key to the dish and to impressing the judges, so Carrie completes the sweep of the episode. Maybe Jason should have put his salmon roll in a Pop-Tart instead.

* Speaking of Jason, he’s in a good emotional frame of mind for Judges’ Table: “if they’re constructive, I’ll be nice. If they’re rude, I’ll be rude back.”

* When Bret says he thought they were in good shape because they had leftovers – which means that diners didn’t come back for seconds – Padma looks at Bret like he’s the dimmest bulb in the chandelier. It’s like when you put together something from IKEA and you have a few unused screws when you think you’re done. Those aren’t bonus pieces.

* Three of the dishes were real duds. Bret’s ceviche wasn’t cold enough to begin with, wasn’t seasoned correctly, and the tostones were too hot to pick up (they’re the utensils with which you eat the fish). The tomato on Patty’s tuna slider was apparently awful and Tom was so pissed off about it that, if he were still wearing that hat at judges’ table, it might have caught fire. (Which wouldn’t have been a bad outcome from a fashion perspective.) Jason admits that rolling up his salmon early was a mistake, but says he didn’t realize it at the time he was doing it. Even Nicholas’ dish fell short due to the wasabi peas. Tom says “details” are where they went wrong, but these weren’t minor details – if I got warm ceviche in a restaurant, I’d send it back.

* Jason is eliminated. I’m shocked – he certainly wasn’t the worst chef in the room, based on what we’ve seen, and I thought the questions about Bret’s ceviche, from high temperature to insufficient acidity, would have bounced him. Jason says he’s “bitter and angry” and in this one case I can’t blame him, even though he comes off so badly on TV.

* Am I alone in thinking we haven’t seen a strong favorite or two? Paul and Kristen had already separated themselves somewhat by this point in their seasons, but I don’t see anyone like that yet. Carrie is the easy choice for now, based on these wins and what I’d call moderate ambition with her cooking, but what she’s made so far hasn’t been wildly inventive like Paul’s dishes or immaculately intricate like Kristen’s. After Carrie, I’ll go with Carlos (gut feel pick) and Stephanie for the top three, with Shirley also a consideration, and Brian and Travis both in the “haven’t seen enough” bucket. Bottom three: Patty, Bret, and Bene.

* Can’t wait till tonight’s episode, which I believe marks the return of Hugh Acheson. Plus, yellow beets are the new pea purée.

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→ October 14, 2013
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Arizona eats, October 2013 edition.

My first Arizona Fall League update went up on Thursday afternoon. The next one will go up on Monday morning … that is, a few hours from now.

I had a bittersweet experience in Arizona last week, my first extended trip there since we moved out of the state in June. The pleasure in seeing Fall League games, catching up with some friends, and visiting old haunts couldn’t surpass the feeling that all of that – plus the spectacular weather – was no longer mine, that the drive south on the 101 was no longer to my house, that winter was waiting for me on the other side of the trip. (I define winter as “not summer.”) I did manage to distract myself by hitting four new restaurants while I was on the ground there, at least.

Crêpe Bar in Tempe is the new brick-and-mortar place from the chef behind Truckin’ Good Food, and you know they’re serious about food when you see they use coffee from heart roasters in Portland, Oregon. Turns out they have a real barista who pulls a damn good shot of espresso, and the drip coffee earned raves from my friend Sam. Crêpe Bar also offers cold-brewed coffee, which they prep daily and allow to steep for about 24 hours, as well as V60 and Aeropress pour-overs, so it’s worth going if only for the coffee. As for the crepes, I’ll just point out that I had a crêpe with vanilla custard, strawberries, toasted slivered almonds, and some 55% Valrhona chocolate, and you’ll just be jealous.

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Located in the Bespoke Inn in Old Town Scottsdale, a mere 12-minute walk from Scottsdale Stadium, Virtu Honest Craft just made Esquire‘s list of the 18 best new restaurants in the country, and it might be the best restaurant in the state of Arizona now – something I wouldn’t say lightly, having tried and loved crudo, Citizen Public House, Pizzeria Bianco, cibo, and others. Virtu’s food was just a slight cut above its competitors, offering inventive plates that played with flavors and textures in clever ways with visually appealing presentations. Kiley McDaniel met me for dinner, but was a little late, so I ordered one of the happy hour crostini options, with piquillo pepper jam and manchego cheese, a great twist on the ordinary fig jam or quince paste crostini concept that brought a hint of spice and less straight sugar to the bite. Then the gluttony began in earnest: the chef sent out a large antipasto plate with three cheeses, truffled salami, Sicilian olives, and marcona almonds, as well as honey to pair with the blue cheese. That was free (I think all the early tables got one), but came out after we’d ordered two starters and two entrees, so things got out of hand quickly. The chef’s snack starter is almost a meal in itself: A pile of hand-cut French fries tossed with sausage, mozzarella curd, and what I think was a sweetened balsamic reduction, topped with an over easy egg. We also went with the item that the Phoenix New Times’ Chow Bella blog highlighted, the grilled asparagus with duck egg, bacon candy, peppered feta, and foie gras hollandaise. The chef’s snack was comfort food, hearty, salty, fatty, and of course a little heavy, while the asparagus plate was like brunch for dinner, bright colors leading to brighter flavors if you could manipulate everything into one bite, which wasn’t always easy.

For the mains, I went with the smoked duck, which came on a smashed plantain with small grilled chunks of foie gras and pomegranate arils. Kiley ordered the seared scallops, served on a pumpkin/onion mash with a white chocolate beurre blanc. I think we both preferred the scallop dish, which was better executed across the board, with perfectly-cooked sea scallops paired beautifully with the fall flavors of the squash and onion; my only comment here is that the dish needed a finish of acid, even something as simple as lemon juice (although I imagine a place like Virtu would instead go with a yuzu foam or a champagne vinegar gelée). The duck itself was cooked nicely but smoking duck does rob you of the glory of crispy duck skin, and the plantain mash had been cooked a second time on a griddle to provide that crispness, a process that made it too crunchy and even charred the edges a little bit. The proteins seem to be standard here but the sides change at least every few weeks depending on what’s in season; I’d recommend whatever they’re doing with scallops and would trust in the chef beyond that.

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Otro Cafe is the newest spot from Doug Robson, the Mexican-born (really) chef behind the menus at Gallo Blanco and the Hillside Spot. Otro’s menu is simple – a few taco items, a few tortas with the same meats you’ll find on the taco menu, a few Mexican street-food starters, and a full bar. Kiley joined me for this meal as well, so we split the elote callejero – roasted corn on the cob with paprika, cotija cheese, and a little mayonnaise, which the server will shave off the cob for you tableside. I also ordered the small guacamole because Kiley is a misanthropic devil-worshipper who hates avocadoes. Both were superb, just simple and fresh items with big flavors thanks to the tomatillos in the guacamole or the salty-tangy burst from the cotija in the corn. For tacos, we each ordered the same trio (tacos range from $2.50 to $3.50 apiece) – the pork “al pastor,” the carne asada, and the grilled marinated shrimp, all of which were excellent. The carne asada was my favorite, even though I’m generally not a big steak eater; Otro uses seasoned grilled ribeye, chopped and topped with lettuce, an aji (chili pepper) aioli, cilantro, and guacamole. The shrimp was second, marinated in achiote and topped with red and white cabbage, chili pepper, and more guacamole, all outstanding although the shrimp ended up in the background beneath the spice and acid of the cabbage/chili slaw. The pork al pastor was still good, served with salsa verde, a little pineapple, and more cilantro, although I missed the better bite of the steak and, well, that was the only taco without guacamole and it was going to suffer by comparison. Otro also offers a number of small side dishes, including two rotating options from local farms/CSAs, for just $4-5. Some items are $1 off at happy hour so the two of us got out of there for under $30 combined and had probably consumed too much food.

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The Gladly is the new venture from the group behind Citizen Public House, focused a little more on cocktails and small plates and less on the mains that made CPH our favorite spot for an elegant dinner out. The Gladly’s chicken liver pate starter, where the liver is blended with pistachio nuts, was by far the best item I had, and while I’m not sure eating a half-cup of the stuff at one sitting was the wisest nutritional move for me, that is what I did because it was too good to pass up (especially with whole-grain mustard and pickled onions to add to the crostini). The Brussels sprouts starter might be a meal for a vegetarian, as it’s served on a plate of creamy white-corn polenta; I prefer Brussels sprouts a little more cooked than this, as they were still too bitter at the center and hard to cut, but the combination of the sprouts and the grits was excellent. The one dish I didn’t love was the duck ramen – five-spice duck “ham” served in a giant bowl of miso broth with ramen and pea greens. The broth itself was a little bland, light on salt but also lacking any clearly defined flavor, and while I love duck prosciutto, its flavor was muted after sitting in the hot miso broth for a while. I’d love to give the Gladly a second shot, preferably when I can indulge in the drink menu, but also to try some of the other small plates like the paprika-cured pork belly, or the pigstrami sandwich, which turns my favorite starter at CPH into a smoked pork butt sandwich with a Brussels sprout sauerkraut as the slaw.

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As for repeat visits, I had breakfast at the Hillside Spot three times and everything was just as I left it, from the chilaquiles to the pancakes to the chocolate chip cookies, so good job there. I also went back to Matt’s Big Breakfast which remained top-notch and swung by Giant Coffee (owned by Matt) and had a great espresso there. Saigon Kitchen in Surprise was a little disappointing, but only in that the bun with chicken I ordered came with these giant pieces of lettuce that got in the way of the noodles and other vegetables that were sort of buried at the bottom. I did have the hilarious experience of watching the seventy-odd woman next to me send back a bowl of pho (soup) that was hot enough for me to see the steam from a meter away because she claimed it wasn’t hot enough.

Some places I wanted to try but didn’t have time to visit: the Welcome Diner, La Piazza Locale, and Bink’s Cafe, all in Phoenix proper, and Altitude Coffee Lab in Scottsdale. There’s always spring training, I guess…

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The Killer Inside Me.

I’m off to Arizona for some Fall League scouting this week, so barring a rainout there won’t be a chat or podcast, and dish posting may be sporadic.

I’m a huge fan of noir films and novels, starting with the hard-boiled detective novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler but, having finished both of their canons, moving on to darker crime novels like those of Jim Thompson, whose The Killer Inside Me is the third and most unsettling of his novels I’ve read so far. The basis for a 2010 movie starring Casey Affleck and Jessica Alba, the novel delivers exactly what the title promises: It’s a first-person account of a sociopathic deputy sheriff whose solution to almost every problem is to kill whoever’s causing it.

Lou Ford is the narrator and killer in question, a cliche-spouting officer of the law who has a troubled background that has limited him to low-level police work, even though he has the intelligence of his father, a successful doctor who may have recognized that his son was mentally unstable. Ford’s narration is of dubious reliability, and he only gives us glimpses of his history of violence, but is more transparent when describing his predicament when an attempt to exact revenge on the town’s wealthy industralist backfires on him (in part through his own duplicity). Every solution he conceives involves violence, usually committed by him but pinned on someone else. After a few deaths too many, however, the facade he’s constructed starts to crumble as he realizes his bumpkin act isn’t fooling the powers that be any longer.

Thompson utilizes violence as a literary tool, as a window into “the sickness” inside of Ford and as a physical manifestation of the character’s inability to properly process negative emotions such as frustration or insecurity, largely avoiding lurid descriptions of Ford’s actions. Thompson largely avoids the question of a first cause, other than a hint that Lou may have been abused when he was a teenager, and focuses instead on the character’s almost robotic responses to difficult situations. He’s the pre-Anton Chigurh, but with a complexity that McCarthy’s arch-villain lacked, showing glimpses of emotions directed at others (through the lens of his own well-being, of course) and a wry sense of humor in between the spasms of violence.

The Killer Inside Me functions as a perverse character study, but its main appeal is its suspense – will Ford continue to kill with impunity, or will the various authorities stop him – and if they do, what kind of fight will he put up before he’s caught or killed? Ford even confesses to another murder he believes he has to commit – whether for practical reasons or due to “the sickness” is unclear – well before it takes place, then takes his time getting around to it, as if he’s enjoying toying with the reader’s emotions, or merely enjoying reliving the murder in his own mind.

The hazard of any novel that uses first-person narration where the narrator is the central character (and probably an unreliable narrator too) is that other characters become two-dimensional because we only see what the narrator sees, or what he wants to tell us. Thompson conveys the sense of a net closing in on Ford in part through the sheer number of characters whom Ford suspects have figured out his ruses, yet none of them has any depth because of the limitations of Ford’s own perception of others and their emotions. Ford is textured and at times opaque, but Thompson gives us a character who doesn’t describe other characters well because he can’t understand their emotions other than fear.

I didn’t enjoy The Killer Inside Me as much as the similar pop. 1280, which is more nuanced in its portrait of a ruthless killer, or The Grifters, which revolves around confidence men double-crossing each other in a study in sociopathy. Thompson’s ability to portray these half-people, consumed only with themselves and unable to feel anything for others, is disturbing in its realism, but that darkness is an essential ingredient in noir and, I admit, part of what I find so compelling in his novels.

Next up: I’m about a third of the way through George Eliot’s Middlemarch, and knocked off Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native last week.

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