→ March 31, 2012
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Saturday five, #2.

Five books, five links to my own stuff, and five links to others’ articles.

I’ve read eight books since my last post on any of them, so I’m going to take a shortcut and catch up by highlighting the five most interesting. Now that spring training is ending, I hope to get back to regular dishblogging soon.

* Charles Seife’s Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea is the one non-fiction book in this bunch, a history-of-math tome that incorporates a fair amount of philosophy, physics, and religion all in a book that’s under 200 pages and incredibly readable for anyone who’s at least taken high school math. The subject is the number zero, long scorned by philosophers, theologians, and even some mathematicians who resisted the idea of nothing or the void, yet which turned out to be critical in a long list of major scientific advances, including calculus and quantum mechanics. I generally prefer narrative non-fiction, but Zero moves as easily as a math-oriented book can get without that central thread.

* Dashiell Hammett’s Nightmare Town is one of three major Hammett short-story collections in print (along with The Continental Op and the uneven The Big Knockover), and my favorite for its range of subjects and characters without feeling as pulpy as some of his most commercial stories. The twenty stories are all detective stories of one sort or another starring several different Hammett detectives, including early iterations of Sam Spade and the character who eventually became the Thin Man, as well as a western crime story that might be my favorite short piece by Hammett, “The Man Who Killed Dan Odams.”

* Readers have recommended Tim O’Brien’s short story cycle The Things They Carried for several years, usually any time I mention reading another book that deals with the Vietnam War and/or its aftermath. The book, a set of interconnected stories that feels like an novel despite the lack of a central plot, is based heavily on O’Brien’s own experiences in that conflict, especially around death – of platoon mates, of Viet Cong soldiers, of Vietnamese civilians, and of a childhood crush of O’Brien’s who died at age 9 of a brain tumor. The writing is remarkable, more than the stories themselves, which seemed to cover familiar ground in the genre, as well as O’Brien’s ability to weave all of these disconnected stories into one tapestry around that central theme of death and the pointlessness of war. The final story, where he ties much of it together by revisiting one of the first deaths he discussed in the book, is incredibly affecting on two levels as a result of everything that’s come before.

* I’m a big Haruki Murakami fan – and no, I haven’t read 1Q84 yet and won’t until it’s in paperback – but Dance, Dance, Dance was mostly a disappointment despite some superficial entertainment value, enough to at least make it a quick read if not an especially deep one. A sequel of sorts to A Wild Sheep Chase, it attempts to be more expansive than that earlier novel but still feels like unformed Murakami, another look at him as he built up to The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a top-ten novel for me that hit on every level. Dance is just too introspective, without enough of Murakami’s sort of magical realism (and little foundation for what magical realism it does contain) and no connection between the reader and the main character.

* I loved Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, a funny, biting satire on upper-class life in the United States just after World War I, so I looked forward to House of Mirth, present on the Modern Library and Bloomsbury 100 lists, expecting more of that sharp wit but receiving, instead, a dry, depressing look at the limitations of life for women in those same social circles prior to the war. It’s a tragedy with an ironic title that follows Lily Bart through her fall from social grace, thanks mostly to the spiteful actions of other women in their closed New York society; it’s a protest novel, and one of the earliest feminist novels I’ve read (preceded, and perhaps inspired, by Kate Chopin’s The Awakening), but I found myself feeling more pity than empathy for Lily as a victim of circumstances, not of her own missteps.

Next up: I’m reading Martin Booth’s A Very Private Gentleman (filmed as The American) and listening to Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine: How Creativity Works. The Booth book is on sale through that link for $5.60.

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Five things I wrote or said this week:

On Jeff Samardzija’s revival.

This week’s chat.

One batch of spring training minor league notes, including the Angels, A’s, Rangers, and Royals.

Tuesday’s “top 10 players for 2017” column, which I emphasized was just for fun and still got people far too riled up. There’s no rational way to predict who the top ten players will be in five years and I won’t pretend I got them right. But it was fun to do.

I interviewed Top Chef winner and sports nut Richard Blais on the Tuesday Baseball Today podcast, in which he talked about what it was like to “choke” (his word) in the finals on his first season and then face the same situation in his second go-round. We also talked about why I should break my ten-year boycott of hot dogs.

—

And the links…

* The best patent rejection ever, featuring Borat’s, er, swimsuit.

* A spotlight on Massachusetts’ outdated liquor laws. For a state that likes to pretend it’s all progressive, Massachusetts is about thirty years behind the times when it comes to alcohol, to say nothing of how the state’s wholesalers control the trade as tightly as the state liquor board does in Pennsylvania. The bill this editorial discusses would be a small start in breaking apart their oligopoly, but perhaps enough to start to crumble that wall.

* I admit it, I’m linking to Bleacher Report, but Dan Levy’s commentary on how Twitter has affected what a “scoop” means, especially to those of us in the business, is a must read. And there’s no slidshow involved.

* The Glendale mayor who drove the city into a nine-figure debt hole by spending government money to build facilities for private businesses – including the soon-to-be-ex-Phoenix Coyotes – won’t run for a sixth term, yet she’s receiving more accolades than criticism on the way out. Put it this way: Given its schools, safety, and public finances, we never considered Glendale for a second when looking to move out here.

* The “pink slime” controversy has led the manufacturer to suspend production at three of its four plants. That makes for a good headline, but are job losses really relevant to what should be a discussion of whether this is something people, especially schoolchildren, should be consuming? And now the controversy is moving on to carmine dye, derived from an acid extracted from cochineal beetles and used in Starbucks frappuccinos. If nothing else, I applaud the new emphasis on knowing exactly what we’re eating.

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→ March 30, 2012
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Citizen Public House + more Scottsdale eats.

Citizen Public House in Scottsdale was on Phoenix magazine’s list of the 23 best new restaurants of 2011; this was my seventh so far, although two of the ones I’d visited previously have since closed. This dinner was the best meal I’ve had at any Arizona restaurant other than Pizzeria Bianco, a fine dining-meets-gastropub menu that’s heavy on bacon fat and other comfort-food staples.

We started with the pork belly pastrami ($12), probably their best-known dish, a small portion of melt-in-your-mouth pork belly with an exterior bark served over browned rye spaetzle with a Brussels sprout slaw and a whole-grain mustard vinaigrette. The meat is tender, the fat smooth and warm, and the zing of the mustard helped balance the richness of the meat. It was difficult to get all of the ingredients in one bite, but the hint of sweetness in the spice rub married well with the acidity of the vinaigrette and the faint bitterness of the cabbage. The bacon-fat popcorn ($5) is as you’d imagine – freshly-popped popcorn tossed in bacon fat with crispy pieces of bacon mixed in; there was a lot of fat at the bottom of the bowl but the popcorn itself wasn’t greasy.

The seared sea scallops ($24) over creamy grits were probably a bit past medium-rare but the sear was perfect and brought out the scallops’ inherent sweetness; they’re not my favorite kind of shellfish (that would be crab), but since this is another signature dish I felt compelled to try it, and actually liked the grits – more like the softest polenta imaginable, but made with white corn grits and whole corn rather than yellow cornmeal, creamy but not overly cheesy to the point where they might overshadow the scallops. The dish was topped with more crispy bacon bits, which are always welcome, and there was a superfluous Coca-Cola gastrique around the edges of the plate. My friend got the fair-trade short rib ($28), cut flanken-style, braised and browned (my preferred style) with a dried cherry sauce (barely necessary) and served over mashed parsnips

The chocolate pecan bars were a little sweet for me, with the texture of fudge and a salted caramel sauce on top, but if you like fudgy brownies this would likely be right up your alley, and the chicory ice cream that comes with it does give an earthy component to balance out the sticky-sweet flavor and texture of the bars. The beer selection only includes one local beer on draft (Four Peaks’ hefeweizen, which isn’t even one of their top two brews); the cocktail menu is heavy on old-school ingredients like gin and rye but in more contemporary concotions.

* Scratch Pastries on Indian School supposedly has the best macarons in town, but after one look at them – wide and flat, as if they’d spread badly in the oven – I decided to stick with a sandwich, which was on some of the best bread I’ve had out here. The smoked duck breast sandwich comes with walnuts, mixed greens, and olive oil, which sounded like it might be too simple but instead keeps the duck – smoky and tender but not fatty – at center stage. The sandwich came with a side salad for $8, an absolute steal given the quality of the ingredients, making it all the more horrifying that someone might choose one of the million fast-food options in that area to save a buck or two (if that).

* Echo Coffee is between Old Town and Papago Park (where the A’s minor league complex is, as well as the Phoenix Zoo) and rivals Cartel Coffee Lab for the best drip coffee in town. Echo grinds the beans to order, sitting them in a cone filter and pouring just-boiled water over the top, so it brews as you watch. Yes, it’s a $2 cup of coffee, but this is what real coffee tastes like, full of subtle notes that are lost when the coffee is overroasted (I’m looking at you, Peet’s) or blended to eliminate any kind of character (the very definition of Starbucks’ Pike Place blend). It’s too far from the house for me to go there just for a cup of coffee, but it’s good enough that I would reroute myself to go by there if I was otherwise headed into Phoenix or Scottsdale.

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→ March 24, 2012
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Saturday five.

Sorry I’ve been somewhat absent from here – spring training is among my worst times of the year for getting time for non-work writing.

I don’t know if this will become a regular blog feature, but I’ve been saving up a bunch of random links and recommendations and finally had an hour (thanks to an early wakeup call from the child today) to sit and work them up: five mostly-new alternative songs I’ve got in heavy rotation on the iPod and five links to articles/posts I enjoyed.

Civil Twilight – “Fire Escape.” (amazon/iTunesicon) After Of Monsters and Men’s “Little Talks,” this is my favorite new song of the year – I hear a little early U2 in the song, especially the vocals, but the slightly offbeat guitar riff is the part that drew me back after the first listen.

Bombay Bicycle Club – “Shuffle.” (amazon/iTunesicon) Second choice for second-favorite new song. That off-kilter piano sample and the spacey production of the vocals both reminded me of Beta Band, but this song is much bouncier than any Beta Band track I’ve heard.

School of Seven Bells – “The Night.” (amazon/iTunes) Sleigh Bells gets all the love right now – I thought the industrial thing was kind of played out twenty years ago – but I prefer these Bells, or at least this song, an ethereal electronic track that sounded like an updated Flock of Seagulls with a female vocalist lamenting a broken heart.

Lonely Forest – “Turn Off This Song and Go Outside.” (amazon/iTunesicon) Immediate reaction was negative – it’s just too emo for me – but then I found myself singing it the next day and caved in and bought it. Think of a slowed-down Jimmy Eat World that still just wants you to know they’re singing their hearts out. The chorus is still gimmicky, though. Originally released in 2010 on an EP.

Grouplove – “Tongue Tied.” (amazon/iTunesicon) Prediction: I’m going to hate this song in about six weeks. I’d call this LCD Soundsystem meets Erasure as sung by your obnoxious friends who sound like they’re never going to grow up.

—

And a few links:
Penny Arcade interview with Days of Wonder’s CEO, talking about how the iPad Ticket to Ride app boosted sales of the physical game. Recommended by reader Patrick T.

Jonah Lehrer on how anyone can be creative, from his just-released book Imagine: How Creativity Works.

NY Times article on hyperpolyglots, including how they use the Internet to find and help each other learn more and learn faster. The main subject is extremely impressive, but I’m not sure from the article whether he’s getting to fluency or just learning basic conversation.

Otters who look like Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as Hedgehogs who look like Martin Freeman.

Will Leitch’s piece on Bryce Harper, in which he points out that baseball needs some stars with personality, which Harper has in spades – and I agree. The “bad makeup” tag on him was always nonsense, and besides, it ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up.

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→ March 23, 2012
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The Artist.

Here’s my basic problem with The Artist, which I saw two weeks ago: The more I try to think about it, the more I end up thinking about something else.

Don’t mistake my tone there – it’s a very good movie, at different points entertaining, funny, and poignant; beautifully shot and staged; and simply written with little that doesn’t belong. But it didn’t stick with me at all; a great movie will come back to me often, days or even weeks after I see it, with the best scenes replaying in my head regardless of whether I called them to mind. I end up considering and reconsidering themes or questions or ambiguities, often until I see a different film. But The Artist brought none of that. It was a fun way to spend two hours, but I couldn’t call it more than that.

The Artist is, at heart, a tragic romance, the story of a man, George Valentin, who is madly in love with himself – so much so that he can’t seem to recognize it when someone else actually cares about him. The title might even be ironic, and given how he treats most of the people in his life, especially after his career begins to unravel, it might have more accurately been called The Asshole.

Valentin (Best Actor winner Jean Dujardin) is a silent-film star whose life is altered by two major events near the start of the film. One is the advent of talkies, which he dismisses as might anyone who finds his livelihood threatened by new technology or innovation. (I imagine buggy drivers had some choice words for the first automobile as well.) The other is a chance encounter with an adoring fan, the fresh-faced and aptly-named Peppy Miller (Best Supporting Actress nominee Berenice Bejo), to whom George gives a role as an extra in his next film. Her star rises with the rise of sound in pictures while he is cast aside, eventually blowing his fortune to produce a silent film that, for a variety of reasons, tanks at the box office, after which his wife leaves him and his life spirals down to the bottom of a series of bottles. He hits bottom twice, and Peppy ends up in position to repay him for his part in starting her career – if only he wasn’t too buried in self-pity to notice.

The strongest aspects of the movie lie in its subtleties, as the plot itself is pretty straightforward and there aren’t any real subplots. Peppy criticizes silent movies once she’s a star by referring to actors “mugging” for the camera, but Bejo and Dujardin mug a lot less than I expected without sacrificing the expression a silent film requires from its stars. I was far more impressed by the mass of activity underneath the film’s surface, some of which holds clues to the small twist at the end of the film that casts Valentin in a better light (but only slightly), some of which just made the film a greater pleasure to watch – such as the scene in the studio’s offices where the camera shows three floors simultaneously, with a flurry of activity around Peppy and George as she tries to reconnect with him, unaware that he’s just been sacked by the studio.

But the production values and strong performances couldn’t quite get me past how sparse the actual story was. Valentin starts at the top, falls to the bottom, nearly dies, considers suicide, but never seems to learn a damn thing – not the need to change, not the value of treating people well, not how to live within his means, nothing. Only at the very end do we see a small sign that he may have learned some humility, but even that is tainted by its circumstances. He waited around for life to come back around and save him. We spend more time laughing at misfortunes of his own making than we do empathizing with him because we never seen the insecurity that lurks behind the pride.

The dog is awesome, though.

—

I was familiar enough with the film going in to try to guard against the reflex reaction that the film only won the Academy Award for Best Picture because it seemed designed to win the award – a black-and-white love letter to nascent Hollywood shot in 4:3 with only two lines of spoken dialogue, coming at the very end of the film. And, to the film’s credit, it wasn’t hard to get lost in the story, even with the twists I kind of knew were coming. But it seemed rather insubstantial for a Best Picture winner, according to the arbitrary standard in my head for that award. I expect more depth from a film deemed the best of the year by that body.

I’ve only seen one other Best Picture nominee from last year, and The Artist was better, but I’m not sure what made this film, stripped of gimmickry, better than, say, Martha Marcy May Marlene. It’s prettier, and more mainstream, and not half as disturbing, but none of those things really makes it better. I’ll work my way through the nominees as I did last year, as well as a few movies that film-critic friends of mine have pushed me to see (coughA Separationcough), but I’ll predict now that I’ll find something else I thought was more deserving. Next up is Drive.

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→ March 11, 2012
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Fresno eats.

Hunan, located in the courtyard of a strip mall at Cedar and Herndon, boasts a chef, Zhongli Liu, who served as executive chef at a major Beijing hotel for over a decade before emigrating to the U.S.,  once representing China at the Bocuse d’Or competition. The restaurant looks like the typical Chinese restaurant you might find in any decent-sized city, but the food was something else entirely. 

I haggled with the waiter to try to get him to recommend something he really liked, but I didn’t get fair until I dropped the word ”authentic,” after which he didn’t hesitate to recommend the house special lamb. Lamb is my least favorite protein, but the man did not lie – the dish was outstanding. The lamb is sliced thinly and stir-fried with green peppers, onions, and a cumin sauce with lots of depth, including a little heat (not as much as you’d expect from all the dried Thai chilies on the plate), a little sweetness, and the right amount of salt. The hot and sour soup included in the meal was also phenomenal in texture and flavor, although I got one piece of bamboo that was too tough to chew. Apparently there’s a second menu you can request with more authentic dishes like the one I ate, although I still would have asked for a recommendation.

Cracked Pepper Bistro appears to be the clear leader for the ”best restaurant in Fresno” title, although that may not be the stiffest competition going. The food was very strong, maybe one grade below what you’d get at a good fine-dining establishment in a larger city, with larger portions and comparable service.

The server emphatically recommended the ”mala-insana” Napoleon, fried slices of eggplant with layers of goat cheese, roasted tomatoes, and pesto, covered with a drizzle of balsamic reduction (according to the server – the menu says it’s aged balsamic). I don’t really love eggplant because it tends to take on a weird, meaty-but-not-quite texture no matter how it’s cooked, but this was the best eggplant dish I’ve ever had. The slices, crusted in panko and crushed pumpkin seeds, held their shape, weren’t soggy or fibrous, and were as crunchy as a piece of fried chicken. I would have eaten them plain.

For the entree, I couldn’t pass up the short rib with German potato salad, and the ribs were tender enough to pull apart with your fingers. (I used a fork, as this appeared to be a respectable restaurant.) The potato salad wasn’t a salad at all – it’s new red potatoes, parcooked, then quickly fried to brown and crisp the exteriors, served with a dressing of minced bacon, sugar, cider vinegar, and Dijon mustard. The texture and sweetness of the caramelized sugars in the potatoes were great, but the sweet/sour dressing was too assertive and even bled into the sauce over the short ribs.

The restaurant’s main problem, at least in the two dishes I tried, was a lack of editing. The eggplant stacks were overpowered by the tartness of the goat cheese and the sweetness of the balsamic reduction. The potatoes that came with the short rib were similarly undone by the inclusion of sugar in the dressing, which, on top of the sugars created by quickly frying the potatoes and browning their exteriors, made the whole thing too sweet. I’m holding Cracked Pepper to a higher standard than I would most restaurants because they are aspiring to that higher standard (and are priced at that higher standard too); this is very good food done with a great deal of skill, but pulling back one step on each dish would have earned them the top grade.

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→ March 6, 2012
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Delux, Bliss on 4th, Irish Wolfhound (Phoenix eats).

I tried three new spots in the last week, but unfortunately none of them was all that great; clearly I need to keep branching out.

Phoenix has a surprisingly strong contingent of high-end burger joints, including three of the best-reviewed ones all within one long block of each other on Camelback just east of route 51. I’ve been to Zinburger and raved about it, but haven’t tried The Grind yet and just got to Delux yesterday for the first time (even though I first heard about it three or four years ago). They’re known more for their fries and for the general vibe of the place than for the burgers themselves, which I’d say also summarizes my experience there.

The fries are clearly a focus, and it’s the sweet potato fries that really stand out. Sweet potato fries rarely live up to the potential of the root vegetable involved, as they’re often soggy or mealy inside and rarely crispy on the outside, but these were among the best I’ve had. They’re cut thin, the exterior is crunchy, while the interior is light and fluffy like a regular French fry would be; the dipping sauce, a mixture of mayo, sour cream, cayenne pepper, and a few other spices, is kind of a poor man’s remoulade but complemented the sweetness of the sweet potato fries well. The regular fries were fine, not greasy at all but also not that crispy, and of course next to the sweet potatoes the regular fries seemed mild.

The burger, while huge (10 ounces), was a disappointment, primarily because the meat itself was underseasoned. They use Niman Ranch beef in both burger options (there are just two, and a limited number of toppings you can add/subtract), but even good-quality meat needs seasoning, especially salt, and this didn’t have enough. The burger was crying out for sauce – ketchup, mustard, anything – to give some depth to the flavor of the meat, but to me, that’s an error in the burger itself. (The burger might be better with condiments, but it shouldn’t require condiments to taste good.) Delux has a pretty wide selection of beer and wines, including a number of beer-tasting “flights;” the menu has interesting sandwiches and salads; but at the end of the day, if I go to a great burger place, I want a great burger, and Delux’s would be behind Zinburger and Blu Burger among Arizona burger joints.

Bliss on Fourth was named one of Phoenix magazine’s 21 best new restaurants of 2011, although that’s a dubious honor since two others have already closed. The concept is “urban hangout” with high-end comfort food, and while the menu hits that mark, the execution the other night wasn’t great.

Their two signature dishes are the pot roast with mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese (available with or without bacon); I went with the pot roast, which had clearly been out of the braise too long and had started to dry out, while the potatoes underneath were somewhere between lukewarm and cold. We ordered an appetizer of pretzel bread with three dipping sauces, but had to remind the server to actually serve it to us, and even when it came it was a little disappointing, since the bread was served in very thin slices – isn’t the point of pretzel bread to get the salty crust contrasting with the thick, spongy center? I wish the execution had been better, as it’s a cool concept in a great indoor/outdoor space, but watching the food come out of the kitchen from where we sat, I could see dishes sitting half-plated, waiting for the final ingredient and getting cooler by the second. Maybe they just need a better expediter, since the food itself tasted fine, but I can’t say I’m jazzed to go get cold potatoes again.

And speaking of mashed potatoes, I tried a reader suggestion (actually a reader’s friend’s suggestion) in Surprise, an Irish pub right near the ballpark called Irish Wolfhound. The interior is caught somewhere between a pub and a sports bar, but more concerning was the mash in the bangers-and-mash, which had a weird texture that I can only assume either came from a box or a freezer bag. If you can’t get that dish right, you’re not an Irish restaurant.

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→ March 1, 2012
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Top Chef S9 finale.

Last night’s Top Chef season finale answered the question: is Paul the ’27 Yankees or the ’07 Patriots?

* Sarah begins by talking about momentum; is there really a “hot hand” in the kitchen? Maybe if you grab a pan preheated to 500 degrees without using an oven mitt. Not that I’ve ever done that.

* Meanwhile, Paul is clearly full of nervous energy once he learns he’s in the finale. Either that or he was mainlining Red Bull in between takes.

* Challenge: Hey, we’re cooking! Create a four-course menu in the restaurant of your dreams. No gimmicks beyond the selection of sous-chefs, which is done by having a selection of eliminated chefs plus two renowned chefs, Barbara Lynch and Marco Canora, each prepare a single dish for Paul and Sarah to taste; those two then select the dishes they liked and get the chefs who made them. I have no problem with this except that having the two expert chefs compete seemed a little silly.

* The group even includes a few of the chefs who were eliminated before reaching the final 16, among them the infamous butcher Tyler Stone, who has to be here just for the comedy potential; and Ashley Villaluz, who I remember because she’s really cute, even in those thick-framed eyeglasses. (Or, especially in those thick-framed eyeglasses.)

* Paul chooses first … and gets Barbara Lynch with the first pick. Hugh says this “is like getting Albert Pujols for a tee ball game.” I need Hugh to be a permanent addition to the Judges’ Table. Paul also gets Malibu Chris, who did an Asian-inspired dish to try to get Paul to choose him (bromance alert!), Ty-Lor, and Keith.

* Sarah gets Nyesha and immediately pigeonholes her (or says she will) as her saucier. Nyesha’s fierce, a shoo-in if they do another All-Stars show in a few years, and this feels like taking your best hitter and asking him to drop a bunt in the two-hole. Sarah tries to pick Heather by taking a dish that’s on Heather’s restaurant’s menu (good logic) but instead gets Tyler and then insults him in front of everyone. She ends up with Heather anyway as well as Grayson, so the team is pretty strong outside of Butcherboy.

* Marco doesn’t get picked. That’s got to hurt. Some head-hanging as he, Ashley, and the other guy whose name I can’t remember slink off.

* Meanwhile, I can’t decide if the editors just tried to make Tyler look bad, or if he did it all by himself. Asking your chef a ton of questions to make sure you’re not screwing something up doesn’t bother me – remember Restaurant Wars, Sarah? – but pushing the sous vide technique when Sarah said she’s not comfortable doing something for the first time in the finale or just flat-out disobeying her instructions is really out of line, and I don’t think you can edit that stuff in.

* But I do think the editors tweaked some of the footage of Barbara Lynch to make her look a little pushy in the early going. Later footage shows her very team-focused in the kitchen, and by the end, she was all praise for Paul, even saying “working with Paul is amazing” and she’s very “proud to have this opportunity.” How does Paul hear this stuff and still have no ego?

* The chefs shop at Granville Market, which is awesome. Every city should have something like that.

* Sarah, on managing Tyler: “(I’m) ‘trying to make Tyler feel like I actually give a shit.” Again, the red light means THE CAMERA IS ON.

* Contrast Tyler’s style to one clip we see of Ty-Lor asking Paul for a quick demo on preparing the radishes. Professional and fast. Could be editing, but in this case, I doubt it.

* They spelled Keith wrong (“Kieth”) on the assignment board. It’s a five-letter, one-syllable name people. And it’s not that uncommon: Keith Hernandez. Keith Sweat. Keith Richards. Keith Moon. Keith Urban. Maybe I was supposed to be a musician.

* First big hiccup for either chef comes when the crab for Paul’s first dish develops an off flavor overnight. Keith says the “crab sat overnight,” but where? On the counter? In the fridge but unwrapped? There’s a mistake in there that we never hear about. Paul was prepared with a backup plan, having bought spot prawns he wasn’t otherwise using, which is impressive. (Also good: Canadian wild-caught spot prawns are an environmentally-friendly shellfish option, as populations are abundant and traps do minimal damage to the habitats.)

* To the food: Paul leads with a chawanmushi with those spot prawns; the first group raves, but the second batch is all overcooked and is easily the worst dish either chef served. Second dish is grilled sea bass (loup de mer, which I think is really branzino) with clam dashi and pickled radishes, earning raves for aesthetics and depth of flavor; Tom says it’s “hard to fault this,” so I guess he’s in a good mood here. Third dish is a congee with eggs, uni, fried kale, and smoked albacore; Tom says not as interesting as other courses, Cat loves fish says it doesn’t fit, but it seems to have worked on a more subtle level, with Bill Terlato apparently saying it’s the best thing he’s ever eaten. (I can’t take Cat Cora seriously as a judge. Is she really on par with the other chefs who appear on this show? She’s just here to promote her new Bravo program, right?) Dessert is coconut ice cream (frozen with liquid nitrogen!) with puffed rice, candied kumquats, mangosteen, Thai chili foam, and jasmine gelee; it’s a beautiful dish, and the judges were pleasantly surprised by the heat in the foam, with Tom saying Paul “really knocked it out of the park” but Hugh quibbling with the texture (too hard) of the puffed rice. Outside of the custard fiasco for group two, it sounds like Paul nailed it the rest of the way.

* Sarah starts very strongly with a squid-ink tagliatelle with dashi, coconut, and raw spot prawn dish that may have been the best-reviewed dish of the night. She follows with a rye-crusted steelhead with caramelized fennel sauce and pickled beets; judges love the fish, but she didn’t cook the beets at all (rookie error? Don’t you at least heat the acid and blanch the beets?) and there was probably too much fennel; there’s some irony here, as Butcher Boy was pushing her to sous vide the beets. That dish caused some legitimate drama when her fiance found a pinbone in his fish, but Sarah went into crisis mode and checked all dishes still in the kitchen to remove any stray bones. (I’ve still never found a great way to remove them without damaging the flesh – needlenose pliers are the best option, but I usually end up tearing some of the surrounding fish.) The fish was well-cooked and even Bev said she liked the crust.

* Her third course was veal cheeks and sweetbreads with polenta and persimmon sauce that looked, um, “rustic” on the plate, and was probably her worst dish, with every component but the cheeks getting criticism somewhere, particularly the texture of the polenta, which she then blended to smooth out for the second seating. Hugh also thought the sweetbreads were overcooked. I love persimmons, and could see a persimmon sauce with a rich meat like veal cheek or sweetbread being outstanding, but pairing that with polenta (which I’ve never seen without some kind of cheese as a binder) sounds like an off-note in my head. But the hazelut cake with roasted white chocolate ganache was a home run, particularly the ganache. Padma – I knew I liked this woman for some reason, aside from her stunning good looks that is – looks at Sarah and says with distaste dripping from the corners of her mouth, “I hate white chocolate.” (I do too. It’s not even actually chocolate.) But Sarah roasts it in a low oven for a half-hour to start to caramelize all that sugar, prompting one judge to say that she “turned it into caramel.” The dish was really striking on the plate as well. I confess that I’d rather have this precise dish with an almond cake instead of hazelnuts, but hazelnuts have always been my least favorite nut – there’s a specific chemical in there that, as often as I’ve had them, I just can’t get used to, and it triggers a mildly unpleasant aftertaste. This sucks, as it ruins Nutella for me.

* Before I get to the results, two interesting notes. Paul refuses to blame Keith for the problems with the chawanmushi: He won’t blame Keith in the kitchen, in the confessional, or at Judges’ Table. This is how you lead.

* Also, I think the producers, for once, undersold a dramatic element – Paul’s father breaking down when he sees his son in the finals. We hear from a lot of chefs on this show that their parents questioned their career choices and often weren’t proud of their chef sons/daughters, so winning this show would be some sort of redemption. (I’ll leave the question of whether pride earned in this way is really that valuable to a therapist.) It came up with Paul and Bev this year, at least, but we didn’t get much follow-up here in the one instance where the chef and the formerly disapproving parent were reunited on camera.

* Judges’ Table: Judging appears to be close to a dead heat, with Tom saying it was the best food ever in a finale, something he reiterated in his by-the-numbers blog entry. But he said what I thought they were trying to say on the show, something that was edited down to maintain suspense: Paul’s menu was more ambitious and showed greater dexterity in managing and manipulating flavors and textures, right down to the less beautiful but more thrilling dessert. And Paul, the Chef of Destiny from pretty much the first episode, is Top Chef. I am pleased. But I’d still gladly eat at Spiaggia, Sarah’s restaurant. (And, for what it’s worth, I think Emeril would have picked Sarah.)

* And that wraps a very up-and-down season of Top Chef, but one that finished with two really strong challenges that returned the focus of the show to the food. The best chef won, and the gimmicks gave us lots to snark about. I can’t complain too much.

* I started these recaps as a lark because the one blogger whose recaps I was reading just missed the mark for me, and I had too many stray thoughts I wanted to write down as I watched. It turned into a pretty popular feature here – I’ve had scouts, agents, and even a player’s father comment on them when I’ve been out at games – and led to a great personal thrill, writing for the official Top Chef site on Bravotv.com. Thank you all for reading and commenting. I’ll pick it up again whenever Top Chef returns.

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→ February 29, 2012
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The Wire, season four.

Daniels: What’s this kid to you?
Prez: I don’t know. He’s one of my students.

There appears to be a very strong consensus among critics and serious fans of The Wire that season four is its pinnacle, perhaps the greatest single season of any American TV series from any network. I won’t say that I disagree with that assessment, but that I find it very hard to view season four outside of the context of the three seasons that led up to it – season four stands strongly on the foundation laid by 37 prior episodes that established storylines, developed characters, built tension, and began a form of social criticism that draws on traditions that predate the medium, a kind of angry exposure of societal injustice and hypocrisy that called to mind the angry righteousness of Native Son. The Wire always had a point to make; season four is where that point got made.

The end of season three saw the demise of the Barksdale gang and the rise of a new, more ruthless drug kingpin on the west side of Baltimore, Marlo Stanfield, who lacks the charisma of Avon Barksdale or the intelligence of Stringer Bell, ruling his territory and crew like an authoritarian dictator, disappearing enemies and buying allegiances when he needs them. The investigation into him sputters due to the lack of bodies – a void undetstood by the viewers, but not by the investigating unit – and city politics, allowing a new storyline built around four new characters and one familiar one to take center stage.

Prez turned in his badge during season three, but resurfaces here as a math teacher in one of Baltimore’s failing public schools; four of his students, Namond (son of Barksdale enforcer Wee-Bey), Randy, Michael, and Duquan (“Dukie”), each of whom earns his own subplot. I would challenge any viewer to watch this season without becoming emotionally attached to these at-risk kids, each of whom started life with a negative balance and only one of whom ends the season with any real hope for improvement, thanks largely to the intervention of an adult who goes well beyond his duties to save a kid from jail or death on the corners. I always found Prez a little hapless as a detective; when he showed aptitude for the problem-solving aspects of the job, the camera always seemed to look on him as an object of pity, as if we should be proud that the slow kid finally found something he was good at. Even watching him slug his father-in-law (who had it coming) had that underdog feeling to it. In season four, Prez becomes a fully-realized character, a man who may have finally found his calling after leaving a job that never fit him, justifying (on some level) his presence as more than simply awkward comic relief. But Prez also becomes our conduit to not just another aspect of urban decay but to the missing piece to fill in the puzzle of the plight of the American urban underclass that this series documents. As it turns out, the problems with the streets and corners start inside the broken homes that line them.

–

No spin on a knuckleball. You still can’t tell how it’s gonna break.

Whether David Simon started The Wire to tell great stories, to criticize the actions and policies that were (or are) destroying inner cities in the northeast and the rust belt, or both is immaterial, because the result is clear: the series tells phenomenal stories, longer, deeper, and more intertwined than on any other American TV series I can remember, but always with a clear (if occasionally preachy) message about why. When I was younger, if a network series wanted to cover a major social topic, they would do a Very Special Episode; The Wire was, in that parlance, a Very Special Series.

The macro story here is the decline of the city, at least since the start of season two, since you might argue season one was primarily about the folly of the war on drugs. Adding the failing education system and the way city politics and bureaucracy perpetuate that failure (although the teachers’ unions come in for little to no criticism here) in season four only makes the overall picture more dismal. The police are corrupt. The schools are hopeless. City Hall is only concerned with numbers and elections. The FBI is too busy chasing terrorists to look at homegrown crime. The war on drugs only increases misery, but no one wants to consider decriminalizing them for fear of a backlash. Any attempt to start a small business to help the community and maybe create a job or two will be met with unreasonable regulations – or a need for bribes. And so on. You couldn’t paint a much bleaker picture unless you wanted to turn it into a series about zombies roaming across a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The trick of The Wire is its ability appeal to your emotions without manipulating them, especially hard because we’re now talking about a season that revolves around kids who are swimming upstream against a current that is trying to drown them. The writing veered as close as it’s come to preaching with the storyline in the schools, with scenes that can’t help but leave the viewer angry – but could they have been written any differently? Stories of failing inner-city schools no longer make the front page because they’re too commonplace, and because (I presume) readers are resigned to these situations as unfixable. Pouring more money into the system hasn’t helped. Testing creates massive incentive problems, which becomes a subplot this season. But more than any other cause, lack of structure and support at home shows up in reality and in season four as a major cause, if not the major cause, of the failing schools.

(I did find the academic project, removing ten disruptive kids from classrooms and educating them holistically while avoiding the standard curriculum, a little contrived, but because it got us another season of Bunny Colvin – and the bittersweet restaurant scene – I won’t complain.)

Even watching the drug dealers of Baltimore recognize the benefits of cartel behavior – the “New Day Co-Op,” meeting in a local hotel conference room – keeps the show grounded in the drug-war theme that was established in season one and continued, often below the surface, in seasons two and three. It also had the benefit of giving me more of my favorite character, Proposition Joe, whose prank phone call to gather intelligence on Herc rivals his “nephews and cousins” line from season two for the biggest laugh I’ve gotten from the series.

–

A good churchman is always up in everybody’s shit. It’s how we do.

Where season four did set itself apart from the previous three seasons was in the depth of writing on individual characters. Earlier years weren’t superficial, but didn’t get as far into motivations as season four did, and there was too much emphasis on current actions relative to character history. Putting the four kids at the center of the show for a full season allowed the writers to focus on past and present because for junior high school kids those two things have little separation between them, and in the case of these kids, the issues from their pasts are still active during the show. Nowhere did this have the same impact (no pun intended) as it did in the storyline involving Michael and eventually Stanfield enforcer Chris Paltrow toward the end of the season. (Spoilers ahead.)

Michael’s visceral, negative reactions to any attempt by adult males to establish clear bonds with him were always odd, but about halfway through the year it became obvious that his reactions were some kind of latent response to prior abuse, likely sexual abuse, by a male authority figure earlier in his life. (It later becomes apparent who the culprit was, and why Michael makes the choices and sacrifices he makes as a result.) When Michael reverses course and asks Chris, who, for all of his coldness during murder after murder, shows peculiar flashes of empathy, even for victims (assuring them it will be quick), Chris’ emotions come to the surface with a fury that reveals a profound, unhealed emotional wound that explains not just the violence of his fulfillment of Michael’s request but the dichotomy in his own character, a murderer with a sensitive side that actually fits him, not one that was grafted on by writers to make him less repellent.

The camera has always liked Cutty Wise, as actor Chad Coleman has this mournful expression along with a deep, deliberate style of speaking that draws your attention even when he’s not in the middle of the action. Yet season three used him more as a prop in plotlines about the difficulties of reintegrating into society after incarceration and the hurdles city government puts in front of small businesses than as an individual character involved in micro stories. Here, his gym is thriving as a center of community activity, with all four boys spending time at the gym, two forging uncertain relationships with Cutty that lead, of course, to violence, but also to one of the season’s few slightly hopeful outcomes.

The one individual story that didn’t grab me was the mayoral campaign of Tommy Carcetti, who, despite getting a little more depth this season (as opposed to the raw ambition of season three), can’t command a scene like a credible fast-rising politician character should. I also never really doubted the outcome of the election – why would we be spending so much time with him, and seeing a resolution in the middle of the season, if he wasn’t going to win? What happens after he takes office is less a function of him and more of the moral hazards rampant in democratically-elected governments. Even the identical character played by an actor with stronger oratory skills would have been more effective.

–

Carver: You know what this is? This is one of those enabling relationships.
Herc: Enable me, Carv.

I think we all recommend The Wire, you to me and now me to everyone who’ll listen, because it is smart, compelling television, infused with bright and dark humor, a show that deserved a wider audience when it was alive and will get that audience , come hell or high water, now that it’s gone. But people should watch The Wire not just for its entertainment value, but because it is a social document, one that treats serious issues seriously, that handles characters like people rather than like tools of the writers, and that shows an essential understanding of the economics of behavior that drive all aspects of our lives. You do not need an econ degree to watch or enjoy this show, just as you do not need one to respond to incentives in your daily life. But you will get an education watching the show, if only in the way that a real education forces you to think critically about issues and search for answers, to ignore easy solutions and to question the pat responses you get from authority figures. It’s showing up on college syllabi, as this two-year-old Slate article attests, and not just in film studies classes. It is an American landmark, a work of protest disguised as a police procedural that, like its best characters, ignores the boundaries set out for both genres in the name of the greater good. There may be, or have been, better American series out there; I’m not well-watched enough to say more than that I haven’t seen one. But rather than elevate season four above the three that preceded it, I’d prefer to simply elevate the series, and hold that season four’s greatness is merely a testament to the vision of its creators, and to the strength of all of the material which laid the groundwork for it.

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→ February 28, 2012
→ By

Arizona spring training food guide.

I have lots of dish posts on food in the Valley, searchable via the search box above or by location tags like Phoenix, Scottsdale, or Mesa. But with spring training games about to begin, I thought it might help to put together one cheatsheet with some recommendations sorted by spring training stadium. I’ll add to this post over the next few weeks if I try anything new or realize that I’ve forgotten a good spot.

I should mention that Chandler and Gilbert both have a number of good options, but they’re not that convenient to any of the ballparks. If you find yourself staying in either place, search the dish archives or throw a question in the comments below here and I’ll offer some recommendations.

I do not have a comparable list of recommendations for Florida, because spring training in Florida is awful and I don’t want to accidentally encourage any teams to stay there.

Tempe (Angels):

* Hillside Spot, Ahwatukee (Phoenix). My favorite place to eat in the Valley, right off I-10 at the corner of Warner and 48th. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I recommend the pulled pork sandwich, the chilaquiles, the grilled corn appetizer, the house-cut French fries, the pancakes (best in Arizona), and the coffee from Cartel Coffee Lab. The Spot sources as much as they possibly can from local growers or providers, even providing four local beers on tap, and you can get out for under $15 including tax and tip. I’ve written about it more than once; here’s one of my posts, which talks about that pork sandwich.

* Cornish Pasty Company, Tempe. Just what the name says – large, hearty Cornish pasties with dozens of traditional and non-traditional filling options. I’ve eaten one for lunch and then skipped dinner. Second location in Mesa isn’t too far from the Cubs’ park and is bigger with more parking. Convenient to the A’s ballpark.

* Four Peaks Brewery: One of our best local microbreweries with surprisingly solid food as well. You’ll see their beers all over the place, but the restaurant is absolutely worth hitting. Parking is very difficult on Friday through Sunday nights, though. Also very convenient to the A’s ballpark.

* Cantina Modern Tequila, Tempe. In the Mill District shopping/dining area. Only ate here once, for lunch, and found the ‘street tacos’ to be solid, although pricier than actual street tacos. Vibe was weird – trying to cater to a business lunch crowd (which wasn’t buying, at least on that day), but the place looks more like a nightclub that serves food during daylight hours.

* angel sweet, Mesa: The best gelato I’ve had out here, and some of the best I’ve had in the U.S. Three words for you: Super dark chocolate. It’s in the Mesa Riverview outdoor mall, just across 101 from Tempe Marketplace.

Mesa (Cubs):

* Rancho de Tia Rosa: A bit east of the ballpark, Tia Rosa has a large, upscale yet family-friendly Mexican restaurant with a smaller take-out taqueria located on-site as well. I wouldn’t call it high-end, but it’s expensive relative to the typical crappy chain faux-Mex restaurants that seem to be everywhere out here (Macayo’s, Arriba, Garcia’s … avoid all of those).

* Mango’s Mexican Cafe: Right on Main Street in Mesa, they’re open for lunch but close at irregular times. I’ve been once, loved their fish tacos, liked the shrimp tacos, really liked the aguas frescas. Cash only, and their website seems to be defunct.

* Pros Ranch Market: A Mexican/Latin American grocery store south of the ballpark (at Stapley and Southern) with a large quick-service department offering some of the best burritos (including, hands-down, the best carnitas) I’ve had in Arizona. The enchiladas are solid, my daughter loves their quesadillas, they make great aguas frescas in eight to twelve flavors, and there’s an extensive selection of Mexican pastries. You can stuff yourself here for under $10. There’s another location near the A’s ballpark in Phoenix as well.

Phoenix (Oakland):

Everything in Tempe is pretty close to here as well, and you’re not that far from Old Town Scottsdale either.

* Pros Ranch Market: Mentioned above in the Mesa section – from the Oakland park, just hop on the 202 west, get off at 24th, head south (left), right on Roosevelt. Also very close to the west exit from the airport – my old Fall League tradition was to get off the plane and head right here for lunch before going to my first game.

* Honey Bear’s BBQ: Just under the highway when you head west from the ballpark, they offer solid smoked meats but below-average baked beans. There’s not a lot of good Q out here – the best I know of is Bryan’s in Cave Creek, which is a hike from the closest stadium – so Honey Bear’s gets a little overrated.

* Barrio Cafe, downtown: About 15 minutes west of Phoenix Muni via the 202/51. Best high-end Mexican food I’ve had out here, edging out Los Sombreros in Scottsdale. Table-side guacamole is very gimmicky (and, per Rick Bayless, suboptimal for flavor development), but the ingredients, including pomegranate arils, are very fresh. Great cochinita pibil too.

* Pizzeria Bianco, downtown: Most convenient to Chase Field. Best pizza I have ever had in the United States. No reservations, closed Sunday-Monday, waits for dinner can run to four hours, but they’re now open for lunch and if you get there before twelve the wait usually isn’t too bad. Parking is validated at the Science Museum garage. I’ve never been to Nobuo at Teeter House, which is in the same complex as Pizzeria Bianco, but it is apparently one of the best sushi places in the state.

* Zinburger: I’m pushing it a little, as this isn’t all that close to the A’s park, but it’s a damn good burger, especially the namesake option (red zinfandel-braised onions, Manchego, mayo), along with strong hand-cut fries. Located in a shopping center across the street from the Ritz.

* Matt’s Big Breakfast: Not really close to any ballpark except Chase Field, but if you’re staying downtown or are crossing the city it’s one of the best breakfast places in the Valley. Tiny, however, so expect a wait.

Scottsdale/Old Town (San Francisco):

* Citizen Public House: The pork belly starter is phenomenal, among the best things I’ve eaten in the state. I’ve only been once so far, but everything I tried there was superb from ingredients to execution. Full review.

* Culinary Dropout: My go-to recommendation for this area, because the menu is broad, everything I’ve had here was good (although I’m told they cut the short rib pasta from the menu – damn them!), and it’s very convenient if you’re staying right in Old Town. They don’t call it a gastropub, but I think that’s the best description. The chicken truffle hash and the turkey pastrami are both very good.

* Arcadia Farms: Farm-to-table breakfast dishes and sandwiches. Not cheap, but you are paying for quality and for a philosophy of food. I have been there twice and service, while friendly, was leisurely both times.

* ‘Pomo Pizzeria: Authentic, Neapolitan-style pizza. Not as good as Bianco, but better than anything else I’ve had around here. Toppings include a lot of salty cured meats designed (I assume) to keep you drinking … not that there’s anything wrong with that. Full review.

* Grimaldi’s: Local chain, related to the Brooklyn establishment of the same name. Very good (grade 55) thin-crust, coal-fired pizzas, including nut-free pesto, and similarly solid salads in generous portions. Not terribly cost-effective for one person, though.

* Scratch Pastries: Amazing high-end sandwiches on bread so good it nearly overshadows what’s between the slices. Full review.

* Echo Coffee: Rivals Cartel Coffee Lab for the best coffee I’ve had out here. At Echo, they grind the beans and brew the cup in a cone filter after you order it. Worth the extra few minutes. Full review.

* Iruna: Tapas place also very close to the ballpark; food was very good but the Spanish-heavy menu was pretty limited for a tapas bar. (The menu on their website is out of date.)

* Gelato Spot: The third-best gelato in the Valley, still pretty good considering how far we are from Italy. There’s one right in Old Town and another way up in north Scottsdale near where the Greenway hits 51.

* Los Sombreros: A bit of a drive south of Old Town into the only part of Scottsdale that you might call “sketchy,” Los Sombreros does high-end authentic Mexican at Scottsdale-ish prices but with large portions and very high quality.

Scottsdale central/north (Arizona/Colorado):

* Soi4: upscale Thai and Thai-fusion, very close to the park. Owned by the same family that runs Soi4 in Oakland. Full review of my first visit; I went back and had the pad see ew, which was outstanding.

* Wildflower Bread Company: I’d say “think Panera,” but this place is so much better than Panera in every aspect that I hate to even bring that awful chain (which now owns the Paradise Bakery chain) into the discussion. Wildflower is a small chain, but their salads are very fresh and filling, and the sandwiches are solid.

* Butterfields: The lines are crazy on the weekends, but if you want pancakes or waffles this is one of the better options in the Valley.

* ShinBay: I’ve never been, but it has a real cult following that lasted during a multi-year hiatus which ended with the sushi-ya opening this new place under the same name in a different part of town.

Maryvale (Milwaukee):

* Are you out of your mind? Don’t go to Maryvale.

Goodyear (Cincinnati/Cleveland):

* Raul and Theresa’s offers very good, authentic, reasonably priced Mexican food, really fresh, always made to order. The guacamole is outstanding. It’s south of the stadium and doesn’t look like much on the outside, but I would call it a can’t-miss spot if you’re going to a Cincinnati or Cleveland game.

Glendale (Dodgers/White Sox):

I have nothing out here, as the stadium went up before there was much around it but a few crappy chains. Two places I’ve heard decent things about that are nearby are Arrowhead Grill and La Piazza al Forno. Because I have to cross Phoenix to get here, I usually stop somewhere like the Ranch Market or In-n-Out (fries well done!) on the way.

Peoria:

* It’s a wasteland of chains out here; the best options I know are both very good local chains, Grimaldi’s and Blu Burger. The latter is one of our favorite places out here, since there’s another location almost down the street from us; they offer several kinds of burgers, including Wagyu (American Kobe beef) and Black Angus, with an impressive list of build-your-own options. My daughter loves their grilled cheese; I think she’d have a hard time choosing between theirs and the Hillside Spot’s for the best in the Valley.

Surprise:

* I know of nothing other than chains out there, although there is a new French bistro called Amuse Bouche that has gotten some positive reviews, offering high-end sandwiches and salads at lunch (priced accordingly), then switching to a small dinner menu of higher-end entrees that sound French-inspired rather than straight French. They also do Sunday brunch. It’s west of the ballpark on Bell Road, just past the 303. If your main destination out in Arizona is Surprise, consider staying somewhere closer to the highway, either Peoria or Glendale, for food options but also ease of getting out to other ballparks. Surprise Stadium is wonderful, but the area around it is an antiseptic nightmare.

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→ February 23, 2012
→ By

Top Chef, S9E16.

This week, no gondolas, no ice blocks, no skiing, just one small gimmick and a lot of actual cooking.

* Sarah is going to get killed again for her comments in the confessionals, and some of that criticism is justified. Saying “this is how it was supposed to be” in reference to these three chefs in the finals is all kinds of wrong – Paul, sure, but I’m of the opinion that Edward was probably one of the three best chefs on the show this season, and that Nyesha was wronged with her early elimination. Winning the World Series doesn’t make you the best team, but it makes you the champions. Getting to the Top Chef final three doesn’t make you one of the three best chefs on the show, but it makes you a finalist. I just can’t buy some kind of predestination aspect to the show, or the idea that this proves that these chefs were the best.

* Then Sarah says of the Quickfire challenge, “Asian food is not my forte, thank god Beverly went home because she would have nailed it.” The red light means the camera’s on, Sarah.

* Quickfire challenge: Cooking with one of three Top Chef Masters contestants (including last season’s winner, Floyd Cardoz), make an Asian influenced dish – but you can’t talk to your teammate, and must trade off in the kitchen every ten minutes, with the experienced chef taking shifts one and three and the current contestants taking shifts two and four. That means the experienced chefs do the concept and most of the mise en place, leaving the contestants wasting time trying to figure out what the big idea was and what’s already been done. Wouldn’t one sentence, or ten seconds of talking, have made this a much more reasonable test of the contestants’ cooking skills rather than their powers of deduction?

* I was surprised to see how easygoing the experienced chefs were – we knew Floyd was like that, but Anita Lo and Takashi Yagihashi were also pretty low-key; other than having strong concepts and hoping their teammates would continue those visions, they seemed to have no qualms about playing second fiddle.

* Paul ends up making a sashimi with mirugai (giant clam) with a yuzu dashi sauce, fried white fish, cucumber, scallions … but adds too much Thai chili at the last moment and blows the dish. I got the strong sense he would have won the challenge (and the $20,000 prize) otherwise. “Ashamed Paul Qui” sounds like a meme waiting to happen.

(Side note: My wife thinks Austin Scarlett of Project Runway deserves his own meme, along the lines of “MEANWHILE … IN JAPAN.” If you’ve seen him on camera, you probably understand.)

* Lindsay probably had the toughest challenge, with Anita coming up with a “scallops three ways” dish that was nowhere near evident to Lindsay after the first switch. The concept was great – reflect three different Asian cuisines on one plate – but it seemed like Anita chose a concept that would work for one chef working start to finish, not for a challenge with three blind handoffs. Lindsay only does two of the three intended ways, and her Chinese sausage overpowers the delicate flavors of the scallop.

* Floyd makes a curry, but Sarah says she’s not comfortable with curry. These two worked together better than the other pairs – it looked like Floyd focused on the curry itself while Sarah went after the proteins, crab and a rice flour-dredged cod. Emeril thought their dish needed more acid, but Padma loved the amaranth greens, which apparently grow quite well in warm climates and reach harvest size in 30 days, so I need to track down some seeds. Anyway, Sarah wins, giving Floyd the quickfire win that escaped him during his Top Chef Masters run (even though he won the whole season).

* Elimination challenge: For 150 guests at a “fire and ice” cocktail party, each chef must make one dish and one cocktail, and the dish must contain at least one hot and one cold element. They do get bartenders to assemble the drinks, so the chefs only have to make sure the elements are ready.

* These chefs are so damn collegial in the kitchen it almost made me want Heather back. Almost.

* Sarah goes with a baked cannelloni, made from scratch (which she says is crazy, but really, that’s the kind of thing you have to do to win on this show), with a spiced sformato (a thick Italian custard) that’s frozen on an “anti-griddle” so it will melt and form a cold sauce over the warm pasta. Her cocktail contains gin, kumquats, and mango, which sounds great if you’re sitting on a Caribbean beach but doesn’t really sound like it works with pasta.

* By the way, is an anti-griddle powered by anti-matter? If an anti-griddle hits a griddle, will the universe collapse upon itself? I heard “anti-griddle” and felt like Lady Violet did when Downton got its first telephone. Hugh Acheson said in his blog post that no one touched the anti-griddle during his time on Top Chef Masters, and Sarah nearly cost herself a spot in the finals because the machine over-froze her sformato.

* Paul makes a lobster stock, tearing claws off lobsters before killing them – I hear he also likes to twist the heads off live puppies, just for practice – using it as the base for a very elaborate dish with king crab, lemon ‘snow,’ and a Pan Am cocktail with kaffir lime, palm sugar, and rum.

* Lindsay, who says she’d pull a Ronnie Lott if she sliced her finger off while cooking today, goes with a halibut over a “fiery” celery root remoulade, tomato broth, tomato ice, and raw kale. I’m not sure if the kale was supposed to be raw, but I find raw kale totally inedible. Steam it, wilt it, saute it with cured pork, bake it, whatever, it’s all good, but raw kale has a very fibrous texture that I find really unpleasant.

* Judges’ table: Sarah gets dinged for the frozen mousse, and for the cocktail not working with the dish. The judges love her pasta, the cocktail on its own, and her overall ambition. Paul had some temperature issues, and Tom goes on about the arugula garnish, although I thought Paul’s comment (he wanted the fresh, peppery flavor) made sense, at least from a concept standpoint. Otherwise, he seemed to nail his dish in every way, yet again. Lindsay cooks her fish perfectly, but the raw kale costs her points and the dish overall was kind of boring (mostly per Tom).

* Tom tweeted right after the show about the arugula comments:

* Paul wins the challenge, Lindsay goes home. It fits the general theme of Top Chef: You win for ambition, and you lose for failures in execution. Lindsay didn’t execute all that well (the raw kale, the supporting ingredients overpowering the flavor of the fish), and she showed the least ambition. Sarah failed to execute one major element, but her dish was much more ambitious than Lindsay’s.

* Sarah’s parting comment, that she knew it would be her versus Paul in the finals, will probably get even more criticism than her opening shots, but this one I understand: If you’re going through this competition, you envision yourself in the finals, and in this case, how could she envision herself facing anyone but Paul? Perhaps it’s not something you say on camera, but it is entirely logical to think that way.

* So, ignoring the fact that this challenge already happened several weeks ago, how dominant a favorite would Paul be against Sarah in the finals? It takes so little to cost a chef a challenge at this late stage that I hate to say he’s more than a 60/40 favorite, even though he’s owned most of this season.

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