Hold the phone, I've got something! People eat chicken...for BREAKFAST!

To put it in Seinfeldian, "what is the deal with that?"

I hate to be snarky against people doing what I do, which is to say writing about food, but I gotta. Just gotta. I flipped through the new Time magazine at work today, and saw a food column in the "Life." section on the austere subject of breakfast.

The piece is titled "The Breakfast Club" in the print edition (although I'm not sure why), and it discusses the logic behind what we eat, when we eat it. The author, Joel Stein, addresses specifically the McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Biscuit.

This is mighty coincidental, because in a moment of weakness I had one of those very sandwiches this morning. In previous moments of weakness (yes, plural...don't hate me), I have sampled the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich, which is in fact the very same piece of chicken on a different bread substrate. Morning, biscuit, plain; afternoon, bun, with pickles.

It is this chimaeric quality that befuddles Mr. Stein: how is it possible that McDonald's is doing this? Isn't it just too weird? And why is it weird, when we eat chicken without reserve throughout the rest of the day? After all, it's the same piece of chicken!

...The biscuit is soft and buttery, and while I don't love chicken, this is at least clearly decent, non-McNugget chicken, boldly presented without sauce.

Yet I still don't feel that it's breakfast. (After all, McDonald's slaps that exact same chicken patty on a roll with pickles and sells it at lunch as the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich.) I need to be eased into my day with something comfortingly soft or sweet. And breakfast meats of any kind gross me out. But if everyone else is eating sausage and bacon, I am not going to judge people for a fried-chicken biscuit. They are pioneers. Thirsty pioneers, no doubt, but pioneers.

Kristine and I made it over to Milwaukee this last Saturday, mostly to peruse some of the lovely paper goods at Broadway Paper. Totally absorbing, Broadway is a great spot for wedding stuff, and even I get into browse-mode there (Kristine, a great lover of tiny notebooks, funky greeting cards, and pads of paper, is in heaven merely within line of sight of the place).

We've long held that if we never had to leave the vicinity immediately surrounding the Historic Third Ward of Milwaukee, we'd be happy to live there. That being unlikely, we're thrilled to be in Madison.

But there's one thing that we'd like to see more of in Madison, and it is the urban vinyl/modern pop art store. Pop Deluxe is pretty good, but it smoothes out the rough edges that one hopes to find in a spot like Rotofugi in Chicago or Schmancy in Seattle, nevermind the pater familias Giant Robot in California and New York. Sadly, Glitter Workshop is (apparently) no more, and based on the one trip I managed there, it was promising!

At long last, however, there's something right in the strike zone of "urban vinyl/modern pop art," and it is just down the street from Broadway Paper. It is Hot*Pop and it's great. Cool clothes and shoes (including this brilliant T-shirt I picked up), tons of vinyl, and even a little plush (although nothing so crowd-pleasing as Uglydolls), all in a very austere design concept with a little gallery in the back. Pitch perfect!

The bathroom walls are all chalkboard-painted. They double, somewhat oddly, as the changing rooms. I felt I should make an addition while I was trying on the shirt. Being an Uglydoll homer, and a general disliker of the Frank Kozik aesthetic (nevermind how he carries himself as a person and artist), I thought this was appropriate:

Okay, so it wasn't much of a reach. But I thought I'd share it here, since I was so wrapped up in cooking and plating that I forgot to take the pictures I'd planned to Flickrize.

• Salad of field greens with tomatoes, hard-boiled egg, Nueske's bacon, and a little spritzy Caesar-ish dressing that was far too mild
  
• Baked eggplant parmigian, with a mix of Italian-seasoned and panko breadcrumbs
  
• Spaghetti with (from a jar) tomato and spinach sauce
  

It's officially summer, but I've been using the grill spottily for a few months now. We don't have the room to keep our big baddie in our possession, so it's having an extended stay at the parents' house. It's all right, because we don't know enough people to hold a dinner party, and there isn't enough room in the house for a proper dinner table anyway. Harumph.

Anyway, we've still got the little guy to house our flame, and the seasonality of grilling has me all hot and bothered about how we start our fires.

In particular, there was a radio ad for some car that was selling itself as the all-out manmobile. Don't settle for half-assed, the voiceover intimated. After all, if you were shopping for a grill, would you buy a little hibachi, or a little charcoal number, or the 80-gajillion, five-burner propane all-business motherfucker with an infrared sear and polished chrome? GIT-ER-DONE!!!, the ad practically shouted at me.

Now, I'm not one to turn down a gadget. If you've been reading here enough, you know that I like my small electrics and special use items. I've bought an electric griddle, a stick blender, a mini-prep, a far-too-big-for-our-household Lodge castiron pan, a probe thermometer...most of these at the behest of one Alton Brown. Damn you, sir.

But when it comes to grilling, I am, have been, and will hopefully always be steadfastly purist. I think those outdoor gas grill mega-constructs that get orgasmically revealed on HGTV are pretty nifty looking, but they're kind of like the Porsche you win in a lottery: great prize, now try maintaining it.

Grilling is its own animal. It is not the same thing as cooking in your house, with a range (yes, I prefer gas to electric ranges, although I haven't played with conduction yet) and a microwave and an oven. It is cooking over flame, plain and simple. Sure, you can add special woods, and you need to take a certain care to keep your grill clean. We're not cavemen anymore, and there are proper standards and protocols for cleanliness and hygiene we need to follow.

Honestly, grilling is special. It hearkens way back. It is primal. And it needs to be treated as such. My feeling is this: there is no special art to cooking with gas; no art, all artifice. Or, to put it less artfully, either make your own fire or cook in your fucking kitchen. Prometheus wasn't fucking around!

This is not to say, however, that I will refuse to eat gas-grilled food, or even that I will refuse to operate a gas grill. I know people who have gas grills, and they are people whom I love. Community, family and the shared effort are more important than the source of the combustion. But you'll never, ever see me buying a gas grill, and I will advocate steadfastly for old-school wood flame.

Incidentally, I just read about a fascinating charcoal product out of Japan that I am actually not going to tell you about further. I tried sending them an e-mail to inquire about cost, and had my e-mail bounce back from what turned out to be a chock-full mailbox. As such, I don't want to add to the traffic jam by telling the Internet all about it. If you know me, ask me; I'll tell the inner circle (so to speak). But I'm guarding the information selfishly otherwise.

First off, sorry Googlers! You'll find no hot scoops on the status of Jennifer and Zoi's relationship, or the rumors mentioned on the reunion special last night. I'm getting a ton of hits on it, and while this post won't alleviate that flood, at least it'll give people the scoop.

Anyway, I actually dug the reunion show. For one thing it showed us the direction Top Chef should really consider heading for future seasons. In my opinion, if the whole Black Hammer thing had made it to air, the show would have been infinitely more appealing. It would be fine by me if the producers spent less time hawking Tupperware or some shitty beer, and less time crafting a villain out of a bad attitude, and instead gave us reasons to feel engaged on a personal level with the contestants. Antonia's Frankenstein dance cracked me right the fuck up, and I wish we could have seen it when it happened.

Where was the Nimma interview?? C'mon! ... Naw, I wasn't surprised at all when she didn't raise her hand with the rest of the chefs who had watched the show during previous seasons.

The only people who really didn't do anything to rehab their image, other than Nimma, were Ryan and maybe Nikki. Ryan still comes off as an above-it-all poseur, and Nikki just didn't have much to say. Dale owned up to his failure, even when he could have been all vindicated by Tom's support, and won some goofball points for his back and forth with Richard in a cut scene about Dale lotioning his nipples.

In fact, I'd say that this special rehabbed the entire season to a certain extent. I found it well-edited, well-crafted, and the chefs all well-behaved and entertaining (infinitely better than last season's Project Runway reunion--ugh!). Compared to, say, The Next Food Network Star, Top Chef is a bright star in Bravo's lineup, and with the impending departure of Project Runway, I dare say it'll be the crown jewel.

Speaking of The Next Food Network Star, I tuned in for a chunk of an episode, and I'm not sure if I can handle watching it enough to recap it. Yes, Nipa, we can all tell that you are from India or somewhere thereabouts. "I was doing a little Bollywood dance inside" is just the kind of "LOOKATMEEE" comment that drives me nuts. And Lisa "Posh Chef" Garza? Man. If anything could make me a Rachel Ray fan, it's the prospect of having to see her on Food Network. And I'm afraid that Gordon Ramsay is too much for me. He's a caricature, moreso than even Anthony Bourdain's harshest critics could ever accuse him of.

If anything, I think I'll be tackling Project Runway. I might tune in for a pilot of sorts for Kitchen Nightmares, but eh. I'll be watching PR anyway, so it's the best fit. I hope you foodies aren't pushed away by this choice! There'll still be food-related posts here (it's my thing), and I do hope you come back to read my column (linked at the upper right of this page) every couple weeks.

Thanks again for all the hits, and the great comments, and the votes of confidence. For those of you who may not be back until next season, thanks for coming! Who knows, maybe I'll be at EW.com next year. For the rest of you, drop me a comment any time.

ADDED:
OH! I almost forgot how funny the t-shirt is. Want one bad. What was Season 2's shirt? It's not on Bravo's shop site. The first year's, even though I wasn't watching then, is obvious: "I'm not your bitch, bitch." Season 3's should have been "My monkey could do that," but was instead CJ's "Oh, big time."

....although they weren't announced on the original page on Bravo's site. My bookmark was pointless.

Anyway, Madison's set for August 27th. That's a Wednesday, so I'd guess that they'll be appearing at the Wednesday downtown Farmer's Market. Nothing official on the when and where though.

Looks like admission's free if you sign up in advance. As your proud Top Chef blogger, I will do my level best to attend!

There was a lot of pathos in last night's Top Chef finale, but did anyone else think it was a little lackluster? Kinda perfunctory? Just me?

Eh. Anyway, we set our scene at the stately Hotel El Convento, where a couple sisters (Steph and Lisa) have a shot at being either the first female or first hideous she-beast Top Chef. Richard, it's worth noting (and Tom Colicchio has noted this in recent interviews), would be the first faux-hawked winner of Top Chef. Which pull of destiny would be the strongest?

Obviously there's no Quickfire, as the chefs walk up to Padma, Tom, and three glittering stars in the heavens of cookery. April Bloomfield of The Spotted Pig, Dan Barber of Blue Hill, and the deliciously marble-mouthed Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin stand at the ready. I must admit, I was a little concerned for their well-being; with the increasing amount of meat primals being broken down on this show, I was worred the chefs might have to butcher and filet these professionals!

But no, the stars stand in front of some lavishly appointed ingredient tables, full of choice cuts of meat. The final challenge is, more simply said than done, to create a four course tasting menu following the convention of fish-fowl-hoof-dessert. Yes, dessert. Thankfully, NO ONE felt the need to utter the famous phrase, "I'm not a trained pastry chef."

The bigwigs will serve as sous chefs for the contestants. First pick will go to the winner of the most challenges, except Richard tied it up with his win last week. Stephanie, winner of a tiebreaking knife-pull, still gets to pick first. She takes Ripert, Richard chooses the artisinal Barber, and Lisa gets the chickypoo April. Lisa's actually a little giddy at the chance to work in a "girl power" environment. Uh oh...happy Lisa. Scary.

Lisa plans on returning to her comfort zone, and despite her new sous chef's total lack of familiarity, she'll be doind a Thai/Vietnamese menu. Richard's chef focuses on a short trip from field to table, which might seem at odds with Richard's various and sundry technological interventions. Stephanie, however, is absolutely wowing Chef Ripert, even though she's concerned that she's annoying him. As head chef over a vastly superior talent, she feels guilty at watching him prep the fish with a critical eye. "He's like, 'Yeah, I know.'" To be fair, Ripert seems to be in a wow-able mood; Richard's Tabasco pelletizing technique, using liquid nitrogen, draws Ripert away from his station to observe with rapt attention.

The next day, Chef Tom waits to ambush the chefs: their sous chefs are done. It's each man/woman/hideous she-beast for him/her/grrBLARGHself. Richard acts nonplussed; "no show, no call, no job," he jokes. But he'd been concerned about his lack of focus at the end of the previous day, and can't be thrilled about losing that extra set of hands. Again, Lisa frightens the audience by being the most calm of the three chefs, with Richard "in the shit" by his own account, and Steph is her usual semi-frantic self.

After impressing Chef Ripert with his Tabasco pearls, initially intended for use with oysters, Richard decides to shelve his liquid nitrogen for everything except a quick-freeze bacon ice cream (yum! seriously, yum). Steph is worried about her dessert too, but it is Lisa who encourages positivity. Who is this creature who looks like Lisa but is calm, cool, chatty, and upbeat? To be fair to my original thoughts, I wasn't sure if this was genuine, or if Lisa was encouraging Stephanie to stick with a failed dessert.

The dining panel is full of luminaries, as we have come to expect. Along with the three sous chefs, the judging crew of Padma, Tom, Gail and Ted are joined by Puerto Rican food afficionado Alfredo Ayala and Tim Zagat of that Zagat. The chefs will serve each course to be compared side by side, and the winner will be the chef who puts together the best overall meal.

First course

Richard prepares a "barely cooked" scallop with mango and a pineapple vinegar. Lisa offers grilled prawns in chili-basil sauce with square potato chips. Stephanie plates seared red snapper over a truffled clam and white asparagus sauce, with green asparagus over the top. Richard's dish, "totally unfamiliar" to his sous chef, is well-cooked but struck some as overly complicated. I must have missed something because it seems like the least complicated of the three. Lisa's chili is too overpowering for some. Steph's, however, is hailed as "elegant" by Ted, and appears to be the best of the round.

Second course

Richard's "Which Came First?" dish asks whether the guinea hen, the chicken egg, or the roasted duck liver came first. It's an age-old question, really. Lisa's poultry course is tom kha gai (a Thai soup) with dumplings. Stephanie sears a quail breast with lobster ravioli, leeks, and a quail egg. Hers is well-seasoned, but lacking a good lobster punch. The leeks, on the other hand, are terrible, undercooked, and totally off-key. No one likes them. Eric digs Richard's complex dish, but it's generally regarded as too unrefined. Lisa's soup is the clear winner here, with Gail calling it "absolutely delicious."

Third course

Richard runs with the pig theme from last week and plates pressure cooked porkbelly with pickled radishes and a mirin broth. Lisa classes up the joint with some wagyu (you might know it as "kobe") beef marinated in coriander, a chayote and cucumber salad, and garlic chips. Stephanie bewilders everyone with lamb accompanied by maitake mushrooms, braised pistachios, and blackbery and green olive tapenade. Richard succeeds only with his radishes, and Lisa's dish is too sweet. Stephanie's trainwreck, which looks on the face to be very similar to Spike's olive-n-grape chicken salad, turns out to be a revelatory experience for everyone at the table. Tom says it's "full of surprises, and it works." That's another round for Steph.

Fourth course

There's a saying about going back to the well one too many times, and Richard throws it right out the window by plating his soon-to-be-patented banana "scallops" with the aforementioned bacon ice cream. Lisa whips up a Thai black rice pudding with lime mango crème and crispy taro chips (speaking of going back to the well, chips again, Lisa?). Lastly, Stephanie runs with her ricotta poundcake with tropical fruit and banana crème, despite her reservations. Those reservations are somewhat well-founded; while her cake is moist, no one likes the banana crème. Lisa's chip reliance is the only critique offered for an otherwise great dessert. And Richard's "scallops" are good, as is the bacon ice cream, but c'mon dude. Branch out! Regardless, it's a toss-up for this round between Lisa and Richard.


It's no use after crying, saying "it's a mistake, it's a mistake"

So there you have it. The last meal of Top Chef 4. Tom is impressed by the contrast in styles, and the makeshift stew room is full of freighted expressions. It's pretty clear, as they sit and wait, that Richard's out of the running. A solid dessert will not make up for the failings of the other three courses.

The Judges' Table commentary pretty closely repeats the in-meal commentary. Stephanie is clearly the winner of the first round, with her beautiful presentation besting Richard's underseasoned scallop and Lisa's really hot prawns. Similarly, Lisa had no real competition for the second course. "Lots of slurping," Gail remarks. Richard's muddled composition and extraneous foie gras, and Steph's sore-thumb leeks had no chance.

The third course was an interesting judgment, because I think the judges all really wanted to like Richard's dish. But he was hesitant to crisp up the porkbelly and risk losing the integrity of the meat, and that is a failure in the judges' eyes. Lisa committed the cardinal sin of doing wrong by wagyu beef; she undercooked it, when the pros all know that the very finely marbled fat needs to be cooked a little bit more to be fully released. Steph's crazy concoction takes the round on sheer audacity, but it was actually pretty tasty too.

My assessment of the fourth course appears to have been charitable towards Richard. While Tom liked the bacon ice cream, no one else really offers a lot of positive commentary. Padma, with a note of thinly veiled disappointment, asks Richard semi-rhetorically, "You won the dessert challenge with this dish, didn'y you?" Cue The Price is Right failure music. Stephanie's poundcake was nothing special, unrefined; Tom tells her he had problems with her banana crème. Lisa gets the most props, and will likely take the crown for this course.

Each chef is given the opportunity to add any final commentary to the judging, and they all do so. Steph feels like she violated a cardinal rule (and Dale's advice from last week) by second-guessing herself on her dessert, and accepts it as a failure on those grounds. Lisa, expectedly, is proud of her menu and feels like a top chef. And then there's Richard, who had been teased in promos as saying something flabbergasting. It wasn't the anti-Lisa tirade many of us were expecting; it was more surprising than that. "Okay, I'll say it, I think I choked tonight." He thinks he overthought, and I can't fault him there.

Richard's mouth-smacking back in the stew room made me feel for him; it really looked like he was fighting back the urge to puke. Gail is totally shocked at Richard's comment, and while it was surprising, I'm not sure I'd say it was shocking. He did overthink things. He only gets credit for his dessert, though, and at this point we can be sure that Richard is done.

The other two know it too, as Lisa ponders out loud which chef took each round, and gives no props to Richard. Steph looks over at him, and you can see the sympathy/pity in her expression. The question for the judges is simply, Which meal would they want to have again? That's key, because it smoothes over the potentially contentious task of deciding whose fuck-ups were worse.

And here, the winner becomes very clear to those of us who have watched this season unfold. There's no question that, while Lisa can craft a pretty good dish now and then, over the course of an entire meal, Stephanie is the chef we'd most like to re-visit. And in a very lackluster end sequence, Padma declares Stephanie the winner of Top Chef 4.

Sure, the pathetic balloon-drop last year was hard to watch, but c'mon. Have a little fun! Focus on Stephanie for crying out loud! We see Richard kibbutzing with Dale (who looks like he's wearing one of Nick Verreos' outfits) and Tom, and we hear Lisa expounding on her pride once again, but so little from our little Steph. But I guess that's fitting for the most demure contestant this season, who's just a little blown away at the moment.

Congrats, Steph!

***

So, that's the season for me, too. I'll put some thoughts together for the reunion show next week, but then that'll be it! I really want to thank everyone who showed up here to read and comment on this total moonshot of a column. I have enjoyed this immensely, and if anyone has any suggestions or requests, I'd be happy to consider doing the same thing for another show if the vox populi willed it so. Food is what I do, but I'm flexible.

Anyway, thanks again for reading. Please come back now and then!

Here we are in Puerto Rico, for the first course of Top Chef's season 4 finale, and we've all had a week to come to grips with the fact that the wrong "fourth person" was in the final group. Lisa, for her part, at least seems interested in making a fresh start. She arrives last to the taxi with a clean (albeit brutal) haircut and perhaps a slightly lighter mood. Still, she looks like the escalator insulted her heritage as she sneered her way to the ground floor.

The other three chefs are less overtly changed from the pre-finale break. Stephanie toured southeast Asia. Richard appears to have debulked his hair slightly. And Antonia opened her restaurant. From all this, we can presume that things will go according to hopes, if not plans. Absence has not made anyone's heart grow fonder towards Lisa, as she gets the most tepid of group hugs.

Puerto Rico is one of the few places outside the borders of the continental US that I've visited, and seeing the chefs stroll into that plaza for the Quickfire made me really miss everything. Particularly the trip to the Bacardi distillery. But the chefs have work to do; they can drink later.

They meet Wilo Benet, the founder of Pikayo restaurant in San Juan. He and Padma task the chefs to create two frituras, tasty fried beach snacks. The only catch is that they must use plantain with both. Plantain's an odd bird; mostly like a banana, but very much not in some key ways. Stephanie tells us that she's been practicing with plantain in advance of this trip, and she just can't get behind 'em. Lisa's unconcerned, having some familiarity with Latin cuisine.

In fact, she's so confident, she turns and goes the opposite way when Padma kicks things off. Everyone else runs to the plantain table (a la Iron Chef), but Lisa goes to the little kitchen to see what the protein situation looks like. As Steph piles plantains of all shades into her arms, her voiceover explains that she's realized that her Quickfire problem is a traffic jam of ideas in her head. She's gonna try to simplify.

Indeed, Steph kicks it off with some tostones with seared tuna and a pork/shrimp fritter with brown butter and a lime-basil sauce. Her first-ever attempt at tostones is met well by Benet. Lisa also whips up a tostone, hers with duck and mango papya salsa. Antonia misses the mark with her crispy oysters with plantain jam, and Richard overthinks the room with too-dry pork albondigas and green plantain chips and plantain salsa. Stephanie takes a pretty easy victory, and boy does she get a whopper of an advantage.

Wilo invites all the chefs to a party in San Juan, and we learn that pink Crocs aren't made for dancing. After some dramatic music and slo-mo camera work (what, are they all about to die in a kitchen explosion?), the chefs make their way to a very detemined Elimination Challenge.



That Elimination Challenge, it turns out, will be held at the very austere and photogenic La Fortaleza, the Puerto Rican Governor's mansion. Unfortunately for us, the weary viewing public, this will be another catering challenge. For 100 VIP guests and visiting chefs, the contestants will have to butcher a whole pig and make at least two dishes from separate parts of the animal. Chef Tom pulls a large frond off of the table behind him to reveal the special guest, a carcass!

This is actually a pretty cool challenge, despite the multi-plate setting. As usual, four past chefs arrive to lend helping hands: Spike, Dale, Andrew and Nikki. And that advantage Steph won in the Quickfire? Yeah. Not only does she get first choice for her partner, but she gets to assign everyone's partner. Wow, aren't we glad that Spike didn't make it this far on his own? What an opportunity for total destruction-wreaking.

But we know our Steph, and she's such a nice little thing that she wanted the best possible competition for this round, not a trainwreck. With the best of intentions, she took Dale for her own purposes, and assigned the following pairings: Richard/Spike, Antonia/Nikki, and Lisa/Andrew. Now, I know Andrew's kind of a spazzy doofus, and wouldn't really work well with anyone except maybe Richard. But Steph had to know that Lisa/Andrew would not go over smoothly. Indeed, Andrew shows just a glimmer of the crazy eyes he was giving Lisa at the end of the box lunch challenge. But he declares that he battles with honor, and will do his best to help Lisa win. I actually believe him, but that doesn't mean it'll be easy breezy.

After a brief planning session, the sous chefs are off to the market while the chefs still in the running head to the kitchen to start prepping their pigs. Richard appears to have gone to mob culinary school; his plan is to cut the head and feet off and use them together. Antonia wants to go traditional Latin, as does Lisa, surprisingly. That's the death knell; whenever a chef abandons his or her own vision for someone else's, that chef loses. Immediately. It's almost like a disqualification. Richard notes this, and exhorts "play your own game."

The irony here is that Lisa's Jewish. So for her to not only abandon her home cuisine for Latin, but also to have to work with a food item that is zeyer trayf...well, it just doesn't seem like she's destined for greatness.

She and Richard both send mallet heads flying in the kitchen, but Richard at least keeps his head about him, as he calls Spike to task him with an added market item fondly remembered from his grade school days: malt liquor! Okay, so it's Malta, a malt beverage made with hops, barley and yeast, but without alcohol. Sounds interesting as a rib glaze, so his menu appears to be shaping up. Antonia seems comfortable too, as she discusses easy ways to break down a pig, but Nikki notes that it seems like Antonia's distracted and lacking focus. Lisa, meanwhile, is getting pissy at Andrew for not doing things exactly her way.

And then there's the Stephanie/Dale superteam. Dale would be arguably the greatest asset of the four helper chefs, and indeed he snags Steph some black plantains to use as a very sweet ingredient. But as he finishes his discussion of how cramped the tiny fridge is, and the chefs all walk out of the kitchen for the night, the camera pans to a pan. A pan of Stephanie's dry-rubbed pork, in an error reminiscent of Marcel's fish in the season 2 finale. This is a big problem, and at that moment, Stephanie's in trouble. And it was Dale who left it out.

This is the big time, people. Let's just break down the menus, straight up:

• Richard's ambitious and broad menu includes coffee-cinnamon BBQ pork shoulder with braised greens and mango; pressure-cooked porkbelly with pickled watermelon; Malta and soy glazed ribs; and fresh ham with beans.



• Antonia plates honey porkbelly with sweet peppers; pork sausage with pigeon peas and habañero; and curried pork with pumpkin and yuca.



• Lisa's dishes are a yuca and pork rellena with pineapple mojo; citrus braised porkbelly with plantain and sweet potato puree; and an adobo roasted pork tostone with black bean and plantain.



• Stephanie, forced to improvise almost an entirely new menu, comes up with (with Dale's assistance) a fruit and proscuitto salad with chicharrones; coconut pork with a black plantain pancake; and pork saté on sugarcane skewers with miso-almond butter.

To emphasize just how bigtime this finale is, the First Lady of Puerto Rico is in attendance. We get very little realtime feedback from the guests, and what we do get is edited to provide a compliment for every chef. The Judges' Table is where we're gonna get the real meat.



The Puerto Rico stew room is indeed a lovely place to be, unless you feel like you made a fatal flaw. None of the chefs are extremely worried, but when Padma calls out Richard and Stephanie, Lisa sums up the obviousness of the verdict: "ahhhhh....fuck."

Wilo saw originality and good execution in everyone's menu, but Tom clearly liked Richard's porkbelly and Steph's chicharrones the best. Tom tells Richard that he thought Richard self-edited more in this challenge, and for the better. Stephanie's summation of her experience was that it was great working with Dale. That should give you an indication of what the judges might be thinking at this point. We've seen this play out before (sea beans, anyone?).

The winner, clearly, is Richard. And when he is declared the winner and told to look behind him for his prize, we see just how big-time this finale is. A 2009 Toyota Corolla rolls out (my fianceé asks, "how's he gonna get that back to Atlanta?" It's Atlanta, not Atlantis), and Richard gets to float back to the stew room to roust the bottom two.

Lisa, in a moment of graciousness, expresses confidence in her dishes but can't fault the two top chefs for their product. Tom, predictably, is puzzled at her departure from Asian fare. Gail found her puree too sweet, and thinks that Lisa's garnishes distracted from the main items. Wilo wasn't a fan of her tostones this time around.

But the most damning critique is saved for Antonia. Her beans were vastly undercooked (despite her lame attempt at defense by saying she likes her beans more al dente). Her three dishes were all served on the same plate, which bewilders the three regular judges. Here we see that maybe Nikki wasn't the best influence on Antonia's efforts in the finale. Ol' One Pot didn't do enough to push Antonia to innovate, and that only fostered the kind of conservative cookery to which Antonia can sometimes fall victim. Her dishes were easily the least sophisticated (read the menus above, and see if you notice how simple her items were in comparison to the other three chefs'), and her technical execution was just as shoddy.

Despite Lisa getting a whopping 91% of the phone poll for who should go home, it is Antonia--that strong contender for fan favorite--who gets to get back on the plane and head home. She brought a B+ level to an A game competition, Tom chirps proudly (you know he was practicing that one), and her table just didn't have the crowds the other three did. Back in the stew room, Antonia whispers into Stephanie's ear, "Kick their ass." Lisa, not to be forgotten, rails against Richard and Steph for the lack of congratulations to her for making it to the finale. I know you guys think the wrong chef went home, but how about some props? Richard, in a rare pottymouth moment, considers the following: "You won the fucking bronze medal. Congratulations." But Antonia did deserve to go home for this performance. So this time, we are given a week to grips with the fact that, amazingly, it was indeed the right "third person" out of four who was sent to the final group.

Every now and then I get the itch to buy a new coffee maker. I'm not a total bean freak, but I'm not a moron either. I read Coffee Geek (which doesn't seem to be as good as it used to for reviews, in my opinion), I check the reviews in Consumer Reports... but it really comes down to a fundamental and biological desire to get something new for the purpose of running water through ground-up beans.

I'm running on this fellow right now. It's a Krups Aroma Control, with a delayed start timer. I like that feature, even if it's done brewing before I finally stop hitting Snooze. But the little Pause n Pour button at the base of the backsplash isn't making full contact with the basket at the other end of the lever. This results in a bunch of water pooling unpredictably in a closed-off basket compartment, and it's only a matter of time before it starts overflowing. My quest is not wholly based on purchase lust. I might actually need a new one (lord knows I don't want to try to crack that thing open and fix it myself, nor do I want to pay someone to do it).

First, I really wanted this horrible monstrosity. It's so ugly that it isn't ugly anymore. It's brown, for chrissakes! But I read some reviews on a variety of sites, and it appears to be not quite as "good" as it is "quirky." In every sense of the word.

So I'm back to browsing the store shelves and Internet, lamely trying to stumble onto the next idée fixe. I don't need a ceramic carafe, although it'd be cool. I don't want pods. Dear sweet Jesus, no pods. I'm also not made of money, so I'd prefer the machine to be under $150. And that's being extravagant.

It would be funnier to close this post with "hit me with your best shot" if I was shopping for an espresso machine, but it is what it is. Help me out.

Here's where I tell you about how sometimes you live in a city and you pass places and see things and read about stuff and never actually get around to experiencing them until someone from out of town shows up to jar you out of your rut.

It is with some shame that I admit that Kristine and I had yet to spend any real time at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. You may deride me at whatever volume you feel is appropriate.

Okay. Now that that's over, let me say that I could go there probably every day. I'm sure many do. The best part was watching the frogs (toads? I can never remember) try to alight upon the tiny lilypads in the Sunken Garden's mirror pool.

Wait. I take that back. This was the best part:



With my hamstrung world travel ability, this is as close as I've ever gotten to an honest-to-god Thai temple/pavilion.

I even got to be the teacher's pet when the tram driver was unable to answer a fellow rider's question of "what's that five-headed statue called?" (answer: a naga)

Good times. Plus, the trip dovetailed nicely with the legwork for my next Fringe Foods! (that's a tease, folks)