What did we learn in the pre-Thanksgiving episode of Top Chef? Well, we learned that Mary Sue Milliken would make a great recurring guest judge. We learned that Susan Feniger likes acid--probably not a surprise. We learned that Beverly is a total nut.

Well, I sure put the whammy on Keith, didn't I? Pre-cooked shrimp and pre-made tortillas? To say nothing of being the wrong kind of tortilla? I'd say something about prison food, but dude had to have earned his James Beard attention for something other than nutraloaf.

(I'll give you time to look that up.) (Also, do check out the second Last Chance Kitchen.)

I thought the Quickfire was cute, making all the squeamish chefs think they were not only going to have to dispatch a live rattlesnake, but coax it out of a friggin' mailbox. It was good to see the guest judge stick to his guns, giving the three simplest preparations of rattler the top spots. Dakota Weiss BS'd her "when I think of rattlesnake, I think of beer" line into a victory, but I would have picked weepy Beverly Kim's rattlesnake nigiri.

This season is clearly not going to be about outsized personalities; there are some real bummers in this cast. Chuy "Official Mexican Palate" Valencia, Paul "The Lone Lone Star" Qui, and Heather "Does Anyone Have a Mallet for This Cake" Terhune struck me as having good temperaments for the competition and all of its oddities.

It was nice to see the show return to elevated Mexican food; it seems like the last time we had this kind of challenge was Season 4, when Erik expressed doubts of Mexican cuisine's upper limits. Fortunately, everyone played nice for young Blanca's quinceanera. Beverly was clearly working through some personal issues, serving Mexican-by-way-of-Korean food, and totally losing her shit over the daddy-daughter dance.

Chuy cranked out two fine-lookin' dishes: a pasilla-balsamic BBQ rattlesnake, and braised goat birria just like abuelito used to make. MOTO's Chris Jones (total nerd, by the way, and not the cool kind--the Star Wars-quoting kind) impressed with a cumin-breaded rattlesnake in a Jackson Pollock presentation, and a really appealing mushroom empanada.

The Team With the Mexican took the win, though no single chef was credited with the grand prize. But then, being given a pass from standing at a really whiny, blame-gamey Judges' Table--way too petulant for the first real week of competition--was reward enough.

Sarah Grueneberg and Lindsay Autry botched the cochinita pibil that Blanca requested, and used store-bought tortillas to boot. Sarah gave up Keith Rhodes' shrimp screw-up (which would have otherwise been invisible since Lindsay never served them), and Keith had to own up to it with the judges. Ty-Lör Boring served a bad fritter, but his carne asada ensured that he was never in danger of elimination; his umlaut stayed in place.

At the end of deliberation, Keith was sent packing for a mushy, unrefined enchilada that didn't live up to regional standards of construction anyway. His poor judgment on the shrimp was probably what spared Lindsay the axe. Ah, but then the Last Chance Kitchen... I'll say that it's definitely the right choice to not tell the chefs about it until after they've been cut.

This week we got the clowns; next week the real rodeo--and more tears from Beverly!

I decided to be lab-precise with this, and open the beers at the same time, making notes as they breathed and warmed. Please remember: I am not a beer professional; my analysis may be completely for shit.

So now we have our familiar 16 chefs; it only took us two weeks to get there. Anyone else think we're going to see more double-eliminations than usual this season? (This "Last Chance Kitchen" online shadow competition seems interesting, but are they hiding the surviving chef away from the rest of the contestants? How did it work in the real world of filming?)

It seemed like there was a little more focus on the food this week, or else last week's food was really that underwhelming. I liked a lot of the big flavors at play, even if not all of them made it through. The seared trout with Asian tomato salad from Paul, Edward's duck chawanmushi, and Beverly's octopus nakji bokum all speak to some strong Asian dishes to come. (The eliminated short rib and oxtail were victims primarily of the cooking technique rather than their Asian flavors.)

This was the gut-punch round, though. Only four chefs were eliminated in the first and second rounds combined; today, five of ten competing chefs were eliminated before the bubble round even started. Another four were booted in that bubble round, including the 51-year old Laurent. I could almost hear Colicchio thinking, There's only enough room for one bald-headed, soul-patched chef in the Top Chef Kitchen, and it ain't you, Laurent.

Lots of references to the old ball and chain back home--or in Janine's case, the heartless bitch who dumped her over the phone after a commitment ceremony that fell short of a Shakespearean sonnet. And actually, everyone who focused on their significant others this week got booted: Janine, Chaz (whose 40-minute risotto never made the plate), and Ashley (wife of a Filipino man whose mother will have some disapproving comments over the strength of her oxtail kare-kare).

Happy to see Wisconsin-born Greyson make the cut in the bubble round--even if she never mentions her New Holstein roots on-screen. (They're right there on the Bravo website, Greyson. Just embrace 'em!) Beverly seems fun, and Lindsay reminds me just a little of another Lindsay I know; she also appeared to really impress Tom with her braised veal.

So at the end of these preliminary rounds, we can draw a couple conclusions. Seattle is down (0-for-4, Chicago is up (6-for-6). Gender is split 50/50, and everyone's under 40--though, in fairness, only Oldy McOlderson Laurent was over 50. Paul Qui all by himself carries the home state's flag going into the real competition, unless Andrew brings his A-game to the D-league of the Last Chance Kitchen.

And Edward, in slicing up his hand but good, proves that every single chef is tougher and more dedicated than Jamie Lauren. (Sorry Jamie, but we shoot straight here in Texas.)

Looks like a good crew this season, and if Hugh Acheson can get over his verbal affectations the judges should do well, too. Me? I'm reeling from the previews, just waiting to see Padma say "motherfucking snakes on these motherfucking plates" again.

I've included travel stops in previous Kyle Ate Here posts, but it just didn't seem fair to San Francisco to lump it in with Appleton and Door County (stay tuned!) restaurants. The first thing I did when we decided to visit our friends in SF was build a Google Map of potential restaurant stops. A city that inspires that level of planning deserves the full treatment--and this is kind of an epic.

The fact that one of our friends in SF is a meticulous planner and enthusiastic promoter of her city didn't hurt the development of a tight itinerary of eating. Despite landing in California well past what normal human beings would call dinner hour, we still ventured out from their Golden Gate Park-area house to the Mission. Chinese food was calling.

Mission Chinese Food is one of those places that plain has figured it out. Literally--the guys running the show out of a dingy storefront had never cooked Sichuan before opening MCF, working it out as they went. The result? One of Bon Appetit's ten best new restaurants of 2011.

Spicy buckwheat noodles with Asian pear. Hainam chicken rice. Broccoli beef cheek. General Tso's veal rib. Kung pao pastrami. This place is right up my alley, and it looks like is should be in an alley. Deep flavors, meats cooked and caramelized to delicious perfection, and a soundtrack split between gangster rap and the best easy listening of the 1980's--I didn't want to leave. That beef cheek dish was maybe the best thing I've eaten all year.

Hard to come down from that cloud, but how about a pub that brews its own beer, has an intricate and gorgeous design aesthetic, and looks out on the hot corner of Haight and Masonic? Magnolia is that place, and the cod and chorizo sandwich I had for Friday lunch speaks well of it. My wife had a watermelon salad that was nice, but come on. Chorizo, people. You know where my allegiances lie.

Friday night, though, was the centerpiece of the whole trip. The one place I insisted upon. The place we made reservations for weeks in advance. Chef Chris Cosentino's Incanto.

You've seen Tony Bourdain eat here on No Reservations. You've seen the chef on Food Network's Chefs vs. City. If Cosentino and his kitchen at Incanto have a claim to fame, it's odd bits. Offal. The kind of stuff my Fringe Foods brain gets all worked up over.

And brain it was for course number one--a brown butter-sauteed calf's brain (yes, a whole brain, creamy and hot), over buttery toast, topped with a smoked caper salsa verde that every single person at the table went a little slack-jawed over. For the main course, my second serving of pork belly in two days (after MCF) came crispy alongside polenta, squash, and smoked apples; I was going for a smoked theme, and it paid off. Dessert was a fig leaf panna cotta with quince that capped the meal off perfectly.


(Other plates at the table included my wife's cured tuna heart spaghettini--a kind of offal riff on carbonara; a special of sweetbread bacon terrine, breaded and fried; lardo with persimmon and pomegranate; and a ridiculous plate of goat two ways with potatoes, olives, and goat horn peppers. It was all terrific, and very reasonably priced--about $300 for four.)

Saturday, we were all over town. It started off well, with a luscious maple Bavarian log from Donut World on 9th (leave it to Kevin to sneak off and procure an illicit doughnut for me; he's a true friend) and a Blue Bottle double americano from Dash Cafe.

Due east to the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero, the Farmers' Market was a totally non-circular operation--strange for this Madisonian. But it was all good once I got some 4505 Meats in me. Their maple sausage breakfast sandwich is a glistening, rocket-hot bundle of sin, and I loved it. Even better are their chicharrones, which resemble nothing so much as meat cotton candy.

Meats-as-sweets continued with the Boccalone cured meat stand inside the Ferry Building. Co-founded by Chris Cosentino, Boccalone fulfills all your "salted pig part" needs. I could have filled my meat cone (not a euphemism) with nothing but their prosciutto crudo and been perfectly happy. That's not to say that the subsequent trip to In-n-Out (yes, Donny, my first time) was out of dissatisfaction. No, it just had to happen.

With all that, I'm still not sure how I managed to fit an Époisses-studded cheeseburger in there, but it happened. Heirloom Cafe, one of Bon Appetit's nine restaurants to visit in San Francisco, has an interesting atmosphere--sort of like a Victorian parlor in a modern art museum--and a tight, rustic menu. Brussels with bacon and a bacon-onion tart might make Heirloom sound like a trend-hopping artifice, but it's not. The comped bottle of bubbly--more of Lauren's networking in action--was just the bow on top of a really enjoyable experience. (And I swear I didn't realize I was following BA's advice on the burger.)

We did have to swear off a round of late beers at Monk's Kettle in deference to our full bellies, but I did at least get to drink a pint of Pliny the Elder on Friday night. Sunday--our last day--would be a "walk off the calories" kind of day. Before heading out for Muir Woods and a little winery-hopping, we stocked up with Beanery coffee and pastries and whatnot from Arizmendi Baking Co-op--holy corn-cherry scone.

And then, en route to Napa, something magical happened. Lauren, struck by the spirit, remembered a roadside sign she'd seen for a diner serving fried pies. "Lunch?", she asked. "Why are we still talking about it?", replied the menfolk. And thus did the Fremont Diner become our Sunday lunch stop.

It's slow, it's idiosyncratic, and there are about three different bottlenecks built into the experience, but man is Fremont Diner something amazing. It's a serious Southern food diner. Our friends, recent transplants to SF from Charleston, South Carolina, were over the moon. Pimento cheese on really nice crusty bread; biscuits crammed full of griddle-hot ham and peach jam; complimentary fried apple slices and onion rings--yes, yes, gods yes.

So, the pie at the end kind of got lost. We had to ask for it twice, and eventually took it to go. At least we were comped a slice of caramel cake for our trouble. Fremont Diner is country-style classics tweaked just a pinch here and there. See: horchata or salted caramel milkshakes, a Reuben topped with chow-chow, or a muffaletta with orange skin-infused fontina. Basically, there are little sheds and outbuildings all over and I want to move into one.

[[Deleted scene involving the four of us punching way over our cultural weight at three vineyards in Napa, and driving past--but dear lord, not stopping along--the murderer's row that is The French Laundry, Bouchon, and ad hoc.]]

The one negative dining experience of the trip came when we stopped at the very cute Oxbow Public Market in Napa-proper. I wasn't sure how much more I could cram into my face, so I decided to play it light with a rotisserie duck taco from C Casa. Upon receiving my (small, EIGHT DOLLAR) taco, I noticed the avocado crema was missing. The server/cashier noted that something appeared to be amiss, and took my taco back for remedy. I could see her telling the cook, who then went to the menu board to see if he'd really left it off. No, dude, I made it up. Heck, I don't even know what avocado crema is.

I have never been closer to playing the "I'm a food writer, and I know both how to read, and what avocado crema looks like" card. I didn't, but I thought about it for a second.

This would have been a bummer of a finale, but inspiration (always timely, it seems, in SF) struck. We're heading to the airport along the eastern edge of the peninsula, yes? What say you all to a quick detour for ice cream at Humphry Slocombe?

The dishes of Secret Breakfast (bourbon ice cream with corn flake nuggets), Blue Bottle Vietnamese Coffee, Caramel Apple, and/or Butterbeer (stout beer ice cream and brown butter ice cream blend) that we all kind of leisurely shared while a huge Halloween crowd filed in right on our heels speak the answer to that question.

Really. If the question is San Francisco, the answer is always going to be yes. For a food guy? It calls to me.

Howdy, Top Chef fans! I bet you didn't see this coming; frankly, neither did I. Let's make some blog magic happen.

Things are going to run a little differently than they did in seasons past. I'm not taking notes, so this will be more analysis than recap. Call it a spoon-drag of consciousness approach. And anyway, there's no way in hell I'm going to try to keep up with the bios of all twenty-nine preliminary contestants.

Many of these early hopefuls were pretty obnoxious, and the knobbiest of those range knobs was shown the sad side of the glass doors exiting the Top Chef Kitchen: Tyler Stone, toothful braggart who would have been subject to numerous Justin Bieber jokes from me had he advanced. (Let's see how long chin-wobbling Edward Kim and Janine Falvo's clenched jaw survive in the Stew Bubble.)

As a Seattle fan, I'm bummed that 75% of that city's chefs were dispatched. Especially Nina Vicente, who had the worst case of timer blinders ever, leaving the rabbit off of the plate in her rabbit challenge. My two early favorites--or at least the chefs I'm rooting for--are Nyesha Arrington, whose resume is impressive; and Keith Rhodes, who turned a prison education in cooking into a successful career as a chef.

Of the rest, I have mixed emotions. Two MOTO chefs are among the official 16; Chris Jones has an odd attitude, and Richie Farina walks like he has to poop. But I dig MOTO's head honcho, Homaro Cantu, so I'm hopeful that these guys can pull off some intriguing plates. Chris Crary is shaping up to be this year's Angelo, though I find it unlikely that Crary will grow on me in any way.

I am fervently hopeful that Ty-Lör Boring sticks around, because I want to see if that ridiculous umlaut wanders around onto other letters in his name, like Richard Lewis' mole in Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

But this is a show that's at least 50% about food. I thought Dakota Weiss (a chocolate/vinegar combo?) and Ty-Lör (who, seriously, looks like he should be bare-knuckle boxing with John L. Sullivan, and it was a fish-sauced rabbit that raised my eyebrow) did way too much monkeying with their food, and yet the judges loved both plates. Both my wife and I are dubious of Emeril's ability to be a stern judge, but I'm looking forward to Hugh Acheson's critical debut. Should be fun. [Edit: I'm told he was a guest judge on Season 2 of Top Chef: Just Desserts, but I wouldn't know, because I've steered totally clear of that hot mess.]

I liked Keith's trio of rabbit preparations, both for how appealing it sounded and how challenging it must have been. Molly Brandt (fighting the preconceptions about cruise ship cuisine) seemed to be a real sourpuss early, but Tom's cold-blooded axing of Tyler and his butchery of butchery scared her into a more circumspect mood. I wished she'd made the pork cheeks more prominent; everyone loves a prominent pork cheek. (Don't think it's just me.)

This episode ended with the final one-third left to cook, plus the bubble round to fill out the official 16. With 11 already slotted, that leaves (by my estimation) four chefs from the last group and one from the bubble chefs yet to move on.

Reserving final judgment on this season's cast until then, I bid you adios until next week. Here's hoping for a strong season!

As I clack away to meet a deadline that was hindered by my vacation (poor me), here's a note for you all. I'll have a special San Francisco edition of Kyle Ate Here coming this week, and the full Madison edition shortly thereafter. There will also be a special beer-centric post on Sunday, 11/14 Saturday, 11/12, to coincide with the Packers-Vikings Badgers/Gophers game. [Edit: Wow, that was a train wreck.]

Gotta go eat another Twix now.