*A GQ interview with David Chang where he talks about plans to expand to Sydney and Toronto in 2012.

I was there last year and just fell in love with Australia—holy shit, the produce, the proteins, the fish. This place is insane. Why wouldn't you want to open a restaurant out here? We're going to try to use only Australian ingredients, with the exception of some fermented products from Japan and some wines from France.

*What Malcolm Gladwell reads.

Since my brain really only works in the morning, I try to keep that time free for writing and thinking and don't read any media at all until lunchtime, when I treat myself to The New York Times--the paper edition. At this point, I realize, I am almost a full 24 hours behind the news cycle. Is this is a problem? I have no idea. My brother, who is a teacher, always says that we place too much emphasis on the speed of knowledge acquistion, and not the quality of knowledge acquistion: I guess that means that the fact that I am still on Monday, when everyone else is on Tuesday, is okay.

I don't want to shock anyone, but we may have been mislead. I think I saw the Olive Garden commercial touting their cooking school about 15 times before the message internalized and I realized that Olive Garden was talking about a cooking school to which they send their chefs and managers. I don't know if any of you have been to an Olive Garden lately, but I think they need to take a look at the curriculum. Turns out the school is more of a vacation, then educational facility.

I was a manager at Olive Garden and was sent to their culinary institute in Tuscany back in 2007. It was more like a hotel, during the off-season, with restaurant on site. They would let the Olive Garden come and stay in all the rooms and they would use the restaurant as a classroom for maybe an hour here or there and talk about spices or fresh produce for a minute before going site seeing all day. The only time we saw the "chef" was when she made a bolognese sauce while taking pictures with each of us to send to our local newspapers. Basically, yes, they send people to Italy every year. As a manager I still got paid my salary and didn't have to use vacation time, it counted as "work". They paid for everything from meals, sightseeing, flight, everything except souvenirs. But in return, they sent pre-written articles to out local newspaper with fake quotes from me and a group photo. Also every year when they would run the promotion, I was supposed to wear a special "chef" coat and make conversation with guests who ordered the promotional meals.

Tom Haverford was riffing about food on Parks and Recreation and I had to transcribe it. If I knew how to use the computer, I'd just put up the clip on Youtube, but this is how I do it.

"'Serts are what I call desserts. 'Tretres are entrees. I call sandwiches, sannies, samdoozles, Adam Sandlers. Air conditioners are Cool Blasterz with a z, I don't know where that came from. I call cakes, big ol' cookies. I call noodles long ass rice. Fried chicken is fry fry chicky chick. Chicken parm is chicky chicky parm parm. Chicken Cacciatore is chicky catch. I call eggs pre-birds or future birds. Root beer is super water. Tortillas are bean blankies. And I call forks food rakes."

I'd never heard this story, but it just adds to the reason Kendrick Perkins was my second favorite Celtic. Big Baby Davis, is of course, first.

Via Long Reads

The S. Pellegrino World's 50 Best Restaurants were announced yesterday with Denmark's Noma taking first place for the second year in a row. Chicago's Alinea is the first US entry at #6 (up 1 from last year). Per Se and Daniel are #10 and #11. The highest new entry is The Ledbury at #34, and David Chang's Momofuku Ssam Bar fell 14 spots to #40.

I haven't eaten at any of the top 100, but, you know, something to aspire to.

Good thoughts, but I blogged it mostly because of the line, "Play them on your Vizio, Derek. You disgust me."

The movie, based on Max Brooks' book, is finally getting going. I loved the book and am excited for the movie. Robert Richardson, who was the cinematographer on Kill Bill and Natural Born Killers, has begun work in London. Imagining how grisly Richardson will make this movie, based on his previous work, kind of makes me nervous.

Al Swearengen doesn't like anything, and Stellar.io knows this.

I clicked through on a Cracked list of 7 memes that went viral before the internet. I like stuff like that, sure. Seeing Alfred E. Neuman reminded me of a question I may have brought up before... If you had asked the kid me to predict 20 years down the line if Cracked would have a better brand than Mad, I never would have done it. Cracked seems to have figured out what the web wants, and has transitioned into a pretty sold web property. Compare that with Mad, which I just found out has a site on DC Comics with a lonely skyscraper ad down the side of the page.

Incidentally, I did not know Alfred E. Neuman came from bigoted anti-Irish propaganda. So there's that.

The only American League player to hit at least one triple in each of the last 12 season is David Ortiz. I would have never guessed. That's 2 things on the blog today that no one would ever guess.