"This sh*t is terrible, even by the low standards of booze that gets you drunk quickly."

The AV Club taste tests Buckfast, the fortified wine that's all the rage (no pun intended) over in Knifecrime Island. Sounds like it would give Mad Dog 20-20, the king of sickly sweet cheap booze in America, a run for its money.

Compulsive eating shares addictive biochemical mechanism with cocaine, heroin abuse, study shows

Disturbing:

The study goes significantly further than the abstract, however, demonstrating clearly that in rat models the development of obesity coincides with a progressively deteriorating chemical balance in reward brain circuitries. As these pleasure centers in the brain become less and less responsive, rats quickly develop compulsive overeating habits, consuming larger quantities of high-calorie, high-fat foods until they become obese. The very same changes occur in the brains of rats that overconsume cocaine or heroin, and are thought to play an important role in the development of compulsive drug use.

Top Chef 6.11: Ham and Jam and Spamalot

To nearly everyone's relief, Robin was eliminated last night (which the AV Club celebrated with the immortal phrase from the Simpsons, "Poochie's dead!"). It was past time for her to go; at the same time, her tearful exit made me feel for her, as she clearly wanted to prove she could compete with all the young upstarts there. But alas, it was not to be.

Jennifer's continuing on-air burnout is even more heartbreaking, given how high she was flying at the beginning. But badly cooked meat is unaccountable at this stage, and if she's eliminated next week, it may well be an act of mercy. I don't know what Eli was thinking -- maybe something along the lines of Hung's notorious cereal diorama from Season Three -- but his offering looked absolutely dreadful, straining even Nigella Lawson's preternatural poise and equanimity. Having won the Quickfire, however, he's still got some life in him.

It'll be interesting to see Kevin's traditionalism square off against Mike's more avant-garde (or "effeminate," (?!) as Toby Young put it) style in the next few weeks. Bryan seems to split the difference, so perhaps he'll pull through in the end.

Top Chef 6.10: Meat Is Murder

Like other viewers, I'm getting worried about Jennifer. She started out so strong, but in the last few challenges has been getting overwhelmed by the stress of the competition. She wouldn't be the first contestant on the show to break down under pressure, but it would be a shame if she went home before the remaining also-rans (hint: rhymes with Schmeli and Schmobin) did.

Speaking of going home, Mike Isabella's leek dish looked awful on the plate, and apparently tasted awful too, so it was no surprise that he was sent packing. Of all the contestants this season, however, it seems like he got the worst rap: Yes, he made a bunch of sexist comments and his cockiness was off-putting at times, but there seemed to be an underlying decency to him (note how he got everyone to wear red neckerchiefs after Mattin was eliminated) that got obscured. Of course, that may have been of his own volition. And in any case, his dishes seemed good, but not great, at least by Top Chef standards: The show rewards hot-shot, experimental cooking, even though a lot of great food is neither.

The range of vegetarian meals offered was pretty disappointing: Like others, I was puzzled that no one thought to use things like cheese or risotto to make a more satisfying meal. Kevin, the winner, actually got closest to the mark with his mushroom/kale duo: if you're looking for meaty, umami flavor without meat, mushrooms fit the bill quite well. I'd also have liked to have tried Mike Voltaggio's banana polenta; now if he can just keep his player-hater tendencies in check.

So next week is something called Top Chef All-Stars Dinner, which appears to be the usual assortment of petty rivalries, but without the reverence for the craft of cooking that makes Top Chef proper such a good show. In other words, it'll be like all the other reality shows out there.

Top Chef 6.9: Purple Monkey Dishwasher

The Quickfire challenge was rather clever: Essentially a game of Telephone with food (hence the title of this post). It wasn't really something that tells you much about what makes for a good chef, but it was a fun exercise.

Restaurant Wars was surprising for a few reasons: The Blue team got away with naming their restaurant Revolt, Robin actually made a good dish, and both Jennifer and Kevin were at serious risk of elimination. It was strange how all the members of the Red team seemed to have been dragged down together. In part, no doubt, that's due to how the workload was distributed, with Kevin and Jennifer taking on much more than they could handle. I also imagine that Laurine's handling of front of the house duties impacted the performance of the group as a whole as well: If the front had been handled by, say, Jennifer -- who has demonstrated excellent executive abilities -- things might have turned out very differently. On the other hand, the pressure of the competition seems to be getting to her, moreso than any of the other contestants.

The bickering between the Voltaggio brothers was typical reality show fare, but what does it tell us about their cooking styles? Michael clearly feels confident and comfortable in his skin, and rightly so, but I could easily see his brassy tendencies getting the better of him down the road. Bryan, on the other hand, is pretty consistent in his execution, but I wonder if he'll more fully demonstrate his creativity when the stakes get really high. Like most people, I'll be surprised if both brothers aren't in the finale.

One other thing: Was I the only one incredulous about the use of the word "sustainable" to describe the meals being prepared -- given that the competition is in Las Vegas, a city that is, almost by definition, unsustainable?

Top Chef 6.7: Stressed Umami Asian

I liked the idea of the Quickfire challenge: It reminded me of the Second City challenge in Season Four in which Richard Blais and Dale Talde had to make "green perplexed tofu," and famously came up with tofu marinated in beef fat and seared with grill marks. That kind of invention is, at least for the TV viewer who can't taste the food the contestants are serving, really appealing.

The rest of the episode? Not so much. I agree with Scott Tobias that we're now waiting for the lesser competitors to be knocked off -- though it was surprising to see Mike Voltaggio in the bottom bracket this week. I suspect, however, that it'll be a fluke.

I think a Restaurant Wars episode is in order, don't you?

Top Chef 6.6: Deconstructing Ron

Some random points:

1. I'm not sure I totally get the deconstruction trend in haute cuisine; even chefs, on this last episode and in previous episodes of Top Chef, often mess up when trying to do a deconstruction of a dish. (Ron, who was sent home last night, seemed particularly clueless.) I think this is one of those instances where simply seeing the food and watching people react isn't enough; you have to actually taste it for yourself to see how the deconstruction works.

2. Toby Young's return was not particularly welcome; who would ever pronounce "paella" like it rhymes with "Stella"? That said, he seems be less snide than he was last season. Also: Where did Gail run off to?

3. The gap between the front-runners and the rest is becoming enormous, more so than in any other season. Ash, Laurine, and Robin don't look like they'll be around much longer. Ashley and Mike I. have some talent, but have had some serious execution problems. Even so, the general level of talent seems to be vastly above that of last season; there's no way someone like Hosea would still be in contention by now, much less win it all.

Top Chef 6.4: Mastering the Art of French Cooking

This season, as with most of the other seasons, a divide is emerging between the contestants who have some sort of background in or affinity for French cuisine, and those who don't -- with the latter usually ending up at the back of the pack. Hector, who packed his knives and went last night, was an obvious example: Latin-American food was essentially all he knew, and he seemed to flounder when asked to do something outside of that milieu. Meanwhile, Jennifer, Kevin, and the Voltaggio brothers, who all appear to have Francophilic tendencies, are consistently at the top. Occasionally you get some outliers (Ilan from Season 2 specialized in Spanish cuisine, and won); and French cooking experience doesn't automatically mean you'll excel (Ron boasted of his French background, and Mattin is actually French, but neither did well in the last challenge); but generally it seems to be the case that knowing and appreciating French cuisine is a prerequisite to doing well on Top Chef.

But why is this? Is it just culinary imperialism, or is it that, as Michael Ruhlman once wrote:

[The fundamentals of cooking] may have been best categorized and explained by French cooks beginning hundreds of years ago, [but] these fundamentals apply to every kind of cooking there is, Mexican, Italian, Russian, Asian, because food behaves the same in one country as it does in another.

That's my sense as well, based on my (admittedly limited) cooking experience. Once you figure out how to make a béchamel sauce, for example, you can do virtually any cream-based dish, from macaroni and cheese to chicken korma. And it may be that being able to see past specific dishes to the forms that they embody (how very Platonic!) is the mark of a great chef. I've noticed that self-taught cooks don't do very well on Top Chef, and it may be that lack of theoretical training that holds them back.

Top Chef 6.1: First Thoughts

The contestants I'm most impressed with so far are Jennifer Carroll, Kevin, and the Voltaggio brothers. Obviously, with Bryan running Volt in Frederick, Maryland, I'm rooting for him, but I rather like Michael's inventiveness and imagination. Tasked with creating a dish inspired by one of his vices, he decides to make a rack of lamb (wink), marinated with the juice of two coconuts (wink wink). Cheeky, but an example of good culinary thinking.

Kevin won the first elimination challenge, of course, and he seems to really know what he's doing. Likewise with Jennifer Carroll, who won the first Quickfire challenge: When she said she's made boys cry in the kitchen, I was in love.

Michael Isabella seems like he could be the next Marcel: Knowledgeable, but an ass.

Jennifer Zavala's decision to use seitan in a dish was probably her downfall; as Spencer Ackerman points out, it's eaten out of necessity, rarely for pleasure.

Potential dark horses: Hector, Eli, Mattin, and Ron.

All in all, this could be a pretty good season.

Pain in a Bottle

Spencer Ackerman gets acquainted with slivovitz:

I’ve never tasted a brandy before, but I’d be surprised if all brandies are as cloying or as rubbing-alcohol powerful as this. Every glug caused pain. Not since I was a juvenile delinquent drinking King Cobra with members of my band can I recall being this affected by a drink. This morning I saw that under the influence of Slivovitz I blogged something that I cannot recall writing.

That's about the size of it. I got a bottle of Rudolf Jelínek (a slivovitz from the Czech Republic) for Christmas last year, and I can attest that it's the kind of drink that will grab you by the collar and slap you around for a while. In fact, all the liquors in the rakia family (of which slivovitz is one) have that "cloying," "rubbing-alcohol" quality to it. What I haven't been able to figure out is what makes rakia different from other brandies, which generally aren't as harsh on the palate. Most brandy is distilled from grapes, which is not the case with rakia, but there are many fruit brandies, e.g., calvados, that are comparatively smooth. I know that grappa, which has a harsh rakia-type taste, is distilled from all the bits of the grape left over from winemaking; perhaps rakia distillation uses a similar process?

Why Chinese Food Is Like Linux

Fascinating talk by Jennifer 8. Lee about the origins of Chinese food in America -- and around the world:

Deep Thought of the Day

Rum makes a better basis for cakes and sweetbreads than bourbon.