Medallions of fine dining
6 months into a delicious new year, our critic reviews his top tastes

By Jerry Shriver, USA TODAY

Francis Mallmann 1884 Restaurante, Mendoza, Argentina (1188 Belgrano; 011-54-261-424-3336). Argentine chef Francis Mallmann is one of South America's stars, thanks to his sophisticated renderings of regional produce at his restaurants in Buenos Aires, Uruguay and here in the heart of the Mendoza wine country. He seems completely at home at this spacious, Colonial-style outpost, where my dinner highlights included flatbread topped with bresaola, dried tomatoes, goat cheese and fresh figs; roasted lamb with pureed potatoes; and perfectly simple chocolate mousse.

????guess i will see????

truffles in paradise

Off to Argentina, love you all!!!

Hey, maybe Jim can comment on this. I bookmarked a Japanimation website a few months ago. When I clicked it tonight, I got the following:

"You have reached the webservers of the American Cancer Society, although it appears that you are trying to reach the website of the Anime Web Turnpike, at www.anipike.com. That website is temporarily incorrectly mapped to our address.

"Please rest assured that the American Cancer Society is working with the Anime Web Turnpike to resolve this problem as quickly as possible.

"The Anime Web Turnpike is available via a mirror site at http://www.anime.jyu.fi/~anipike/."

I've never gotten this message before when clicking on this link, and it seems dishonest to me. My take is that the ACS attempted to reserve the URL, found out it was taken by an organization with less clout, and/or a weaker domain registrar (ie, pimply fans), and just muscled on in. Fine, but why couldn't they say this:

"You thought you were clicking on Anime Turnpike, but, surprise, we finessed them out of their URL. Eventually we won't even post this message, you'll just have to get back to the search engines and find Anime Turnpike on their second choice URL. If you don't like it, let us remind you that we're trying to cure cancer here, and if you have a problem with that, then may God have mercy on you, heartless person."

Is there any possible scenario where Anime Turnpike was in the wrong here? Maybe they started using it and found out ACS had it in reserve. Still, it seems to me that prior, extensive use should count for something.

putin visits bush at his ranch in texas. says hes looking forward to riding horseback with bush around the ranch. unfortunately, bush does not ride. but he can drive.

Doomed Plane's Number Lottery Winner

british pm tony blair has sent not so super secret agent harry potter to afghanistan to wreak havoc at the box office. having worked his magic in kabul theatres, he has moved on to bewitch taliban audiences in jalalabad and kandahar with his cuteness and pluck if not his magic. potter said the covert operation has come as a welcome relief from promoting his movie and merchandising tie-ins.

grateful for the assistance while mindful of the need to spend another 20 billion before the war ends to satisy the defense contractors, bush has issued guarded praise for the movie and potters secret intervention. he has publicly put on a good face and offered potter an open invitation to play t-ball at the whitehouse once all the evil has been wrung from bin laden. however, dratfink has unearthed secret NSA and CIA communiques outlining strategies for countering, kidnapping, cloning or killing potter if he becomes a risk to americas global hegemony.

stock for the gillette company soared on the exchange today at the prospect of an almost clean shaven afghanistan. their new ad campaign plastered on hastily assembled billboards amidst the rubble of kabul extols the virutes of 'gillette: the new face of freedom'. but dont confuse that with lancomes 'le nouveau visage de la liberté' campaign for women. the french beauty multinational have set up make-up booths in mazir e sharif to instruct the afghani women in the art and ritual of face painting. no more blaming the taliban for being dateless on a friday night, ladies!

birds cleared of all wrongdoing in airbus crash. incarcerated rebel flock leaders released from detention. bald eagles breathe easier. audobon society sues over defamation of character for birds everywhere.

america needs this kind of commitment to its olympic sports.

is this picture really necessary?

"If you put your ear to the ground, you can hear the lake draining," said geologist Amy Clifton of the Nordic Volcanological Institute in Reykjavk, Iceland. "It sounds like water going down the sink."

will harry potter melt the titanic or can george lucas make a movie that we all want to see? and what do the sci-fiers make of this spielberg project? i have a feeling this soundtrack will outsell the movie. maybe the movie was made just to push the cd.

20th Century Fox has set the U.S. release of "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones" for Thursday, May 16 -- "one day earlier than expected" (Variety).

"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" will open this weekend "on an historic 7,000-plus screens" (Variety).

The Northern Alliance takes Kabul; the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are pinned down in the mountains and effectively neutralized; democracy is restored; Bush was right, the left was wrong; forget the Saudis, forget Palestine; let's put 9/11 behind us and get back to Britney.

"Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote" say the Bush lackies at the NYT. The headline could just as easily have read "Overvotes Put Bush Election in Doubt," but the status quo must be maintained at all costs.

Hollywood helps out with the war effort

O.K., what's the deal? The little I know about art history I've learned from the very well informed people here. Alex, in particular has been quite a good teacher. And I know I learned all about the use of the "camera obscura" by many of the great painting masters (most notably Vermeer?) This was presented to me as a well known fact. But now I keep reading everywhere (here, here, here, here - links from here) that David Hockney has a new book out where he supposedly floats this "new" and "controversial" theory.

Is it really new? Does Hockney have any claim to this idea? Or is this just a rehashed controversy being trotted out to drive book sales?

Sure, I guess watching birds in Central Park can teach you a thing or two, and make for a fine afternoon, but to the geek birder the need for a wind tunnel is pretty clear.

Ken Kesey died today. He was 66.

Peter, I can see your house from here

Let's Roll

does anyone have the address of sarah's opening? i forgot the invite and need to be there by 6...
thanks.

There's been controversy about high tech security devices at 26 Federal Plaza which go unused, or, like the $30,000.00 x-ray machine, get used as coffee holders. My favorite device is decidedly low-tech. It's a convex mirror with wheels on the back, attached to a pole with a flashlight on it, and used to check the underside of vehicles. The only thing lower-tech is the sniffing dog, but we have yet to build a device with that level of sensitivity to odors. Maybe we should use owls for night vision.

The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.

Islamic Hip-Hop vs Islamaphobia
(from 1997)