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Archive for November 2012

Revenge of the Han Dynasty

Nov30

Restaurant: Han Dynasty

Location: 3711 Market st, Philadelphia PA. tel. (215) 222 3711

Date: November 21, 2012 & November 26, 2014

Cuisine: Szechuan Chinese

Rating: Spicy Goodness

_

Every year, we Gavins converge on Philadelphia for the annual ThanksGavin, and every year it starts out with the “Wednesday night dinner.” This time around, we ended up at Han Dynasty, a downtown Szechuan Chinese restaurant. I love Szechuan, but rarely see it. In China, I’ve had meals that were so spicy delicious that your life flashed before your eyes.


Han Dynasty is a new breed of American Chinese restaurant, more hip by far than your typical Chinese eatery.


The menu. The red border is not only auspicious, but prognostic — of the heat!


Knowing we were up for some Szechuan, I dragged some Riesling across the country in my handy winecheck bag.

Parker 92, “The detail, refinement, and lift that characterize the best of 2007 were reason enough, Rebholz said, for him to essay some residually sweet Riesling, otherwise, I’d rather leave that to the Mosel vintners. The 7.5% alcohol of his 2007 Riesling Spatlese Vom Buntsandstein indeed puts one in mind of the Mosel, as well as on notice that this will be wine of delicacy and very high residual sugar. It is also impressively endowed with ripe quince and wafting lily and gardenia perfume, and manages to keep its sweetness balanced so as not to tip into sheer confection, but instead to exhibit seamless purity and nectar-like lusciousness. It should be worth watching for a dozen or more years, and in fact I would personally not even care to revisit it for 6-8 years.”


Not your usual Chinese chinz.


Even the tea comes in stylish (probably Japanese, from the look of them) teapots.

We ordered up a deluxe ($30 a person) tasting menu for 16.


Vegetable fried dumplings. The vegetarian variant of your standard potsticker. These were probably the most disappointing dish, but then again, these puppies are always better with pork.


Spring Rolls.


Chinese hot wings, ordered off the happy hour menu.


Double Dragon Punch. Brandy, rum, amaretto, homemade orgeat, orange, pineapple & lemon juices. The ultimate Scorpion Bowl!


Champagne (style) wine also goes great with spicy Chinese.


Spicy Crispy Cucumber. Beware anything at Han Dynasty that has “spicy” in the name. These were delicious and crunchy, but drowned in chili oil — not that I minded.


Dumplings in Chili Oil. Even hotter. These fiery little fellows burn straight down the gullet.


Scallion Pancake. Not spicy, but observe the lovely red tint to the sauce!


This super sweet Auslese from my cellar went perfectly with all the chili. Quince preserves, baked apple, lily, gardenia, and hints of caramel and vanilla mark the nose of the Prum 2007 Wehlener Sonnenuhr Riesling Auslese. With richness yet delicacy and lift it saturates the palate with rich fruit, liquid flowers, vanilla cream, and savory, saline, shrimp shell reduction-like mineral essences. This intense, pure, subtly and truly nobly botrytized Auslese has umami with a capital “U.”


Wonton soup. Not hot, but had a little bit of peppery kick.


Rice helps cool the palette.


Little clams in spicy black bean sauce. Yum. This wasn’t too spicy, although you can see those Szechuan peppers hiding in there.


Dan Dan Noodles. This isn’t the crazy hot traditional version of the dish. Sure, it had plenty of heat, but it also had a nice sweet nutty sesame taste.


Another view.


We had the pork on the side, like high end baco-bits.


Sesame noodles. Same noodles as the dan dan, without the pork or chili sauce. Much nuttier in flavor.


Smoked duck. The duck was probably tea smoked duck, as it had that pastrami-like flavor. Controversial, as some didn’t like that vibe. I did.


Han Dynasty’s take on Honey Walnut Shrimp. These generous shrimp were crazy tempura fried and then glazed with a honey sauce and walnuts. Great rendition of the dish.


Hot shrimp with asparagus. Not a ton of shrimp, but some heat.


This was a special. Lobster in garlic sauce. Yum yum delicious. The lobster itself was perhaps a hair overcooked, but the sauce was amazing and the crustacean was perched on a bed of rich noodles…


Which allowed them to be soaked by the sauce. Yowzie!

Ma Po Tofu. One of my favorite dishes in general, and while this rendition was a touch too salty, it was still fabulous.


Eggplant w/ Garlic Sauce. These were not only very spicy, but had a delicious smokey garlic taste.


String Beans w/ Minced Pork. Fantastic version of this classic.


Pea Leaves w/ Garlic. Another great classic vegetable treatment.


Hot sauce style beef. Stir fried with cabbage and celery in an authentic Sichuan chili oil hot sauce!


Kung Pao style chicken. Peanuts, celery, and chili peppers. Excellent version of the classic.


Scallion Style chicken. Stir fried in hoisin and oyster sauce with onions and scallions. Not so spicy.


Cumin style lamb. Cumin-crusted and stir fried with bell peppers, dry peppers, and onions. Strongly flavored of cumin as you’d suspect with a nice heat. This was excellent, although it wasn’t as good as a cousin of the dish I once had in western China that was drier, on sticks. That one was bright red and relentlessly, throat burningly hot. It was also one of the best lamb dishes I’ve ever had.


Scallion Style beef. Mild and tasty.


Salt and pepper style chicken. Delicately battered and served on a bed of minced pepper and onion.


Salt and pepper fish. Also good, with a bit of heat.


This unusual white wine from Campagnia went pretty well too.


Another special. Whole stripped bass in sweet and sour chili sauce.


The sauce was, you guessed it, hot! But amazing.


Another special, dry fry style shrimp. These puppies were heavily fried (yum) and doused in a healthy dose of chili oil, then stir fried (again).


Spicy Hot Pot. Beware, like most Han Dynasty food, it was hot two ways (temperature and spicy). There was all sorts of goodness in there. Mostly chicken and a bit of seafood. This had some schezuan peppercorns.


The chefs at work: playing with fire!

This was a fantastic Chinese feast. Sure, it burned through my whole GI for 36 hours, but it was worth it. A worthy addition to the catalog of great Wed night ThanksGavin openings. Commenting two years later, and many many great Chinese meals under my belt, I’d have to say this is solid Schezuan style food, a tad modernized, and good stuff. One complaint on my second go (2014) was that they brought all the food in two giant waves, an “appetizer” and “entree” wave. The first time each item came out more or less on its own. This is way too many dishes for a big barrage.

See the rest of the ThanksGavin here.

For more Philly dining reviews click here.

By: agavin
Comments (2)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Chinese Food, Han Dynasty, hot pepper, Sichuan, Szechuan Chinese, ThanksGavin, Wine

WOW Endgames – Cataclysm

Nov28
Cataclysm Collector's Edition contents

The Cataclysm Collector’s Edition contents

For the record, like many others, I stopped playing during the last six months of Lich King (who needed to run ICC more than 20-30 times?) and came back for Cataclysm. I discovered what is now my least favorite era of WOW.

Getting There

I didn’t even like leveling in Cataclysm. The zones were boring. I hated Vashj’ir for it’s annoying 3D travel and vast size. The others were just uninspired. Only Uldum was decent.

The Big Distraction

I suspect that the designers blew their wad on the giant world revamp. Every zone in Azeroth got an update, some quite dramatic, and all of the quests were redone. But I never saw any of this — except flying overhead. With four toons from 60-80, I wasn’t about to go level a new one. I didn’t even try out the new starting zones (Goblin and Worgen, although I heard they were good). If Worgen had been Horde (like they should), I might have tried them.

Cataclysm Barrens divide

The old world got a facelift, or hatchet job…

Talent’s Last Stand

The talent trees got another huge overhaul, but this time instead of adding 5 new talent points, Blizzard took away  30! Level 85 characters had 41 talents, which wasn’t so bad except it reduced the emotional reward given at each level. Still, I understand how the prospect of 76 points could be overwhelming from a design and user standpoint. More substantially, Blizzard introduced a more formal choice of specialization. Instead of merely investing points in various trees, you had to pick your preferred tree. Along with this came certain mutually exclusive abilities and resources.

On the plus side, this allowed the designers the freedom to work on the specs in more isolation without having to place signature spec abilities deep into the trees. By Pandaria, it allowed even greater differentiation of specs. On the minus, this change continued a trend toward homogenization. There was a feeling under the old system, even if illusionary, that you could create an interesting hybrid between two specs. No more.

Cataclysm Warlock Talents

The new, post diet, Warlock talent trees

Reforging to Sameness

A number of gearing innovations were introduced with Cataclysm. In the BC and LK eras, the number of affixes (different stats and attributes possible on gear) had expanded considerably. The game has a lot of gear specs: plate tanks, plate dps, plate healing, mail spell dps, mail melee, mail ranged, mail healing, leather healing, leather spell dps, leather melee, leather tanking, cloth healing and cloth dps. In the old days, the designers ignored some, like bear tanks, but with making every spec viable came the need to provide them gear.

With Cataclysm, the designers tried to reduce this gear proliferation and consolidate stats. For example, the new “mastery” stat, basically good for every spec, but does something different for each. It might improve healing for a Holy Priest and damage for a Shadow Priest.

To make more gear useful to more players Blizzard introduced the reforging vendor. This allowed players to exchange one secondary stat on an item for another secondary stat. For example, if you had an item with crit and mastery, but want more haste, you could take half the mastery off and turn it into haste. This was reversible and modifiable.

This allowed almost any gear that fit your basic spec to be adjusted to fit your overall itemization. The downside was that it made gear increasingly by the numbers. Individual items used to matter more. You sought out the Azuresong Mageblade or the Core Hound Tooth. After  Cataclysm, if the item had a higher ilevel (item level) and fit your spec at all, it was likely better. This meant that you stopped caring so much about the individualitem and its stats and more about its ilevel.

Reforging Vendor

The reforging vendor allows you to play with the stats on your gear

The End of the Silhouette

Vanilla, BC, and LK WOW never allowed the modification of gear appearance. Other games had dyes and methods of cosmetic alteration, but in WOW, the gear actually looked good, and because each class had unique tier gear, it was usually possible at a glance to tell how good (or at least dedicated) a player was. In fact, when I first started playing I was really impressed by the way your character slowly improved visually. At first, you dressed in rags, and slowly but surely you got cooler looking (with a few setbacks). I, like most players, chose function over form, and sometimes had a patchwork appearance.

Cataclysmchanged all that by introducing Transmogrification. The transmorg vendor, would for a fee, make any piece of gear look like any other of the same type that you owned (i.e. you couldn’t make a bow look like a sword). Suddenly, your best gear was disconnected from your best-looking gear. The cool part of this was that old gear, which often looked very cool or nostalgic, was useful again as a template for appearance. It also allowed characters to construct unified thematic sets without compromising function. Negatively, the specific new gear you got became even less memorable. It was just ilevel and stats.

transmogfircation window

You can now make any gear look like pretty much any other gear

Normal Mode is Back

Cataclysm about faced the dungeon difficulty trend from LK. Normal mode level 85 dungeons had some challenge, and Heroics had a new key: gear level. You couldn’t enter them (via the Dungeon Finder) without having a certain gear level. This meant you actually had to run the normal ones. Which was good.

They weren’t really that hard and they had some decent gear. Plus, each faction had a tabard you could wear to gather reputation. Two of these dungeons were favorite Vanilladungeons that got a refresh and new level 85 modes: Shadow Fang Keep and Dead Mines.

Uldum's Lost City of the Tol'vir

Uldum featured this cool outside dungeon (shades of ZF and ZG) called The Lost City of the Tol’vir

The Return of CC

Heroic difficulty was another matter. While Cataclysm Heroic’s weren’t as brutal as BC Heroics, they were actually kinda difficult. They often required a bit of crowd control (CC) and knowledge of boss strategies. Again, not anywhere near that from the BC and Vanilla era, but a lot harder than in LK.

In guild runs, this was no probably and actually quite fun. But the problem was that most people didn’t run dungeons in guild groups, they used the Dungeon Finder. Heroics with the Dungeon Finder became torture. They were just a bit too hard for most random groups. They required you know the fight. Many good players reacted to this by dropping group as soon as anything went wrong. This happened prior to the Dungeon Finder, but social factors kept it more in check. Now, one wipe and your best player or two fled, leaving you to replace them by random chance.

At the time, I thought my problem was that after facerolling dungeons in LK, it was hard to go back to a challenge, but I think it had as much to do with the interaction of the Dungeon Finder. Pugs with no invested social connection are not well geared to face and learn to overcome challenges.

Justice/Valor Points

The badge system reached more or less final form: which wasn’t badges at all, but points. Instead of a constantly expanding collection of currencies, Blizzard converted the badges into two types of points (presumably the badge->point thing was for better granularity) and instituted several policies. With the release of new tiers, any remaining currency in the better currency (Valor) was converted into the lesser (Justice). Old Valor Gear was then made available for Justice Points. New gear went into the Valor Vendor. You earned Justice via dungeons (easy) and Valor by dailies and raiding (harder). Both currencies gained a weekly cap to discourage hardcore players from grinding out too much at once.

Blizzard experimented with different methods of Valor awards for non-raiders: first Heroic completed of the day, then up to 7 Heroics per week. The later was designed to remove the “need” to run one Heroic every day, but somehow turned out to discourage running as many of them.

This latest evolution worked well. Valor gear was very good, and could be purchased approximately one item every two weeks (if you maxed out your weekly cap). There was too little Justice Gear. For single spec classes (like my Warlock) the currency was useless after about two weeks — until a new tier landed a bunch of formerly top gear in the Justice Vendor. For non-raiders, Valor points were too hard to cap.

The elite can slay Deathwing, which is pretty cool

Guild Loyalty

Another successful new system was the expansion of the guild system. With Cataclysm, guilds as an entity gained reputation, levels, achievements, perks and more. Doing “work” (quests, dungeons, profession work, etc) started earning you reputation with your guild and the guild itself experience. The guild could then level up, earning members various guild perks. Certain achievements could open up guild rewards. The perks and rewards were actually pretty sweet although not usually related to performance per-se. Things like: faster running while dead, shorter hearth teleport timer, 10% more reputation, and a mass resurrection spell.

Overall, the system felt rewarding. You definitely wanted to be in a guild, and one that was pretty high level at that. The speed of leveling was reasonable and worked even for my tiny and fairly inactive guild.

Guild reward window

The guild reward window: lots of cool stuff

Reputation Redux

Cataclysm‘s end game reputation grinds kept me occupied for a few weeks. There were some decent epic items and a few cool mounts. Most reputations had some dailies to help them along, or there were always dungeon runs. But they didn’t last forever, after about a month, I pretty much maxed them all out.

PVP + Dailies, oh my

Blizzard tried world PVP for a fourth time with Tol Barad. It was a lot like Wintergrasp, including the same kind of loot piñata boss. I felt obligated to run the boss once a week, but couldn’t have cared less about the PVP.

It also had a PVE rep and hub with a whole bunch of dailies. This was a pretty extensive 2-3 week grind-a-thon but awarded a couple of worthwhile things at exalted. Then it was done.

Tol Barad

The Tol Barad outside world PVP zone. Pretty much just good for its loot filled tasty creme boss.

Archeology Fail

Instead of adding yet another crafting profession, like BC and LK, Cataclysm added a fourth optional profession all players could train: archeology. This turned out to be a rather boring, albeit, time consuming distraction. Making you travel is a time-proven form of cheap WOW gameplay (lots of holidays feature “tour the world” activities). Theoretically, Archeology could earn you cool items, but at launch it did so in a maddeningly tedious fashion.

Archaeology gets you all too familiar with this little gizmo.

Raiding as Usual

My guild fell apart at the end of LK and my new one consisted of mostly casual players, so I didn’t raid much at all during Cataclysm. I suffered from near burnout and never mustered the energy to try pugging anything or finding a raiding guild.

About a month after the expansion shipped I ran out of any way to progress my character without raiding. So I stopped playing.

Trolls again?

A few months in, Blizzard added two new 5 man dungeons with better gear. But I’d seen them both before: the troll raids Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman, just repurposed as 5 man dungeons. I tried a couple of times to run them, but they suffered from the same problem (as the Heroics) of pug wipes.

I stopped playing one more time.

Zul'Gurub

The return of the trolls: Zul’Gurub!

Molten Front

Blizzard tried again with the Molten Front, a new raid (I didn’t try it) and a daily quest hub and reputation. I ground out rep for a week or two and grew bored.

I stopped again, and didn’t return until Pandaria.

Molten front

Burn your eyes out on the bland looking Molten Front

Gone for Good?

Without a raiding guild, the majority of endgame progression was unavailable. Sure, I could have continued mindlessly running the same dungeons to gather valor points, but what was the point of getting new better gear if I wasn’t facing any new encounters? I just didn’t feel motivated. This time around, I didn’t bother with alts, the boring 80-85 zones put me off.

Late in the expansion, Blizzard introduced the Raid Finder, an attempt to do for raids what the Dungeon Finder did for dungeons. I never tried it out, but it’s possible, probable even that had this been around at Cataclysm launch, I would have played longer and had more to do.

But as it was, Cataclysm suffered from a diffuse focus spread throughout the world, frustrating Heroic pugs, over homogenization, and a general lack of newness. Had I played too long? Or was it the content itself?

I assumed it was me… until Mists of Pandaria…

 

WOW Endgame series: Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Lich King, Cataclysm, and Pandaria.
or read about Mists of Pandaria leveling.
Latest hot post: Reaper of Souls Analysis!
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Deathwing

Deathwing lunches on a tasty tower

Related posts:

  1. WOW Endgames – Burning Crusade
  2. WOW Endgames – Lich King
  3. WOW Endgames – Vanilla
  4. Mists of Pandaria Leveling
  5. Expansion of the WOW Factor
By: agavin
Comments (19)
Posted in: Games
Tagged as: Blizzard Entertainment, Cataclysm, Video Games, Warcraft, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

ThanksGavin 2012

Nov26

It’s that time of year again, time to loosen your belt buckle and sit down for the annual ThanksGavin!


The table is set.


And decorated.


The libations begin with this bubbly.


And the real deal, Grand Cru Burgundy. Parker 95, “This saturated and dark colored wine, with its extraordinarily spicy nose of sweet red and black fruits, sent me soaring. This massive, intense, broad-shouldered, masculine, structured, and chewy wine is crammed with super-ripe, rich, and layered blackberries, cassis, licorice, earth, and Asian spices. As if that were not enough, its dense fruit comes roaring back after expectoration, lingering on the palate for nearly a minute. This is an extraordinary Clos Vougeot! Projected maturity: 2006-2014. Bravo! to Jacques Lardiere and Pierre-Henri Gagey.”


And this 2006 1re Cru, which was younger and brighter than its older sibling, but still delicious.


The first of the two birds comes off the BBQ, cripsy!


Parker 93, but tasted like a 98, “The classic 1997 Barbaresco Santo Stefano is evolved and flamboyant. A medium ruby/garnet color with an amber edge is followed by a sweet perfume of black cherries, tobacco, leather, spice box, licorice, and tar. Full-bodied, with a creamy texture, superb concentration, and an exquisite finish, it can be drunk now or cellared for 15+ years.”


Here is the full spread. Most of this hard work is by our tireless chefs: my mom and aunt.


Cranberry sauce, the jelly-like kind.


A kale salad with pine nuts, pomegranate seeds, and optional parmesan.


Parker 94, “The 2001 Bocca di Lupo is a wine which demonstrates that the Aglianico grown in the northwestern part of Puglia, just a short distance from the Basilicata, can compete with the best of Italy’s south. Smoky and balsamic on the nose with intense and expansive notes of raspberries and blackberries, cloves, mint, and high-roast coffee, its packed, strappingly muscular, and dense flavors continue in a seamless flow over the palate, softening as they move but still totally mouth-filling and explosively powerful. The only regret is that these wines are released too early and will probably be drunk too early as well – this is a bottle which I would not touch until 2007, and it will still be going strong in 2020.”


A tangy-spicy cranberry chutney.


Balsamic glazed beets.


Parker 90, “The 2003 Chianti Refina Riserva exhibits a similarly sweet, open nose along with plenty of vibrant, super-ripe dark fruit, outstanding length and lovely overall balance in a style that is plump and accessible without sacrificing the wine’s underlying structure. It is made from 90% Sangiovese, with the remaining 10% divided among several other varietals, and aged 24 months in French oak barrels.”


From scratch Challah stuffing.


BBQ Turkey.


And homemade gravy.


Thai curried sweet potatoes with a  bit of coconut milk.


Bread. In the back in Cranberry Walnut from “Park’s”.


The official 2012 plate, or you can find the last 10 years of them here.


This 20 year Dow Tawny Porto covers dessert.


The spread.


Homemade (like everything else) rustic pear, cranberry, and ginger tart. My Mom makes these 🙂


And these: The world’s best pecan pie!

And my grandmother’s special brownies and blondies.

This was another spectacular homemade ThanksGavin dinner as usual. It was arguably even better than ever before.

For more ThanksGavin meals, click here.

Related posts:

  1. ThanksGavin 2011 – The Main Event
  2. ThanksGavin 2011 – The Third Wave
  3. Bibou – ThanksGavin 2011 Prequel
  4. Thanksgiving Proper
  5. ThanksGavin in Review
By: agavin
Comments (4)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Dessert, feast, holiday, stuffing, ThanksGavin, thanksgiving, turkey, Wine, Wine tasting descriptors

Ghosts of Thanksgivings Past

Nov23

Find here a review of the ThanksGavin dinner plates for the last decade!

Related posts:

  1. Ghost of Thanksgivings Past
  2. ThanksGavin in Review
  3. ThanksGavin 2010 Reprise
  4. ThanksGavin 2011 – The Main Event
By: agavin
Comments (1)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner, turkey

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2

Nov21

Title: Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2

Director/Stars: Kristen Stewart (Actor), Robert Pattinson (Actor), Bill Condon (Director)

Genre: Fantasy

Watched: November 19, 2012

Summary: Disney Vamps

_

BDP2 is not nearly as vomit inducing as part 1. Sure, I did my fair share of cringing, but mostly the film brought a smirk to my face.

This is the story of a family of carebear vampires. Sure, they have creepy red eyes, but they get to race through sun dapples forests and jump off 8,000 foot cliffs into the Northwestern surf.

The film manages to do an okay job with some of the story’s odder elements, like the fact that Jacob has a love-crush on an infant. That the infant in question is a hideous CGI doll certainly makes it feel less pedophilic. It’s all watchable if you’ve kept up with the series, and there is certainly more conflict than in part 1. The Volturi are up to no good, hail from Tuscany and don’t seem the least bit Italian, but Michael Sheen plays one of those camp villains you just love to hate.

Just as in the previous four films, the overzealous use of CGI and crazy sped up action lends the film an extremely fake look. Act 2, where the good guys recruit “witnesses” to come to their defense, seemed languid. The whole multicultural array of vamps felt extra silly in a film of silly. Stereo-typed Brazilians join up with stereo-typed Russians join up with stereo-typed Irish and the like, but oh well, this is Twilight.

The film alludes to Edward and Bella’s “out of control” sex life, but provides us with only the chastest of scenes. Not only has the royal couple created some kind of weird halfbreed (even if the 7 year-old version is pretty cute – and I mean harmless-kiddy-cute not Jacob-the-pedophile-cute), but the whole vampire nation has cross bred themselves with the X-men.

Everyone seems to have a power. Pain ray, elemental control, clairvoyance, mysterious smelly black smoke of doom, you name it. Mortals may have some trouble keeping track of the rather vast crew of red eyes and their manifold abilities. It doesn’t matter too much. Eventually, they all form up in two lines on a nice big frozen lake for the final showdown.

But the showdown never happens. Or does it? Actually, the final non-fight was pretty cool. Best action sequence in the series so far. Perhaps the only one that was kinda exciting. Michael Sheen can sneer with the best of them.

All in all a fitting end to the “saga.” It is what it is, but it ain’t really about vampires.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ti0H-bvMi3I]

And it’s worth checking out this Cracked magazine review of the whole series too.

Read my Twilight review or New Moon or Eclipse or Breaking Dawn, part 1.

For more Film reviews, click here.

Or discover my own paranormal novels.

Related posts:

  1. Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1
  2. Twilight Saga: Eclipse
  3. Twilight Saga: New Moon
  4. Book and Movie Review: Twilight
  5. Breaking Bad – Season 3
By: agavin
Comments (6)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Bill Condon, Breaking Dawn, Film Review, Kristen Stewart, part 2, Robert Pattinson, Twilight, Twilight Saga

World of Warcraft 8th Anniversary

Nov20

Blizzard released this cool 8 year anniversary video, which is sort of a walk down memory lane. Given that I’ve been writing up my giant endgame comparison post series, I thought it apropos.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jqBkUqOMacA]

WOW Endgame series: Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Lich King, Cataclysm, and Pandaria.
or read about Mists of Pandaria leveling.
Latest hot post: Reaper of Souls Analysis!
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Thanksgiving Dream – only $0.99

Nov20

To celebrate Thanksgiving, the Kindle version of The Darkening Dream is on sale for only 99 cents from Wednesday November 20 until Friday the 30th! Take the plunge, it’s certainly a great deal.

Buy it on Amazon!

Tweet, share, like, follow, blog and grab a copy of my book.

About The Darkening Dream

As the Nineteenth Century gives way to the Twentieth, modern science and steel girders leave little room for the supernatural. But in dark corners the old forces still gather. God, demon, and sorcerer alike plot to regain what was theirs in Andy Gavin’s chilling debut, The Darkening Dream.

1913, Salem, Massachusetts – Sarah Engelmann’s life is full of friends, books, and avoiding the pressure to choose a husband, until an ominous vision and the haunting call of an otherworldly trumpet shake her. When she stumbles across a gruesome corpse, she fears that her vision was more of a premonition. And when she sees the murdered boy moving through the crowd at an amusement park, Sarah is thrust into a dark battle she does not understand.

With the help of Alex, a Greek immigrant who knows a startling amount about the undead, Sarah sets out to uncover the truth. Their quest takes them to Salem’s brutal factory workrooms, on a clandestine maritime mission, and down into their foe’s nightmarish crypt. But they aren’t prepared for the terrifying backlash that brings the fight back to their own homes and families. Can Alex’s elderly, vampire-hunting grandfather and Sarah’s own rabbi father help protect them? And what do Sarah’s darkening visions reveal?

No less than the Archangel Gabriel’s Horn, destined to announce the End of Days, is at stake, and the forces banded to recover it include a 900 year-old vampire, a trio of disgruntled Egyptian gods, and a demon-loving Puritan minister. At the center of this swirling conflict is Sarah, who must fight a millennia-old battle against unspeakable forces, knowing the ultimate prize might be herself.

“Gorgeously creepy, strangely humorous, and sincerely terrifying” — Publishers Weekly
“Wonderfully twisted sense of humor” and
“A vampire novel with actual bite” — Kirkus Reviews
“Steampunk Lovecraftian Horror by way of Joss Whedon”

Buy Sample Characters Reviews Reviewer Info

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By: agavin
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Hedonists Boil Up Some Crab

Nov19

Restaurant: The Boiling Crab

Location: 3377 Wilshire Blvd. Ste 115, Los Angeles, CA 90010

Date: November 15, 2012

Cuisine: Cajun Seafood

Rating: Negative frills, but really tasty

_

Good food doesn’t always have to be fancy. My most recent Hedonist adventure was to The Boiling Crab, the Korea-Town outpost of a cajun seafood joint.


The place is located in a built up K-Town food oriented minimall.


And, boy, is it popular. This was a random Thursday and the wait was over an hour. I’ve heard that on weekends it can be 2-4!


Hedonists events require that everyone bring a bottle of wine. I brought three! Just in case. On this particular night, we had eleven people, but only a few wine drinkers. Boiling Crab doesn’t even serve wine, so I’ve learned to bring my own glasses (Riedel restaurant grade) in my rolling wine carrier. The wines are shoved in the back along with some icepacks (whites) and a bunch of cork screws and the like.


Le menu. Simple, and pretty much all market price. The market price was damn reasonable too, for example, just $17/lb for main lobster and $8/lb for blue crab!


And this is because TBC does not spend any money on extras. There are no plates. No glasses. No utensils. Food is served in plastic bags. Yes, that’s right, plastic bags. I’ve never even seen this before!

Given that this place serves seafood covered in spice, butter, and garlic, two of us brought good German Rieslings.

Parker 93, “The complex 2003 Riesling Auslese Erdener Treppchen boasts a nose of honeysuckle blossoms. Medium-bodied, supple, and silky-textured, it exhibits an expressive flavor profile composed of red fruits, pears, and spices. In addition, this luscious, pure wine possesses a long, fruit-filled finish.”

This one had a little age and a hint of classic Riesling petrol.


TBC is bib worthy. In fact, it’s the messiest restaurant I can remember eating at.


This is Dungeness Crab with Sha-Bang sauce (cajun, lemon pepper, and garlic butter). It comes just like that, crab in a bag with sauce. No utensils, you just reach in and crab the hot crab.


Then you pull it apart with your hands. They throw a couple lousy nut crackers on the table. Again, no forks. No plates! But it was delicious!


We also had a bag of king crab legs. Here’s one that escaped.


From my cellar: Parker 96, “After a performance like this for a Spatlese, the warning was hardly necessary! Donnhoff’s 2009 Niederhauser Hermannshohle Riesling Spatlese offers a riot of herbal aromas reminiscent of but far more intense and diverse than that of the corresponding Grosses Gewachs, and here, too, accompanied by grapefruit and passion fruit in a manner that calls to mind Sauvignon. Horehound, licorice, sage, mint, black tea, nut oils, candied grapefruit rind, and crushed stone inform a silken-textured palate. As with the corresponding Brucke, there is a remarkable interactivity on display, and a depth of mineral and animal savor that goes beyond crustacean shell reduction or veal demi-glace, leaving me salivating helplessly.”

This was my Riesling, and it was considerably sweeter than the first one. In my opinion, both paired fantastically with the spicy garlic seafood.


Some really yummy cajun sausage. It didn’t even come by itself but was “in the bag” (literally) with the shrimp.


Here are the shrimp (and some refuse). Again, bag of shrimp. You have to reach in and grab them. By the time you do, your entire hand is coated to the wrist with spicy garlic butter!


Parker 93, “David Powell consistently excels with The Steading, an 8,000 case blend of Grenache, Mourvedre, and Shiraz. Aged 22 months in 300 liter hogsheads (foudres), it represents Australia’s version of Chateauneuf du Pape. The 2002 The Steading’s big, spicy, earthy nose reveals notions of cherry liqueur, licorice, pepper, dried Provencal herbs, raspberries, and leather. Ripe, medium to full-bodied, chewy, and heady, it is best drunk during its first 7-8 years of life, although it will last a lot longer.”

This was a nice wine, but I thought it clashed pretty badly with the food. Really any red would.


Cajun fried catfish over cajun fries. Pretty delectable, hot as Bejesus, and had a nice earthy catfish taste. Eaten with your hands, of course.


Some of the shrimp on the table. The cost savings here is passed onto the consumer: you have to de-head and de-leg and de-vein your own shrimp. They were, however, awesome, and probably even better than the crab. The sauce was literally finger licking good.


And we also had a bag of corn. It was a little mushy, but very sweet and I loved it with the salty garlic sauce.

Sweet potato fries.


Parker 94, “The 2009 Chateauneuf du Pape is dominated by Grenache with major amounts of Mourvedre, Syrah and other authorized varietals. Its dense ruby/plum color is followed by aromas of smoked meats, roasted Provencal herbs, a gamy character and lots of kirsch, black currant and blue fruits. Rich and full-bodied, it is softer than most young vintages of Vieux Donjon tend to be.”

Very nice, smooth wine, but too strong for the food.


We ordered up a lobster. $42 for a 2.5 pounder!


Quite the fellow, and delicious.


Here is his tail, sitting in a bloody pool of cajun juice.


And a bit of repulsive leftovers. We had to periodically venture forth, grab some plastic bags from the counter, and then return and sweet this crap away. It’s very self serve.


But I doubt they’ve ever had a party that brings 4-5 of their own wine glasses each!

Despite the mess, this place was pretty fantastic. And what a deal, $39 all in for each person (including tax and tip). The above was food for five too! You’re paying entirely for the seafood, and nothing extra. I don’t mind the atmosphere or mess (it is what it is), but I wish there wasn’t such a long line :-). I guess nothing is too good to be true.

For more LA dining reviews click here.

Or for more crazy Foodie Club meals.

At The Boiling Crab, even girls get their hands dirty (this is some random adjacent table).

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Boiling Crab, Cajun, Chateauneuf du Pape, corn, crab, Donnhoff, Foodie Club, hedonists, Lobster, Los Angeles, Riesling, Sausage, Seafood, shrimp, Spätlese, Wine, Wine tasting descriptors

A Taste of Taos

Nov16

Recently, a friend invited me over to his house for a chef dinner featuring Southwestern American Cuisine. Of course, I brought the wine.


The chef in question was Chris Maher (above). Christopher recently owned and directed Momentitos de la VIDA, a fine dining establishment in Taos, New Mexico. He functioned as the executive chef and received excellent reviews since opening the doors in 1999 through selling it in 2006. Gourmet and Bon Appetit have both named VIDA as “one of the most notable restaurants in the Southwest” and Maher earned the prestigious AAA Four Diamond Award six consecutive years in a row from 2000 – 2006. In 2005, he was invited to cook at the prestigious James Beard House in New York, New York, to a sold out event. Chris currently heads Cooking Studio TAOS – a teaching and food consortium – where people are encouraged to play with their food!


Progress in the kitchen.


For the pre-dinner loitering period. Parker 95, “This saturated and dark colored wine, with its extraordinarily spicy nose of sweet red and black fruits, sent me soaring. This massive, intense, broad-shouldered, masculine, structured, and chewy wine is crammed with super-ripe, rich, and layered blackberries, cassis, licorice, earth, and Asian spices. As if that were not enough, its dense fruit comes roaring back after expectoration, lingering on the palate for nearly a minute. This is an extraordinary Clos Vougeot!”


Chips and two kinds of homemade bean dips. On the left, “Tuscan white bean spread” and on the right “Black bean dip.” Both had just a little heat.

Because there is a lot of chile in Southwestern Cuisine, I brought a pair of rieslings. This one is close to dry.

Parker 92, “The detail, refinement, and lift that characterize the best of 2007 were reason enough, Rebholz said, for him to essay some residually sweet Riesling, otherwise, I’d rather leave that to the Mosel vintners. The 7.5% alcohol of his 2007 Riesling Spatlese Vom Buntsandstein indeed puts one in mind of the Mosel, as well as on notice that this will be wine of delicacy and very high residual sugar. It is also impressively endowed with ripe quince and wafting lily and gardenia perfume, and manages to keep its sweetness balanced so as not to tip into sheer confection, but instead to exhibit seamless purity and nectar-like lusciousness. It should be worth watching for a dozen or more years, and in fact I would personally not even care to revisit it for 6-8 years.”


Green Chile Stew with potatoes and chicken. This was a very flavorful dish with a strong gentle heat. It paired very nicely with the rieslings, particularly the one below.

Then a sweeter effort. Parker 97, “White peach preserves, luscious Persian melon, fresh red raspberry, cooling lime, green tea, iris and gentian are all projected on the nose of Donnhoff’s 2009 Oberhauser Brucke Riesling Spatlese, then take on a fleshy, silken, yet svelte form that combines infectious juiciness, invigorating salinity, uncanny buoyancy, and vibratory interactive complexity, leaving my tongue tingling and my head buzzing. The depth of savor here is such that to speak of nut oils or of shrimp or lobster shell reduction merely points in the correct, otherwise ineffable general direction. “Creamy, dreamy, transparent” were the last words I could pronounce in the presence of this natural wonder that will certainly be capable of spreading joy for at least the next quarter century. “There was a tiny bit of perfectly dry botrytis here,” notes Donnhoff, “and to get much over 90 Oechsle you usually need that.” Needless to say, its presence has in no way precluded the utmost purity of fruit, clarity, or subtly electrical energy of which Riesling is capable in this amazing site. “I’m warning you, they’re not necessarily better,” said Helmut Donnhoff with a grin when serving me his two 2009 vintage Auslesen.”


Frisee & Green salad, cilantro jalepeno vinaigrette.

For reds, I had to bring something up to this much spice.

2008 Camerlengo “Antelio” Aglianico del Vulture Basilicata. An extraordinary rendition of this ancient grape that constantly evolves organically in the glass with unfiltered language. The flavors dance across meaty and inky depths, almost Mouvedre here, reminds me of an older Bandol I had the other night, but with more suede.


Poblano Farsi Rellenos stuffed with beef, potato, and cheese. Not your typical relleno, it was relatively light. The red sauce underneath was quite delicious with a good bit of heat.


Parker 96, “The 1998 Chateauneuf du Pape is the greatest effort produced since Beaucastel’s 1989 and 1990. It reveals more accessibility, no doubt because the final blend included more Grenache than normal. Its dense purple color is followed by sweet aromas of blackberries, licorice, new saddle leather, and earth. There is superb concentration, full body, low acidity, and high tannin, but it is surprisingly drinkable for such a young Beaucastel.”


Chris’s Biscochitos, vanilla ice cream with a chocolate, chile sauce. Simple, but delicious, with a bit of cinnamon chile going on.

Overall, a delicious an enjoyable evening!

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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Chris Maher, Dessert, Dinner, Donnhoff, Riesling, Southwestern Cuisine, Taos, Wine, Wine tasting descriptors

WOW Endgames – Lich King

Nov14
Wrath of the Lich King Collector's Edition

The collector’s edition box

…continued from my coverage of the WOW Burning Crusade endgame.

The months leading up to the launch of Wrath of the Lich King were very exciting for me. First of all, my son was about to be born — in fact, he was scheduled to arrive just days after LK! And on a WOW front, Blizzard pushed the 3.0.x series of patches 4-6 weeks in advance of the expansion itself.

Before Heading North

Patch 3.0.x introduced the most sweeping changes of any infrastructure patch yet — and a lot of it was content of a sort. We got the usual full reworking of the classes and talent trees. This didn’t itself add any content, but yet it did. One consequence was a substantial increase in average dps output. All of a sudden, impossible raid bosses were now difficult… but doable. Our guild, which previously could kill Arche and Illidan on a good night, starting trouncing them and moving through Sunwell.

Over Achiever

Just as significant, was the brand new achievement system. Blizzard hardly invented achievements, but in their usual fashion, took what other did and did it better. The WOW achievement system launched with an overwhelming array of achievements and meta-achievements (more than 500). These didn’t give you any in-game advantage, but they sure felt cool and opened up fun vanity awards such as pets, mounts, and titles.

Even before LK itself shipped, I spent countless hours grinding out certainly achievement types. I’m a completist (i.e. type A) and I thought I’d knocked off almost every quest in Azeroth. Well, it still took me about three weeks to complete the Azeroth and Outland sections of Loremaster (an achievement and title awarded for doing every quest in the game).

The patch also moved pets, mounts, and currencies into new interface tabs. This opened up a lot of bag space and made it reasonable to invest heavily in collecting the cute little beasties. I was already a bit of a pet collector, but in the month or so before LK went nuts with grinding out every cool pet I could. Unless the grind was particularly horrific (Hyacinth Macaw), I got it. This included rarities like the Black Tabby Cat and Disgusting Oozeling. I always had the most pets of anyone I knew.

One of the great things about the achievement system was that it opened up countless different avenues of time investiture to choose from. I worked on questing, dungeons, seasonal events, and pets. Others might have worked on PVP, reputation, or whatever. Every aspect of the game was covered and it brought new life into many of them.

WOW Achievements

Holiday Fun

Patch 3.0.x shipped during the busy WOW holiday season that includes Brew Fest, Hallows Eve, Winter’s Veil etc. In the Vanilla period, I treated holidays as curious decoration. A few minutes doing the Winter’s Veil chains in 2005 showed them to yield… pretty much nothing and that was the last of it.

During Burning Crusade, Blizzard introduced the first holiday boss, the Headless Horseman.  Not only was he a fun new boss, but he dropped a bit of epic loot. Serious toons like my Warlock had much better gear anyway, but he was great for grabbing a good ring for your alt. He was so popular that the Dire Brew boss, Ahune, and the Valentine’s boss soon followed.

But achievements took the holidays to a new level. They provided a road map of weird activities during each holiday. And if you did everything for the holiday, you got a title. And, even better, if you did everything for every holiday (which took a year) you could earn a 310% speed special purple dragon mount! At the time, these fast mounts were very hard to come by. Usually only the most hardcore raiders could hope to earn one.

So that Halloween I tried (successfully) to finish the holiday meta, which was in those days pretty f**king stressful. Blizzard has since made them much easier, but that first year there were some achievements that required a lot of luck and a lot of grinding. To maximize your odds, you had to really knock everything out as soon as you could during the holiday in case there was some troublesome random number based task. Also, at the beginning of the holiday, the crowds generally made most things easier. And there were some serious crowds. The holidays were never too popular before, but the rush to earn the achievements brought out a serious frenzy of players.

The Headless Horseman

The Headless Horseman: Holiday boss extroidnaire

The Big Day

Burning Crusade was so cool that I was very excited for Lich King. Plus, the trailer was badass. I even waited outside at midnight to buy my pre-ordered Collector’s Edition. This was the last time I bothered. I still got CEs (for the pets) but I just ordered them from Amazon and waited the extra 12 hours.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMRhnC4-QGQ

I bought a new Macbook Pro a couple weeks before just to make sure I could play in the hospital with my tired wife and freshly minted son. This actually worked pretty well, newborns sleep a lot. 🙂

Heroic Faceroll

Anyway: the endgame.

Historically, dungeons made up the bulk of early endgame play. I dinged level 80 and some guildies invited me into a Heroic. Yeah, that’s right. No keys. No attunement. No grinding to Revered reputation. Just hop right in… and crush the dungeon in 20-30 minutes!

Huh? Not only were dungeons short, which was obvious even while leveling, but even the Heroics were incredibly easy. I never ran a single level 80 non-heroic instance. There was no need. Your quest gear would easily carry you in Heroics, and the rewards were much better. Better gear, more rep, and more badges (more on that later). Crowd control was completely useless. Pats? Who cares? The tank just grabbed a pile of mobs, you nuked them down, repeat.

A few specific fights were kinda hard at the beginning of the expansion: Skadi in Utgrade Pinnacle, and the final bosses of Oculus and Halls of Lightning. As a consequence, those last two were the least popular instances.

For those that liked a challenge, every dungeon had 2-4 funky achievements that involved weird ways of beating bosses. Some were quite hard and almost all required a group that played together regularly. Getting all these achievements earned you a cool mount and provided quite a time sink for the dedicated few.

Badges for Everyone

LK took the badge system developed in BC to a whole new level. It introduced two (soon to grow to four, then six) badge currencies for PVE alone. Badges of Heroism came from 5 man Heroics and 10 man raids and Badges of Valor from 25 man raids. Both allowed the purchase of good endgame gear. The lower currency epics were the same grade as the heroic epics. The better currency similar to the first tier of 25 man raiding.

In practice, this meant that you wanted lots and lots of badges at first. For several weeks, even Heroism badges were useful. Soon enough, at least for classes with damage only specs, you wouldn’t need those so much (except maybe for the new Heirloom gear). But Valor badges, you could always use those. And even the heroics let you earn two of those a day by running the “daily dungeon.”

All of this meant that it was advantageous to run 5 man dungeons long after you needed anything the dungeons themselves dropped. As they were easy to begin with and most players out-geared them rapidly, they became mindless zergs (see below).

WOW currency tab

The currency tab: have a few badge types!

Rep Hubs & Tabards

LK gave us more reputations than ever. Most zones had one. Some of these had small clusters of repetitive daily quests you could use to grind to exalted.  Those with quests mostly yielded cosmetic or profession benefits. The grinds were fairly short, usually around 2 weeks.

While in BC each dungeon yielded a specific rep, LK instituted tabards that allowed you to earn the rep of your choice while running Heroics. This meant that it was only a matter of time before you brought all tabard reps to exalted, but usually, by the time it happened, you didn’t need much they had to offer. Each rep did have an epic or two, and so the first couple were useful, particularly if they had dailies to speed up the process.

Professions, both of the crafting sort and the basic cooking and fishing, usually each got a single daily quest. Instead of having recipes drop all over the world randomly, the were usually sold by the profession vendor in exchange for a new currency given by the profession daily. So, for cooking, you ran your quick little daily, and every couple of days, bought a new recipe. This all made it easier and more predictable to collect your patterns, but it also took most of the excitement out of the process.

Overall, after about a month, you were done with the dailies (other than the daily dungeon).

WOW Oracles hub

The “hub” (or home town) of the Oracles faction

Even Raids can be Easy

At launch, LK was a little shy on raid content. It gave us two single boss raids: Obsidian Sanctum and Eye of Eternity and one big one. Naxxramas 2.0 had 15 bosses!

These three raids could be run either in 10 man or 25 man configurations. You could run both each week if you liked. I was never much for 10 man because the loot was considerably worse and they dropped the lower badge type (which I always had in excess). 10 man was a bit easier for most fights. OS was very easy normally (there was a progressive way to make it harder) and The Eye was harder, but not too hard. Both were short.

Even Naxx was tuned way easier than previous raids. But it was long. At this stage, Naxx 25 held a lot of good gear, but it quickly became quite a slog, particularly if you ran BOTH the 10 man and 25 man versions. It only took our guild about a month to have it on farm (where every boss died every week). Long before the next raid tier launched, we were pretty darn sick of Naxx. The revised Vanilla design was still excellent, and few players had seen the instance the first time around, but still, it felt a little lazy. Even the gear looked the same (although it was updated for level 80)!

The clever achievements did add a little fun. Title based ones like “The Undying” (where you cleared Naxx without any deaths) were very popular among the skilled.

Naxxramas

Naxxramas 2.0: back for more ghoulish fun

PVP backburner

In BC, although tedious, PVP was a good way to progress your PVE game. LK saw the introduction of gear that was so heavily slanted toward PVP as to be nearly useless in PVE (compared to easy to get badge gear). This, combined with crazy battleground fatigue from BC, insured I never ran a battleground during the whole of LK (except for a few holiday achievements).

One exception was Wintergrasp, the new world PVP zone. Now, I couldn’t have cared less about WG itself, and found it pretty boring. But it was useful to run it occasionally so as to be in the right place at the right time to catch a group for the new PVP raid instance. This dungeon, located under WG keep, was available to the faction that most recently won the zone and contained at first one, then with each new tier, more raid bosses. These bosses were very easy, trivial to PUG, and dropped a mix of PVE and PVP gear, including the pants and gloves from each tier!

Getting lucky here was an easy way to save badges or DKP (Dragon Kill Points used to partition guild loot).

Archavon

Archavon: PVP/PVE loot piñata waiting for the slaughter

3 Drakes, Ulduar and crazy hard modes

The early raids were easy by design. Blizzard wanted a wider range of players to experience the raiding content. But OS had an unusual mechanic for making it harder. You could kill Sartharion’s 3 drakes before the boss, and take him down easy, or you could leave up one, two, or three drakes. For each extra drake you fought at the same time as the boss, the loot was better. This itself didn’t make much of a gearing difference, but if you killed him with all three drakes up (3D) you got an elitist title and a chance at a cool specialty mount.

In the spring of 2009, when the next big raid, Ulduar, shipped, it took hard modes a step further. Ulduar was another giant raid with 14 bosses. It was long, involved, and pretty hard even normally. At least, the last third was. Some people loved it. I thought it was too big and took too long. And I really wasn’t a fan of the first boss’s tedious vehicle mechanic. A few of the bosses also had unusual “hard modes” like OS where you could trigger a different, much much harder fight. We attempted these a number of times but our guild only really managed hard modes on Flame Leviathan and XT-002. The hard modes dropped gear a half tier better.

If you more or less did all of these hard modes you could open up Algalon, and extra boss who was really cool, and really really hard. You only had an hour a week to fight him too, but killing him awarded a highly prestigious title.

mimiron

Ulduar was home to some crazy-ass fights

Badge Inflation

During the LK period, Blizzard experimented with the badge system. At first, you had to manually loot your badges off bosses. It was easy to forget, and so they then added an “auto loot” that forced them into your bag. This worked, but was buggy and often caused server instabilities. Later, they moved the badges from your bags into a special currency section and added a system by which they would be automatically credited as soon as the boss was downed. This included a system to issue rewards when the final boss of a dungeon was cleared.

Additionally, as each successive raiding tier was released, it became necessary to make available new currencies. Players would have accumulated surplus badges in the older tiers, and to keep things fair they introduced new pairs of currencies (one for dungeons and 10 man and one for 25 man). Limited means of down converting newer currencies into older ones were experimented with. By the end of the expansion this became an unwieldy collection of 6-8 different badge currencies just for LK, so while the basic scheme was to be retained in Cataclysm, some cleanups were in order.

Overall, the badge system did remove some of the frustration inherent in the random nature of dropped loot. It helped you make steady progress regardless of your raiding situation. In the Vanilla/BC days this had been vastly more susceptible to your spec and how often your guild ran farm content. If you played an “easy to gear” spec like Holy Paladin (who has healing plate all to itself) previous tier or farm instances would literally shower you with loot. In the days when a Holy Pally could heal effectively in any armor type, you could passably gear one in just a run or two of a big instance like Kara or Naxx if other healers didn’t need the loot.

Another Hub

Summer saw another interim patch with a new rep, a new daily quest hub, a new 5 man, a revised level 80 version of Ony, and a new mid-sized raid. Grinding the rep mostly got you cosmetic gains again, but the new 5 man was useful in gearing alts as it dropped entry level epics very easily. Both the 5 man and the raid were lazy designs and took place inside the same basic arena map. You fought a series of bosses with no trash.

Lazy and uninspired as this was, it was efficient gearing wise.

10 + 25 + heroic 10 + heroic 25 = Burnout

The raid, Trial of the Crusader, had 5 bosses and could be run in 30-40 minutes. Blizzard tried something new with raid difficulty variations. TOC had 4 modes: 10 man, 25 man, 10 man heroic, and 25 man heroic. You could run all four modes every week! Because of the complex array of gear levels in Ulduar (10 man, 25 man, and their respective hard modes ranged from 213 – 239) there was rapid gear inflation going into TOC. 10 man was 232, 10 man heroic and 25 man 245, and 25 man heroic 258.

This all meant that almost anything from TOC was better than Ulduar (and of course Naxx and the like). 25 man regular was pretty easy and its 245 stuff was even better than Algalon loot. The place was fast and pretty easy. 10 man heroic wasn’t even THAT hard once you had 25 man gear. 25 man heroic was pretty hard, but not crazy.

All in all, a total loot fest that invalidated all the previous LK raiding content. It was also mind numbing because there was incentive to run it on 3-4 modes per week. Sometimes I’d run all four in one day, then switch over to an alt and run a few more! Everyone was very rapidly and totally burned out on the place. Good thing there wasn’t any trash.

Trial of the Crusader bosses

Trial of the Crusader: all bosses, all the time, four times a week!

Ice Crown Patch, Magister’s Terrace redux

The penultimate major patch of LK introduced a lot of content. The giant Ice Crown Citadel raid opened along with three new 5 man dungeons. These followed the model set by the Isle of Quel’Danas in BC and were both more difficult and dropped far better loot. In fact, they dropped 232 in Heroic, which was equivalent to TOC 10 man. This continued to devalue loot from the original dungeons and first two tiers of raiding (Naxx and Uld). You could gear new tunes very quickly and effectively in 232 and 245 by a combination of these new dungeons and TOC farm runs.

Which prepared you well to run ICC for 258 and 264 loot. The first four bosses of ICC were very easy and the instance opened in waves. Average gear levels surged. Still, the middle and ending ICC bosses were not so easy and again separated out the solid and just average guilds. This gigantic instance was to be the main source of endgame raiding for the next year to come. The only exception was a one boss side raid that came in Spring of 2010. After a few months of endlessly repeating ICC many players moved on to alts or other games.

The creative hard modes of Ulduar must have required too much developer effort and constraint, so ICC retained the preselected Heroic mode like TOC, but Blizzard collapsed the normal and Heroic raid lockouts so you could run it at most twice on one character. This manual switch between difficulties is still the case today in Mists of Pandaria.

Icecrown Citadel

Icecrown Citadel looms in the background

Dual Spec

LK also introduced Dual Specialization. This continued Blizzard’s push toward quicker and easier by allowing your character to have two entirely different talent/action bar/glyph setups. This was most useful for tanks and healers as they could split between a raid and farming spec. Die hard PVP players could also split that way. For PVE only dps classes like my Warlock it was a nicety, but not essential. Still, it supported the varied play-style agenda that Blizzard had and has been pushing.

The Dungeon Finder

The ICC patch also brought one of the biggest changes to date: the dungeon finder. Previously, to run a 5 man dungeon, players had to assemble a group manually via global chat channels (idiotically confined to capital cities), all players came from the same server, and had to journey across the world to the instance. Once three arrived, it was possible to summon the other two.

The dungeon finder allowed players to queue for a category or specific instance and then instantly teleport into the dungeon together. It even drew from a pool of servers. In practice, this was nearly instant for tanks and healers and 10-15 minutes for dps. You could continue questing or dailies while waiting and you could replace players fairly quickly if one bailed. Afterward, you could teleport back to the exact spot you left.

Given that assembling a group required 1-2 hours of broadcasting in a capital city, this was enormously convenient. It meant that you could queue while playing, and then when ready, pop in, run a dungeon, and pop back with very little down time. But most players were from different servers and this meant that the incentive to stay with a problematic (or slightly problematic) group was very low. Gone was accountability, the sense that you would be branded lame by other players on the server. Gone was the camaraderie of making in-game friends during successful (and not so successful) runs. Server identity continued to erode.

wow dungeon finder

The dungeon finder

Zerg for all

The combination of factors introduced in LK led to the rise of “zerg dungeon farming”:

  1. Easier Heroic dungeons
  2. Badge rewards  from bosses
  3. Daily rewards making it valuable to run instances long after players outgeared the instances and their direct loot
  4. The dungeon finder allowed for rapid forming of runs

The net effect of all this was that late period LK dungeons became a sort of silent and hurried  race through the instance. In the typical run, the tank charged forward, grabbing mobs willy nilly while dps aoed them down and healers barely had to do anything. Boss mechanics became nearly irrelevant. Subtlety and strategy were abandoned.

Howling Fjord

Wrath had this dramatic Nordic vibe

Conclusion

By the end of Lich King, nearly all the major mechanics that Blizzard introduced during the course of WOW evolution had come into play: Badges, the dungeon finder, dailies, reputation hubs, tier acceleration, split difficulties (heroic and normal), split raid sizes (10 and 25), profession currencies, separate pvp/pve tracks, achievements, and more. This endgame toolbox allowed for a wide range of player activities and for fairly continuous rewards along many of them. It allowed for much of the player base to experience raid content and tried to avoid sudden progress blockages for different player types.

The general feel and flavor of Lich King was also fantastic, but there were problems. In the name of accessibility, the epic nature of many encounters was sorely eroded. Numerous difficulty and size tracks and long reuse of content led to fairly extreme burnout. Overgearing of instances watered down designs that were already fairly forgiving and removed any strategic play in dungeons (i.e. crowd control and the like). In the name of balance, loot and rewards became monotonous and chore-like. Raid content was too sparse and too easy to cover the two year expansion. More burnout ensued.

I liked the expansion, and I give Blizzard an A for effort. They aren’t afraid to experiment and try to move the game in a better direction, even if those changes sometimes have negative consequences. They are particularly willing to overhaul class mechanics again and again. Overall, the LK endgame gave you more to do than ever before.

We return to Azeroth for Cataclysm, where the back swing of the difficulty pendulum was to have interesting consequences…

WOW Endgame series: Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Lich King, Cataclysm, and Pandaria.
or read about Mists of Pandaria leveling.
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By: agavin
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Tagged as: Arthas, Blizzard, Lich King, pt_wow_endgame, Video game, World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, Wrath of the Lich King

Untimed Goodies

Nov12

My latest Advanced Reader Copy of Untimed. NOTE: the white balance leans overly orange in this photo

This was a busy week for Untimed swag. The proof came for the latest ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) and it looks fantastic. Not only the outside, but the interior has a new properly done layout  that includes all the illustrations and near print ready formatting.

Swag bookmarks

I also received a run of bookmarks. These look pretty cool but I wish there was an easy way to get proofs before printing a big run. The way they price these things on the online printshops (I used overnightprints.com for these) it only makes sense to order 1000-2000+, but there are no (physical) proofs. The text on the back is a little close to the trim for my taste, even though it was well inside the safety zone. They also have a 2-3mm variance in the cutting, which is typical but annoying. They aren’t all centered perfectly an I’m a perfectionist. Still, they look cool. For those of you curious about the process, below are the print ready versions.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Untimed
Tagged as: Andy Gavin, books, Novel, online printing, Paperback, swag, Time travel, Untimed, Writing

Hedonists at Dahab

Nov09

Restaurant: Cafe Dahab

Location: 1640 Sawtelle Blvd, Los Angeles, Ca, 90025

Date: November 6, 2012 & September 21, 2015

Cuisine: Egyptian

Rating: Tasty!

_

Just a mere three days after the Hedonists tore up Totoraku, we return to this nearby casual Egyptian cafe and Hookah bar: Dahab.

This was a decidedly more casual affair, although the basic rules are the same. Each person needs to come with at least one great bottle of wine. Standards aren’t as high as for a stellar meat dinner like Toto, but there was still some great stuff. And this drew a crowd of over 20!

The Dahab menu can be found here.


This is a third of the table. It was a crazy warm November night and we sat outside, filling the entire patio. There were so many of us that Yarom (our fearless organizer) had to float chairless! There also wasn’t even close to enough space on the table and the restaurant doesn’t even own wine glasses. Good thing I brought 8 Riedels of my own and several others did as well.


We started with this champagne brought by white and bubbly maestro Ron. The NV Brut Rose is a pretty, gracious wine. Freshly cut roses, red berries and spices take shape nicely in the glass as the wine shows off its understated, timeless personality. Billecart-Salmon’s NV Brut Rose is a reliably tasty wine.


Olives and pickled radishes.


Parker 95, “This year there is also only one Willi Haag wine with the name 2006 Brauneberger Juffer Riesling Auslese, athough for the record this carries the A.P. #6. It mingles white peach, vanilla, honey, and nut oils in a wine of uncanny refinement, delicacy and palate-saturating richness, representing a classic example of the magic in the Burgerslay section of the Juffer, whence Marcus’s father drew some of the greatest (if too-little appreciated) Middle Mosel wines of the ‘70s, ‘80s and early ‘90s. Juicy melon and white peach and kinetic citrus are beautifully folded into a creamy, vanilla-tinged envelope, then burst forth in a lusciously long finish with a distinct note of slate stone. It’s impossible not to compare this Auslese with the great 1975, and I believe it to be the masterpiece of Marcus Haag’s career thus far. If you are lucky enough to latch on to bottles of this incredible value – and I have seen them floating around at prices far lower than the already low suggested retail price noted above – treasure them and if possible wait 8-10 years before opening. There exist more than enough wonderful 2006 Mosel Auslesen you can enjoy younger. This one may well be worth following for 30 or more years.”


Warm pita bread.

A dry styled Oregon Riesling and “The opaque blue/black/purple-colored Noon Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve is even more impressive from bottle than it was from barrel. This is a great effort displaying first-growth quality. It boasts a stunningly pure nose of creme de cassis, cedar, licorice, smoke, and vanilla. As it sits in the glass, notions of chocolate also emerge. This full-bodied Cabernet builds incrementally in the mouth. The finish lasts for 45 seconds. A magnificent example, its seamlessness and concentration are profound.”


Another third of the table.


An awesome shaved rice sake with that soft anise thing that I love from great sake.


Things are just starting to get going.


Ron, always good for great white Burgundy, brought this 2008 Dom Dublere Corton-Charlemagne. Burghound 92, “Here too mild wood sets off extremely fresh aromas of pear, green apple and wet stone the latter of which is also reflected by the vibrant and overtly muscular broad-scaled flavors that possess impressive drive and length. Interestingly, this is not as complex as the Chaumées though it’s longer.”


I actually convinced my lovely wife to join us this time. She’s a sucker for the vege plate (below).


I brought this older Grand Cru Mazy-Chambertin (1996). It also had a funky nose that blew off, but this bottle wasn’t nearly as good as the other 3-4 I’ve opened recently of the exact same wine. Pity, those previous bottles were fantastic.


Parker 91-93, “The 2007 Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast displays plenty of raspberry and floral notes, has a deep ruby/purple color, nicely integrated wood, medium to full body, and a spicy finish. Drink it over the next decade.”


Lana was generous to donate this Parker 100 blockbuster, “The 1998 Cote Rotie La Landonne is a perfect wine … at least for my palate. Its saturated black/purple color is accompanied by an extraordinary nose of smoke, incense, tapenade, creosote, blackberry, and currant aromas. It is densely packed with blackberry, truffle, chocolate, and leather-like flavors. The wine possesses high tannin, but perfect harmony, impeccable balance, and gorgeous integration of acidity, alcohol, and tannin. It is a tour de force in winemaking.”


From my cellar. Parker 95, “The profound 2000 Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee de Mon Aieul (85% Grenache and the rest equal parts Syrah, Mourvedre, and Cinsault) tips the scales at 15% alcohol. From an old vineyard and cropped at 15 hectoliters per hectare, and aged only in foudre, it boasts a dense purple color in addition to an exquisite nose of violets, minerals, blueberries and blackberries. Pure and concentrated, but atypically tannic, it requires considerable aging as it is one of the vintage’s more backward, broodingly powerful efforts.”


Big assembled feast plates of various vegetarian mezze. In the center, grape leaves  stuffed with rice, chopped tomato, parsley and special seasonings. The white stuff is lebnah, Middle eastern style yogurt mixed with mint, red pepper & topped with olive oil. Then clockwise are falafel: ground fava beans and vegetables with special seasonings. Next hummus: ground garbanzo beans with garlic, lemon juice and special seasonings. Then foul: pureed fava beans with garlic, tomatoes, onions and special seasonings. And last, babagannouj: eggplant dip with tahina sauce and special seasonings.


This alternate version has in the 7 o’clock position, yogurt salad: yogurt with chopped cucumber, mint and garlic.

Below then are detail pictures of most of the mezze:


Tabouleh. Chopped parsley, onion, and tomato mixed with lemon and special seasonings.


hummus: ground garbanzo beans with garlic, lemon juice and special seasonings.

lebnah, Middle eastern style yogurt mixed with mint, red pepper & topped with olive oil. I love this stuff, particularly with the meat.


babagannouj: eggplant dip with tahina sauce and special seasonings.

foul: pureed fava beans with garlic, tomatoes, onions and special seasonings.

Gibna bel tamatim: feta cheese and chopped tomato mixed with olive oil and special seasonings.


Parker 97, “The 2006 Broken Stones (63% Syrah, 24% Grenache, and 13% Mourvedre) blew me away. An inky/purple color and a dazzling, explosive bouquet of black raspberries, camphor, cassis, forest floor, and spring flowers are followed by a rich, elegant wine offering laser-like precision as well as a striking minerality. It is a powerful yet graceful effort.”

The other side of the bottle.


Parker 89, “The 2008 Ventillo 71 is named after the address of the old winery and is 100% Tempranillo. It has a soft, leather-infused nose with strawberry, mint and a touch of orange blossom. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins and ample freshness. There is a core of wild strawberry and red cherry fruit, finely integrated oak and a composed, elegant finish. This is a commendable Rioja.”


Fattoush salad. Romaine lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, onions, and suemock topped with pita chips.


Another salad, more classic middle eastern.


Cole slaw like salad.

Falafels. Chickpea paste fried with tahini sauce.


Meat pies. Falaffel filled with a meat patty. Delicious.

Kobehbah. Beef and pine-nuts covered in burgur wheat and fried. Hot and delicious.


Parker 90-92+, “Aged completely in demi-muids, the 2008 Syrah Halcon is a tannic, young, promising effort that may merit an even higher score next year if it puts on the weight and flesh that the 2007s did in barrel. At present, it reveals abundant blue and black fruits intertwined with hints of forest flora and spice. While not as powerful as the 2007s, it exhibits lots of minerality and structure.”


Shrimp kabob: 10 pieces of shrimp grilled to perfection served with rice and green salad.


Parker 87, “Soft, ripe, and fruity, with big, smoky, charred berry-like scents intermixed with tobacco and plum aromas.”


A line of trouble makers.


Parker 94, “A spectacular offering, the 1998 Command Shiraz (which spent 3 years in French and American oak) is the type of wine that is impossible to duplicate outside of selected Barossa and McLaren Vale vineyard sites. An opaque purple color is followed by spectacular aromas of toasty oak, camphor, blackberry liqueur, and asphalt. It is humongous in the mouth, decadently rich, and luxuriously fruited, with a viscous texture as well as a 40-second finish. Low acidity and ripe tannin add to the succulent impression.”


Grilled squab. Yum.

Liver. Quiet good, tender and with a lot of flavor.


Peppers, tahini, and garlic paste (for chicken, yum!).


On the left the 2004 Kosta Browne Russian River Pinot.

On the right, Parker 95, “Chapoutier makes no bones about the fact that he prefers his 1996 Cote Roties to his 1995s. Wealthy readers with access to Chapoutier’s wines will have fun determining whether the 1995 or 1996 Cote Rotie La Mordoree is the superior wine. Both are terrific examples of Cote Rotie with 20-25 years of evolution. Chapoutier prefers the 1996. The 1995 is a superb wine, but I am not sure the 1996 isn’t a point or two better. Both wines possess intensely-saturated black/purple colors, and smoky, black raspberry, coffee, and chocolate-scented noses with black olives thrown in for complexity. The 1996 may have greater length, but that is splitting hairs at this level of quality. Both are medium to full-bodied, rich, extraordinary examples of Cote Rotie that possess power as well as finesse. Both will require cellaring to reveal their personalities. I suspect the 1995 needs 4-5 years of cellaring.”

Getting the buzz on.


Bamia: okra.


Robin brought this 1994 Heitz (regular) and it was drinking very well, youthful even, full of tasty tannins.


A big meat plate! We have shrimp, chicken, shish kabob (felit mignon), and kofta (ground beef and lamb mixed with onions and parsley).


An Amarone (I can’t read the details unfortunately).


Another view of the meat.


Rice pilaf.


French fries.


Parker 91-93, “The extraordinary 2007 Cotes du Rhone-Villages Rasteau offers up aromas of chocolate, black cherries, dusty, loamy soil, scorched earth, garrigue, and spice. This full-bodied, powerfully concentrated, meaty, expansive, substantial wine should age well for a decade.”


Koshari: traditional vegetarian dish (lentils, brown rice and pasta served with a spicy tomato sauce & topped with fried onions).


Parker 89, “The 1994 Cabernet Sauvignon (545 cases) reveals evolved fruitcake, cedary, tobacco, roasted herb, and cassis aromas, as well as rich, concentrated flavors. It is impressively rich, with an herb-tinged, black currant personality, medium to full body, sweet but noticeable tannin, and excellent purity, all framed by toasty new oak. The wine gives every indication of being ready to drink with another 2-3 years of cellaring.”


Yarom playing the hookah!


Parker 88, “The evolved, medium gold color of the 1990 is prematurely advanced, raising questions about future longevity. It possesses plenty of intensity, and an unctuous, thick, juicy style, but high alcohol and coarseness kept my rating down. There is bitterness as well as fiery alcohol in the finish. The wine does not offer much delineation, so cellaring should prove beneficial as it does have admirable levels of extract. Suduiraut can make powerful, rich wines that are often rustic and excessively alcoholic and hot when young. I am told they become more civilized with age, and certainly older, classic Suduiraut vintages have proven that to be true. I feel this estate’s propensity to produce a luxury cuvee (Cuvee Madame) in vintages such as 1989 tends to have a negative impact on the regular cuvee.”


Various traditional desserts. The gooey white toped one at 1-2 o’clock was particularly awesome.


Another plate of traditional sweets, including rice pudding in the middle.


In case the Hookah isn’t enough.


Little baked donut ball like pastries.


Rice pudding.


It was actually a birthday pudding!


The donut balls coated in Nutella. Certainly two good things are even better.

A coconut dessert.

This was another fun evening. Super casual and more than a little crazy. Dahab is a tasty little restaurant  serving delicious Egyptian food, but they aren’t really set up for either 20+ parties or wine nuts like us. They did manage with the food, and we managed the wine. It was cozy, but made extra fun by the warm evening and outside setting.

For more crazy Foodie Club dining, click here.



On September 21, 2015, we went again. I integrated the food pictures above, but the wines from that second visit are here:














Related posts:

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  2. Totoraku – Hedonists Beef Up
  3. Hedonists at STK
  4. Hedonism at Esso
  5. Peace in the Middle East? – Mezze
By: agavin
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Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Billecart-Salmon, Cafe Dahab, Cafe Dehab, Dahab, Dehab, Dessert, Egypt, Egyptian Food, Foodie Club, hedonists, Hookah, kabob, Los Angeles, Middle Eastern, Mosel, Restaurants and Bars, Riesling, Wine

WOW Endgames – Burning Crusade

Nov07
The Burning Crusade box

The original cover

…continued from my coverage of the WOW Vanilla endgame.

In January of 2007, Blizzard launched The Burning Crusade, the first of four expansions to World of Warcraft and completely overhauled the endgame. In the race from level 60 to 70, any advantage gained by level 60 raiders was quickly swamped out.

Vanilla introduced the core World of Warcraft gameplay: questing, dungeons, pvp, and raids, but The Burning Crusade (BC) began a long process of inventing and refining new mechanics that doled out rewards for these activities. Most innovations were introduced during the BC and Lich King periods, and the newest two expansions (Cataclysm and Pandaria) have mostly tuned those mechanics. BC represented a lot of innovation, beginning one way (closer to Vanilla) and ending another.

It’s all about the numbers

BC saw radical changes with regard to party size. Ignoring UBRS, Vanilla finished up with a 5, 20, 40 scheme. This meant that dungeons were 5 man, smaller raids 20 man, and big raids 40. BC dropped the odd “big dungeons” (like UBRS) and moved to 5, 10, 25. Dungeons didn’t change, but the small raids moved to 10 man and the big raids to 25. Unlike today, each raid was designed for one size. At launch, there a single “intro raid”: Karazhan and four “big” raids. Two were 1-2 boss raids (Gruul’s Lair and Magtheridon) and two were bigger progression instances (Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep). 40 man groups persisted vestigially for ad hoc and battleground PVP.

The intent of the shrinking group was to make it easier for guilds to get a raid together. With 10 man, this was successful. 10 man raids had enough people for two tank mechanics and specialized roles, but were easy to recruit and coordinate. I’m not sure the 40 to 25 shift was as productive. 25 man raids were only moderately easier to organize than 40 and certainly felt less epic. On the other hand, Vanilla 40 mans allowed single players to screw up and slip through the cracks. In BC 25 mans, everyone counted.

Questing

BC shipped with 7 big new zones, a new capital city, two new races, and a ton of quests. By the time I hit level 70, I still had two full zones left. However, like Vanilla, the motivation to finish wasn’t extremely high. You got gold and a few decent blues, but it was a lot of work, and there were numerous annoying 5 man quests. The main reason to finish was to open up the complex network of key chains required to raid (more on this later).

Questing in general was a lot better organized. The basic principle of smaller quest hubs located near their objectives was established. There were few long postal quests like in Vanilla. Dungeon quests remained interwoven with long zone based quest chains. This usually meant, like Vanilla, that during leveling you had not opened up the proper chains for many dungeons. Often these lengthy chains that wound in and out of the many dungeons had to be completed at 70.

The Black Gate

The gateway between Outland and Azeroth

Split Reputation

Reputation in BC moved from the sidelines to front and center. Each dungeon group had one (or two) associated new reps and each rep gained a more meaningful vendor. The rewards, pathetic in Vanilla, became merely okay, and in the case of a few later reps actually good. Several of the reps gated the acquisition of vital items and buffs. The specifics varied by class and spec, but generally it was necessary to run most reputations to revered, particularly since entry into the new heroic difficulty dungeons also required revered reputation with each dungeon’s specific rep (more on that later). Reputation was earned in two ways: by running dungeons specific to the reputation or by grinding annoying drops.

In BC, reaching honored was generally trivial, revered a modest effort, and exalted painful but perhaps 10 times easier than the excruciating final march found in Vanilla. The original design found in Vanilla and early BC was that not only did the amount of rep needed for each rank double, but the ways you could earn it diminished. Midway in BC Blizzard reversed the latter and opened up increasing earning potential at higher levels. A tremendous improvement.

Important to all classes were two new city reputations (Scryer and Aldor). Blizzard experimented with providing the player with a choice between two similar reps. Both gated important buffs and resistance gear. Any serious raider needed to reach exalted and that required killing thousands of specific mobs to collect rep drops (or you could buy them on the auction house). Since this was the last time the designers tried this “choice of rep”, I can assume it was a failure. It added color, but ultimately was a lot of developer work for what didn’t amount to much variety.

Normal Dungeons

Dungeons remained a major source of loot and were necessary to armor yourself in dungeon blues for entry raiding. Blizzard shortened up the dungeons — slightly. Nothing in BC was as big and as long as the gigantic Blackrock dungeons. Still, some of them were still quite long, like Shadow Labs. Normal dungeons were difficult in questing gear and some dungeons like Shattered Halls, Shadow Labs, and Black Morass had high wipe rates. They required careful crowd control and care. There was more need for players to understand the boss mechanics than in Vanilla. A few dungeons proved unpopular and were infrequently run.

But they were, for the most part, challenging and fun.

Keymasters wanted

When BC shipped, instance attunement was famously complex. Every raid, heroic dungeon, and the more difficult normal dungeons all had separate and involved key requirements that wound their way through previous content. Some of this content was quite difficult and unpopular and basically made it so that only players in well organized guilds could easily complete the chains. In these guilds, players were willing to run otherwise pointless dungeons and raids merely to help others finish their keys. Without this, gathering a pickup group for difficult content could be extremely frustrating.

Later in BC, the designers removed the key requirements. Most people seemed to feel this was an entirely good thing and Blizzard never again gated instances with much in the way of achievement based requirements (although the current ilevel gating could be considered a dumbed down form of key). However, I miss the key quests. True, the ones in BC were often too long and too difficult, particularly the Naruu and A’dal chains, but they gave you long term goals and filtered out less capable players.

I my opinion, the Karazhan (intro raid) key chain was perfect. It required running several normal dungeons but could easily be accomplished in a day or two. The Naruu chain, where you had to defeat Mag (an unpopular 25 man boss) and several brutal heroic dungeons was another matter entirely.

Burning Crusade Raid Atunement

Vanilla and BC key requirements

Kara is King

It was never clear if Blizzard intended players geared from normal dungeons to move straight to heroic dungeons or the intro 10 man raid, Karazhan. In practice, Kara was much more appealing. It offered vastly better rewards and was much less frustrating.

Karazhan is also my favorite instance in all WOW — and I reached exalted with the Violet Eye (Kara’s rep) on three characters.

Kara was a big place. It had 12 bosses (some optional) and a post corn roast buttload of trash. It was also incredibly cool with a fantastic score and ghostly gothic atmosphere. The bosses each had distinct and memorable mechanics. The complex encounter design that had been born in Vanilla‘s Naxx was repurposed in a more approachable manner. There were actually even more than 12 bosses because the opera event was really 3, one chosen at random each week, same in the Servant’s Quarters (even if it’s rewards were so lame that no one ran it).

For loot, Kara contained something for everyone. Its gear was a step up from the dungeon blues and better than the early heroic and badge epics (see below). It held the tokens for the tier gloves and helm and dropped matched gear for every slot and every spec in the game. At two epics per boss, it dropped upwards of 20 items per run for 10 players. A lot of loot. By late autumn of 2007 Kara was a juicy plumb of a loot piñata for new 70s.

But in the beginning, it was too hard, and the loot a little too weak. Early groups moving into Kara soon after launch experienced a serious shock. Kara wasn’t exactly a gear check. You could do it in blues, but beyond the first boss, it required that you understand the mechanics. For raiders forced in the hellfires of Blackwing Lair, AQ40, and Naxx, it was a cakewalk. For normal players, used to tank and spank, it was a serious challenge. Over several months, Blizzard nerfed the bosses, trimmed back the exhausting trash, buffed the loot, and players learned the encounters.

The 10 man “entry raid” concept was so successful that mid expansion Blizzard added a second one, the troll themed Zul’Aman.

karazhan

The wizard Medivh’s spooky abode

Tier Tokens

BC introduced the concept of the tier token (actually AQ40 and Naxx had experimented in this direction, but that was only for the 1%). In Vanilla, bosses dropped a particular tier item, like Ony and the Tier 2 helm, and they dropped them for a specific class. This barely worked with 40 players, but in 10 man raids it would have been a total failure. Nothing is more frustrating than seeing a bunch of druid helms when there isn’t even a druid in the party!

So we got the token, which could be exchanged for a specific piece of gear, say the Tier 4 helm. Usually three classes shared a token, so say priests, warlocks, and paladins. This meant it was likely someone could use it. The token could be converted to any spec’s gear, say holy, prot, or ret for paladins.

Heroics and badges

Far less successful, were the heroics. The idea itself was brilliant. Since leveling dungeons don’t get a lot of mileage, provide two tunings of each BC dungeon: normal and heroic. The heroic was intended to be level 70 exclusive and quite difficult. In practice, the heroics were VERY hard, required revered reputation, and provided sub-par rewards. However, it’s worth noting that their badge system was to evolve into one of the cornerstones of WOW endgame progression.

Heroics dropped mostly blue gear. Only the final boss would drop an epic, and there were very few of these, covering only a fraction of the gear slots and specs. The epics were also lame, barely (and sometimes not) better than the blues. The bosses also dropped “badges” that could be redeemed for epic gear. Again, brilliant idea, poor tuning. Heroic runs earned 3-6 badges. Gear cost 40-80. The gear was the same lame ilevel as the end boss heroic gear, and there weren’t very many items.

Heroics were also very hard. Some, like Shadow Labs or Shattered Halls were REALLY long or really hard. They were hard to recruit for and even harder to run. In the early days, before the badge gear was expanded, they weren’t worth it.

PVP was the new black

I’m a PVE player. I never cared that much about PVP itself. But during the first year of BC the easiest way to gear your PVE character was to PVP. Before the removal of the Tier 6 key requirements, you could get post Kara gear only from the 25 man Tier 5 raids. These were pretty hard and even in a raiding guild it was several weeks between items. The summer 2007 PVP set was competitive with T5 and the fall one better. Half of it could be bought for honor, the other half for arena points.

And honor came from battlegrounds. So you played them. And played them. And played them some more. This was easy, predictable, and boring. I used to PVP on the laptop while watching TV. You wanted to grind for 5-10 hours a week. Basically, I consider this a design failure. It got me into battlegrounds, and for a while I cared, but eventually I’d just run AV endlessly, barely paying attention.

Even losers win

During the 2007 seasons, arena was the secret sauce and 3 vs 3 the sweet spot. A casual 3 vs 3 team could spend an hour a week, lose half its matches, and still earn enough arena points to buy amazing gear every other week. This was the best time investment to gear ratio in the entire game by an order of magnitude. Eventually, Blizzard caught on and required fairly high ratings to buy the best pieces. Still, it paid to arena to get the others. With Lich King, they changed the gear balance to make PVP gear fairly useless in PVE, but for a while, it was a solid progression option.

New Daily Hubs

During the course of the expansion, Blizzard introduced a number of ideas to add endgame content and mitigate the varied time investment of the player base. As I discussed in my Vanilla article, difficulty and time investment were used as the gateway to many rewards. It turned out, you could do the same thing for quests that you did for raid gear: limit them by real time as opposed to time investment.

And so the daily was born: A quest that you can do once per day. Dailies allow grinds to be limited by real time instead of time invested. If you can only earn reputation by completing 5 daily quests worth a total of 1000 points, you can only earn 1000 a day. One of the first uses of the daily concept was the “daily dungeon.” Here, one random dungeon was chosen each day. Running it rewarded extra badges. This actually solved two problems. Besides gating badge earning, it concentrated player energy on that specific instance for the day and made it easier to find a group.

The spring of 2007 brought a trio of reputation based daily quest hubs. These player time sink centers allowed you to pick up 5-8 quests per day and turn them in for reputation. Things were calibrated so that a 1-2 hour a day investment for 2-3 weeks would bring you to exalted in any one of the hubs. Blizzard didn’t trust the new mechanic and these first hubs were mostly cosmetic. I did the Netherwing chain where you earned a cool flying dragon. The grind was significant but fair. You could do it but it was enough work that you felt you achieved something. The evolving mix of quests was also pretty cool (the bootarang quest is one of WOW’s greatest).

Like the badges, this idea was initially underutilized but destined to become a cornerstone.

Unlocking the Gates

During early BC, my guild endlessly ran Kara and Gruul. Entry into the T5 raids required that the entire guild earn the “Champion of the Naruu” title by killing Magtheridon and running a bunch of heroics. No one liked Mag and our guild was too disorganized to get everyone through the heroics. This effectively kept us artificially “stuck” in T4 gear and unable to progress into T5.

Eventually, Blizzard just dropped the key requirement to Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep (and later to Black Temple and Hyjal). This was a drastic solution, although effective enough. However, in my opinion, the real mistake was the nature and difficulty of the keys, not their existence. Key quests added flavor and excitement to the endgame, but they needed to be doable without a great deal of punishing runs. Merely requiring 10 of 25 in the raid to have killed Gruul for entry into SSC/TK would have been fine.

A similar problem existed with the T6 raids (Black Temple and Hyjal). Their key quest was truly epic. Besides some heroics, you had to collect something from both Vashj and Kael. These bosses, the final ones in both SSC and TK, were serious raid checks. Both encounters were multi-staged and required that everyone in the raid know and execute on their role. While cool encounters, it was very rare that guilds wanted to take down these bosses after getting into T5, as the burden of training new people on them was too high.

Still, earning “Hand of A’dal” (killing both Vashj & Kael), was one of the proudest moments of my WOW career.

illidan stormrage

I used to tank Ilidan on my warlock

ZA and Vanity Wins

In Vanilla, Blizzard introduced plenty of additional content as the endgame progressed, however very little of this helped the more casual player progress their gear level and make any additional progress in the difficult raids. These remained the providence of exclusive raiding guilds. In BC this changed.

First, they introduced ZA, a new 10 man “easier” raid along the Kara model. This offered gear somewhere between the T4 and T5 level. It was easier than T5 and only required 10 people so it helped players and guilds gear to make better progression in T5 and T6. Also, ZA introduced a number of interesting new concepts designed at rewarding better players. The faster you ran it, the more loot dropped. But more importantly, if you ran it really fast, you got a single “Amani War Bear” mount for someone in the group. This became a major status symbol, particularly as Blizzard removed the ability to win the mount when Lich King shipped.

In my opinion, some of the features of ZA paved the way for both the achievements and raiding heroic modes that were to become the hallmark of endgame experimentation in Lich King.

Daily hub and more epic 5 mans

With the final major content push of BC, Blizzard introduced not only a new major raid (Sunwell, the last crazy hard normal raid in WOW history) but a whole island of content. There was a great new 5 man dungeon at both a higher level of difficulty, better design, and with better epic loot. Plus there was a new reputation centered around a quest hub of daily quests. This took the daily concept begun with the more casual hubs and brought it to the next level. The dungeon tied into the same rep and keyed from it, plus the rep vendor actually offered valuable epic upgrades both as normal gear and as profession recipes.

The model of the Isle of Quel’Danas was to set the mould for what was to come. Plus, unlike in Vanilla, this patch offered less hard core raiders a shot at “easier” gear equivalent to T5 and T6. One of the effects of this was to enable progression of guilds (like mine) that didn’t really have the skill to handle Black Temple and Hyjal in pure T5 gear. This ties into one of the most important trends discussed below.

The Isle of Quel'danas

The Isle of Quel’danas

Currency to provide progression (expanding tokens to all raids)

The initial badge system sucked. As I said before, the badges were only earned in annoying heroics and the rewards bit. With the launch of Qel’Danas, this all changed.

Suddenly, you could get badges not just in heroics, and bonuses for daily heroics, but every raid boss dropped a pair, including the ones in ZA and Kara. The already popular Kara became a total badge fest at  23 a week! Even the hardest core raiders pounded it out making it easier for the rest of us. Why? Because the new badge vendor on the Isle sold T6 quality gear. Sure, some at steep prices like 250 badges, but the gear was fantastic. This meant that if you raided, and ran a Kara/ZA, and some heroics, like a daily or the ever popular Heroic Mechanar (because it was the easiest and shortest heroic), you could bank 50-70 badges a week.

New best in slot items every two weeks or so. One way or another, the badge system (now the point system) has been a major part of WOW ever since. I’ll discuss later how it evolved over the course of Lich King, where it was to see a lot of experimentation, but Blizzard had hit on something. The badge system meant that running instances where you needed no loot, or were unlucky and got no loot, wasn’t a total waste of time. When you accumulated enough badges, you could buy something you really did need. Regulating the rate of badge acquisition would be a major design challenge, but the concept was brilliant. Vanilla and early BC were filled with a lot of play sessions that left you feeling cheated, hours invested and nothing gained. Badges changed (or at least mitigated) that.

You are not prepared!

It’s worth noting that the final raid, Sunwell Plateau, retained the traditional Vanilla/BC elitist only model. Some regard this as the best raid Blizzard ever produced, but few saw it. Our guild only downed the first two bosses, and we considered ourselves pretty elite to be killing anything in there. It was hard, really f**cking brutally hard, and nothing about the new gearing systems changed that. Meeting the final boss of the expansion, Kil’Jaeden, was something only the most dedicated and skilled could be expected to do.

Archimonde

It took us 6 weeks to vanquish Archimonde

Heading toward normalization

BC began and extended a trend which was to continue through Lich King and Cataclysm: Normalization.

In Vanilla, a lot of differences existed between classes and faction. The Alliance had Paladins and the Horde Shamans. BC took this away and gave both factions the same classes. Because of both PVE balance and largely because of arena, Blizzard worked very hard to normalize the classes and specs. There was a significant effort to make every spec viable. In Vanilla, raiding Druids and Shamans healed. Tanks were all Warriors. BC saw the rise of the Pally and Bear tank. Not only that, it became part of the design to make even healing specs viable in arena and for solo (i.e. daily) play.

In Vanilla/early BC, healing gear was healing only and healing specs couldn’t dps worth a damn. Healers were forced to spec back and forth in order to grind materials or run dailies. Blizzard made a number of incremental moves to change this, first making “plus healing” provide partial damage and then merging “plus spell” and “plus healing” into one stat. The amount of gear was reduced, with a lot of healing and dps gear merged. There was some effort to provide specialized bear tanking gear and other rare specs.

Another aspect of normalization was a decreased emphasis on quests and content that could only be experienced by a few. Blizzard built less and less specific class quests in BC and onward. Still, BC had a few great ones like the Druid flying form quest chain.

Hybrid Vigor

Making most specs viable changed the relative value of the hybrid. In the Vanilla design, hybrids (druids, shamans, paladins) were supposed to be more versatile but a little worse than the dedicated classes. As each spec was brought into parity, the “option” of being healer/dps or healer/tank/dps became more and more valuable. My main has always been a Warlock and we dedicated damage classes became less popular and less likely to be picked for raid.

Conclusion

In many ways, BC was my favorite endgame. It had some problems, particularly at the beginning. The difficult key quests and high degree of raid difficult meant that it “seemed” like there was too little raid content for mediocre guilds like mine (because T5 and beyond wasn’t accessible). The tuning on new systems like heroics and badges wasn’t right at the beginning.

Still, there was a lot to do, and the game felt more epic than ever. Compared to Vanilla, there was vastly more accessible content for the non-raider and the softcore raider alike. Things were generally much more balanced and mature than in Vanilla, if not quite as varied. There was a lot less wasted development effort (some of Vanilla‘s vast dungeons were barely ever played). It was possible for different levels of raiders (and even non-raiders) to make significant progress across the course of the expansion. PVP got some skill based  development (at top arena levels) and only remained “mostly” (as opposed to entirely) a grind.

Burning Crusade introduced, new and untuned, many of the systems that were to lead to the modern endgame. Lich King would more or less finish the job.

This saga continues as we head to the frozen north…

WOW Endgame series: Vanilla, Burning Crusade, Lich King, Cataclysm, and Pandaria.
or read about Mists of Pandaria leveling.
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By: agavin
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Totoraku – Hedonists Beef Up

Nov05

Restaurant: Totoraku [1, 2, 3]

Location: 10610 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90064.

Date: November 1, 2012

Cuisine: Japanese Yakiniku

Rating: Best beef in town!

_

The Hedonists ride again, this time to my favorite Japanese beef joint, Totoraku. I‘ve reviewed this peculiar (but fantastic) invitation only restaurant before. It serves a very refined version of Japanese Yakiniku, which is Beef BBQ originally from Korea but filtered through Japanese sensibility.

The outside is basically a shell. The “Teriyaki House” has nothing to do with the food within, and the phone number is incorrect. The place is like a beef speakeasy!

At Hedonist events everyone brings a bottle of two of great wine. We open with this champagne. The NV Brut Rose is a pretty, gracious wine. Freshly cut roses, red berries and spices take shape nicely in the glass as the wine shows off its understated, timeless personality. Billecart-Salmon’s NV Brut Rose is a reliably tasty wine.


The only thing that really changes at Totoraku is this impressive looking appetizer spread. This is for four people. Everyone gets a bite sized bit of each.


Sockeye salmon wrapped in jicama, with avocado and a kind of soba.


Melon and salami, a different take on the classic.


Tuna sashimi in a sauce.


Little cubes of tofu.


Hard boiled qual egg stuffed with cod row and crab. Tasted like a deviled egg!


Asparagus in a butter sauce.


Really tender fresh abalone with yuzu pepper.


Shrimp on radicchio with caviar.


Chef Kaz and his assistant plating the food in the kitchen.


This older 1984 Grace Family Cab was a surprisingly fresh entrée into the world of reds.


Beef carpaccio with special salt, flowers, and some onion family derivative. Very yummy. This is eaten raw.


We moved up to a more recent vintage of the same wine. Parker 90. “The 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon (260 cases) offers plenty of up-front sweet black currant fruit mixed with toasty new oak and mineral characteristics. It is medium-bodied, plump, and accessible, revealing good fruit in its subtle, restrained personality.”

Two kinds of beef sashimi, eaten nearly raw. On the left beef tataki (rib eye) and on the right (in the cup) beef throat sashimi. Also on the plate is a bit of Korean style hot sauce (the red stuff), some intensely strong garlic (yum) and micro julienned ginger.

The throat was very chewy, more about texture. The rib eye soft and more flavorful. All went well with the garlic and ginger — I particularly liked the garlic.


A new release from Vega Sicilia, Spain’s most renowned winery, is the 1995 Valbuena (magnum). A plum/ruby color is followed by aromas of sweet black fruits intermixed with licorice, earth, and spicy oak. Full-bodied, with excellent concentration, a juicy, layered texture, and fine purity, it is forward and plush.


A raw beef dish. Marinated raw beef is seen here with ginger, raw egg, cucumber, daikon, pine nuts, and something orange. Apparently, this is a Korean dish called Yukhoe. Actually, I’ve had it at Korean places, but in any case it’s delicious.


The elements are mixed together and then eaten. It’s hard to describe why it’s so good, but it is, with a very complex flavor and texture interplay.


One of my favorites. Parker 99+! “The 1989 has taken forever to shed its formidable tannins, but what a great vintage of Lynch Bages! I would rank it at the top of the pyramid although the 1990, 2000, and down the road, some of the more recent vintages such as 2005, 2009 and 2010 should come close to matching the 1989’s extraordinary concentration and undeniable aging potential. Its dense purple color reveals a slight lightening at the edge and the stunning bouquet offers classic notes of creme de cassis, subtle smoke, oak and graphite. Powerful and rich with some tannins still to shed at age 22, it is still a young adolescent in terms of its evolution and will benefit from another 4-5 years of cellaring.”


Beef tongue with salt.


Don’t put your tongue on the grill!

BBQ to perfect, and add a bit of scallions, then dip in lemon juice and enjoy. This is about the most tender tongue I’ve had (and I’ve had plenty). It’s still a dense slightly rubbery texture, but delicious.


Parker 89, “The 1988 has an aroma of exotic spices, minerals, blackcurrants, and oak. In the mouth, it is a much firmer, tougher, more obviously tannic wine than the 1989. It is a beautifully made 1988 that will last 20-30 years, but the astringency of the tannins is slightly troubling. Patience will be a necessity for purchasers of this wine.”

I agree with Parker, this was full of heavy duty Bordeaux-style sour tannins. Not really a very pleasant effort.


Filet Mignon with bell peppers, onions, and sisho pepper.


93 points, “Deep garnet purple color. Aromas of chocolate malt, vanilla, berry pie, and toffee with a supple dryish medium-to-full and a craisin, pencil shaving, baked apple, brown spice, and earth with chewy tannins. Very nicely balanced and elegant.”


Filet on the grill.


Parker 91, “The medium to dark ruby-colored 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon Champoux Vineyard displays creamy, sweet, Connecticut white corn, and black cherry aromas. Medium to full-bodied and satin-textured, it is an intense, blackberry and dark cherry-flavored wine. This expressive, flavorful offering has outstanding follow-through from its attack to its long, seamless, and focused finish.”


Momotaro tomatoes with a vinaigrette. These are supposedly incredibly good tomatoes, as a hater, I didn’t try them. I think Oyama-san gets them from some special place in Orange Country.


The “salad.” Cucumbers, carrots, daikon.


They are served with this spicy sweet miso dip. The vegetables do help to move along the fat and protein heavy meat.



Parker 95, “There are 475 cases of the 2007 IX Syrah Estate, which offers up flowery, roasted meat, balsamic, tar, and blackberry characteristics in a full-bodied format. The wine reveals sweet tannin, and layers of fruit, including a note of lavender that emerges as the wine sits in the glass. It should drink well for a decade.”

We also had a Colgin Cab, but I can’t remember what year and I missed taking a picture of it.


More meat on the grill.


From my cellar: Parker 96, “The 1995 is spectacular. When Emmanuel Reynaud said it was evolving quickly, in essence repudiating this vintage, I immediately drank two bottles of this glorious elixir. It does not reveal the over-ripeness of the 1990, bringing to mind a hypothetical blend of the great 1989 and 1978. Deeply-colored and still young, with black currant/creme de cassis-like characteristics, huge body, yet great structure and delineation, this is a classic Rayas that is totally different than the 1990. It should continue to improve in the bottle and may merit an even higher score. While it can be drunk now, it will be even better with 3-4 years of cellaring.”


Outside rib eye with special salt and garlic.


Parker 94+, “A very great wine, the dark garnet-hued 1980. Still a young wine at age 29, it exhibits massive earthy, meaty, bacon fat notes intermixed with notions of scorched earth, blackberries, currants, pepper, and spice. Full and rich with slightly rustic tannins, it has a good 20 years of life ahead of it.

Grange, Penfolds’ flagship wine, is, by many accounts, the most renowned and world-famous wine produced in Australia, and these six vintages from my cellar all acquitted themselves well. These wines are almost always Shiraz, but many vintages include less than 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, and there are cross-appellations blends from vineyards in the Barossa and McLaren Vale.”


Inside rib eye.


Parker 95-98, “The 1998 Syrah E-Raised is great stuff. The blended Syrah comes from different vineyard sources, primarily the Alban Vineyard in San Luis Obispo, and Bien Nacido and Stolpman Vineyards in Santa Barbara. These wines are always amusingly named (Black and Blue, Against the Wall, Imposter McCoy). All the components were tasted, and even the least impressive cuvee was tipping my olfactory and sensual charts at 93 and 94 points, with the finest cuvees ranging up near perfect 97 or 98 point totals. It is black-colored, jammy and super-intense with awesome concentration, terrific, chewy, explosive flavors of blackberries, cherries, and cassis interfused with creosote, pepper, and vanillin. All the cuvees are gorgeously pure, thick, and rich. As they sit in the glass, notes of roasted coffee, licorice, smoke, and barbecue spices emerge, giving them another dimension of complexity. It is hard to make a prediction at this point, given how sensational previous vintages have been, but it would not surprise me to see the 1998 Syrah turn out to be the finest yet from Sine Qua Non.”


I’ve been to Toto at least 10 times, but this is the first time I’ve ever had the lamb, which like all of Kaz’s meats, is pretty wonderful.


This was really a loaner from a neighboring table, but we drank some anyway. 1,000 thanks!

Parker 96-100, “During its first 10-12 years of life, this was a perfect wine, but it now seems to be in a stage where the fruit is still present, but the previous exuberance and intensity have faded slightly. There is plenty of amber at the edge, and this medium to full-bodied wine shows notes of menthol, cedar, spice box, plums, and black cherries. Owners of 750 ml bottles should plan on consuming it over the next 4-6 years. Magnums should be less evolved, and merit a score 4 to 6 points higher.”


King crab legs.


From my cellar: Parker 96, “What sumptuous pleasures await those who purchase either the 1996 or 1995 Pichon-Lalande. It is hard to choose a favorite, although the 1995 is a smoother, more immediately sexy and accessible wine. It is an exquisite example of Pichon-Lalande with the Merlot component giving the wine a coffee/chocolatey/cherry component to go along with the Cabernet Sauvignon’s and Cabernet Franc’s complex blackberry/cassis fruit. The wine possesses an opaque black/ruby/purple color, and sexy, flamboyant aromatics of pain grille, black fruits, and cedar. Exquisite on the palate, this full-bodied, layered, multidimensional wine should prove to be one of the vintage’s most extraordinary success stories.”


“Special” beef. I think it was a form of sirloin. It was certainly good, very salted.


Another loaner (they sure had great wine). Parker 98, “A magnificent example of Chateau Margaux and one of the most tannic, backward Margauxs of the last 50 years, the 1986 continues to evolve at a glacial pace. The color is still a dense ruby/purple with just a hint of lightening at the rim. With several hours of aeration, the aromatics become striking, with notes of smoke, toast, creme de cassis, mineral, and white flowers. Very full-bodied, with high but sweet tannin, great purity, and a very masculine, full-bodied style, this wine should prove nearly immortal in terms of its aging potential. It is beginning to budge from its infantile stage and approach adolescence.”


Special beef on the grill.


And the final loaner. This was a total stunner. Parker 100, “For the fourth time, the Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee da Capo has been produced, and for the fourth time, it has received a perfect score although I might back off the 2000’s perfect score based on the fact that it seems to be more of an upper-ninety point wine than pure perfection these days. The 2003 Chateauneuf du Pape Cuvee da Capo has distanced itself ever so slightly from the 2003 Cuvee Reservee. Before bottling and immediately after bottling, these two wines’ differences were not as evident. At present the Capo reveals that extra level of flavor, power, complexity and richness. It is a big wine (16.1% alcohol – less than in the 1998, but more than in the 2000 and 2007) boasting a dark plum/garnet color as well as a stunning bouquet of aged beef intermixed with pepper, herbes de Provence, and steak au poivre. This unctuously textured, full-bodied Chateauneuf possesses enormous body, huge flavors and sweet, velvety tannins. Still youthful, it has not yet begun to close down, and I’m not sure it ever will given this unusual vintage. It is a modern day classic that should continue to provide provocative as well as compelling drinking for 20-30+ years.”


Skirt steak.


This is a tasty but sometimes tough cut. Not here, soft as butter.


t

An unusual dessert wine from the town of Massandra in the Crimea which was an ancient Greek settlement. The Tzar had a palace here and for centuries they made special wine for the royal family. Raisin in a glass, this particular vintage must have been served up to Stalin!

Cool box.


And its own wine “passport.”


Toto serves homemade ice creams and sorbets as dessert.


Lychee and pistachio.


White chocolate and expresso. I like the ice creams better than the sorbets here. The white chocolate was fantastic.


Blueberry.

Chef/Owner Kaz Oyama on the left, Hedonist organizer Yarom on the right with the cigar.

And this place IS all about the beef, which is arguably some of the best I’ve ever had. Certainly the best yakiniku/Korean BBQ I’ve ever had. There is a perfect tenderness to every cut that’s fairly transcendant. I’m not even that much of a steak fan — but I’d take this stuff any time over even a spectacular cut from Mastros or Cut. The food here does not vary much from visit to visit. There is no menu. The quality however is utterly consistant. So while it isn’t an everyday sort of dining experience, perhaps once every 6-9 months, I love to return for my fix.

This was a spectacular evening with some really great meat, amazing wines, and good company!

For other Foodie Club meals, click here.

Related posts:

  1. Totoraku – Secret Beef!
  2. Hedonists at STK
  3. No Beef with Mastro’s
  4. Hedonists at La Paella
  5. Manpuku – Not so Secret Beef
By: agavin
Comments (3)
Posted in: Food
Tagged as: Barbecue, bbq, beef, Dessert, Foodie Club, hedonists, Japanese cuisine, lamb, Totoraku, Wine

Air Middle Earth

Nov02

Air New Zealand is using this very amusing (in a geeky way) Hobbit-themed safety video on its flights!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBlRbrB_Gnc]

You can also check out The Hobbit trailers here.

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By: agavin
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Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: Air New Zealand, The Hobbit

Prometheus Rebound

Nov02

Title: Prometheus

Cast: Noomi Rapace (Actor), Michael Fassbender (Actor), Ridley Scott (Director)

Genre: Science Fiction

Watched: October 25, 2012

Summary: Trying to go long! (7/10)

_

In many ways, Prometheus, harkens back to 60s and 70s Science Fiction (novels). Not only is it Ridley Scott’s vague take on a prequel to his own 1979 Alien, but it ambitiously tackles gigantic open ended questions in the manner of Rama, Gateway, and the like. But does it succeed?

Not entirely.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sftuxbvGwiU]

This film is certainly broader and vaster than Alien — which is a contained “monster in a box” sort of story, albeit a brilliant one — and the actors are pretty good, but Prometheus feels a little rushed. Most of the characters seem to be acting on mysterious hidden agendas that don’t make total sense. And they proceed with a crazy sort of recklessness — given the obvious high level of risk even before it devolves into a total cluster f**k. I mean, come on, who sends a team that doesn’t know each other to the other side of the galaxy? Who thinks it’s a good idea to take off your helmet in a giant alien pyramid or stick your fingers in xeno-goo?

Also, despite the pretense of “hard sci-fi”, there are a lot of liberties taken with physics, biology, and the like. Can gigantic alien donut ships really roll and flop across the ground? I don’t think so, big objects don’t have the tensile strength to topple like that, look what happened to the twin towers. Can you outrun one on foot? Or why does an expedition that auto maps every millimeter of their surroundings with glowing holographs need to ask crew members what “coordinates” they’re standing at?

Still, I enjoyed the film. Ridley at least tried to make a great film, even if he only ended up with a good one. This is no mindless action romp with unmemorable talking cardboard cutouts. It’s a real solid effort, starkly gorgeous to boot, and definitely better than Robin Hood!

For more Film reviews, click here.

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By: agavin
Comments (19)
Posted in: Movies
Tagged as: alien, Arts, Film Review, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Prometheus, Ridley Scott, Science Fiction
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