Stay Tuned

Greetings! As many of you know, I've been pursuing a Masters in Plant Science and trying to write a waiter memoir.  I've decided to focus on finishing my Masters.
Stay tuned for new developments in food writing and T & A Farms as I wrap up my graduate work this spring.

Some Thoughts on Wine: Tips for Fine Dining Waiters Part 1 of 2

Some Thoughts on Wine: Tips for Fine Dining Waiters

First and foremost wine is an agricultural product made from a crop called grapes.  Grapes grow in the ground in certain places in the world.  Some of these grapes grow better in certain environments.  Soil and weather play the biggest part.  The French call this “terroir”, which loosely translates to “a sense of place”.  Viticulture techniques judiciously applied, are naturally important; however, as we all know from perusing a wine list that wines are “from” somewhere.  California Cabernet. Argentine Malbec, French Bordeaux, Italian Barolo.  Do you notice something about the above mentioned wines?  They all mention where they come from; however, the first two mention the varietal (type of grape), whereas the third and fourth mention a region in their respective countries.  All wines from Europe are called Old World wines.  In the Old World (Europe) wines are described by their geographical origin.  The French call this Appellation Origine Controlee (AOC).  New World wines are from the US, South America, South Africa, and Australia.  These wines are made from cuttings originally brought by emigrants from Europe.

            Once these new world grapes were planted, they developed their own flavor profile.  For instance, Bordeaux France is where Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot originated.  They are grown on the banks of the Gironde River.  It’s relatively cool and not too far from the Atlantic Ocean.  Contrast this with California Cabernet and Merlot, both widely planted in the warm Napa Valley a full 6 degrees latitude lower than Bordeaux.  The soil is rich volcanic soil and it is very hot in the summer.

So this terroir (sense of place) figures prominently in assessing a wine’s quality.  For example, Apples grow well in Washington.  It’s cold enough to give the fruit tree the requisite hours of chill necessary for optimum fruit production.  This cannot be said for Los Angeles.  There are pockets of micro-climates that will chill, but not like Washington, so one could assume that apples from Washington will be a higher quality apple.  For the sake of comparison, let’s assume farming methods are the same. 

            Think of a target with three concentric circles.  The outside circle is the big region.  The middle circle is the village.  The bull’s eye is the vineyard.  So we have

Burgundy = region = California

Chassagne Montrachet = village = Napa Valley

Montrachet = vineyard = Araujo Vineyard

Theoretically, if we had three white Burgundies (btw white wine from Burgundy is Chardonnay), and the first said Bourgogne Blanc, and the second said Chassagne Montrachet, and the 3rd said Montrachet, which one would be the highest quality?

The Taste: An Authentic L.A. Food and Wine Festival

If you consider yourself a true foodie Angeleno, update your Labor Day Google calendar as “BUSY” as you will be attending the Taste at Paramount studios.   The Los Angeles Times sponsored culinary event bills itself as “A Food and Wine festival that is authentically L.A.”, and a passing glance at the bios of the participants shows they’ve got the street credibility to back it up.

Five events over the course of three days (Aug 29-31), offer guests the very best food and drink L.A. has to offer, at an Angeleno food festival starring actual Angelenos. Nearly every culinary professional participating makes L.A. their home.  From the chefs, Nancy Silverton, Josiah Citrin, Michael Cimarusti, John Sedlar, and even Thomas Keller—who grew up in Oceanside—to the L.A. Times staff that spotlight the unique facets of this great city.  To have the likes of Pulitzer prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold, Test Kitchen chef Noelle Carter, or the veteran critic/cookbook author Russ Parsons teaming up with Michael Cimarusti, Thomas Keller, and Nancy Silverton, one cannot help but smile at your good fortune to break bread with these hometown heroes.

Whether it’s learning about “found food” at a foraging seminar with Pascal Baudar—who knew there were so many edible plants in Griffith Park?--or seeing how local chefs sustain the emerging food hubs by only sourcing from family farms within 100 miles, the Taste demonstrates how Los Angeles has consistently led the way in a citywide reimagining of food and its effect on our collective culinary culture.  Despite the fact that the Taste takes place at the venerable Paramount Studios, let’s face the truth.   As movie crazed as we are, very few Angelenos can tell you who won Best Actress at last year’s Oscars, but coax them to recount their first dinner at Mozza or Melisse, and the vivid recollection would make you swear they were channeling Billy Wilder.

The philosophical and practical commitment to excellence makes the Taste stand out from other Food and Wine Festivals.  It’s more than tasty samples.  It’s a culinary chautauqua, a harkening back to adult education tent show revivals where, in addition to incredible food, ideas are exchanged to nourish the body and open our eyes to new perspectives.  Naturally, the Taste spotlights Chefs and Cooking , but fortunately for us foodies, the other gastronomical guilds, some of which are only now rising from the dead, like heritage Bartending, Canning and Preserving, Butchering, Foraging, are given their due.

Fri. August 29 7:30 PM

Opening Night of the Taste with LA’s Best Chefs

Sat. August 30 11 AM

Field to Fork hosted by Russ Parsons and Nancy Silverton

Sat August 30 7:30 PM

Dinner with a Twist hosted by Jonathan Gold, Betty Hallock, John Sedlar, and Julian Cox

Sun August 31 11AM

Sunday Brunch hosted by Noelle Carter and Chef Thomas Keller

Sun August 31 7:30 PM

Flavors of L.A. hosted by Jonathan Gold and Michael Cimarusti

We Got a Bad Potato! Part 1 of 2

          For years Marvin’s wife had been bringing her own food to Spago—salad, a piece of fish, green beans, and a baked potato. For months we tried to convince her to let us cook her Dover Sole, but she hadn’t yet agreed when, one night, as she was eating her own food in the Spago dining room, she flagged me down.

          Naturally I hurried to her side. I couldn’t imagine what the problem could be since I hadn’t served her a thing from our menu.

          “Adam,” she said, “this potato tastes bad.”

          By then I had learned that the customer is always right, so naturally I said, “Let me remove it, then,” and I removed the delinquent potato from her plate, prepared simply to toss it.

          “Tell Gary about the bad potato,” she said.

          Gary was her security guard, a retired LAPD detective and a bear of a man with a thick walrus moustache. Gary dressed in a slick black suit, an earpiece in his ear, and whenever I saw him, it struck me that he looked right at home riding shotgun in a limo.

          That evening I found him standing at the end of a quiet hallway by the bar.  To the left was the wine room, to the right another beveled glass door with the Flame of Life etched in it, which opened eastward to a beautiful narrow alley.  Shrouded in almost perpetual shade by towering blue gum eucalyptus, with a brick raised garden bed overflowing with exotic, shade loving bromeliads, and the wafting, intoxicating scent of night blooming jasmine, this walkway cleverly disguised an ulterior purpose: the surreptitious transport of VIPS.  For you see, the pathway broke in the other direction, by means of a narrow passage that connected the valet station and the alley.  When informed by the Maître’d, valets ran to the back and assisted “camera shy” celebrities before the paparazzi could run around the building.  Mr. Davis; however, was not in need of this service.  He had his own valets (body guards), Gary and John, and Greg the chauffeur.  So I saunter up to Gary, as he sips a coke. “Gary,” I said, proffering the potato, “Mrs. Davis wanted you to know we got a bad potato.”

          I had no idea what he was supposed to do with that information, but that wasn’t my problem, after all.

          He turned and looked at me. “Really?” His voice had that deep-throated cop sound to it, and I watched as he leaned into his wrist mic and said,

 “Greg, we got a bad potato here!” 

          Greg was the limo driver, and I couldn’t imagine what the limo driver was supposed to do.

          Gary listened a moment and turned back to me and said, “Hang on,” and I stood there, vaguely wondering if they had a plan. A few seconds later Greg came running through the alley and to the back door. He was carrying a new baked potato!

The Taming of the Review--the Spago Tasting Menu Part 5 of 5

An elegant white Burgundy from Pouilly-Fuissé precedes the agnolotti, and we waiters inform the guest that this postage stamp-sized ravioli are closely inspired by the Piedmontese model, filled with fresh sweet corn, a touch of Mascarpone and Reggiano, butter and caramelized corn kernels.  But when the manager steps up and presents a cutting board with a large summer truffle and begins shaving it into delicate slivers that float like rose petals onto the dish, the din of the crowd vanishes. A portal opens. Goodbye Earth.  I say this with no apologies for the summer truffle’s status as third tier truffle, behind the classic black truffle of late summer and the angelic white truffle d’Alba that graces us with her presence in November.  Tasting menus done on the scale of Spago allow for elevated culinary journeys that do not necessitate a credit check.

The truffles allow the next dish, roast suckling pig with last of the season morels and fava beans, to offer an experience of two great spring flavor combinations nearing the end of their availability.  The crispiness of the pork, coupled with the earthiness of the morels, lend themselves nicely to a classic California zinfandel, and Michael Bonaccorsi forces the guest to think outside the box by offering a Ravenswood “old vine” Zin from Lodi, California!  Educated wine lovers, with all this talk of terroir and AOC, might be perplexed to discover this superb wine originates from the heart of California’s central valley, a place famous for raisins and Gallo wine. But there is that zinfandel with its deep purple hue, its jammy nose, the pronounced black pepper on the palate and supple tannins, the Ravenswood “old vines” Zinfandel from Lodi tells us to forget our pretenses and to look for quality and value wherever it may reside, and despite his predilections, that ability is Bonaccorsi’s genius.

Traditionally, the final meat dish would be rack of lamb or Kobe beef; however, now and then a guest might request another kind of beef, one that happened to be on the regular menu.  Côte de Bœuf , which loosely translates as “hunk of cow,” is a bone in rib-eye, or cowboy steak.  Added to this incredible cut, seasoned with only kosher salt and fresh ground pepper, we served pommes aligot, for which there is no direct English translation, the closest being “cheesy potato heart attack.”  Rumor had it Chef Lee brought the recipe back from three-star Michel Bras in Laguiole, France—and the fact is, this was the only dish at Spago that came with directions to Cedars-Sinai hospital.  Such a dish demanded a wine with enough tannins to tame it, and fortunately we had many to choose from, from a young Bordeaux to a rich Syrah from Santa Barbara County—Bonaccorsi’s preference being Santa Barbara where ultimately he moved to make his own high quality Pinot Noir.

The dishes cleared, the table crumbed almost for the last time, the good waiter fades into the background, leaving a guest on her own for a while.  She might observe a smartly dressed man and beautiful young lady having a light dinner—wondering at that, though we knew that the man had earlier eaten dinner with his wife.   The sommelier returns with the cheese cart, displaying  Brillat-Savarin, a triple-cream from Normandy; Brin d'Amour, a Corsican raw sheep's milk cheese rolled in herbs; Stilton, the famous English blue cheese; Pont l'Eve^que, from Normandy; and Te^te de Moine (aka Monk's Head), a raw Swiss-made cheese shaved by a spinning shaving blade into flower-like ruffles.  Sometimes we offered a trio, sometimes all of one, and the wine pairing depended on the cheese.  Bleu cheeses call for ports; soft whites go well with sauterne, and the harder cheeses allow the guest to carry forward the Syrah from the last course.

Next came a phase that that often incited the ire of the pastry chef, Sherry Yard.  Often Chef Lee hit guests so hard, they raised the white flag at this juncture, fearing even eating a thin mint would cause an explosion like that of the gluttonous man in the Monty Python sketch.  Sorbet arrived to cleanse the stinky cheese breath palate, and on its heels came a light fruit-based offering, or perhaps something astonishing like a classic mille-fueille, “thousand leaves,” embellished with blood orange zest in pastry cream and with juice from the fruit in the crème anglaise.  As if the artistry of the presentation wasn’t enough, Sherry often served the dessert herself, flooring the guests, leaving them sated and grateful.

At last, from a perch on the cliffs of culinary bliss, warmed by the Spago sun, a guest might take in the look of the bustling place with a clarity she missed on arrival. As intimate as the meal felt and was, the dining room is huge, one that easily could seat 200 guests at once. Since the tasting experience stretched out over two seatings, over 300 meals were likely served over its course! 

The bill arrives, always a rock solid reminder that the guest has returned to earth. Indeed, a guest might wonder if he’s just eaten in a tourist trap.

The answer is yes. Spago is a tourist destination. But the food and service elevate it far above other tourist traps like Mann’s Chinese Theatre or the Hollywood Wax Museum.  Still, some social critics—and more than a few jealous restaurateurs have knocked Spago’s fame as indicative of undeserving Hollywood glitter. There have been whispers and worse—that the Spago scene swindles through culinary subterfuge; that it’s all smoke and mirrors, a false heaven. 

To that I always said, “Praise the Lord!  You’re cured!  You can walk again!”

The Taming of the Review--the Spago Tasting Menu Part 4

But back to our guest at the tasting menu table where the sommelier is describing the next wine, an Austrian white called Gruner Veltliner.  Within minutes the first course arrives in the form of white asparagus, prepared first as a salad with a Meyer lemon vinaigrette, and second as a warm gratin.  Asparagus challenges most wines for its naturally high levels of sulfurous methionine convert the taste of even the finest whites into something not unlike vegetal compost tea.  But then there is the Gruner Veltliner, a wine savory enough to cut through any resistance the asparagus mounts.  And the white asparagus itself, with its lack of chlorophyll--a result of sunlight never being allowed to touch it--diminishes the vegetal notes, thus aiding the wine, and everything is perfection, again.

By the time the guest has finished the two asparagus dishes, he might glance at the big man and see his table has already received a dozen dishes— as if the kitchen knew ahead of time what to prepare. The guest might ask and learn that the big man is Marvin Davis, and Spago values his business. Of course they knew ahead of time what to prepare. He eats here every day, twice a day.

 Plates are cleared efficiently, the silver replaced, another white wine glass added as the waiter arrives with a bottle of E. Guigal Condrieu.  When anyone asked, all we waiters knew how to answer. Condrieu is not a grape, it’s a place, and the history of Condrieu is built around one famous grape, Viognier, which makes a peachy but dry wine that lends itself nicely to Asian cuisine, particularly Thai.  A seafood curry arrives, featuring beautiful Santa Barbara spot prawns in red curry with raised octave notes of kaffir lime and Thai basil. The prawns' heads, tempura battered, lie on squares of white paper in the center of the table.  By now the guest can almost touch the moon.

The dishes begin to arrive in succession, and the keen-eyed guest will notice: They seem to come from everywhere around the globe.  Chef Lee Hefter commands a ship that sails the globe searching for the right ingredients, ingredients that, when synthesized, will elevate the diner to a vantage point high above the earth.  Oddly, wine pairings remain rooted in the old world since the master sommelier, Michael Bonaccorsi, believes that the “old world” set the bar by which the “new world” must be measured.  Many a wine enthusiast has embraced good wines from California and Chile and Australia, but the Europeans have been cooking and making wine for a long, long time.  There is a reason the Loire Valley is famous for its goat cheese so it’s no accident that the Sauvignon Blanc grown in the Valley is the right wine to accompany that cheese.  The French feel so strongly about these connections they have codified them into a system called Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC).

That said, the Turbot that arrives atop an eggplant nicoise may find a crisp Rose from Provence as its soul mate.  The sense of place, what the French call terroir, shines in the delicate texture and mellow flavor of the turbot, which only days earlier was fished off the Mediterranean coast of France and expressed overnight to Spago’s kitchen.  The crisp green beans, tomatoes, and delicate quail egg, comingle subtly with the interplay of fish and wine.

Next comes a straightforward sautéed Foie gras with a cherry reduction, but the wine accompaniment shows an understanding of the physiology of taste that would bring a smile to Brillat-Saverin’s face.  Jurancon Sec, the dry version of Jurancon, made from Gros Manseng,  and hailing from the Southwest of France,  integrates itself into the scene with its deep golden color, not unlike that found in Sauterne, but totally different.  Something miraculous is afoot.

The Taming of the Review--the Spago Tasting Menu Part 3

            As soon as Spago Beverly Hills opened, an amuse bouche—often the miso cone—became a tradition. A trio of amuse bouche arrived in quick succession, season specific, for Spago’s menus always followed the seasons. You’d never find blueberries from Chile in December.  Truthfully, the billionaire Marvin Davis could get out-of-season fruit whenever he wanted since he didn’t believe in winter, summer, fall or spring; he lived only in Marvin time and assumed others did too.  Once Mr. D, as we called him, travelled to Houston in the morning to check on his oil company and returned to L.A. that evening just in time for dinner.  I’d heard Houston was struck by severe thunderstorms that day, so I asked, “Mr. D., how was the weather?”

             “What’s weather?” he replied, and it struck me then: Of course he had no sense of weather. He moved from air conditioned house to garage to air conditioned limo, to private plane in private hangar, to Houston hangar, to new air conditioned limo, to garage to air conditioned office.  Mark Twain once famously said, “Everybody talks about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it, but I realized in that moment that Marvin Davis had indeed done something about it.

            At any rate, back to the table. In early summer, the amuse bouche might be a delicate mini tart, filled with the first of the season’s Junecrest peaches from the Masumoto family farm just south of Fresno, topped with a dollop of mousse de foie gras marinated in sweet Moscato. This would be followed by a confit of pork belly tucked inside a pâte feuilletée.  Once the guest had peeled himself off the ceiling and floated back to the table, he was greeted by a petite tasse brimming with Santa Barbara sea urchin pot de creme illuminated by a wasabi cream and osetra caviar.  Sometimes I watched a guest and imagined he must be wondering if he ought to eat it or sell it to the highest bidder at Sotheby’s for the dish is that beautiful, and the very moment the urchin touches tongue, . The taste rockets the taste buds to the fourth dimension where time stands still and Cher looks young.

            As the guest comes to, waiter, sommelier, assistant sommelier and manager are staging glasses for the first course of the evening.  Sometimes a guest’s eyes might wander to glance at the big star who just entered the restaurant or to gaze at Wolfgang Puck standing just across the room despite having appeared live that very morning on Good Morning America. .  “How the hell did he get back in time for dinner?” a guest might ask herself. “He was in New York this morning and now he’s signing a stack of cookbooks for one large table, posing for a photo with another.  

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, Barbara Lazaroff, designer and partner (soon to be Puck's estranged wife), appears and works her way around the room.  She’s directing busboys who carry a huge, booth-like chair into the main dining room and set it at a large, round table.  From a side door an enormous man enters; he’s accompanied by two burly men and a petite lady, obviously the man’s his wife dressed to the nines in a fabulous St. John knit.  At that moment Sydney Poitier appears around the corner, joined by Jackie Collins and Bob Newhart!  Barbara embraces them all.  And as I watched I always heard the Spago refrain playing in my mind: Live! Love! Eat!

Taming of the Review--the Spago Tasting Menu Pt. 2

Immediately inside, standing attention at the host stand was the Maitre’d at Spago Beverly Hills, Jenny.  The time difference between a small delay and an hour-long wait could be subdivided by a simple twenty dollar bill while a hundred could send time reeling backwards.  Once past the portal, guests were escorted by cordial, and smartly dressed young ladies through the bustling, loud dining room, and seated at an elegant table with creme colored linen, and heavy teak chairs with the Flame of Life etched into their backs.  The pulling of the chairs for the guests was of utmost importance for no other reasons than, 1) it was polite, and 2) they weighed a fucking ton.   These custom made behemoths were a sight to behold.  They were unstackable, in yet another Barbara Lazaroff design triumph of form over function.  Their legs undulated, giving way to impossible curves that brought to mind Steve Martin’s Cruel Shoes.  I remember when the restaurant was new, and Barbara saw damage on these chairs, she went berserk, and you’d hear her and Wolf arguing in the hallway by the garden.  “Barbara, it’s a restaurant, not a museum!” he would lament.

When we knew a guest was planning to have  a tasting menu--or if the guest was a reviewer who had no choice but to eat whatever we served --the table was set simply, with a classic mis-en-place and a champagne flute.  Old school joints like Chasens began with an empty table, the waiter taking a cocktail or champagne order and serving up that order with oysters or their famous seafood platter and afterwards setting up the appropriate mis-en-place.  But by the time Spago Beverly Hills opened, times had changed. In the new era, even VIPs wanted bread right away, and Spago obliged serving an array of wonderful house baked breads like crispy Lavash, as well as olive, walnut, and sourdough from Nancy Silverton’s La Brea Bakery.  Spago couldn’t make everything in house, but if they went outside, they went for the best.  This also made sense as Nancy and her husband/partner, Mark Peel had both apprenticed at Spago in the 1980s.

So now the guest is seated, so let’s get started.  A true tasting menu always begins with champagne.  Cocktails at the table are bad-form.  Having a Negroni lingering on the sidelines like some vagrant on a piazza in Florence is absurd, but a wise waiter carefully navigates these waters.  You don’t want the guest juggling his cocktail, and Billecart-Salmon with his amuse bouche (its purpose to amuse the senses), miso cone with ahi tuna tartare.  The wise waiter proffers champagne with a small introduction.  “We are happy to offer a world renowned cuvee Bille-Cart Salmon Brut Rose,” making the 3 oz. pour in one pass. 

            The fine waiter pours the Billecart-Salmon and the iridescent bubbles that race to the top, dare him to twist the bottle back just before overflowing.  If all goes well, the table will be aglow with an effervescence that beckons the diner to a higher state of consciousness.  Something truly wonderful is about to reveal itself.  If the stars have led us towards a fusion of cultures, the sesame miso cone with Ahi tartare will manifest itself, or perhaps the strong pull of traditional European cuisine will be desired, and then the amuse bouche might be a potato gallette with crème fraiche, smoked sturgeon and black osetra caviar.  Either way, the champagne and crunch transport the diner into an astral plane; he is rising and flying, like a honeybee racing, towards the warmth of the sun.

Meet the Fakers

Some of you have inquired how my orchard supervisor interview went at the organic farm yesterday. Not so great. In fact, profoundly disappointing. I drove out there early, and when I entered the farm, I was really impressed. Obviously whoever owns it has serious cash. The land alone is worth about 3 million (based on a Zillow comparison for a barren lot down the road).

Biodyamic farms are self-contained entities ("living organisms") as Rudolf Steiner would call them. There were beautifully laid out pastures, rolling orchards,Scottish highland cattle and exotic sheep. There was a pond that had been converted into a classic California riparian xeri-scape.

Anyway I got there on time, and then a farm employee, told me to wait as they were meeting someone else. I waited nearly a half hour, then met the young man who along with his wife are the "farm managers". Neither of them have an agriculture background beyond the three years the farm has been in existence. He's a documentary film maker, she was/is an in-house chef with a celebrity/vip clientele. You can see how I might have thought, "These are my people!" Anyway, they invited me into an office, and immediately embarked on one of the lamest interviews I have ever experienced. The husband was obsessed with my tractor skills. I am certified, but he kept talking about how "they" (the Mexicans) wouldn't respect me if my skills weren't as good as theirs. Never mind that I've worked with Mexicans of all stripes for 25 years, and my ex-wife is of Latina heritage (I declined to reveal this info). Plus the use of the phrase "they won't respect you" struck me as incredibly racist. That language is used for training stubborn breeds of dogs (i.e Rhodesian Ridgebacks, which I own btw!). Anyway, they told me nothing of the farm, which was peculiar, as it was a truly amazing place. I had to ask them all the questions. I told them about my honey business and how much I love bees, and he replied, "Sounds like you should stay in the bee business" BTW bees are indispensable to biodynamic farming, and they didn't have bees there.

I could go on and on, but perhaps it is another chapter in my book. LOL! Some might find this amusing, as I try to connect the dots, but I was suspicious of a company that has one investor (from Chicago) but they decline to reveal who he/she is, and the farm was featured in a OWN special on organic farming. Maybe it's Oprah, but what kind of investor shells out at least 5 million dollars but has two beginning farmers as managers. The wife had self published a cookbook with a foreword written by the musician Beck. Now, call me paranoid, but Beck is a well known Scientologist, and Scientologists only help each other. So as I sat there holding court with these charlatans, I could only think of the great existential film, "The King of Hearts", where the town has been deserted save for the inmates of the local asylum, who assume the roles of the town folk.

There is a vibe to Scientologists. For instance, a cult will tell you all the things to "talk you out of" wanting the position, so you'll beg to join. The wife actually said to me, "We're here to talk you out of it."--"DANGER, Will Robinson, DANGER!"--And they also insisted the position was a live-on position. The ad said "housing may be available"--a nice perk for the right person--but when I pointed this out, the husband proceeded to lecture me about farm-life. This being a small farm with a drip irrigation system. There are so many orchard emergencies!

I could be wrong, but my wife has a background in stunts, and she worked for a Batman stunt show years before where the company was owned by Scientologists. And they were always posturing in an arrogant, "we know better than you" way, and hired subcontractors who were scientologists, and then were humiliated when the million dollar set they built was built backwards!

OK enough whining...I've got a proposal to finish!