The Rake Magazine

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  • Louie the Wine Guy

    May 25, 2004

    With two week’s worth of wine events to report on, this entry is packed with tasting notes. It is a busy time of year, springtime, so full of promise. The Napa Valley Vintner’s Association event of early May was the harbinger for the lively Wine Fest weekend on May 14 and 15, which featured a variety of gatherings celebrating Napa Valley wines and raising money for a local charity. It was my great pleasure to introduce Fernando Frias of Frias Family Vineyard to The Wine Doctor, so that the fabulous Frias Family wines might become available here in Minnesota. The deal was struck, so stay tuned for what could be the most exciting new wine to enter our market in some time.

    Speaking of The Wine Doctor, I recently had the good fortune to sit down with him to taste the wines of Mike Januik, formerly the winemaker for Chateau St. Michelle. Mike had become perhaps the most powerful force in the Washington State wine industry, through St. Michelle’s dominance in the market. So why did he leave? Simply put, to work toward making the best wines in the world. Januik believes that Washington State can produce wines as distinctive and expressive in varietal character as those from the best regions of California. After putting nine of his wines to the test, here’s my opinion: His chardonnays are very solid, but these days not many of us are interested in paying $30 for a chardonnay. His merlots were not distinctive, but then I don’t find that quality in many merlots (Pride Mountain and Paloma being two exceptions). Januik’s ’01 Cabernet was approaching greatness, and I could see where the high ratings were deserved. But it was his Syrah, both the 2000 and the 2002, that made my heart sing. These wines are worth every penny—seek them out and consume with certain delight!

    We also tasted a ’96 Chateau Corbin Michotte St. Emilion, which, at $31.99 retail, didn’t impress me too much. But I am tough to please when it comes to French Bordeaux, having developed such a Napa palate. I did get to try just this past Saturday a ’98 Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou, quite a prestigious Bordeaux from the St. Julien region. This was a finely structured wine, but I still preferred its tasting mate, a ’97 Clos du Bois “Marlstone.”

    The Wine Doctor and I also sampled a couple of tasty offerings from the South American producer Budini. Both the 2002 malbec and cabernet were very much worth their asking price of about $10 a bottle. Likewise the red and white blends under the label “Le Bistro” were very good, when you consider the $8.99 price.

    Moving on to an event I presided over on May 15, during which a small group celebrated with four flights of Napa wines. Standouts included S. Anderson “Stag’s Leap” 2000 Chardonnay ($24.99) and the Kendall Jackson 2001 Cabernet “Grand Reserve” ($22.99).

    And, lastly, a wine dinner on May 22 gave us the opportunity to taste Schramsberg’s “Mirabelle,” a non-vintage blend sparkling wine. A great bubbly for picnics, it’s also a great value at about $18. Another standout was the quirky zinfandel from “Blockheadia Ringnosii.” Winemaker Michael Ouellette honors his French heritage by making a wine that is very Rhone in its styling (perhaps akin to a Chateau-neuf-du-Pape, or in a similar manner as Bonny Doon’s “Cigare Volant”). This is a great wine to pair with a spring lamb barbecue. A Ferrari-Carano ’00 Reserve Chardonnay went over very nicely with a salad of spring greens, feta, and caramelized walnuts. And then came the big cabernet blends mentioned earlier, the Ducru Beaucaiilou and the Clos du Bois “Marlstone.” Both were massive and yet supple—great beef wines. And I must mention that just this past Friday I noticed at Sam’s Club in Maple Grove that the ’97 Marlstone was on sale for $24 and change. That, dear friend, is a steal!

    We ended this fabulous evening with two knockout dessert wines: First, a sublime Eiswein from Franz Reh in Germany; and second, a delightful port from Silver Oak’s winemaker, Justin Meyer. Along with some locally produced passion-fruit-filled chocolates and a precious Stilton cheese from England, dessert became an international love-fest! Ah, gluttony…

    So, what is up on the local scene? I was checking out one of the Cost Plus Word Market outlets, and they do offer an occasional reason to stop in a buy a few bottles. This month they are featuring Cline’s Red Truck blend, as well as the Toasted Head Chardonnay from R.H. Phillips. Two very nice spring picnic wines. Another chain, The Cellars, is having somewhat of a May sale, with a hodge-podge of selections discounted through the end of the month. A few big-name Napa cabs stand out, like Caymus and Staglin Family. And they stay balanced by offering an assortment of ’97 French Bordeaux as well. I might be tempted by the ’97 Chateau LaGrange, St. Julien, at $26.97.

    With the spring wine sales now past, the next big sale to anticipate is Hennepin-Lake’s coming in June. Stay tuned for more news on this sale-to-beat-all-sales, if you believe everything owner Phil has to say… Well, time to jump back outside and enjoy what is turning out to be a long and cool spring. The city gardens and parks are lush and gorgeous this year, so grab your favorite bottle of wine, your favorite friend, and go enjoy!

  • Placebos & Lip Service

    There certainly has been a lot of fuss lately about the health insurance crisis. A couple of weeks ago in the New York Times Magazine, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton—a person who is guaranteed to get a rise out of excitable Americans on both ends of the political spectrum—set forth her case for reform. Again. She noted that the situation has only gotten worse since she was laughed off the rostrum the first time she proposed radical change to a broken system that will not heal itself.

    Within the week, the puissant Newt Gingrich wrote to acknowledge that he agreed wholeheartedly with at least one of Hillary’s principles: that reform must focus on the individual. Although he didn’t say precisely what he means (undoubtedly that innovation and change must come from individuals exercising their profit motives, not the fed acting like a nanny state), we were gratified to learn that the issue means enough to him that he actually founded something called the Center for Health Transformation.

    When Hillary and Newt agree on something, the end is surely nigh; only the willfully stupid don’t see the mess we’re in. Business leaders are noticing that employee health benefits are the single biggest debit on the company spreadsheets. When the captains of capitalism begin to complain, powerful people begin to listen. But what can the powers and principalities offer, other than flagrant lip service?

    It is an interesting impasse. The only way to effect genuine change is to muster sympathy from influential folks who worry about health insurance only in connection with their stock portfolios. We live in times when enlightenment comes in only one flavor—enlightened self-interest—and no politician will take up the cause of real reform until it is clear that such a position will get him power, money, or both.

    We wonder why William McGuire, the CEO of United Health Group, is so eager to raise money for George W. Bush. The president is grateful for the hundred thousand dollars McGuire has raised on behalf of his re-election. Does Minnesota’s highest-paid executive know something we don’t about what is required to overhaul health care? We hope so, considering he was paid ninety-three million last year to run the nation’s largest and most profitable health care company.

    We like to pick on McGuire, but we know the problem is systemic. Of sixteen corporate officers at United Health, twelve have given a total of twenty-three thousand dollars to the Bush reelection campaign (just one thousand dollars short of the maximum allowed by law), while none have given a red cent to that bleeding heart John Kerry. (Lois Quam, the head of one division who is also married to DFL point man Matt Entenza, played it safe with a harmless donation to Dick Gephardt.) It may also be worth noting that four United Health executives reporting to McGuire bring home a total of $66.7 million in annual salary.

    Which begs the question: Just how committed to change can a person be, who is compensated so handsomely by the status quo? And why does United Health make its home in a state where the company cannot legally operate its core business because it is a for-profit health management organization? Perhaps it is to insulate its executives from the public opprobrium their greed so richly deserves.

    What is the Republican agenda for treating the health care crisis? It is to blame bogeymen, to distract from real issues with straw men and red herrings. The people presently in control like to claim that what is really driving health care costs are frivolous lawsuits and filing inefficiencies, and an absence of competition in the marketplace.

    McGuire, in his euphonious annual letter from the chairman to stockholders, makes grandiose claims about the need for broad societal initiatives, while gloating about the performance of his company. He makes no specific recommendations for change—at least not anything that might ruffle stockholders. What’s really needed, in the argot of the day, is more “science-based decision making” (in other words, more insurance-company bean-counters making even more decisions—it is called actuarial science, you know) and the computer-compatibility of patient files. This is a little like blaming the oceans on the rain.

    “Our health care can—must—work better, be more efficient, and truly provide for all people,” he wrote last year. “As a nation, we can and must cover everyone.” And yet he also points out that “the magnitude of the challenges in health care, combined with ideology, lead some to propose preemptive or unilateral decisions.” The clear message is that drastic times require timid gestures.

    Let us translate McGuire’s game plan for you: We can squeeze even more money out of the system for our “stakeholders” by continuing to turn up the heat of our rhetoric, while cashing in our stock options, and being careful to do nothing of substance. When the issue is complicated, it’s best to blame the trial lawyers (malpractice chicanery!) and the nurses (lousy filers!), and raise as much money as is legal for political candidates who care about the basic human dignity of massive profits.

    On Tax Day, United Health reported record first-quarter earnings and increased margins. Profits are way up. Oddly, the health care situation for most non-millionaires has not noticeably improved.

  • Force of Habit

    The bells have been ringing for thirty minutes, but it is the sound of a cane rattling through the empty, cavernous church that suggests prayer. It is held by an old man, his stooped body covered in the flowing black habit of a Benedictine monk. He enters from the sacristy, clicking, clacking, up a barely perceptible incline. When he reaches the altar, he pauses and bows, then turns to the left and clicks and clacks his way upward to a lonely seat in the dark wooden choir.

    The early morning light is meager, cast from a stained-glass skylight above, through clear windows that run the length of the nave, and from the massive stained glass abstraction that dominates the back of the church at St. John’s Abbey. Other men in habits arrive, bow, and then take seats in the austere straight-backed choir slots. They arrange prayer books and hymnals on the stands in front of them and wait, casting their eyes on the simple wooden crucifix that hangs from the levitating white baldachin. At seven a.m. sharp, a white-haired monk rises from his seat in the choir. “Lord open my lips…”

    “And my mouth shall proclaim your praise,” follow the accumulated voices of the Benedictine monks, a soft morning thunder rolling out from the choir over the empty pews.

    A single note echoes from the pipe organ. The monks on the choir’s left side sing a verse from Psalms, their voices resonant and nearly undivided. After a pause, the monks on the right side sing a verse. The song continues, shifting back and forth across the choir in a sort of divine stereophonic effect, brothers singing to brothers singing, occasionally joining together on a verse, offering their voices to each other and to God.

    When the psalm ends, after the last organ note fades into an ethereal echo, there is a full minute of silence, a contemplation of the prayer just sung, the moment interrupted only by a sneeze, or the occasionally audible grumbling of a stomach. Then the psalms continue, the canticle comes, the responsorial rumbles. Morning Prayer lasts for roughly thirty minutes, depending on the day’s demands, before the monks shuffle silently from the church.

    They walk from the sacristy into the cloister, and then turn right into a wide hallway with tile floors and mostly bare walls, passing a lounge where several copies of the day’s Star Tribune have already been pulled apart. The procession continues, still silent, down a flight of stairs, into a darker hallway, past more lounges, past a massive floor-to-ceiling bulletin board covered with sign-up sheets for prayers, readings, haircuts, and kitchen duties, and then through two wooden doors into the abbey dining room. Pastel-colored religious paintings and stained-glass images of foliage hang from the wood-paneled walls. A beautifully carved wood podium stands ceremoniously in the middle of the space; a massive china cabinet dominates a far wall. Eggs, sausages and other dishes are served in chafing dishes on stout wooden tables. It is a very much an old room in style, and yet certain details—the harsh lights, the plastic dishes and trays, the Wheaties and other boxed cereals—suggest that practical updates and conveniences have been integrated. The brothers eat breakfast in silence.

    This has more or less been the morning routine since 1856, when a group of Benedictine monks from Pennsylvania arrived in St. Cloud to tend to the German Catholic population. In the 150 years since its establishment, St. John’s Abbey, located on 2,500 acres in Collegeville, ninety miles north of the Twin Cities, has exerted a profound influence on both the Catholic Church and the history of Minnesota. The liturgical reform movement responsible for English and other non-Latin masses received some of its most influential and eloquent support from monks at St. John’s, which is also home to a university and prep school. Minnesota Public Radio was launched within the Abbey’s cloisters (and Garrison Keillor’s first radio performances took place here). The abbey’s Liturgical Press remains one of the most important religious publishing houses in the world, printing journals and books that continue to influence both the scholarly and popular understanding of religion and spirituality. The community has counted among its ranks prominent historians, theologians, liturgists, artists, and philosophers.

    Nevertheless, St. John’s Abbey is undergoing the most dramatic changes in its history. For decades, it was the world’s largest Benedictine monastery, with more than four hundred monks living there at its peak in 1963. Today, it has 175, and their average age is sixty-five. The abbey’s traditional role as a provider of parish priests to Minnesota’s churches has become largely obsolete, its monks neither youthful enough nor sufficient in numbers to do the job. The large central Minnesota farm families that once provided the abbey with its most plentiful source of novitiates have been lost to changing rural demographics, leaving the abbey to compete with the temptations of big cities and non-religious careers. Most serious, the sexual-abuse scandals that erupted in America’s parishes also shook St. John’s, altering its culture, its image, and its relationship to Minnesota. Yet even through its darkest hour, the abbey has continued to find novices and retain members, who in turn find relevance in a Minnesota prayer community based on the writings of a sixth-century monk.

  • Hormones on Overdrive

    It’s another spring evening at the Mall of America, where the Glitz
    store is in full bloom with taffeta and tulle. Pastel Cinderella
    dresses glimmer under the fluorescent lights, and the skirts bursting
    from these sleeveless bodices are so lush, they make the satin wedding
    gown I wore fourteen years ago seem downright drab. I touch the
    bejeweled outer layer of a particularly lovely dress, and then I see
    its $298 price tag, which further confirms the dowdiness of my own
    once-upon-a-time princess costume (now stored dutifully in a cardboard
    box in the basement, for posterity).

    In any case, I’m not here for a dress, but for the teenagers who buzz
    around me, circling the racks and ducking in and out of dressing rooms
    with their selections. I’ve already spent countless hours in
    legitimate, moderated teen chat rooms, marveling at the banter among
    twelve- to fifteen-year-old boys and girls. Most recently they’ve been
    asking each other for advice about whether or not to have sex, what to
    do if your dad thinks you’re a ’ho, how to get a girl back, combating
    lust, and whether boys prefer shaved pubic hair on girls. Now I’m
    hoping to break out of the close, sweaty space of these anonymous chats
    and talk to some local teens face to face. I see a friendly looking
    girl at the rack with the jeweled skirt and I make my move.

    Melissa, it turns out, is a junior from Lafayette, Minnesota
    (population 529), and she’s here shopping for the prom. She doesn’t
    have a date yet, but she plans to go either way, because, as she
    explains, prom is a very big deal. “I guess girls like to get all
    dolled up, it makes us feel important,” she told me shyly, averting her
    gaze. When I asked if she thought there would be drinking and drugs and
    sex at the prom, she looked a bit wounded. “No, I don’t think we really
    have that kind of thing,” she said.

    Of the fifteen or so kids in my highly unscientific sampling at the
    mall that night, Melissa, the shy girl sporting a mouthful of braces
    and little or no make-up on her almost clear skin, was the only one who
    expressed such reassuring naivete.

    If the lilac buds outside my window pop open today, then others were
    blooming yesterday along roadsides approximately seventeen miles south
    of here, and still more will be doing so tomorrow seventeen miles
    northward. Spring rolls along at a pleasantly predictable pace year
    after year, global warming or no. As it arrives, it greens the lawns,
    buds the trees, and transforms winter’s faded trash into dirty
    pinwheels to blow in the wind. Spring also heralds prom night, a
    cultural relic that UrbanDictionary.com now defines as an “unusual
    American custom in which otherwise Puritanical just-say-no parents
    support, tolerate, approve of, or feign ignorance and/or disapproval of
    teenage public drunkenness, destruction of hotel property, and lewd
    behavior.”

    Today’s proms are not at all the crepe paper-and-punch affairs of times
    past. As the premiere social events of the teen season and the last
    hurrah of adolescence, today’s over-the-top, limo- and hotel-enhanced,
    booze- and sex-soaked proms might even be viewed as emblematic of the
    way everything about American adolescence has changed. And adolescence
    has changed, in that it now lasts for all of about twenty minutes—or
    twenty years, depending on how you look at it. We simultaneously want
    to accelerate childhood into adulthood, and spend our adulthood
    resisting the trappings of age and idolizing and emulating youth.

    American adolescence is both the shortest and the longest it has ever
    been at any point in history, which isn’t saying all that much, since
    the term “teenager” with all its associated connotations was only first
    coined in 1942—prior to which the notion of an extended passage between
    childhood and adulthood had yet to be embraced in ideological or
    practical terms.

    Modern adolescence has been defined as lasting until anywhere between
    age nineteen and thirty-four (the latter being the age of adulthood, as
    pinpointed by the $3.4 million “Transitions to Adulthood” project,
    funded by the MacArthur Foundation). Known as the Peter Pan syndrome,
    the trend of extended adolescence is represented by a growing number of
    twenty-somethings who depend on their parents well past the point of
    legal adulthood. According to the Institute for Social Research at the
    University of Michigan, the number of young adults in their twenties
    living at home with their parents increased by fifty percent between
    1970 and 1990. Today, sixty-three percent of college students say they
    plan to live with their parents after graduation.

    Meanwhile, when does adolescence start? Scientists have noticed that
    this physiological phase begins as much as a year earlier with each
    passing generation. And younger adolescents’ exposure to sex, drugs,
    alcohol, and independence from parental authority is becoming more
    widespread and intense. Increasingly younger children are taking up the
    outer vestments of teendom. Meanwhile, the physical signs of puberty
    are also creeping down to affect eight-, seven-, even six-year-old
    girls (and the newest research suggests the age of puberty is also
    falling for boys). A century ago, the average age for a girl’s first
    period, or menarche, was about seventeen. Menarche now hits girls
    between twelve and thirteen. Alcohol, drugs, and sex are now typical,
    rather than exceptional, components of modern adolescence. Social
    research also shows the most influential forces in the lives of many
    teens shifting from family to peer culture, including the media, at
    younger and younger ages. This is not restricted to urban settings.
    Suburban high school students have sex, drink, smoke, use illegal
    drugs, and engage in delinquent behavior as often as urban public high
    school kids. This is according to senior researchers at the Manhattan
    Institute, who drew their findings from the National Longitudinal Study
    of Adolescent Health—one of the most comprehensive and rigorous studies
    of American high school students. Regardless of where they live,
    students also engage in these behaviors much more often than most
    people realize.

    The American press is saturated with stories about the “crisis of
    adolescence,” with new headlines literally every day. And then, every
    so often, someone cries foul, protesting all the fuss: “Shut up,
    already. They’re teenagers! Teenagers have always been reckless and
    there never were any good old days, so get over it!”

    It’s an appealing sentiment, in a way. If we accept it at face value,
    we can let out a guilty little sigh and go back to business as usual,
    convinced that things are not, after all, so bad out there—and
    certainly not so much worse then when we were kids. This denial ought
    to hold up for as long as it takes to read the facts from a recent slew
    of news stories: The U.S. has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and
    births (and abortions) in the western industrialized world. Half of all
    fourteen-year-olds have been to a party with alcohol. Self-harm
    (cutting) is increasing among children as young as six. More than
    79,000 teens under eighteen received cosmetic surgery in 2001, and
    3,682 of those got fake breasts—up from 392 in 1994. Almost half of
    fourteen-year-olds report current drinking behavior; about a quarter
    report heavy drinking and marijuana use. Girls as young as twelve are
    reporting pressure to have sex. Twenty percent of twelve- to
    fourteen-year-olds have had sex. The percentage of sexually active
    eighteen-year-olds has risen steadily from twenty-three percent in 1959
    to eighty percent in 1999. Sixty-six percent of all high school seniors
    have had sex. Half of all young people report experience with oral
    sex—which they, like Bill Clinton, don’t define as “sex.” American kids
    spend twenty-eight hours per week watching television. Childhood
    obesity has hit an all-time high. About three quarters of teens believe
    that the actions of other teens are influenced by the sexual behavior
    seen on television. Sixty-five percent of the sexually transmitted
    diseases diagnosed this year will be among people under twenty-five. A
    statewide study shows that ten percent of adolescent males in Minnesota
    have chlamydia. Teens are five times more likely to get herpes today
    than in 1970, and because most teens think oral sex is safe, record
    numbers of teens are contracting a strain of mouth herpes that was once
    associated only with genitals.

    The story spins out as far as you can follow it and beyond, and in the
    end it should force us to wonder if, after all this, the kids are all
    right.

  • Women with Vision 2004

    For its eleventh year, the Walker’s annual celebration of female film directors kicks off with the apropos new documentary In the Company of Women, a look at the vital role of female filmmakers in the nineties’ independent-cinema explosion. Though it sometimes feels like a ninety-minute commercial for the Independent Film Channel (which funded it), it’s still a heartening overview of the inroads women have made in the male-dominated film world. Other intriguing movies being shown include Double Dare, about Hollywood stuntwomen, and a free retrospective of the short works of Minnesota-born director Sarah Jacobson, who died of cancer in February. There’s also a number of strong features from outside the U.S., including the American premiere of At Five in the Afternoon, an intriguing, Spike Lee-like drama about a schoolgirl in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan who dreams of running for president. (612) 375-7622; www.walkerart.org

  • Toots & The Maytals, True Love

    For those who know Toots & the Maytals solely from “Pressure Drop”—the best cut on The Harder They Come, the greatest reggae collection ever—a whole world awaits. With Jimmy Cliff, Bob Marley, and Bunny Wailer, Toots has kept on keeping on, even as public interest in reggae outside of Kingston, Jamaica, has dipped and doodled with the speed with which Minnesotans become Twins fans. Toots’ latest, True Love, is a guest-studded affair featuring the likes of Eric Clapton, Ben Harper, Bonnie Raitt, and Ryan Adams, perhaps in hopes of generating the same kind of crossover appeal that reminded everyone Carlos Santana was still alive. It’s an honorable introduction to our man Toots—and since people have been jumping on and off his bandwagon for a generation, no one will mind if you suddenly catch on now.

  • Los Lobos, The Ride

    East L.A.’s band of wolves have had a thirty-year career of remarkably high-quality work, though that hasn’t always translated into the mainstream success worthy of their talent, their 1987 monster-hit cover of “La Bamba” aside. And although it’s good news to us merely that they’re back with their first disc since 2002’s stellar Good Morning Aztlan, seeing who else Los Lobos have invited along for The Ride makes this one especially intriguing. Guests include Richard Thompson, Tom Waits, and Bobby Womack, who joins the band on a remake of his seventies soul classic “Across 110th Street.” Elvis Costello and gospel singer Mavis Staples lend vocals to reworked versions of two older Lobos tunes, “Matter of Time” and “Someday.” Mark your calendars for September 1 and 2, when the band’s crackling live show brings them to the State Fair stage.

  • Diana Krall, The Girl in the Other Room

    Cooing jazz chanteuse Diana Krall met pop-punk icon Elvis Costello at the 2002 Grammys, and so far two great things have resulted—their marriage, and an inspired, romantic collaborative album. Krall is known for giving new life to old standards. Girl In The Other Room, however, breaks that tradition as the first of her eight albums to showcase her songwriting talents. Sexy down-tempo numbers such as “Abandoned Masquerade” and “I’ve Changed My Address” are highlights that foretell a great future for Krall/Costello originals. Costello lends his songwriting finesse on six numbers, and Krall also covers the likes of Joni Mitchell and Tom Waits. Longtime fans will see this as a departure from her usual fare of simple standards, but fear not—this clever, more sophisticated material still preserves her signature elegance.

  • The Testament of Dr. Mabuse: The Criterion Collection

    Best known for M and Metropolis, director Fritz Lang made this intriguingly offbeat 1933 thriller just before fleeing Nazi Germany—and small wonder he had to. Though the Nazis supposedly offered him a chance to run Hitler’s film industry, they couldn’t have liked the parallels Testament drew between its titular villain, an insane criminal genius, and Der Fuehrer. Besides its political daring, Testament was a forward-looking piece of cinematic art, bridging German expressionism and the later styles of Alfred Hitchcock and the James Bond-style spy thriller. And the character of Mabuse himself, who runs a shadowy crime empire from an asylum cell, is an exemplar of the line of fictional evil masterminds stretching from Moriarty to Hannibal Lecter. Criterion’s two-disc DVD is jam-packed with extra goodies—interviews, a fresh English translation, and production-design sketches—that nearly comprise a film-school seminar of their own.

  • Quang

    Our only regret, really, is that it took us so long to finally check out this bustling Vietnamese spot, one of the reasons Nicollet Avenue earned the nickname “Eat Street.” Big portions, tasty dishes (love the chicken with ginger sauce), and nicely affordable: We splurged on one of the most expensive items on the menu—the weekends-only seabass and jumbo shrimp soup—and were set back a mere eight bucks. And in our ongoing quest to find the perfect eggroll, we may have found a new contender. On second thought, we won’t regret anything, we’ll just eat.