[WARNING: spoilers for The Boys season 3 premiere tofollow]
The Boys season three has already been totally unhinged, and there have only been three episodes so far. First, there was an A-list cameo within the first few minutes of the season. Next….well, it involves an Ant-Man tribute.
In an extremely bonkers moment from the first episodes, a superhero aptly named Termite, played by Brett Geddes, ends up shrinking himself down small enough to enter his partner’s penis. And then the unthinkable happens: Termite sneezes and blows up while inside his partner. Hey, it happens.
The show is no stranger to weird moments and giant explosions. Showrunner Eric Kripke said that this was a nod to the Ant-Man of it all. “Once you realize you’re gonna do a tiny Ant-Man character, you have to have that Ant-Man run up someone’s butt and then blow them up,” Kripke told Entertainment Weekly. “But then we realized that we already had blown up someone’s ass.” Which they did in season one. “There’s only so many orifices a person can go in. So really, by process of elimination, you [have to] run into a urethra.” You just have to.
Surprisingly, Amazon was on board, as well as the practical effects involving a 11-foot-high, 30-foot-long prosthetic penis.
“They were cool with it,” Kripke began, adding that there was a speed bump: “You’re not supposed to show an erect penis,” Kripke explains. “So we had to be very careful with the design of the penis — ’cause we built it practically. That’s a real 11-foot-high, 30-foot-long penis built at great expense. But if you look at it, we had to design in all these wrinkles to make it clear that it wasn’t erect. So, anyway, it’s exhibit 7,023 why I love this job.” A real, practical penis! That’s Hollywood for you.
Kripke then told Variety that Craig Rosenberg, who wrote the script, was the main mastermind behind the idea, which was inspired by those Ant-Man memes. “These evolve in a writers’ room and the evolution of that sequence started with, ‘We need The Boys to fight a superhero.’ So then we ask, ‘What big superhero haven’t we done yet?’ Someone says, ‘We haven’t done Ant-Man.’ And then someone else says, ‘There’s that meme of Ant-Man climbing up Thanos’ butt and blowing him up. So we should do that. We should give the audience the thing that Marvel can’t give to them.’” Marvel definitely will not give you a practical penis, no matter how much Deadpool wants to.
One of the harsh realities of being an American is hearing people from other places explain their country’s head-slappingly obvious solutions to what seem like intractable problems here. Such was the case hearing Top Chef Houston winner Buddha Lo explain how culinary schools work in his native Australia.
“I’ve always found it a little bit weird with the culinary schools here,” Buddha told me. “For me to be a chef, I actually got paid to go to school and got all these incentives to be a cook.”
He continues:
“I think what’s affecting our cooking industry in the US is that nobody’s going to go to cooking college, pay thousands of dollars, and then get paid $13 an hour at a good restaurant. [In Australia] they realized that they have a skill shortage in cooks, so they decided instead of people having to pay to go to school everyone gets paid to go to school. It’s a bit of a different system, but I think that one works.”
Apologies for leading with that tangential anecdote, but it was one of my big takeaways from my chat with Buddha Lo, shortly after he was revealed as the winner of this season’s Top Chef in the finale last Thursday. The show had moved to Houston for this, its 19th season, and while the competition was fierce and the level of cooking arguably higher than ever before, my week one favorite ended up holding the trophy at the end. It’s been a long time since there was a chef who dominated like Buddha did.
Buddha (actually a nickname he got in childhood for being chubby) was a fascinating mix of contradictions. On the one hand, his study of past Top Chef seasons and apparent recall of judges’ preferences and ability to incorporate them into his food made him seem almost robotic, like he’d figured out how to “Moneyball” Top Chef — an advanced AI fed hours of Bravo programming. Yet it’s hard to square that take with the figure of Buddha himself, a cuddly Australian guy, lovable enough to fit the nickname “Buddha” and possessed of the casual insouciance typically associated with his countrymen.
Buddha, it seems, is just a naturally eclectic person — the kind you don’t often see in reality programs. Born to Chinese-Malaysian parents in Australia, he grew up in Port Douglas in far north Queensland, a city closer to Papua New Guinea than it is to Sydney, where he foraged for edible ants and tasted dugong meat, part of a handful of animals that only the local Indigenous Australians were able to legally hunt. He started working at his father’s Chinese restaurant at the age of 14, before going to culinary school, and eventually heading to London to work at a restaurant owned by Gordon Ramsay.
Later, Lo spent a year at Eleven Madison Park in New York, before becoming the executive chef at Huso, serving an eight-course caviar tasting menu. While he says he never dreamt of being a “caviar chef,” Buddha says such a specialized menu does tend to eliminate many of the headaches of running a “normal” restaurant. “You won’t get vegans because caviar’s not vegan,” he says. “You won’t get people who don’t know what’s going on, or ‘why are you putting caviar with my dessert,’ because if you don’t know about the restaurant, it’d be confusing to why you are there. It’s a caviar restaurant. So if you don’t like caviar, you don’t come.”
Over the years, Lo has done a lot of different types of cooking, and in winning Top Chef, he proved that he can synthesize them all; that he isn’t just one thing or one gimmick.
Of course, winning Top Chef is a career pivot in and of itself (from dork to cool?). In the restaurant industry as it now exists, a chef’s career arc often isn’t seen as complete until they become a media personality. For most Top Chef winners, winning the show is only the beginning of that chapter. So I was eager to pick Buddha’s brain to find out how he felt about it while he was right on the cusp.
— I’ll start with: “Buddha, you just won Top Chef. What are you going to do now?”
I don’t know. It’s a wild ride. I haven’t taken it in yet. There are a lot of things that are upcoming with a lot of press and media. Last night we had a huge celebration, so we rented out a cinema and then we had a party bus and stuff like that. So we had a lot of fun. But the future’s looking good.
I’m hoping that this platform will give me good leverage into where I want to be.
I was talking to another Top Chef winner last week and we were talking about how you guys go from being in kitchens all your life and then you win the show and suddenly you’re a media personality. Has it been weird? Do you have any experience doing media and being in front of a camera and things like that?
Look, I think that with my career, I knew that I needed to be able to do these sort of things. So it’s become quite clear that the successful chef route is to actually be in public. If you look at people like Wolfgang Puck or Gordon Ramsay, they have to deal with media and that’s not a bad thing, but that’s an essential part of making a successful business. Not only if you want to open up more successful restaurants but even just to get more and better employees. Just to know that people want to work for you. So that’s quite important to have in mind — that that’s part of your path.
Tell me about Port Douglas and the culinary influences that you got from growing up there.
Port Douglas is very interesting. You probably haven’t even actually seen the scenes that I actually used to cook in Port Douglas. We did some weird stuff. It’s a regional part of Australia, it’s probably one of the largest style Indigenous populations in Australia. I went to school in Mossman, and we’d go pick ants off trees and eat them and go forage on our lunch breaks for quandong berries, snapping sugar cane and sucking on it, and then throw boomerangs in the schoolyard, which is technically a weapon, but we still did it. It’s a weird upbringing that not a lot of people have had the opportunity to see me pull from because it’s a very special way of cooking. The Indigenous people have showed me things, how to cook stuff. Like, they’re allowed to cook stuff that we’re not allowed to touch because if we were to hunt it, it’d be illegal. They would go get sea turtles, dugong, which is like a seal, and they’ll cook it.
So I had the pleasure of eating all these different array of Indigenous ingredients growing up in Port Douglas.
Do you think that you learned anything from that? It seems like you’ve gone farther other direction towards more fine dining.
You learn a lot of things from the smallest details. I could watch a YouTube video, or some sort of advertisement, I could always pick up something. We started going into the bush and we started cooking things, we would cook a lot of things over fire. We’d do these things, in New Zealand they call it a hangi — which is an underground earth oven where you would dig it up, you would light it up, start a huge fire and then wrap everything up and leave and bake it inside the ground. So I think that would’ve taught me how to learn how to control cooking with fire. And I did that when I was 14. It’s uncontrollable fire, so it’s not like you can turn the gas and turn it to the three or something, it’s proper stripped back cooking.
I wouldn’t say I mastered it at 14 years old when we were doing it, but I definitely learned a lot from it.
In terms of the show, what were your favorite and least favorite parts of the format?
My favorite would be the challenges. You don’t get these opportunities in your career where there’s a fully stocked pantry, there are all the dishes, all the equipment’s all there, and you literally leave your station after you’ve cooked and people are cleaning up for you. Never had that in my life. Because whenever you’re cooking, you also go, “Oh, do I really want to use that, another pot? That’s another pot that I have to clean.”
Definitely, the highlight was just the cooking itself. Obviously cooking for great judges. Even the main judges Padma, Tom, and Gail. I’ve been watching them for so long and just to be standing right there with my plate of food was amazing. And the low points, I think the living situation was quite low, but I understand why they do it. Everything’s taken away from us, our phones, our TV, all that sort of stuff. I didn’t mind the phones and the TV, but I’m a person that loves music, so I always need music in the background.
Having two and a half months without music was quite hard. I think that’s one that I struggled the most with.
Are you allowed to read? Can you have books?
You’re allowed to read, but you’re not allowed to read anything that’s cooking-related. And I’m kind of boring and I like to read everything that’s to do with cooking or watch things that’s to do with cooking.
Do you have favorite food books that were influential?
It’s hard to pick out one, but I don’t read many biographies. I read more recipe-based books. I like reading all the techniques and reasons why they’ve done it. I also like reading food pairings because I find them very interesting. Finding out what goes well with what, without even knowing that there’s a classical dish to it. For example, the beef dessert I made, just making a dessert out of beef fat, I knew that it was going to work because they’ve done it before, they’ve done it in the 1800s. Beef fat with caramel, it’s like okay, well, if someone’s done it in the 1800s and they’re willing to put it in a recipe book then it must be okay.
Was it freeing to just be judged on the strength of your cooking without having to deal with restaurant patrons and those kinds of things?
Oh, yeah. 100%. It’s so good. Restaurant Wars, I got the book of all the guests and like, “Okay. Are there any dietaries?” And they’re like, “No.” It’s like, “What? We’re cooking for 60 people and you’re telling me not one of them is gluten-free?”
Yeah. It was amazing to be in this sort of format and setting where it’s just like, “Okay, do your food to the best of your capability.”
I mean, in a perfect world wouldn’t that be the way that being a chef worked, where you just sort of came up with a restaurant concept and you cooked it once or twice, and then you got to do a different one a week later?
Yeah. Well, Restaurant Wars is 36 hours. That’s not the easiest. You can study for Restaurant Wars, that’s fine, but you don’t know who’s going to be on your team. And that’s probably the biggest thing is the team. It’s finding out what their strengths are and how you want to execute them. Because I had a plan in my head to do front of the house and dessert, but Damarr wanted to do dessert straight away. So that came straight away and I had to go, well, I’m not going to let someone do my main course while I do front of the house, I don’t trust that.
It’s a very interesting concept.
Did you watch the run of the show once it came out?
Oh, yeah.
The whole thing?
Oh, absolutely. Every episode.
Were there any edits where you were like, “Oh, come on. That’s not how that happened.” Or you thought, “Oh, I don’t like what I did there,” or whatever?
Yeah, absolutely. But after maybe your first, second episode you go, “Well, that’s just the show, right? That’s what it’s called. It’s a show and I have to accept that.” And once I started accepting it I really enjoyed it. That’s not what happened, but I’m going to play with it because I know what happens at the end of the day, and I understand that if you put someone absolutely crushing it throughout the whole season, that’s going to be a boring show to watch, right?
This show’s been on for 19 seasons. I know you’ve watched a lot of them yourself. What do you think the differences are between how some of you guys on this season came up as chefs and how some of the chefs that were on some of the first seasons came up?
Oh, it’s like night and day, isn’t it? You don’t have Dale Talde saying, “Okay, let’s go to the back. Let’s punch on.” And that’s the thing with studying it as well, it’s like if you learn anything from previous chefs, it’s that you also have to make sure that you represent yourself in the best way. Because unlike Real Housewives or… I don’t know. I don’t really watch these reality TV shows, but unlike all these other different sort of shows, they don’t have a brand, they don’t have a restaurant, so if you don’t like that character, it’s not like, “Oh, I’m not going to go to their restaurant.”
Whereas if we do something wrong or say one thing wrong, we can lose customers and business. And I think that shows within each season. You have to be super careful what you say and what you do. Not to say that anyone wanted to do anything that extreme, but back in season one, no one really cared because they didn’t have social media and they didn’t really care about what the media said. Someone can cancel you from saying one wrong thing nowadays, so it’s definitely a different style of competition. But I think it’s all for the better as well. If we look at that time and era of the industry, yeah, that was acceptable. Gordon Ramsay’s calling people a “donkey.” And you wouldn’t call someone a donkey in an office space, so why would you do that in the kitchen?
So I think the shift between how it’s turned up is very important.
In that sense, were you surprised at all by the vetting process going into the show? My sense was that there’s been a lot more scrutiny on the people that they’re putting on the show than there may have been in the past.
Yeah. So there’s a huge process that you have to go through before getting onto the show. And I appreciate it. I think we understand that unlike Hell’s Kitchen or other shows like that, you want to do the opposite, you want to highlight some incredibly talented chefs. And I think that’s what’s really good about it. It’s like, yeah, some people didn’t perform well, but if you really looked on paper, they wanted a very even fair spread of competition. Everyone brought their own unique styles and some people thrived and some people didn’t. It’s a very interesting way that they cast it. I’ve never been cast before, but it took a couple of weeks and a lot of paperwork to get through. So they definitely know what they’re doing. They’re a well-oiled machine.
There was never a point where I go, “Oh, that was unfair.” No, everything was fair. They told us, we wrote in the papers, they explained the rules in every challenge. After 19 seasons and 240 plus chefs, they’ve really got their system down pat. Other than that, of course, you can choose good people, but then you can’t always monitor their day-to-day lives, right? So that’s the hard thing as well.
Do you think that there are important things for a restaurant to express or promote beyond just making tasty food?
Um… no, I don’t. The system could be better. I think that chefs, especially in America definitely need to be compensated a little bit better. It’s a bit uneven. A server in New York could make probably $100,000 plus, and a cook will probably make about, if they’re lucky, 55. I worked in Eleven Madison Park and there were people getting paid double to what I was getting paid, and they only just started working front of the house for two years and I had been a cook for 10, 12 years. I just don’t think that’s good. That’s something that needs to be changed, and maybe that might entice people to go into the industry more.
I’ve always found it a bit weird with the schooling system and the culinary schools. So for example, for me to be a chef, I actually got paid to go to school and I got all these incentives to be a cook. I think that’s what’s affecting our cooking industry in the US is that nobody’s going to go to cooking college, pay thousands of dollars, and then get paid $13 an hour at a good restaurant.
And you went to culinary school in Australia, right?
Yes, I went to culinary school in Australia. They realized that they have a skill shortage in cooks. So they decided instead of people having to pay to go to school, everyone gets paid to go to school. It’s a bit of a different system, but I think that one works because the culinary scene in Australia is amazing. And that’s because a lot of the cooks are able to go to culinary school. It’s not a high-paying job. It’s just like I don’t see anyone wanting to get into this industry and have that sort of student loan hanging over them and then getting paid probably close to nothing.
Yeah. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either. All right. Well, I’ve taken a lot of your time. I know you guys got other interviews to do. I appreciate it a lot and congratulations.
[At this point the audio cut out for a good 30 seconds. Right as it felt like he was about to give me a compliment.]
–Yeah, I said I love reading your stuff every week.
On the outside, Steve Bannon is a powerful political pundit responsible for Donald Trump’s ascension to the White House. But on the inside? Well, it sounds like he’s just another insecure guy who’s desperate to not be seen as just another “podcast bro.”
In a revealing profile by The Atlantic, journalist Jennifer Senior shared texts from the alt-right champion along with insight from those in his inner circle. What she found was a man easily triggered by unfavorable opinions about his appearance with an unhealthy view of his own self-importance.
“There were times when he almost resembled a regular human,” Senior wrote, referencing her digital correspondence with Bannon. “He would talk about missing his father, who died in January at 100, and how strange it was to be in his childhood home alone. (Just sat in the family room for hours.) He would fret about his weight and express pleasure when a newspaper used a photo that did not, for once, make him look god-awful, like some deranged incel by way of Maurice Sendak.”
Senior also details Bannon’s many cellphones, some encrypted, which he uses to communicate with members of the Republican party, bragging to her in one instance about his sway with certain senators in the latest Supreme Court nominations. Those cellphones can often be heard buzzing through his broadcast of the War Room, his “TV show” that was pulled from Youtube after Bannon used it to spread election conspiracies. Though the show is now audio only and can only be streamed on conservative media sites, he gets a bit testy when anyone dubs it a podcast. Senior shared that Bannon sees his show as a visual medium, and gets offended when others don’t notice his attention to detail.
“He broadcasts from the ground floor of a Washington, D.C., townhouse, and there are cameras, bright lights, a backdrop that devoted viewers know well: a fireplace mantel displaying a gold-framed picture of Jesus and a black-and-white poster saying there are no conspiracies, but there are no coincidences,” she writes.
So if you ever run into the guy on the street and feel like pushing some of his buttons, at least now you’ve got ammo.
On his weekly Instagram Live stream, The Fat Joe Show, the “Lean Back” rapper shares his unfiltered thoughts on all sorts of topics, from the controversy surrounding Joe Rogan to why no one wants to see Busta Rhymes in a Verzuz hits battle. Given his status as a veteran of the rap game — his debut album Represent was released nearly 30 years ago, in 1993 — his opinions hold weight, even when his expertise isn’t always obvious. For instance, in his latest episode, he has some critiques for J. Cole’s new pro hoops career.
Although it may not seem like it, Joe’s just as heavy in the New York streetball circuit. And while ESPN’s recent And 1 mixtape documentary showed that pro ball and streetball are two very different games, Joe’s success at world-famous tournaments like Rucker Park’s gives him a certain amount of credence. “Now, is J. Cole really good?” he wonders “They say he is nice. Are you sure they say he is nice? Because this is a classic story…” He then compares Cole’s exploits and the praise he’s received from playing in the Basketball Africa League and Canadian Elite Basketball League to another rapper-turned-hooper whose success has been exaggerated in later years.
“Master P didn’t score one point at the Rucker,” he recalls. “Master P keeps showing these videos of him going to the league. I respect Master P at the highest level, but that is not true. It’s emphatically non-cipher. He came to the Rucker and stunk it up. Didn’t score one point. I don’t know how he’s going to the league.” So while Drake, Rick Ross, and others have supported Cole’s hoop dreams, it seems he has at least one peer who remains skeptical — and probably with good reason, considering the Scarborough Shooting Stars’ losing record and Jermaine’s ho-hum stat lines so far.
Vladimir Putin appears to have expected to march Russian troops into Ukraine and see them immediately fold to his imperialistic whims. Over 100 days into the war, that hasn’t happened, and we’ve already heard that things are disastrous behind the military scenes. Putin’s inner circle is said to be maneuvering to insert a successor in his place amid national embarrassment, and U.S. intelligence offers dug through documents that revealed how his “rule is no longer absolute,” given an assassination attempt and Putin’s ongoing health battles, among other concerns.
Russian troops are also reportedly completely over this invasion, to the point where they stomped their feet and almost blew up their general. Amid other disappearing military leaders (after either being killed in the line of duty or being fired by an irate Putin), Newsweek is now relaying how a top Russian commander — known not-so-lovingly as “The Executioner” — lost his life as well. Vladimir Andonov, who’s believed to have murdered POWs and civilians, bit the dust by way of a sniper:
Social media channels and Russian newspapers reported that Vladimir Andonov, 44, had been killed by a sniper in Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv.
“He died at night during reconnaissance of the area, along with his comrade, presumably at the hands of a sniper,” said the Peleng 03 telegram channel on Sunday, in a post reported by the mass circulation Russian newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets.
Yeah, Ukrain is not messing around here. From the very beginning of the invasion, President Volodymyr Zelensky, refused to be airlifted to safety, stating his firm belief that he must help defend his country and people. And with Ukrainian citizens brandishing molotov cocktails and Russia making much slower progress than expected, it appears that Putin’s struggle is real, and so is the survival of his army and presidential tenure.
Pairing steak and bourbon has been around as long as, well, bourbon itself. The two go hand in hand, thanks to the balance of sweet and spicy from the brown juice pairing with the umami and savory notes of the steak. Begging the question, what’s the best bourbon whiskey to pair with your steak?
Today, I’m going to find out.
For this blind tasting, I’m pouring eight bourbons — classic, crafty, and high-end — and tasting each one with a slice of steak. I grabbed a Japanese A5 Wagyu filet (280 grams worth) and butter-basted it (I used buffalo butter from Italy) with a nice outer sear in a cast-iron skillet to a very low medium-rare (about 120F internal temp).
Which turned this:
Zach Johnston
Into this:
Zach Johnston
I then heated a piece of slate for plating while the drams were poured for me and the steak rested. The whole process took about five minutes. I sliced the steak into thin strips, hit it with some birch smoked salt flakes, placed it on the pre-heated slate, and dove in.
Before we get to the tasting, here’s my methodology. First, I had a piece of the steak as a control before I started anything. Yes, it was delicious on its own. I’m nosing and tasting (spitting) each dram of whiskey first to prime my palate with that whiskey for the bite. Then I’ll take a bite of steak. Lastly, I’ll nose and taste the whiskey again.
Here are the competitors:
Old Elk Wheated Bourbon
Redemption High-Rye Bourbon
Michter’s Single Barrel 10-Year Bourbon
Garrison Brothers Balmorhea
Wild Turkey Longbranch
Frey Ranch Small Batch
George Dickel Single Barrel Aged 9 Years
Weller Special Reserve
Ready to see how it shook out?
Also Read: The Top 5 UPROXX Bourbon Posts Of The Last Six Months
You’re drawn in by a big bowl of vanilla ice cream drizzled with salted caramel sauce next to a very faint hint of dried florals. The palate builds on that ice cream, creating a sundae with crushed almonds, creamy toffee brittle, and a hint of eggnog spice. The end is medium-length with a touch of that buttery sweetness carrying the sip to a warm end.
Tasting Notes with Steak:
The steak was initially kind of sweet with a nice layer of salt but had a hint of bitterness to it that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. A touch of smoke adhered to the toffee and nutmeg of the whiskey right away and evened things out.
When I went back to the whiskey, there was a lot more bitterness, as though the spices had been over-cooked. This was just an okay start.
Taste 2
Zach Johnston
Whiskey Tasting Notes:
Rich vanilla wafers with nougat and orange zest mingle with tart berries and winter spices on the nose. The palate is all about the dried cherries dipped in chocolate with lemon pepper spice, a hint of cedar, and old leather. The end feels part vanilla-cherry tobacco and part mint chocolate ice cream with a touch of cedar tying it together.
Tasting Notes with Steak:
This was classic and grassy on the palate which primed me really well for the steak. That grassiness leaned a little sweet and helped highlight the sweetness of the steak while a hint of vanilla added a lushness to the whole experience, especially when I got back to the whiskey.
This felt like it was starting to gel as a pairing.
Taste 3
Zach Johnston
Whiskey Tasting Notes:
The nose opens with soft wood and worn leather next to light touches of dark berries, orange oils, egg nog spice, sourdough Southern biscuits, and slight cotton candy sweetness. The palate starts off with maple syrup sweetness which then leads into a rush of berry brambles. The mid-palate hits on a bit of dark spice, vanilla tobacco, and dark cacao espresso bitterness. The finish leans into a dry-yet-almost-sweet oak with a touch of an almond shell and dry grass coming in at the very end.
Tasting Notes with Steak:
Okay, this is where it’s at! That sour biscuit vibe really counters the rich and unctuous steak nicely. The smoked salt marries the maply syrup and sweet grass while the bitterness in the whiskey compliments the softness of the steak.
Going back to the sip after tasting the steak, there’s this perfect balance of sweet, bitter, woody, spicy, and dry that just works. This is the pairing to beat!
Taste 4
Zach Johnston
Whiskey Tasting Notes:
This opens with that signature Garrison Bros. raw oats and leather before veering into a sense of a corn-syrup-laced pecan pie next to hazelnut bespeckled cinnamon rolls and creamy milk chocolate with a hint of vanilla tobacco. That chocolate drives the taste towards a mint-chocolate ice cream vibe (heavy on the chocolate part) with small dashes of holiday spices, hard toffee candies, more raw leather, and a flourish of wet grains. The end circles back around to all that sweet and chocolatey creaminess with a final slice of perfect pecan pie on a slow fade.
Tasting Notes with Steak:
That raw leather and grain brought out the rawness of the steak. That wasn’t bad per se, but it felt like a step back and not a step forward.
Going back to the whiskey after the steak, there was more balance to the whiskey and that raw/wet grain/leather vibe really calmed down, allowing more of the nuttiness and spices to shine through.
Taste 5
Zach Johnston
Whiskey Tasting Notes:
Christmas spices meet oily vanilla and subtle caramel up top. The palate adds orange oils and buttery toffee to the mix, as the spices edge upwards on the palate, next to a creamy vanilla pudding body. That velvet texture builds throughout, with toasted oak and cedar notes as a hint of sweet firepit smoke arrives on the long and satisfying finish.
Tasting Notes with Steak:
This really popped when you took a bite of steak. The palate was a little weak at first, but the fat and salt of the meat helped everything to sort of amplify.
The steak itself stayed somewhat neutral. I’m not sure if the whiskey helped it, whereas the steak certainly helped this whiskey pop.
Taste 6
Zach Johnston
Whiskey Tasting Notes:
The sip draws you in with hints of burnt orange rings next to fresh honey, apple-cider-soaked cinnamon sticks, cherry tobacco, and vanilla pods. The palate leans dry with cornmeal, bales of straw, woody eggnog spices, cherry stems, and a touch of dried mint next to cedar boxes full of vanilla tobacco. The mid-palate turns with a note of pancake syrup that leads back towards the dry woods and tobacco.
Tasting Notes with Steak:
This was a complex whiskey for sure. Then it sent the steak sort of sour and bitter at the same time, which was not really that ideal. I tried another bite of steak to see if something was off and there was still a distinctly sour note created for the palate of the bourbon.
Going back to the bourbon, it was a perfectly nice dram but… kind of screwed up the taste of the steak.
Taste 7
Zach Johnston
Whiskey Tasting Notes:
The higher ABVs add depth to the cherry cola notes on the nose as the sweet syrup lurks in the background next to eggnog spice, salted peanuts, and a touch of dry wood. The palate delivers on those notes while leaning into the cherry and vanilla while the spices kick up and notes of soft leather, dry reeds, and maybe a touch of wicker arrive late. The end is slightly fruity but leans more into cherry tobacco with a dry and woody end.
Tasting Notes with Steak:
This was old and bold on the palate and that sort of worked with the steak. It added an almost super long dry-aged vibe to the mix. The steak became extra soft and sweet as the whiskey rolled around in your senses.
Going back to the whiskey, there was a clear sense of the sweetness and wicker that rounded both the dram and steak out very nicely. This was very good, but I’m not sure if it beats out number three. It’s close.
Taste 8
Zach Johnston
Whiskey Tasting Notes:
This felt the most “classic” on the nose with hints of vanilla cream, cherrywood, new leather, and apple blossoms leading the way. The palate had a thin cream soda feel to it with both cherry and apple pie filling, a buttery pie crust, and a vanilla/cherry pipe tobacco chewiness. The mid-palate was full of dark cherry syrup that lead to more of that tobacco with a slight dry reed vibe on the end.
Tasting Notes with Steak:
There’s a nice and classic element to the whiskey that gives way to a raw leather note but it’s way more dialed back than number four. Interestingly, that raw leather note ages as you take a bite of the steak, which becomes nicely sweetened and spiced.
When you go back to the whiskey, there’s a clear sense of soft tobacco and dark cherries that shine through and add to the sweetness of the steak that’s very pleasing.
Part 2: The Ranking
First, can we just appreciate this steak for one second? Have you read our steak guides? Click here! And here!
Frey Ranch is all about the farm behind the whiskey. In this case, that’s a 165+-year-old farm in the Sierra Nevada basin near Lake Tahoe. The grains (corn, wheat, rye, and barley), fermentation, distilling, aging, and bottling all happen on-site at Frey Ranch.
How It Paired:
This was the worst pairing by far. That sour and bitter note that the whiskey gave to the steak was unfortunate. It was also so pronounced that it was hard to get past. Look at it this way, I wouldn’t have been pissed enough to send it back if I was in a swanky restaurant and ordered this pairing, but I would have been pretty damn disappointed.
This craft whiskey from Colorado takes the idea of wheated bourbon to the very edge of its limits. The mash bill carries a whopping 45 percent wheat, pushing this very close to being a wheated whiskey. The juice is then aged for an undisclosed number of years before it’s batched and cut down to proof with that soft Rocky Mountain spring water Colorado is known for.
How It Paired:
This was a little bitter too but not overwhelming so. Still, that’s the reason this whiskey is ranked this low. Call me crazy but I don’t want a whiskey to turn my steak bitter.
This much-lauded Texas bourbon is the highwater mark of what great whiskey from Texas can be. The juice is aged in Ozark oak for four years and then finished in oak from Minnesota for another year, all under that blazing West Texas sunshine. The bourbon is then small-batched, proofed with Texas spring water, and bottled at a healthy 115 proof.
How It Paired:
I generally dig Garrison’s raw grain and leather nose. It’s part of what makes the whiskey unique. I just don’t think that note worked as well as it could today in a steak pairing. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this bourbon was a little too bold for a good pairing. It sort of overwhelmed the subtlety of the steak.
These bottles are the masterwork of chef-turned-master-blender David Carpenter. The juice is hand-selected MGP single barrels that provide a classic bourbon base that then leans a little softer on the palate.
How It Paired:
This is where things get good when looking at pairing these whiskeys with steak. This was perfectly fine overall but didn’t wow. I think I’d order this if I was in a steak house and there was nothing else on the menu that jumped out at me.
A few years back, Wild Turkey brought on Matthew McConaughey to be the brand’s Creative Director and design his own whiskey. The product of that partnership was launched in 2018. The juice is a wholly unique whiskey for Wild Turkey, thanks to the Texas Mesquite charcoal filtration the hot juice goes through. The bourbon then goes into oak for eight long years before it’s proofed and bottled.
How It Paired:
This just worked. The whiskey was a stone-cold classic with nice nuance and uniqueness that worked well with the fatty meat. This is very close to being a go-to pairing. The only thing that held it back for me was that it was a little sweet from top to bottom. But that’s really nitpicking.
Buffalo Trace doesn’t publish any of their mash bills. Educated guesses put the wheat percentage of these mash bills at around 16 to 18 percent, which is average. The age of the barrels on this blend is also unknown. We do know that they cut down those ABVs with that soft Kentucky limestone water.
How It Paired:
This was another easy “yes.” The pairing worked really well and both the steak and the whiskey brought something to the table. Again, this feels a little sweet for my palate for a pairing but that’s very personal. Overall, this is a solid way to go the next time you’re ordering steak and whiskey.
This is Dickel’s signature whisky. Nine-year-old single barrels are hand-selected by Head Distiller Nicole Austin that fit Dickel’s flavor profile at cask strength but with a little nuance from release to release, making this a fun single barrel offering to track down yearly.
How It Paired:
This nearly won, given that it added a very funky dry-aged element to the steak that felt elevated. In the end, this made the most sense on my palate as a pairing that complimented the whiskey and steak while adding something to both. Moreover, it felt right.
Michter’s is currently distilling and aging their own whiskey, but this is still sourced. The actual barrels sourced for these single barrel expressions tend to be at least ten years old with some rumored to be closer to 15 years old (depending on the barrel’s quality, naturally). Either way, the juice goes through Michter’s bespoke filtration process before a touch of Kentucky’s iconic soft limestone water is added, bringing the bourbon down to a very crushable 94.4 proof.
How It Paired:
This was instantly the right whiskey (though that Dickel came close). It felt right from the first bite of steak and then really popped when I went back to the whiskey. The fat and salt of the steak added exactly the elements the whiskey needed to take it somewhere new. A hint of smoke popped up, there was a new hint of singed marshmallow, and the spices felt sweeter.
The steak had this lovely soft sweetness that felt like it had been wet brined in a whiskey spice mix for a few days. It was bold and smooth and delightful. I heartily encourage you to copy this pairing for yourself.
Part 3: Final Thoughts
Zach Johnston
This was a pretty illuminating blind taste test. Yes, the most expensive whiskey won. And yes, it’s also my go-to whiskey for special occasions. But it really did stand far above most of the rest of these bottles.
Overall I’d say, find the whiskey between five and one that has a flavor profile and steak vibe that speaks to you and go with that. I truly liked the Dickel, Weller, and Longbranch as steak pairing whiskeys. The Redemption was solid too but looking back feels more like it should have been in a Manhattan than neat. Still, none of them could hang with a Michter’s 10 Bourbon.
As the music industry adapts to the new era of streaming and TikTok trends, there is another shift that has to be made: making the industry more economically sustainable.
With summer tours kicking off this month, many artists have spent a substantial amount of time working towards curating an exciting show experience, with minimal waste and lower CO2 emissions. Most, if not all, concertgoers aren’t generally thinking about the impact that their favorite artist is making on the environment, but they should: a tour like Coldplay’s “Music Of The Spheres” tour can bring in over 50K eager fans per show, each with their own unique carbon footprint.
Artists like Coldplay have teamed up with various organizations to help encourage their fans to educate themselves about their individual impact on the environment and provide resources for them to reduce said impact. Coldplay’s tour aims to be as waste-free as possible, with a focus on recycling and reusing. Before the show, the band introduces a short film with different ways their tour has worked with venues across the world to ensure a cleaner show. Single-use plastics have been discouraged from their tours, being replaced with special edition Ball Aluminum Cups, which can be taken and re-used, or recycled at the venue. The band also sells custom water bottles, with proceeds going directly to ClientEarth. Their popular LED wristbands are also made of plant-based, compostable material. These little steps make a larger impact when they are being promoted to thousands of fans every night. It also helps when they make it fun– fans are invited to dance on kinetic floors and use stationary bikes to help power the stages. Just one night on the bike can generate 11kWh which can power their c-stage performances.
“Artists and music have always been at the forefront of social change and advocacy.” Live Nation’s Director of Global Sustainability Lucy August-Perna said, explaining that big artists have the power to inspire action from an individual level. August-Perna notes that Coldplay worked for over a year in order to make sure every aspect of the tour was addressed in order to see where they could improve their sustainability efforts. One aspect that was often overlooked was fan transportation to and from the show.
“Our Green Nation rep worked together with Coldplay management and local public transport authorities to help incentivize and subsidize public transportation to and from the shows,” August-Perna explains. For their MetLife tour stop, fans were encouraged to purchase railway tickets instead of driving, which were discounted in partnership with NJ Transit. Other fans can log their commitment to sustainability on the World Tour App to receive discount codes. “It has been a win-win for everyone involved, bringing awareness to an important solution to climate change – public transportation infrastructure. It also helps reduce traffic congestion, which is good for the venue, fans, and the local community. These kinds of high impact, focused executions are what we’re looking to accomplish.”
While Coldplay has been actively working on its suitability effort for many years, other big-name artists have been following in their footsteps. Billie Eilish and Shawn Mendes, who are both embarking on worldwide tours this year, have teamed up with REVERB, an organization that has been educating fans and artists alike about the environmental impact of their tours.
REVERB brings initiatives like free water stations and battery recycling to various tour stops, with some stops offering donation boxes and bringing in local organizations for community outreach. REVERB manager of communications Chris Spinato says that fan outreach is a major component when it comes to making an impact. “Much like a guitar tech or sound engineer, our ‘on-site coordinator’ acts as a green tech, making sure that all sustainability measures for the tour are in place,” Spinato says. “Those measures can include waste diversion including recycling, composting, reusable service ware, and water refill stations backstage, in catering, and on buses, collection of batteries for proper disposal (or donation to local shelters if they are still useable), coordinating local food for catering, and much more.”
For Harry Styles’ sold-out 2021 tour, REVERB helped eliminate over 30,000 single-use plastic bottles over nearly 100 tour dates. The practice has been trickling down to merch creation as well — Eilish partnered with REVERB to create a sustainable edition of her album on vinyl, created with vegetable-based inks, a recycled sleeve and jacket, and bio-wrap “plastic” that is made from sugar cane. Lorde, who has been actively promoting sustainable practices by not physically releasing Solar Power cds, also worked with REVERB to create her eco-friendly merch.
Despite the big-name acts being at the forefront of the sustainability movement, these practices can easily be transmitted to smaller bands without a sustainability team. Encouraging fans to take the necessary steps to even just be aware of their impact can help trigger a widespread movement. “It would have been great if it had been happening decades ago, but that’s true of the environmental issues in every industry,” Spinato adds. “What’s unique about the music industry is it not only has a real opportunity to meaningfully reduce its environmental impacts, but also an outsized ability to influence change. Music has always had immense cultural power to change hearts and minds. If we can unleash that power to combat the climate crisis and other environmental issues, big things will happen. It’s already starting.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
iHeartRadioMusic Festival will take place September 23 and 24 at the T-Mobile Arena. In addition to the aforementioned performers, Black Eyed Peas, Lionel Richie, LL Cool J featuring DJ Z-Trip, Luke Combs, Maren Morris, and Morgan Wallen are all set to take the main stage.
On that Saturday, Maggie Rogers, 5 Seconds of Summer, Big Time Rush, Girl in Red, Lauv, Chloe, Willow, Chase Rice, Latto, Carly Pearce, Ryan Hurd, GAYLE, and Lauren Spencer-Smith are set to take the Daytime Stage at Area15.
“We’re thrilled to once again return to Las Vegas for a weekend full of great live music with this year’s Festival,” said Tom Poleman, Chief Programming Officer for iHeartMedia, in a statement. “What makes this festival one of a kind is that we have the best artists from every genre of music that we play on our 860 iHeart stations all on one stage. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see so many legends performing together.”
For those who can’t make the festival, The CW Network will livestream the concert through the CW app, and will also broadcast the concert on a later day in October.
General on-sale begins Friday, June 17 at AXS.com.
Some of the artists mentioned are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
On Sunday, Atlanta rapper Trouble was shot and killed during a home invasion. Now, according to local news, police have a suspect in custody. 33-year-old Jamichael Jones turned himself in after Rockdale County Sheriff’s deputies went to Jones’s mother’s house and she received a call from Jones himself. One of the deputies got on the call and convinced Jones to surrender near Southern Regional Medical Center in Clayton County. He has been charged with felony murder, aggravated assault, home invasion, and battery and a judge denied his bond, setting his next hearing for June 15.
According to witnesses, Jones did not know the “Bring It Back” rapper, and Trouble was visiting a woman Jones did know. Apparently, there was some domestic dispute between them, and Trouble was shot once in the chest after Jones forced his way into the home. A neighbor described the neighborhood as “quiet” and said it was “traumatizing” to learn that not only was a national celebrity visiting the apartment building but was killed there as well. “To be honest with you, we don’t have that type of situation or issues that happen in this particular neighborhood, so to find out that you have a local celebrity that’s inside your residential area and this is what happens … it was like very, very traumatizing,” he explained.
Trouble was signed to Mike Will Made-It’s Ear Drummers label and was just two years removed from his last project, Thug Luv.
Heck, Johnson still hears from pissed-off Star Wars, five years later, so it’s understandable that he muted the replies to his first The Last Jedi tweet in some time.
“Haven’t touched this stuff in years, but Bryan lines them up and knocks them down so succinctly and with such a pleasant tone, I figured eh, f*ck it. (replies off to spare his timeline),” the Knives Out director tweeted. He was quote-tweeting a thread from writer and filmmaker Bryan Young, who wrote, “I’ve been seeing some interpretations of The Last Jedi in my mentions that are making me scratch my head and wonder if I saw the same movie. So I thought I’d tackle a few of them in a thread.”
The whole thing is worth a read, but here are some highlights:
Luke’s arc in The Last Jedi is steeped in the history of Star Wars and mythology of the world. When he realizes neutrality benefits the oppressors, he comes back, but on his terms, taking up the appearance of Excalibur without betraying his ideals. The pinnacle of being a Jedi. pic.twitter.com/SmIWnqO2DD
Another complaint: some people didn’t like Leia’s survival after Ben’s attack on the Raddus. That’s subjective, I guess, but I and many audience members found it moving and beautiful. Leia uses the Force in pretty much EVERY Star Wars movie, so this was no surprise to anyone. pic.twitter.com/UeWWX9oKks
I’ll totally do threads like this about other Star Wars movies, too. I love all of them to some extent. I HAVE done threads on all of them. This isn’t new to The Last Jedi.
I think the analysis of Last Jedi gets the most love because it’s actually the deepest, most complex one.
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