Denuology: The Observation and Observations of Denuo. » Anisha

The Ultimate Amuse-Bouche

Anisha — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:37:14 +0000

Quick, you’re late to Paris in 1906 and your go-to corset is still at the cleaners: what do you do? It is precisely occasions like these that I regret anchoring the bulk of my wardrobe in the Muppets heyday circa 1979. So I get over it and go. After all, this is the meal that’s a solid year in the making.

It’s my trip to Next, Grant Achatz’s restaurant masterpiece. Achatz is Michael Jordan in the kitchen, augmented by a Shakespearean bout with tongue cancer, a story coming soon to theaters. He continues to floor diners with Alinea, consistently ranked one of the best restaurants in the world, and is now upping the ante with Next and it’s impending neighbor Aviary, a ballsy reimagination of the cocktail lounge.

Next was announced in dramatic fashion, via a Transformers-esque trailer last May. It’s a culinary Back to the Future where the entire menu is reengineered every three months to painstakingly emulate a place and a time, starting with Paris 1906, moving on to Thailand and who knows where after.

Devotion is a cocktail, not a jigger of anything straight. A dash of stubbornness and helplessness laced with a splash of compulsiveness and unawareness poured into a shaker, along with two fingers of deep love and sorrow – Sportswriter Gary Smith

So Achatz is either insane or wildly devoted to attempt this edible tomfoolery. And it was exactly when this plot was announced that I submitted my email to the Next ticketing process, because it was like guaranteeing seats to Game 7 of a Lakers-Bulls final.

Earlier this month, access to the online marketplace was granted to the ones who signed up first on the capped 19k email list. There was digital drama in the form of email server failures, delayed passwords, confusion and questions, all quickly and transparently addressed by Next. Eventually I get my invitation to the highly nuanced pricing system with the option to pre-purchase a table for 2 or 4 (because ménage trios are a waste of money for restaurants). Prices per table fluctuate depending on the day, time and corresponding peaks in demand. Ultimately, the experience is entirely pre-paid and no money is exchanged at the restaurant. And the byproduct is a long overdue dining StubHub, a secondary resale market that creates a subplot with crescendoing intrigue. Even Gaga couldn’t stir up this cauldron of brouhaha.

And so we arrive.

Next exudes the feelings of a meandering train, patient movement and subdued time travel with its industrial décor and muted soundtrack that immediately exports you into a silent film. I can talk about the turtle consommé, the pressed duck with a blood-kidney jus that turned us into gluttonous vampires, or the supremes de poussin that is the most exciting bite of chicken you’ll have. Or even the tour of the kitchen after and a photo op with executive chef Dave Beran where I may or may not have grabbed his ass.

Yes, the entire Next experience is brilliant yet underwhelming, only because you expect Parisian dancers to descend from the ceiling and a mime with a waxed moustache to appear tableside.

See, that’s the thing about well-engineered hype. Because in life and food and sport and anything else- what is the ultimate amuse bouche? It’s when the bites of build up so geniusly whet your appetite that even the impeccable innovation in the ensuing execution leaves you selfishly and ravenously craving more. Because for Next, as much as it is about the food, it isn’t. And that’s what makes it so damn delicious.

And it’s for that reason that I’m hooked, boarding this food train to Thailand and beyond.

I’m Still Hungry: A Rant to the Wonderfully Horrible World of Food Blogs

My First Time (at SXSW)

Anisha — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:22:27 +0000

BBQ sauce stains denigrated inappropriate regions of my jeans, pedicabs ate a chunk out of this week’s lunch money and lines took a toll on my soul (should have used TaskRabbit), while a surplus of Austin food trucks with pun names both further questioned and restored my sanity.

In addition to joining the mostly Asian Wives and their escort for SXSW Interactive, I stayed to indulge in the music portion. With thousands of options for panels, keynotes and bands, I stumbled upon lots of awesome and sprinkles of crap.

7 days in Austin left me with the extremes of Evil and Good, which were equally enlightening. And below is what ultimately stuck amidst the alcohol haze.

EVIL

Christopher Poole was not the most poised and eloquent speaker, but this 4chan founder is a devil savant primed for a meaty yet awkward Jesse Eisenberg role. 4chan’s rampant fury is rooted in cornerstones that Poole shared which collectively raise a sausage middle finger to what many hold as community best practices, and he is applying these same F Us to his recent effort:

F the jazz: basic images can triumph over video, flash and audio

F identities: Anonymity is authenticity in order for content to ultimately reign over its creator

F data and storage: lack of registration and archives reduce barriers to incite avid participation

The Crowdsourcing: Innovation and/or Exploitation panel was an unexpected treat. While the obvious benign examples were celebrated, the discussion around collaboration facilitating mischief is what was memorable. Fred Benenson of Kickstarter discussed using it for more playful means, namely initiating an endless circle of crowdsourcing (crowdsourcing what should be crowdsourced what should be crowdsourced) as well his EmojiDick initiative. Meanwhile Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain rationalized how crowdsourcing can be seen as a modern day manifestation of slavery. He spun a tongue in cheek argument that gained steam as he equated Amazon Mechanical Turks to digital sweatshops and warned against the menace of collaboration applications for tasks such as monitoring borders and crimes, and railed against the extension of gamification to labor.

GOOD

Marc Ecko has done it all and is now focusing on being an instigator for causes, because he wants his “CO2 emissions to be like broccoli cake”. It all starts with being authentic, which he has a BS but obviously proven effective formula for achieving. The primary tenants are unique voice [(action-fear)/self(lessness or ishness)] and a more complex emotional proximity sum of touch and feel. Increasing this was his motivation for tagging Air Force One because “humans are emotional creatures who only act rationally”. He waxed poetic about his current areas of focus: Artists and Instigators (”the AARP of pop culture”) and Unlimited Justice (fighting paddling in schools which is highly correlated with increased high school dropout rates in the states that still allow it).

Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMs, shared his dynamic story proving again that failure breeds success. He lost $1MM in Amazing Race 2 by 4 minutes because he didn’t ask for directions. This ultimately let him on an excursion to Argentina which inspired his “one for one” idea that proved that “giving not only feels good, it’s a great business strategy” that elicits an unbeatable competitive advantage when it comes to attracting and retaining the best employees, partners and customers. He was the most vibrantly polished yet genuine speaker, a perfect close to the Interactive portion and a talk worth listening to in whole when it’s finally posted.

MY MUSIC HIGHLIGHTS

Top 4 Bigger Name Performances

James Blake at Stubbs

Janelle Monae at La Zona Rosa

Emmylou Harris (through a glass window) at the tiny IFC recording studio

Bright Eyes at a pop-up show at the Austin Club

Top 4 No Name Performances (at least to me)

Mister Heavenly outside by a carousel (members of Islands, Modest Mouse and Michael Cera)

Caitlin Moe and Mia Moretti at Austin City Limits (a DJ accompanied by a hotwire electric violinist)

Notar at Rusty Spurs (primarily because Adam Duritz joined onstage for an impromptu performance)

Lost in Trees at The Stage (Arcade Fire with more folk)

REMNANTS

Hot Mess: Why is Taylor Momson in a band? How the hell did I find myself transfixed by this nonsense during my last night?

To Do: Add Café Flesh to Netflix queue (for the strong narrative and nothing else, of course). One of the few things legibly written in my notebook following the much more boring then it sounded Sex it Up panel. Dan Buczaczer mandated we each go to at least one adult themed event.

Biggest Regret: Never say no to a hammered C+ grade actor and his arm candy who proposition you to a threesome in an elevator circa 2:17am.

a digital R.I.P.

Anisha — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 20:20:33 +0000

Chris Al-Aswad via Twitter on July 23 at 4:49pm: There are no second acts in American Lives. –F. Scott Fitzgerald.

This is as much a story about alphabetical order as it is about hashtags.

Ahluwalia, Anisha then Al-Aswad, Chris. With the serendipity of the alphabet, we grow up next to each other on classroom seating charts, in awkward yearbook photos, and all the other critical elements of the grade school and junior high social reality. So a longstanding bond develops between a girl with coke bottle glasses and a class clown.

Like most childhood friends, we see each other less and less, and eventually lose touch somewhere during college. I hear about Chris battling demons, and wonder.

Years later, we predictably reconnect. There’s the friend request from Chris, a connection that holds significance in a wasteland of acquaintances. An exchange of messages ensue that laughs us back to Ms Ingrisano’s carpeted 3^rd grade classroom that always smelled of popcorn.

We spy on each others lives. Chris has channeled his passion into spearheading Escape Into Life, a burgeoning artist community.

Escape Into Life “is a philosophy, an experiment, a dream 2 fuse the visual & literary in the most spectacular way possible” (@writeasongtoday). I, along with many others, admire and follow the success and his ongoing cultivation of a true labor of love.

Then last week, amongst the Facebook commentary that peppers the day, somewhere in between Patricia “taking a boat tour in Key West” and “18 friends have changed their profile pics”, is the unexpected news that punches in the gut.

@EscapeIntoLife erupts into a tour de force of accolades from the legion of artists and friends he’s inspired, mourning his death and honoring his legacy.

So each minute and hour, after a wake and after a funeral, more and more continue to join the digital #TYCHRIS celebration, proving Mr Fitzgerald wrong.

Because sometimes nudges as happenstance as alphabetic order lead us to people that matter, ingraining us in the fabric of the first act of their lives.

And sometimes, spaces as intentional as digital communities empower artistic pioneers to create a different kind of connection, one that impacts so many more so differently, fostering a bullish creativity that lives and grows long past a tragedy.

Yes, for Chris, there is a second act.

#TYCHRIS

A Day at the NRA

Anisha — Tue, 25 May 2010 22:20:59 +0000

Thanks to my favorite cohort, I had the opportunity to attend the NRA Show yesterday (THIS not this).

It was a huge cluster of everything food related from celeb chefs to the latest innovations in kitchen refrigeration to blenders that double as guillotines to mobile cuisine, also known as the new black. Sadly, there were no exhibitions dedicated to The Human Centipede.

Aside from sampling a frightening range of food for 382 minutes, here are my top 3 highlights:

3) Seeing the potato chips of the future from a short distance. Sadly I wasn’t able to sample due to some persistent, pushy broads who boxed me out.

2) Listening to Foursquare highlight some of its more interesting business applications during the social media panel. Namely lawyers who give discounted services to those who check-in to jail, car services that offer free rides to the mayors of major airports and the Jimmy Choo trainer hunt. Really makes you think health clinics are missing out for not pushing the Rolls Royce of STD testing to those bullish enough to check-in to the Sybaris Pool Suites.

1) Meeting my 2nd husband at the First-Ever Foodie Flash Mob! See 35 seconds in, and admire the pure velocity and spirit of his turns.

No related posts.

Denuo is Full of Prudes & Whores

Anisha — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:51:45 +0000

There’s no denying that Twitter is an iconic poster child of the times. What gives the platform its real significance? Besides the bird, it’s what Twitter enables, how people use it, and how these behaviors evolve.

Inspired partly by this and mostly by the opportunity to shed superficial light on the lovely employees here, I embarked on a rigorous analysis to diagnose the different Denuo personalities, based solely on their Tweets.

Below is a summary of findings. Huge credit goes to Sarah for synthesizing the results into this phenomenally frightening visual representation.

NARRATORS provide filtered color commentary. They observe and selectively share worthy nuggets that aren’t corrupted by personal bias and judgment.

CRITICS rant, pick apart, reveal- but only when true inspiration strikes. Their self-musings are discerning, nuanced and often appeal to a more focused and limited group.

POLITICIANS promote, promote, promote. They tirelessly cater to an avid, broad following by frequently spotlighting their wisdom, travels, work and discoveries.

EDITORS curate and distribute content a la news outlets. They find inspiration from their large networks and Tweet/RT the best finds, often multiple times a day.

Read more to see the full details of the study.

DATA COLLECTION

*Included active Denuo Tweeters (updated in past 3 months)
*Data collection cutoff date was the AM of 6/30/09
*Past 10 Tweets for each employee were dissected at a nearby lab (or a spreadsheet that can be provided upon request)
*RT and @ mentions were included, direct @ replies were omitted

SCORING

*Each employee was assigned a 0-10 score on two scales: promiscuity and egocentricity
*Promiscuity (prude-whore): Based on number of followers, following, and frequency of Tweets
*Egocentricity (me-you): Based on degree to which the content/tone of Tweets are self-focused

CAVEATS

*Profiling solely intended to represent a recent snapshot in time
*Data interpretation colored by excessive levels of relativity and subjectivity, further magnified by my questionable judgment.