It's holiday travel time again! We look at how airlines are working to improve their on-time statuses and how LAX workers are protesting during the busy holiday. Then, we'll look at how to put a multicultural spin on the Thanksgiving turkey, how baristas are competing for the best latte art and much more.
Airlines see improvement in accuracy of arrival and departure times
At some time today, many people are likely heading to the airport, hoping against hope that their flights won't be delayed. You might want to get out of the door and into your car, or your taxi or airport shuttle a little earlier.
Although it might not seem this way, so far this year, 83 percent of all flights took off within 15 minutes of schedule. That's the highest level since 2003, according to the Department of Transportation.
It varies widely from airline to airline, but overall, the industry has been focusing on improving departure and arrival times. It's a process which involves many complex calculations and not so complex practical considerations.
Ray Neidl, senior airlines analyst with Maxim Group, joins the show to explain what's involved in making at least the travel part of your Thanksgiving a little less stressful
LAX workers stage protest ahead of busy Thanksgiving holiday
Nearly two million people are expected to travel through Los Angeles International Airport over the long Thanksgiving weekend. But a march by hundreds of LAX workers this afternoon is threatening to shut down Century Blvd, the main route into the airport.
The employees are protesting what their union calls "unfair labor practices."
KPCC's Ben Bergman joins us now from LAX.
Putting a multicultural spin on the classic Thanksgiving feast
Every Thanksgiving, generations of immigrant families have eaten, or at least tried to eat, the traditional Thanksgiving turkey. It's a dish prized for its simplicity. A roasted turkey rubbed with salt and pepper, stuffed with a delicious mix of breadcrumbs, chopped celery, onion and seasonings. Some of us get fancier than that, but that's the gist, right?
But here's a little secret: some newcomers, and not-so-newcomers, tend to find the classic American bird a little bland, so they tweak the traditional turkey to fit their culture and palates. KPCC reporter Leslie Berestein-Rojas is here to give us a taste of what different families in Southern California bring to the table.
Every Thanksgiving I've heard my Cuban dad say the same thing "sabe a corcho," he thinks it tastes like cork. And I've heard people who's parents have come from the other side of the planet and they related more or less the same stories.
Not to disrespect the turkey, but unless you come from somewhere in the world where turkey's eaten and even if you do come from a place where turkey is eaten but the food is a little spicier or more savory, the classic butter-basted bird is a little mild.
It's a tradition and its a novelty for newcomers, but some people will try it once or twice and then they'll go back to eating what they'd normally eat for a holiday, tamales, pork. kabob, duck. Some families now, the first generation, they'll tolerate the turkey and the mashed potatoes once a year just so the kids can have it. This is where it starts getting creative, because people start adapting the turkey to their tastes.
This is what's lead to restaurants and delis in immigrant enclaves all over L.A. to start concocting their own Thanksgiving turkey meals for customers. For example, Mexican Oaxacan-style turkey or Chinese-style turkey.
It's interesting because turkey is eaten in Southern Mexico for special occasions, but its eaten very differently. A true Oaxacan style turkey isn't a big ceremonial bird, it's stewed, served in mole, so that's where the assimilation part comes in. When Oaxacans come here to the U.S. and they encounter Thanksgiving its not the turkey that they know.
Here's how Bricia Lopez of the Oaxacan restaurant Guelaguetza describes her family's turkey: "When we heard about the turkey we were like, 'Oh great, we're going to eat turkey again.' We never thought about cooking it the way Americans cook it, we started putting spices in there. My mom's version of stuffing has chorizo in it, which is typically totally Oaxacan."
This version of stuffing goes really well with a turkey seasoned with chiles and herbs, and then it's served, of course, with black mole. Her mom, restaurant owner Maria de Jesus Lopez, started making this at home for her family, but then she started making these orders for Thanksgiving customers at the restaurant. She was busy this week making orders and she showed me what goes into the stuffing.
"We use bell pepper, celery, rosemary and jalapeño chile and some walnuts and apples. We put it with bread, Mexicans we use bolillo, like a french roll, and we want to put some chorizo," said Maria Lopez.
It's a real mix of customers who order Maria's turkeys, they tell me it's about 50-percent Mexican and 50-percent everyone else who wants to try a Oaxacan style turkey tastes like. Interestingly, they say a lot of Mexican-American customers who come in are more assimilated, second generation, their first-generation parents are still cooking their own meals.
Then there's a Chinese-style turkey, which is described as like a Chinese roasted duck. Manager Eric Yu at the U2 Cafe in Alhambra, he says they expect to sell about 500 birds this year.
"We marinate the turkey and then we put comes seasoning and Chinese herbs.," said Yu. "Then we hold it to blow it until the skin is crispy and dry. After that we put it in the oven and bake it for an hour and a half…a lot of Chinese or Americans love it."
Of course they don't serve it with mashed potatoes you can take yours with a side of rice or noodles, and there are some places the stuff the bird with sticky rice.
Now these are just some of the turkeys that people are ordering to take home, but a lot of this creativity is going on in individual kitchens all over town and you're likely to encounter turkeys that are seasoned Vietnamese style, Indian style, Cuban style, you name it.
I've eaten Cuban-style turkey for years. The answer is mojo, there's this garlicky, sour orange marinade that Cubans use and they usually marinate pork in it, the ceremonial meat that we'll eat for Christmas. So he's spent years marinating this turkey trying his best to make it taste like lechón and it kind of worked, it still tasted like turkey, but it smelled fantastic.
'Skirt Steak' examines how female chefs stand the heat
In the world of restaurant kitchens, most professional chefs are men. Food journalist Charlotte Druckman wanted to find out what it's like to be a woman behind the hot front lines of a professional kitchen.
In her new book "Skirt Steak: Women Chefs On Standing The Heat And Staying In The Kitchen," Druckman interviews 70 of the country's top female chefs about their recipe for survival in the male dominated industry.
Grinell College guard breaks NCAA record with 138 points in a single game
Last night in Iowa, Grinell College beat Faith Baptist Bible, 179 to 104. Normally, that wouldn't make national news but this was not your usual game. Grinell's guard Jack Taylor scored 138 points all by himself, shattering the NCAA record by 25 points
David Arsenault is an assistant basketball coach at Grinell.
A few thoughts on how we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday
As we roll into Thanksgiving weekend, KPCC's Steve Proffitt joins us with some thoughts, and a few facts, about the modern celebration of this great American holiday.
The day before Thanksgiving, or really the evening before, has become one of the biggest party nights of the year, rivaling even the all-time champion, New Year's Eve.
College kids, young people, even ancient mariners such as myself find ourselves back in our home towns, or our old friends come back to our town. It's a time to reconnect, and clearly, a time to imbibe. Bars, taverns, honky-tonks and cocktail lounges, they will be doing land office business tonight.
And really, it's not like Christmas, when you have to worry about last-minute gifts, or New Year's when you have to worry about who you are going to kiss at midnight. I guess you can get anxious about your turkey, but really, it's a low pressure holiday, and a lot of people like to kick it off with some serious bar hopping.
The Holiday Creep Phenomenon
Today, about half the KPCC staff has taken the day off to get home, or just to get ready for a big night of partying. More and more schools are closing on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and, well, here's a personal anecdote. I teach a journalism class at USC, and yesterday fully half my class was missing. AWOL.
It used to be you took Thursday off and you were back to work on Friday. Now, Wednesday is a wash. Tuesday is not being taken seriously. At this rate, within a generation, Thanksgiving will be a week-long holiday, and then we can start chipping away on the Friday before Thanksgiving. Of course, the Monday after, it's already a banner day for absenteeism. Holiday creep.
The Retail Version of Holiday Creep
This year we have the controversial Thanksgiving night retail sales, where you have employees, cranberry sauce still staining their chins, trying to perform their sales clerk duties while fighting back the tryptophan-induced lethargy brought on by their turkey over-consumption.
This sort of retail creep goes back to the '80s. Before then, it was just bad form to start pumping in Christmas music and having sales until after Thanksgiving. But Wal-Mart, Target, other big retailers, began moving their Christmas sales activities forward, creeping toward Halloween, and even earlier.
Now they have gobbled up Thanksgiving itself, and next, they may figure out that if we adopt the European tradition of Christmastime — celebrating the full twelve days of Christmas — they can extend the shopping season into the New Year. Which will lead workers to find reasons to extend their holiday to include the 13th and 14th days of Christmas.
That gets us well into January. Then, they can pop in for a few days of pretending to be productive before taking Friday off for a long Inauguration Day weekend. Oh, hell, why not Thursday, too. Only happens once every four years.
Grammar Girl breaks down the meaning behind Thanksgiving terms
Well it's time now for another installment in our regular series of conversations with Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty! She's a superhero of the English language.
She's back today to give us a little Thanksgiving refresher course before the big meal, you know, to save you from embarrassing yourself in front of great-aunt Mabel.
The impact of Israel's success with the Iron Dome system
Despite the new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the violence continues. The fighting is supposed to stop at 9 p.m. in Israel and Palestine.
Earlier today, 22 people were wounded when a bomb exploded on a bus outside Israel's military headquarters in Tel Aviv. Hamas did not claim responsibility, but it praised the attack. As of now, 111 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict began, including 56 civilians. Three Israelis have been killed.
Israel has been able protect its civilian population with its Iron Dome missile defense system. This is the first major test of the system and it's getting high marks for its effectiveness.
Abraham Sofaer, a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, who studies national security, joins the show.
Israel and Hamas agree on cease fire
After a week of fighting, a cease fire has been announced between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza strip. More than 140 Palestinians and five Israelis have been killed in the violence.
The announcement was just made at a press conference in Cairo held by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr.
The cease fire is set to take place at 9 pm local. Cairo is freelance reporter Noel King joins the show with more information on this breaking news.
'Chasing Ice' doc uses timelapse to expose ice loss in Arctic
Five years ago, Stanford student Jeff Orlowski landed a great gig working as a videographer for National Geographic photographer James Balog.
Balog was attempting the first expedition of what would become a long mission to use timelapse photography to track climate change and ice loss in the world's most extreme environments. Orlowski didn't know it then, but that first trip would turn into his new documentary, "Chasing Ice," which opens in Los Angeles on Friday in selected theaters.
'The Slumbering Masses' looks at how society, not biology, solidified modern sleep habits
It sure would be wonderful if someone came along and said, "You don't have to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep to be healthy, just stop feeling so guilty!"
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer is the author of "The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life."
He's here to tell us that our modern ideas about sleep habits have less to do with health and medicine and more to do with social norms and historical trends.
SoCal's top baristas compete for best latte art title in Downtown LA
If you are a coffee drinker, you may have noticed a growing trend: latte art. It’s when baristas pour steamed white milk on top of the dark brown espresso in such a way that it leaves designs on the top of your drink. It takes a lot of skill to pull off, and now it’s become a competition amongst top baristas. Jed Kim has more.
It’s the final Thursday Night Throwdown of the season in Los Angeles, and hundreds of people have packed into a small coffee shop in Downtown L.A. Baristas from all over Southern California are here to compete.
Jonathen Liu, bullhorn-wielding organizer of the event, writes a list of names on a giant sheet of posterboard.
“That is our tournament bracket. We’ve been doing this since January. This is actually the ninth one we’ve done," said Liu.
There are latte art tournaments all over the country, and each has its own way of doing things. Liu came up with L.A.’s format: each person pays an entry fee. Then, they face off in pairs. Whichever one wins goes onto the next round, and so on until there’s a champion. Normally, the winner would take all the money, but tonight is for charity. Instead, they’re fighting for prizes and bragging rights.
Two competitors stand next to each other at an espresso machine. They don’t pull their own shots. Instead, someone else does that for everyone so competitors can focus solely on steaming and pouring their milk. As the contestants pour the milk, it leaves pools of white color on top. Adjusting the pour affects the way those pools are shaped.
“This style of latte art is called free-pour latte art, meaning you don’t do anything except pour milk into the espresso," said Anne Nylander, one of the judges for the night. “So it makes these interlapping designs that often look like, um, hearts is a really common design. We also have a design called a rosetta, which looks like a flower a little bit or a leaf. And then we also have a pour called a ‘tulip’ which is three hearts or more layered on top of one another.”
The judges make their decisions based on a lot of criteria, such as contrast and definition between the milk and the coffee, also how intricate and difficult the design is weighs heavily.
When the judges point to the winning cup, the crowd erupts into cheers. They’re all packed against the counter, trying to see the designs. Marcelino Martinez is one of them. As a competitor, he’s a little nervous about what he’s seeing.
“Yeah, the tension definitely builds up, you know, seeing everybody, how good they’re doing, and you kind of question yourself," said Martinez. "Then again, you’ve got to get back in your head like you can do it. You know? It’s all about holding your nerves really, more than anything, besides skill set for sure.”
With all this effort going into the art, you’ve got to wonder what it does for the coffee itself. Can you taste a winner? Not really. Liu says he heard the skill described this way.
“Latte art is really like the frosting on top of the frosting on a cake," said Liu. "You know, the cake is gonna taste the same no matter what, but the latte art is kind of just making it prettier. It’s like the piping.”
Still, getting to this level of talent means a lot of coffee-making experience, which generally means better coffee. But tonight’s about the milk, and at the end, one barista is left standing: Pasadena Intelligentsia’s John Martin.
There are hugs and back slaps but no hard feelings among the competitors. It’s all about the community of coffee, which is a widespread community. All the money collected tonight is going to help baristas in New York who lost work because of Hurricane Sandy.
Author Yann Martel on seeing his 'Life Of Pi' come to life on the big screen
Ang Lee's epic "Life of Pi" opens in theaters today, and it's already gotten some of the best reviews of any movie this year. It's
Based on the best-selling novel published 11 years ago, translation from page to screen was a long and tedous job involving a number of writers and directors who stuggled with the project before Lee succeeded.
Watching, a little amused by it all, was the book's author, Yann Martel.
KPCC's Patt Morrison tracked him down at his home in Saskatchewan to find out more about how how he felt about the movie, and its strange journey to the screen.
Airlines see improvement in accuracy of arrival and departure times
At some time today, many people are likely heading to the airport, hoping against hope that their flights won't be delayed. You might want to get out of the door and into your car, or your taxi or airport shuttle a little earlier.
Although it might not seem this way, so far this year, 83 percent of all flights took off within 15 minutes of schedule. That's the highest level since 2003, according to the Department of Transportation.
It varies widely from airline to airline, but overall, the industry has been focusing on improving departure and arrival times. It's a process which involves many complex calculations and not so complex practical considerations.
Ray Neidl, senior airlines analyst with Maxim Group, joins the show to explain what's involved in making at least the travel part of your Thanksgiving a little less stressful
LAX workers stage protest ahead of busy Thanksgiving holiday
Nearly two million people are expected to travel through Los Angeles International Airport over the long Thanksgiving weekend. But a march by hundreds of LAX workers this afternoon is threatening to shut down Century Blvd, the main route into the airport.
The employees are protesting what their union calls "unfair labor practices."
KPCC's Ben Bergman joins us now from LAX.
Putting a multicultural spin on the classic Thanksgiving feast
Every Thanksgiving, generations of immigrant families have eaten, or at least tried to eat, the traditional Thanksgiving turkey. It's a dish prized for its simplicity. A roasted turkey rubbed with salt and pepper, stuffed with a delicious mix of breadcrumbs, chopped celery, onion and seasonings. Some of us get fancier than that, but that's the gist, right?
But here's a little secret: some newcomers, and not-so-newcomers, tend to find the classic American bird a little bland, so they tweak the traditional turkey to fit their culture and palates. KPCC reporter Leslie Berestein-Rojas is here to give us a taste of what different families in Southern California bring to the table.
Every Thanksgiving I've heard my Cuban dad say the same thing "sabe a corcho," he thinks it tastes like cork. And I've heard people who's parents have come from the other side of the planet and they related more or less the same stories.
Not to disrespect the turkey, but unless you come from somewhere in the world where turkey's eaten and even if you do come from a place where turkey is eaten but the food is a little spicier or more savory, the classic butter-basted bird is a little mild.
It's a tradition and its a novelty for newcomers, but some people will try it once or twice and then they'll go back to eating what they'd normally eat for a holiday, tamales, pork. kabob, duck. Some families now, the first generation, they'll tolerate the turkey and the mashed potatoes once a year just so the kids can have it. This is where it starts getting creative, because people start adapting the turkey to their tastes.
This is what's lead to restaurants and delis in immigrant enclaves all over L.A. to start concocting their own Thanksgiving turkey meals for customers. For example, Mexican Oaxacan-style turkey or Chinese-style turkey.
It's interesting because turkey is eaten in Southern Mexico for special occasions, but its eaten very differently. A true Oaxacan style turkey isn't a big ceremonial bird, it's stewed, served in mole, so that's where the assimilation part comes in. When Oaxacans come here to the U.S. and they encounter Thanksgiving its not the turkey that they know.
Here's how Bricia Lopez of the Oaxacan restaurant Guelaguetza describes her family's turkey: "When we heard about the turkey we were like, 'Oh great, we're going to eat turkey again.' We never thought about cooking it the way Americans cook it, we started putting spices in there. My mom's version of stuffing has chorizo in it, which is typically totally Oaxacan."
This version of stuffing goes really well with a turkey seasoned with chiles and herbs, and then it's served, of course, with black mole. Her mom, restaurant owner Maria de Jesus Lopez, started making this at home for her family, but then she started making these orders for Thanksgiving customers at the restaurant. She was busy this week making orders and she showed me what goes into the stuffing.
"We use bell pepper, celery, rosemary and jalapeño chile and some walnuts and apples. We put it with bread, Mexicans we use bolillo, like a french roll, and we want to put some chorizo," said Maria Lopez.
It's a real mix of customers who order Maria's turkeys, they tell me it's about 50-percent Mexican and 50-percent everyone else who wants to try a Oaxacan style turkey tastes like. Interestingly, they say a lot of Mexican-American customers who come in are more assimilated, second generation, their first-generation parents are still cooking their own meals.
Then there's a Chinese-style turkey, which is described as like a Chinese roasted duck. Manager Eric Yu at the U2 Cafe in Alhambra, he says they expect to sell about 500 birds this year.
"We marinate the turkey and then we put comes seasoning and Chinese herbs.," said Yu. "Then we hold it to blow it until the skin is crispy and dry. After that we put it in the oven and bake it for an hour and a half…a lot of Chinese or Americans love it."
Of course they don't serve it with mashed potatoes you can take yours with a side of rice or noodles, and there are some places the stuff the bird with sticky rice.
Now these are just some of the turkeys that people are ordering to take home, but a lot of this creativity is going on in individual kitchens all over town and you're likely to encounter turkeys that are seasoned Vietnamese style, Indian style, Cuban style, you name it.
I've eaten Cuban-style turkey for years. The answer is mojo, there's this garlicky, sour orange marinade that Cubans use and they usually marinate pork in it, the ceremonial meat that we'll eat for Christmas. So he's spent years marinating this turkey trying his best to make it taste like lechón and it kind of worked, it still tasted like turkey, but it smelled fantastic.
'Skirt Steak' examines how female chefs stand the heat
In the world of restaurant kitchens, most professional chefs are men. Food journalist Charlotte Druckman wanted to find out what it's like to be a woman behind the hot front lines of a professional kitchen.
In her new book "Skirt Steak: Women Chefs On Standing The Heat And Staying In The Kitchen," Druckman interviews 70 of the country's top female chefs about their recipe for survival in the male dominated industry.
Grinell College guard breaks NCAA record with 138 points in a single game
Last night in Iowa, Grinell College beat Faith Baptist Bible, 179 to 104. Normally, that wouldn't make national news but this was not your usual game. Grinell's guard Jack Taylor scored 138 points all by himself, shattering the NCAA record by 25 points
David Arsenault is an assistant basketball coach at Grinell.
A few thoughts on how we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday
As we roll into Thanksgiving weekend, KPCC's Steve Proffitt joins us with some thoughts, and a few facts, about the modern celebration of this great American holiday.
The day before Thanksgiving, or really the evening before, has become one of the biggest party nights of the year, rivaling even the all-time champion, New Year's Eve.
College kids, young people, even ancient mariners such as myself find ourselves back in our home towns, or our old friends come back to our town. It's a time to reconnect, and clearly, a time to imbibe. Bars, taverns, honky-tonks and cocktail lounges, they will be doing land office business tonight.
And really, it's not like Christmas, when you have to worry about last-minute gifts, or New Year's when you have to worry about who you are going to kiss at midnight. I guess you can get anxious about your turkey, but really, it's a low pressure holiday, and a lot of people like to kick it off with some serious bar hopping.
The Holiday Creep Phenomenon
Today, about half the KPCC staff has taken the day off to get home, or just to get ready for a big night of partying. More and more schools are closing on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and, well, here's a personal anecdote. I teach a journalism class at USC, and yesterday fully half my class was missing. AWOL.
It used to be you took Thursday off and you were back to work on Friday. Now, Wednesday is a wash. Tuesday is not being taken seriously. At this rate, within a generation, Thanksgiving will be a week-long holiday, and then we can start chipping away on the Friday before Thanksgiving. Of course, the Monday after, it's already a banner day for absenteeism. Holiday creep.
The Retail Version of Holiday Creep
This year we have the controversial Thanksgiving night retail sales, where you have employees, cranberry sauce still staining their chins, trying to perform their sales clerk duties while fighting back the tryptophan-induced lethargy brought on by their turkey over-consumption.
This sort of retail creep goes back to the '80s. Before then, it was just bad form to start pumping in Christmas music and having sales until after Thanksgiving. But Wal-Mart, Target, other big retailers, began moving their Christmas sales activities forward, creeping toward Halloween, and even earlier.
Now they have gobbled up Thanksgiving itself, and next, they may figure out that if we adopt the European tradition of Christmastime — celebrating the full twelve days of Christmas — they can extend the shopping season into the New Year. Which will lead workers to find reasons to extend their holiday to include the 13th and 14th days of Christmas.
That gets us well into January. Then, they can pop in for a few days of pretending to be productive before taking Friday off for a long Inauguration Day weekend. Oh, hell, why not Thursday, too. Only happens once every four years.
Grammar Girl breaks down the meaning behind Thanksgiving terms
Well it's time now for another installment in our regular series of conversations with Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty! She's a superhero of the English language.
She's back today to give us a little Thanksgiving refresher course before the big meal, you know, to save you from embarrassing yourself in front of great-aunt Mabel.
The impact of Israel's success with the Iron Dome system
Despite the new ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the violence continues. The fighting is supposed to stop at 9 p.m. in Israel and Palestine.
Earlier today, 22 people were wounded when a bomb exploded on a bus outside Israel's military headquarters in Tel Aviv. Hamas did not claim responsibility, but it praised the attack. As of now, 111 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict began, including 56 civilians. Three Israelis have been killed.
Israel has been able protect its civilian population with its Iron Dome missile defense system. This is the first major test of the system and it's getting high marks for its effectiveness.
Abraham Sofaer, a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, who studies national security, joins the show.
Israel and Hamas agree on cease fire
After a week of fighting, a cease fire has been announced between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza strip. More than 140 Palestinians and five Israelis have been killed in the violence.
The announcement was just made at a press conference in Cairo held by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr.
The cease fire is set to take place at 9 pm local. Cairo is freelance reporter Noel King joins the show with more information on this breaking news.
'Chasing Ice' doc uses timelapse to expose ice loss in Arctic
Five years ago, Stanford student Jeff Orlowski landed a great gig working as a videographer for National Geographic photographer James Balog.
Balog was attempting the first expedition of what would become a long mission to use timelapse photography to track climate change and ice loss in the world's most extreme environments. Orlowski didn't know it then, but that first trip would turn into his new documentary, "Chasing Ice," which opens in Los Angeles on Friday in selected theaters.
'The Slumbering Masses' looks at how society, not biology, solidified modern sleep habits
It sure would be wonderful if someone came along and said, "You don't have to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep to be healthy, just stop feeling so guilty!"
Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer is the author of "The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life."
He's here to tell us that our modern ideas about sleep habits have less to do with health and medicine and more to do with social norms and historical trends.
SoCal's top baristas compete for best latte art title in Downtown LA
If you are a coffee drinker, you may have noticed a growing trend: latte art. It’s when baristas pour steamed white milk on top of the dark brown espresso in such a way that it leaves designs on the top of your drink. It takes a lot of skill to pull off, and now it’s become a competition amongst top baristas. Jed Kim has more.
It’s the final Thursday Night Throwdown of the season in Los Angeles, and hundreds of people have packed into a small coffee shop in Downtown L.A. Baristas from all over Southern California are here to compete.
Jonathen Liu, bullhorn-wielding organizer of the event, writes a list of names on a giant sheet of posterboard.
“That is our tournament bracket. We’ve been doing this since January. This is actually the ninth one we’ve done," said Liu.
There are latte art tournaments all over the country, and each has its own way of doing things. Liu came up with L.A.’s format: each person pays an entry fee. Then, they face off in pairs. Whichever one wins goes onto the next round, and so on until there’s a champion. Normally, the winner would take all the money, but tonight is for charity. Instead, they’re fighting for prizes and bragging rights.
Two competitors stand next to each other at an espresso machine. They don’t pull their own shots. Instead, someone else does that for everyone so competitors can focus solely on steaming and pouring their milk. As the contestants pour the milk, it leaves pools of white color on top. Adjusting the pour affects the way those pools are shaped.
“This style of latte art is called free-pour latte art, meaning you don’t do anything except pour milk into the espresso," said Anne Nylander, one of the judges for the night. “So it makes these interlapping designs that often look like, um, hearts is a really common design. We also have a design called a rosetta, which looks like a flower a little bit or a leaf. And then we also have a pour called a ‘tulip’ which is three hearts or more layered on top of one another.”
The judges make their decisions based on a lot of criteria, such as contrast and definition between the milk and the coffee, also how intricate and difficult the design is weighs heavily.
When the judges point to the winning cup, the crowd erupts into cheers. They’re all packed against the counter, trying to see the designs. Marcelino Martinez is one of them. As a competitor, he’s a little nervous about what he’s seeing.
“Yeah, the tension definitely builds up, you know, seeing everybody, how good they’re doing, and you kind of question yourself," said Martinez. "Then again, you’ve got to get back in your head like you can do it. You know? It’s all about holding your nerves really, more than anything, besides skill set for sure.”
With all this effort going into the art, you’ve got to wonder what it does for the coffee itself. Can you taste a winner? Not really. Liu says he heard the skill described this way.
“Latte art is really like the frosting on top of the frosting on a cake," said Liu. "You know, the cake is gonna taste the same no matter what, but the latte art is kind of just making it prettier. It’s like the piping.”
Still, getting to this level of talent means a lot of coffee-making experience, which generally means better coffee. But tonight’s about the milk, and at the end, one barista is left standing: Pasadena Intelligentsia’s John Martin.
There are hugs and back slaps but no hard feelings among the competitors. It’s all about the community of coffee, which is a widespread community. All the money collected tonight is going to help baristas in New York who lost work because of Hurricane Sandy.
Author Yann Martel on seeing his 'Life Of Pi' come to life on the big screen
Ang Lee's epic "Life of Pi" opens in theaters today, and it's already gotten some of the best reviews of any movie this year. It's
Based on the best-selling novel published 11 years ago, translation from page to screen was a long and tedous job involving a number of writers and directors who stuggled with the project before Lee succeeded.
Watching, a little amused by it all, was the book's author, Yann Martel.
KPCC's Patt Morrison tracked him down at his home in Saskatchewan to find out more about how how he felt about the movie, and its strange journey to the screen.