The Food Network’s Chopped has a reasonable premise. Great chefs do not need recipes to work with good ingredients. We amateurs in the audience can learn from how the pros handle the ingredients. That’s the premise of the successful “Iron Chef America” program, and it works in that show. … The problem with Chopped is that it artificially overconstrained in a way that diminishes the culinary craft in favor of unrelated skills. How about adding a hungry dog to the kitchen or having only two burners on the stove? That might be fun, but it would have nothing to do with good cooking.

The Camelback Inn is a Marriott luxury resort in the Scottsdale area, north of Phoenix. They started serving Sunday brunch again in September. They were closed for however long it takes to spend $50 million remodeling the building having the restaurants and the registration desk. Brunch at the Camelback Inn was long fabled as a place where important people enjoyed fine food. G. Gordon Liddy and Sandra Day O’Connor are said to have dined there, although not necessarily at the same table.