Nostalgia Diaries, Pt. 26: The mid-00s NCAA Tournaments

March Madness holds a weirdly special place in my heart. I don't know how common I am among the millenial sports fan in the US, in that my peak interest in college basketball's amazing postseason tournament was probably the mid-00s (middle school and high school). This is probably swayed by the fact I went to a college without a real sports scene, and other than living vicariously through friends who did, and two bracket wins as an adult (2019, 2024), the interest has slowly waned. It reached its nadir this year, where I really didn't care at all about the bracket. I know very little of the teams. Granted, of course I'll be there Thursday through Sunday, watching for the close games, the buzzer beaters, the upsets. But in the back of my mind, and my heart, I'll harken back to a simpler time where this tournament was just more dependably meaningful.

Overtime, I think I've come to realize the main reason: when I'm young, things ending at 12am - 1am seemed super, super late. I'm now used to staying up to that time all the time on weekdays, and usually later on weekends. But back in 2004-2008, that was well past my bedtime - at least at the start of that era. And therein lies the allure - the lateness of it all. My distinct memory, seared into my brain as a never-ending piece of nostalgia, was the 2005 2nd Round game between West Virginia (#7 seed in the West Region) and Wake Forest (#2 seed, featuring Chris Paul). It was a fairly notable double-overtime game that West Virginia won, introducing the world to Mike Gansey and Kevin Pittsnogle (who would go on to bigger and better things with West Virginia the next year). And I watched their dramatic win by not watching it, but listening to it broadcasted on WFAN in my radio-enabled walkman. But still I can just picture it.

So is the mindset of a kid experiencing things past his bedtime before his years. I don't know why but particularly those first few mid-00s years, before I got a laptop, and before they started streaming every game online, many of those memories came with a radio attached. It was a radio I was listening to that same year in 2005 when Bucknell knocked out Kansas. It was a same radio the next when Wichita State beat Tennessee. It was the weirdest way to be capturing the sport. At some point I'll write a whole nostalgia diaries about WFAN as a whole, but it's weird looking back how that radio-enabled walkman, kept under my pillow, mattered in those days.

There was also just the lateness of it all. The weird names, the weird courts (this was the area before they overstylized everything and branded every court. They would just play games through the Elite Eight on normal courts. It all changed I believe around 2007. This is when the next great invention was created, somethign that seems benign now but was incredibly novel at the time - the invention of MarchMadness.com that streamed every game.

It seems quaint now but until TBS/Turner took on part of the NCAA program, you could oinly watch on CBS and while they did rotate games around at times, it largely was you being stuck with what they wanted to show. The one real exception to that was taht old streaming service. The quality was spotty, but damn did it work - allowing you to just flip back and forth from game to game. And more than that, they invented the boss button, that wierd toggle that brought up some static excel-like window. It probably wouldn't hold up to the tiniest bit of scrutiny, but for what was still early Web2.0 at the time, man was it cool.

I probably do like the fact that today you can, in theory, watch every game on TV. You are in control. But honestly, back in the MarchMadness.com days, you were in control too - if anything, having a keen eye and dexterity to switch games all the time was an even more important skill. The true masters (like me) could enjoy the entire tournament when mere mortals were left to the whims of CBS.

But in the end, I think what makes that era the most magical was it was before I really got a true understanding of the strategy of the NBA. What has hurt college basketball for me over the years is just how jarringly bad the play is compared to the NBA. Granted, that disparity is even bigger in college football vs the NFL, but still - as I got more into the strategy of the NBA (the onset of which was the 2010-2014 Spurs), college seemed way too plodding. But in the mid-00s that wasn't an issue (the NBA game was fairly plodding at the time anyway), and the games seemed dramatic. The names rang louder. It all seemed bigger, and that brings me to the last element of this. The first was the fact 1am finishes seemed like stealing candy. The second was the advent of MarchMadness.com. And the third might be the most important: it was the brief window before the one-and-done era.

I forget what year it was, maybe 2014 or something, but someone on Twitter wrote something eye-opening that, with teh possible exception of the 2012 Kentucky team, all the Final Four participants from 2007-2009 would wipe the floor with those of 2010-2014. Now, that's probably a bit hyperbole, but there is some truth. Firstly, that era had some consistency - from the three straight UCLA teams. To the Hansborough / Lawson UNC team from 2006-2009. It had some great Kansas teams, including the upperclass-heavy 2008 Title team. It had Scottie Reynolds who played roughly eleven seasons for Villanova, cresting in 2009. It had of course the back-to-back Florida team. It had names that rang out. That just doesn't happen anymore. Sure, maybe it is because the ringing was more present and persistent given it was coming often out of a grainy radio, but whatever it is, March Madness was never better for me than 16-20 years ago.

My Favorite Restaurants: Top 40 Tasting, Pt. 3 (#10 - #1)

10.) Pujol  (Mexico City - 2018)

Pujol is Mexico City's best or 2nd best restaurant, going back and forth with Quintonil (haven't been). It was the first on this list to be featured on Chef's Table with chef/owner Enrique Olvera. On the downside, there were only six listed courses which expanded to eight with a few extras thrown in. On the plus side, each was immaculate, from the famous baby-corn coated in a sauce made from ants, to a perfectly cooked octopus, to another perfectly cooked dish with lamb chops and a green mole. Even the desserts with their mango dessert and best churro you will ever have were both excellent. But of course, one cannot talk about Pujol without talking about the Mole Madre dish, their centerpiece, which is just a plate with two concentric circles of dark and light mole, with nopal tortillas. It seems crazy to serve just that as effectively the main course - but it is truly unbelievable. It is accepted people will go as far to lick the last drop of mole off the plate. It truly was a showstopper of a dish that elevates a bunch of other really great dishes.

9.) Salon  (Cape Town - 2024)

One of my only real regrets through all my trips to Cape Town is taht I never made it to The Test Kitchen, which for years was the premier single restaurant in Cape Town. Bookings were frighteningly tough. Then Luke Dale Roberts closed it during Covid, but I guess got the itch back to open a fine dining spot. It was incredible, a culinary tour through all the spots the Chef Roberts has worked or taken inspiration from. Brilliant South African dishes to be sure, but also a foie gras take on black forest cake, a brilliant "tamale" dish featuring the most Mexican of flavor profiles, to a brilliant play on Duck l'Orange, to authentic Korean to end it. It was all brilliant. In isolation, maybe you would worry about how successfully a place could pull off all these different cuisines, but apparently Mr. Luke Dale Roberts is a talented, worldly man - and after going to Salon, if anything I rue not having gone to The Test Kitchen even more.

8.) Mingles  (Seoul - 2022)

Mingles is Seoul's top ranked restaurant, and after going I can see why. It was a classic tasting menu shop, with sharp clarity on its menu, its decor, its everything. It also had a really nice 'Korean Liquor' pairing along with the wine pairing, something I took that got me to taste various different Korean localized liquors. The meal itself was great, with some of the best, most interesting dishes I've had, such as a great king-crab two ways dish, a brilliant take on surf & turf (pork & squid stuffed oyster, along with a braised beef cube), to an incredible lamb three ways dish as the primary main. The vegetable dishes were also spectacular, such as a corn soup dish that opened my eyes to just how sweet corn can be. Mingles was a special restaurant showcasing the best of modern Korean cuisine.\

7.) I Pupi  (Sicily - 2019)

This was the second tasting course meal we had in our trip to Italy in 2019, and while the first one - Imago in Rome - was a big disappointment, the seafood-forward I Pupi in Bagheria, Sicily (about 30 min away from Palermo) was incredible. Their first course of a random assortment of small bites was inspired, each being seafood forward. The second plate which was a platter with six nigiri on it with six different salts to add on top was divine, and while not 'Italian' in any way was just an insane dish. The rest of the meal got more Italian, but still small, focused, refine, seafood plates, from a zuchinni noodle wrapped fish, to an incredible soup, to lamb chops (the only meat). Each dish was so well put together, alternating from amazing small bites to dishes that approached the size of a normal restaurant starter, to everything in between. This was just a fabulous meal and such a nice comeback after being disappointed with Imago earlier in that trip.

6.) Borago  (Santiago - 2024)

Central gets all the notoriety from showcasing native food and different altitudes and all that stuff. Deservedly so - it is still to come. But the Chilean version, to some degree, is nearly as good. Rodolfo Guzman's restaurant was the highlight of my trip to Santiago, with some staggering dishes. From a paper scallop with a bright blue algae sauce, to a staggering monkfish and lobster cooked in seaweed. There were incredible small bites to start, like a little makeshift bumblebee of honey and a Chilean corn. And of course that final dish, that Patagonian lamb - just a piece of lamb, roasted over a fire for 24 hours. Much like say it takes balls for Enrique Olvera to serve mole as the main dish at Pujol, so too is it here serving a piece of lamb with no sauce, no sides. Nothing - and it was truly perfect. As was Borago more or less as a whole.

5.) Maido  (Lima - 2016, 2022)

Maido will always have a soft spot for me as it was the first tasting menu spot I went to, at a time where I didn't really know just how well reputed it was. We went for lunch, unable to get a dinner reservation but the menu is the same either way. It is a japanese-peruvian kaiseke meal that is just perfectly designed, executed, presented and crafted. 13 courses, all seafood based, all incredible, from various nigiris, to incredible takes on ceviche, to a choripan of fish & octopus sausage, to a very complicated but inredible soup decanted in front of you. Even the deserts of sea urchin and what they call the 'reef' which is a giant edible reef rock, are wild. I'm sure there are places in Japan that are just as good and more 'authentic', but this is my favorite take on Japanese cuisine ever. Just now I remember being mesmerized at each dish, on how it looked when it was brought out, on the complexity of the way it is described and of course on how it tasted. This, and to be fair the two above it, are peerless for me in the sense that I have zero idea how to recreate any of these dishes. They are simple while being complex, each ingredient, each little piece just so perfect. I hope to go Lima's other world reknowned restaurant Central at some point (maybe even this year, to which I will have to likely re-write this list to add it in), but if we could only go to one premier spot last time, Maido was a perfect pick.

4.) Gaggan Anand  (Bangkok - 2022)

Because of many reasons, I'm going to rank my 2nd trip to a Gaggan Anand restaurant separately from the first one. One reason is it technically is a different restaurant, in a different space. Another is the experience was different - this is a restaurant where he serves just at a chef's table to a group of 14 people. And the biggest difference was Gaggan Anand himself was present, was there to talk to the patrons, the entire thing being equally an experience along with the food. The food was still great, with some of the most inventive dishes I've ever had with insane preparations that he explained so well. It still had all the measure of excitement, like random things that tasted like tom yum soup, or charcoal chicken balls or a dried paper lightly filled that tasted just like hummus. It was classic Gaggan, classic modern cooking, and the only restaurant on this list whre the Chef was there to personally chat with and serve to the customers. The old restaurant is higher up the lsit because at the end I think the food was even better, but my second trip to a Gaggan was about as good as I could have imagined.

3.) Azurmendi  (Bilbao - 2021)

Azurmendi came as close as any meal I've had to unseating what might be a lifetime pick at #1. The basque restaurant certainly met it for downright creativity and presentation. From the picnic basket of small bites, to the greenhouse where they were literally picking up roses from a garden bed before you realized it was sorbet, to of course each incredible bite at the table. All in all they technically had 27 dishes, almost all of which were excellent in their design, freshness, preparation and ultimately taste. My favorites of the small bites were the cod fish brioche and the truffle meringue, just incredible little bites. The daiquiri rose was incredible, from presentation to taste. The asparagurus three ways and play on fish taco were divine. The tempura oyster was maybe the best bite I've ever had, and the ending dishes of cod tart and iberico pork were just sublime. They have a rich tapestry to which to create from local produce and Iberian meats and fishes, but Eneko Atxa's brilliant mind puts it to incredible use.

2.) Central  (Lima - 2022)

Very likely next year Central will be named the best restaurant in the wrold by San Pellegrino in their World's Best 50 list. It is well deserved (the restaurant ranked above it for me has reached similar heights on the same list). The dishes are both uniformly incredibly tasty, and ridiculously inventive. As shown on his turn on Chef's Table, what chef Virgilio Martinez and his team create are art pieces, they're stunning, they're beautiful, they look as good as any dishes I've had, and they were all very good. From dishes made out of random amazonian vegetables, to amazonian fish, to incredibly weird lattice things, to some of the most inventive desserts I've had, including a panoply of peruvian chocolate as the final dish. The best part of the restaurant is how focused the theme is, with showcasing hte beauty of Peru across elevations and its various weird ingredients. It may not have been as many courses as it was in its height pre-covid (I believe 18, now down to 14) but I can only imagine what the four extra would have been.

1.) Gaggan  (Bangkok - 2019)

I don't know if any restaurant will ever top Gaggan, which had so much hype entering in, having seen it on Chef's Table, see it rise up the world rankings, and it being Indian focused. I was expecting a lot, and it somehow overdelivrered. The 25 course menu was just perfect from the start of audacious versions of famous Indian street food (still unsure how my little bit of what looked like a cracker with foam and curry leaf tasted like idli sambar), to the mains of prawn balchao, decronstructed curries, a perfect lamb leg, and multiple Japanese dishes during Gaggan's Japanese phase. The setting, sitting at the chef's table watching his sous chef's go to work, with Gaggan's noted love of Heavy Metal ringing through the speakers, was a delight. IT was so well paced, 25 dishes of 3:30, never once making you feel like you're being rushed through each delectable dish. It is astounding to think this is what is possible with Indian food, that this is how good a menu can be even if you limit yourself to just five meat courses in the 25, and how great an atmosphere, a perspective, a cuisine and a legendary chef can concoct together.