Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, July 21, 2018

8

FOOD & DRINK

Mountain Views-News Saturday, July 21, 2018 


TABLE FOR TWO by Peter Dills

thechefknows@yahoo.com

TO REVIEW OR NOT REVIEW?

 This is the question: when is a restaurant fair game for a 
review? With the popularity of Yelp and message boards on 
the internet, it seems that the feeding frenzy of reviews begins 
as soon as a restaurant opens its doors. We can’t blame social 
media, however. Even before everyone and their sister became 
a restaurant blogger, newspapers big and small wanted “their 
guy” to be the first to review the new kid in town. What is the 
difference between a movie review and restaurant review? In my 
mind, plenty. A movie will be edited to pieces and previewed 
a hundred times before it hits the screen - many times the 
ending will be changed or the musical score played with - you 
get the picture. I have been doing this long enough to know the 
opening day general manager and executive chef probably won’t 
be around by the first anniversary anyway. 

 Merrill Shindler from KABC Radio feels that if a restaurant 
is charging full fare they are open to a full review. My dear 
departed dad, Elmer Dills, thought six months was sufficient 
time to iron out any kinks. He’d say, “the paint isn’t dry yet!” and 
that’s actually what led me to this article. I went to the new Nick’s 
Restaurant on South Lake the other night, and I could smell the 
paint (I really could!). Pasadena “godfather” of restaurants, 
Gregg Smith, told me he felt six weeks was plenty of time to get 
the act together - if you can’t succeed in six weeks, you are in trouble. The smart restaurants do what is 
called a soft opening - limited hours, limited menu, and discounted food. That gives the restaurant plenty 
of time to get to know their community and the guests can sample the menu. I tend to get pretty good vibes 
about a restaurant, maybe you do too? Will it make it, is there parking, is the bar area cool? Sure, during 
the first week the food may be slow to come out or your chosen drink isn’t quite like the one by your favorite 
bartender, but the restaurant itself is fluid; it has life. My approach is simple: I’ll write a ”first impression” 
review, and then go back in six months for an update. I will usually find a totally different restaurant at that 
point. Or at least I hope I do. 

 Follow me and my updates on Facebook. Peter Dills


Scientists working on NASA’s Juno mission to 
Jupiter shared a 3-D infrared movie depicting 
densely packed cyclones and anticyclones that 
permeate the planet’s polar regions, and the first 
detailed view of a dynamo, or engine, powering the 
magnetic field for any planet beyond Earth. Those 
are among the items unveiled during the European 
Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, 
Austria.

 Juno mission scientists have taken data collected 
by the spacecraft’s Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper 
(JIRAM) instrument and generated the 3-D fly-
around of the Jovian world’s north pole. Imaging in 
the infrared part of the spectrum, JIRAM captures 
light emerging from deep inside Jupiter equally well, 
night or day. The instrument probes the weather 
layer down to 30 to 45 miles below Jupiter’s cloud 
tops. The imagery will help the team understand 
the forces at work in the animation—a north pole 
dominated by a central cyclone surrounded by eight 
circumpolar cyclones with diameters ranging from 
2,500 to 2,900 miles.

 “Before Juno, we could only guess what Jupiter’s 
poles would look like,” said Alberto Adriani, 
Juno co-investigator from the Institute for Space 
Astrophysics and Planetology, Rome. “Now, with 
Juno flying over the poles at a close distance it 
permits the collection of infrared imagery on 
Jupiter’s polar weather patterns and its massive 
cyclones in unprecedented spatial resolution.”

 Another Juno investigation discussed during 
the media briefing was the team’s latest pursuit 
of the interior composition of the gas giant. One 
of the biggest pieces in its discovery has been 
understanding how Jupiter’s deep interior rotates.

 Prior to Juno, we could not distinguish between 
extreme models of Jupiter’s interior rotation, 
which all fitted the data collected by Earth-based 
observations and other deep space missions,” said 
Tristan Guillot, a Juno co-investigator from the 
Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France. “But Juno 
is different—it orbits the planet from pole to pole 
and gets closer to Jupiter than any spacecraft ever 
before. Thanks to the amazing increase in accuracy 
brought by Juno’s gravity data, we have essentially 
solved the issue of how Jupiter’s interior rotates: 
The zones and belts that we see in the atmosphere 
rotating at different speeds extend to about 1,900 
miles.

 “At this point, hydrogen becomes conductive 
enough to be dragged into near-uniform rotation 
by the planet’s powerful magnetic field.”

 The same data used to analyze Jupiter’s rotation 
contain information on the planet’s interior 
structure and composition. Not knowing the 
interior rotation was severely limiting the ability 
to probe the deep interior. “Now our work can 
really begin in earnest—determining the interior 
composition of the solar system’s largest planet”, 
said Guillot.

 Juno was built by Lockheed Martin and is 
operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The 
spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral Air 
Force Station on August 5, 2011, and entered a polar 
orbit of Jupiter on July 5, 2016.

 Juno’s mission is to measure Jupiter’s 
composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar 
magnetosphere. It will also search for clues about 
how the planet formed, including whether it has a 
rocky core, the amount of water present within the 
deep atmosphere, mass distribution, and its deep 
winds, which can reach speeds up to 384 mph.

 You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.com.

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