The Show for Aug. 26, 2026: Plans for importing water, the Michelin star process and more

As Arizona prepares to deal with less Colorado River water, the state is moving forward with water augmentation projects. What some of those ideas look like. And, Arizona could get its first Michelin star this week.

Transcript

ANNOUNCER: KJZZ’s original production, The Show, is supported by Banner Health, Arizona’s largest nonprofit healthcare system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health: Nonprofit for Arizona. bannerhealth.com/nonprofitforaz.

LAUREN GILGER: Hi, I’m Lauren Gilger, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday, we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here’s today’s episode.

MARK BRODIE: Good morning, it’s The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: And I’m Lauren Gilger. Coming up, where Arizona could look to bring more water into the state.

MARK BRODIE: And Michelin inspectors have been secretly eating at Arizona restaurants. Who might get a star?

LAUREN GILGER: But first, the dust has settled and despite some major efforts, there will not be any citizen initiatives on this year’s ballot. Citizen initiatives have been one of the few ways voters in Arizona have bypassed the legislature to make some pretty significant changes to state law in the past, from establishing the constitutional right to an abortion to raising the minimum wage, to legalizing medical and then recreational marijuana.

But over the years, the Republican-controlled state Legislature has made it a lot harder to get those citizen initiatives on the ballot. And this year’s attempt by public education advocates to give voters a chance to put restrictions on the state’s Empowerment Scholarship program is just the latest example. KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez has the story from our Politics Desk, and she is here in studio now to explain. Good morning, Camryn.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Good morning.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so first explain to us just how a citizen initiative works. These are the issues you can vote on on your ballot. You’ll see these questions yes or no, right? Sometimes there’s a pretty long list of them these days. Some of those get there because state lawmakers referred them to the ballot. Others go through this pretty extensive citizen initiative process. What does that look like?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It looks like a lot of signature gathering. So you have to have a coalition of folks and you probably have to have some funding behind you. ... But you basically start by hiring a group to help you gather signatures, and then you have to gather a massive amount of signatures to get your initiative on the ballot.

But it very likely would be challenged by a lawsuit, and that’s what’s been happening lately. It’s become sort of par for the course is citizen initiative effort immediately gets a legal challenge. So you also have to have money not just for the signature gathering effort, but also for an attorney. And only if it survives litigation does it make it to the ballot, and then you have to campaign on behalf of your citizen initiative.

So that is the process. And then if voters pass it, it goes into law, and it has a lot of protections. So as opposed to a normal bill going through the state Legislature, a voter-passed initiative has much more protections in state law and can’t as easily be undone.

LAUREN GILGER: How much money can a process like this cost, Camryn?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I’d say minimum $3 million — and you should probably have closer to two or three times that.

LAUREN GILGER: Oh, my gosh. OK, so I mentioned a couple of the big things that have been passed via citizen initiative here in the past. What are some of the ones that come to mind for you?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Arizona voters have made some really substantial changes to the state’s laws over time. The Clean Elections Commission itself was created by voters, and voters have made their opinion pretty clear on some issues, which has then crafted how the Legislature acts going forward because they don’t want to run afoul necessarily of citizen initiatives or spurn other ones that they don’t approve of. But I think abortion that you mentioned is probably the most significant one in recent memory, and that passed overwhelmingly.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, it did. How have lawmakers then, as we mentioned — mainly Republicans who have been in control of the state Legislature for a very long time — how have they made this process harder over the years?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It’s been sort of a chipping away process from them, and they themselves have been taking advantage of putting things on the ballot more over the last four years that we’ve had split government. So they’ve had to deal with Katie Hobbs in the Governor’s Office, and she’s been vetoing a lot of their partisan legislation. So they’ve been using the ballot as a way to bypass her with their legislative referrals.

But as the citizen initiative process goes, lawmakers have the ability to alter that in state law, and one of the things that they did that was very significant is took away the ability to pay per signature. And another one was to basically make the legal standard much stricter. So that allows citizen initiative petition sheets to basically be thrown out for any very small infraction.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. OK, so let’s talk about Prop. 212, or what would have been Prop. 212 had it made it to the ballot. It did not. This was an effort supported by the state’s teacher union, Save Our Schools Arizona. They gathered a reported 415,438 signatures. That’s a lot. They only needed about 256,600 signatures, but they could not prove they had enough signatures to make it to the ballot. How is that possible?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Yeah, and I think that situation has kind of reignited this discourse overall, because Democrats were like, "This is an uphill battle. This is untenable. If you’re turning in that many signatures and you still can’t do it, then nobody can do it." And I think there’s a lot of frustration there, but I don’t know that there’s going to be an appetite to change how things work with Republican state lawmakers.

Basically, the hurdles involve signatures getting thrown out by the tens of thousands for small — well, maybe not small — infractions. So things like duplicate signatures or you misdated or didn’t have your petition sheet notarized, that’s another thing that can get them thrown out. Or if one petition signature isn’t eligible for whatever reason, all of the signatures that they gathered get thrown out. So let’s say that one person collected 60,000 signatures. If that person is deemed invalid, none of those signatures count at all.

LAUREN GILGER: And that happened to a lot of signature gatherers this time around, sounds like.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It did.

LAUREN GILGER: One idea out there that’s been brought up by some of the people who are not happy that this didn’t make it to the ballot is that citizen initiatives, the people behind them, should be able to collect signatures online. We should say they are not; they’re out in person, often in the summer in Arizona, getting people to write down their names and addresses on a sheet and fill out the signatures that way. There’s a verified way to gather those signatures online already, right?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: It’s called E-Qual, yes. And that is something that I know at least a few state lawmakers brought up recently when Prop. 212 failed, and they were like, "Why don’t we just allow people to collect signatures online?" Like most petitions these days, if you want something to change and you start to gather money like a GoFundMe or a MoveOn or a Change.org, any effort like that typically has an online version. And state law requires you to go out with literal sheets of paper and collect signatures. You can go door-to-door, you can set up a booth and hope people walk up to you. ... It’s a longer process, it’s a more strenuous process — and I think potentially some of that is by design.

LAUREN GILGER: But that has not made it through the state Legislature, obviously, that idea to make this collectible online.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: No, it has not.

LAUREN GILGER: OK. Republican lawmakers, though, we should say, who have been behind many of those changes to make it harder to get initiatives on the ballot, have an argument to make, too. They say they’re not really citizen initiatives anymore, these are all out-of-state groups with big money. You talked to John Kavanagh at the Capitol. What did he have to say about this?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: He said he’s not losing any sleep over it. And yes, that was his argument. He was like, basically, "There are these big out-of-state interests that pour all of this money and influence into Arizona to get their agenda passed, and it’s not something that’s Arizona-specific or really coming from the Arizona grass roots, and that’s what we’re trying to discourage."

But then he also acknowledged that the so-called grass roots, like your average Joe, can’t really do this on their own because you have to have so much money, you have to have so much time, you have to have a coalition behind you. So you basically have to have a giant group and/or millionaires on your team. So if it’s not possible for them, it’s not really possible for anybody.

LAUREN GILGER: You think this’ll be something you hear about at the Capitol next coming session here?

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: I think maybe there’ll be an effort by some Democrats, because they’re in the minority, to try to make some of these changes that we talked about, like the E-Qual option. But I don’t know that I can see any of them getting passed.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. KJZZ’s Camryn Sanchez with our Politics Desk. Thank you, Camryn.

CAMRYN SANCHEZ: Thank you.

MARK BRODIE: As Arizona prepares to get less water from the Colorado River under recently announced plans from the federal government, the state is moving forward on plans to bring in more water from elsewhere. The Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, or WIFA, has approved what are called scopes of work for two water augmentation projects. There are a handful more that will follow. One of the initial projects involves recovering excess runoff in California; the other deals with treating wastewater, again, out of state. Chelsea McGuire is WIFA’s director. She joins me to talk more about these projects and what might come next. Chelsea, you’ve sort of whittled down these augmentation proposals, and now you have two that WIFA is pursuing more seriously. Is that right?

CHELSEA MCGUIRE: Sort of. We still have seven overall water importation proposals that we are going to look at more closely as an entity, but we have two that we have finalized the scope of work for what that looks like, for what kind of information we need to know about the project to allow the board to continue to make those go or no-go decisions as we learn more.

So we have two that are ready, they’re starting the work. We have five that are getting ready, and I think we anticipate we’ll be able to start that work by the end of September. But these two are ready to go.

MARK BRODIE: OK. So let’s talk about these two projects, and let’s start with the California groundwater storage and recharge. What exactly would this entail?

CHELSEA MCGUIRE: Absolutely. It’s a little bit of a misnomer in the name. There is going to be water stored in the ground, but it’s not groundwater as that is actually defined.

This is a project that would take excess runoff from California in a series of to-be-determined sites — that’s some of the information that we’re asking these teams to work on providing to us. It would take that excess water, it would store it underground, allow California to utilize that water however it sees fit, in exchange for a portion of California’s Colorado River water flowing instead to Arizona.

MARK BRODIE: So is it safe to say then that those two numbers would be roughly equal, like the amount of water from California’s allocation of the Colorado River Arizona gets is equivalent to the amount of excess water that California gets under this deal?

CHELSEA MCGUIRE: I wouldn’t say equal, I would say equitable. What we’re really looking for in this project and any of the projects that are before us is a win-win situation. California, we are hoping, wants this groundwater storage, or they want this excess water storage.

So if there’s a reason that they would need to take a higher cut of that and it would be more of a ratio of exchange, that’s something that we would work out with them. We’re not going into any of these projects assuming that we know what the needs of the state are in terms of the needs of California.

We’re not going into any of these projects assuming that we know what California is or isn’t willing to do. We’re going in saying, "We believe this is a possibility, we’d like to investigate this possibility with you, sort of a ’what would it take to get you in this water storage project today?’"

MARK BRODIE: Got it. OK. So the other proposal that is moving forward at this point is called the South Bay Potable Water Reuse. What does that one entail?

CHELSEA MCGUIRE: That one entails something that many of Arizona’s San Diego expats, at least during the summer, may be familiar with. There is a water treatment plant that treats wastewater from Tijuana, and a lot of us know that sometimes there’s some real issues with that plant. The effluent from that plant ultimately discharges into the Tijuana River and therefrom into the Pacific Ocean.

Unfortunately, that plant is kind of fraught with issues in terms of the infrastructure that’s there. There are pipes that break frequently. And so often there are water quality issues in the Pacific, and so we’re unable to swim in San Diego or in Coronado Island. And there’s also real water quantity and quality issues in Tijuana.

So again, speaking of win-win issues or win-win projects, this project would expand the existing treatment in South Bay for that wastewater coming from Mexico, expand the treatment in terms of instead of treating that water to effluent standards, treating it to potable standards so that it’s actually usable by humans. Then that treated water would flow back to Tijuana for their use, to help that community and to make sure that they have adequate water, again in exchange for a proportion of Mexico’s Colorado River water coming into Arizona.

One of the things that the board also talked quite a bit about in its meeting and that the team that’s developing that project talked quite a bit about is that there are options to change the way that this project is designed to either facilitate that exchange or to facilitate delivery of that water to a point perhaps above Morelos Dam.

So there’s some flexibility with this. So we’re very optimistic about something like this being the exact structure that we’re looking for. How do we solve multiple problems with one project, hopefully getting as much buy-in as we possibly can from all the impacted communities?

MARK BRODIE: So I’m curious about some of that flexibility, because I was going to ask if most of the projects or some number of the projects, these two anyway, seem like the additional water would not be made in Arizona, that it could potentially be brought here or it would be used somewhere else in exchange for that other place’s allocation of Colorado River water.

Does that seem to be maybe one of the easier ways to do this, that if you’re going to create more water, that it happens somewhere else and we just take their allocation of Colorado River water in exchange for that?

CHELSEA MCGUIRE: I certainly wouldn’t call any of these easy. But what I would say is that, yes, if you’re looking at — I guess I’ll answer this question in two ways. The first is that WIFA’s mission, our mandate, is actually that process of going out and developing those water sources outside of Arizona. That’s what our statute requires us to spend 75% of our augmentation funds doing.

And so part of it is that that’s where more water is. We don’t have a lot of excess water to develop in Arizona, and so we’re looking to our sister states, our sister nations, that either have access to an ocean or maybe have different water supplies available. So that’s part of why we’re looking there.

But to your point, part of why we are looking at so many of these as exchange options is that that’s most likely going to be the most economical way to make more water available in Arizona. As opposed to building the infrastructure to physically move a molecule of water from one place to another, it would be building the infrastructure to make that water available locally and then facilitating some sort of exchange on the river.

That may not always be possible, though, and we are at a point right now where I think everyone has quite a bit of attention on the Colorado River for very good reasons. So we do want to keep our options open.

MARK BRODIE: OK, so you mentioned economics, and I’m wondering what WIFA’s financial situation is at the moment, because I know that you’ve had concerns with money not being allocated or money potentially being swept for other purposes. What is your situation financially now to get some of these pilots off the ground?

CHELSEA MCGUIRE: What I will say is that financially we are in a very good position to get to the end decision-making side of the road, right, to get to the point where our board can say, "We know which of these projects or project is the best for Arizona to invest in."

Apart from that, though, when it actually comes to building that project, to investing in that project, to making it so that the water coming from that project is reasonably affordable, we’re definitely going to need to come back to the state and come back to others to say, "How do we make this happen?"

Now, we are under absolutely no impression that this water is not going to be significantly more expensive than any other water source that Arizona is used to, but that’s going to be the way of the future. When there isn’t a lot of water and when there’s not enough water to go around, expensive water becomes sort of the name of the game. It’s the thing that’s going to keep our portfolios afloat.

And so we fully anticipate the need to go back to the state legislature and say, “Look, there was a promise of $1 billion to WIFA. We have about a third of that. We are in a water crisis. Let’s figure out ways to make state resources available to continue to make these projects not just possible, but also palatable for the rest of the state.”

MARK BRODIE: All right, that is Chelsea McGuire, director of the Water Infrastructure Finance Authority of Arizona, otherwise known as WIFA. Chelsea, thanks as always, I appreciate it.

CHELSEA MCGUIRE: Thank you, Mark.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, it is The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, will an Arizona restaurant earn the state’s very first Michelin star?

DOMINIC ARMATO: Stars are tough, man. It’s one of those things where if you do all your eating in Phoenix, you think, “Wow, these are amazing restaurants,” and they are, and these folks do tremendous work. But then you start visiting some of these restaurants in other cities, and you start visiting these restaurants in other countries, and it’s like, these are some pretty good restaurants. It is an extremely high standard.

MARK BRODIE: We’ll hear from a Valley food critic about what the prestigious honor means ahead of the first-ever Southwest ceremony taking place tonight.

LAUREN GILGER: But first, invasive grasses like buffelgrass and stinknet have grown across large swaths of our Sonoran Desert, and they’re fueling wildfires, literally adding fuel to the fire. Now researchers from all three state universities are working together to figure out where those invasive grasses are, map them out and evaluate different approaches to try to manage them. It’s being done in partnership with the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management, funded by a Regents Grant from the Arizona Board of Regents. I spoke with two of the researchers on the project more about it: Andi Thode, a professor of fire ecology and management in the School of Forestry at NAU, and Fabio Albuquerque, associate professor at the School of Applied Sciences and Arts at ASU.

ANDI THODE: With the Sonoran Desert being the most biodiverse desert in the world, we also have a large diversity of invasive species that are causing problems, and they include grasses and forbs. So things like red brome, buffelgrass, fountain grass, stinknet and some Schismus species, which people sometimes call Mediterranean grass, are some of the bigger players in driving fire in these ecosystems. And the big issue with these is that our desert is really patchy, and these species have come in and filled in those open patches between the native vegetation, and that allows fire to carry through the deserts when fire didn’t before, and it’s something we call the grass-fire cycle.

LAUREN GILGER: Have we seen wildfires in the state that are really fueled by these kind of invasive grasses?

ANDI THODE: Yes, we’ve had some very distinct years for that, and those fires have gotten — some of them have gotten over 100,000 acres.

LAUREN GILGER: So when we talk about sort of the patchiness of the desert, I think what’s striking to me about what you just said there is that we don’t think of the desert as a place that’s really prone to wildfire. But are those species what’s changing that narrative?

ANDI THODE: Yes, absolutely. With those open patches, there wasn’t a lot of vegetation between our large palo verdes and mesquite trees and our saguaros. There was some shrubs here and there, but there was open ground, and that open ground is now filled with invasives, and that’s the problem. In certain years, it’s not every year, but it really is moisture dependent.

LAUREN GILGER: So this project is funded from a grant from the Arizona Board of Regents. It’s taking professors from all three state universities, and you two are representing two of them here. But the idea, it sounds like, is to get a better handle on where it is that these kind of invasive species are so that fire managers can be better prepared. Tell us, how do you approach something like this?

FABIO ALBUQUERQUE: Yes, so first thing to know is we need to fill gaps of knowledge. So a bigger problem, like Andi said, the invasive grasses, they can change the landscape, they can make more wildfires, they can make them more frequent, destructive. But what we don’t really know is where they are, right? And we do not really understand deeply their cycle in the desert. So we want to get that information first, so we can generate some information for managers, we can create some kind of risk maps where managers can visualize where these areas could be located over the space and maybe over the time, too.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, so if you don’t know where these non-native grasses have taken over, it’s difficult to predict where a wildfire might erupt.

FABIO ALBUQUERQUE: Correct. So knowing where these species are is the first step towards understanding the process.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so give us the logistics here. How do you go about mapping something like this? Is this like you have to physically fly over the place, drive out there?

FABIO ALBUQUERQUE: That’s a very good question. So we don’t have a lot of information, a lot of data on the field information. So we use some kind of modeling that would allow us to relate the basic information we have — so we don’t have a lot of information, right, where these species are located — we relate these locations with the environment that these species live in, and then we predict over the space. So we basically use modeling to predict where these species are over the space.

LAUREN GILGER: So, Andi, you’re on the forestry, fire management side of this. How would you like this data to be used by fire officials, right? Like you’re talking about support tools, like actual maps of this. Is this something you imagine them being able to look at in terms of how they’re treating these grasses, trying to get rid of them before wildfire season hits?

ANDI THODE: Yes, our project actually takes it a little further than this. We’re really going to be putting in some experiments on the ground to look at what sort of treatments people can do that would be most effective. That’ll be done in two different ways. One way will be looking at treatments that they’re already putting in and monitoring what they’re doing, and then another way will be putting in actual experimental blocks where we might try some new, novel treatments in areas across the desert.

LAUREN GILGER: What does that look like? What is the traditional approach to managing this versus some novel ideas?

ANDI THODE: Well, traditional approaches vary from hand pulling, mechanical pulling, to herbicide use. Some people have tried using fire. With the species that we have in the desert, that doesn’t always play well, but we’re looking at some alternatives to that, which is propane burning, which is a very targeted burning of just the invasives with very little damage to the natives, which is a completely different idea than using prescribed fire. So there’s a lot of different ways. Some people are even thinking about grazing with sheep and goats as a potential. And with all of these treatments, there’s pros and cons to them, and so the balance is finding what treatment can affect the non-native and invasive species the most while helping to do the least damage to the desert natives, which is actually a tricky thing to do.

LAUREN GILGER: Right, so you’re talking about burning the grasses that surround saguaros, which we want to keep, and not damaging the saguaros. Is that possible?

ANDI THODE: With this propane burning treatment, that is possible. There’s also people are looking at pruning some parts of the desert as well. You know, there’s a lot of different treatments that managers are doing out there, and in some places, they’re pulling from treatments that have been done in forest ecosystems and bringing those down to the desert. Those are really thought, many of them, to be inappropriate and actually doing some damage to the desert, but managers are also struggling to know what to do. So that’s the hope is that we can help move things forward in a sense where we have some data, we have some information, and we have a range of effectiveness and a range of knowledge on these and create sort of a menu of treatments.

FABIO ALBUQUERQUE: If they know where they are, if they know where higher risk is, they can target, they can monitor, they can do fire prevention, they can protect the habitat, so there are so many things that they can do that this mapping can help them to take these better decisions.

LAUREN GILGER: All right, well, lots to watch for in terms of how this comes about. That is Fabio Albuquerque, an associate professor at the School of Applied Sciences and Arts at ASU; Andi Thode, professor of fire ecology and management in the School of Forestry at NAU, principal investigator for this three-year project that’s just getting started. Fabio, Andi, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks for explaining this. Good luck with it.

ANDI THODE: Thank you so much, appreciate it.

FABIO ALBUQUERQUE: Thank you so much for the invitation. I appreciate it as well.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, it is The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Perishable food sold in California stores generally can no longer have sell-by dates on them under a new law that took effect last month.

Instead, food can have “best if used by” or “use by” dates listed. They can also have “best if frozen by” or “freeze by” dates. The idea is to make it clearer for consumers about how long they can keep food in their fridges or pantries, and also reduce the amount of food that’s thrown out.

With me to talk more about this is Margarethe Cooper, an associate professor of practice in the School of Animal and Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the University of Arizona. Margarethe, what do you think about this new California law?

MARGARETHE COOPER: Yeah, I think part of this has to do with some confusion on the part of the consumer with all the different kinds of labels that they might be seeing, and those can range anywhere from a “best if used by,” a “sell by,” or “use by.” And so having that additional “sell by” doesn’t really add value to the consumer. When we’re in the store and we see that, we might be misled by what that means. And typically, that is for inventory management for stores so that they have an idea on how long to display a product, so it’s not really a food safety date.

MARK BRODIE: It kind of makes sense, right? If I buy, let’s say, eggs at the grocery store and it says sell by a particular date, that doesn’t really tell me how much longer I can still eat those eggs or cook with those eggs after I’ve bought them, right?

MARGARETHE COOPER: Exactly.

MARK BRODIE: So do you think that the new labeling language will help address that problem?

MARGARETHE COOPER: I think it can help start clearing things up. I think there still is information that may be helpful for consumers to be aware of. For example, the “best if used by” date is going to tell a consumer the best flavor or quality of that food item, and it’s not really a purchase or safety date.

So regarding that, a lot of times we have food waste happening. In fact, across the US, it’s estimated upwards of 30% of food is wasted, and a lot of it does have to do with confusion on whether food is safe, wholesome to consume.

So these dates are a guideline. We also can use our senses to detect if there’s spoilage. And so those are going to be things like looking if a food item is slimy, if it has an odor to it and so on. So you may be able to see, smell that something is off.

MARK BRODIE: Well, do you think that for folks who may be if they’re not sure about something or see a “sell by” date and it’s past that, are they thinking about whether or not the food will taste as good as it could, or whether or not it’s going to make them sick?

MARGARETHE COOPER: I think it really just depends on the individual. I think one of the big things that can get lost when we purchase food is kind of the basic guidelines that we think about in food safety, the four steps to food safety: clean, cook, separate, and chill.

Things as simple as washing your hands before you prepare things, things like not cross-contaminating raw meat with those delicious strawberries you’re going to consume. Having separate cutting boards.

A lot of times, what we know is that folks are more likely to get sick based on food safety practices that are very easy to follow. So I think when we’re purchasing things in the store, we might be looking at those dates. I think everyone’s going to have a different perspective on what they think that means, and that’s where I think there’s some confusion between these typical dates folks might see.

MARK BRODIE: It seems like there are kind of two very distinct camps when it comes to this kind of thing. There’s the folks who believe that the dates don’t really mean anything — that, as you say, use your senses. You can tell if the milk is spoiled, you can see if there’s mold on the bread or on a dairy product or something like that. And then there are other people who maybe don’t trust their senses, and as soon as they see that date, it’s going in the trash.

MARGARETHE COOPER: Yeah, I completely agree. And so that’s where, “if in doubt, throw it out” is one of the adages. I think the other camp being, of course, thinking about reducing food waste. So I can totally see trying to balance that between the two.

So certain things for sure, like you said, if it smells off, don’t consume it. It’s not the same as getting sick from like you have pathogens, which are like bacteria or viruses or parasites that make you sick, but then there’s spoilage microbes. Those are the things that are going to change the flavor of foods to make them smell distasteful. You certainly don’t want to eat those, and they certainly could elicit a reaction if you consumed it, but most of us are going to know that’s not safe to consume.

I do want to specify that a really important date: The only date that is federally required is infant formula. That one is a hard stop, it’s a “use by” date, and that has to do with strict controls and guidelines regarding safety and nutrition for infants.

MARK BRODIE: So do you think that in California, now that the food will say “best if used by,” “best if frozen by,” do you think that will actually make an appreciable dent in the amount of food waste, at least in California?

MARGARETHE COOPER: I really think it’s going to be kind of an interesting experiment. Seeing as that the dates are still going to be — folks are still going to have to see “best if used by” or “use by,” and what do those two mean, perhaps if there’s an educational campaign of some sort as well. So I’ll be interested to kind of follow the story.

MARK BRODIE: Well, it seems like there’s still going to be some interpretation here, right? Because if I get something that says “best if used by,” that doesn’t necessarily say it’s not safe to eat it after that date. It maybe just, to the point you were making earlier, might not be peak flavor.

So I suspect — and please correct me if you think I’m wrong — that there will still be people who, sort of in those distinct camps, right? Some people once it gets to that “best if used by” date, regardless of what it looks like or smells like, if there’s any question at all, they’re just going to toss it. And other people are going to say, “Looks fine, smells fine, I can keep using it past that date.”

MARGARETHE COOPER: I think there still could be some confusion. Looking at Assembly Bill 660, it’s “best if used by” or “use by,” and I think the distinction they’re making here is no more “sell by.”

And they’re saying “best if used by” means — they’re saying it indicates a quality date, and that the “use by” indicates a safety date. But technically, as I mentioned earlier, if you look at the guidance that we have, it is not really a safety date in the sense that we can still consume certain foods safely. And a lot of it has to do with, again, seeing if there’s any spoilage indications in the food item.

Now, kind of the wild card when we think about our food is that certain foods that are perishable are going to be quite sensitive to being kept in what we call the temperature danger zone, which is between 40°F and 140°F. If you have a perishable food item — milk, fresh meat, eggs, those sorts of things — if you subject it to that temperature abuse, then you’re really going to increase the likelihood that spoilage is going to accelerate.

MARK BRODIE: On a philosophical level, if we really want to reduce food waste, how much of it comes from sort of policy changes like what we’re seeing in California, and how much of it has to be on us, on consumers, to really think about food differently, maybe think about what we buy differently, think about what we keep in our homes and how we keep it in our homes differently?

MARGARETHE COOPER: I think it’s a combination of both. And I think where regulatory agencies like California at the state level might invest in or think about education to then inform the public so that they can make better decisions, I think there’s an opportunity from regulatory agencies if they’re enacting these, such as what California is doing, to educate the public because I think there are a lot of great — it’s an opportunity to present some tips to the public as to how they can better use their food more effectively, more nutritiously, safely and deliciously.

MARK BRODIE: Margarethe Cooper is an associate professor of practice in the School of Animal and Comparative Biomedical Sciences at the University of Arizona.

LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, it is The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

MARK BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: Arizona could get its first-ever Michelin star tonight. And for anyone who’s watched “The Bear,” you know what a massive deal this is in the restaurant world. And spoiler alert here for anyone who hasn’t seen Season 5 yet.

[CLIP FROM “THE BEAR” PLAYS]

CARMY BERZATTO: He said a lot. Sorry. He said the food overall was truly exceptional and creative. He said the talent here is undeniable.

SYDNEY ADAMU: But …

CARMY BERZATTO: That there’s a scallop dish he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about, and the hospitality was beautiful. He said the room felt alive without being precious or try-hard.

SYDNEY ADAMU: Did we get a star?

CARMY BERZATTO: You got two.

[END OF CLIP]

LAUREN GILGER: Tonight in Las Vegas, the Michelin Guide will host the first-ever Southwest ceremony and name the restaurants here who will receive a star or two, as well as other lesser recognitions that our next guest this morning says are even more interesting.

Dominic Armato is a longtime dining critic here in the valley, including at the Arizona Republic and Phoenix New Times. And Dominic, this means that there have been Michelin inspectors throughout the Valley, the region, for an undisclosed amount of time —

DOMINIC ARMATO: They are among us.

LAUREN GILGER: Eating at these restaurants, right? Are they doing this secretly? How does this work?

DOMINIC ARMATO: They absolutely are. Part of the mystique of Michelin is that we know almost nothing about the Michelin inspectors. We don’t know how many there are, we don’t know how long they’ve been here, we don’t know which restaurants they’re going to. They are extremely tight-lipped about their process. They’re pretty open about their criteria, but in terms of who’s doing the judging, we should not know. And if we find out, that’s a problem for them.

LAUREN GILGER: Right. OK, so the secrecy is the point.

DOMINIC ARMATO: Absolutely.

LAUREN GILGER: What is the criteria, though? They publish that.

DOMINIC ARMATO: They do, yeah. And this is interesting because I think the general public tends to have a misconception about what Michelin’s criteria are because they think, “Oh, it’s got to be some beautiful fine-dining restaurant, white tablecloth and fantastic service,” and all that kind of thing. But when you look at the actual criteria that they use for judging, there are five points on the criteria list. That is:

• The quality of the products they use to make the food
• The mastery of flavor and cooking technique
• The personality of the chef expressed in the dining experience
• The harmony of flavors
• The consistency between the inspectors’ visits

And that’s it.

LAUREN GILGER: Consistency. So they’re going to go more than once.

DOMINIC ARMATO: Oh, absolutely.

LAUREN GILGER: Many, many times, probably.

DOMINIC ARMATO: Yes. Well, we don’t know for sure. It’s interesting. I did read a review from a Michelin inspector once, sort of a secret interview, and he mentioned at one point that some of these restaurants might be revisited up to three times, which would imply that four would sort of be where they top out, which is not it’s not a huge sample.

I mean, that’s pretty typical for like a newspaper review, but it’s not as much as you might think. But they do they mention that, and they mention, of course they want to spread it around among a bunch of different inspectors to try to get a sense of making it a team effort rather than one person’s opinion.

LAUREN GILGER: It’s not one person. OK, got it. And we have no idea who these inspectors are. Are they chefs?

DOMINIC ARMATO: No. They are reportedly very experienced and knowledgeable experts in the field of restaurants and hospitality. But we’re just going to have to take their word for it.

LAUREN GILGER: OK, so let’s talk about likely contenders. I mean, a Michelin star is a huge deal to get in the restaurant world, still today — and very, very hard to get for all of these reasons that we’re talking about. Who might be on the list here in the Valley?

DOMINIC ARMATO: So first of all, you’ve got what people think of as sort of the traditional Michelin places, which are those fine-dining temples. And I think everyone has their eyes on places like Christopher’s at Wrigley Mansion and Kai and Cafe Monarch, maybe to a lesser extent, maybe people seem to think that maybe Course has a shot at it.

And so those are sort of those more traditional fine-dining restaurants. And if you ask me to handicap, I’d probably put them roughly in that order. But stars are tough, man. It’s like It’s one of those things where if you do all your eating in Phoenix, you think, “Wow, these are amazing restaurants,” and they are, and these folks do tremendous work.

But then you start visiting some of these restaurants in other cities, and you start visiting these restaurants in other countries, and it’s like, these are some pretty good restaurants. They’re really, you know, it is an extremely high standard that the Michelin inspectors hold these restaurants to. They don’t just hand these things out.

LAUREN GILGER: Any underdogs that you think should be on the Michelin radar that probably are not in the valley?

DOMINIC ARMATO: So I definitely wouldn’t call it an underdog. F&B is one of the most beloved and appreciated restaurants in town, for good reasons. But I’m very curious, because of how Michelin is, to see how they handle F&B.

Because if you ask me, Charleen Badman, her work absolutely nails all five of these criteria. She gets incredible product, has this way of extracting flavors out of things and blending things in unexpected ways. Her personality is right there on the plate. And unlike so many chefs, she’s back there in the kitchen every day doing it herself. The place is incredibly consistent.

But here’s the thing, is that her style is not sort of what you tend to think of as that traditional Michelin style. Her style is a little, it’s a little rustic, it’s a little homey, it’s kind of sort of comforting. It’s not like that really sleek, refined sort of Michelin style.

So in that way, what’s interesting to me is I think that it’s less that a Michelin inspection is a test for F&B. I think F&B is a test for Michelin inspectors.

LAUREN GILGER: Ooh, he’s laying it down! OK.

DOMINIC ARMATO: No, I hope they pass. I really do. I hope they see that. I think they should.

LAUREN GILGER: She’s not using the tiny tweezers.

DOMINIC ARMATO: Exactly. It’s not tweezers cuisine. And and and to be fair to Michelin, you know, they do recognize restaurants that are not — but it’s less common.

LAUREN GILGER: Less common. OK, so what about sleepers?

DOMINIC ARMATO: If we’re talking about total sleepers, I’ve got two of them. There’s one I I think people are maybe sleeping a little bit on ShinBay. But ever since Shinji Kurita retired a few years ago, I feel like no one’s talked about that place. But the the chef who they brought in, Ken Tanaka, he’s doing spectacular work there. And I don’t see them mentioned an awful lot, so I’ll be a little curious to see if they pick something up.

And the other one that I think is a real deep sleeper that, frankly, I think Phoenix is sleeping on in general, is Hush Public House. I think I feel like Phoenix sometimes doesn’t appreciate the way that kitchen ticks like a Swiss watch. I mean, they just get great stuff, and it is super consistent, and everything is executed perfectly, and they slay it every night.

And that’s the kind of place that Michelin does like. So I almost wonder in that case if that’s something where the Michelin bias, so to speak, might work in favor of a place that’s being overlooked in its own city. We’ll see. I don’t know. It’s a bit of a long shot, but I just have a hunch about that one.

LAUREN GILGER: That’s interesting. But there’s not just the stars, right, with Michelin? There are some other levels here. So if you don’t get a star, you still might get recognized in some way.

DOMINIC ARMATO: Absolutely. So there are the stars first and foremost, and those are very, very hard to come by. And I think the stars generally are not a surprise. It’s not often that a place comes out of nowhere to suddenly snag a star. What’s interesting is when you start getting into the Bib Gourmands.

The Bib Gourmands to me, honestly, is the more interesting part of the of the conversation here, because that’s where Michelin goes out and says, “OK, well, maybe these guys don’t have the kind of money to do this crazy high-end fine-dining cuisine and bring in these incredibly expensive ingredients …”

LAUREN GILGER: Sure.

DOMINIC ARMATO: “... but they make great food day in, day out for a reasonable price that the average person can afford.” And that, I think first of all, I think that’s just as noble as high-end fine dining. And secondly, I think it’s a whole lot more interesting because there’s so much out there. Handicapping that? Forget it. There’s no way. There’s so many possibilities.

I think for some places, the Bib Gourmand might be like a consolation prize. I think about uh some absolutely spectacular restaurants like Bacanora and Lom Wong, who have been recognized by the James Beard Foundation. They do tremendous food.

I worry sometimes: Are they going to have the kind of consistency that uh that that Michelin is looking for? And if they don’t, if these guys are only going to visit three or four times, if they catch a few off things, maybe that ends up being a consolation prize for them, they get a Bib Gourmand instead of a star.

But then there are so many little places, you look through the other Michelin Guides in other cities, and they will pluck some stuff out of obscurity. So that’s where the interesting stuff starts to happen. And of course I’ve got a wish list of stuff I would love to see them recognize, but there’s so much.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. Whoever gets a star or a recognition of some kind from Michelin this week, though, I mean, they’re going to be inundated after this, right? Like it’s going to be nuts for them.

DOMINIC ARMATO: Oh, it’s a big deal. Yeah. Absolutely. Michelin these days is a little polarizing, you know. But whether one is into it or not, I mean, you can’t deny that there are large numbers of people who will look at those lists and will say, “OK, well, this is how I’m going to scout out my vacation. This is how I’m going to figure out where to eat when I’m on my trip.” I mean, it’s a tremendous honor.

And particularly when you get into the stars, these people know what they’re talking about. I mean, whether or not you agree with any specific choice, you know, they’re not random schmoes. They’re people who know good food, and I think they’ve demonstrated that over the years. It’s an honor, I think more than anything. I mean, that’s one of those things that a lot of a lot of places dream about. And those who say they don’t — maybe they do, maybe they don’t. We’ll see. I think they might not be totally honest about that.

LAUREN GILGER: All right. Well, we’ll see what happens. Dominic Armato, a longtime dining critic here in the valley, now writes the Something to Doux newsletter — that’s D-O-U-X, we should say. Dominic, thanks so much for coming on The Show. We really appreciate it.

DOMINIC ARMATO: No problem.

LAUREN GILGER: Thanks for listening to The Show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah and Ayana Hamilton. The Show was created by Jon Hoban, and our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram @kjzztheshow.