TOP CHEF

He's cooking up a great future

Aspiring chef Christian Dortch can be excused if he's too exhausted to whip up a gourmet meal for his mom on Mother's Day. The Leilehua High School senior will spend Saturday competing in the national Best Teen Chef contest in North Carolina. He made the finals by winning a regional competition in California and has prepped tirelessly since then, including in his family's kitchen — where he's the chief cook on a nightly basis. As Dortch heads off for the culinary meet, we say ... break an egg.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Recession's silver lining

The good news is that Honolulu's traffic congestion dropped last year by 34.2 percent from 2007, according to Inrix, which keeps traffic scorecards for the 100 most populated cities.

The bad news is that the decline indicates “;whether businesses are shipping products, whether people are going to work and whether shoppers are going to the mall,”; says Bryan Mistelle, Inrix president and CEO. Accordingly, the most drastic drop in traffic congestion occurred in Detroit, which had an unemployment rate of 21 percent.

JUDGMENT DAY

Taking the presidential tour

Call it the UH whirl tour.

In a break from past practice, the University of Hawaii is sending out two of its presidential finalists for meet-and-greets statewide.

The first to land is M.R.C. Greenwood, left, former provost of the University of California system, and now at UC-Davis; she's got a full plate of meetings this week.

Next up is Robert J. Jones, a senior vice president at the University of Minnesota, who'll have a full schedule here next week.

It's a touchy-feelier selection process — a change from years past, when students, faculty and the community first got to meet the new UH president, well, after he'd been named the UH president.

There's even a “;rate the candidate”; link on the UH Web site. Check it out at: http://www.hawaii.edu/offices/bor/presidential-search/