Meet the new Willy Wonka: Timothy Childs is a former space shuttle technologist who’s building a 29,000-square-foot chocolate factory on prime waterfront property on the Embarcadero.

Although some cooking competitions are better known — the National Chicken Cooking Contest, the Pillsbury Bake-Off — Sutter Home Winery’s Build a Better Burger National Contest and Cook-Off competition has grown in popularity and importance in recent years.

For those of you looking forward to Part 3 of wine myths, let me assure you it is in the works and will be a future article. But because the world is focused on the Olympics in Beijing, I thought I would devote this column to my recent food and wine journey throughout China.

Mark “Marky” Kanemura, a Castle High School graduate and former 24-7 Danceforce instructor, has made it into the top six on Fox TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance.” Voters tonight will decide if he makes it into the top five.