Puerto Rico Mourns Murder of “National” Dish by Original Chino Latino; Not “Every Puerto Rican [Makes] Lousy Chicken,” Sings Governor Acevedo Vilá

Talk about bad P.R., possums.

And we mean P.R. as in the good ole Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, self-proclaimed Isle of Enchantment, “island of tropical breezes” where “always the pineapples [are] growing” and “the coffee blossoms blowing,” and “the sunlight streaming,” and “the natives steaming.”

And after last night’s episode of Top Chef, the Puerto Rican people have something else to get them steamed. As one eyewitness said on the show, “He killed it, he killed it!”

By “he,” she meant Hung “Más Puerto Rican Than Thou” Huynh, and by “it,” she meant arroz con pollo (chicken and rice), more or less the “national” dish of Puerto Rico (we use scare quotes because the boricuas are particularly touchy about the political status of their island “estado libre asociado,” and we haven’t the energy or the death-wish at present to tackle the question of whether you must be a nation before you can have a national dish).

We learnt last night that Hung lived in Puerto Rico for a few years (who knew?) and that he spoke Spanish “somewhat” (and, in truth, his Spanish is almost better than his English, and he sounds much less of an asshole in Spanish).

It seemed perfectly logical to him, then, for the Elimination Challenge to cook arroz con pollo as his Latin dish to feed the crew of Dame Chocolate, the latest of Telemundo’s hodgepodge telenovelas (because, God knows, the crew of a telenovela must of necessity eat only Latin food).

Besides, added Hung, alluding to his Asian origin, and making sweet, sweet love to the editors in charge of Bravo Foreshadowing™, “If I can’t cook rice, I should go home.”

Of course, Mr. Chino Latino couldn’t cook rice.

And when he got called out for it by the judges, he took his usual position: Hung knows better. Dammit, he even knows better than the Puerto Ricans themselves, which gave us a nice giggle (almost as good as the giggles induced by the opening credits of Dame Chocolate).

Hung, Hung, Hung.

With all his ineffectual, unworthy-of-Gong-Li snarling and sneering, he tries ever so hard to be a shark. And yet, in the end, Hung learned the hard way that “when you’re a Jet, you stay a Jet.”