Damned Gnocco Too Dense to Realize When He's Being Damned with Faint Praise

From Ryan Scott’s interview with Grub Street:

Rich[ard Blais] is breaking culinary boundaries. One night he said to me, “I respect so much what you do, Ryan. You can cook with two or three ingredients, and look at a fennel bulb and it’s just fennel. I’d try and figure out how to levitate the thing. I can’t cook on your level.”

Oh how we cackled, possums, at how Ryan just can't get it through his fennel bulb. Our hats go off to Richard for saying something so patronizing and condescending while making Gnocchi-Head think it was sincere praise. For once, Rocco DiSpirito was right.