My Abalone Has a First Name

And it ain’t Tom.

Now, we should preface this, possums, by saying that we admire and respect Tom Colicchio. He’s knowledgeable as hell, and, based on his blog, he’s undeniably the best writer on the judging panel, except, perhaps, for Anthony Bourdain.

This is why we were so baffled during the premiere to hear Chef Colicchio repeatedly pronounce “abalone” as “a-ba-lawn.” We checked a few dictionaries (Random House, Merriam Webster, American Heritage) and we didn’t find this pronunciation.

And so, of course, we wondered, Have we found this season’s lychee? (The “LEE-chee”/“LIE-chee” debate went on for several weeks last season after Otto Borsich left.)

So we’re not saying Chef Colicchio’s pronunciation is baloney, but can any of you, possums, help dispel the mists of “a-ba-lawn”?

Or is Tom Colicchio led astray
Just like P-A-D-M-A?

Chat on a Plate: "Cleveland Rocks" Edition

Monday may be chefs' day off, but they're "on" with the Gals, Ms. Place and us.

Tonight's live "Chat on a Plate" will be with Otto Borsich, and will take place between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern time.

Some members of Otto's family will also be present, so keep it clean, possums. Leave all the pirate-like wenchin' and pillagin' stories for another time. We'll see you there.

NBC Universal Family Turns On Itself Like Jim Carrey Hitting Himself in "Liar, Liar"

In a a surprising move reminiscent of Jim Carrey hitting himself in Liar, Liar (a Universal Pictures production), MSNBC, a subsidiary of NBC Universal, the parent company of Bravo, published a scathing online article today about Top Chef. You can read the article here, but we include some cherce bits for your delectation:

A hairy situation
The defining moment of the season came a few weeks ago when some of the remaining five competitors decided, after a night of drinking, to shave their own heads, and then shave Marcel's. At least, that's what viewers saw. After Ilan and Elia shaved their heads, Cliff woke Marcel, and as Ilan cheered him on, wrestled Marcel to the ground and held him in a headlock. As a result, Cliff was sent home for violating the show's rules.

That wasn't quite what happened, however. Careful viewers noticed that, in one of those scenes, Elia still had all of her hair, and was on the floor laughing as Marcel angrily stormed off. In other words, she and Ilan shaved their heads only after their attempted hazing of Marcel went awry. Editing the scene out of order seemed designed to protect the show's integrity, which was waning episode by episode as interpersonal conflict took over.

After the incident, the producers refused to allow head judge Colicchio to dismiss all four participants, like he wanted to do, and thus let Marcel win the competition by default. On his BravoTV.com blog, Tom wrote that "[p]roducers stepped in with a veto. Sending all of the chefs but Marcel home wasn't going to happen."

Of course, the departure of those four contestants would have prematurely ended the series on a low note. But it would have also been a fitting note, as the competition and cooking often fell away in favor of "Real World"-style immaturity and unnecessary drama packed with deceptive editing.

Less about food, more about drama
In its second season, "Top Chef" became more of a soap opera set on a reality show than a competition about cooking. Otto quit the competition after admitting to have taken food from a store that his team didn't pay for, although he did return it. Mia quit to save Elia from elimination. Michael used his budget for one challenge to buy beer for himself. All the chefs were spared elimination but put on probation after accusations of cheating during a challenge. Cliff was sent home for his part in hazing Marcel. Betty fought with Marcel. Frank fought with Marcel. Ilan screamed at Marcel. Elia accused Marcel of cheating but offered no evidence.

Amuse-Biatch Pimps the Cheftestants' Rides

Possums, we alight from our barouche to bring you this compilation of cheftestant vehicles culled from the cheftestants' Bravo photo diaries. As always, the captions in quotes directly underneath the photographs were presumably written by the cheftestants themselves and are reproduced faithfully. The editorial content is ours.













"My Ride
The Vespa."

Come sappiamo tutti, "vespa" vuole dire "wasp" in italiano. In fact, according to Wikipedia, "'Sembra una vespa!' ('It looks like a wasp!') exclaimed Piaggio president Enrico Piaggio when he first laid eyes on what would become the most successful scooter of all time." Now, our knowledge of entomology is pretty spotty (though we do know a cockroach when we see one, [Gregor] Samsa Talbot), but a wasp and a gnat seem pretty closely related to us.














"My Ttruck
It's a Ridgeline and I really love it. Big and functional."

As a Southerner, Miss XaXa has a thing about boys with trucks, and this picture of her Chulo Chef, Carlos Fernandez, atop a big truck sent her into lustful titters (one part Harajuku girl to three parts Dorothy Malone trying to seduce Rock Hudson in Written on the Wind). "Oh, Carlos, it's so butch," she purred. But Carlos would no doubt like us to remind you, possums, "Friends don't let friends drive (or dial) drunk."














"Me and Truck
Me next to my new truck."

Wait, Beer Bong drives a truck? You could have knocked us over with a peacock feather.















"My bike."

On behalf of New York City pedestrians, we were greatly comforted to find this photograph of Cliff Crooks' motorcycle alongside the other pictures in the photo album, which show Cliff enthusiastically endorsing Grey Goose and looking, oh, let's say, just this side of sober. In fact, for a second our eyes blurred and we swore that his bike was a Kamikaze and not a Kawasaki.
















"My Bike
I enjoy riding my bicycle."

Well, it is "No Name-Calling" Week, and we just don't have the heart to say anything mean about Otto Borsich, so let's just say that, "Biking is great exercise and great for the environment!"

Forget the Lychees; Where's the Beef?

Poor Otto Borsich.

In Lycheegate, the first "-gate" of a Top Chef season that has had more "gates" than a Christo installation in Central Park, cheftestant Otto Borsich quit the competition after he was accused of shoplifting a case of lychees from a supermarket (and mispronouncing them, to boot).

Alas, even then, poor Otto was behind the curve, for, according to an article in Slate, he should have gone with meat rather than lychees when his fingers got itchy.

As Brendan I. Koerner writes,

Meatlifting is a grave problem for food retailers: According to the Food Marketing Institute, meat was the most shoplifted item in America's grocery stores in 2005. (It barely edged out analgesics and was a few percentage points ahead of razor blades and baby formula.)

Meat's dubious triumph is due in part to a law enforcement crackdown on methamphetamine use. Meat used to be the shoplifting runner-up to health-and-beauty-care items, a category that includes cough medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in home-cooked meth. In 2003, for example, a quarter of shoplifted products were HBCs, while meat took second place at 16 percent. But states began passing laws that require stores to move medicines containing pseudoephedrine behind secure counters. That was enough to cut the pinching of HBCs, which fell by 11 percent between 2003 and 2005.

Koerner points out that most of the protein-pilfering is associated with high-end cuts of meat, and that the fair sex has itchier fingers than the stereotypical meat-and-potatoes guy when it comes to filching the filet mignon:

Though men and women shoplift in equal numbers, such aspirational meatlifters are most likely to be gainfully employed women between 35 and 54, according to a 2005 University of Florida study; men prefer to lift Tylenol or batteries, often for resale and often to support a drug or alcohol habit.

So it seems Clara Peller was on to something when she tried to get answers about the whereabouts of beef from seemingly sweet, pigtailed Wendy. For all we know, Wendy had slipped the beef into her blue gingham pockets.

Episode Two, Part 2: Pompadour & Circumstance

Now it’s time for the Elimination Challenge (we can tell, because they always say it in audible capital letters). Padma announces, rather fatuously, that “L.A. is one of the most multicultural cities in the world.” As Angelenos of a particular stripe, we snort and drink to the platitude, surprised that it has taken until Episode Two to trot it out.

The Elimination Challenge will be a team effort, with the teams focusing on two of multiculti L.A.’s cuisines, Vietnamese and Korean (to go along with the Japanese of the Quickfire Challenge). The teams will each be responsible for creating one hot dish and one cold dish, and will be judged on their team work.

The teams are created by having the chefs draw knives. The knife handles bear either a Vietnamese or (South) Korean flag (we hate to be nitpicky—oh, hell, whom are we kidding?—but it’s not the “Korean” flag, since you have both a North and a South Korea). The whole time the chefs were drawing knives, we kept looking for a “cheat sheet” posted on one side of the knife. Call us skeptical, suspicious bitches, but given the geographical literacy of the American public as a whole, the idea that some of these contestants (we’re talking to you, Beer Bong) would know what the Vietnamese or South Korean flag looks like is just preposterous.

Instantly we are struck by the geopolitical implications of the decision. These are the cuisines of two Asian nations that were or are divided by Communism on a north-south basis, and in which the United States fought a war. We hadn’t realized that the Bravo producers were so devilishly deep in their formulation of challenges. And how great is it that Marcel and Otto, the two contestants vying with Kim Jong Il for Dictatorial Coif of the Year, should both have been on Team Korea?

The teams will be presenting their food at a charity event for Project by Project, an organization established to help the Asian community. Cut to Otto the NeckerChef telling us how glad he is, since he is “hugely involved in hunger issues.” That’s all well and good, and certainly admirable, but as Season One contestant Lee Anne Wong wryly points out on her blog, Otto just “assumes that the Project by Project event will be feeding the needy and hungry Asian community of Los Angeles,” when Project by Project, according to their press materials, is actually “a national volunteer organization of social entrepreneurs that serves Asian Pacific American non-profit organizations by raising public awareness, encouraging volunteerism and building capital.”

Team Vietnam consists of Josie, Betty, Mia, Emily, Carlos, Beer Bong, and Sam. Team Korea is Frank, Otto, Ilan, Cliff, Marcel, Elia and Marisa. This means that we’re not just replaying the Cold War with cold noodles; we’re also revving up for another skirmish in the Battle of the Sexes.

Team Vietnam’s organizational meeting is a model of efficiency, cooperation and organization, with Spice Rack (unwisely baring her midriff yet again), Josette Eber, and Empress Josiefine (sporting a rather rakish newsboy cap that would do “The L Word” proud) taking charge but soliciting input from the other members.

Team Korea’s organizational meeting, as befits a divided nation, is extremely disorganized. As Cliff tells us, he, Frank and Ilan decide to make a huge batch of sangria before the meeting. (We hasten to point out that Cliff has immunity after the Quickfire Challenge; could our little Valrhona Bear be so devious?). This means we are treated to the nauseating sight of Tarte Titass flashing her tanline and shaking her nonexistent maracas in a hideous pink and white striped top. They sit around, with Elia bravely trying to get them to discuss the menu while the boys get drunker, tell incomprehensible jokes, and lasciviously stroke the rim of a glass before sucking their fingers (we’re talking to you, Ilan).

We admire Elia’s focus and spunk, as well as her very cute Marc-Jacobs-goes-to-the-souk ballet flats, but get hives looking at Marcel’s flipflops and Otto’s Roman centurion Mary Janes. Elia’s plea—“Let’s just finish the menu and then we cheell”—goes unheeded. This is also where we first hear the word lychee—pronounced “LEE-chee,” and this is very important—in the form of Marisa’s plan to make a dessert involving lychee pearls.

It’s the next morning, and we get the requisite “Good morning, Vietnaaaam!” voiceover from that Robin Williams lookalike, Spice Rack Betty. We do not, however, get a snippet of the theme from “M*A*S*H” for Team Korea. The teams are each given $500 dollars and one hour to do their shopping.

As Team Vietnam marches off to the specialty store to the strains of “Asian-inspired dance music,” courtesy of the closed captioning service, we see Josie expertly handling melons and cooing, “Yeah, baby.” Even Austin Powers couldn’t have done better. The rest of Team Vietnam’s shopping expedition proceeds just as smoothly.

Team Korea’s shopping expedition in a supermarket in Koreatown is as much of a muck-up as a “M*A*S*H” episode. We are first subjected to a Marcel interview featuring not only full-on pompadour but also a pompadour of a double-Windsor tie knot. In pink. Paisley! Did Jimmy Neutron spend the entirety of last season studying Stephen Asprinio’s mannerisms and sartorial choices? We are very disturbed, and secretly hope Stephen Asprinio has seen “Single White Female.” We can just see the remake: “Single White Sexually Ambiguous, Arrogant, Prissy, Overcompensatorily Large Tie-Knot-Wearing Chef.”

“EE-lia, did you get the LIE-chee?” asks Otto, setting our teeth on edge. For your information, NeckerChef, her name is pronounced “EH-lia” and the fruit is pronounced “LEE-chee.” Not that we’re obsessive or anything, but we actually counted the number of times the word “lychee” was uttered on this episode: 22 times. 11 times it was pronounced “LEE-chee” and 11 times “LIE-chee.” Of those, Otto was responsible for 9, and Ilan and Marisa for the other 2, and she was just quoting Otto (we don’t know what Ilan’s excuse is).

At the checkout, Team Korea is over budget and they have to return some items. As they take their cart to the minivan, the closed captioning informs us that we are hearing “dramatic music,” and then an unidentified voice says, “I think we got a case of LEE-chees for free.”

Marisa tells us that Otto said this to her, but our Perry Mason instincts were roused at once. That was clearly not Otto’s voice, and Otto would never have said “LEE-chee.” “Otto wuz framed! This is the type of thing that brought Dan Rather down,” whispers Miss XaXa.

Marisa, who only last episode crowed, “I use everything to my advantage that I can use to my advantage,” professes to be shocked at this unfair advantage that Otto wants to take, and makes her outrage clear to anyone who will listen during the food-preparation montage. Our favorite bit in the montage is Marcel, stealing another of Beer Bong’s lines as he exclaims, “Oh fuck, where’d that pot go?”

Betty is shown making a “refresher” with ginger, cucumber, and aloe. She proclaims herself “the bar wench” to Chef Colicchio, and then tells the camera, all the while flaunting her fun bags, that they’re going to have “so many reasons to entice these guests over to our table.” Well, I guess two reasons counts as “so many,” n’est-ce pas?

When Chef Colicchio reaches Marisa and Elia and innocently asks how things are, Lycheegate breaks and all hell breaks loose. Tom calls Team Korea together and questions Otto, forcing him to admit that he did say, “We got a case of lychees for free.” We are impressed by Tom Colicchio’s prosecutorial skills--this is how the international nuclear agency is supposed to behave with Kim Jong Il--but not so impressed by Otto’s defense. All our Perry Masoning was for nought. Otto is forced to return the nukes, er, lychees to the store, and Team Korea’s confidence is shaken.

The next day, the teams set up at the charity event, and then comes the tasting and judging. We are momentarily distracted by how fabulous Gail Simmon’s shoes are. Padma’s hair person has redeemed herself, but oy, the wardrobe--an unflattering peacock skirt and a black corset top. Padma introduces us to the guest judge, Ming Tsai of Blue Ginger Restaurant in Wellesley, Massachusetts and PBS fame. Someone has obviously briefed Ming on chef jewelry, since he sports a Colicchioesque necklace on a strap.

We’re no experts, but it looks to us like Ming Tsai has had work done. He’s certainly ballooned since we last saw him on PBS, and is starting to look like one of those Wellesley matrons we remember from college. Miss XaXa says he actually looks more like Siegfried or Roy, she can’t remember which, the one that got mauled, and is he wearing lip gloss? We're also shocked when he tastes Team Vietnam's refresher and points out that it's spicy and has chili in it. "Ginger," corrects the Spice Rack herself. The owner of Blue Ginger can't tell when something has ginger in it? Is this what things have come to?

At the Judges’ Table (we are so pleased they got the apostrophe right), we are nearly blinded by the rock on Padma’s finger, just about as large as one of the illicit lychees. They discuss the virtues of the teams’ dishes, and Padma even breaks through the Valium haze to get a little feisty about just how good the Korean-style pork was. But the others win out, and Team Vietnam is called in as the winners. Betty is declared the individual winner and given a prize, a limited-edition Kyocera ceramic sashimi knife, one of only 100 in the world. “Huh?” says Miss XaXa, “I thought Kyocera made copiers.”

Having heard the shouts of joy from Team Vietnam, Team Korea figures out that they’ve lost. Cliff declares that he’s pissed they couldn’t work together as a team. This strikes us as rather rich, considering that he was responsible for getting the team drunk in the first place.

Team Korea is called in to be worked over. After questioning by Ming Tsai, Frankie the Bull crumbles and admits that he made the rice and that it looked like “hell on a plate.” If he’s that good, let’s send Ming Tsai to do some interrogation work at Guantanamo.

For all that has subsequently been said and written, it’s interesting to note that when the issue of Otto and the lychees comes up, Marcel is actually the first to throw Otto under the bus, and then Marisa and Elia pile on.

Frankie the Bull is irate and aghast. The ethic of the team, la squadra nostra, this team of ours, has been violated. He doesn’t understand how team members can flip their loyalties on a whim: “It’s a team, and if you don’t back your team mates, you might as well take your head and shove it up your ass.” Are we imagining things, or is Frank’s restaurant called Omertà?

As the maker of the “hockey puck” that purported to be panna cotta, Marisa’s head is on the chopping block, but Otto finally fesses up and falls on his sword. See, Rummy? This is how it’s done. Marisa’s skinny, padded ass is safe for one more week. Otto waxes philosophical in a hideous chalk-stripe suit, purple shirt and yellow tie that he must have stolen from the Cleveland dinner theater production of “Guys and Dolls.”

Then come the previews from next week, featuring a fire house, and scenes of self-immolation by Beer Bong where he is raring for a fistfight with Tom Colicchio. We definitely can’t wait.

Episode Two, Part 1: The Story of the Feesh and Lovs

The episode starts with a perfunctory gathering of the herd after the weakest member has been picked off by the wolves. Following sad-sack Suyai’s sad sacking, one of the women says, “We are one lady down,” which to us has the whiff of a title for a Thai movie about transvestite volleyball players or an Agatha Christie mystery (though the Agatha Christie mystery this most resembles is And Then There Were None). They resolve to be on their game in order to avoid the Suyai send-off.

Otto the patriotic NeckerChef tells us that it’s going to come down to “who can improvise, adapt and overcome.” But Otto, what ever happened to “stay the course”?

Then the contestants are woken up at 4:30 a.m. in the way we would like to be woken up every morning: by a beefy, twinkly-eyed Tom Colicchio. The early bird catches the best fish, he tells them, and they’re off to the fish market. The ladies’ modesty is left undisturbed, but we do get to see Beer Bong’s wriggling chest. When Marcel prances around shirtless, we are so distracted looking for the Siamese cat we are now convinced he is hiding in his pompadour that we almost miss the fact that he has a soul patch on his chest to match the one on his chin.

Mia confesses that the stress and the sleeping in a strange bed has left her feeling queasy. Frankly, this is unworthy of our Josette Eber. No cowgirl worthy of the name would be put off by a strange bed. Calamity Jane and Diana Ross turn over in their grave and Beverly Hills mansioleum, respectively.

It’s now six a.m., and time for the quickfire challenge. Padma greets us at the American Fish and Seafood Co. And this is where things come to a screeching halt.

We now interrupt this regularly scheduled recap for a rant.

Padma is sporting an unflatteringly tight pink polo cum pirate-wench top, nondescript black tights, riding boots, and pigtails. The woman who posed in a silver lamé bikini on top of live lobsters is wearing pigtails and pirate gear to the fish market?!? After last episode’s fashion successes, this is simply unacceptable.

We would, of course, have been in heaven if she had worn marabou, silk jersey, and Louboutin slingbacks to the fish market, but we were expecting at least a repeat of the time, two years ago, when, sporting a “Gucci bag and her goggly Costume Nationale sunglasses,” she went with a reporter from the Observer to “Chinatown, in search of fish (she thinks nothing of swinging a great big bass near her flowery summer frock, but she is a little concerned that her heels - as high as the Empire State itself - will get all fishy).”

Forget for a moment that the British reporter actually meant the Empire State Building. Isn’t “Top Chef,” aren’t we, good enough to get at least a “flowery summer frock” and some bass-swinging? Badly done, Padma, badly done.

Oh, and the pigtails. For a second we thought we were looking at Marisa. (Seriously, Typhoid Marisa’s pernicious influence must be stopped, or next we’ll be seeing Tom Colicchio wearing pigtails; we’ll leave it to bloggers with PhotoShop skills to portray that horror). The cruel morning light reveals Padma’s gauchely done highlights and hair that looked encrusted with hair spray. We expected Oribe; you gave us Raggedy Anne. Raggaydy Andy Cohen, you have some 'splainin' to do.

We can hardly believe we’re saying this, but we are actually starting to miss Katie Lee Joel, even with her nonexistent upper lip and the painted whore of Babylon look befitting a shopgirl made good. Padma has a flat, affectless delivery, and this, too, seems like a betryal and a put-on. Consider this excerpt from the same Observer article:

"I'm getting into making pickles ," she says, super-animated (when the tape recorder is switched on, she swoops straight into voice-over mode; as soon as it is off, she immediately flicks out the light, and you are left feeling all chilly and resentful).

Well, that’s exactly right. We are feeling all chilly and resentful. Where is the woman who played Sylk, diva rival to Mariah Carey, in Glitter? And where is the woman who starred in Boom, “a Bollywood thriller about three supermodels who steal diamonds belonging to Indian Mafiosi”? And, indeed, the woman who posed in a silver lamé bikini on top of live lobsters?

You may be trying to prove you’re intelligent and competent, but this isn’t the way to do it. Anyway, we thought you had resolved this issue for yourself. After all, you told the Observer, apropos of your marriage to world-famous novelist Salman Rushdie, “I'd be lying to you if I said that my new last name didn't resolve the issue of whether I am intelligent or not. I think that people assume that if someone of that calibre ...”

Aren’t we “Top Chef” viewers entitled to profit from having the issue resolved? We take back everything we said, Padma. Bring back “super-animated” and “flowery summer frocks” and silver lamé bikinis and supermodel hair. We want Sylk and Glitter and Boom in the kitchen. (Whom are we kidding? Silk, glitter and boom describe the entirety of our life’s ambitions.)

Rant over, we now return you to your regularly scheduled recap.

Padma announces to the assembled contestants (who, unlike her, seem to have had enough time to get their hair done), “Today’s challenge is about sushi.”

Priceless expression on Mia’s face, trying to keep the gorge down, an expression which the rewind button, a shaky hand and a digital camera don’t seem to be very good at capturing.

Beer Bong reaches for the top: “How am I going to stay in the middle on this one?”

Not content with her customary and apparently contagious pigtails, Tarte Titass is also wearing a pink baseball cap reading, “koukla.” Forever alert to punning opportunities, we do a little research and hit a gold mine. Koukla is the Greek word for “doll” and the name of a line of women’s clothing sold online and at Greek church fairs (Marisa is part Greek). Well, Marisa, doll, we never expected you to be reading Ms. magazine, so I suppose this doesn’t really come as a shock. Our one question: Bravo blurred your denim-ed derrière in the audition tape, presumably because it sported a label or logo, but didn’t blur the koukla cap. What gives?

After a little dry heaving, Mia tells us her first thought upon hearing about the sushi challenge, “H-E-double hockey sticks.” We find it delightful. Is it retro? Where does it come from? Can we get a linguist on the case?

Elia’s reaction is equally priceless: “I lov kook-eeng weeth feesh. I lov butt-cherrying feesh. I lov sweem-eeng weeth feesh. I lov eat-eeng them. I lov feesh.” What did we tell you? It’s definitely all about the feesh and lovs. Well, Elia, after this episode, we would advise you to be careful around Frankie the Bull, or you may be sweem-eeng weeth the feesh to your heart’s content.

So the challenge is to prepare sushi in 30 minutes for sushi chef Hiroshi Shima, who comes with his own translator (batteries not included). Our favorite part of the food-preparation montage is Mia talking to herself: “Come on, Gaines, get it together, girl.” Even we feel motivated by that. One question, though. According to her Bravo bio, Mia’s last name is Gaines-Alt, so why doesn’t she say, “Come on, Gaines-Alt, girl”? Inquiring minds want to know.

Despite our rant, there is one point during the judging when Padma’s icy demeanor is exquisitely deployed. Beer Bong, who at least is honest enough to declare himself “so out of my league,” has garnished his attempt at sushi with a “cornstarch slurry” (yet another fitting nickname for him). After tasting it, Padma’s only reaction is a straight-to-the-heart, cold-enough-to-keep-vodka-in, worthy-of-Helen-Mirren-playing-Queen-Elizabeth-II, “Thank you.” Brava, Padma, brava!

Then Chef Shima sexually harasses a clearly embarrassed and unprepared Padma by pushing in her mouth one of Mia’s curiously cigar-like handrolls. Verdict: “It wasn’t really appealing.” No shit, Shima. Watch your back. I don’t think Salman Rushdie will appreciate his wife’s being forced to fellate bad sushi. No wonder that “translator” of yours looks so much like a bodyguard.

Of Otto’s sushi, Chef Shima says that he is “very impressed with the way you rolled it.” Pardon us, but isn’t this a compliment that might be better and more accurately given to Beer Bong? Just saying.

Dear, culturally sensitive Otto is truly touched by this compliment. After all, he is but a mere “round-eye from Cleveland, Ohio.” As we will soon discover, Otto’s eyes may be round, but they’re also shifty. Anyway, we thought people from Ohio were called the Buckeyes, not the Round-eyes, but what do we know?

In the end, the winner is Cliff, with his Hubba Hubba, er, Hama Hama oysters with ginger, rice wine, soy, mango and jalapeño. Congratulations, Cliff. And may we say, you look very, very, very good in scrubs. Perhaps you can replace Isaiah Washington on “Grey’s Anatomy”?