Photo by Charles Haynes/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Proof

Whatever Gray's meaty creation, Karoum was picked the winner, earning both the respect of his peers and what appeared to be a congratulatory smooch from host José Andrés! (Read how Karoum prepared for battle here.)

In an earlier bout, an orgy of Top Chef alum took the stage as surprise guests: Good Stuff Eatery's Spike Mendelsohn, paired with The Chew's Carla Hall, topped rumor magnet Mike Isabella of Graffiato, paired with Jennifer Carroll (cooking in three-inch, calf-high boots), with their spin on patatas bravas made with a melon-baller.

The Ronald Reagan Building was totally packed, totally loud and totally full of old men in suits who shelled out $200 a pop (not including throwing down thousands of dollars for auction items) to attend the charity event, benefiting the D.C. Central Kitchen. The joint was so noisy that Andrés, dressed in an elbow patch blazer (what, does he think he's teaching a class at Harvard?), often had to scream into the mic to be heard. I think I overheard handsome co-host Anthony Bourdain ask the Minibar maestro if he was running for the White House.

The fashionable Hall, dressed in gorgeous skinny leather pants (she even let me feel them—soooo smooth), performed admirably in the role of auctioneer. She must be getting plenty of practice in speaking crazy fast from talking over Mario Batali on The Chew.

Some 60 local restaurants offered tastings during the competition. Dupont Circle's Casa Nonna, for one, was boiling fresh pasta on site for its sample plates.

Some photos from the star-studded soiree:

Secret ingredient: skate.

Nothing like raw meat, served in bulk.

Andrés, showing off the goods.

Duck and parmesan do go together.

I swear, Bourdain and I locked eyes. Or maybe he was just waving to friend Tim Carman.

Yes, apparently, pageants still exist. That's Miss District of Columbia standing with victorious chef Karoum.

Photos by Stefanie Gans

Bryan Voltaggio

The Huffington Post reports that Batali and partner Joe Bastianich are planning to open a Washington-area spin-off of their 40,000-square-foot Flatiron-area food-and-beverage emporium by the end of 2012.

Contacted by HuffPo, Voltaggio rebuffs suggestions that Batali and company's arrival might spoil his own plans, noting Eataly's reliance on imported goods, in particular: "Mine's going to be very much based on American cuisine, with meat and poultry from within 200 miles of Frederick."

Photo by Charles Haynes/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

The Ba Bay Team: Khoa Nguyen, Sara Siegel, Nick Sharpe, and Denise Nguyen.

You've likely heard about the new Vietnamese restaurant taking over the former Locanda space on Capitol Hill. But maybe you haven't heard this: The forthcoming Ba Bay will feature Nick Sharpe in the kitchen.

For those who need a fast refresher, Sharpe used to be executive chef at Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar, which is, last time I dined there at least, not particularly Vietnamese. So what gives?

You could say Sharpe has connections.

He and Ba Bay principal owner, Khoa Nguyen, have a history together. About four years ago, they both worked under then chef R.J. Cooper at Vidalia, Sharpe in the kitchen and Nguyen at the front of the house. The two chefs (Nguyen has a degree from the Culinary Institute of America) stayed in touch as Sharpe jumped from Maestro in Tysons Corner to Fiamma in New York City to Mio in D.C. before finally landing at Sonoma in 2009.

Nguyen and his cousin, managing partner Denise Nguyen, understood that Sharpe, given his experiences in Cooper and Fabio Trabocchi's kitchens, would bring an element of refinement to the Vietnamese street dishes they planned to serve."It's just elevating what's already great," says Denise Nguyen during a recent phone call.

In order to start elevating, however, Sharpe first had to learn Vietnamese cuisine.  To do so, the cousins took Sharpe to a family member's home in Williamsburg, where he learned the background and the proper methods to make a number of Vietnamese dishes, from pho to caramelized clay pot chicken.

"In that regard," says Denise Nguyen, "it's a big creative push for him."

Sharpe is not alone in that regard, either. Khoa and Denise Nguyen have also hired Sara Siegel as sous chef and pastry chef. She has the chops for both jobs. She has not only worked the line at Mario Batali's Babbo in Greenwich Village but also pastry at — well, who would have guessed this? — Vidalia.

"It's sort of funny," says Denise Nguyen. "We have this Vidalia backbone here."

Hmm, this casual operation, with dishes ranging from $6 to $22, suddenly sounds like one of the most promising new restaurants in D.C. Look for it to open in November at 633 Pennsylvania Ave. SE.

Massimo Fabbri

As the classic-rock soundtrack throbbed and we dissected our dishes at Babbo, some terrific and some downright mediocre, I kept thinking one thing over and over: D.C.’s Tosca is every bit as good, if not better, than Mario Batali’s famous operation in Greenwich Village. This may not be an altogether fair comparison. Babbo aims for a funkier, more eclectic audience, the kind wooed by a rockin’ atmosphere and a celebrity chef. Tosca, on the other hand, sets its sights on D.C.’s lobbying culture, with its appetite for obvious sophistication both on the plate and in the dining room. But in those areas where Batali and Tosca toque Massimo Fabbri’s interests intersect—pasta, for example—it’s clear to me that the latter chef is operating at a higher level. Consider Fabbri’s fresh tortelli stuffed with robiola cheese and black truffles. The little packets are almost canary yellow in color and absolutely lush on the palate. You don’t chew them so much as let them melt on your tongue. This is pasta that reminds you why Italians look down on French food—if not on celebrity chefs who allow their kitchens to coast on thick, chewy, and undercooked ravioli.

1112 F St. NW (202) 367-1990

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

I'm sorry to pick on Rachael Ray. It's beyond shooting fish in a barrel. It's carpet-bombing fish in a home aquarium (though I have to admit that I admired Ray's self-awareness and unwillingness to take the bait after Martha Stewart bashed the TV cook last year).

Nonetheless, would I be surprised one day to find Rachael Ray working at a dry cleaners, as is the premise of this shamefully addictive CBS fluffball titled I Get That A Lot? Well, yes, I would be surprised, if only because she's such a rich, well-branded institution now.

But in the secret recesses of the blackest part of my heart, I'd also think: Why shouldn't she be working at a dry cleaners? Does someone with her skill set really deserve to make more money cooking than Mario Batali and Tom Colicchio and Alain Ducasse?

If you haven't yet had a chance, like Y&H, to watch the Iron Chef America episode in which the not-so-secret ingredient is the White House vegetable garden, you might want to stop reading now.

Otherwise, you'll never forgive me for what I'm about to do: reveal the winner in the star-studded cook-off that pitted Mario "Orange Crush" Batali and Emeril "Bam Bam" Lagasse against Bobby "Death Smirk" Flay and White House Executive Chef Cristeta "I'm Surrounded by Too Much Testosterone" Comerford.

I have a reason. The New York Times' Kim Severson and Sam Sifton suggested yesterday that the fix was in during their give-and-take on the Diner's Journal blog. As in: The winner was a foregone conclusion given the fact that the show was provided access to the most powerful house in the whole stinkin' universe (American interpretation, naturally). Take a read:

K.S.Seriously, the only one who kept her peas in the basket, as it were, was Cristeta Comerford. She was cool as a cucumber, even when her pastry guy was in the weeds and Alton Brown asked her strange, overwrought and unanswerable questions. And her look was flawless throughout, which is more than I can say about the brothers. I completely heart her now. Here’s the bigger question: Was the fix in? I mean, I know reality TV isn’t exactly real, but this felt like a set up of the highest order. How are you going to get your Food Network show invited to the most powerful house in the world and not give the gold to the host team?

S.S. Let’s turn that question over to the readers. For myself, I think it would have been hard, even for British subjects like Ms. Lawson and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (Ms. Seymour’s greatest role) to deny Ms. Comerford and her employer’s vegetables the win. I think that would have been the case even if that chowder thing she and Mr. Flay made wasn’t as dodgy and weird and gross as it looked and sounded.

Also, that there was a fix would suggest the idea that Mr. Batali burned the radishes on purpose. And I love that idea. (”I charred some icicle radishes,” he said, as if this were smart cooking, when he introduced the dish. Dude! Nice try!) Because: did you see the expressions on the judges’ faces after they ate Mr. Batali’s sweet-potato raviolo, with the egg yolk inside? They were rapturous. That was a winning dish, right there. I suspect that Mr. Flay’s barbecue and tamale dish was, as well. But my feeling is he would have won with a pile of blue-corn tortillas, some honey mustard and a heap of steamed kale.

OK, readers, let's get into it. What the fix in?

Frittatas were on the menu Sunday afternoon at Y&H's house.  It sounded like a good idea, both simple and satisfying. I started with a recipe I pulled from Mario Batali's  Molto Italiano, which, thank God, somebody else has already added to the internets.

I figured I could easily find all the ingredients at the local farmers market, even this late in the year. I was correct on that count. I even picked up some porcinis and applewood-smoked bacon to add a little texture and flavor (and bacon!) to the recipe.

What I neglected to remember, however, are two important factors:

Blanched spinach requires that you dry those wrinkled little mofos so that they don't add too much moisture to the frittata and prevent it from setting correctly. Y&H consumed a lot of time and paper towels drying those suckers. There must be an easier way, yes? (Insert plea for help from readers.)

The other issue is our old Calphalon 9-inch saute pan, which lost its stick resistence six years ago in a terrible kitchen accident. (I lie, of course, just to cover for the fact that I forgot to treat the pan before adding the egg mixture, which I always forget to do.) It makes one step in Mario's recipe all but impossible:

Pour the egg mixture into the skillet and cook until the bottom has set, about 5 minutes. Hold a flat plate over the pan and invert the frittata onto the plate, then slide it back into the pan. Cook until just set, about 5 minutes more, and serve hot.

Yeah, right. I had a better chance of prying that drink out of Lindsay Lohan's hand. I finally fell back on a technique I learned awhile ago: Stick the whole saute pan in a very hot oven for a few minutes until the top sets.

Worked like a charm, if I say so myself. The lunch, in the end, wasn't so simple. But it was quite satisfying — almost as satisfying as eating it in front of the telly as the Redskins pulled off that Sunday miracle.

Comerford and Flay get fresh (veggies) in the White House garden.

Jeesh, speaking of predictions, Y&H should have guessed this would happen as soon as the White House broke ground on its kitchen garden in March: Iron Chef America has trotted out three of its, ahem, heaviest hitters to cook a meal from ingredients plucked from the hugely symbolic garden.

The special two-hour episode of Iron Chef America, dubbed with a stunning lack of subtlety, Super Chef Battle, features Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse, who take on Bobby Flay and White House Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford in the competition.

The episode has already been filmed, and according to The New York Times' account, First Lady Michelle Obama laid out the ground rules to the teams (they had to cook five dishes using ingredients from the White House kitchen garden) and put in a good plug for her Healthy Kids Initiative.

The show will air on Sunday, Jan. 3, on the Food Network.

Not surprisingly, the air date is politically tinged. So says Y&H's virtual friend, Obama Foodorama, who writes:

The show's January airdate is timed perfectly to be right before Congress comes back into session, when legislators will be addressing the reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which provides federal funding for school feeding programs. Better school lunches are one of Mrs. Obama's priorities, and President Obama's too; Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack frequently notes in his public remarks that this was the very first subject President Obama discussed with him during their "job interview."

And here's another interesting twist: The ingredients used for the actual cooking challenge in Kitchen Stadium were not from the White House garden. So says both The New York Times and Obama Foodorama, who notes:

Today, the chefs reunited in New York in the Iron Chef Kitchen Stadium, the stage set where the competition part of the show occurs. In addition to the "secret ingredient" of White House Kitchen Garden veggies (stand-in organic veggies were used for the actual filming–) the chefs were given a baby pig, and a pantry of dairy products to work with, among other things. Guest judges for the competition part of the episode were cookbook author/chef Nigella Lawson, actress Jane Seymour, and Olympic swimming champ Natalie Coughlin.

Photo courtesy of Obama Foodorama

Saturday was a vacation for me. I ate at home. Carrie and I made dinner for friends. She made a tomato tartare, based on the recipe from Michel Richard's cookbook, Happy in the Kitchen, and I made osso buco with risotto alla Milanese, based on recipes by Mario Batali and Mark Bittman.

The tomato tartare, with its shallot dressing, performs a classic Richard trick: It fools the eye into believing the dish is something that it's not, beef tartare in this case. (The photo above doesn't do justice to Carrie's dish; her initial presentation was gorgeous, but we were so eager to dip into it that we forgot to snap pics until four or five bites in. Did I mention wine was involved at this point?) The appetizer does share one thing in common with its meaty cousin, though: It goes down so damn easy.

I bought the osso buco from Wagshal's Market, and they were beautiful, two-inch center-cut chops that even I couldn't screw up that much. Photo after the jump.

Photos by Angela Potter