Michael Ferraro slices his ill-fated squid.

Apologies, Feed readers, for this late dispatch of Tuesday night’s episode of Chopped! We’ll be back in the saddle with (timely) recaps next week.

The second season of Chopped! moseyed along on Tuesday night with episode two. High-fives all around for the serious tristate-area representation: Chefs included Michael Ferraro of Delicatessen; John Lawson, executive sous chef at Gordon Ramsay at the London; David Kirschner (W Hotel in Hoboken); and Nicole Puzio (Ox Restaurant in Jersey City).

Appetizers had to be made with calamari, brussels sprouts and Asian pears, and all the chefs had a tough time properly cleaning their cephalopods. Seven minutes in, everyone was still washing, which prompted judge Marc Murphy to observe, “Everyone’s still cleaning, it’s a calamari cleaning party!” If only there were a Beard Award for humor.

Lawson made an aggressively peppered squid salad, which contained an unwelcome guest: a squid eye. Kirschner’s crispy squid salad suffered from oversalting, while Ferraro grilled his squid but failed to remove the cartilage, and Puzio was unable to finish her calamari tempura. The judges—Amanda Freitag and a grumpy Scott Conant, in addition to Murphy—felt that her dish could have been the best, but she was disqualified for not being done in time.

Entrées pitted the chefs against bison sirloin, dried mangoes, leeks and Belgian-style ale, from which Ferraro created a roasted bison sirloin with arugula salad and melted leeks with ale-infused mangoes—a dish that the judges agreed offered the best protein. Lawson whipped up pot roast with some killer beer-braised potatoes, and Kirschner served undercooked bison with butter-poached leeks and a faux gastrique (Conant felt it wasn’t a true gastrique since it lacked acidity). For those two offenses, Kirschner was felled by Ted Allen’s mighty chop.

Desserts featured ancho chilies, semisweet chocolate and black plums. It was a toss-up between Lawson’s toasted-almond–crusted caramelized plums and Ferraro’s napoleon with sweet ricotta and roasted plums with thyme and sage. Even though the judges preferred Ferraro’s dessert (they gave him huge props for making a cake in the time allotted), they felt that Lawson stayed true to his talent throughout the meal—and he walked away with the win.—Zachary Feldman

Next week: Another batch of hopefuls vie for the title of Chopped! champion.