Julio Lazzarini and his friend the blender.

Last night’s episode of Chopped! demonstrated that, despite the New York–centric nature of the program, even chefs from as far as Wilmington, Delaware, have a shot at the title. That chef—Julio Lazzarini of Orillas Tapas Bar—was joined by Mark Spooner, a veritable mountain of a man and chef with Great Performances catering, “the fourth largest catering company in America,” Massimo Felici of DeGrezia restaurant in midtown, and Christine Campbell, a butcher and private chef working on Long Island. Judges were Aaron Sanchez, Scott Conant and Amanda Freitag—who sported a wispy, almost Shirley Temple–esque ‘do.
Appetizers were made with beef shoulder, fish sauce and canned pumpkin, and even though Campbell produced nuggets of tough, chewy meat, it was Felici who was chopped first for leaving in raw sage leaves, which overpowered his dish of arugula salad with seared beef.

For the entrées, the ingredients were whole flounder, yellow plantains, baby bok choy and mini watermelons. Spooner earned points for pickling watermelon rinds, but lost them for serving broken fish fillets, and Lazzarini’s accidental inclusion of pin bones was deemed less offensive than Campbell’s serving of raw flounder and a far-too-spicy watermelon-sriracha broth. For making Scott Conant cough, she was chopped.

Dessert brought a basket filled with tomatillos, crème fraîche and plain doughnuts, which had Spooner making fritters, while Lazzarini treated doughnut slices like French toast. During some prep work, when Spooner cut his finger and slapped a glove on his hand to keep things sanitary, we were sickly fascinated to see him hold up his hand to reveal an almost palm-size pool of blood welled up inside the latex—Chopped! is so hard-core.

Lazzarini’s treatment of the doughnut made his dessert too heavy, and despite his previous efforts, the judges felt there were a few mistakes that couldn’t be overlooked. And so an injured Mark Spooner came out the victor.—Zachary Feldman

Next week: Duck appetizers and Serrano ham entrées.