Dave's cart has egg rolls with ginger dipping sauce, fried shrimp, salami panini on a sun-dried tomato roll, and the chocolate-dipped strawberries, which are dipped in dark chocolate but streaked with white. We next get a look at Tiffani's really precariously stacked Quince Paste & Goat Cheese Napoleon; herbed grissini (Italian breadsticks) wrapped in prosciutto (what happened to the truffle butter?); potato chips that look too brown, which we later learn have been tossed with aged Gouda; and the brie and tomato sandwiches. Harold doesn't feel that good about his beer-battered onion rings, mini pizzas, mini grilled cheese, and honey-Dijon buffalo wings. The carts are wheeled away to the Poker Room with Gail as an escort.
In the poker room, we get introduced to Phil Hellmuth, world champion poker player; Greg Pierson, poker player; and I guess some other guys who aren't famous enough to be named. Gail presents the dishes. They really appear to like Dave's egg rolls and shrimp. Turning to Tiffani's cart, the poker players think they need forks and decide her stuff is not necessarily the best poker food. Well, okay, so they are trying to use a knife and fork to cut the brie and tomato sandwich, but come on -- it was tea-sandwich-sized! They could have picked that up! They think the potato chips are too strong, too sharp. Burned? Finally, when tasting Harold's platter, they players agree that the food was well-designed for a poker room. One guy is "eh" about the mini pizza, but loves the spice on the chicken wings. As they talk about their final assessment, it is so clear that the poker players loved that Dave threw in the chocolate-covered strawberries. No one else gave them something sweet, and this is significant. Ha -- take that, Colicchio! However, the best individual dish for one guy was Harold's bag o' frozen wings. Phil Hellmuth says that Tiffani might have won were it not for the flatbread (he's talking about the sesame crackers stacked with quince paste and goat cheese, because Gail called it flatbread for some reason).









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