Metromix stopped into the Top Chef tryouts we told you about and talked to would-be cheftestants — some of them locals, like Paul Inserra, a bartender at Sfoglia who cooks a mean beer-and-bacon soup; Andrew Sikorski, a chef at Docks Oyster Bar; and Pascal Frola, an executive chef of Naples 45, who says he brings to the table “my face on the plate.” Yum! Our vote goes to Eng Kian: Between the faux-hawk and the Jean-Georges fetish, the Malaysian ICE student could easily be the next Hung.

Future chef-testants? [Metromix]

Taking an active interest as we do in hygiene, we keep an eye on the New York Health Department’s restaurant-inspection site. Usually, it’s outer-borough taco joints and the like that flunk their tests. We were surprised today, however, to find a few big names cited for everything from suspect shellfish to — something worse than supect — rats.