When a James Beard winner brings doro wat, you do not bring fried chicken.
Marcus Samuelsson — born in Ethiopia, adopted by a Swedish family at three, ran the kitchen at Aquavit at age 24, now operates Red Rooster in Harlem and a small empire across the world — picked doro wat because doro wat is his answer to the question "what's the best dish you make." It is the Ethiopian chicken stew built on berbere, niter kibbeh (a clarified butter infused with about fifteen aromatics), and the kind of slow reduction that has a tempo you can feel.
Bobby brought, by the show's account, a version that leaned more on cayenne and tomato paste than on the berbere infrastructure that doro wat actually requires. The judges, all of whom have eaten the real thing, were polite about it. They did not give him the round.