Here is the thing about getting beaten by your own judge. Michele Ragussis has sat on the Beat Bobby Flay judging panel multiple times. She has watched Bobby win. She has watched Bobby lose. She knows the room, the lighting, the camera angles, and the specific face Bobby makes when a plate isn't working.
Then she got into the kitchen and made pastitsio — the Greek-American casserole of bucatini, meat sauce sharpened with cinnamon and clove, and a béchamel cap baked until the top crackles. It is, structurally, a lasagna built by a country that does not believe in mozzarella. She nailed the béchamel. Bobby's pasta dish, per the broadcast, did not have the layered structure hers did.
Ragussis runs the kitchen at Gedney Farm in the Berkshires. She was the Food Network Star Season 8 runner-up. The judge became the verdict.