Loco moco is a Hawaiian plate-lunch dish that starts with rice, lays on a hamburger patty, blankets it with brown gravy, and crowns the whole thing with a fried egg. It is the kind of dish a chef from Buffalo, New York — about as far from the Pacific as the continental United States gets — should not, by rights, win with.
Mike Andrzejewski runs SeaBar and Cantina Loco in Buffalo. The technique loco moco rewards is the gravy: a true brown sauce built on beef fat and flour, slow-toasted to peanut color, then loosened with stock and finished with a hit of soy and Worcestershire so it carries umami the rice can drink. Cheat the roux and the gravy stays pale and floury.
Bobby's roux, the judges' palates suggested, did not get there.