Taichi Kitamura runs Sushi Kappo Tamura in Seattle, where the omakase costs less than half what you would pay for the same level of fish in Manhattan and the line out the door reflects exactly that math. He grew up in Kyoto. He has been folding dumplings since before he can remember.
He beat Bobby with pot stickers in 2015 — the show's fourth-season premiere. The pleat on a pot sticker is the entire dish; it has to seal water in while letting steam out, which is a thermodynamic ask most home cooks never solve. Kitamura's pleats were tight and even, the kind that come from twenty years of muscle memory. Bobby's, per the broadcast, leaked. The dumplings that leak are the dumplings that lose.