So the end of Friday night’s festivities at the Tampa Bay Wine & Food Festival included what they call the Titanium Chef Challenge (Because the words “Iron Chef” are, you know, copyrighted.)

The combatants: Joshua Adam Garcia, better known by his self-appointed nickname of “JAG” versus “culinary rocker/celebrity chef” Johnny Ciao.

Only, they weren’t. JAG, who is best known for losing last years “Next Food Network Star” competition after inflating his resume just a tad, (Gee, that seems to be a theme on Food Network lately. But I digress.) had to go up against New Zealand chef Jason Roberts. Why? Because Ciao suffered some sort of horrific hand injury at Thursday night’s Party for the Senses at the Mahaffey Theater in downtown St. Petersburg. Something about Sergio Mendes makes people go a little wobbly, I guess.

The secret ingredient for the night’s cooking competition? (Apparently secret ingredients aren’t a trademarked feature of such things.): Chocolate. And Mahi Mahi.

Ooooookay.

Anyway, Ciao participated as a guest judge. And so did Lorraine Bracco, an actress formerly known as Dr. Melfi of “The Sopranos.” The last judge’s chair, which was auctioned off for charity went for $17,000. No word on where invited judge Chris Sherman of the St. Petersburg Times was.

Headache yet?

Well, JAG and Jason, who was called in at the last moment, did their level best to make something edible. Jag had Justin Timineri, an executive chef for the Florida Department of Agriculture who had done a teriffic red snapper demo earlier in the day, as his sous chef. (Or “soose” as master of ceremonies Tim Wilkins unironically called him.) Roberts had the talented Robert Masson of 717 South restaurant in Tampa.

The grand prize? Being knighted by toastmaster and Scottish comedian Jeremy Bell

How’s that headache? Need some Advil?

All went well, or as well as these kinds of things can go. The food really was secondary here, as the Culinary Sherpas can attest. It was more of a cougar cocktail rodeo than a culinary demonstration.

At one point, I got all giddy because a lightbulb perched above one of Roberts’ dishes shattered and fell into the food. Roberts and Masson fished out what they could find and showed some genuine concern.

I, however, caught it on video (footage to come later), and and began thinking, “I’m going to get the last footage of Lorraine Bracco before she dies from eating glass. This is her final meal. I have her death dish on tape. She eats with the fishes, then sleeps with the fishes. I’m going to be rich.”

Bottom line: by the end of it, Roberts was named the victor, I had to spit out a mouth of undercooked chocolate risotto that I tasted off one of JAG’s plates, and the Scottish dude annoyed the hell out of the room by playing bagpipes before tapping the Donnie Wahlberg lookalike on the shoulders with a sabre and wrapping him in a kilt. God, I hate the Scottish.

For photos of all this hot mess, go to my Flickr gallery. Lots of pics of the shirtless dude in the kilt and his, um, gluteal cleavage. I did not shoot those. Michelle Baker did. I swear. (Be sure to check out the liveblogging that the Sherpas are doing at the festival throughout the day.) Tampa Bay’s 10 covered it last night, too, in case you want to watch video.

Jaden Hair drives up for today’s festivities. She’ll be blogging on her site, too.

Note to self: Text Jaden to bring a Costco-sized bottle of Advil.