The AP reports that D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams travels today to New York to serve on the three-judge tasting panel at tonight's taping of an episode of the Food Network's Iron Chef America. Back in October, Williams was a member of the local tasting panel that picked former Signatures chef Morou to compete in the nationally televised cooking competition over Washington food luminary Ris Lacoste (formerly of 1789) and Ristorante Tosca’s Cesare Lanfranconi. Tonight, the one-named Morou will again have Williams in his corner as Morou faces off against a yet-to-be-named Iron Chef in hopes of gaining the people's ovation and fame forever.

Williams -- who proclaimed to this DCist back in 2001 that the long-departed Fuzio was his favorite restaurant in Washington -- will no doubt enjoy the dishes prepared by Morou and the Iron Chef. But the mayor may have motives for heading up to New York other than judging the competition...

▪ With all the obstacles he's faced trying to get a stadium built for the Nationals, Williams might want to pick Chairman Kaga's nephew's brain about how he and the Gourmet Academy managed to cut through all that red tape and erect a Kitchen Stadium in the United States.

▪ There's the chance that Williams feels sorry for Morou in light of Signatures' closing (damn you, Jack Abramoff!) and wants to ensure that Morou will be able to work again.

▪ Williams is patterning his political career on that of Japanese lower house member and frequent Iron Chef judge Shinichiro Kurimoto.

▪ Williams digs traveling.

Whatever the mayor's reason for attending, we hope that Morou represents the District far better than did Galileo's Roberto Donna, who put up what was perhaps the worst performance in the history of both Iron Chef and Iron Chef America last March by completing only two of five dishes against established veteran Masaharu Morimoto.

Of course, Morou's success is partially in the hands of Williams, who could give Morou a boost by throwing a few extra points his way. And although we can't condone regional favoritism for its own sake, that's better than the alternative -- Morou's taking a page out of his former boss' handbook and trying to bribe the judges.