Culinary card sharks, there’s a new game in town. Who are the kings and queens of the D.C. dining world? The jacks of all trades? Aces in the hole?

More importantly, who is the Joker?

An answer to 52 of these questions was given out as swag on Sunday night at the 2016 RAMMY Awards, the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington’s annual recognition of some of the area’s best restaurants and chefs.

BlueCart, a supply ordering application for the restaurant industry that was founded in Washington two years ago, handed out decks of the custom-made playing cards to attendees at Sunday night’s festivities. While many copies of the DC Dining Deck 2016 were foolishly left on tables as guests focused their attention elsewhere, savvy party goers snatched up the clever collector’s items.

Mike Isabella, who took home the coveted Restaurateur of the Year award, is fittingly the ace of spades, joined by Michel Richard, Jamie Leeds, and Fabio Trabocchi, as fellow aces. The kings are for the most part heavy hitters: José Andrés, Patrick O’Connell, Marjorie Meek-Bradley, and Rock Harper. The queens are all high-powered female chefs, including Ris Lacoste, who tweeted out her pleasure to serve as the queen of spades.

These and other card assignments seemed to suggest a pecking order at play, and restaurant critics Tom Sietsema and David Hagedorn also found themselves assigned the joker category; while the twos through tens seemed a little more random, BlueCart CEO and co-founder Konstantin Zvereff was adamant that the cards — which chefs agreed to be on and submitted photos for — were assigned by lottery.

“It was all completely random,” insisted Zvereff, even when confronted with the fact that Isabella, with his Midas touch, happened to be the ace of spades.

Nevertheless, some chef feathers were indeed ruffled.

“Scott Drewno, he’s a good friend of ours,” says Zvereff, “he was extremely upset that he was ten of clubs. But there’s nothing we can do. If we started shuffling people around to accommodate a couple of chefs that might be more prominent, it would eventually backfire.”

Since he did take home Chef of the Year honors that night, Drewno had good reason to think of himself as better than a ten — but still snapped a photo with Zvereff even as he “complained” about the perceived slight.

Unfortunately the cards are not available to the general public, so your best bet on getting your hands on a deck is by asking BlueCart nicely — they have a few packs left to distribute on a case-by-case basis.

Cards (in Spades, Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds order)

Twos: Joe Palma, Spike Mendelsohn, Matt Baker, Teddy Folkman
Threes: Bart Vandaele, Rob Weland, Tony Chittum, Fabrice Bendano
Fours: Todd Gray, Jeff Tunks, Cedric Maupillier, Vikram Sunderam
Fives: Jeff Buben, Matt Adler, Tim Ma, Katsuya Fukushima
Sixes: Kwame Onwuachi, Bryan Voltaggio, George Pagonis, Kazuhiro Okochi
Sevens: Danny Lee, Jennifer Carroll, Derek Brown, Nick Stefanelli
Eights: Alex Levin, Nathan Anda, David Guas, Victor Albisu
Nines: Mike Friedman, Kyle Bailey, Dimitri Moshovitis, Erik Bruner-Yang
Tens: Jonah Kim, Michael Schlow, Scott Drewno, Roberto Donna
Jacks: Jeff Black, Robert Wiedmaier, Cathal Armstrong, Seng Luangrath
Queens: Ris Lacoste, Gina Chersevani, Tiffany MacIsaac, Amy Brandwein
Kings: Marjorie Meek-Bradley, Rock Harper, José Andrés, Patrick O’Connell
Aces: Mike Isabella, Michel Richard, Jamie Leeds, Fabio Trabocchi

Critics (in lieu of Jokers): Tom Sietsma, David Hagedorn

Filed Under: BlueCart, Konstantin Zvereff, mike isabella, playing cards, rammys, restaurant association of metropolitan washington, Ris Lacoste, Scott Drewno,