He was second in the contest, but first in our hearts.
Park Slope Thai restaurant Sky Ice held an ice-cream eating contest on Saturday, where the most impressive feat wasn’t the winner scarfing down an entire tub of the eatery’s signature dessert before anyone else — it was the antics of the runner-up, whose boisterous showmanship included smothering the freezing confection onto his forehead with a spoon.
In fact, the only person at the cold-weather contest who didn’t leave with fond memories of second-place-getter Jo Rose’s antics was the man himself.
“I don’t remember [hitting myself with a spoon], because I had a couple of drinks,” said Rose, who grew up in Park Slope before settling in the distant isle of Manhattan. “If I did that, it was for laughs — I try to put on a show.”
Rose is an experienced competitive eater — he’s previously tried out of the Nathan’s Hot-Dog Eating Contest, but didn’t make the cut. He ultimately came in second out of nine competitors in the ice-cream battle, but wasn’t happy about it, he said.
“I can’t believe I lost,” said Rose. “I wanted to win so bad.”
Instead, victory went to Ditmas Parker Patrick Garcia, who edged out Rose by being first to devour a pint of Sky Ice’s Thai tea ice cream, earning himself a $100 gift certificate to the Fifth Avenue eatery.
Rose took home a Sky Ice hat.
This was Garcia’s first eating contest, but what he lacked in experience he made up for it in love of ice cream, he said.
“I’ve been really fond of ice cream and my wife pushed me to go to this contest,” Garcia said. “I guess it was a good decision.”
Garcia plans on spending his winnings on more ice cream, he said.
The brain-freezing face-off, usually a summer affair, was held in a colder climate to add an extra degree of difficulty beyond mere gluttony, according to the organizer.
“We wanted to use the element of weather to make it part of the challenge, versus how much someone can consume,” said Jonathan Bayer, who owns Sky Ice along with wife Sutheera Denprapa.
The restaurant creates its own blend of ice cream that are somewhere between traditional ice cream and gelato, but with Asian flavors, including sesame seaweed, white miso almond, and green tea, Bayer said.
