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Food

Sacha Baron Cohen Convinced a Food Critic He Was Eating Human Flesh

And he loved it.

Over the course of this season of Who Is America?, Sacha Baron Cohen's ex-convict character Rick Sherman has been trolling pretty much every pretentious art scene out there. He got a gallery owner to fawn over a painting supposedly made of human shit. He convinced an EDM DJ to let him play the sound of a guy getting stabbed in prison to a packed Florida nightclub. And on Sunday night's episode, Cohen-as-Sherman set his sights on the foodie world—somehow managing to turn a food critic into a cannibal on TV.

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In the segment, Sherman invites dinnerreviews.com editor Bill Jilla over for a three-course meal inspired by his time in lock-up. It started out pretty simply, with a "beans-and-toast medley" appetizer plate, before transitioning into more, uh, creative territory.

"This dish is inspired by a true story," Sherman tells Jilla as he brings out a new plate. "When I was inside, I needed some veal. Obviously, we couldn't get it, so I used the services of a prisoner called Andy 'The Mule' Newman. He smuggled in some veal in the way that he traditionally did, in a prophylactic condom in his buttocks. And it was the most tender veal I've ever tasted. Essentially, the veal had been massaged every time he walked."

"Like the Kobe beef process," Jilla says, before slicing into a strawberry-flavored condom stuffed with "anally-aged" veal and declaring it the best he's ever had.

For the main course, Sherman tells Jilla another story from his time inside—this one about how he inadvertently ate a human meat steak and acquired a certain taste for flesh. "A few years ago, the Chinese started a program where, you know how people donate their organs? Well, they can donate their flesh… This is a fillet of vegetarian-fed Chinese dissident and a cauliflower puree."

"It's like butter soft," Jilla moans as he pops the so-called human flesh into his mouth. "It's melting on my palate! I don't even need to chew it."

At Sherman's direction, Jilla stares into the camera and says a quick thank you to the family of the dead man he thinks he just ate. "To the Lao family, thank you very much," he says, showing off their son's "loin" that he is "enjoying very much."

To be fair, Who Is America? is at its best when it's helping elected officials ruin their careers on TV or making fools of public figures, and Jilla isn't either. The guy isn't a major player in the food world and his website went dark after Sunday's episode aired, but still—watching him daintily slice into a stuffed condom and thank the family of a man he thinks he's eating still makes for some of the most surreal footage from the show so far. If this season has proven anything, it's that Cohen can get people to happily do just about anything when there's a camera pointed at them.

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