"Elmo loves wasabi," said an unmistakable voice over the phone. "Do you know what wasabi is?" Taking an invisible squeegee to the brain, we realized that this conversation was actually taking place.

We had no idea Elmo was so self-deprecating. “I’m a horrible chef,” Elmo told Jimmy Fallon, Jason Schwartzman and Questlove on The Tonight Show. But we think the Sesame Street star was being far too ...