Quick Take: The Great Food Truck Race, "A Pinch of Salt Lake City"
Sometimes offering a bargain isn't always the best deal.
Review: The Great Food Truck Race, "A Pinch of Salt Lake City"
(S0202) The second week of Food Network's The Great Food Truck Race finds the seven remaining teams pulling into Salt Lake City, Utah. All of the teams had a much better game plan this go around which provided for more entertainment and drama than the Season Two premiere. The teams were only given $100 in seed money this week and encountered their first Truck Stop -- a cooking challenge that forces all of the contestants to be quick on their feet and flex their cooking ability.
Who would have thought this but Salt Lake City is home to one of the top Italian sausage makers in the country, Creminelli Fine Meats. So of course the Truck Stop involved sausage. Within 90 minutes all of teams had to go to Creminelli and make a sausage from scratch that they then had to incorporate with five other ingredients to create a signature dish. A local chef then judged this dish.
The chef on the Hodge Podge truck annoyed me... First he bragged about knowing how to make sausage and then he didn't really want his teammates to help. This seems to be a running theme with him. His final product did not look appetizing to me, but he did go on to win the competition. This gave Hodge Podge an extra $100 in seed money and excluded them from the Speed Bump. Personally I think the dish that Devilicious came up with looked way more appetizing. Korilla BBQ had an interesting tactic to the competition. Instead of participating they decided to keep the meat they got from Creminelli and use it as part of their food supply for later in the competition. Definitely a smart move. If they keep thinking like this they may very well end up being the victors. Seabirds, the vegan truck, couldn't even deal with the smell of meat inside of Creminelli for more than a few minutes so they ran out and decided to create sausage using garbanzo beans. Not surprisingly the judge asked them where the sausage was when they presented him with their dish. I agree with him. They could have at least attempted to put a casing around their concoction to make it look somewhat authentic. Their dish looked more like bruschetta than anything else.
The competition gets into full swing with each of the trucks heading out to their location to start cooking and selling. This week it seemed that all of the teams were on equal footing. Well, that is until the Seabirds got a rude awakening. Last week they had an alliance with the Lime Truck. This week the guys on the Lime truck undercut them by getting a contract at a pet adoption drive to be the exclusive food truck there, selling vegan food nonetheless! Mind you on their drive into Salt Lake City the girls on Seabirds made plans to sell there. Alliances never work; everyone is always out for themselves in these competitions. Cafe Con Leche ended up having the best advantage, they hooked up with a local Mexican restaurant to do a catering job for them at a party. Roxy's Gourmet Grilled Cheese continuously had the same problem, the fear that their supply of food was not going to match the demand.
When the Speed Bump came along all of the food trucks' were selling in full swing, but they had to shut down from their current location and move at least one mile. For some this hiccup was no big deal as people followed them, for others it proved to be an obstacle. At the end of the two days the seven trucks combined earned over $25K. Coming in first this week was Korilla BBQ earning $5,665 and coming in last, and going home, was Devilicious earning only $2,846. This was only $159 less than the sixth place Roxy's Gourmet Grilled Cheese. Unfortunately, Devilicious ended up inadvertently setting up their own demise by offering $1 off each of their meals. Dollars add it up, and quickly! I think they got more caught up in having customers than making money. I'm actually surprised though that Hodge Podge didn't come in first since they did have a few advantages. They ended up coming in third making $3,646. I guess it all depends on what you do with what you have that makes a world of difference. One final thought. I'm expecting things to get hostile between the guys from the Lime Truck and Roxy's Gourmet Grilled Cheese. Last week there was a mishap in Las Vegas with parking and this week once again they had a minor dispute over the way Roxy parked their truck at Creminelli. I definitely think that the guys from Roxy's Grilled Cheese have it in them to be the most ruthless of all the teams.
Next week, the six remaining teams head 530 miles east to the Mile-High city, Denver Colorado. There, they will have to dig for their own mushrooms to create a dish and one person will have to run the truck. Robin Roberts from Good Morning America makes an appearance and the teams will be competing to have an inclusive interview with her, which will give that team national exposure.
Now I want some bbq !