Great Food Truck Race

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Chef Dave

Cook
Joined
Oct 3, 2010
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62
Location
Arizona
Did anyone watch the Great Food Truck Race on Food Network?

It was an interesting show. It started with 7 food trucks, each crewed by 3 people. Each food truck served a different menu ... Vietnamese Banh Me sandwiches ... burgers ... French ... buffalo wings and pudding (an odd combination) ... Cajun etc.

Each week, the trucks had to compete in a different location. The host gave them money to restock their kitchens. The crews had to figure out where to get their food and where to sell. They usually had two days to sell. The truck with the highest gross total earned free hotels and travel from Orbitz.com. The losing truck had to leave.

To make things more interesting, the host issued a truck stop challenge at each location. The crew leader had to keep his or her cell phone on because no one knew when the challenge would be issued. At the time of the challenge, each crew had to shut down operations and report to the challenge site.

At one location, they had to clean and fillet a cat fish. The winning truck got to go to sell food at a vintage car rally. The crews of the losing trucks had to stay behind and fillet several hundred pounds of cat fish.

It was an interesting show.

Part of the attraction was the question of whose cuisine would reign supreme. It was also fascinating to watch how each crew marketed their food. At one point, someone from the burger truck boarded a passing tourist bus and got all of the passengers to buy burgers. At another location, the same truck parked outside a bar and sold burgers to passing college students as well as the bar's customers. Luck also played a factor since contestants had to find and choose locations to sell their food.

The first truck out was the buffalo wing and pudding truck. They lost one day of sales when they started the contest with an empty propane tank. Since they couldn't use their deep fryer, all they had to sell were variations on banana pudding.

I wonder whether there will be another food truck race.
 
From what I heard, there are plans for a second season.
Most of the trucks have websites, kinda interesting to visit.

There was a fair bit of discussion on the web about how the Nom Nom
truck beat the others so badly in every competition... comments about
extra generous tips, wealthy uncles.... subtle questioning as to perhaps
they were padding their sales figures.
Which makes sense.. for $50,000 and bragging rights, a few thousand out
of pocket would be a great investment.
Course, the Nom Nom ladies really worked their network contacts and got some
local advertising and support in most cities, so.....
All in all, not a bad show.
 
The Nom Nom ladies were definitely cute. It's too bad they lost so much time in the Bronx. They essentially won six battles only to lose the war.

xt_team-photo-nom-nom_s4x3_lg.jpeg
 
Nothing against Nom Nom, but I am glad that Grill 'em All won. A guess I was just voting for the underdog. It was an interesting show. I wish we had some of those types of food trucks around here. It is nice to see that food trucks are not limited to the usual hamburgers, tacos, burritos, etc. Glad to hear that it will be on again. Plus, I think Tyler Florence did a good job of being the host.
 
I was expecting Nom Nom to win, so it was pretty cool that Grill 'Em All won.

I really don't understand how Nom Nom beat Grill 'Em All after the burger guys won the chuck wagon cooking challenge. Grill 'Em All had lines of customers at the vintage car rally ... so how did Nom Nom manage to pull a win out of this ... especially when they missed most of the Church crowd on Sunday?
 
And not just a win... Nom NOm STOMPED everyone, every week, by hundreds of dollars. THat's a LOT of $2.50 wraps and $6ish Banh Mi sandwiches.
 
Just a guess, but maybe it was due to the cost of food? Grill em alls burgers actually looked like $6.00 worth of food.
 
I really enjoyed that show. I think I took advantage of a "marathon" on a weekend, and recorded all the episodes so I didn't have to wait a week to see another one. It was really a good show, and glad to hear there will be another.
Wish we had such a wide variety of trucks around here !!
 
The show could really pick up a notch if a dumpy old taco truck from East L.A. was included in the show. The show could use a real down to earth roach coach representing. Bet they will kick butt.
 
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