The Great Food Truck Race

[Tilden]

I didn't get that vibe at all. I took it more as a bit of history to make the presentation more interesting rather than a food lesson. I don't know of many non-Koreans who have ever heard of King Sejong (who also invented the Korean alphabet, by the way). If they said or implied anything about giving a lesson in Korean food itself I missed it.

In an interview section, or whatever they call it on the Great Food Truck Race, the Korilla guy who explained the burger said that he told the story because he didn't think a Kansas food critic would be familiar with Korean food. I doubt he'd have said that about a food critic from California or New York, and in fact, that critic is known outside of Kansas too. He's not just some local guy with a food column in the local shopper. I knew that, so I imagine quite a few other people would as well, but the guy from Korilla didn't.

I actually like it better when they're in smaller towns where one or two trucks can't get an automatic advantage by tapping into people or organizations they know there. It levels the playing field for everyone.

[Maybaybie]

I grew up in a small town in Maine (2,298 people currently), attended high school in the neighboring town (pop 8,875), and currently live a few towns away from where I grew up (pop 2,987). When they said they were going to a 'small town', I envisioned a place like where I live, went to high school, or grew up. 23,000 people to me is not a 'small town'. Of course if you are comparing it to NYC or LA, then I suppose it's smaller than those places by a bunch, but still not "small" by my standards. We don't have food trucks here except for a fish and chips truck that has permanent residence in one of the local parking lots- and no one is ever there when I drive by. I'd love to see them go to an actual small town uannounced. I know with production and the like it's pretty much an impossiblity and of course word of mouth brings out the people in droves, but it wasn't like this last season. I still enjoy the show, but it's lost something now that people know they are coming and what the show is about.

I also wonder if the trucks going veggie next week was concocted after the Seabirds were sent packing. I know they had the sausage challenge, but that didn't give one particular truck an advantage for the whole show and it was only for one challenge. I think if the Seabirds were still in it than they would be the one truck with a big advantage (of course they had the advantage this week and couldn't capitalize on it, so who knows!).

I didn't like the HodgePodge guy at first (Chris), but I think he is slowly growing on me. He can back up his arrogance with his cooking ability. I was surprised the food critic gave him heck about not doing more for the $5 challenge. He made fish and chips- I thought that was pretty darn good. The girls in the pink and white dresses need new outfits. I'm not sure why they always wear the same thing because there is no logo on the dresses and they don't scream HodgePodge, like the lime headbands scream Lime Truck (even though I still don't get the "Lime" thing or what their signature dishes are).

I wish they would not be allowed to call ahead and use their "contacts"- I think it takes away from the game. A few seasons back on The Amazing Race- they stopped allowing the teams to pay another person/taxi to drive somewhere and have them follow because it was getting pretty boring that way. This is sort-of the same thing.

One last thing- even though I am from a (very) small town, I know good food. Don't come to my town and dumb down my food- I went to Culinary School. So take that Slime Truck!

[kireelady]

I wish they would not be allowed to call ahead and use their "contacts"- I think it takes away from the game. A few seasons back on The Amazing Race- they stopped allowing the teams to pay another person/taxi to drive somewhere and have them follow because it was getting pretty boring that way. This is sort-of the same thing.

I think that's what happened in Atlanta. I won't say which truck it was, but they used the Atlanta food truck coalition to tweet about them being here. They also parked a few of the more popular and well-known trucks in the same lot, so people would stop by only to find out that they weren't open, but the Food Truck Race truck was.

[Jinafire]

ugh, I'm so disappointed in Korilla right now! I was rooting for them the whole time... well I guess Lime Truck will win.

[TripleGemini]

We spent the episode trying to figure out what constituted cheating. I guess now we know. The killer had to be when they watched tonight and realized that they would have been safe anyway.

And really, HodgePodge? Processed American cheese food? That's not even cheese! No wonder that guy said that Roxy's was better...HodgePodge could possibly have competed with real cheese, but not stuff that you unwrap. (Especially if it was on Wonder Bread!)

[tarfan77]

Yeah, that was just strange. You know, if they had added a small amount, it might have been seen as an error. But how on earth did they stick $2,700 in and expect to get away with it?

[Tilden]

You know, I hate to say it, but I wondered if it wouldn't be Korilla that got caught cheating, because they'd pushed the limits of the rules as far as they could before without technically cheating--their decision to serve nothing at the one challenge, so they could keep the meat to supplement their supplies, their gleeful snatching up of condiments from the food service area of a grocery store because they were supposed to be spending only $5 on their dish. If you're willing to go that far, it might logically be easier to take the next step directly over the line.

That being said, I was astonished at the sheer magnitude of the cheating. That they added $2700 to their total and expected to get by with it somehow is unbelievable. As another poster mentioned, a smaller, irregular amount might have been able to have been passed off as an error--they wrote down a bill wrong or they confused prices on a couple of them. But $2700? Even if they could have made a mistake that big, it would show tremendous inability to run a truck properly on their part. I don't think it was a mistake, though, because they didn't even attempt to defend themselves as they might have, had they felt they were being inappropriately accused. And I was really floored by the one guy commenting in Korean on his way out that "he," meaning the host, had really made them look bad. Um, no. You made yourselves look bad by cheating. All he did was announce what you'd done, point out it was against the rules, and disqualify you. He really didn't offer anything much in the way of moralistic platitudes about cheaters never prospering or anything like that. Oh, and making the comment in Korean might mean no one immediately understood it, but did you really think they wouldn't offer a translation of what you said by the time the show hit the air?

I wasn't particularly surprised that the Lime Truck had won immunity either. Their dishes sounded and looked better, probably because they've done vegetarian fare frequently before and weren't that bothered by the change. Ditto Roxy's, since grilled cheese sandwiches are already vegetarian. Didn't surprise me much that Roxy's did so well either, since they were serving something very familiar and easy to eat on the run--though $9 for a grilled cheese from a truck seems like a lot to me. Perhaps that's reasonable in Boston, but not around here. I did think it was a little ridiculous, however, that all the trucks ended up at that free concert as if that was the only thing going on in Memphis that day. Memphis is a big city. There must have been more than one event in town that night--and if someone's going to a free concert, they probably aren't planning on dropping $9 on a grilled cheese.

If nothing else, the cheating scandal at least made things a little less predictable. For a change, something happened that I didn't necessarily expect would. I don't particularly care who wins at this point, however, and that's not great for a competition show. In fact, I sort of forgot it was even on tonight, because I was happily watching Casablanca on AMC at 8 p.m. and only caught the latter part of the late showing of GFTR by accident. That doesn't say a lot about my level of interest in it either. But then, I really love Casablanca, and I'd rather watch it again than a lot of things.

[tarfan77]

That being said, I was astonished at the sheer magnitude of the cheating. That they added $2700 to their total and expected to get by with it somehow is unbelievable. As another poster mentioned, a smaller, irregular amount might have been able to have been passed off as an error--they wrote down a bill wrong or they confused prices on a couple of them. But $2700? Even if they could have made a mistake that big, it would show tremendous inability to run a truck properly on their part. I don't think it was a mistake, though, because they didn't even attempt to defend themselves as they might have, had they felt they were being inappropriately accused. And I was really floored by the one guy commenting in Korean on his way out that "he," meaning the host, had really made them look bad. Um, no. You made yourselves look bad by cheating. All he did was announce what you'd done, point out it was against the rules, and disqualify you. He really didn't offer anything much in the way of moralistic platitudes about cheaters never prospering or anything like that. Oh, and making the comment in Korean might mean no one immediately understood it, but did you really think they wouldn't offer a translation of what you said by the time the show hit the air?

Here's the thing: I don't know the exact rules, but what I'm wondering is . . . how did they even do it? I mean, how did they even manage to get an extra $2,700 in the cash box without it being noticed?

FWIW, I like how Tyler's parting words were—simply, although not without a note of "How the #@@#% could you think you'd get away with it?"—"Get in your truck and go home."

[Shoepie]

I guess Korilla was thinking they did not match the total with the receipts. They could have made fake receipts but I guess that would have taken too much time. I guessed Korilla, too, because of keeping the meat on that challenge. That was clever but showed them to be looking for ways to win outside of the rules.

Butchering a pig is something that is way out of the picture and skill set for a food truck. We see these type of challenges on Top Chef and that makes sense. Personally I would rather keep the focus on what the Trucks offer and watch them tweak their menu to improve their chances of selling more.

Lime was a shoo in for the win when I saw that corn pancake. It looked delicious. They should add that to their permanent menu.

Anyone using processed cheese or Wonder Bread should be immediately eliminated! I was shocked when I saw Hodge Podge unwrapping that cheese!

Maybe next season we will see them find a happy medium between the two seasons. I still don't know what the Lime Truck has on its normal menu. And I would like to kmow that!

I also didn't like the first elimination. Why not have a road crew follow the trucks to change a flat or fix a mechanical problem and make this about food.

[Kip]

The fact that Korilla was so comfortable putting that much extra money in makes me wonder if they had been doing this all along and the show staff finally caught on.