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Four Questions About 'The Great Food Truck Race' Finale
by Joel Keller, posted Sep 20th 2010 3:30PM
If you've been following the new Food Network series 'The Great Food Truck Race,' you know that the fun summer show had its finale last night. I won't mention who won it until after the jump, but as I watched the finale unfold, something about it didn't seem right to me.I didn't think I'd like the 'Food Truck Race' when it started, even though I like new trend of gourmet food being served out of trucks that used to only dispense hamburgers and hot dogs. But the personalities of the people on the various trucks sold me on the show, as did the fact that the twee and robotic members of the Nom Nom banh mi truck won every challenge leading up to the finale.
In the finale, they were pitted against the always-scraping-by heavy-metal gourmet burger guys from Grill 'Em All. And the contest was looking like a blowout until midway through the episode, which lead me to my aforementioned head scratching. Read on to see some of the questions I have about the finale that I'd ask the producers if I had a chance.
Did the producers make up the final "Truck Stop" at the last minute to even the playing field? Almost every week, host Tyler Florence would call up the trucks and give them a "Truck Stop," which means they'd have to stop what they were doing and perform a task that was outside their comfort zone. One week, the trucks had to butcher a side of beef. Another week, they had to make a meal with catfish. This week's Truck Stop was simple: The Nom Nom crew had to make a burger and the Grill 'Em All guys had to make a banh mi sandwich for a guest judge.
The timing and nature of that Truck Stop was curious. Nom Nom was being badly beaten at that point; Grill 'Em All had traversed all five boroughs of New York City and were 20% of the way towards their money goal in Manhattan, while Nom Nom was staring a hard time in Staten Island in the face.
It felt like the producers were looking at the Grill 'Em All guys reaching the top of the Flatiron Building for the win with the Nom Nom guys stuck in Staten Island and they needed to even things out. So they picked a challenge that seemed to favor the Nom Nom truck -- who can't make a decent burger? -- so they could skip SI and set up the final showdown at Union Square.
What would have happened if the guest judge picked the Grill 'Em All banh mi? It just seems like that never would have happened. Luckily, Grill 'Em All ended up winning, but it felt like the producers decided to punish them for being so far ahead.
How did the trucks find such convenient parking spots? In New York, where parking is scarce, it seemed awfully convenient that both trucks happened to "find" similar prime parking spots.
In the Bronx, for instance, both trucks set up shop outside Yankee Stadium during a game, with Grill 'Em All situating themselves next to Stan's Sports Bar on 158th St. and River Avenue. I've been to dozens of Yankee games and I know that it's impossible to find parking at that spot right before a game, and I'm not driving around both a huge food truck and a support car. And during the final showdown in Manhattan, both trucks miraculously "found" spots in Union Square, a place where even a Smart car would have a place to find parking.
The producers really should have been up front all season and had the truck owners tell the audience that these spots were arranged beforehand. Otherwise, they're just insulting our intelligence.
Did the finale get rejiggered so Nom Nom wouldn't automatically win? There was no explanation why Nom Nom won every single stop. They didn't just win most weeks, they blew away the rest of the field. In every city it seemed like their marketing savvy worked to their advantage. But the penultimate challenge, in Jonesborough, TN, was a bit of a mystery. They didn't have a connection, they didn't have a pre-arranged spot. They looked like they got a late start compared to the other two teams. Yet, they beat out Grill 'Em All by a few hundred dollars.
Which leads me to wonder if the producers decided to change the formula for the finale so Nom Nom couldn't just station themselves in a spot and rake in dough. They knew the strengths and weaknesses of each team, and knew that Nom Nom was going to blow Grill 'Em All out of the water if left to their own devices in New York for three days. Indeed, we heard one of the Nom Nom crew talk about aligning themselves with New York magazine's Grub Street site so people would know where they were while they were in the city.
If Nom Nom wasn't in the finale, would the five-borough challenge cooked up by the producers have been used? It's hard to say, but it does seem like it was concocted to blunt the unstoppable force that was the Nom Nom truck.
When is Metallica going to sue Grill 'Em All for copyright infringement? Now that they've won, I wonder if they're going to be under pressure from the legendary band to change their logo. It's not the first time Metallica has sued someone, and it won't be the last.
What do you think? Was the finale of 'The Great Food Truck Race' fair to both teams?
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