bluepiano

The whole thing was a set-up by the producers and so phony, including Tyler pretending to be surprised when Karl suddenly showed up. Give me a break! I hope that the producers realize this was a bad plot twist and we don't ever see it happen again. All the food just magically appears now. We used to see teams shopping and having to figure out their budget. I guess the producers decided that was boring. So now we have more time for the fake drama of finding a parking space, which in reality is something food trucks never do, since permits and permissions are required. The only redeeming thing this season is that the food actually looks really good. No prepackaged ingredients, or mac'n'cheese every week with a different topping. I would happily eat everything Da Bald Guy and the Puerto Rican food truck make. And Khana's leader is obnoxious, but they do make some creative dishes. Petty comment. I hate the other Khana woman's neck tat.

I thought they said that the truck Mookie Betts picked was going to get immunity and the cash prize? The editing on this show is always intentionally deceptive. We were shown long lines for Paisano both days, and not many customers for the vegan truck. Then, the vegan truck comes in second and the Boston guys are in fourth place. Weird that this season there has been no mention of pricing, which in the past has been a major focus. I miss that element of strategy. Do you price lower to try to sell more units, or price higher to increase revenue even with less sales? That's a big part of the real business of food trucks. I was wondering about that in relation to the vegan truck. Their big item in terms of sales volume was the lemonade. But how much were they charging for that? That must've been a pretty expensive cup of lemonade for them to win the Little League challenge.

I think that was Sommer's youth and inexperience coming out. She was probably worried that GR didn't see her as a leader because of her youth, so she overcompensated. The best leaders can lead quietly. Not that she was going to win anyway, but her yelling at people really highlighted that she's not ready yet. Alex has looked like an obvious winner from the very first show. He has strong cooking skills, a good personality, and the experience of having owned and run his own restaurant. In fact, he's looked like such an obvious winner that it almost makes me think he won't get it. Because the show will need to come up with a surprise ending.

I think that Alex was looking so much like the obvious winner that they needed to take him down a peg to create some suspense. He still seems to me the only one with the combination of skill and maturity to become a head chef. Plus, he has the experience of having owned his own restaurant. We've been listening to Tara's "they're all out to get me" for three episodes now, and it's gotten really tiresome. Though I guess not to GR and the producers, since they've kept her around for at least another show.

I had the same thought. He said something like "you chose to step down," as if they were cowards. But they were being team players by letting a better dish go up and not standing on ego. It was interesting when GR showed surprise that Alex's dish wasn't picked. He clearly thinks he's the best chef on the blue team, if not in the whole competition. We were then led to expect a shock elimination, with all the talking heads of Alex worrying his chicken wasn't cooked. But I was pretty sure it was fake drama. Tara might consider that the reason she isn't popular with her team is because she's really annoying, not because she's the only 40 plus.

He has terrible people skills. I can't imagine him being in any kind of role where he has to manage people. I can't see him being Executive Chef of a lemonade stand, let alone a Gordon Ramsey restaurant. Agreed, it's a very unflattering hair style. Especially given her light blonde hair. It makes her look like she's going bald. I suspect that with a better hairstyle she would be an attractive woman.

After last week's show I posted that we may soon be returning to the men vs. women format. Only took one more show. I would've preferred if Nicole got sent home over O'Shea, because at least he owned that he messed up, while she blamed everyone but herself. How did lack of communication cause her to cook raw chicken? Based on next week's preview she's really annoying, so maybe they kept her for "entertainment" value. Alex for the win. He managed to remain calm in the face of Billy's manic craziness, and he seems heads and shoulder over the other chefs on the Blue team. There seem to be some good cooks among the 20 somethings, but I don't think any of them have the maturity to be a Head Chef for GR.

Actually I think this group is still better than what we had in the first few seasons of HK, which was like watching "Dumb and Dumber," with many of the contestants barely able to boil water correctly. On the 20 somethings team, the men are largely late 20s, but I think four of the women are 23 or younger. It's hard to believe that they're legitimate contenders for a job as head chef at a GR restaurant, given the lack of maturity and experience, even if do they have cooking skills. A couple of them are line cooks. That's not a knock on them, you have to start somewhere. But no way is a 22-year old line cook ready to be a head chef. They seem to be fodder, chosen to create drama. I think it's possible, as someone else suggested, that at some point they will scrap the youth vs. age theme and realign the teams based on the old men vs. women format.

Her saying that her boxed pasta was "fresh" reminded me a of an episode from Fawlty Towers, when Basil says that the frozen peas are fresh, because they were fresh before they were frozen. So GR said the orange soda dish rated a 5, but then deducted two stars on principle? If it tasted good, what difference does it make what the ingredients were? And in fact, Coca Cola and Dr. Pepper are both commonly used in cooking in the south, so the orange soda didn't seem that weird to me. I'm also rooting for Alex, the chef who lost his restaurant because of Covid. I have two friends who opened restaurants just before the lockdowns. One survived but is deep in debt, one didn't. It's heartbreaking to lose your dream because of something completely outside of your control. Besides that, he seems like a nice guy and one of the stronger chefs. I must not have watched that season. But I know him as one of Jon Taffer's "kitchen experts" on Bar Rescue, which is hardly a huge recommendation. On that show he comes across as kind of an arrogant jerk. (Vic Vegas, from Next Food Network Star, is another of Taffer's experts, and is much more likeable).

Yeah, that was weird. I almost feel like he was making fun of her, like "how dare you small town white girl try to make a Latino dish." He damn well knew she'd never been to Venezuela. Using crumbled chips or pretzels as a breading coating is something that cooks, especially home cooks, have done forever. And yet we were supposed to believe this is something creative and brilliant that the great Gordon Ramsey came up with?

Success often changes people. But in her case, I tend to give her the benefit of the doubt. I can see where she might have had to grow a tough exterior in response to the perception that her Master Chef win, and some of her other accomplishments, were due to favoritism because of her disability.

I have a different take. I see all this build-up of Derrick as almost a guarantee he won't win, since they'll need a surprise twist at the end. So Derrick will go down in MC history as they guy who was the best chef but didn't win twice. I don't know, but she's clearly one of the chosen ones, if not TCO. She and Willie had two terrible dishes out of three, but they still weren't in the bottom two. Their Wellington was maybe the worst. The judges bend over backwards every week to shower her with kindness.

Derrick did make the challenge all about himself. I got tired of his talking heads about wanting to make Shelley regret not picking him. It was silly to personalize it so much. For that matter, Bri didn't pick him until almost the end. At this point I'm pretty tired of both Derrick and Christian and their "top dog" posturing.

It's in Riverside County, California. But the big joke was the constant reference to "cowboys and cowgirls." Norco is an affluent community built around private horse ownership, which requires a lot of bucks. One look at the many overweight, middle-aged residents should tell you that these are hardly working ranch hands. Derek must be pretty unpopular, because I assumed he would be one of the first two or three cooks chosen based on ability. When Gordon said to him, "do you expect to be last man standing?" he said yes. We were told that Shelley picked strategically and Bri picked based on friendship, choosing Fred first, but it turned out to be the opposite. The Red team was cohesive and the Blue team spent a lot of time arguing among themselves. I would not have wanted Christian or Shanika on my team because I think both tend to personalize everything and think only of themselves. Christian's response the very first time Shelley said something to him ("don't disrespect me") definitely did not help team spirit.

Yeah, his "there can only be one alpha dog" comment was asinine and borderline offensive towards the other contestants. So it's not about cooking, it's about who's the most macho? Where does that leave the women? This show loves a rivalry, real or contrived. My theory is that in the previous week Christian won immunity because they knew the winner was going to pick the order chefs chose their deserts, and it was an opportunity for Christian to stick it to Derrick and add more fuel to the fire. But Shelly is one of the chosen ones and clearly a personal favorite of Gordon's. Different contestants are always judged by different standards, depending on whether the show wants to keep them around because it's thought they make good TV. I think that Dara is also in for a long run because of the "former Master Chef Junior contestant makes good" storyline. A few weeks back there was a young woman from New York who was eliminated. As soon as I saw the bottom three, I knew she was toast, because the other two were show favorites and she didn't have much personality. As evidenced by the fact that I can't even remember her name.

I was at an event last night with a food truck. Pretty basic fare. Hot dogs, burgers, sandwiches. The highest priced item on the menu, a pulled pork sandwich, was $10. And the food came out fast.

Cuban cuisine, like that of other Caribbean islands that were settled by the Spanish (Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico) blends Spanish cuisine with African (due to the slave population) and native tribal cooking. For reasons that could probably best be answered by a cultural anthropologist, Mexico and Central America, though also settled (conquered) by the Spanish, did not seem to incorporate the Spanish influence and their cuisine developed along a different path. (Funny, the frizzy haired leader of Senoreatas said several times that Cuban food does not use hot spices or peppers, though she seemed to often use those in her recipes). Years ago, I knew someone of Cuban heritage who ran a Cuban restaurant. What really drove him around the bend is when someone came in and asked why there weren't any tacos on the menu.

They weren't even supposed to be doing Mexican. They claimed to be a Cuban food truck, with a vegan spin on traditional Cuban food. But you're right, I've eaten a lot of Cuban food, and many of their dishes seemed more Mexican than Cuban, with their reliance on tacos and tortillas. There are a number of classic Cuban dishes, and I don't remember them doing a creative vegan interpretation of any of them. And they also had the advantage of being in Southern California beach towns, with a large population of health-conscious people, who even if they're not vegan/vegetarian look to cut down on their meat consumption. I don't think a vegan food truck would've had quite the same advantage in some other parts of the country. Between being based in LA and capitalizing on the vegan fad the whole season was kind of stacked for Senoreatas.

The editors did actually leave in footage of one disgruntled customer saying he needed to get back to work and asking for a refund. A big part of food truck business is parking in industrial parks and outside office buildings to serve workers who don't have the time to sit in a restaurant. (When one is even available close by). So being able to turn out food quickly is essential, and the food has to be good as well, to get repeat business.

Adios to the "worst season ever," not the hottest. The entire season was like an argument for retiring this show. Nothing that we saw was even close to representing the actual business of food trucks. Shopping and budgeting have been eliminated from the show. All the ingredients they need for each challenge just magically appear in the truck. And in the real world, no one will wait 30-40 minutes. I was talking last week with someone who runs a food truck. They said it is all about production and quick turnaround times. All the food in the finale looked mediocre at best. There's been a lot of dissing of Cheese's food in the forum, but I never thought Senoreatas was much better. They also heavily rely in prepackaged foods, like the "chicken" or "meat" substitute they use in most dishes. When Mahogany was preparing their shrimp dish, I thought I saw a bag of precooked shrimp laying by the stove. How can you make ceviche is the shrimp is already cooked? Did anyone else notice that the Senoreata's team leader kept referring to "Sugar" rather than Cheese Born with It when talking about their truck? Fitting I guess, because the whole season was really about the competition between those two giant egos. The only way this show can rebound is if they return to having actual professional food trucks. I also feel like they need to figure out a way to limit the use of social media. This season was more of a social media competition than a food truck competition. Teams that are not social media savvy (like Eso and Southern Pride) have almost no chance, even with far superior food.

Even being lobbed a softball with Jamaican, I thought that Chrisitan showed a lack of creativity. Adding jerk spices to fried chicken? I could've done that! Yet he won the challenge. This is the second week in a row where someone won immunity with a very simple, straightforward dish, over other chefs who embraced the challenge and did something that showed a lot more creativity and ambition. (Amanda won the week before just by making falafel.) The inconsistency of the judging on this show makes me crazy. We are always hearing "is that really master chef?" when someone makes a straightforward dish, but now 2 weeks in a row someone has won for doing just that. It's a reminder that, like all reality shows, there is a script that's followed. They decide in advance who they want to be Top 10 or Top 5, and there's almost nothing those chefs can do that will get them eliminated. You'll notice that if one of the Chosen Ones makes a dish that looks like an absolute disaster, the judges can always say "the dish is a mess, but your flavors are good." And since we don't taste the dish, how can we argue?

Wasn't that because as a vegan she couldn't taste the hot dog? And there was never any mention that Sonic would incorporate the winning dish. They all seemed gross anyway.

True, but in this season, when so many trucks struggled to find locations and attract people, social media savvy seemed more important than ever. Senoreatas said they stayed up all night posting to social media, and as a result had a crowd before they even opened. That should definitely not have been allowed. (I don't know what he thought he was making a donation to. They're just contestants on a dumb FN show.) Someone earlier in this thread said that customers are given money by the show to buy food. If true, that would explain how the trucks can charge such overinflated prices. I heard the Eso chef mention that their chicken and waffles dish was $20, so I assume they were all charging that. I've noticed that there was little to no talk this season about pricing, while in previous seasons pricing strategy was often discussed. (Charging a higher price to generate more revenue versus charging less to sell more).

I caught that too. I am sure that the parade did not just happen to wander by. Since this show has even lied about where it was filmed, nothing is believable anymore. Like we're supposed to think the Coney challenge was a surprise, when the trucks just happened to have hot dogs (or vegan dogs) on hand. I realize that marketing is important, but this season it's been all about marketing and very little about food. Eso's lack of social media savvy is what cost them the competition, even though they had by far the best food of the final three. Their chicken and waffle special seemed head and shoulders above the others. (Senoreata didn't even use a plant-based chicken substitute. They used the same "meat" they use all the time.) Sugar making fun of Eso's meticulous food preparation bugged me. When you're doing "semi-homemade" with canned chili and store-bought rotisserie chicken you really shouldn't talk. (I'm still bugged by Senoreata's claim on the first show that being in Los Angeles gave them no advantage, when they went to a farmer's market in their neighborhood and used social media to get all their friends there.) So I don't know who to root for (or against) in the finals.

Totally agree. Even if it was really delicious falafel, I didn't think she deserved to even be in the top three for making a very standard vegan dish she's made countless times before. Bowen and Derek both created a new and original dish, which involved a high degree of technical difficulty as well as creativity. It was like someone winning a meat cooking challenge by making a hamburger. Samantha's dish may have been bland and boring, but it least it was completed. Shelley's looked like a collection of ingredients thrown on the plate. But Shelley has always been one of Gordon's favorites, and it wouldn't be the first time a decision has been made that brings the judges' impartiality into question.