'The Great Food Truck Race:' True story, cantaloupe grows in Alaska
The Spenard Food Truck Carnival returns this week after its annual winter break, so of course I found a food truck reality tv show for us to gab about.
Have you featured the Alaska season of that one Food Truck Race show? My beautiful and clever friend Jes asked me. I’m curious whatever happened to those people afterward and how the Alaska season compares to the other ones.
She's talking about The Great Food Truck Race – with 18 seasons on the Food Network and hosted by chef Tyler Florence. Food truck teams around the country compete to win some money and bragging rights. Seven teams filmed for over a month in late 2020 for a chance at $50,000.
Tyler and the 21 participants start their journey off at Flattop Mountain, where they have to get their truck keys out of a 200-pound block of ice.
Our race will take us from rugged Anchorage to breathtaking Palmer, seafood Mecca's Homer and Seward, and then, straight into the savage interior, to historic Talkeetna. And finally, beyond Mount Denali to majestic Fairbanks.
Filming during the height of the pandemic was a choice. Part of the network's reasoning was due to Alaska's "low" covid numbers (we were not testing enough). And during the winter? There's a reason why the Spenard Food Truck Carnival runs through September.
In the first ep, we see the trucks roaming around town, like Tasty Balls by Wild Scoops and Some Like it Tot at Anchorage Brewing. Of the seven food trucks, they are the only ones still in business (based out of Oklahoma).
I hate that the customers have to wait 40 minutes to an hour for an order of tater tots.
Each episode, teams compete in challenges to earn seed money. This buys them groceries, but if they have $ left, it's added to the final tally. At the same time, they are competing in actual cooking challenges – like trying to sell the most orders of a special dish.
The challenges for season 14 seem disjointed and half-baked. In the Homer episode, team members fish for their catch of the day. Makes sense for the seafood mecca... Wait, what do you mean contestants are panning for gold to earn their seed money? And a contestant actually gets frostbite? I thought this was a cooking show.
Some of the chefs make decent looking meals with Alaska staples, like birch syrup, moose, salmon, crab, moose and chaga. Some of them don't!
The women from Tasty Balls are the most charismatic on the cast (the chili guys seem great but unfortunately they get the boot ep 2). They have a rapport with one another. They are people people. You watch someone in sales start selling and genuinely reach flow state. Same vibe.
Honestly, I just wanted to eat everything they were selling. Chicken pot pie balls. Oreos deep fried in churro batter. Gimme that.
In Palmer, Tyler challenges teams to build a fire and cook s'mores with only wood, kindling and flint (simmer down, Jeff Probst).
I've told you Alaska is all about extremes. Palmer, Alaska holds on to eight world record titles for large produce. We're talking about cabbage, cantaloupe, broccoli, rutabaga, kale, kohlrabi, turnips and carrots.
I was ready to dog him for spitting incorrect facts. I had no idea that Alaska had figured out how to grow cantaloupe in XL.
Marion is growing cantaloupes in Haines!! Pretty cool. Common Ground Alaska in Big Lake grows and sells them: they usually start coming on about mid-August and last through the first week or two of September. I have signed up for their mailing list and will give a melon report come summertime 🍈🫡
Breakfast for Dinner knocks out Oink Mobile, Metro Chili and Querencia Mia in the first three eliminations. Tasty Balls turns it around in episode four, finally winning a challenge and makes their way to the finals in Fairbanks with BFD.
Tyler tells the final two teams they need to make their own version of the "traditional" dish (no further explanation was given), Alaskan ice cream.
It's got to have shaved ice, berries, fish, some kind of animal fat. And other than that, it's totally your unique recipe.
Chef Dee from Tasty Balls had heard of it before. Dee, Misti and Nadia make theirs with fish, ice, lard, lemon juice concentrate and a little bit of sugar.
BFD‘s team use cod, blueberries, bacon fat, corn and ice, and top theirs with chocolate syrup. The chef and sous won't even try it. Even when Tyler was listing ingredients for the challenge, BFD had a perpetual stank face on.
Ultimately, BFD lost by $5 in the finale (the closest win in the show's history), and Tasty Balls took home the dough. They deserved it for the ice cream alone.
After their win was announced, Misti was interviewed by Shelby Hodge in 2021, [The experience] taught me that if you put your mind to it and put good energy around it and do your absolute best, you will succeed.
Shelby called the season something of a cross between Survivor and Chopped. Accurate.
(total watch time: 4 hours, 12 minutes)
Outwit. Outplay. Outreport.
We are making our way through Survivor 50 on AK IRL's Discord. This season is truly giving old school Survivor: so far, we've gotten an unsuccessful attempt at blindsiding Cirie, Christian shit his pants and Colby got a concussion (production dubbed in a didgeridoo sound, a nod to his OG Australia season 💀).
THAT'S HOW YOU DO IT ON SURVIVOR!
That's it from me this week. As always, thank you for reading and supporting AK IRL (and me and my fam). 🫂