Another week, another stop on The Great Food Truck Race. This week it’s Denver, CO and Tyler Florence has a few surprises in store that could shake up the game.
The teams learned that their first challenge required them to prepare an original dish using local mushrooms that reflected their own style. Oh, and they had to forage through the mountainside themselves for the mushrooms. I’ve seen plenty of mushrooms growing in the wilds of my own backyard from time to time, but I’ve never had the earth to harvest and cook them. I also have no idea which mushrooms are edible except for the ones I buy at the store, so I would have to question each prepared dish if I were judging.
The winners were The Lime Truck with their Surf & Turf and Turf & Turf, which consisted of a scallop on a bed of oyster mushrooms and porcini mushrooms wrapped in thin slices of seared beef. Advantage – an exclusive interview with a local ABC affiliate (courtesy of special guest Robin Roberts) to promote the truck and the location and $200 in seed money. The rest of the teams got nothing. Literally. They all had to rely on contacts and the kindness of strangers to purchase their food to start the competition.
One team, Hodge Podge, got smart and teamed up with Lime to feed off of their publicity while Lime benefitted from Hodge’s knowledge of the city. Like they always say, “Location, location,location.” Except a funny thing happened — while the other five trucks gathered their food, Lime was busy with publicity and shopping which put them way behind the others when it came time to prep, prepare and sell. Hodge Podge was already up and running by the time Lime got to the location and ended up poaching some of their sales while people waited. The lesson learned is that not every advantage has its advantage.
Over the course of the two days, everyone fell into their old patterns of using up a location and moving on, usually onto someone else’s turf, and on day two Korilla and Roxy both ended up at the same location as Café con Leche, who was still in sticker shock from the amount of food they bought from a local Cuban restaurant … $384 worth. The other trucks moving in did not bode well for them.
The Speed Bump required each team to select one person to run the truck while the others sat out, and everyone seemed to adapt pretty well … except for Seabirds who couldn’t seem to get things started the first day and only fell further behind everyone else when only one person was in charge. In fact, they never seemed to have a line and their last potential customer only wanted a free cup of water.
In Salt Lake City, the seven trucks made over $25,000 and in Denver, the six trucks pulled in over $30,000. First place went to The Lime Truck, even though they had a late start. Their high menu prices helped them earn $6919. Second was Korilla and third was Hodge Podge. In the end, a high food bill and poached location doomed Café con Leche, who lost to Seabirds by $87.
Next stop: Manhattan … Kansas. A college town of 52,000 who probably aren’t vegan. Seabirds are worried already.
Clacked by Chuck Duncan 
on Aug 29, 2011 @ 04:25 EST5EDT
