Asians behaving badly... cheating food truck edition! If you've been following the latest season of Food Network's The Great Food Truck Race, it probably comes as no surprise that I've been rooting for Edward Song, Stephan Park and Paul Lee of Korilla BBQ.All season, the Korean American trio from New York City has been on the road serving up their brand of Korean-inspired tacos, one city at a time, and completely dominating the competition. That is, until last night's episode.
[Spoiler alert!]
After kicking much ass up to now, the Korilla crew rolled up into Memphis -- when it comes to barbecue, Memphis does not mess around -- and that's when they were met with their first truly debilitating hurdle.
For this week's Road Block challenge, the trucks weren't allowed to serve any dishes with meat. For a truck that has consistently drawn huge lines with their Korean barbecue tacos, this did not go over well. Korilla's substitute tofu/kimchee concoctions weren't cutting it with the Memphis crowd.
But this was a tough challenge, and it didn't look like any of the other trucks were doing very well on the Memphis stop either. So who knew how the teams would fare after all the receipts were counted? That's when the show dropped a bombshell on the entire thing...
After counting the first night's totals, the show's producers discovered that one truck's cash total didn't add up with their receipts -- by a lot. It seems that the truck in question had padded their sales by adding some of their own money to the cash box. The cheating truck: Korilla.
Outed as cheaters, host Tyler Florence instructed the Korilla guys to get in their truck and get the hell out, right then and there. Disgraced, they rolled out.
Scandal! The crazy part is, when they revealed the actual totals, it turned out that Korilla wasn't on the bottom at all -- they weren't in danger of being eliminated, and there was no reason to pull their shady stunt. It doesn't make any sense. What the hell were these guys thinking?
I'm sure there's more to this story, and we'll hear these guys' side of it sooner or later. But damn, that was one hell of shocker. As a fan of the show, I was pretty disappointed to see the Asian guys go down like that, especially after being such strong competitors and making it this far. For shame.
