A welcome distraction: Turlock team talks about ‘Great Food Truck Race’ TV experience
These days, we’re all looking for positive distractions. And if that comes in the form of a scrappy team of Central Valley women cooking up a storm on a nationally televised reality show, I say pass me the popcorn — or better yet, pass the plate of sopes.
Turlock residents Carina Stringfellow and Priscilla Gutierrez and Denair resident Lindsey Stringfellow make up Super Sope, one of seven teams selected to appear on the new season of the reality series “The Great Food Truck Race.” The show premiered March 26 and is now three installments into the six-episode season. It airs at 9 p.m. Thursdays on the Food Network, with the finale slated for April 23.
Hosted by celebrity chef Tyler Florence, the show has teams of restaurant veterans and newbies — like the Super Sope team — competing against each other in food trucks to make the best dishes and raise the most money in a series of challenges. This season is being called “Gold Coast” and set primarily along the California coast and Western states. The grand prize winner takes home $50,000.
So far, the teams have worked in Los Angeles, San Diego and Palms Springs. This week’s episode takes them to Las Vegas.
The women, all originally natives of Los Banos, are related as well as longtime friends. Carina (a former paraprofessional working with students with disabilities who has launched her own catering company) and Priscilla (a physical education teacher at Pacheco High School in Los Banos) are cousins. Carina and Lindsey (a Stanislaus County courthouse clerk) are sisters-in-law.
Still, before the show, they’d never worked together professionally, let alone worked together in the confined space of a food truck with cameras recording their every move. Filmed over six weeks last summer starting in July, the show was a true trial by stove-top burner fire for them.
Yet the women, who spoke with me from their separate homes (social distancing, folks) via a group video conference call Tuesday, said their friendships all emerged unscathed.
“For me, it was like I’m working together with my sisters — we can bicker at each other, we yell and say stuff,” Priscilla said. “But we know at the end of the episode or by the time we’re back in our rooms we forgot about it. We took nothing personally.”
That sisterly teamwork has showed in their results so far. They’ve earned praise from host Florence, who called the flavor of their homemade corn masa (used to form the sope base) “spectacular” and said of an appetizer dish they’d created, “I would murder this whole plate.” Don’t worry, in this case (and only this case) “murder” is a very, very good thing.
The women also want you to know that what you see is real, and actually just a fraction of how hard they had to work. The producers provide each team with their own custom food truck at the start of the show. And they are given the keys and instructions for each challenge, for the most part, that’s it.
Lindsey got one test drive to the gas station before becoming the Super Sope truck’s driver. And together, the team was solely in charge of planning, shopping, prepping, parking, marketing and making the food for each challenge. One of the most important and hardest aspects of the show, they all agreed, was finding a place to park the truck each day.
The teams would have to contact local business owners and organizations, in hopes of finding a friendly host to let them park. They also had to contend with local zoning laws for food trucks, as well as other businesses already operating in the area that might not take too kindly to a bunch of food trucks with TV cameras gobbling up their customers.
While they said they got used to the film crew being around them, watching the show was the first time they’d seen the footage of themselves.
“It is a little weird to watch yourself on TV, and I think I was done watching myself after the first week,” Carina said. “But I’m really happy with the way we were represented and presented ourselves. I wanted people to see what we were really about, especially as a person who is starting her own small business.”
Carina, who I first spoke with back in January when it was announced her team had made the show, said she is still moving forward with opening her own Super Sope trailer. She had a series of public events planned for April for people to try her food, but the global pandemic has put all of that on hold for now.
Since the show started airing late last month, the women said they’ve gotten encouraging texts and messages from friends, acquaintances and even past college professors cheering them on. The women, like the rest of us, are all in self-isolation in their homes right now, so they haven’t been able to celebrate together.
But they’re proud of what people are getting to see, and the food they’re putting out together as a team. Sure, there’s a little drama — because you can’t have good TV without drama. But they said all the bonked heads (again, it’s small on a food truck) and frayed nerves were worth the experience. It also shows aspiring food truck owners a little bit of what it takes to succeed on the streets.
“What you see on the show is super real and authentic, but in a real business setting, it is going to be a lot harder than it is even on the show,” Lindsey said. “It’s definitely not easy.”
Carina said that for now, they’re excited that so many people are watching locally. She had hoped to use the series as a launching pad for her real Super Sope truck. But the women said that with the uncertainly of our times right now, they’re just happy to provide people with something fun to watch to take their minds off things and hopefully feel a little community pride.
“Watching this show encourages me every single day,” Carina said. “All that hard work we put into it, it hasn’t slowed me down at all. But I empathize with all the small business owners who are struggling right now. If anything, we need to support one another and help one another as best we can. One of the best ways we can do that right now is to stay home — it’s just what we have to do.”
And then, when we’ve passed all this, be sure to look out for Carina’s Super Sope truck on valley streets. She already has locations picked out in Turlock and Denair. As someone who was lucky enough to try her food before all this started, you’re gonna have to trust me on this for now — it’ll be worth the wait.
This story was originally published April 7, 2020 at 5:18 PM.
