Commentary: Wichita team ousted from ‘Food Truck Race’ — and something doesn’t smell right

Those who watched the penultimate episode of “The Great Food Truck Race” titled “Beach Battle Royale” on Sunday know that Wichita’s team — Argentina’s Empanadas — was eliminated. It won’t get to compete in the finale that airs next week. It won’t get a shot at the $50,000 grand prize.

The team walked away on Sunday in third place, which is respectable. But in my opinion, Argentina’s Empanadas was a casualty of reality show shenanigans, a victim of its own success.

That’s right. It is my belief Argentina’s Empanadas got the Great Food Truck Shaft.

The team started dominating the competition about halfway through the season. It finished in first place on episodes four and five. Plus, if the edit of the show is to be believed, the team nearly always had the longest lines of people waiting to buy food.

As the season wound down and the number of remaining teams got smaller and smaller, Wichita’s team continued to dominate, and its competitors loudly voiced their collective frustration. On last week’s episode, filmed in Mobile, Alabama, the remaining teams decided to gang up against Argentina’s Empanadas and try to get the truck ousted from the race.

And that’s exactly what happened. On Sunday night’s episode, Argentina’s Empanadas was sent packing after a surprise twist: The winner of a challenge in which past “Food Truck Race” winners visited the trucks to decide who had the best customer service got to shut down one of the other trucks for an hour.

Wally’s Waffles from Chicago won that challenge, and after not much debate, it decided to shut down its No. 1 threat: the team from Wichita.

“We’ve been looking for an opportunity to slow down Argentina’s Empanadas, and finally an opportunity has presented itself,” the head waffle maker said on the episode.

Though the empanada team hustled with fervor once it was able to reopen, even entering a nearby bar with empanadas in hand to try to make up sales, that hour killed its chances. The team that makes the least money on each episode is eliminated, and on Sunday, Argentina’s Empanadas was behind second-place team Wally’s Waffles by only $85.

“I would have preferred to have lost for $500 or $1,000, honestly,” Argentina’s Empanadas co-owner Carolina Brandan told the camera. “Eighty-five dollars feels very devastating.”

So the team that had dominated for the entire back-half of the season ended up getting third place, when it was clearly on track to win first. Up until that point, it had put on a first-place performance. Then, a last-minute “twist” ensured that the top performers were pushed out of the way.

For what reason? To make the show less predictable? To punish the “rumor spreaders?”

About those “rumors.” On last week’s episode, the Wichita team was blasted by the other teams — and by celebrity host Tyler Florence — for repeating to other trucks something a customer had told them: That competing truck Bao Bei from Washington, D.C., was paying people to buy its food so that it could boost its bottom line.

Wichita team member Chad Freeman texted the other two trucks to warn them about what the customer had said and to encourage them to keep an eye out, which to me seems completely reasonable. He wasn’t lying about being given that information: The crew had actual footage of an elderly gentleman telling Paola Mentis, the third member of the Argentina’s Empanadas team, exactly that.

But the Wichita team was savaged by the other teams for “spreading rumors.” Even a few local people who commented on my post about last week’s episode criticized the team for its supposed transgression.

Yet I’m fairly certain that, in their position, all the other teams — and most people — would have done the same thing. Freeman didn’t suggest they gang up on Bao Bei. He didn’t threaten to expose the team. He simply shared the information with the other teams in a “for what it’s worth” sort of way.

The teams got so mad about it, in my opinion, because of one reason and one reason only: They were upset that Argentina’s Empanadas was winning and were desperate to get them out of the way.

I’ve been watching reality TV long enough to know that it’s not exactly “reality.” And Argentina’s Empanadas has even been sharing posts on its Facebook page since Sunday’s episode that seem to imply that what the audience saw wasn’t what really happened.

One seems to indicate that Argentina’s Empanadas believes it should have won the customer service prize.

Another post that went up Monday implies something much more nefarious went into the elimination.

“It took funny business in order to shut us down...not 1 hour,” it read.

In a Facebook live video posted after the team’s Sunday night watch party at Hopping Gnome Brewing Company, Brandan showed off her medal and insisted that she was happy with third place.

But the other teams knew that they could only win by shutting down the strongest team, she said.

“We were the winners of the show,” she said. “If we didn’t get shut down, we would have demolished the other teams for sure.”

Freeman looked perturbed in the video.

“I think you can read between the lines,” he said.

Normally, I would call this “sore loser” behavior. But the evidence seems to back up what Brandan and Freeman are saying.

Phooey on Food Network. I still love Tyler Florence and will never — ever — stop cooking his pulled pork recipe.

But something just didn’t smell right this season.

Those who want to support Wichita’s Argentina’s Empanadas can now do so in real time. The team is about to upgrade with a nice new food truck, and it’s still looking for a brick-and-mortar spot.

The owners are hoping that the exposure from their Food Network run will give them a boost. In the meantime, they set up on Saturday mornings at the Old Town Farm & Art Market and frequently do pop ups at local breweries.

“There’s a thing I want to say to the Wichita community,” Brandan said on her Facebook live video, “which is nobody on the show had the support that we do, and that’s because of you.”

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