Despite stress-fueled marital spat, Wichita team comes in 1st on latest ‘Food Truck Race’

Argentina’s Empanadas had a very bad day in Biloxi.

But then, it turned into a very good day.

The food truck from Wichita, whose owners are competing on Food Network’s “The Great Food Truck Race: Games on the Gulf,” finished in first place for the first time all season on Sunday night’s episode, titled “Gulf Highway Robbery.”

But before it did, things got ugly on the truck and viewers watched as husband-and-wife owners Chad Freeman and Carolina Brandan engaged in a pressure-fueled, expletive-filled spat that almost led to disaster.

By the end of the episode, the couple had made up, and their first-place finish means they’re one of five teams heading on to the next leg of the race. On the show, food truck teams from around the country travel from city to city selling their food. The team with the highest sales is the winner, and the team with the lowest sales is eliminated. The last team standing at the end of the race gets $50,000.

Behind the drama on Sunday night’s episode, filmed in Biloxi, Mississippi, was head empanada maker Brandan’s insistence that the truck start selling food to the long line of people that was waiting to place orders even though her teammates, husband Freeman and friend Paola Mentis, didn’t think they’d prepped enough food yet.

The teammates went back and forth about whether they were ready to open, with Brandan expressing fear that people in their line would move on to dine at another truck if they didn’t start selling. When her teammates wouldn’t budge, she exploded, and her husband requested that she “Shut the @#$! up.” In turn, she informed him he could “@#$! off.”

Such exchanges rarely go well for married couples, and before the argument was over, Mentis had told both of her teammates they were in time out, and Brandan had parked herself on the truck’s floor, refusing to fold anymore empanadas and declaring she was on strike.

“I apologize,” Freeman eventually told her. “I meant nothing personal by it. I am deeply, deeply sorry.”

The team was able to recover, and in an interview a few minutes later, a customer described the tango beef empanada he’d just eaten off the truck “the best thing I’ve ever had. No lie.”

But the drama didn’t end there. When the teams gathered at the end of the episode with host and celebrity chef Tyler Florence to find out which team was to be eliminated, he delivered a severe tongue lashing.

The teams, all afraid the trucks next to them were charging more and would outsell them, severely inflated their prices. One truck sold a $25 crab cake. One charged $20 for a four-inch po’boy sandwich.

Florence read out loud some of the reviews that had been left by customers who’d visited the trucks, and they were harsh about the pricing.

“Your value proposition for each dish was atrocious, and you ripped off these good people of Biloxi, and I want to hear all of you say I”m sorry,” Florence said. “Shame on you. Shame on all of you.”

The food truckers appeared a bit shocked but all said “I’m sorry” in unison.

Once he’d calmed down, Florence announced that Plates on Deck from Lakeland, Florida, had been eliminated. Argentina’s Empanadas sold $9,507 worth of food in Biloxi, it was revealed when they were handed their first-place gold medal. The team later posted on its Facebook page that not only was that the highest total for a team in “Food Truck Race” history but that their prices were among the lowest.

“Your empanadas were delicious,” Florence told the team. “They just get better all the time.”

The fifth episode, which will feature the teams competing in Jimmy Buffet’s birthplace of Pascagoula, Mississippi, airs Sunday at 7 p.m. on Food Network.

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