Tammye Nash. |. Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com
“We knew this was going to be a challenge,” Andrew Pettke said of having to keep secret for months the fact that he and his husband Chef Navin Hariprasad and their business partner Sarah Hartshorne — aka Team Mystikka Masala — had won The Great Food Truck Race: Gold Coast last summer.
“When we and [Team Lunch Ladies] found out we were the final two teams, we talked about it, and we made a pact that after it was over, we would tell everyone that they recorded two different endings, so we didn’t know who actually won. That took the burden off of everyone trying to get us to tell them how it turned out.”
The secret finally came out on Thursday, April 23, in the final episode of the 12th season of the popular Food Network show — right in the middle of the COVID-19 epidemic, which shut down restaurants and other businesses across the country. In fact, the trio’s Dallas restaurants, Spice in the City and Lucky Cat Vegan, haven’t even been able to open for delivery and take-out, because “our restaurants share a residential lobby with a loft in downtown,” Navin explained the day after the finale aired. “We felt it was too risky to operate. We are exploring the variables now on when it will be safe to open again.”
The couple’s share of the $50,000 prize money for the Great Food Truck Race will hopefully help bridge that gap.
About two years ago, Navin, a registered dietician and the chef behind the spicy fusion menu at the two restaurants, was recruited to compete on another Food Network cooking competition, Guy’s Grocery Games.
Navin said. “I agreed to do it, and [the publicity from that] ended up bringing us a good chunk of business. With that momentum behind us, we decided it was a good option to apply to participate in the rest of the Food Network shows.”
About a year later, he added, they got the call that they’d been accepted for The Great Food Truck Race. Because they needed a third team member, the men said, they talked Sarah, their friend and business partner, into participating, too.
Sarah, who was still recovering from a then-recent hip surgery, wasn’t so sure about being on TV. But Andrew and Navin managed to convince her to go along for the ride.
Then they had to come up with a concept for their food truck, which really wasn’t that hard considering that they already had a popular and successful concept with their restaurants.
“We decided we would showcase our fusion dishes,” Andrew said. “They are delicious and tasty and visually amazing, and it would be something that could get people to move out of their comfort zone and try something new.”
The food truck provided by the network was eye-catching, too: bright pink and orange, with a blue-colored map of Texas on the side. Andrew explained, “The orange and pink colors were our idea. The state of Texas outline was something they added in.”
So they had their menu, and they had their truck. But they knew they had to have a message, a gimmick, if they really wanted to get people’s attention and draw in customers.
“We had several messages that we really wanted to push while we were on the show,” Navin said. “The first one was that Andrew and I are a successful long-term [same-sex] couple. We’ve been together for 13 years, and married for one.”
That, combined with their menu of healthy ethnic cuisine, was a great message. But what about a gimmick, that hook that would get the customers to the truck to hear the messages? That’s where Mystikka Masala came in.
“I had already done drag a couple of times in the past,” Navin said. “The first time was back in the old Rose Room inside Village Station. I enjoyed drag, but I ended up going the college route instead. But I kept doing the drag occasionally, for charity events and things like that. I really love the androgyny of drag, and I love portraying that different character up on stage.
“So, we were talking about it, asking ourselves, what hasn’t been showcased yet on The Great Food Truck Race? And Mystikka Masala was born,” Navin continued. “We really created her as something that would push us out of our own comfort zones but that would, at the same time, break some barriers with people who hadn’t really been introduced to the LGBTQ community yet. And drag is really hot right now, so we wanted to ride that wave.”
The competition
So, they had a team. They had a concept. They had a truck. They had a menu, and they had a gimmick. But the hard part was just getting started.
“The biggest challenge,” Andrew said, “was that every episode was in a different city, and every city was a new city to us that we were unfamiliar with. We had to find the perfect place to park our truck for the right time of day, and then we had to get permission to park there. That proved to be really challenging in Las Vegas, because the best places, obviously, are on The Strip, and you can’t just easily call up the owner of a big casino to get their permission to park your food truck in front of their business.”
On top of that, he said, the kitchens in the food trucks are small and cramped, so the team had to adjust to working in such a confined space. And the trucks themselves are used and all have their own little quirks.
“You have to find work-arounds,” Andrew said. “Like water. You have to bring your potable water. And then there was the heat; the heat was unbearable. It was the middle of the summer, and the trucks had no air conditioning. One day that we were in Palm Springs, it was 117 degrees. I drove a truck with no air conditioning across the desert, twice, in the middle of the summer. It got so hot that a can of soda literally exploded one day.”
Sarah and Navin usually rode in an air-conditioned car while Andrew drove the truck. But even they weren’t safe from the heat. The three had plastic visors they were as part of their uniform, and one day a visor left in the back window of the car melted in the heat of the sun coming through the rear windshield.
“I think we have always considered the option of having a food truck, and we had talked to people with food trucks in Dallas.
They had told us how difficult it can be,” Navin said. “But being on this show takes it to a whole new level. There are so many things to consider: location, weather, marketing, permission, price points, competing side by side with other food trucks.
“We really had to be creative and be able to adapt right on the spot,” he continued. “Since the show, we have definitely said we probably would not do a food truck as a regular concept, although we are open to considering a catering truck for special events. But this definitely opened up our eyes to the challenges that food truck owners face, and we had the show helping us get into places and maintaining vehicles.
“It’s a lot of work. Hats off to all the food truck operators out there. You have to constantly hustle, and you have to go where your customers are,” Navin said.
The aftermath
After winning, Andrew and Navin spent months keeping their secret and anticipating the boost in publicity from the show would bring their Dallas restaurants, especially once everyone knew they had won.
And then the COVID-19 epidemic hit. By the time the finale aired and Team Mystikka Masala was declared the champion, Spice in the City and Lucky Cat Vegan had been forced to close.
“We waited all this time for the show to air and to get that momentum, and then we had to close the restaurants,” Navin said. “But the silver lining is that we had the $50,000 prize money, and we have had time to rest and re-organize and catch up with family and friends.
“We have been exploring all our options. Hopefully, once this [COVID-19 epidemic] passes, we will open our restaurants again.
In the meantime, Andrew, who graduated from the Dallas House of Comedy, continues to plan for a career in the media, “looking for hosting gigs,” as both he and Navin contemplate the possibility of doing cooking segments, either together or individually. They are also both creating content for their Chef Navin YouTube channel.
“Navin cooks, and I make the cocktails,” Andrew said. “We are focusing right now on meals you can cook with the non-perishable items you probably already — things like ‘rice three different ways.’
“Mainly,” Andrew added, “we are doing it out of boredom, but we also want to help our friends and other people who watch find ways to make creative and tasty meals. And the best part is, I get to eat Navin’s cooking!”
