Great Food Truck Race host Tyler Florence, right, chats with Team Mystikka Masala team members, from left, Sarah Hartshorne, Andrew Pettke and Chef Navin Hariprasad.
If you are a fan of the Food Network’s Great Food Truck Race: Gold Coast, you probably already know that the final three competitors will be in Santa Barbara in this week’s episode — set to air Thursday, April 16, at 8 p.m. local time — where host Tyler Florence will “put the final three food trucks to the test on a sprawling avocado farm, where to race to pick and pit 50 avocados,” according to a Food Network press release. And then, the press release notes, “Team morale is tested when the trucks are challenged to one-up each other’s avocado dishes, and one team’s family makes a surprise visit.”
At the end of this week’s episode, the final two teams will be announced, and next week — April 23 — those two teams face off in the season finale in Los Angeles as the fight it out to see who wins the $50,000 grand prize.
You may already know all of that. What you might not know, though, is that one of the trucks, Team Mystikka Masala, is operated by Dallas couple Navin Hariprasad and Andrew Pettke, along with their friend Sarah Hartshorne.
The other two trucks in the final three are Team Lunch Ladies from Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and Team Super Sope from Turlock, Calif. The other Texas team, Team Batchelor’s Kitchen, went home last week after the Las Vegas episode.
The Team Mystikka Masala members have set themselves apart this season by sending Navin out in drag to draw in customers, and each customer that orders from them is assigned a “drag name.” Only fitting since, as Navin told me, Dallas drag diva and Dallas Voice columnist Cassie Nova is a good friend and officiated at his and Andrew’s wedding. And from Chef Navin’s drag “lewks,” it seems he might have borrowed one of the Rev. Cassie’s wigs, or at least her hair color, for the show.
Navin and Andrew own two restaurants in Dallas — Spice in the City and Lucky Cat Vegan, the latter of which serves a “100 percent plant-based menu with an Asian flare.. Navin is a registered dietician who has “a passion for clean cooking,” and who “combined his family’s traditional vegetarian Indian recipes with his Texan-born palette and love for all types of cuisines with bold flavors and spices,” the Food Network press release notes. Navin worked as food services manager for Parkland Hospital before leaving to open Spice In The City Dallas and Chef Navin Catering. Since then, he’s also opened his, all-vegan concept, Lucky Cat Vegan, “serving a 100% plant-based menu with an Asian flare.”
Navin has also appeared on the “Spiciest Chefs” episode of the Food Network show Guy’s Grocery Games. And he and husband Andrew have created a YouTube channel where they are sharing easy recipes to cook using non-perishable foods like rice to make life and healthy eating easier during these days of quarantine life.