• FoodNetwork.com

Last night Food Network's - Food Court Wars, featured some hometown food truck folks. Tucson's own, Costa Rican food truck, Kadooks, took on Sierra Vista's, Asian fusion - food truck, J's Kitchens, to earn a year rent free spot in the food court in Sierra Vista's mall.

I am a food freak, so I get all fan boy when I see Tucson (and surrounding areas not including Phoenix) in the national spotlight. This episode was a lot of fun to watch. Kadooks brought their Caribbean flair complete with Costa Rican coleslaw and won the concept portion of the show. The prize for the first battle of the food court war, was getting some one on one time with Tod Graves, multi-millionaire entrepreneur, founder and owner of Raising Canes Restaurant.


The two brick and mortar hopefuls then went on to a marketing event at Fort Huachuca, where, in my opinion, Kadooks also brought the better dish, (there are no "winners" declared in the second leg of the show, just get people to show up) with their Gallo Pinto and Cilantro/Citrus Chicken pitted against J's Kitchen's pork lumpia (which for whatever reason they continued to call a spring roll, if it is Filipino, and fried, it LUMPIA!).

In the end, J's Kitchen, an Asian fusion truck, went with Tyler's advice and did straight Filipino food and won the mall spot slanging their Adobo Chicken, and Pancit. - Side note: Anyone else get so annoyed when Tyler Florence changes the contests' dishes, then raves about that component of their dishes to others, especially when that meat marinade and chili sauce was cooking 201 - at best?

Congrats go out to both food truck crews for giving their all, representing Southern Arizona well and having a hell of an episode.