And now, boys and girls, it's time for More Fun With Food.
Granted, that's not the name of a real show, but it could be.
Instead, this week finds the return of a couple of foodie favorites -- The Great Food Truck Race and Guy's Grocery Games. Here's a rundown on what's in store for the new seasons. Each has a twist.
• The Great Food Truck Race, 8 p.m. today, Food Network. Host Tyler Florence is back for "a fierce food battle on wheels with a relative twist."
The five-episode Season 7, officially titled The Great Food Truck Race: Family Face-Off, will feature six teams made up of families who have never operated a food truck before.
For the uninitiated, TGFTR features teams in food trucks taking on menu challenges, then "racing" to a new venue to do it all over again. One team is eliminated each week on the way to $50,000 being awarded the last truck standing.
Included in this season's competition are a Chicago police officer and her sister, identical twin cheese experts and Jersey Shore reality star Vinny Guadagnino along with his mother and uncle.
The route this season covers scenic Southern California, beginning with Los Angeles and ending up on Catalina Island on Sept. 25.
In tonight's episode, the teams start with a funnel cake eating contest at a theme park in Los Angeles. After leaving the park, Florence gives the families their first signature menu cooking challenge.
Then, things get tense as the teams hold a bidding war for the primo food truck location on the park grounds.
The least successful team is sent home.
The race then heads to Ventura County for a strawberry festival, an ostrich egg hunt in Santa Barbara and a roadside attraction challenge in Palm Springs before hitting Catalina Island.
Here are the teams:
Bigmista's Fatty Wagon -- Neil Strawder, Phillis Strawder, Eric Lara, representing Long Beach, Calif
Carretto Siciliano -- Vinny Guadagnino, Paola Guadagnino, Angelo Giaimo, representing Staten Island, N.Y.
Fortune Cooking -- Tom Lin, Julie Hill-Lin, Tiffany Webster, representing Milford, Mich., and Denver.
Grilled Cheese All-Stars -- Michael Kalish, Charlie Kalish, Bryce Adams, representing San Francisco and San Diego.
Lei-Away Leidies -- Carey Ofahengaue, Summer Prescott, Autumn Prescott, representing Provo, Utah and Laie, Hawaii.
Sweet Southern Soul -- Tiffany Ermon, Tikia Travis, Kizzma Snoddy, representing Chicago and Atlanta.
BUT FIRST, THIS
• Guy's Grocery Games, 7 p.m. today on Food Network. This season, Triple-G has been supersized -- the new title is Guy's Superstar Grocery Games and features eight "superstar celebrity chefs" battling it out "in an epic five-week competition of the most intense challenges the aisles have ever seen."
Aside: Just how many superstar celebrity chefs are out there? My guess is that if you are on a Food Network reality show once, you are automatically a superstar celebrity chef.
Fans know well that the Guy in the title is 48-year-old spiky haired celebrity chef/restaurateur Guy Fieri (real name Guy Ramsay Ferry).
The eight celebrity chefs to be tested are Richard Blais, Maneet Chauhan, Eric Greenspan, Alex Guarnaschelli, Marc Murphy, Damaris Phillips, Jet Tila and Justin Warner.
Food Network boasts they will face "a series of off-the-hook market challenges to prove their innovative culinary abilities, with shocking twists and turns along the way."
That's right, brace for "shocking" twists and turns.
Judging the competition are celebrity chefs Carl Ruiz and Aarti Sequeira, along with food critic Troy Johnson. Each week they have the unenviable task of "deciding who has the culinary creativity to advance and who is in the express checkout lane of the competition."
The survivor of all this tasty torture will be crowned the first Superstar Champion and bag the $40,000 grand prize for the charity of his or her choice.
In tonight's premiere, the celebrity chefs must make their signature dish using only ingredients from the middle aisles.
In the second round, the bottom two competitors fight for survival in a cook-off of American favorites. Wait! There's more! There's one final surprising twist that I won't spoil for you.
Future episodes find the chefs using ingredients chosen by the dreaded Food Pyramid; being paired into teams; making their best dessert; and creating a gourmet entree using Guy's son's favorite snack foods.
The grand finale on Sept. 25 will have the final four chefs going three rounds in a competition that involves Guy's new "Wheel of Games."
Style on 08/28/2016