A Special Taping

So the actual event was quite exciting: a chance to meet Robert Irvine and be on his new show, Restaurant Express. He even took the time for photos and was an incredibly nice man, which I find is all too rare when meeting celebs nowadays. Mr. Irvine did seem to linger around our table, and when I was almost erroneously served a duck sandwich instead of a crab salad, I turned to him and offered him my sandwich. (He was standing beside me observing the execution, but he politely declined.) So all of that was good fun.
And for the rest? Not so much. We received numerous emails telling us to arrive and check in by 11 and that I did. There weren’t any lines which was great. We were then told to return at 12. Finally, after arriving at 12, they let us in around 12:30. By this time, I was starving but I was assured that we’d be given plenty of food. Wrong again.
We were each given $ 20 of funny money and had a choice of three trucks in which to spend it. We were told that the trucks could run out of food so to spend it wisely. As I was standing next to one truck, I opted to choose the Mango Shrimp salad from truck #1 for $ 10 before risking the run to the other two. What I received was 5 deep friend shrimp in a mess of shredded, dressing covered mango. This item was probably worth about $ 5 and I would never order it again. It might have been tasty, otherwise, but deep fried shrimp in a salad seemed to be a bit of an oxymoron for a healthy choice.
Luckily, I had made a friend here. She opted for a crab salad and a fish taco from truck #2. Each item was priced at $ 10. I gave her my remaining $ 10 so I could also imbibe in a fish taco. The shrimp salad was the best and probably worth about $ 8 considering the amount of fresh shrimp that we received. The fish on the taco was ok, but it was placed on an uncooked corn tortilla, and I could barely eat the tortilla. This was disappointing. So much for a Socal fish taco. This item alone would have been worth around $ 3, and I can’t see any self-​respecting Socal resident paying any more for it than that, if at all. It was well under the standard of a Wahoo taco by comparison.
The third truck was serving a chicken and steak sandwich for $ 12 and $ 15 respectively. Of course, we’d run out of money by that time. And if we’d chosen to visit the aforementioned trucks, we would have only been able to buy one item each, unless we pooled our remaining $. So the prices were uneven to begin with. Only time will tell to see how the show pans out and what Mr. Irvine decides about the food and the odd pricing system.
We were able to find a seat and could serve ourselves complimentary overly sweet lemonade and iced tea. Various people were interviewed, and what was hilarious is that you’d tell them how you really felt, and then you were supposed to reword your comment and repeat yourself. Of course, this is a standard interview practice but was awkward to watch and participate in just the same. So we’ll see how it all pans out.
Overall, it was certainly enjoyable to meet Mr. Irvine, make a new friend, and possibly be featured on the Food Express (airing in November.) We left just after two pm extremely hungry. I did see some people eating what seemed to be larger portions, and others took quite a bit more time to eat, so maybe they were given extra money to spend. Perhaps they had the connections that I did not? At any rate, they didn’t know that I was going to be Unilocaling this, or just maybe my dollar would have stretched that much further.