‘Top Chef: California’ episode 12 preview: Does Jeremy’s ‘Taco Dudes’ concept fail?

Let’s be honest: Almost everyone loves tacos. They’re easy to eat for the most part, packed with flavor, and usually they don’t cost an arm and a leg.

So for a “Top Chef: California” challenge Thursday night all about coming up with a unique food concept, Jeremy comes up with the idea of Taco Dudes, a place where you go and get some creative tacos in a gastropub setting. All of this sounds great to us. The problem comes with some of his other ideas.

1. The garden on the roof – Does it sound pretty? Sure, and we could picture this working if his concept was some sort of high-end sandwich shop catering to foodies / people who are extremely health-conscious. We don’t think anyone looking for tacos really will care one way or another what you’re doing with your roof.

2. The idea of “hot chicks” serving you food – The term almost seemed to immediately turn off Padma Lakshmi, and we get it since these sort of gimmicks take away from the quality of the food in terms of perception. No one takes them seriously, and we think personally that the majority of men these days over the age of 21 really don’t care about what their servers look like so long as they get good food.

We do think some of Jeremy’s ideas for the food signage and the taco names are cool, since there aren’t too many people intentionally playing up the whole “bro” angle. But lettuce wraps? Yet again, we’re not sure people eating at a place called Taco Dudes are really watching their carb intake.

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