A challenge on The Great Food Truck Race is drawing plenty of criticism online after viewers compared it to one of Top Chef’s most unusual challenges — and many fans are calling the entire thing unnecessarily complicated, boring, and downright ridiculous.

The controversy centers on Episode 4, where the food truck teams were sent high into the mountains for a challenge that required them to leave their kitchens behind and compete in an unusual ingredient hunt. Instead of simply focusing on cooking, the contestants had to travel up the mountain by chairlift, navigate the snowy terrain, and collect ingredients from blocks of ice before returning to their trucks.

For viewers, the concept immediately felt familiar.

The challenge was compared to a Top Chef challenge in which contestants were forced to ski through the mountains and retrieve random items hidden inside blocks of ice. While that concept may have been intended to create a dramatic television moment, some viewers felt the gimmick distracted from what they actually wanted to see: the chefs cooking.

And now, The Great Food Truck Race appears to be facing similar criticism.

The mountain challenge required the teams to collect ingredients that would later be used in a mandatory smoked-flavor challenge. After traveling to the top of the mountain by chairlift, the contestants had to gather ingredients connected to the smoking process before bringing them back down and incorporating that distinctive flavor into the food they sold.

The unusual format created an especially difficult problem for the dessert trucks.

While savory teams could naturally incorporate smoked ingredients into grilled meats, vegetables and other familiar dishes, the Sweet trucks had to find creative ways to incorporate smoky flavors into desserts without completely ruining the balance of their dishes.

For some viewers, however, that difficulty did not make the challenge more entertaining.

Instead, the mountain race and ingredient hunt were quickly labeled among the more frustrating challenges the series has produced. Critics argued that forcing contestants to ski, ride a chairlift and search through ice blocks felt more like a television stunt than a meaningful cooking competition.

The comparison to Top Chef only intensified the reaction.

Fans have long debated whether reality cooking shows sometimes prioritize elaborate challenges and dramatic locations over actual culinary skill. In this case, some viewers felt the mountain setting looked impressive, but the challenge itself did little to demonstrate who was truly the better food truck team.

The smoked-flavor requirement did at least force the contestants to rethink their menus. Savory teams had an obvious advantage because smoky flavors naturally complement many traditional dishes, while dessert teams had to experiment much more aggressively.

That created some interesting culinary moments, but for viewers who disliked the gimmick, the central question remained simple: Did the teams really need to go skiing and hunt through blocks of ice just to make a smoked dish?

For now, the mountain challenge has become another example of a reality cooking competition trying to make the food more dramatic by turning the cooking process into an elaborate obstacle course.

And judging by the reaction online, not everyone is convinced that bigger, crazier challenges necessarily make better television.