Sin City

Last weekend, I paid tribute to a friend who recently moved on. He loved Las Vegas - everything about it, from the excess, to the bright lights, to the fact it never shut down. The city has much less hold on my imagination, but I could find no better way to honor him than to visit his "second home."

We discussed doing eating challenges together, but since the opportunity did not present itself I chose to dedicate a few to his memory. He would have appreciated that... an uncommon artist simply working through a different medium. Picasso worked with paint. I work with plates.


Anyway, I decided to run a gauntlet of challenges that day. My official designation for this attempt would be the "Triple Monson." Keep in mind that "to pull a Monson" means that you successfully completed two challenges a few hours apart. Could I push it to 3?

My day began at Emily's Diner, located in the Fortune Casino just outside Vegas in Henderson, Nevada. It's a nice little spot, totally smelled like smoke, and was full of anxious gamblers. I don't smoke or gamble, but I was there for their 3-lb+ Colossus Burger Challenge. Finish it in 20 minutes, and it's on the house ($20 price tag) along with a nifty shirt and your pic on the wall.

3 lbs of beef is intimidating up close, but I do pretty well with patty stacks. Just unpack it, bite, swallow. The whole burger tower vanished in 10 minutes flat. I outdid myself on this one. No joke, I probably could have gone double or nothing on this burger challenge. It tasted delicious too.


An hour later, I went over to Mr. D's Frozen Custard (in Henderson) to get dessert. Because I thrashed the burger so quickly, I had the sensation of still being really hungry. This was no challenge, but I always read good things about the Royal Turtle Sundae and I wanted to see if it was worth the hype. It was! Vanilla custard, chocolate syrup, caramel sauce, pecans, and a cherry for $5 and change.... probably 12-14 ounces of sugary goodness. And it was worth every penny.

What next? Another challenge of course. It was a toss-up between 100 oz of frozen yogurt and a 24" sandwich. The sandwich won out, because I didn't feel like another sugar rush.


About an hour later, I ventured over to Johnny McGuire's Deli in Las Vegas proper. Now, I was in the city of sin. Johnny McGuire's features a 24" sandwich challenge. Eat it all in 40 minutes to get a free meal, a t-shirt, and your name on a "Wall of Shame" plaque. Since it is Vegas, the challenge features a special punitive twist: failed challenge attempts pay double.. meaning that losers would shell out $50 for an otherwise $25 sandwich. Yikes.

The gambling motif is nice, but the message to me was clear: "DONT LOSE!"


This is a variable challenge in that you can pick any sandwich off the preset menu, provided that it comes loaded with all the vegetables. I've completed the challenge before with zesty turkey, but I wanted a change of pace this time and went with grilled pastrami and swiss instead.

Hmmmm.... grilled pastrami and swiss was not the world's best decision. It was just really dense and heavy. Keep in mind that this sandwich routinely clocks in between 4.5 and 5 lbs, and I already had 4+ lbs rolling through.

I steeled my body... reminded myself why I was here, what I was doing. Couldn't fail.... so I cranked hard to finish at 33:49. Pulled the Monson with several minutes to spare! Sweet!


The plaque is full, but the restaurant plans to buy a bigger one... my previous win needed just over 20 minutes. That empty stomach thing definitely helps!

Well.... I left the place feeling very tired and full. Victory does not come free, even if the food does. I wandered down to the Strip to kill time and give my body a chance to digest. The drive took forever because of traffic, but whatever.... not like I was in a rush or anything.

Pulled into the parking lot for the Sahara Casino, and just rested there a bit. It felt pretty good to just lie back and think about nothing. But, eventually, I would start walking around.


Three brave souls gave it all against the "Big Badass Burrito" at the NASCAR Cafe. Seriously, it's gotta weigh more than the advertised 6 lbs... but either way I was in no shape to tangle with the B3... just watched and kept on walking.

(Photo courtesy Naked City Pizza facebook)

My last stop of the night (in another 4 hours) was Naked City Pizza, located inside of Moon Doggie's Bar a few miles off the strip. They were debuting a NY-style sheet pizza challenge that night - 24" x 16", 4 toppings, 10 lbs of pizza for two people in 30 minutes. Winners would get a free shirt and a clean bill ($35)... though obviously no promise of a clean bill of health with all that cheese and grease. This is the equivalent of two 18" thick-crust pizzas.

My partner for the challenge was Vegas local Tom Gilbert.... he totally dominated the proceedings. I was lucky to get down just over 25% (or 2.5 lbs) in the 17 minutes it took him to mow through the other three-quarters. No doubt, he could have done this thing solo!

In fact, Tom was angling to do a "double or nothing" wager with the owner, but I was in no shape to take on another pizza. We settled instead for dessert: fried dough covered in confectioner's sugar. Mmmmmm.....


Probably, probably.... I should have skipped this. But what the hell, it couldn't have been more than another 2-3 ounces. And it was better than I expected. Ice cream would have been sweeter though.

We became the first team to successfully take down the "Frickin' Huge Pizza Challenge." Another team took a shot after us, but it wasn't very pretty.... I will spare you those details.

The night ended on a social note. It's always a wonderful experience to meet a new personality in competitive eating, particularly when they're a bit more accomplished than you are. It reminds me that there's still room to grow.

On a personal note, I was ecstatic. Three successful challenges and two desserts in a 12-hour span was certainly a new level for me. I felt down about not going faster on the pizza, but it's really hard to complain under the circumstances. I would estimate my total consumption that day at or above 11 lbs.

The drive home through dense fog was certainly a lot less enjoyable. But, I think I put up a fitting tribute in the City of Sin.

I feel I lived up to Matt Cohen's new nickname for me: Mr. Mass Consumption.

Dan's Super Subs

Though there's a much bigger and more recent story I could be writing about, I'm tired. So I'll just resort to a story I mentioned on my "roadmap" a few posts back.

Dan Super Subs in Woodland Hills offers a straightforward submarine sandwich eating challenge. Order and eat any two jumbo 13" sandwiches in one hour to get your name on their wall of fame. Women have the option of eating one jumbo sub and one regular (8") sub to enter the wall of fame.

I visited in January 2010 when I happened to be in the area. As far as challenges go, there is nothing difficult about this one. I went with one hot sandwich, pastrami, and one cold sandwich, turkey. The total weight of the two sandwiches could not have exceeded 3 lbs.


Think Subway, just fresher and about an inch longer. The pickles on top were a nice touch. The hot sandwich went down faster, but in all I didn't need more than 22 minutes to finish. It was a leisure stroll down the espohagus.


There is special recognition provided for male and female mass consumers... but I wasn't interested in going for the house record at the moment (I believe it currently stands at 5 sandwiches). I was dealing with a recent traumatic experience, and for a awhile considered quitting this activity altogether. Small victories (and good friends) encouraged me to stay in it.

Stephanie Wu recently visited Dan's Super Subs during an eating roadtrip and took over the women's house record with 3 jumbo subs. I applaud that win. She also reported on a revamped prize structure... which may be enough to convince me to visit again if I'm near enough.

The manager was really friendly, the staff neat and professional. It's a small shop, but I see them taking their business far. Here's to a second location!

Getting Pregnant

El Nopal Mexican Restaurant, located in West LA, offers a signature item called the Pregnant Burrito. The name draws different reactions from people, but it is definitely one of the more interesting things I've come across.

Take 12 oz of white-meat chicken, onions, avocados, and lettuce.... wrap it in a tortilla. Then douse the whole thing in red sauce and sprinkle cheese on top. You now have a Pregnant Burrito.

Before visiting their establishment last year, I scanned through Yelp reviews and discovered that they had instituted an on-going, no-time limit eating challenge featuring this bloated burrito. If you could best the standing consumption record by at least one-half burrito, you would be crowned "El Nopal Pregnant Burrito Eating Champion." Your meal would be on the house, and you would get a special golden restaurant t-shirt. Sounded pretty good.

Yelp reviews at the time indicated that the record currently stood at 2.5 burritos, but that was a bit out of date. Turned out the latest champ had downed 3.5 Pregnant Burritos, so I would need to put away 4 for a shot at posterity. I wasn't expecting that going in... still, thinking back to some of the other challenges I completed, I knew I stood a decent chance.

The restaurant was dark and cozy. I liked the environment... staff was friendly, chips and salsa were on point, though pretty much everyone wrote me off as having no chance of breaking the Pregnant Burrito record.

As usual, the first installment tasted really good. I appreciate avocado, and the chicken was really lean. But eating the same thing repeatedly always leads to the law of diminishing returns: less and less satisfaction from each new burrito consumed.

Even chocolate eventually tastes like asphalt. Extensive buffet experiences confirm this.


Some burritos look neater than others. Presentation counts for less during a challenge, but clearly this fourth burrito was totally soaked in cheese... therefore it probably also weighed more than the previous burritos. Consistency was an issue that came to mind, but I couldn't let those thoughts deter me. I needed to finish.

(Note: challenge pregnant burritos must be ordered with chicken and all fillings, but other meats are available for ordinary consumption... I tried to get a different meat choice, but the manager refused my attempt at variety)

These burritos must have weighed 2 lbs apiece, if not more. By the time I swallowed the last bite, the only thought crossing my mind was relief. The manager offered to give me another burrito, to see if I could press the record higher - but I politely declined.

4 Pregnant Burritos was enough for me that day. I needed just over one hour, which I didn't think was totally awful. It might have helped if they agreed to bring them all out at once... instead of one at a time as I finished them. The kitchen was not very fast towards the end.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. This was the first time a restaurant challenge had involved the title of "champion." I wasn't sure how to handle it. Silence was my method. In fact, I don't think anyone ever knew I held the record at El Nopal.

My record stood from September 27, 2009 until mid-May 2010 when Jarrod set the new record at 4.5 burritos. My 7+ month reign was over, but my hat was off to the new man. That was no easy feat.

Big Rocco

Some pizzas are so massive they have their own life story. The 8 lb Big Rocco Stuffed Crust Pizza might have its own gravitational pull as well.

Maybe the truth is a little of both. On December 13, four of us were mystically pulled to Chicago Rocco's in San Diego to attempt this heretofore unconquered eating challenge.

As to the story, the owners told us that they named this pizza after their son - Rocco - who weighed 8 lbs at birth. I like that little detail. It really breathes some life into an otherwise standard pizza challenge. There's something neat, and equally perverse, about trying to eat the weight of a newborn in pizza.

If anyone is suspicious, 8 lbs is a standard marker for 2-person pizza challenges. Luigi's at the Beach (also in San Diego) claims that their 30" cheese pizza clocks in at 8 lbs. Original Grazianos, a chain that runs challenges at various Southern California locations, claims that their monster pizza runs 8-10 lbs.

Expecting one person to consume 8 lbs of pizza is no small feat. The pizza is only 12" wide, but it is 3" high and loaded with all the cheese you didn't ask for. It looks intimidating as they bring it out of the oven and set it on the table.

You get to pick six toppings (or stuffings?) from the menu. Picking lighter toppings will backfire, as it did with all of us, because they will add as much cheese and sauce as necessary to bring the total weight up to 8 lbs. Eat it all and it's free. Otherwise, pay them $35.

There's no time limit on this challenge. You get to take as long as you like. Of course, that's not always an advantage. Anyone who's ever tried to leisurely coast thru 7-8 lbs of food will find it gets increasingly painful as time wears on. It pays to "speed eat" sometimes.

Due to transportation issues, we arrived in two groups of two via different freeways. We agreed that the team arriving first might as well just begin the challenge. So, Manny Blitz and I dug in.

The pizzas were cut into 8 massive slices. The first 3-4 slices tasted delicious. Rich. Things got incredibly difficult once we passed the 50% point. I knew I would beat this thing, but it would be a battle. A long battle.

Our second team, composed of Aaron Ybarra and Stephanie Torres, arrived about 25 minutes after we had started. Soon enough, they were tearing through their own massive stuffed pizzas.


Though Manny and I started the challenge first, Aaron and Stephanie blasted through their pies with speedy technique. I hoped, somewhat legitimately, to become the first to finish this huge pizza. That honor instead went to Stephanie, who finished her pizza in approximately 36 minutes. The staff treated her to several sodas on the house after her big win.

I continued eating. It was considerably difficult because all the grease was getting to me... I don't think I ever needed to eat so much damn cheese in all my life. Along the way, Manny threw in the towel after eating about 6/8 of the total pie. He fought valiantly toward the end.

Pushing myself hard, I finished the last morsel of greasy pizza at 88 minutes. A win is a win! That makes me the second person to conquer the Big Rocco... considering the oily brutality of the challenge, it's an honor I should wear with pride. It really tested my endurance for distance eating. My only regret is not finishing within the hour mark I'd set for myself.


Strategy is all-important. Manny and I both employed a "slice by slice" method, but that was clearly not the way to go. You needed to get through the cheese before it hardened - and before your body began to reject all the grease. Our fellow eaters handled it the right way.

Though Aaron eventually gave up, he ate about 7/8 of the pie. No matter what else I can say, the man is fast! He's got a bright future in speed eating. The Big Rocco seems to be just a bit above his current stomach capacity.

It would have been cool to have gone 4 for 4 that night, but 2 for 4 is a decent result given the immense difficulty of the challenge. Most restaurant challenges do not approach the 8 lb mark, and for good reason.

It was a thrill to win, but the next day hardly felt glamorous ;(

Too Much...

Several years ago, Domino's Pizza ran a promo where you could order pizzas online and pick as many toppings as you wanted. They might still do it. The truth is that I haven't eaten anything from Domino's since late 2007.

Naturally, I find these kinds of promotions difficult to resist. A friend and I decided to custom-order pizzas that had virtually every topping on the menu. Like 11-12 toppings per pizza. It seemed like a funny idea at the time. Kind of a sneaky way to get more value without actually spending more.

Things took a bad turn when we drove out to pick up the pizzas. The guy who actually prepared our pizzas was irate at our ridiculous topping selections. He complained that it's hard to properly cook such a pizza - that you need to bake it longer and therefore risk burning parts of it.

"You guys really didn't need to order every damn topping on the menu!"

I took some offense to that. We didn't order every topping on the menu, for one thing. Besides, isn't the customer always (or usually) right? Why give me the option to pick 12 toppings if you're just going to complain about it?

I don't think that guy smiled once. He totally deserved the negative review we gave him. As for the pizzas? They tasted okay. Lots of intermingling flavors, little bit of burning, but thankfully they didn't seem contaminated. Maximum value achieved.

If I remember correctly, we followed up those pizzas with a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts from the $3.99 Midnight Special at the Long Beach location. Good times.

My next post will be a tribute to Ben Monson.... sort of.

The 20K Club

Insomnia strikes at inopportune moments sometimes. I figured I may as well do something productive.

This post is a reflection on the "20K Club," an informal competitive eating association borne of a Facebook conversation between Johnnie Excel and Matt Stonie regarding the feasibility of consuming 20,000 calories in one sitting.

That's a hell of a lot of calories to put down in one run. For the sake of perspective, 4 lbs of peanut butter would only get you to 11,000 calories.

Come to think of it, there's many of us who might have yet to enter the 10K Club. It's tough to say... but plates like the one pictured above might certainly help.

That's a heap of soft serve ice cream buried under five dense pieces of cheesecake. It reminds me of those ridiculously oversized dessert plates you would see on Ben Monson's bodybuilding.com page, though clearly Ben did it bigger.

You're gonna need to eat several of these plates to even remotely approach 20k. Maybe you could try candy bars - between 90 and 100 would take you to 20,000 calories.

The 20K Club has some rules in place that make the task even more daunting. For example, you can't simply eat large quantities of calorie-dense ingredients such as butter or mayonnaise to achieve high totals. You have to consume actual foods or ingredients assembled into legitimate dishes. Foods used must also be sourced from nutrition labels so that the calorie counts may be verified. And: the consumption must be captured on one continuous video clip for posterity.

That's complicated enough. And pretty straightforward.

There's many ways to enter the hallowed Hall of Fame (which is still barren). Do 11 lbs of animal crackers sound good to anyone?

Moving Pictures

Generally, when you come to this website you are hit with a barrage of photos. That's been the track record.

I realize it's time to try something new. Gotta keep things fresh. Instead of just posting up a stream of photos, I'm considering creating video slideshows of the food I consume to post on YouTube.



This is just a sample video of a visit I paid to Hometown Buffet for their $5 weekend breakfast special early in 2010. It's a collection of about a dozen photos. There was nothing really special about this particular meal. $5 is an unbeatable bargain for an unlimited amount of food... even if it isn't haute cuisine. I know two guys who incessantly debate the quality of Hometown's food. Thankfully, it's pretty tough to screw up breakfast. I like it there.

Come to think of it... today's a weekend, isn't it?

Bottom line: more of these slideshows are on the way!

In Memoriam

Early this morning, a dear friend of mine passed away. He was a colleague in the profession of teaching. I could always count on him for solid advice, whether it was about professional or family matters. His words comforted me during a moment of intense hardship last year. And, for that, I was incredibly grateful.

Nestor Salan didn't know about this blog or my videos, but he knew about my passion for eating and he encouraged me to pursue eating challenges and contests wherever possible. He was one of the few people I knew who was constantly asking: "So what'd you eat this weekend?"

We were always talking about having eating contests among the school staff to raise spirit among the students. While these never took place, Mr. Salan would have been the first guy to volunteer. Maybe even before me.... building up a sense of the community meant that much to him.

I'll miss the man, but I'll forever remember his words: "I'll be where I need to be when I need to be there." That spirit of optimism and destiny was unshakable.

It's too bad we never had an eating contest. He might have won.