(En)grossing Thoughts

Probably some of the most disgusting pictures I've come across are the "after" shots. The ones we take of finished plates. It's an attempt to prove that the meal was really eaten and not merely thrown over the shoulder. It's kind of feeble. Before I resorted to video it made sense. Now it's kind of gross.

What does a tray full of sauce and grease really prove anyway? Obviously a tray full of wing bones and empty ice cream containers don't prove anything. They're good to tack onto the end of a video, but that's it.

And who the Hell smiles after eating 7+ lbs of chicken? That's gotta be the world's second fakest smile.

Because this is the world's first fakest smile, taken after eating 12 lbs of pizza. In the future I'm going to opt for a more realistic post-game pose. Yes, an eating challenge is about winning. I don't need to look like I climbed a mountain, all triumphant and such.

When it's all over, it really feels like a mountain climbed you. And that's nothing to smile about.

Sushi For Dessert

Haven't blogged at all this month, so here we go. Asian Palace Buffet in La Mirada, CA offers AYCE weekend dinner for $12.99 plus tax and tip.

The sushi was above average for the price range. I also appreciated the availability of crab items.

I'm possibly the only person who could mix sushi with a dessert plate. Well worth the price and I'd go back if I was in the area.

Raising the Bar

The bar was set at 41 pancakes last night. Johnnie Excel and I have started this game of one-upsmanship recently, and it shows no signs of vanishing into the cold night.

It started a long time ago, really. We were curious as to who would win a capacity battle between the two of us. Unfortunately, differences in our skill sets made most comparisons impossible. Excel does well in speed contests, whereas I achieve my best in longer competitions.

We discussed meeting at a buffet. Nothing really came of that (yet). We clashed recently at Chick Fil A's nugget eating contest, but that really wasn't a fair test. Chicken nuggets aren't Johnnie's favorite food and the salt content deterred most participants from going for broke.

But pancakes are a whole other matter. We both love them. Luckily, Denny's runs a $4 promotion for all-you-can-eat pancakes. Finally, there's a potential proving ground for us.

Last year, I was featured in the local Yucca Valley newspaper for eating 33 pancakes at Denny's in 90 minutes. Now, Johnnie has raised the bar to 41 hotcakes in two hours. Can I push it to 45?

And yes, those are pictures of hot dogs up above. I will leave the symbolic meaning up to you.

Feeling Fab

Fab Hot Dogs is a restaurant with a strong local following. Located in Reseda, CA, they were famously featured on the TV food program "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" in 2009. The eatery actually sells T-shirts referencing Guy Fieri and the TV appearance.

I visited them in April 2011 in connection with a video project that hasn't yet materialized.

So.. Fab Hot Dogs maintains two Walls of Fame, one dedicated to customers who have sampled every item on the menu (in their lifetime), and another for the diner who holds the record for most hot dogs and buns consumed in a single 30-minute visit.  While eating everything on the menu in one visit seemed tempting, I was there to break the house hot dog record.

In 30 minutes, I pushed the record from 10.5 dogs and buns up to 15. It wasn't particularly difficult to put up such a number. The owner gave me the option of stopping at 11, since that would have secured the record and my spot on the wall. It seemed like a good idea to keep going since I still had time and room in my stomach.

How were the hot dogs? Well, delicious. Juicy. Flavorful. I don't eat hot dogs often so it's hard to describe their taste creatively! The dogs themselves were slightly bigger than a Nathan's competition frank. The buns were clearly larger and heavier than anything I'd run across in a contest. 15 hdbs at Fab probably equates to over 20 hdbs at a Nathan's contest.

Oh yes, I also received a T-shirt to commemorate my ascendancy as the new hot dog record holder. Its got a likeness of Guy Fieri's face on it and a really slick store logo. Hard to believe I have yet to see a single episode of his show.

There's Always A Catch

You can't read it, but the list of OMG Champions at The Catch is short. Unitary. The lone wolf is Tom Gilbert, a professional eater residing in Las Vegas. He's a quiet man, but he can eat like a freak. Two years ago that prowess garnered him a $500 payout.

Photo courtesy T-Vo facebook

This is what the 8 lb OMG burger looked like when I attempted it in the summer of 2009. It's certainly huge. Whoever puts it down deserves the prize. Tom earned good money for less than 30 minutes of work. Of course, Tom's victory was not without consequences. The Catch of Anaheim decided to limit who could be eligible for the cash prize.

In short, if you have any competitive eating experience whatsoever, you can't play. Maybe you completed a 4 lb burrito challenge at a restaurant across town. Or, maybe you won a 3 minute hot dog eating contest in San Diego. You won't be allowed to compete for the prize (they take your ID and google you). The logic isn't totally there. If I can eat 1/2 lb of hot dogs in 3 minutes, does that automatically mean I'm guaranteed to eat 8 lbs of hamburger in one hour?

Clearly, it's an attempt to protect the house. The OMG Challenge is actually a scam masquerading as a legitimate eating challenge. Anyone who stands a chance of actually finishing it isn't allowed to go for it. Ironically, serious eaters like Stephen Obar and Stephanie Torres have previously come up short against it.

On New Year's Eve, 2011, my friend "The Spicialist" decided to try his hand at the burger. After a long spell, the manager returned with his ID and determined he had participated in a 5-minute taco eating contest and was therefore voided from the $500 prize. Unfortunately the manager was rather rude and belligerent in his explanation of the facts. I didn't see the need for that. We weren't there to rob the place. We were there for a fun night. If we can't play, just say so kindly.




My friend was undeterred. We got a crowd here, it's New Year's Eve, so let's put on a show.. if he could finish the 8 lb burger in one hour, it would be free. No $500 prize, but an eating challenge nevertheless.

The burger that emerged from the kitchen was no 8 lb OMG. It was considerably larger, anywhere from 10 lbs on up. The Spicialist fought valiantly but he stopped after eating half in about 20 minutes. He proceeded to toast us with a bottle of Tabasco.




Well, it was still a fun night. The leftover burger tasted great but the service was lackluster overall. I couldn't believe how hard it was for our party to get water or have our drink orders serviced. The management clearly held a grudge against us over the challenge situation. Even Pho 87 didn't treat me so roughly. I won't be going back, and there's no "catch" to that.




You can count on a group of competitve eaters to have a good time, even in the midst of defeat. Friends, food, hot sauce, air hockey, arcade games, claw machines, and Dance Dance Revolution. What more could we ask for?

Happy New Year indeed.

A Challenge To-go

Photograph courtesy Matt Cohen

Everyone's telling me about it. Dine 909 tweeted it to me last Friday, Dax Swanson told me over Twitter this evening, and Matt Cohen messaged me the picture about it in the afternoon.
Visit any participating Togo's sandwich shop in Southern California and you can take on the Pounder Challenge. Eat a family sized pastrami sandwich in 30 minutes or less to win a limited edition T-shirt and a certificate of completion.

What you won't get, win or lose, is a refund. This sandwich will set you back $21.95. Still, it looks like fun for someone wanting to try their hand at a first challenge. It's probably no more than 3 or 3.5 lbs.

What strikes me is how rare it is to find a chain offering an eating challenge. What's next, a Monster Big Mac challenge at McDonald's?

3 ft of Cheesy Hell

This is the 3 foot cheesesteak challenge from Hermosa Beach. It's sold at Big Mike's Subs for $30, and you get 30 minutes to devour it. Winners get a t-shirt, a mention on the wall of fame, and a gift certificate for $30.

It's no easy feat to eat this monstrosity. In fact, when I visited this place November 2010, I didn't manage to win this food fight. I had the last bite in my mouth at the 30th minute. The manager refused to call it. Oh well. I'll be back, and next time it won't be close. It's rare that I speak with such boldness but 2012 calls for new directions.

Finishers of the sandwich are elite company of the competitive eating world. Damon Wells and Ben Monson finished it prior to become Major League Eaters. Right after I failed it, Stephanie Torres finished it to become the third successful challenger. Elite company indeed. If I could eat hot dogs like any of them I'd make more of an impression.

So it goes. And next time I go, I'll be taking that grey t-shirt with me damnit.

Emptying the Garden of 15 Olives

What does an endless bowl of pasta look like? To be honest, I'd never seen one before. Neither had my friend. That brought us to Olive Garden last September. We needed to find out if such a thing existed. We were suspicious, because we'd heard that everything must come to an end at some time.

We dined for about two hours, running through a considerable gamut of conversation. My friend got through 6 plates and I cleared 15, to the amazement of the server.

Honestly, there's no way I can remember the names of all the different combinations I ordered. For fairness I tried to get a bit of everything. It seemed like a great deal all around.. how do you beat $9 for 15 bowls of restaurant-grade pasta?

So, why did I stop at 15? It's not an even number, or a lucky number. I wasn't stretched to the limit. But, I was facing a 2-hour drive home from Orange County and wanted to make it home comfortably. If I didn't relish the ability to drink water on the way home, I might have finished 4 or 5 more bowls.

Endless is a fancy term, but it still refers to a limited number. It's all relative. My endless capped off at 15, and it's nothing I'm going to complain about now. At least I didn't have to cook all those combinations of pasta!

Rolling Out 2012

It's 2012. With a great year behind me, it's time to start looking at what I'm going to do with competitive eating in the next 12 months.

There's much fewer available restaurant challenges in Southern California. My focus will shift toward raising the bar. There's a few extremely large challenges on the horizon (Fat Sal's in Westwood), as well as some places where I'd like to try double-challenge portions.

On the contest horizon, I plan to help Chick Fil-A of La Habra promote their nugget eating contests and participate selectively in a few other local events. I'm also looking into the possibility of tying charity work to competitive eating.

I'll be doing more work with Wreckless Eating as well. I'm joining their cast as a regular member. Matt Zion and company have a few ideas for raising the bar on mass consumption, and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens. There will also be more videos produced for my own YouTube channel, mostly challenge documentation and other short concept clips.



As far as this blog goes, there's plenty of old (and new) challenges to write about. In this New Year, a trip down to San Diego has yielded four wins and I'll write about them shortly.

97 and 3

A tabulation of my restaurant challenges for the year 2011 returned a figure of 100. The number came as a surprise. I didn't think it would be that high, but statstics don't lie. 97 of them were answered successfully while the remaining 3 required two tries to get it right.

So which challenges did I fail? Well, two of them were mentioned recently. There was the 36" team pizza at Big Mama and Papa's Pizzeria in Los Angeles, as well as the 5 lb Bikkuri Don Bowl at Wakasaya in Little Tokyo. The third was the 5 lb cheesesteak challenge at McGonagle's in San Diego.

Two bites in, I blocked up my throat with cheesesteak as I pushed myself to go at top speed. That was an incredibly disappointing finish. Management called a disqualification as I cleared my throat with a full plate of food. During my revenge tour I went more slowly and cautiously toward a victory.

A 97% success rate isn't perfect, but I won't complain. This count of 100 challenges does not include contests or my 20K calorie bowl, or similarly non-sanctioned challenges. The count only includes eating challenges sanctioned by restaurants in which a refund or prize was offered for finishing the food in question.

It was a big year. My most publicized challenge of the year was the 4 lb Brahma Bull sandwich at Rib Line in San Luis Obispo, CA. which was showcased on Man v Food Nation. My favorite challenge was the 120 oz steak at the Brand Steakhouse in Las Vegas, NV.

I've had several days in which I completed two challenges, and in one instance I managed to complete three. My biggest single challenge of the year was probably the 28" 2-topping pizza at Valentini Pizza in Victorville, weighing in at 12 lbs.

My most controversial challenge was the 10-12 lb Phozilla bowl at Pho 87. The restaurant refused to give me the prize jackpot after labeling me a "professional eater" and citing my appearance on Man v Food. Then, the restaurant listed my name on the website as a challenge winner and then just as mysteriously pulled it down. At least they agreed to refund my $32 for the challenge.

Well.. it's been a year. I met several new eaters (The Spicialist, Mary Bowers, Juan Rodriguez, Chris Wreckless), deepened friendships with others, debuted on Wreckless Eating and had a background role on Bones.

In a change of pace, I've created a video compiling my challenges for 2011 and forecasting a banner year ahead.

Happy New Year.

Coming Up Short

A commenter on Eatfeats wondered if I've ever lost an eating challenge. There have been a few. In all but one case, I've managed to go back and avenge my defeat. Over time, my speed and capacity skill set have improved and that has led to stronger results.

I've never lost a heat challenge. I've never lost the second or third challenge I've attempted on the same day.



My challenges are lost when the time limit is excessively short or when I choke (literally). Rice has posed the greatest difficulty for me where speed eating is concerned. The Bikkuri Don, a 5 lb sashimi and rice bowl available at Wakasaya in Los Angeles, proved elusive for me within the 15 minutes. Last month, I conquered it in 10. That's evidence of progress.

The team 36" pizza (in the video at the top) met its end when I returned with Johnnie Excel as my partner the following month. Aaron Ybarra is an excellent speed eater, but the pizza was simply too massive for us to complete as a team. I'm also suspicious that the crust was thicker when I tried it with Aaron. 



File photo courtesy J. Excel's Facebook

To date, the sole challenge that has eluded me is the 3-foot Philly cheesesteak at Big Mike's in Hermosa Beach. My old stab at that behemoth sandwich came in November 2010. The last bite was in my mouth at the 30 minute mark but the manager refused to take it. I think I'm due for a rematch.

A future post will discuss that 3-foot sammich in detail. There's tons of photos, as well the story of a friend who completed it right after I failed and made me look like a chump. Such is life.

Hope everyone's ready for a new year!

Grinding the Mill

The Cookie Mill is a small (but busy) restaurant in Azusa, CA. My cousin was the first to tell me about the place, having discovered from Yelp that they have an eating challenge.

But more on that later. Challenges aside, the place makes excellent cookies on site. All categories of flavor... Fresh batches are baked throughout the day and well into the night. You can get a large cookie sandwich for $3, which is just what the college student ordered. It's near a college as it turns out, so the place is consistenly packed with starving students looking for a deal.

Fittingly, their restaurant challenge is a massive ice cream cookie sandwich. It's one of the few sugar-based eating challenges available in Southern California.

As a matter of curiosity, I think it'd be interesting to see how many ordinary-sized cookie sandwiches could be eaten in 10 minutes. The big cookie is a huge novelty. The regular cookie sandwiches are more akin to what you'd encounter in a contest.

Different Takes

The Broken Yolk Cafe, in San Diego County, offers the highly inconsistent Ironman Challenge. 12-egg chili cheese omelet, home fries, and two biscuits. I've finished it four times, and each time it's come out differently. You can get more potatoes (or less), more eggs (or less), and the biscuits can be normal or gigantic.

But, when you take on a restaurant challenge, you play by the restaurant's rules. The platter could be 6 or 8 lbs. Well, it's a nice assortment of food. This picture makes me want breakfast.

72 oz Side of Beef

The Iron Hog Saloon, a few miles away from Victorville, offers a 72 oz steak challenge modeled with near exactitude off the Big Texan in Amarillo, Texas.

Getting to the Iron Hog is a bit of a journey. After reaching Victorville, you must drive through several miles of dusty desert road. At some point you wonder if you're going in the right direction. GPS says that you are, but in the desolation you begin to doubt that tinny voice telling you to drive ahead.

It's a biker bar, yes, but they take their challenge very seriously. Here is the competition table. Once time begins, you get one hour to plow through the steak and various sides or you owe them $100. This price tag is a bit steep. I'd say it's the biggest deterrent to any brave soul taking the challenge. On top of the table is an official rundown of the rules and some local trivia.

Now it's time for some backstory. Prior to my visit, I had never done a steak challenge. The idea of trying to eat 4 1/2 lbs of meat seemed intimidating. When I filmed with Adam Richman on the set of Man v Food Nation a week prior to taking this challenge, Richman made sure to sell the point that I'd never done a steak challenge. But, facing a 3 lb tri tip sandwich (which I did for the show) is a bit different from facing a 4.5 lb steak with assorted sides.

Yeah, it's that big. Easily the size of 8 or 9 ordinary steaks that a man or woman would eat for dinner. Before my visit, there was only one challenge winner. Her name is Stephanie Wu, an enthusiastic eating challenger who completed several challenges and operated a sophisticated website documenting challenges before mysteriously disappearing. I hope she's ok, wherever she ended up. Her record time was 59 minutes.

The cook brought out the platter, let me choose my knives, and we were off. I chose to focus on the meat first. In about 8 minutes the steak was over half finished, so I switched over to the potato and tomato slices. Though I didn't have to, I also finished the optional lettuce and cantaloupe slices. They were good for varying up the flavor.



My finish under 29 minutes caused a small uproar in the restaurant. It cut the record time in less than half, so I understand the shock, but there's many eaters who could have finished this challenge in under 15 minutes. Knowing how to tackle a huge steak now, I'm certain I could improve on my own time. It made me nervous when customers would crowd in to watch, but it's not everyday that someone rolls in and manhandles the biggest meal on the menu.

And without a doubt, this is a challenge that I would love to do a second time. It tasted phenomenal, the cut of meat wasn't too fatty, and there are several sides on the menu so there's plenty to choose from. Given the price tag there's no way they'd let me have another one on the house.

They even have a guest book! There's only been two challenge restaurants, in my experience, that offered that nice touch. The other, famous for pancakes and weary travelers, will be the focus of an upcoming post.