Fuddruckers takes world's largest burger title (for now)

It was only a matter of time until someone had to go and holy-frickin'-crap-size-it in the battle for the world's largest commercially available burger. I'm just glad it happened to one of my favorite burger joints.

On Thursday, the Fuddruckers in the Foxwoods casino in Connecticut unveiled a 29.6 pound burger (What, they couldn't add a few pickles and onions to push it over the 30 mark?). Guinness was on hand to verify the beast, which goes for $250 and has to be ordered 48 hours in advance. That's it above in all of its rather colorless, unappetizing glory.

The Norwich Bulletin has a write-up about the meatstrocity here. Of course, in the interest of "balanced journalism," the article also quotes a local dietician who moaned about "portion control" and "obesity." Also in the article, Dennis Liegey (owner of Denny's Beer Barrel Pub which held the previous record with a 15.5 pound burger), said the Fuddruckers' record "will be short-lived" and said he'll soon offer a 50-pounder.

I guess that's okay. Impractical, but okay. I mean, how many people are going to order a 50-pound burger? About as many as would order a 29.6 pound burger (especially when it costs $250!). If you asked me, in order to qualify as "The World's Largest Commercially Available Burger," a burger should have to be 1) commercially available, and 2) something more than three people will order each year. No, scratch that, a better second criterion might be that it can't be something you have to order 48 hours in advance.

And what's with the $250 price tag? That's $8.44 per pound! Actually, that's not too bad, considering a one-pounder at Fuddruckers starts at $7.49, but compare it to the Denny's burger or the 12.5 pound Zeus at the Clinton Station Diner in Clinton, NJ, and the Fudd burger becomes a pound-for-pound rip-off. (Denny's 15.5 pounder goes for $34.99 which comes to $2.26 per pound, while the Zeus' $34 price tag makes it $2.72 per pound.)

In the process of setting up the links in this post, I noticed the Clinton Station Diner website offering a 50-pounder called Mt. Olympus. Finish it in three hours with four friends and it's free. According to another website, Mt. Olympus costs just $99 and takes only 60 minutes to prepare (the Denny's 15.5 pounder takes 120 minutes). That makes it $1.98 per pound (cheap!) and the one-hour wait time more than qualifies it under the aforementioned two-part "commercially available" test.

So who really has the largest commercially available burger? Who knows. One thing's for sure, this battle ain't over till the fat lady eats (or, as our Connecticut dietician friend might say, "till the fat lady slips into an obesity-induced diabetic coma and is finally taken off life support.") Well, I was hungry.

This just isn't right

I'm not sure if I want one of these, but I stumbled onto this and thought it was worth a post. This eBay seller sells them for $14.99. Who would buy one of these? No one with a penis, that's for sure. And probably no one who likes men. I guess that sort of narrows it down.

Bertoletti takes the ice cream crown

Patrick Bertoletti is the new ice cream eating champion after winning the GoldenPalace.net World Ice Cream Eating Contest in New York. The win marks the third of the year for Bertoletti, who also took home the gold in a key lime pie contest and a corned beef match.

Bertoletti downed 1.75 gallons of vanilla ice cream from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory to set a new world record. The official results and summary are posted here, but Crazy Legs took second with 1.5 gallons and Eater X third with 1.25 gallons. To put 1.75 gallons in perspective, that's the equivalent of 14 pints of Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

In the post event story, IFOCE President Richard Shea had this to say: "Ice cream is clearly one of the most difficult disciplines on the circuit because of the 'Brain Freeze' factor. However, most of these eaters are immune to the cold."

Immune to the cold, Rich? By now I'm used to Shea's tendency to stretch the truth and embellish here and there (after all, it is competitive eating), but now he's just making things up -- and maybe insulting our intelligence just a little bit. I guess you can blame my impatience for bullshit in the media on my job as a public relations strategist. (I know, I know, some of you are saying that more qualifies me to be a bullshitter.) Not coincidentally, Richard Shea himself was a PR man before devoting himself full time to the IFOCE.

A 30-inch hot dog grows in Brooklyn

A couple of giant hot dog stories are posted at SuperSizedMeals.com. I sort of feel bad recycling content from other blogs, but hey, I don't get all the sweet referrals like they do, so screw it. Besides, when I do get inspiration from other blogs, you can be sure I'll always give credit where credit is due.

The first story is about a 30-inch hot dog served up by Schnack, a hot joint in Brooklyn (Tagline: "People try it...and they like it"). On Monday, Schnack is hosting an eating contest for their two-and-a-half-foot monster dog, but in the meantime they're holding a few qualifying rounds to separate the gurgitators from the mere eaters. The guy on the right has lots of good pictures from his recent visit. His blog ("Iron Stomach") sounds pretty cool, and I just might keep an eye on it. His blog's tagline: "Food, beer, wine, drinks, and other things that go in my mouth." (Whoa buddy!!)

The other hot dog story is from competitive eater Andrew "Skinnyboy" Lane's website. He just celebrated a birthday with a cake shaped like a hot dog. Check out a few of the cross section pics. It looks like the hot dog is made out of pure icing! Mmmm...icing that looks like processed meat products.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for details

The IFOCE really needs to work on releasing more detailed information about their eating events. An announcement on their website heralds the upcoming GoldenPalace.net World Ice Cream Eating Championship, but says little more than "an ice cream eating contest will be held in New York City." (I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.)

That doesn't really paint a vivid picture in a fan's mind. First of all, who will be competing? What flavor(s) ice cream will be eaten? What's the previous record and will the previous record-holder be in attendance to defend his/her title? And, lastly, where in NYC is it being held? (It's kind of a big place.)

(SIDENOTE: The record is held by the very recently retired Ed "Cookie" Jarvis, who downed one gallon and nine ounces of vanilla ice cream in 12 minutes. On a side rant, lets hope the IFOCE soon standardizes the time limits of these events. The NYC contest is 8 minutes, which will leave us with two ice cream records and whole lot of confusion about who's the greater eater.)

Oh, and what's with the event only being open to the media? Ice cream is as American as apple pie ala mode. It's sold by vendors at baseball games. You can't throw a birthday party -- no matter how old you are -- without a little ice cream to go with your cake. Hell, I personally have five half gallons of it in my freezer at home (only the low fat stuff...gotta save calories for other eating challenges). Bottom line: Who wouldn't want to see people shoveling Rocky Road down their gullets and eating their way through the worst ice cream headache of all time?

In defense of the IFOCE's announcement, it does say that no hot liquids will be allowed (which can supposedly be used to alleviate said ice cream headache) and that cups and spoons will be standardized.

(NOTE: After this was posted the IFOCE announced more details about the event. You can find said announcement here.)

Chestnut's 50 debated on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption

Joey Chestnut’s awesome performance in the Las Vegas qualifier was among the topics discussed on the “Mail Time” segment of today’s episode of Pardon the Interruption (aka PTI) on ESPN. I personally am a big fan of the show, which airs daily on ESPN (I TiVo it for my regular fix of baseball headlines and opinions). For those not familiar with the program, it features a pair of veteran journalists who debate the daily sports headlines. Often their commentary is laced with sarcasm and sometimes – as in this case – their topics spill over into the wackier side of sports and pop culture. Here’s a transcript of the Chestnut discussion:

TONY KORNHEISER (reading email from viewer): American Joey Chestnut downed 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes over the weekend. Kobayashi’s record is 53 and a half. Has Kobayashi finally met his match?

MICHAEL WILBON (over footage of Joey aside Rich Lefevre during the final seconds of the qualifier): I hope they both get sick and throw up all over the table in this competition and have to have Pepto Bismol sort of pumped in them intravenously.

TONY: Here’s what I think about this. Kobayashi gets to eyeball this guy at the same trough and this guy’s gonna fold. If this guy’s got any brains, he studies the film of the Kodiak bear. (Cut to footage of bear vs. Kobayashi hot dog eating stunt.) That’s the way you beat Kobayashi. You grab about 18 in your big paw and you shove ‘em down, bang, bang, bang! You put Kobayashi to shame.

MICHAEL: Is he a bear? Is he as big as a Kodiak bear? Does he have the jaw structure and the hands and paws of a Kodiak bear?

TONY: Well, that would be a problem. That would be a problem.

MICHAEL: Yeah, you shoulda thought of that!

Las Vegas Five-O

Something big happened on Thursday at the New York Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Something even the boldest of Vegas bookies would've given only 75-1 odds of occuring. That something was 22-year-old Joey Chestnut -- the number three eater in the world -- eating 50 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes during the second qualifying event of the season to determine who will compete in the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Contest on July 4.

Chestnut's 50-spot annihilated the American record of 37 set by Sonya Thomas during the 2005 Nathan's contest and left everyone (perhaps including Chestnut) in shock. (For some reason, the IFOCE claims Thomas' U.S. record total from 2005 was 42, but other sources -- including Thomas' own website -- set the mark at 37.)

So what does Chestnut's feat really mean? For one, it means Takeru Kobayashi isn't unbeatable. In each of the last five years that Koby has devoured the competition on Coney Island the real question was never if he could be beat, but how many hot dogs he would eat and who would finish second.

Let's take a quick look at his dominance over the years. In 2001 he burst onto the scene by downing 50 dogs and buns; a full 29 more than the runner-up. The next year, he put away 50.5 dogs to Eric "Badlands" Booker's 26. In 2003, Koby had an off year, eating just 44.5 franks but he still dusted runner-up Ed "Cookie" Jarvis' total of 30. 2004 saw him set the current world record with 53.5 dogs (countryman Nobiyuki Shirota would finish in second with 38), and last year he cruised to another easy win, beating Sonya Thomas by a score of 49 to 37.

In two of those four years, Joey Chestnut's Thursday total would've won him the coveted Mustard Yellow Belt and the obligatory whirlwind tour on the late night TV circuit.

In an ESPN.com article, IFOCE Chairman George Shea had this to say about Chestnut's gut-busting feat: "This could be so critical to our sport," said George Shea, chair of the International Federation of Competitive Eating, which sanctions more than 100 eating contests, including the Nathan's event. "It's never good for the same athlete to win so many years in a row. The Fourth of July has been stolen from Americans because of Kobayashi's dominance and now America has someone who they can get excited about."

But could it be that the IFOCE owes its very existence to Kobayashi's ability to eat circles around the competition each July at the corner of Surf and Stillwell in Brooklyn, New York. In the same ESPN article, Joey Chestnut estimates he's won more than $50,000 in prizes while competing on the pro-eating circuit. Where does that money come from? Sponsors. And how has the IFOCE been able to attract its sponsors? Takeru Kobayashi.

When Koby put up a "double deuce and a half" in 2001, the world took notice. Next year, the world watched again to see if "that little Asian guy" could defy the laws of gastrology one more time. How would, of course, and he'd do it again, and again, and again. Just as Babe Ruth ushered in a new era of baseball in the Roaring Twenties by putting up gaudy home run totals year after year, so too has Takeru Kobayashi with competitive eating. To say that Koby's dominance is somehow bad for the sport of competitive eating is like saying pro golf would be better off without Tiger Woods in the 90s or the NHL without Wayne Gretzky in the 80s.

No, I have a feeling most gurgitators on the competitive eating circuit don't mind one bit if Kobayashi flies into LaGuardia from Nagano each year, eats four dozen hot dogs on ESPN, and then disappears for another 364 days (with the exception of Koby's appearance at Krystal Hamburger Eating Contest in Chattanooga). And why not? While Koby's basking in his awesome celebrity status in Japan, American eaters are making thousands each year (or at least gas and beer money) by pulling down prize money provided by sponsors who are attracted to a sport made popular by the 24 hours Kobayashi spends on American soil each year.

I'm not saying Koby's reign shouldn't end -- or that Chestnut isn't the one to do it -- I'm just not sure what'll happen when it does.

Take all you want, but eat all you take

Poor Wendy Dershem never saw it coming. Earlier this month she, her boyfriend and her two children were kicked out of an Iowa Chinese buffet after employees claimed the woman's kids were leaving too much food on their plates.

The waitstaff had apparently observed the wasteful habits over the course of several visits and finally decided to show 'em the door. Said one employee: "They just take one bite and throw it away. They take four egg rolls and crab rangoon, take one bite of egg roll and throw the whole plate. That is wasting food."

I found this story on Yahoo News and anyone who's ever read the discussion boards on Yahoo know they can get pretty out of control. Like really, really out of control. Especially on stories that involve race or politics...or Chinese food. Surprisingly about 80 percent of the comments came down on the side of the restaurant. Of course, that doesn't mean they still weren't a little irreverent. Here's a few of the more extreme and laughable remarks (and these are only from postings 2800 through 3100!):

"I'd have spiked the egg rolls with rat poison and kicked her and her bratty kids right out on the street," said Trolllikeapornstar.

"Wasteful pigs should be killed" was the subject of Whiteyfart772000's message. I couldn't bear to post the actual comment, but what do you expect from someone named "Whiteyfart".

"Fat people at buffets are a big problem," said the_internet_is_a_pudenda rather bluntly. (Apparently he's not familiar with the belt-of-fat theory.)

"tyler durden is god" narrowed the problem down to a lack of birth control: "Most people should be sterilised. This is a good example of why. Her kids are brats. Too bad she couldn't keep her legs closed."

"I see SO much waste in my business. Shoot! the amount of breakfast meat I threw away from one table yesterday, could've feed my daschund for a week!" said Humble383.

"Metalhead Guy 50280" likes his buffets with a little sass: "I am going to go eat at this restaurant now! It kicks ass to see some people still have balls and don't stand by while douchebags like those people screw them over."

"spiceychickensandwich" has a plan that might work: "Tazer her everytime she wastes food and then she'll stop"

"Oink! SNORK!" said leezlevontramp.

And, the Over Reaction of the Day Award goes to "clenderinqwertyuiop- likitres" for this insight: "The family should have been charged ten times what they paid and should be forced to work as slaves at the restaurant for twenty years, at the end of which, they should then be taken out, stripped naked, beaten to a bloody pulp and shot!!!!!!!!!!"

It's a stereotype that all Japanese dogs are small!

Liz from Urban Honking has an awesome side job. I'm not sure what she does for her real job (Liz, what do you do for your real job?), but in her spare time she gets behind-the-scenes access to all the biggest IFOCE events (at least those in the northeast United States). When she writes about her adventures on the circuit, it's probably the best competitive eating coverage on the internet.

Her blogging efforts also afford her the opportunity to chill with the eaters before and after each competition. This weekend she attended the taping of three episodes of the IFOCE's "Eats of Strength" series in Islandia, NY. Check out her write-up and don't forget to also view the Flickr photo set.

The above shot of the venerable and aptly named Crazy Legs Conti is just a taste of what's available at her photo set. Also available? A few pictures of Eater X the day after he got a perm at a salon in Chelsea.

I bought it on eBay (now what the hell am I going to do with it?)

eBay has everything. At least that’s what they say. So I decided to test the waters by doing a search for all things burger related (by the way, happy burger month!). Even though 90 percent of the 2,598 items were Happy Meal toys (or whatever the equivalent children’s meal is at Burger King), there were a few items on the list that weren’t cheap pieces of crap. Here are the highlights:

FAKE BURGERS – This is for those days when you just want to sit and stare at a burger and fries but don’t really want to go through the hassle of cooking and eating it. I’ve never had one of those days, but if you have you can buy this burger basket which looks just like what you might get at your favorite drive-in burger joint. You can also buy a burger on a plate with chips, a pickle, and very realistic looking Coke (at left). Mmmm…cold, waxen burgers.

PLUSH BURGER CD CASE – This little gem is described as a “fun way to keep your CDs and DVDs safe.” It’s also “suitable for home, car, office and holiday use.” Since the seller is from the UK, I’m assuming the latter is referring to use while on vacation. As far as being suitable for use at the office, I beg to differ.

BURGER BEER – It’s burgeresque in name only, but I like beer and I like burgers so I’ve included it here. Speaking of beer and burgers, how cool are these things at thatburger.com?

ODE TO A BURGER PUZZLE – This is by far the most robust burger on eBay and at 500 pieces, it’s a pretty decent sized puzzle too. The description says that although it’s a 500 piece puzzle, it comes with 502. A little extra pickle maybe? Who knows.

“MONSTER” BURGER DECAL – This is probably the only item on the list that I WILL OWN. It’s a 17 by 24 inch “photo quality burger decal” designed to give a snack truck or concession stand a “professional look.” So what kind of look is it designed to give if I put it on my refrigerator? Don’t answer that.

15-FOOT BURGER KING DARTH VADER DISPLAY – This poor guy is selling off his Star Wars collection and…oh, the humanity…"most" of his comics because he’s moving into a new house and doesn’t have room to store them. (I think that means he moved out of his parent’s house and into a tiny apartment above a tattoo parlor.) This item is actually a 15-foot inflatable Vader head and was used as a rooftop display to promote one of the new Star Wars movies. The seller claims to have purchased it from a BK manager who wanted to raise some extra cash to throw a cookout party for his workers. Gee, thanks boss. I’m busting my ass on the grill 30 hours a week, and you give us a work-related barbeque? Oh by they way, Lord Vader comes with a pump and the original box. May the force be with you.

“RARE” BURGER KING MASK – Who doesn’t love The King? Okay, maybe 90 percent of women and anyone over 40 doesn’t. They tend to think he’s “bizarre,” “creepy,” or “sort of like a serial killer.” Said one commenter on this blog entry, “(The King) scares the bejesus out of me anytime (he) comes on. (I) literally have to close my eyes to keep from shitting myself. Thank god no halloween costumes were available because if I saw one walking up to my house I'd probably beat him with a shovel.”

BURGER NECK TIE – This fashion abomination is for that crazy boss who decides to “let it all hang out” on a Friday so he wears this thing to score some points with the interns. Except instead of being cool, he’s just a jack ass with a stupid tie.

VINTAGE BURGER SIGNS – There’s a few of these reproductions of old metal 1950s style signs available on eBay. This one is kind of neat. If I had a nice porch and bitchin’ stainless steel grill I might buy this and hang it above it.

BURGER COIN PURSE – You probably have to be under 12 years of age to pull this off. Ladies, can you imagine being out on a date with a guy and he whips this thing out? He’d probably be the same guy who wears the cheeseburger neck tie and owns a 15-foot inflatable Darth Vader head.

The man they call Badlands

The 420-pound man standing next to me in the picture above needs no introduction for those who follow the sport of competitive eating. For those who don't, he's Eric "Badlands" Booker, the 9th ranked gurgitator in the world. The picture was taken last month at the Phillips Crabcake Eating Competition in Baltimore. It was covered in a previous post, but Badlands was in attendance that day not as an eater, but as an entertainer (he rapped a song from his new album during the few minutes after contest while the totals were being tallied).

A few facts about Badlands need to be pointed out to truly understand the awesome eating power this man possesses. As a New York City subway conductor on the 7 train -- the same train that transports New Yorkers to see my beloved Mets at Shea Stadium -- he holds records in all the foods we love to eat: donuts (49 glazed in 8 minutes), candy bars (two pounds of chocolate in 6 minutes), pumpkin pies (4 and three eighths of Entenmann's pies in 12 minutes), and some foods we like not so much, including 8 and a half ounces of onions in one minute and 9 and a half POUNDS of peas in 12 minutes.

This year will mark Booker's 10th appearance in the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. Of course, that's assuming he makes the cut in one of the upcoming qualifiers. But anyone who watched him eat 30 baseball-sized matzo balls in 5 and a half minutes at the Friar's Club in New York on April 20, 2005 knows there's little doubt that he will.

All hail the King!

Have to admit, I'm likin' this new "I am Man" campaign from Burger King for the new Texas Double Whopper. The spots urge males everywhere to stop settling for "chick food" and eat like a man (presumably at Burger King, but big, greasy burgers (happy hamburger month!) can be had at many places). Best lyric: "Oh yes, I'm a guy! I'll admit I've been fed quiche. Wave tofu bye-bye, now it's for Whopper beef I reach!"

Mmmm, quiche and beef! (But mostly beef.)

Friends don't let friends drive hungry

The number crunchers at Insure.com just released a list of the "10 Most Dangerous Foods to Eat While Driving." Your friend and mine, the hamburger (happy hamburger month!), came in at a somewhat risky number five on the round-up. The other offenders, in order of most dangerous to...still a bit dangerous, are as follows:

1. Coffee
2. Hot soup
3. Tacos
4. Chili
5. Hamburgers
6. Barbecued food
7. Fried chicken
8. Jelly or cream-filled donuts
9. Soft drinks
10. Chocolate

Okay, right off the top I have to say I agree with hot soup, particularly french onion soup. That's the stuff with the gooey cheese on the top and the one they tell you never to order on a date or job interview lunch, so it makes perfect sense not to eat it during your trip back to the office.

I'm not sure why soft drinks made the list. Why soft drinks? Why not milk or iced tea or apple juice? (I've since been informed that "soft drinks" can be used to refer to any non-alcoholic drink. Who knew?! Okay, probably a lot of you.) And what's so hard about eating chocolate? Bite the chocolate bar, chew, savor, swallow, repeat. Not that difficult.

Here's a few deadly snacks I'd recommend adding to the list:

- Spaghetti and meatballs (All that twisting of the fork and slurping of the noodles. And we won't even get into those pesky meatballs.)

- Crab legs (That little shell cracker thing is a handy tool, but it takes just one squirt of crab juice in the eye and your Hyundai is kissing the rear end of the Porsche in front of you.)

- The Big Texan 72-ounce steak (Yeah, we can pretty much consider any food that requires utensils to be dangerous, but this one requires a fork and a knife and a Kobayashi-sized appetite.)

I could go on and on (habanero peppers, white rice with chopsticks, really really hot and cheesy pizza), but you get the point.

31 days of left handed Whoppers

Somehow the fact that my favorite food has its own month devoted to it managed to escape my attention -- until now. Thanks to A Hamburger Today for enlightening me, but May is National Hamburger Month! So what's that mean? I'm not exactly sure, but I'm pretty sure it gives everyone license to eat as many hamburgers as they want for the next 27 days. Granted, I don't need an excuse to do that, but some people do and, well, here it is!

In honor of hamburger month (not to be confused with cheeseburger month, which I think is August), I encourage all Americans to go forth and support their local establishments by eating at least one burger per day during the month of May. Can't get a burger on Monday? No problem...just eat two on Tuesday! I personally might save all of my burgers until the last week of the month and eat myself through the best seven days of my life.

And, since it's hamburger month, you might see an increase in the number of burger-related facts and stories here at Mega Munch, starting with this one:

On April 1, 1998 Burger King made fast food history by taking out a full-page ad in USA Today to unveil the first ever left handed Whopper. The sandwich, according to the original press release, was "re-engineered to fit more comfortably in the left hand, thereby reducing condiment "spills" for left-handed hamburger lovers." This fast food miracle was accomplished simply by rotating the condiments 180 degrees, thus "redistributing the weight of the sandwich so that the bulk of the condiments will skew to the left, thereby reducing the amount of lettuce and other toppings from spilling out the right side of the burger."

Like any new product launch, the BK marketing team did their homework. Turns out, approximately 1.4 million of the nation's 32 million lefties eat at Burger King every day and until then they were forced to consume their favorite sandwich at the risk of a lapful of pickles, lettuce and onions.

In the photo below, you'll noticed the 180-degree rotation of the condiments in action. A bit of initial training was involved at the employee level, but after the first few they probably got the hang of it. On the left is the left-handed Whopper and on the right is the regular Whopper. Notice the placement of the fries and drink are also on the left side -- an extremely convenient detail for southpaw snackers.


Astute readers (i.e. those with a date function on their watch or the energy to check the top of the page on which the ad was printed) soon figured out that the wacky Whopper was really an April fools joke. The next day, BK issued another release confirming the prank. In it they noted the thousands of customers that actually visited locations across the nation to request the new burger, including many that asked if Burger King offered a right-handed version.

1-800-COOKIES

Picture this. You're a sophomore at State, you've been cramming for a sociology mid-term for the past four hours (or playing Madden football with friends), it's 2 o'clock in the morning and you're starving. The pizza place closed hours ago and the vending machine...well, a Butterfinger just ain't gonna cut it.

Thank God for this place. If you go to school at one of the 10 northeastern universities listed on the website you can have cookies, brownies and milk delivered right to your door with just one phone call. Just like mom used to make, except I don't remember my mother whipping up a batch of double chocolate chunk cookies or Snickers brownies after I returned from a rousing night of, er, socializing on the town.

Fittingly the place is called Insomnia Cookies. And, in a select few (lucky) locations, you even order cookie and brownie combo packages with a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Damn, so much for avoiding the Freshman 15.